December V|irtual Crop Class with Ann

Happy December to you all and hoping you had a fun, festive time. My class today is perfect to scrap those seasonal memories from 2024 or another year and features papers from Simple Stories and a whopping ephemera pack! I have made 3 pages but you've plenty to create more. I plan on adding my photos to the photo mounts on the pages as I designed these earlier in December ready to add pictures from this year.

You can find the istructions on the Google Drive LINK HERE and if you don't have the kit then scraplift along with your own papers.

Enjoy!

August 2024 Virtual crop class 2 with Tricia

 

Good Morning all and welcome to my class in this month's Virtual crop.

I was thrilled to get to play around with Simple stories 'Pack your bags'.  It’s such a fun colourful range with lovely travel motifs and a collection that will let you create your own clusters of embellishments in the layouts to suit your photos.

The dual sides of the papers will also allow you to flip your options and the range of double sided tags have cute edges to compliment your colours.

So lets get going click here and we'll get started, don't forget to share your layouts over on facebook!

Class 13 We were on a break - with Tracy Annunziato

I'm back, this time with what is possibly one of the most famous lines, and certainly the longest running joke, of the whole series!  We were on a break!  More about the origin and story in my instructions, but putting it into a layout... I broke a background in half!

This fun bright summery Simple Stories collection, Just Beachy, is screaming to be used documenting breaks away from real life!  So I've documented a few trips to Tenerife, where real life just doesn't get me!

I also broke a habit, you'll find no inky backgrounds here today, I've inked the edges of one layout, but that's actually not usually a habit of mine!

I hope you enjoy the class, you'll find your instructions here. Join us back here at 8pm for Class 14, the last of the weekend with Tricia and then we close the day with one final challenge.

Class 7 The One about Central park with Tricia

 

Good afternoon friends!

We are off for a picnic in Central park with Simple stories and their yummy 'Simple vintage spring garden' collection.  

For the first layout I wanted to take inspiration from the incredible overhead pictures that I have seen of Central Park with the beautiful green floral oasis in the centre of a grey urban-scape.  I also wanted to represent all the various little sections of the park from literary walk to the Swiss house. 

These papers are great for photos of days out or days in the garden so grab those photos and click here and join me for a day out in Central park (the ice cream is really good :0)

Back here in 2 hours is another challenge for you and your next class from Ann will land at 8pm.

 

Class 2 The one about chef Monica with Ann

A warm hello from me for my first of three classes this weekend. The Simple Stories Domestic Bliss papers in the kit chosen for this class immediately made me think of the Friends character Monica and her job as a chef. And then I looked at the papers and they were more about keeping home than cooking but luckily Monica was also a home body, always cleaning and tidying so the collection still worked just as well!!

Instructions for Class 2 can be found HERE where I made 3 layouts including the one above and if you didn't grab a kit for this please do feel free to join in with your own papers and scraplift one or more of the class pages. 

We do ask that if you do scraplift you credit the designer when sharing to social media.

Next up is Days of our lives with Karen at 10pm and then we close the day with a second challenge at 11pm. 

June 2024 Virtual Crop with Ann and SS Just Beachy

 

Join me for a journey through countryside, cities and beaches as I make the most of all the fabulous summer elements in the Simple Stories Just beachy collection.  Three layouts for you in the class (one above and two more) and you can download the instructions from  HERE searching for 0624-Ann.pdf  

I hope you enjoy the class - Tracy closes today's virtual crop with her class at 2pm. See you then!

April 2024 Virtual Crop class with Karen

Hello everyone and welcome to my April class using one of my favourite manufacturers, Simple Stories. 

This class kit was packed with goodies and even having made three pages there is a lot left over to play with. 

This was one of the class pages I made 

You can find the full instructions HERE 

I hope you enjoy playing along and please do try and share your work in our facebook group as I would love to see it. 

Karen x

November Virtual Crop Class with Mel Hand

 

This month I worked with some autumnal Simple Stories papers from the Acorn Lane and Harvest Lane collections. The layout shown above has some optional inking and stenciling along with some fringing. If you are not up for the fringing or the ink it can easily be adapted to skip these elements.

My second layout is quite straightforward and utilises the lovely patterns of the papers to create a grid design layout. Find instructions for both layouts HERE

Don't forget to share your creations with us over on the ATDML # Create Facebook group 

August 2023 Virtual Crop Class with Debs

 Happy Scrappy Sunday to you all and welcome to the second class of the day 

I've designed these pages using papers, rub-ons and frames from this beautiful, jam packed Simple Vintage Life in Bloom kit. These papers and rub-ons in this collection lend themselves beautifully to creating layered clusters on our layouts.  I made three layouts using this class kit and there's still plenty to spare to make cards and gift tags.

Instructions for this class layout inspiration can be found here. 

As always we love to see you get up to so please share your pages in our ATDML#Create Facebook page.

Hope you have a blissfully creative afternoon.

August Virtual Crop with Mel

 Welcome to another virtual crop weekend

All our virtual crop instructions can be found on our Google Drive here

All of this month's classes (Mel at 10, Debs at Noon and Ann at 2pm today) can be found searching in the 2023 Virtual Crop album on the Google Drive link and will start 0823

Mel's Lemon Twist class is gorgeous - go take a look and happy scrapping

May 2023 Virtual Crop Class with Tracy

What a lovely Sunday it is, whether it's sunshine or rain for you today, I hope you are making the most of the long weekend! 

I got to play with the beautiful Simple Stories Vintage Life in Bloom range, and I love this class I've put together for you.

I have never been a big fan of chipboard, and frames just don't rock my world... but I have to admit I am so glad I was given them for this class!  I genuinely love the layouts I've made!

We create two layouts, one that will be perfect for a thoughtful selfie, or a pic of a special someone, and really framing the moment!

Our second layout has a really fun vibe, and would go with literally any theme and colours of photos.

I hope you love them too, and really would love to see your versions on our facebook page.

Next up is Karen closing out our May Virtual Crop day at 2pm.

  

Class 3 - Big Girls Don't Cry with Debs

Hello All,

Sending a warm South African welcome to the ‘Big Girls don’t Cry’ class where we will explore using large photographs on a page.

This class allows for super quick and easy pages using the gorgeous Simple stories Simple Vintage Indigo Garden range. I have been using large prints on layouts for many years and love that they are a convenient way to complete a layout quickly because the photograph covers so much of the space.  Large prints also allow us to add a title, embellishments and journaling ono the photograph without losing or covering any important details on the photo.

Examples and instructions for layouts using extra large photographs can be found here.

I look forward to seeing your large photo layouts.

Hope you all have a wonderfully scrappy weekend.

Debs

Simple Stories Vintage Indigo Garden

 

Hello, I hope you are all having a lovely bank holiday weekend.  Here are a couple of spring packed pages for you using Simple Stories Vintage Indigo Garden.  This is a beautiful range and interestingly, though it could just be the papers I had, there was a pinky side and the other side was yellows, blues or greens....so you are always left with an option if you don't want too much pink.   I also got sent some more banner stickers and I still think these are fabulous and glam up a page with very little effort!  What a great invention.

For my first page I used the banner as the border between 2 papers - my border sticker didn't quite extend to the full 12" of the page but there are so many extra stickers that you can easily just add some and in fact I really like layering the stickers so some stuck to the page and some on foam pads.  I've also used some of the chipboard frames that come in the range and they are great way to add a bit more to your photo.

I backed the frames with some paper from the kit and then added stickers in the middle. 

Here you can see how I added stickers to the end to try to disguise the fact that the sticker didn't extend the full width.

Here is a slightly more minimalist page using one of the smaller banners.  I started with green ink and some of the confetti glitter that BoBunny make - mine has started to dry up as it has been open a while, but I scooped some out and added a little water to it and it revitalised it so I could spread the sparkles around the page.  Again lots of layering of the stickers and a few of the papers and the page comes together really quickly!

I like the way that you can leave the frames open to reveal the layers beneath them, then just add a little sticker over the top.

August 2021 - Class with Tracy

 Good evening friends.  I hope you have all had a lovely day.  I'm typing to you from Sunny Wales again, sat in the garden with mum, beer in hand, so you could say I'm in my happy place!

I loved the bright colours in this kit, and so I chose a photograph with a rainbow of colours in the dresses and clothes we wore when Ann, Wendy and I finally met up with the Welsh after almost 2 years!!!  

The travel theme worked well even for just a day out, and the sticker book will last for ages, it'll be especially great if you're planning a little travel journal!

I used the tags as a feature, because why not? I tried to keep the tag page quite simple, I hope you enjoy it.

The second page is a little more fun but both pages are pretty simple so I hope perfect for an early evening play... I hope you have a rip roaring time! 

Instructions can be found here.

I really hope you like the class and I am so excited about teaching you all in person at Retreat.  I can't wait to see your versions of the pages, so don't forget to pop them in the albumn.

August 2021 Cyber Crop - Class 1 with Katherine

 

Hello and welcome to our virtual crop!  If you don't have the kit you can put together your own and join in the classes.  As always we would love to hear from you in the chatter and see your finished pages so make sure you join in on our Facebook page ATDML#Create. In my class you will make 2 pages, but there are plenty of bits and pieces to make more - it uses the lovely Family Fun collection from Simple Stories.  For the first page the focus is on the lovely foam stickers that you get in this kit with a little bit of faux stitching.

The next page is packed with all the rainbow colours in the kit and gets you to dig out your punches to make a feature.

You can find the class here. 

I hope you enjoy the class and look forward to seeing your creations and be back here at 12 noon to see Karen's fabulous class.

July Sketch challenge with Tricia

Morning guys 

Welcome to this month's sketch challenge which has been inspired by the Simple stories Sunkissed range.  I love the bright colours of this range and I wanted to match the bright primary colours with primary shapes. 

I love this photo of my nephew and his Dad on one of their first holidays and the blue skies and sunglasses was a perfect match for these papers.  With the good weather we have had this year I'm sure you have a good few snaps that would suit this layout or why not switch it all up and create your own layout using the sketch as a basis.  Flip it, rotate it but whatever you do, don't forget to upload your example in the Facebook album so we can see what you have been up to.

 

June Virtual Crop class 2 with Simple stories and Tricia

 

Good Morning guys!!

Welcome to class 2 of this month's Virtual crop!

This afternoon we'll be using the gorgeous, Vintage cottage fields range from Simple stories.  This range is full of soft colours inspired by blooming flowers and nature found in your back garden.

For my first page I wanted to bring elements of looking out your window across your garden (one of my favourite views from my house and slatted fences with climbing flowers.

I layered the chipboard frames and backfilled two of them with strips of paper to create a slatted effect.  I also made use of the frames with grouped flowers to also create a trellis effect. I added in some wood effect alphas to complement the theme.

For my second layout I wanted to capture the mood of sitting out in my blooming garden with bunting or festoon lighting and fluttering butterflies all around.  

So grab those photos of lockdown walks, picnics in the garden (or the Park) or just you in your favourite flowery top!!

You can find the instructions here

Around the World in 80 Days - Class 1 - Arriving in Paris, France with Katherine

 

Hello everyone, welcome to the first class of our Around the World in 80 hours cybercrop.  Hopefully you have discovered challenges 1 to 4, if not check out the earlier posts.  Make sure you join us in our Facebook group ATDML#Create and share your pages in the albums.

For this class we are using the Simple Stories Quarantined papers and as Paris is the home of many wonderful artists your challenge in this class is to step outside your comfort zone and get a little messy.  There are 3 pages, one of which is covered in inkiness but the other 2 are cleaner, so there is something for everyone to enjoy.  The papers will work perfectly with all your 'stay at home' pictures, so dig them out before we get further afield.

Delight in the mess of distress inks and watercolour.

Move onto some careful cutting and layering.

Focus on the journey and journal all the details in my easiest page ever!

You can find the instructions for the pages here.

I hope you enjoy them, be back at 6pm ready for an Italian challenge.

March 21 Virtual Crop Class with Ann

Happy Sunday crafty ones. I hope we find you in good spirits today joining in our March Virtudal crop.

Today I have created two layouts and a little fold out book with the fun Simple Stories Bro & Co which whilst a predominatly teen boy range can be used as I have shown for any subjects. I still have much of the kit contents left over so you can definately make all that I am sharing plus more.

Click HERE to download the instructions and enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Ann

Going Vintage

 

Hello, I thought I would share some vintage pages using the beautiful Vintage Ancestry collection from Simple Stories.  I decided to stick to heritage photos for these pages and it is really easy to scan them in with phones and get a decent print.   For my first page I have a picture of my great grand parents, and I decided to cut out the edge of the large yellow flower so that it could overlap with the photo, the same with the butterfly wings, so I carefully used a craft knife and looked at which parts I needed to cut to be able to slide my photos underneath.  I also added in some of the frames, a bit of lace and collection of flowers that pulled the colours from the papers.  I chose a crocheted flower as Nan (my Great Grandma) loved a bit of knitting or crocheting so it reminded me of her, I made the poppy using chiffon and carefully burnt the edges of it with a candle - it is 3 hand-cut circles, decreasing in size with a brad in the centre.  I chose the poppy as this was part of how my great grand parents met - Teddy was carried to safety by Nan's brother in the First World War.

Here  you can see the flowers up close - I also used a vintage button for the centre of my crochet flower.

This shows the details on the papers up close and some of the co-ordinating chipboard.

For my second page I wanted to add lots of photos so went with a more modern style, but tried to keep to the heritage theme.  I cut out several of the cards that you get on the papers - a mix of 4" square and 2" squares.  I arranged them with my photos and left one for the journalling.  This is a more recent photo and was the coronation of Elizabeth and here you can see my Mum and her sister all dressed up for the occasion by my Grandma!  There is also a larger picture of the street part where they are down the from in more normal attire!

The colours in these papers are so pretty, I love the pops of blue and red.

I hope that has inspired you to dig out some older photos and write down the stories behind them!