A month of December inspiration...Scraplift Santa!

Starting this Saturday and every Saturday and Wednesday throughout the month of December with your ATDML design team.  A series of nine festive posts to inspire your festive crafting with layouts and off the page projects to inspire. 

You can directly scraplift whoever is playing Santa that day or take an element of the project to inspire some seasonal crafting. No kits, no instructions, no rules, just some festive fun from the team. We can't wait for you to join us!

Feeling Nostalgic for Summer

Hi All,

Just a quick post to share what I have been making. With the dark evenings drawing in and the temperatures falling I am nostalgic for summer so I decided to scrap a photo of my girls relaxing in a hammock on Castaway Cay Disneys private island in the Bahamas.

I used the You Are Here collection from Simple Stories and a silhouette cut file from Paige Evans.

First I backed my cut file. As I very rarely scrap in the week I managed to use this as something I could sit down and spend a few minutes on here and there so over the course of a week I had finally backed all the separate sections. (patience isn't my strong suit - or more accurately I tend to need to use most of my patience quota up during a day working with some very characterful little 3 and 4 year olds)  so doing this bit by bit made it easier for me.

Then I pulled out a nice background from the collection with enough interesting bits already included that I only needed to add a few bits of stickers and ephemera to make it work.

To finish I added some enamel dots to the flower centres but it didn't look quite right so I added a little circle of tiny crystals around the flower centres.

I hope you enjoyed my little bit of summer to brighten the end of November!

Don't forget to pop over to the ATDML # Create Facebook page to say hello and share your creations.

Georgia Blues with Ann

As Katherine has already shared we got to chose our own papers for design team gallery in Nov and we were both drawn to Prima Georgia Blues.

I wish you could see how pretty these foiled papers are and the combination of gold foiled floral with wood and text print is just lovely. 

The options to vary up the look of your page with these papers is endless!  I've gone darker on the page above with the woodgrain background and lots of pattern paper layering but in my next layout mixed media on a white background with a few strips of the same collection and it loos completely different. 

My third layout is a combination of these two designs with 50/50 cardstock paper background and come fussy cutting of the lovely floral patterns in this collection. 

Georgia Blues, part 2

Here are my next 3 pages...for the top one I might have bought 2 sheets of the base paper - as I loved the front and back!  I really like the grungy style with the gold foiling - it's so elegant - it meant I left a fair amount of white space around my photo and then just added little bits of punching and stamping along with gold confetti paste and some of the ephemera.  I also used a few drops of the navy cosmic shimmer mist.

My next page I used the lace border from the BoBunny Stickable stencils and gold glitter paste as a feature, then added layers of punched papers.  I created 2 little clusters, layering up ephemera and gems - there are some lovely little stickers that are a cross between washi tape and stickers - so you can tear them really easily and add them as a layer by your photos.

My final page was inspired by Ann and her Vicki Boutin mixed media crayons (which sold out too quickly...so I had to improvise with distress oxides, cosmic shimmer mists and gelatos).  I layered up lots of colours from the photos on my background - printing them with a plastic bag and then going in with a paint brush.  I also added lots of glitter paste and discovered this adds a beautiful effect as you can still see the paint colours underneath, just with lots of sparkle on top.  A few flowers, a little bit of paper and ephemera and this one was done. 

I hope you've enjoyed a good look at this collection - go and check out the gallery for more detail photos and more inspiration.

Georgia Blues, part 1

It is always so hard to choose from all the beautiful papers when I go on retreat...I can spend ages shopping!  However, this set jumped straight out at me (with a bit of a hand from Ann!) the lovely Georgia Blues collection - packed with florals and vintage greys and just beautiful deep blues.  I've made 6 pages with the selection of papers that I picked up, so here are 3 of them and I will be back with a couple more.

The first was quite straight forward - I had to show off the gold foiled Midnight paper at the top of the page, and I added a thin layer of gesso around where my photo was, then stacked up my elements around it.  I picked up an ephemera pack too which has acetates (Love) and then die cut elements too - so the flowers at the top of the photo...though I did cut a little more closely to the edge with these.

Although there is no wood grain paper in this collection - this one from Simple Stories goes beautifully - I tore up a few layers of the papers, then added a cluster of co-ordinating flowers along with some Tim Holtz die cut leaves, again you can see the acetates from the ephemera pack as a  layer underneath.  Jill also has some beautiful deep navy sparkly thickers that go beautifully with the papers.

Another piece of paper - Written - which has strips of words, woodgrains and florals.  I decided to make a feature of it and then punched stars in different sizes so they would fall down the page.  I also added in a layer of gauze and some confetti glitter paste in gold -  it is a large hexagon style paste and adds a lovely sparkle.

I hope you've enjoyed a quick look at this collection, there will be more pages to come!

November Virtual Crop class 3 with Debs

Afternoon all and welcome to the final class for this months Virtual Crop.
We'll be embracing the past era of 'Clean & Simple' scrapbooking with these fresh, clean graphic papers from the Pinkfresh 'Live More' collection.

Click here to find the instructions for these pages

And don't forget to pop into the Facebook group to show us what you've done.
Happy Scrapping
Debsx

November Virtual crop Class 2 - With Tricia

Good afternoon Campers!

Welcome to my class for the November virtual crop.  Today I'll be using Echo Park - I'd rather be crafting to create a handbag mini album along the theme of shopping.  Whether you've taken a recent girls day, or want to catalogue some of your favourite clothes and top these papers are a real eclectic range and I wanted to make use of the variety of patterns team teamed with the stickers to give the feeling of sifting through the rails.

These albums come complete with fab little wooden handles and we have added a gorgeous flower to give it a bit of pop!

             

 

Click Here for the Instructions

I hope you enjoy the class, pop back later to join Debbie :o)

November Virtual Crop Class 1 with Mel

Good morning all and thank you for your patience after this mornings technical hitch! Please disregard your kit labels, This was origianlly scheduled as class 3 but has moved up to class 1 while we try to get everything else working again!

So my layouts are travel themed and use the lovely Simple Stories Travel Notes papers.

Click HERE to see the other two layouts and full class instructions.

Don't forget to pop over to ATDML # Create on Facebook to share your creations!

Simply Halloween

We have never really celebrated Halloween before but being in America over Halloween is a whole different experience so I have a fair few Halloween pictures to scrap.

It was wonderful to be able to get a coordinated range like the Simple Stories Simple Vintage Halloween and know everything is just going to work.
 I cut down one of the papers to mount it on the black cardstock and also cut round the spider's web to slide the photograph underneath which just sort of tied everything in place.

The journal block and date were cut from the same range and I just added paper scraps, some punched stars and some stamping and stencilling. Really quick and simple page to create.

Using Leftovers & Scraplifting a Scraplift

The retreat seems a distant memory but I came back having scrapped a few pages and used lots of my Vicki Boutin Field Notes papers and embellishments - I wanted to make one more layout with some of the leftovers and so I started to think of what layout I could do that used a small amount of several different patterns.

My favourite thing to do when I am stuck in a rut or in need of an idea is to look back through my old albums. I often find there are layouts that remind me about a technique or style I used to use and sometimes there are layouts that I just want to scraplift and update with new products or pictures.

I came across this layout of Isabelles 9th birthday using the Echo Park Take Note collection. This layout was a scraplift I did from one of Ann's 2014 Cybercrop classes (Picadilly - see below and CLICK HERE for instructions)

So I set about making a new updated version using up my Vicki Boutin Field Notes stash! I added a border to this one and drew sketched circles first using the silhouette. Then I punched out the circles from leftover papers. Then to embellish I used a variety of ephemera, stickers and chipboard accents.

It's always satisfying to use up some leftovers and make a layout with them. Do come on over to the ATDML # Create Facebook page and share any layouts you have made with the leftovers from class kits or collection packs.

November Journaling Prompts

Eeeek sorry for the belated prompts this month (a certain irony in the prompts not being prompt) but here we are a whole week late!

This month's prompt is:

Top Ten Style - this could be a list of favourite things, a Christmas list (as shown below) a holiday destinations list or anything else you can list.


 My first example isn't a layout but a mini book I made ages ago documenting the top ten places I wanted to go to. It was a class at our Spring 2008 retreat and I was really pleased to see that since I made the book I have ticked four of the top ten off my list...

This one kind of feels like cheating a little bit because I used it to illustrate a previous promot but it includes the very sweet top ten list of Christmas things Isabelle wanted for Christmas when she was about three. Sadly now at 13 and a half the list is slightly longer and less sweet (top of the list this year is a ticket to see Hamilton!) 

November 2018 Sketch Challenge

Dolly here again with a new sketch challenge for you. There will be a sketch for you every month, featuring on the second Saturday of the month.

I hope that you find the sketches useful and remember, a sketch is just like a starting block for your own creative process. Sometimes a sketch will inspire you to create a page that looks very similar to the sketch. Sometimes it will just be something within the sketch that inspires you such as the colours, the photo placement, the grouping of embellishments. Your Page may end up looking very different to the sketch. It doesn’t matter at all. If it inspires you to create something it has fulfilled it’s sketch destiny!

So here is the November sketch.

My pages will always look very like the sketch … yours does not have to.

This month I used papers from Simple Stories A Charmed Life found here 

I love the Simple Stories papers as they are really good quality, are double-sided and I love the cards that come with each collection.

Have fun with the sketch and do share what you create on our facebook page.