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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!
Stay safe, everyone. :)
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I had a completely scrappy weekend! On Saturday I met my friend Andrea at an art supplies shop to buy some pretty papery goodies, and then we spent almost 9 hours in complete frenzy scrapping a wedding album for her sister. And we finished it! And made it look awesome! It’s just something about adding all the photos into a context and a complete story that makes them just a little bit more amazing to look at.
Sunday I spent with my dear mom, making Christmas cards. It was ages since we did something together just her and me, so I felt really grateful we had the chance to schedule that day in. She made so many pretty cards, I just had to sneak some photos of them and share. We have completely different styles, so it’s always surprising and fun to see how she’s gonna end up using her supplies!
We ended the weekend with a nice dinner, my mum, dad, Jed and I, shared a bottle of wine, talked about crafty things. I’m lucky to have a family that indulge me, they let me go on and on about my ideas and plans. I feel like I talked their ears off. Maybe I should get out of my crafty corner more….
This layout is all about me embarking on a deeper journey into the art of photography. I’ve had a camera pretty much since I was 6 or 7 years old, took photography in high school, and got my analogue SLR in my early twenties. The step to digital was a big one, and I sort of fell out of the habit. I had the camera for many years without really using it to it’s full potential, but then something changed in my life, and now I’m feeling more inspired and creative than I’ve ever have. All I want to do now id to photograph everything. EVERYTHING. All the time. And get better.
The best thing about this layout, for me, is that it was such a surprise. I remembered the sketch challenge a bit last minute and pulled a photo from my stack of prints, and this self portrait is what I grabbed. The stripy paper is a leftover scrap from one of my old favourite papers, that I’ve sort of kept safe for a rainy day (yeah… I know…). The journalling is done on a page from an old book, after I wiped some gesso on it. I used another page, torn into tiny squares, for the title. The dotted ribbon I love, and I think it was one the first ones I ever bought. Awesome to finally get to use it!
The composition of this layout is inspired from this sketch at the Swedish webzine Allt om Scrap, and is a part of their summer competition. Great fun!
I’ve managed to take a lot of photos of Tricks this summer, and some of my favourites is from the weekend when she visited my parent s and me at the summer cabin. We had a lot of sunshine and spent some time relaxing down by the water, talking about life and love and plans. As she tried out the water I took a few shots, this is one of them.
The spot where she’s standing was my favourite spot when I was little, because it’s full of soft, green, luscious sea grass, and it isn’t too deep, so you can just stand there and let it tickle your toes. Somewhere deep in my stash I found this old patterned paper from Basic Grey, which I think originally is a Christmas paper, and from one of their retired collections (Figgy Pudding). It’s been one of those papers I’ve loved so much that I haven’t used it. But I just thought it fitted well as sea grass and sea weed.
This is what the journalling says:
“I remember how wonderful it felt when I first got the opportunity to invite my best friend to the summer cabin for the first time, and get to show her the place I think is the best on earth, to show her the place that filled my childhood with so many adventures. It became an instant tradition, and now it’s not even a proper summer if Sara doesn’t visit.”
I’m really glad I took the time to scrapbook this photo. I have so many great ones from all the years we’ve been friends, it’s really time to make them more accessible.
The composition of the layout was inspired by this sketch,
which is originally from a sketch challenge at the Swedish scrapbook shop Scraphuset.se.
The Swedish webzine “Allt om Scrap” publishes an inspiration issue every Sunday, and last Sunday they posted some layouts from a challenge they did. I didn’t have time to do it last weekend, but I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, so I took some time yesterday to do it, since it really did feel like a challenge. Listen to this:
- May only contain patterned papers. Must use acrylic paints and 4 different stamps. Have to have one type of overlay and at least 3 tags. And finally, it must have sewing machine stitches.
- Can not include flowers, ribbons or lace. No corrugated cardboard allowed, and may not contain anything white!
Well… Only patterned papers and nothing white? Hello? I haven’t really done a traditional, full-size scrapbook layout before, so why not start with something difficult? Go big, that sort of thing. I got the perfect idea and I wanted Tricks in it, so this is what happened:
Yes, we like our dots ;) I really had bite my tongue plenty of times, not to reach for plain one-coloured papers, keeping the white details out, not using any string. In the end I’m pleased with the result, I wouldn’t have thought of this idea if it hadn’t been for the specifications in this challenge. Thank you, Tricks, for doing the photo shoot with me! You look really beautiful in that dotty dress!
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