The lovely Shimelle posted a new Sketch to Scrapbook Page the other day, and I found the sketch to be very alluring; there was way more stuff in that sketch than I would usually dare to put on a layout. Maybe I’m coming out of my shell, hehe. As I flipped through my Box of Forgotten Prints I Really Love (BoFPIRL, in short… ehm) there they were, the perfect 4×6 photos just waiting to be scrapbooked.
Following the sketch, this layout took me roughly an hour. AN HOUR, people! I usually spend way more time than that on a design, biting my nails, moving pretty paper around, getting ink on my fingers and glue in my hair, not being able to make up my mind. So, this sketch was a total kick starter for me. Thanks, Shimelle!
This is the finished layout, I apologize for the really badly lit picture!
In the photos you see our old family dog, who sadly passed away a few years ago. He was a happy little dog with loads of funny mannerisms and quirky personality streaks (something that seems to happen with all the pets in our family). Just as the rest of us, he was always happiest when we were out by our summer cabin. He was a free pooch there, hanging around the family but sort of deciding his daily curriculum as he pleased. He had a habit to take himself for a walk every day, checking the perimeter of the house and our orchard, and then strutting down to the waterfront to dip his paws. After he’d shaken the water off, he’d stand in the sunshine with his nose pointed at the horizon, and sniff the sea. Just enjoying himself. Then he’d mosy up to the cabin again, hoping for a treat.
He was a very special dog, we talk about his funny little ways quite often. He was with us on so many special occasions… It’s funny how, thinking about one specific memory, opens up a whole bunch more. There’ll prolly be more doggy layouts sometime in the future.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Or, as my dear friend Vanja chooses to call it: Friendship Day! I like her take on it much, much more. It’s more including, and of course you can celebrate your friendships! I don’t usually do handmade valentine cards for this particular day, but this year I decided to make a few for my closest family and one for Vanja and her daughter Nikki, to celebrate our friendship and the fact that whenever we hang out we have a great time, and always leave me happy and energized.We haven’t had a chance to hang out much for a few years, but are now a bit more back on track, which makes me incredibly happy.
Go check the series out and definitely watch the video where she makes the cards. She has such a great teaching style! (And makes a lot of her projects upside down for her videos. Serious skills, ya’all!)
Hope you all are having a great day, be it with your valentine or your family and friends. Stay safe!
Sometimes you just need something small and fiddly to craft while you can’t move about much, while you lie on the couch feeling fatigued and sorry for yourself. Say, if you are feeling really under the weather. Just in time for Valentine’s. So: These tiny little paper roses are perfect. So easy to make you can do it even if you have a fever, promise!
There is a special place in my heart for recycling, and so I decided to make these paper flowers out of newspaper. There’s this local paper that someone sticks in our letterbox once week no matter what notes we put up. It’s fairly annoying: It takes about 2 minutes to flip through, and then it goes directly in the recycling bin! Such waste of paper. So, I thought I’d give it another round before it got tossed out.
I cut long strips from an entire spread, and was lucky enough that one of the pages had a huge picture in it with a big blue sky. So, folding the strips in half I got the blue colour on both sides of the strip, which lead to the blue effect in the middle of the roses.
Quick, easy and so very pretty! Love making my own embellishments!
I have not had time for a proper update for a few days, but that does not mean I have given up on my projects! Since last time, I have taken photos daily, gone for a photo walk in a frosty forest, written a little bit on a story almost every day, made some samples for wedding invitations for some lovely friends that are getting married this summer, celebrated my 2-year anniversary with my boo, and generally making some plans for some exciting things in my life. Feels pretty awesome! I completely approve of this projects, it’s so much fun!
Can you believe it’s almost been a month?
Tonight I wanted to try some more masking techniques, and so I decided to turn my last experiment inside out. So I cut out a bunch of clouds and adhered them to thick cardstock with some 2 way glue (easy to remove after adding all the colour). I had to help hold them down a bit when I worked with the distress inks, but other than that it worked just fine! Here’s how the cards turned out:
Some happy cards to give away to happy people! Love how they turned out! But I’m feeling like I need to invest in more colours regarding distress inks. Like, all of the colours…
Day 10 in my endeavour to create something every day for 365 days. Today’s prompt was to make something with water or be inspired by it. I didn’t have the best of days today and felt a bit moody, so the water park fun land I was going to build (who doesn’t want a water slide in the living room?) will have to wait for another time. Instead I Tried out some mixed media techniques, which cheered me up (if you can’t have a waterside in your living room, at least you can splash around with it when creating some sort of art).
Result:
I’ve said it before: I really can’t draw. But maybe I can learn?
Vanja Utne is a Norwegian illustrator and artist that I love. She makes wonderful art, and her illustrations are so charming and just looking at them makes me smile. She’s also the creator of one of my favourite comics on the web.
Go visit her site and check out her wonderful stuff at CheesePirate.com:
So, this Christmas she sent out some Frostfell cardswith her own illustrations on it, and she sent one to me! It was totally one of the highlights during the holidays, and certainly one of the nicest cards I’ve gotten. I wanted to send her a card back, but also, I couldn’t help but make these Cheese Pirate earrings. Handmade, custom made and limited edition *wink*, these are the only ones, and only for Vanja!
This character is Lunch, the rodent bard:
I love this little rattie so he got some dangly hearts to hang out with him. And this is the cheese pirate, with some shiny loot (because he’s a pirate. So he needs some treasure. But I didn’t add any cheese):
I’m looking forward to seeing more art from Vanja, and I hear rumours of the possible publishing of a book soon. I’ll pre-order mine!
Day 8! One I’ve been looking forward too. The prompt for day 8 could not have been more perfect: Make an old book into something new.
I’ve been wanting to alter a book for a long time, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I grew up loving books with all my heart, cherishing them, taking good care of them… to alter and change a book has felt a bit big and scary, you know, like I’m crossing a line. But no more! This beautiful old thing, that is sadly falling apart anyway, will get a new life as an album documenting this year (The title is “The Conquest of the World”, which of course I feel is very fitting):
I’ve been researching for a while on how to do this thing, so today’s prompt really… prompted me get started! One resource I’ve been looking at is Noel Hyman’s vids at Paperclipping . Noel (and her husband Izzie) makes really high quality vids, and Noel has a lot of good ideas and is very pedagogical. I highly recommend having a look! I feel much more confident now, having seen a few examples. Other than that I try to find examples on Youtube from mixed media artists.
The book plate is filled with little cogs and pebbles and beads, and I’ll fill it in with some glaze to encase it all, but I wanted to take these photos first, since it takes ages for it to dry properly. The word in the book plate is “Create”, which is my One Little Word for 2012. I’m so excited about this book, and hope to fill it with lot’s of stories, memories and photos from this year. Onwards and Upwards!
Hope you liked the photos! Thank you for stopping by. Keep creating!
Today I didn’t follow the daily prompt in the creative diary. It had to do with going outside, and since there is a storm going on right now I didn’t feel to compelled to do that, hehe. So instead I stayed in my crafty corner and put together a layout based on the journaling I created yesterday. Since the project is about creating something every day, with no boundaries or rules, and I managed to do an entire layout in one sitting (I’m not a fast scrapbooker) I’m pretty pleased with myself. Yay me! Day 4 is done!
Reflection: It’s weird how I find myself constantly using yellow and blue, when these are my least favourite colours. What’s up with that?
Another reflection: It took me a LONG time NOT to put a lot of extra stuff on this layout. I realise it’s not very well balanced and that the upper left corner could have used something, maybe, but in the end I, after rummaging through my entire stash, I settled for splashing some blue watercolour up in the corner. So there you go. Sometimes it’s more about the story than the pretty shiny things, I’m learning *smile*. And this layout was really about the journaling and the story in the photo.
Handmade decos are always a nice touch to a card or a scrapbook layout, I think. It just feels great to be able to make something from scratch from the supplies you have, and it gets a little more personal, which is what I always want with my Christmas cards. Sometimes a Christmas card is only thing you send someone that year, maybe to a friend or a loved one that lives far away and you’ve haven’t had a chance to see or talk to in a while. That’s why it feels important to me; I want the recipient to know I’m thinking about them.
So here are some of the Christmas cards I made this year. I decided to hand paint some baubles with watercolour. I really can’t paint at all, but this technique is fairly easy: Draw a circle on some watercolour paper, dampen the circle with water, then add colour, a little bit at a time.Make it a bit darker around the edges and leave a little spot where you don’t put any colour at all, which makes it look a bit shiny.
When deciding on size, I punched out a circle with one of my punches and used that as a template. That made it easy to punch out the baubles perfectly circular after I’d painted them. Also, I used some of my small snowflake- and heart stamps to make a decorative pattern. I stamped the pattern in water resistant ink before I added the watercolour. Lastly I sprayed the baubles with some shimmer mist. To make the card a little dimensional I adhered the baubles with some foam dots.
I was really pleased with these cards, I wanted to make more like them, but I went on to other ideas, more posts to come!
This Christmas I wanted to make something handmade in silver for my friend Andrea, just to show her my appreciation. She’s been cheering me up and being very supportive, but we don’t get to hang out as much as I’d like. I decided to make a pair of earrings. I found a pair of sterling silver hoops that were perfect, and wanted a star theme (we both love stars, an it a theme that suits her!).
I gotta tell you though; making all these tiny silver stars was a bit of a pain in the arse, especially getting the holes for the hoop the right size without breaking the clay. But once they dried and I’d mended them with some paste, I could sand them down and polish them a bit. In the end they turned out great!
The burning process is one of my favourite parts about making PMC jewellery. It’s a little piece of magic, really. That thing you’ve been working on that looks so grey and dull suddenly bursts into flame and turns into pure silver. It’s pretty awesome, and it’s always very exciting to see the result!
Mixing it up with a colour perfect for my friend, this was the end result:
I’m really happy with the finished product, as soon as I pierce my ears I might make a pair for myself ;)
