A Place in Time

Are you a Graphic 45 lover ? It seems to be one of those ranges where it either fascinates you or it doesn't !
I love it, I love the ranges they bring out,some are really quirky,and some are beautiful and feminine.
When I was at the last ATDML retreat,I fell in love with the 'A Place in Time' range that had just come in. It consists of one page for every month and there are also pages of cut outs for each month to match. There are lots of ideas out there on the net for these,and I decided I'd like to do one page every month this year as a nice memory and keep them in an easel album so it's like a scrappy calendar. So of course I bought all of them... I'm looking forward to doing one each month this year. Or you could do one for the year just gone I suppose!
Here's my first page.

I used a snowflake mask and inked it with tumbled glass distress ink and stamped with some bubble wrap on the background.Then I punched some snowflakes out of the remnants of paper. I made the little rose with some kraft card stock and inked it to match.

 

Lucky we had some snow this month so I could go overboard with the snowflakes!

Challenging Myself...

I have recently been looking back on the childrens albums and while there are lots of layouts I love I feel like there are chunks of the story which are missing and, more importantly, people who are missing.

Recently in this post I shared a layout where I had got Izzy to journal (very briefly) about my Auntie and it got me thinking. As an extended family we are all very close but I think this was the first layout I had done with my Auntie in it - now we are not terribly good at having our photos taken in this family but it made me look at the layouts with fresh eyes and realise that some very important people in our lives are really under represented in the albums.

So I am going to try this year and make sure that there are some layouts featuring extended family in the albums.

First up I am going to scrap a photo of Isabelle and her Nana (Darrens Mum) as I know that she isn't in any of the albums, not even once :(

Hopefully I will be uploading a completed layout very soon!

It has to be Feathers

I finally found my pack of Studio Calico feathers which I bought at the ATDML retreat to use for one of my posts (yes I think I need to spring clean my space!).  I was inspired to have a go at one of the techniques in this months Scrap365 magazine embossing over a canvas shape in clear powder and then inking over the top.  So I used a grid stamp and clear embossing powder on my fabric feathers and inked over the top in a grey chalk ink, once it was dry I rubbed over the top with a baby wipe very lightly just to show a little more of the pattern.  Continuing on my feather theme I also made my own larger template based on the Studio Calico feather and cut it out of some of the October Afternoon 9-5 paper to tuck behind the photo.  Feathers have been around for quite a while now but they are still appearing on paper, you can add real feathers, chipboard feathers and there are lots of fantastic tutorials out there for making paper feathers too (here is one).

A bit more Scrap365 inspiration was a tutorial on distressing - I normally just distress using scissors or a sanding block and bending paper.  However in the tutorial Rachel Elliot looked at moistening the paper and really crinkling it up....which I have to say I loved doing and really like the effect.  The inky effect for the background is based on a technique my friend Kim Price uses on lots of her pages, but I had a play around with it and didn't use a paintbrush as in her tutorial (which is here)....but I'll have to save that for a step by step (the page is quite crinkled but it is in my album now and will flatten out there!)

The papers are all by October Afternoon from their 9 to 5 collection which you can find here

Using Christmas Supplies for Non Christmas Projects

I was given a pad of October Afternoon- Make It Merry   papers as a Christmas present (thank you Jill & Mel) and as it was so pretty wanted to use it for a special project.  My daughter and her boyfriend visited The Making of Harry Potter tour just before Christmas and took over 300 photographs!  As luck would have it Ann Freeman runs a crop on the 2nd Saturday of each month with her great friends Tracy and Caroline.  Just look at the fun those girls have!

Ann's class was a fabulous folder with inserts for photographs
(Ann's beautiful folder is here).  How fortunate for me that Ann was using the Make It Merry range.  So when I received the paper pad I was able to add these papers to my inserts and finish the project.

I love how Ann comes up with such lovely ideas for projects and then chooses the perfect paper range to execute them.

 I am also following the tutorials by Kirsty Smith called Pretty Polaroids.

 

I used the same paper range to make the 2nd in her set and it looks quite Valentineish and not very Christmassy at all.
 

Why don't you post a link to projects you have made using paper ranges for something other than what they were designed for.

Irresistible!

It was too irresistible - I did warn you, in this post, after seeing them photographed on a piece of black cardstock - I just had to get on and use those journaling cards that I made at the weekend.  So I used three as photo mats, one as a mat for my title and two for journaling.

Added a punched boarder and some punched butterflies, red gems and I think this is the quickest page I have ever made.

 It probably took longer to resize the photos and punch the butterflies than it did to put together.  Oh well, off to sort out some more bits and pieces to make another set of journaling cards.

Simple Stories Journaling Cards - Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

Last year I took the ‘Just One Sketch’ class by the very talented Kirsty Smith (Miss Smith) and have signed up for this year’s class ‘Telling Tales’ . As a consequence I now follow her blog (that girl is as mad as a box of frogs) and recently she posted a tutorial on making journaling cards from scraps.  

 I decided to make some journaling cards, ready for the upcoming class, using the scraps I had left fom the Simple Stories papers and stickers.  

I cut 12 cards  from a sheet of kraft card , I have six left for playing with later.  Other than that I just used a small square, heart and circle punches and stapled the top instead of using a paperclip.  They are less freeform than Kirsty's but I am very fond of them. I know Kirsty hand cut hers and they were different sizes but my ocd kicked in and I had to have uniform cards. (Looking at them photographed against some black card I really want to make a page with them immediately so the making a new set may come quicker than I anticipated) - watch this space!

On reflection, I think my cards may be a bit small (3in x 2 ¼ in) but I had such fun making them that I won’t mind making some more larger ones. 

Why don’t you pop over to Kirsty’s blog to have a look at her tutorial? I bet you will have made some cute journaling cards by this time next week once you have seen how easy they are to make. You may also be tempted to sign up for her upcoming class.

Introducing....

Our newest Design Team member has been a guest designer several times, she has taught a fabulous Make n Take at one of our retreats and is going to make a wonderful addition to the team.

Welcome aboard *Denise Holmes*

Here is a little information about Denise in her own words:

My name is Denise Holmes. I’m married with three grown up sons and a sheltie dog who are often the subjects of my scrapbook pages.

I work full time in an  Accountant’s and can generally be found crafting whenever I get a spare moment.

I’ve always loved crafty things, I started making cards in 2006 and concentrated more on scrapbooking after attending my first crop, when I discovered I could create be
autiful memories for myself, have fun and make friends in the process!

 I love creating mini books, tags and other projects as well as layouts. I really enjoy messing about with distress inks, mists & rubber stamps, and often incorporate these into my layouts. I’m definitely an inky type of crafter!

 I’m so thrilled to have been asked to join such a talented design team at A Trip Down Memory Lane and can’t wait to start creating!

We hope you will enjoy seeing Denises work in our galleries and reading her posts on the blog.

A Fond Farewell...

Our lovely Dawn Evans has submitted her last pieces for the ATDML galleries having decided to give up her DT place due to a busy schedule and a sometimes elusive mojo. Dawn was part of the original ATDML design team from 2006 and apart from a short break she has provided us with so much inspiration in those years. We have really and truly loved having her as part of the DT and so I wanted to do a post to share some of my favourites that she has scrapped.

When I started scrapping Dawn was a huge influence. Evans1 as she goes by on UKScrappers was my heroine and I loved her style and a favourite of mine was the way she often matted photos, page elements and papers on a narrow black mat. It is a technique I still use today but at the time it made her layouts really distinctive and really inspired me.

At the retreats Dawn has been such a popular teacher - along with her trusty sidekick \ classroom helper Jo they have had many classes of ladies in stitches with their fun and easy going ways and given more than a few ladies palpitations as they got out the sewing machine and encouraged them to "quickly stitch around the edge of this circle!"

So we are really sad to say goodbye to Dawn but have to say a massive THANKYOU for all her hard work. It has been such a pleasure to have her work in our galleries

The January DT Gallery is the last to feature Dawns work and I hope you will check it out when it goes live on Jan 21st.

xxx

Papers designed to be cut....

With Mel's new goodies for Christmas....I realised I had some of the lovely Portfolio range too which I then needed to dig out and have a play with.  The colours are fairly neutral, mainly blue yellow and grey and it is one of the increasing range of papers that are made so you can include them in project life style projects where your pages are made of lots of divided pockets (here is the co-ordinating Pink Paislee book designed for this purpose).  Echo Park has some lovely kits where you get the papers and page protectors together in their Photo Freedom range, as well as Simple Stories whose papers are designed with this in mind and you can get their co-ordinating folders too.  I've noticed that lots of the new CHA goodies are also designed this way so it looks like it is going to be a big thing this year!

So I could have used it to make a Project Life style page (but it is too early in the year for me to have my January photos already printed), instead I wanted to have a go at using all the journal spots and cut outs on my page.  I decided to go for a washing line effect and hang them all from some string at the top - I distressed the edges and used bubble wrap to get the background.  I did add a little more washi tape to the journal spots.  Another fantastic thing about all those journal cards is that I am compelled to write more on my page which is a good thing as that is where a lot of the memory is.

Portfolio Layout

And here is what I made with my Pink Paislee Portfolio products. I still haven't used the stamps yet but I got stuck in with the paper pack and added very little - just the yellow October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers and the little bit of bling.

 

 

Again I must apologise for the poor photo quality, my timing of photo taking is NOT good at the moment so it is another late night photo of the layout!

Sn@p Layout - Oh Happy Day!

Well as predicted I couldn't wait long to play with either of my scrappy presents and first up was the Sn@p goodies! Apologies in advance for the rubbish picture quality but it was a late night picture taken in poor light.

I love the Simple Stories papers and the concept of the different sized cards and strips which all work so well together - it offers a wide range of layout designs that are easy to put together and work really well.

This layout is a photo of Olivia drinking a delicious but VERY filling milkshake in on our holiday to New York.

What Was In Your Stocking? Part 2

I had also had my eye on the Portfolio Collection and with a little subtle hinting (well actually a direct request) I ended up with these goodies too!

I am so looking forward to using those stamps!

What Was In Your Stocking? Part 1

My Auntie was struggling for something to get me for Christmas so I asked her for some of the Sn@p products from Simple Stories. Of course I wasn't allowed them until Christmas so have been patiently (not) waiting to get my hands on these...

I am hoping to get some time to play with these VERY soon!

A Festive Layout - 3 years on!

I am on a bit of a roll with being decisive and getting pages made without spending hours and hours on each one but still being pleased with the outcome!

I have been wanting to scrap these photos for quite a while now but have struggled to find suitable papers - believe it or not that pink top Izzy is wearing was really hard to find papers to go with! A couple of weeks ago I got hold of an Amy Tangerine paper pad and found that the splashes of pink on this paper worked quite well with the top so finally I have scrapped the photos taken 3 years ago of "making the Christmas pudding!"

I also have similar ones from the last two years although this year, shock horror, no pudding has been made in this house so it was a M&S pudding this year!

More photos, more scrapbooking

As the new year starts a host of resolutions are made which, for crafters such as ourselves, may include any number of photography, scrapbooking, or other papercraft challenges.  I know many Scrapbookers who partake in monthly challenges set on blogs, weekly sketch inspirations or even daily photography ones, all depends of course on how busy we are, how much spare crafting time we have and what else is on the crafty agenda.

I have decided to try and take a photo a day for the second year in a row. I didn't do too bad last year missing the occasional day here and there, and struggling to find interesting photos to take of "oh, I was just at work again today!" but on the whole I did rise to the challenge and more importantly enjoyed it. I think one of the reasons I liked this challenge was because it helped me to capture the every day things, from kids in pjs, to what I cooked for tea, from my latest crafting project to a lazy sunday stroll. I ended up with a raft of photos that told the story of my year and I have made a couple of pages featuring all of the photos I took that month too. I didn't do this every month, but I love my snap snot month pages that I did do. Some photos also featured on a layout of their own if there was a bigger story to tell.

What also helped me stick to this challenge was an app for my smartphone so I could snap away with my phone not needing to have my big camera with me and then I could record a photo against each day on the app. These can then be synced to your computer and printed from there, or sent via Bluetooth to a printing device.  This year I have downloaded a new app for my phone called my365 which can be found in the Google app store and downloaded for free (not sure about iphone sorry).

You can also share photos from this app on Facebook and Twitter too should you be so inclined. So is anyone else taking up a challenge this year to take take more photos? Means more scrapping, more stories to tell and a new angle to your pages too. Do let us know if you are or have before and tell us how you found it. I know there are many apps out there that can do this and would love to learn of others being used.

New Class Uploaded....

This lovely class from Katherine Sutton has recently been added to the website. I have to confess that she did the class a while ago and I am just getting around to uploading it *sorry Katherine!*

 

I love the technique she has used to achieve an interesting texture with the paper. Katherine used products from the October Afternoon Cakewalk Range along with other items. Click HERE to download the PDF instructions including the full supply list.