A touch of Springtime

I'm quite into book binding at the moment and today I wanted to share a book project with you. I started with two 7cm box canvas frames and I covered them with 7-Gypsies collage tissue which you will find here using decopatch glue which I bought at the ATDML retreat a couple of years ago.

Next I cut 24 pieces of brown paper 14cm x 7cm and folded each piece in half and stacked them in six lots of four ...in book binding parlance these are known as 'signatures'.

I drilled three tiny holes through the edge of the canvases so that I could stitch them to the pages as covers using Coptic stitch. If you want to learn how to do Coptic stitch I can highly recommend video tutorials by Sea Lemon...

 

I bound my front cover with the recess of the canvas on the outside and when the book was bound I decorated the front with some fussy cut and punched images from Graphic 45 'Once Upon a Springtime' which is making a brief comeback (although I still had some left from first time round!). I finished it with a few tiny gems.

 

Here is my finished book...

 

 

 

Here's hoping springtime is just round the corner!

Re Visitng 'Tea Time '

Following on from this post here. When I was at one of Ann's recent crops sitting with Karen- she was using these beautiful papers and I knew immediately that I would 'have to order some'
They are so pretty and I knew I could re visit some photos of dad and me when we went to the Queen's garden party .
I used a Martha Stewart Punch around the Page for  the background  and die cut a little butterfly to add to the summer feel.

Quite a simple page but it said all I wanted it to.
They really nice papers with a good range of muted colours -I will definitely be making some more layouts with mine. They are called 'Tea Time'  six papers and one sheet with ready to cut embellishments.A good buy for £6.50 !

Be Still My Beating Heart

I am sure you will feel the same when you see the new Marion Smith Designs - Posh range that Jill and Mel have just got in.  I know the Marion Smith Alice in Wonderland themed papers flew off the shelves and I think that this range will do the same as they are so beautiful.

Gorgeous colours and papers with such pretty lace and flowers on.  I love the one with little pockets to cut out and embellish.  Now I have told you about them I had better get them in my basket quick before they all go!

Karen

Virtual Crop - Class 3 with Jane

Hello everyone and I hope you are having a happy scrappy time virtual cropping with us. My class uses the Prima range 'Engraver'.

These papers are perfect for vintage layouts and so I chose photos of a wedding from 1932 for my fist project.

The first project is a double layout with some fussy cutting of flowers and some layering.

My second layout is a single page which features lots of distressing and layering...

 

 

 

 

 

Click HERE to download the instructions!

Virtual Crop - Class 2 with Katherine Sutton

Hello, I hope you are all enjoying the crop - my class uses Simple Stories Say Cheese and we make 2 pages.  You could adapt this class easily to use any of the Simple Stories ranges, and others too - it uses a mix of 3 by 4" and 6 by 4" cards and then base patterned papers.  I used a polaroid app on my iPhone to get the curved borders around the photos LiPix.

My 2nd page uses lots of portrait 3 by 4" cards - in strips - a bit like a film real and again most paper manufacturers make this size card so you could adapt it to Websters, Echo Park, Project Life or Graphic 45 and get a completely different look.

Here is a link to the class, do upload  your pages to our Facebook gallery as we would love to see them.

Virtual Crop - Class 1 with Karen

Hello and welcome to our January Virtual Crop and are you ready to have some pretty paper fun?

For my class I have created two layouts using the absolutely gorgeous and girly Websters Pages 'Sweet Routine'.

Where Did The Time Go is the title of my first page and I am sure we all ask ourselves that question when we look at how our babies have grown.

My second page is called Our Pride and Joy and uses some of the cut apart cards in the kit.

The instructions for these pages are here.  As always we love to see what you make so why not pop a photo onto our Facebook gallery here.

Katherine is up next with her class.

Hope you have lots of creative fun today

Karen

January Virtual crop challenge

Welcome to your debut virtual crop day 2015 and in usual style we start with a challenge based on this day in history.

Did you know on January 17th 1929 Popeye the Sailor man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, made his first appearance in a comic strip. It was four years later before he made it to our TV screens in animated version.

Your challenge today inspired by Popeye is to create a nautical themed page. Use photographs of the ocean/seaside, cruise photos or be inspired by the colours of the sea on your project - the choice is yours. Will you rise to the challenge? We hope so!

Don't forget to upload your challenge entries to our Facebook Gallery or leave a comment below with a link to your project.  Happy Scrapping and we will see you back here at 10am for your first class. Have fun xx

December in January

I've got quite a few Christmas photos I want to scrap now so the other evening I set to and found my Graphic 45 stash
This layout is using the Time to Flourish collection - we had some great Christmas Crops in December this one being Ann's where we had a 'Christmas Photo Booth '

For the background I used paper from the 'Twas the night before Christmas' collection.

Some good old fussy cutting of a couple of Poinsettias and some sparkly sequins finished it off.

Here's another page I posted in the Facebook group in case you don't have Facebook that I made using Webster's Strawberry Fields (are you humming it?) They were so apt as my youngest son has just gone travelling for 6 months so the journaling cards were perfect

I used a star stencil with some distress ink to add a bit of interest - I just can't leave that white space! and die cut some stars too.

 

Books, books, books...and the Internet

Hello everyone, sorry I'm a bit late with blogging today but as usual life is keeping me busy and this week particularly I'm obsessed with making books.
Tomorrow I'll be teaching an all day class to teachers from throughout Scotland (snow permitting). The title is 'Paper craft and book construction for the classroom and beyond' and throughout the course of the day the delegates (who potentially might have no paper crafting skills to speak of) will be making 15 different books, from accordion, maze, origami and fold out books to more complex saddle stitched, Japanese stab stitched and Coptic stitched books. Every bit of paper is cut to size ready and waiting...

I have found the Internet to be a huge source of inspiration when putting together this mammoth class and so I thought I'd share just a few of the images I have found... when I look at some of these I want to head straight into my craft room to start making!!

 

One of my crafting Facebook friends recently shared this video which is Randi Parkhurst's book project called 'Patience'...one day I WILL make one of these...

 

Link to vimeo video

 

 

Finally, it's one thing looking at pictures but if you are going to make any of these, you also need the skills. 'Sea Lemon' on You Tube is one of my favourite book binding gurus - I watch a lot of her videos to learn new techniques... like this one - making a book with shells as covers!!

 

So get out there...find your inspiration and start creating.(Failing that - keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow!)

 

 

One of my books from a few years ago to finish with...

 

A January Bargain

Remember last month when I Facebooked (is that a real word?) about this beautiful range from Create & You called Tea Time.

Well I was so inspired by it that in no time I managed to create four pages.

It was perfect for a photo from the 'Mad Hatter's Tea Party' that I took Gracia to in London.

I couldn't have asked for a better match to the scarf that Gracia was wearing than the cream flowery paper.

Ideal for a photo of the both of us at the Shrewsbury Flower Show

And finally I made some little Polaroid frames to hold a photo and a couple of the cut out shapes.

Four layouts from a paper pack costing £6.50 - A January Bargain I think.

January Virtual Crop Preparation

Our virtual crop is scheduled for the 17th January, there will be challenges and lots of classes to join in with.

So in preparation you might like to make sure you have

Class 1 - Karen Moss

Layout 1 -

3 3 by 3" photos

1/2" corner rounder if you have one

Layout 2 -

6 by 4 portrait photo

Class 2 - Katherine Sutton

Brown ink for inking edges

Layout 1 -

4 4 by 4" photos which will be trimmed to be 3 3/4" square photos.

I used a phone app called LiPix which gives you a nice polaroid border as shown below

Layout 2 -

2 3 by 4" photos - portrait

mine are black and white but colour will be fine

Class 3 - Jane Hewitt

Layout 1 - A double page which has 2 sepia toned photos -

1 portrait 3.5 by 5"
1 landscape 3.5 by 5" (though 4 by 6 would fit too)

They don't have to be sepia but this colouring works really well with the papers - vintage photos/styled photos would work really with this class.

Layout 2 -

4 by 6 landscape photo

Which comes first the photo or the page?

How do you make your pages?  Whilst scrapping with a friend last week, I had finished one project and was looking in my stash for something else to do and came across this beautiful page kit.

 Websters Pages - Beautiful Chic Papers

It was one that Ann had put together for her Christmas crop.  I spent some time playing around with the papers and doilies and to my friend's consternation I designed and made a double page before I had chosen any photos to go on it.

I then had to find suitable photos and when I came across these ones in my pile of  'photos to be scrapped' they seemed perfect.

Do you always choose your photo and then make your page or do you do, as I do sometimes, make a page and then find the photos to go with it?

Karen

Cold and Frosty Morning

Hello and Happy New Year everyone.

Here is a page I made with some of the new papers that are in store called My Home Garden - it has a beautiful purple colour which went really well with the frosty feel and then Jill also sent me the most beautiful prima flowers - the photos don't do them justice - they are sparkling with glitter.  Plus the sale is on at the moment so you can grab them at a great price too :).

My page started off with gesso, and tape, silver embossing powder and grey mist, followed by some rings of stickler, and layers of torn paper - which gives them a frosty feel, then doilies and a picture I took as part of my December Daily of one of the beautiful heavy frosts we have had.  I then added a prima lamp post and the flowers, with gems and a little hobby house watering can with a glitz alphabet.

January 2015 Photography prompts

Welcome to 2015 with the ATDML Design team!  We look forward to sharing a year of paper craft inspiration with you all.

As promised a few days ago we are reintroducing the monthly photography prompts. Use these to kick-start your month of photography with a view to taken a bunch of different photographs you can the scrapbook.

Here are your prompts for this month.

January

Selfie on the 1^st

Winter warmers

Taste of January

January bargains

Planning/Preparation

You don't have to share these with us, but if you would like to ...then leave a comment with a link to your photographs below, or use #atdml when you post to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or wherever!

See you back here soon for more inspiration from the team. Happy New Year x