Colour Challenge February 2019

Hello everyone, Dolly here. It is the fourth Wednesday of the month and so that means time to play with a colour swatch

I don't know what it is like in your part of the world, but here on the south coast it is chilly, even though we haven't really had the much longed for snow.

As it is February, and of course we should expect cold in the winter, I have selected a wintery cool swatch this month, but I have made a page that isn't by any means a traditional snowy wintery page using the swatch.

Here is your swatch for February

and this is my page using that swatch as a basis.

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 As always you can play with the colours, using different tonal values on your page and using more of some colours and less of others. You will find that the beige colour helps to give a little bit of warmth to your page.
 

I hope you enjoy the challenge and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Remember to upload your page to the colour challenge gallery here

Adding a bit more colour...

Hello everyone, Katherine here - this month I wanted to take a look at adding a bit more colour to pages, especially when you have quite neutral papers.  So the benefit of neutral papers like Hello New Year from Simple Stories and also Winter Wishes from BoBunny is that any photo will go with them,  but then I like a little more colour.  I often use inks and am loving the distress oxides at the moment.  For my first page I chose colours from my scarf and added them in a band, then adde some bits of stamping in co-ordinating colours and other embellishments that matched - the perfect sort of page to put together if you sort everything by colour.  The black and white of Hello New Year worked perfectly to give a break from all the colour around my photo.

I loved that technique so much that I also used it in this months virtual crop - there are some instructions about how to add distress inks and oxides using just a little bit of plastic if you haven't tried this technique yet.

Winter Wishes does have a mix of blues in with browns and creams, it's a beautiful wintry collection, for this one I wanted to pull out the orange of my husbands coat...and didn't have orange paint!  I started with gesso and then mixed in some of my brusho inks in reds and yellows until I got a shade that I was happy with.  Still wanting to continue the mess I added some sparkle with BoBunny's confetti paste in silver, a few punched snowflakes and nuevo drops and I was done.  

Dig out your neutral papers and add a bit of colour!

ATDML Alphabetical challenge D

Letter D makes is Alphabetical Challenge appearance today and tempts us with the following prompts to inspire a page. Remember you can choose one or more or all of the prompts, the choice is yours.

As always you have two weeks to rise to this alphabetical challenge after which time we will move on to the letter E. I hope you are enjoying these challenges. Please do share your pages in our gallery HERE. 

February 2019 Virtual Crop day with Ann and Kaisercraft

Hello lovely crafters where I hope your Sunday is planned to be a relaxing one. By the time this post goes live I will have been out on a chilly rugby pitch side watching my boys so it's a good job my class kit today is sunnier colours.

I have created two pages, on embracing the recent trend to feature triangles on your layouts (which I am really having a phase on at the moment!)

And my second page I went a tad fringe scissors crazy! You don't have to use fringing (or herb scissors as they are also known) you can use normal scissors and it'll take a little longer, or just add unfringed strips of paper and stickers instead for a similar but less textured look.

Your instructions can be found HERE and I hope you are inspired to have a go..and there may even be a bonus project at the end as well.

Don't forget to share your creations over on the ATDML # Create Facebook Page.

February 2019 Virtual Crop Class with Katherine using Shimelle's Box of Crayons

Hello, welcome to my colourful class using Shimelle's box of crayons.  There is stamping, inky mess, layering and distressing with a little bit of doodling too!  There are 3 pages altogether, the one above being the messiest - dig out your distress oxides (or other water-based inks) to create a rainbow effect.

For this page it's all about layering the curves and then we use some stamping to add a different sort of layer behind the photo.

A really nice and quick page with a little bit of fussy cutting, some doodling and hand cut paper strips.

I hope you enjoy the class.  As always do come over and join in the chatter on the ATDML # Create Facebook page and share your creations.

You can find the class here.

February 2019 Virtual Crop class with Karen Leahy

Hello everyone and I am so thrilled to bring you a class which celebrates something we all love but don't often scrap about - our wonderful crafting and creating.

I think we all craft in different ways. Obviously scrapping is our main love! But many of you sew and paint and draw and create things in all sorts of wonderous ways.

The class uses the amazing Echo Park I'd Rather be Crafting papers and I look forward to seeing your pages over on the ATDML # Create Facebook Page.

I made three pages - and still have things left over!

There are instructions for three layouts and you can find them here

Join us as midday when Katherine will be here with your next class.

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 2

Hello and welcome back to the Album Covers Challenge. It was great to see several people joining in and posting their layouts based on The Beach Boys' That's Why God Made The Radio from our January challenge. (It's not too late to go back and have a go at that one!)

This month our album cover is No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom" Album. It was their third studio album and was released in October 1995 - for me that meant it coincided with my first term in sixth form and I can remember "Don't Speak" one of the tracks on this album playing on our sixth form common room speakers quite a lot!

I am a fan of a big circle so I loved this album cover and, as before I found it helpful to make a sketch to plan my layout. In this instance I substituted a 4x6 photo in place of the foreground figure.

I sorted through and wanted to use some of the Paige Evans Whimsical collection but took nods from the blue and yellow in the album artwork. When it started to come together I had to flip my design so that the photo was on the right and the embellishment cluster on the left as the photo I wanted to use had Olivia looking towards the left and I usually prefer my subject to look towards the middle of the page rather than off to the side.

For the title I dug out some Thickers in a blocky font to match those on the album artwork and, although they didn't make it onto the sketch I noticed the flies on the edge of the circle on the album cover and added some clouds to echo their placement.

I hope this gives you a little inspiration before the Virtual Crop tomorrow. Don't forget to join us tomorrow morning at 10am for our first class. Over on the ATDML # Create Facebook Page we would love to see what you are scrapping and if you have a go at this challenge please do upload it to the Album Covers Challenge Gallery.

Prima Midnight Garden

The new Prima Midnight Garden papers are so lush - such rich deep colours and great for fussy cutting too.

When we went to New Jersey recently a trip to Carlo's Bakery was a must. Not sure if any of you are Cake Boss fans, but the original store in Hoboken is a must. We were so thrilled to meet many members of the family including Mauro, Joey and - of course - Grace.

The papers just worked so well with the top I was wearing (even though I cut most of it out of the picture I know it is there!)

The papers leant themselves perfectly to fussy cutting

Now - in the words of Buddy himself ... 'Who wants to eat some cake?' 

Wander...

Hello Campers 

I'm well and truly over the coldness and dreaming of spring already.  However, the weather has made for some lovely winter walks and photo opportunities it brings. I've been using Prima 'Spring Farmhouse' this month which are a gorgeous mix of rich shades and neutral tones with lots and lots of floral elements. These can take some time to cut out but the time and effort is often worth it to bring together these elements as one collection.

The midnight Garden paper has a gorgeous gradiated hue radiating from the centre which provides a good focal point for the pices.  I used floral elements from 'Rose reciepts', 'simple things', 'beautiful life' & 'Full heart' 

Using Kraft cardstock and 'More roses please I layered 2 sections to act as a staggered photo mount. I wanted to draw the eye through so i created a 3/4" thick frame 8" wide to sit around the  photomount.  

The title 'wander' was cut from the 'simple things' paper and tucked behind the photo.

Once these were in place I layered the flora and fauna around the base of the photo using a mixture of tape, foam pads and creating texture by shaping the leaves.

The neutral side of the collection works in a lovely colour pallet of washed out woods, gingham and patterns with a homespun feel.  For Simple Things I teamed these with some gold elements for a subtle effect.  

I handcut the wreaths staying as close to the shape as possible and alongside the long pennant shapes, I used a collection of wooden strips to create a photo mount.  All the paper's tile strips have a patterened back and I used these to bring colour to the layout.  

It's not long now to the retreat and I'm looking forward to seeing you all there - there are some cracking new ranges we can't wait to share with you.

Prima Georgia Blues

I have always loved Prima - always top quality gorgeousness and these new papers are no exception.
I used the new Georgia Blues collection.

The papers are double sides -always a plus - and have gorgeous gold foil embossing on them.
The florals are just gorgeous too.

The photo is from New Hampshire from our trip last autumn.

I couldn't resist fussy cutting some of the flowers from one of the papers and adding it along with some ribbon and very old roses. The only other addition was some punched butterflies.

Sketch Challenge February 2019

Hello everyone and welcome to my monthly sketch challenge.
Remember that you don't have to stick rigidly to the sketch. You can follow it exactly, flip it, add or delete things; just let the sketch inspire you to scrap.

I hope you have fun with this one.

This is the page I made with the sketch

I hope that the sketch inspires you to scrap and, if it does and you make a page, please share it with us and add it to the sketch gallery here in our facebook group

 Have fun and scrap those memories.

ATDML Alphabetical challenge C

Time for another Alphabetical challenge and we continue on to letter C for this month where your prompts to inspire a page are below.

Plenty of easy prompts this month so we hope to see lots of pages in the gallery which can be found HERE on Facebook.

As always you have two weeks to create a page inspired by one or more of the C prompts above and I have illustrated a couple of ways you might do this below.

Firstly here is a page using Cocoa Vanilla (Midnight) papers on Cardstock with a couple of floral Clusters.

And my second illustration features a patterned paper Circle and more Clusters.

Debs, Random Ramblings: Instalment 2

Aaah ... Saturday morning, traditionally a morning to get the shopping in and attend to all the chores one never got round to doing during the week. Except that I read somewhere “Crafting comes before Housework in the dictionary.   As it should.” So, who am I to argue with Collins or Cambridge or Oxford?!  With that in mind, and it being the beginning of February, my mind has turned to prepping for Valentine makes. I picked up these in town to put onto valentine tags for colleagues and pupils at school

I’m thinking of pairing them with these scrumptious 3X4 Simple Stories LOVE cards from the ATDML shop. Will update later in the month to let you know how they come together (and whether the mini humans liked them or not).

Meanwhile, I would really like to hear about your Valentine project plans and, of course, see what you’ve created when they’re done. Please join in the fun and share your ideas on our Facebook group page which can be found here.

Happy planning people. MWAH 💋