Today I choose Happiness with Pink Paislee

Here is the other line that I picked up at the retreat after a lovely class with Ann - Pink Paislee's C'est La Vie.  Again I gesso'd my cardstock before adding the paper, then cut some banner strips of a mix of width and length - they are mostly around the 2.5 to 3" wide.  I distressed the edges of all of them.  I use a title card and also journal spot from Kaisercrafts #Me collection, and then some of the Websters Pages stickers left over from Mel's class (they are from the passport range).  I'm not a massively floral girl, but prima have these beautiful blue flowers, so since I was in the picture I figured I could floral it up!  The final step was a few gems, and I trimmed the stalks of the smaller flowers so I curled the green wire and added it to my flower bouquet.

This is Me with Kaisercraft #Me

This month we got to choose our papers at the retreat, and I often end up selecting papers that we've used in classes as I discover how nice they are!  Having been to the retreat my messy-ness came back and I think I've painted on every single page that I've made too.

For this page I knew I wanted to the 2 areas for embellishment and lots of white space - though in this case patterned space, I think the black and white words work really well for a male page.  I had my 4" photo so set to work with some gesso creating slightly bigger areas, I then layered up lots of paper, and delved into my punches and the sticker sheet from the collection.  Lots of layering and you may spot a couple of bits from the other collection I picked up too....but I'll save that one for another time.

More Kaisercraft Sea Breeze

Sharing more Kaisercraft Sea Breeze goodness today with another layout I created for the April designers choice gallery.

The background for this page (Raindrop) is ready printed with the beautiful teal flowers and leaves at the top left and bottom right corners. I started by adding a 5 1/2" x 8" floral printed photo mount in the space in between the flowers. This small print paper(Refresh) has a white background so is a subtle addition to the page and doesn't detract from the main floral design. My photo is 5"x5" (available from Photobox and a great new size to scrap with) was added next with a row of hearts (taken from one of the title strips of a paper in this collection)

I then added three cards is a row from the Splash paper, adding a notebook punched border to the left edge of the first and adding journaling to the second. I completed the page with a floral detail element cut from the floral paper, a row of brown leaves below the final card (they were also from a title strip and a hand drawn black border around the edge.

This page only took a short while to pull together as all the papers are so easy to work with and make for quick and very pretty pages. Take a look in the shop for Kaisercraft Sea Breeze to find the papers used here and start creating. 

April Virtual Crop - Class 3 by Mel Hand

Last class of the day coming up ladies. I worked with the lovely Echo Park "The Story of our Family" for this (yes the collection that started the "Ann measures in owls" story!)

I love the bright colours in this collection and as always I have used inking on my layouts. If you don't usually do this I urge you to give it a try and a little black inking really makes those colours POP!

You can click HERE for my instructions to this two layout class. The first layout is below and features a fun sunburst design which makes the most of the many patterns and colours in this collection.

I hope you have all enjoyed another ATDML Virtual Crop - join us again for next months Virtual Crop of Saturday May 21st for another 3 classes and of course a challenge. In the meantime do stop by the ATDML # Create Facebook group for scrappy chat, inspiration and to share your creations.

April Virtual Crop Class 2 with Ann

Happy Saturday crafty ones, here is the link to my virtual crop class today which features no less than three layouts all with slightly unusual photo sizes.

You can find the instructions here

Don't be hung up on the exact sizes of the photos described, moreover think of changing up your photo sizes to alter the look of your pages and bring variety to your albums. If you don't have a 5x5 photo, don't fret. Simple trim down a 6x4 photo to a 4x4 square and mount onto a piece of 5x5 card before using on your page. Of course you can stick with the overall layout design and your own choice of photo size, it's entirely up to you. The class is there to inspire not insist!

If you have photo editing packages or apps on your phone you can play about with making a collage to place several images onto a 6x4 sheet, then save this is a single file and print as you would a normal 6x4 photo. I used this on my karate layout below where 6 square photos were added to a 6x4 format and then, once printed, trimmed into individual squares.  

On my Me and Mine (tag) page I printed created a collage of 3 landscape photos onto a 4x6 format which you can then print off and trim into three separate smaller images to use on your page.

Have a play! For those of you with the kit enjoy the gold (especially those Thickers!) and have fun with the different photo sizes. Your next class is up at 2pm, enjoy!

April Virtual Crop Class 1 with Karen

Hello, hello lovely virtual croppers.  I hope you have set aside lots of time this weekend for our classes!  We enjoy seeing what you do with the kits and designs as much as we enjoy designing and making our projects.

My class uses the utterly gorgeous Marian Smith Designs Junque Gypsy to make two pages.

The first is called Fabulous and is quite girlie with lots of fussy cut butterflies.

The second - Remember is more masculine but as you see I used black and white photos of my brother and me when we were children. 

You can download the instructions for this class here.
I hope you enjoy making these and join us at 12 noon for Ann's class.

April 2016 Virtual Crop Challenge

Another Virtual Crop day is upon us, which means we start with a challenge for the day before moving on to three classes from three of your ATDML design team.   All instructions for the classes can be downloaded free from the links supplied in the blog posts which will follow at 10am, Noon and 2pm today. 

In the meantime your challenge, as always, is based on a piece of trivia from a day in music history.

CHALLENGE: Blue Days, Black Nights was the first single from Buddy Holly, so your challenge is to feature blues and black on your challenge layout.

We'll be back here at 10am with your first class, see you then, but in the meantime, have fun with the challenge!! Remember there is no time limit, you can join in whenever you are free.

Ann
x

New Kaisercraft Sea Breeze

April gallery is designers choice. This usually follows a retreat when us lucky designers get to chose which papers we want to create layouts, cards or projects with to inspire you all. The day our spring retreat started, April 1st, was also the release date of the new Bo Bunny Sea Breeze collection. I used these and the retreat Bingo challenge to create this page which features:

• Distressing - the edges of the background card (which were first stained with Tumbled Glass distress stain
• Stamping - The date just above the row of papers to the right
• Mist/paints - Again used subtle spray of ink and a flick of colours to the bottom left and top right
• Stars - I used sequins for a subtle scatter of elements across the page

Why don't you have a go at the Bingo challenge, chose a line of inspiration and create a page featuring the four chosen requirements, see where it takes you.

April Virtual Crop Photo Requirements

Class 1 - Karen Moss

Layout 1 

Title is "Fabulous"
5" square photo (although you could change it to a 7 by 5" if you want)

Layout 2 

Title is "Remember"
3 3" square photos

Class 2 - Ann Freeman

Layout 1 

5" square

Layout 2

3 landscape photos measuring 4 by 2" (I printed the 3 on a 6 by 4" photo using picasa)

Layout 3

Portrait 3.5 by 5" (a trimmed 6 by4") and 6 2" square photos (again I used picasa)

Class 3 - Mel Hand

Layout 1

6 by 4" landscape photo and title "My Sunshine"

Layout 2

2 6 by 4" portrait

Make your own twine flowers

It has been a busy few weeks with the preparation for the retreat last weekend and I was a little behind on uploading me design team work to the gallery. I fixed that yesterday and uploaded some pages to the 2016 galleries.

This layout was one I created for the March gallery using Bo Bunny papers and I decided to make some twine flowers to go with the others I was using (Prima) and to add another texture to the page.

To do this I added a glue dot to my page where I wanted the centre of my twine flower to go. I then took a length of twine and looped it around five times and then trimmed the end to be in the centre. Holding it in place I then placed it on the glue dot pressing down firmly before adding another glue dot on top in the centre and a gem.

I think these are a nice (inexpensive) way to make your own interesting embellishments for a page, and they look lovely on cards too, very unique.

April 2016 photography prompts

There'll be no April fools here today, we are quite serious with our next set of photography prompts as a new month begins. Of course one of the prompts allows for some silliness should you so chose to rise to the challenge for this month (we hope you do!!)

Grab those cameras, mobile phones and selfie sticks and go have some creating fun this month with the prompts and be sure to share your images in our Facebook group ATDML # Create or use #atdml on other social media sites to spread the word!!

Happy April everyone, enjoy your day!

Ann 

x