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.
Some Mondays are just way tougher than others. That’s when Mr Boo rescues me AND gets me this awesome retro-cassette-party stamp. I will work wonders with this thang! I love it, and I feel spoiled rotten. I’m in a better mood for just testing it out. Woop!
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!
Ok, so here’s a silly thing: I like sketches, but I’ve hardly ever done a layout based one. It’s a bit like when I’m cooking; I LOVE inspiring recipes but I hardly ever use them when cooking. I just wing it. But I felt like trying it out some more, and found this sketch challenge on a new Swedish sketch blog, lillblommanskissar.se. Fun! Perfect timing, too! The rules were quite lenient, I could twist and turn the sketch and add or withdraw element, as long as it shows that the layout is based on the sketch.
As I dug through my box of printed photos (I have a stash of photos I love, just waiting for the right moment) this photo of my friends Sara and Cecilia jumped out at me. It was a wonderful summer, many years ago, when the three of us spent a week together at Sara’s summer cabin. It was the three of us, hanging out in the sun, going to the beach, cooking good food, drinking some wine, having a little summer vacation together. You know that feeling when summer is so intense and perfect that you can just close your eyes and smell it and feel it on your skin? That was what it was like. This is my friends on the steps to the main house, having ice cream:
On the same steps we also had some perfectly chilled Russian champagne and smoked shrimps. It leads up to a small nook of the house that is called a “Punch Veranda” in Swedish, which could be translated as a Punch Porch, or a Toddy Porch (ha, I love that!). Anyways, it was a very happy time, and I just live the photo with it’s sharp sunshine, the old steps, the bare feet, the roses growing wild.
I wanted the layout to feel fun and carefree, like that week, so I played around with some paper tape, colour wash and some watercolour splatter.
Here are some details:
Thank you for coming by and reading my blog *s*. Hope you had a great weekend. Tomorrow is MONDAY! Onwards and upwards, my friends!
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…
No, I didn’t have time to post anything yesterday, but I still did something creative, so, yay me, that was 14 days of that project! I prepared some journalling for a layout I wanted to do today, and also I took some photos of two dear friends, Hanna and Janne, photos that no doubt will end up in my 2012 book. Me, Jed, Hanna and Janne geeked out yesterday and spent the better part of the day and evening playing a board game I love, “Arkham Horror“. Awesome! We beat the big beastie in the end, but it got darned close! I had such a great time. There’s something about playing a good ol’ board game, everyone sitting around a table cursing and laughing.
So, today is day 15 of the project to do something creative everyday for 365 days. This weekend I took a small pause from the prompts and just went freestyle *wink*. Today I sat down and created a layout with a photo I’ve been wanting to use for years. I actually have a sketch in an old notebook using this photo, and I am sort of glad I never had a chance to make it back then, it would have been horrible! (Seriously, think total scrapbook newbie like 5 years ago). I like how it turned out today.
I’ve noticed that often when I sit down to start on a layout I dig through my stash and pick out a pile of embellishments I like. But then in the end I often don’t stick them on. But it takes some time to NOT stick them on, because sometimes I feel like I should, if you know what I mean? I’ve come to a point now thought where it feels ok to just stop and say “You know what, this is enough for me. Glue stick down.” Because I’ve come to a point where it’s more important what the layout is about.
This is a photo of our cat Sixxten, from when he was about 1 years old. He has this habit of finding new places to sleep all the time, and he never moves or makes a sound when you can’t find him and go around the apartment looking for him, no matter how much you call. He is like a nap ninja!
Many years ago my grandmother knitted me this wonderful, super-warm jumper in a grey, Swedish wool (much needed during our winters). I had left it on the bed one day, and for some reason I noticed that the cat had been uncannily quiet for several hours (he’s normally very talkative). So I started looking for him, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked in cupboards and bags and closets, under the bed, under the couch, well, everywhere. I called and coaxed, but no sound or movement.
It was just by chance that I went into the bedroom one last time before completely panicking, and there he was, all bundled up in my wool jumper.The jumper was almost exactly the same grey colour as the cat. He’d been sleeping in it for hours, al snuggled up, and he was radiating an enormous amount of heat. He hardly woke up as I went to stroke him, he was in such a warm snooze-coma.
So, that’s what I created today. Overall a nice, lazy Sunday, but tomorrow is the start of another week! Stay safe, have a good one!
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!
The Christmas cards needs to go in the mail next week if they are to arrive in time, especially the ones I’m sending overseas. So I have to get a move on! I thought I’d done rather well so far, but when I sat down and reviewed my list I realised I still have a few to make. Gah! Glue glue glue! My problem might be that I never like to make the same type of cards more than a couple of times, 2-4 for the most of any card. It’s much more fun that way, getting to try new techniques and motifs and colours. But I guess it’s not so great when it comes to speed and productivity, hehe…
I like to add handmade embellishments to whatever I make, if I can manage. So I tried to paint these X-mas baubles in watercolour. I don’t really know how to paint but painting different layers of the different shades worked out quite well. I made them the same size as one of my circle punches, do cutting them out was a breeze. I have soem pics of the finished X-mas cards to post, I just need to get them off my camera. But here’s a sneak peek at least! Have to get back to stamping and gluing and making more cards! *Hurries back to my crafting nook*
P.S. What’s the chance of me setting up a Craft Signal light, like in Batman? It could be a monkey. I could flash it towards the ceiling and make an alarm noise and run to my work space shouting: “To The Craft Cave!”… Seriously have to look into this… It feel very important… Maybe I should write a theme tune…
I started on a new 12×12 layout the other night, and I sat for quite some time going through my stash trying to fins something I thought went with the photo. I couldn’t find one.
The photo is one of myself, about10-11 years ago. A good friend took that photo of me, sadly though we lost touch many years ago. I think that photo of me is one of the few from that time I really like. I was in my early 20′s, an sure, when one is young and pretty (harr harr) of course there are a couple of nice looking pics of you, but at that age it’s not often one poses on a picture as oneself. This photo though, is just me in my messy room in my first apartment, holding a camera. The colours are sort of murky (so was my apartment) and there’s a lot of clutter (MY clutter) and I look rather scruffy. But it’s me, at that time.
I felt that none of my patterned paper really matched. So I started to paint one of my own, on a piece of 12×12 recycled, unbleached paper. I’m not quite done with the layout yet, but thought I’d show a few pictures. Hope to share the whole thing with you soon!
It’s funny, I made this cards in good time before Easter; I was going on a holiday and I wanted them in the mail in time. So, while the cards actually arrived almost a week early, this post is way way late, but here goes anyway:
I wanted to make some fast and fun cards and do some stamping, and i knew I wanted something egg shaped. I just didn’t want to go and buy a stamp just for this occasion. It happens so easily, you buy a special stamp for one holiday and then you never use it again. I like trying to figure out how to use what I have in a new way.
I have this huge beautiful mounted stamp of a big flower, and the size and pattern of it makes it very versatile. So I cut out an egg-shaped template and used that to make these almost feathery eggs. Some bright colours ans papers in different layers and that was it. Here they are:
