April Colour Challenge

Hello everyone - Dolly here with the monthly colour challenge.

I had the chance to work with the gorgeous Cocoa Vanilla More than Words and Midnight collections as well as Pink Fresh Studios Indigo Hills so they inspired the colour choices this month.

I hope you like the swatch and remember, tonal variations on the colours work well too - they don't have to be the exact shades.

This is the page that inspired the palette this month.

I do hope it inspires you to make something and, when you do, please share it int he colour challenge gallery HERE

Kaisercraft Blessed collection

I have been working with the gorgeous Kaisercraft Blessed collection this month and it is so beautiful and so many of the papers lend themselves to fussy cutting and I do love a bit of fussy cutting

 I used white cardstock for the background and then fussy cut some of the flowers from the Gratitude paper which is such a gorgeous mix of pinks and pale blue greens.

The page was really really simple to complete just adding some of the strips from the Friendship papers which also supplied the title block.

Just adding a few hearts and butterflies punched out of the scraps finished the page really quickly.
Gorgeous spring collection to enjoy whilst we have this stunning weather.

April Virtual Crop Class 3 with Mel

This month I used the lovely Patio Party to make my class layouts, the bright sunny florals seem to have come at just the right time as we enjoy beautiful weather over the Easter weekend..

Instructions can be found HERE. There is plenty left over in the kit to make a third layout and I would love to see what you do with your pages, do come over to the ATDML # Create Facebook page and share your creations.

April Virtual Crop Class with Ann

My class today features a wedding themed layout (though the kit allows you to go for a more generic general love theme if preferred) where I added a little flicked paint to the white cardstock background to break up what would otherwise be quite a basic, graphic page but this is entirely optional.

I also made a mini book to house all the lovely retreat photos I would have from our weekend away and to make the most of the beautiful Ephemera pack pieces in the kit.

As always we would love to see what you make with your class kit so please share with us.

Your instructions for these projects can be found HERE and I hope you enjoy making them.

Happy Easter to you all, and enjoy virtual crop day x

April Virtual Crop Class 1 with Karen

I am so pleased to bring you a class using the gorgeous Bo Bunny Felicity papers which include some wonderful vellum too. And there is a sheet of gorgeous white rub on letters too.

The papers are wonderfully fresh and they lend themselves to come fussy cutting too.

There are three layouts in the class and, as always, you will utilise some clever cutting to make the most of the papers in the kit.

This is the first layout

I love that the papers will work with any theme. I used them to complete pages for my Paris album, focusing on Versailles, but they will work for so many different things.

This is the second page

and this is the third

I so hope you enjoy the class you can find the instructions here and can't wait to see your pages, do pop over to the ATDML # Create Facebook Page and share your creations there.

Join us at midday for Ann's mini book class.

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 4

Hello and welcome to the April edition of our Album Covers challenge.

As this is posted I am at the retreat so I am scheduling this post in advance.

For this month I chose the untitled album from Blink 182 released in late 2003. I loved the modern pop art style and zingy high contrast colour palette.

For the layout I wanted to stick pretty close to the origianl design substituting a photo in place of the smiley face and bringing the smaller circle (face outline) down a little to allow my title and embellishments to feel connected rather than floating apart. Initially I was going to replicate the black title on cream wonky cut card pieces but I found a title in a perfect colour to work with my photo and caved in and used that!

I used inks to create the blocks of colour and added drips of the pink and black.

I cut the circles and arrows on my silhouette but if you wanted to recreate this but didn't have an electronic die cutter you could replicate this with a manual circle cutter or even draw round something circular and use a thick tipped pen to create the circle.

I found the suitcase and globe in my Paige Evans Horizon stash and the title was from the Horizon puffy thickers sheet.

I hope you enjoyed this months album cover challenge, do head over to our Facebook Group ATDML # Create this weekend for the Virtual Crop on Sunday and if you have a go at the Album Challenge do upload your layout to the Album Challenge Gallery.

ATDML Alphabetical challenge H

Your second letter for this month is the letter H and here are your prompts to inspire your next layout.

You can pick one, or two or more/all of these to feature on your next page and I have illustrated a few on the page below.

We look forward to seeing how the letter H inspires your next page. Do share as always in our Facebook gallery 

April Sketch Challenge

Hello everyone - Dolly here with another Sketch Saturday.

I really enjoyed creating this one - even though I covered a lot of the bits up - I still knew they were there. It is a great page for using up leftover scraps and, let's face it, we all have leftover scraps that we will get around to using 'one day'! That day is here.

This is the sketch

Just as a size reference - the squares used to form the diamond pattern at 2.5"

I added lots of stamping to mine to highlight the diamond pattern too.

This is my page made from the sketch. I used a mix of gorgeous Cocoa Vanilla More than Words and Cocoa Vanilla Midnight

I hope you like the sketch and it inspires you to use up some of those scraps. If you make a page we would love to see it posted in our monthly sketch gallery HERE


Have fun - I can't wait to see those pages.

Ready Made Backgrounds with Cocoa Vanilla

When I get a sheet of paper like the background above I am loathed to cut into it, and then spend time trying to find a photo (as I don't want to cover it up too much) and a little bit of paper so I can show as much as the paper as I can!  I know it should be about the story and the photo and not the background!  When I really love a background I tend to create lots of little layers of papers, so here you can see some strips and little stickers, and also use something that is transparent - so vellum or in this case a torn glassine envelope, so you get layers, but can see the paper behind.  

Sticking with the minimalist page I used a beautiful title from the Midnight chipboard, and also one of the hearts that co-ordinates - to add a little more bling, but again coverage you can see through I used a circle of silver thread and then also wrapped some around the heart.  The final step was a few drips of silver mist.

So you can still see plenty of that beautiful background paper but I've also managed to use it too!  The papers are Cocoa Vanilla's Midnight collection and you can find them in the shop.

This is one of those papers where I would have to buy 2 sheets!  I hope this has inspired you to choose and use one of your favourite papers, one that you've been saving!

Multi-photos and messy backgrounds with Cocoa Vanilla

We were sent a mixture of Cocoa Vanilla lines this month to play with and I've used a mixture of More than Words and Midnight - both of which are gorgeous and go really well together.  I have lots of pictures of Palma Cathedral from our holiday last year - it was beautiful - it has a mixture of traditional Cathedral beauty but also an arts and crafts sort of vibe with a little section done by Gaudi too.  In an ideal world the photos should have been black and white to go with the paler colours...but then the beauty would be hidden, so I went with full on colour and pastels.

I took inspiration for the background from the papers and used a mix of distress oxides and distress inks in pale blues, yellows, pinks and greys.  I then used a Kaisercraft called Fading Dots and imitated the dots that are on some of the papers too in black ink.  Lots of fussy cutting of flowers - though fortunately as these flowers are roughly drawn you can get away with rough cutting.

Then it was just a case of arranging them all together along with a few butterflies and some of the little type written words from the sticker sheets.

I used a pale cream alpha and to make it stand out had a go a mimicking the hand drawn flowers in pencil - still a skill I need to perfect but it was good fun to have a go with.

Another similar arrangement for some more of the photos - I just trimmed the photos to focus on the areas that I wanted, then mounted them on white card.  I added some torn strips of paper behind them...but being that I dug out some of my mists and created an inky pink and silver background.

The photos show the main sanctuary - it had a beautiful chandelier packed with candles, carefully handcrafted, then in the centre is the chapel designed by Gaudi.

There are some beautiful chipboard flowers and hearts in the Midnight ephemera collection and these were great to add as embellishments to my pages.

A whole paper full of butterflies to cut up from More than Words, layered on Midnight stickers - normally scrapping boys it was fun to use up a little bit of pink!

A bit of a tour around my holiday - I hope you've enjoyed the pages and it's given you some inspiration.

ATDML Alphabetical challenge G

Changing things up a bit this month with the letter G and sharing the post in the evening rather than first thing! I asked a few of our members this morning to guess what prompts I had come up with..and I'll be honest I was amazed no-one said GOLD!!!

I am intrigued to see what you all come up with this month, it is always a joy to see the gallery filling up each month!  So have fun with this one, and I will be back in two weeks with the letter H. In the meantime I have popped a page illustrating some of the prompts in use. My layout features a GREY background cardstock, GREEN triangles and some flicks of GLITTERY paint . Pick the prompts that work and get creating!