Feb Virtual Crop weekend challenge - Inspired by...

It's the third Friday of the month ahead of our February virtual crop day which means it's time for another Inspired by challenge.  This challenge runs until midnight on the last day of February and there is a £5 ATDML gift voucher up for grabs for the favourite page chosen by the design team.

So take the image above and use it to inspire a layout. You can use the colours, the dots, the A4 size whatever and be inspired to create from the image. Share your page over on our Facebook page for a chance to win the voucher. All entries must be shared by midnight on the last day of February.

I'll post my interpretation of this challenge over the weekend as it's still drying!!

See you back here tomorrow for three classes in your February virtual crop day starting at 10am.

Jane's Saturday Video - February - Pockets and pop-ups part 1

Ok - apologies for the long title but today's video is part one of some techniques for making pages in a chunky mini book. This mini-book is full of interesting pages with pockets and pop-ups which are straightforward to make and really effective. The book itself is made using black card and then decorated using the Nature Sketchbook papers from Graphic 45. Of course you can use these techniques to make a book using any papers. The book construction is a concertina spine - but more of that in a later video - first a couple of pages. Today we are going to look at making a page which opens 'gatefold' style but has a card and pocket mechanism for keeping it closed - I call it a 'locking' pocket (though it's not really locked!). I also included on the video the 'how to' for a pop-up 3D page.

The first couple of pages look like this...

The video is below... or you can see it on my YouTube channel  here.

I'll have more pop-ups and pockets featuring in next month's video - plus how to make the book - stay tuned!
Jane x

February Virtual Crop Photo Requirements

Hello, the 2nd Virtual Crop of the year is on it's way on the 18th February, though the challenges begin in the evening on the 17th.  Kits are on sale as I type, click here, they sell out fast, even if you don't manage to get a kit you can still join in with all the challenges and the instructions are free to download so you can make the pages too.

Join us on the 18th in our Facebook Group for lots of chatter, and you can share your pages too ATDML #Create.

10am - Karen Moss

Layout 1 - 10" wide and 7" tall photo (or you can make this size of photo up with lots of different photos.

Layout 2 - 11 photos

1 ¾ x 2 ¾ , 2 x 1 ½ , 2 ½ x 1 ¾ , 1 x ½ , 2 x 2’ 2 ½ x 1 ¾, ¾ x 1, 1 ¼ x 1 ½ , 1 x 1 ½ and two 2 ¼ x   1 ½

These photos fit into frames that are printed on the paper, so the sizes depend on which of the frames you choose from the paper.

12 noon - Jane Hewitt

A trimmed 3 by 5" portrait

2pm - Katherine Sutton

It would be good to have some photos of you, especially for layouts 1 and 2 in this class.

Layout 1 - 1 Portrait 6 by 4"

Layout 2 - 1 Landscape 6 by 4"

Layout 3 - 1 Landscape 6 by 4"

Hug time

My Boyfriend and his sister are incredibly close and this is one of my favourite photos of the two of them.  It just epitomises how they are together and it's such a joyful shot - it makes me smile every time I look at it. 

As the photo has a clean simple background I wanted to keep a sense of that in the layout.  However, I wanted to bring the fun aspect into it too.  I started off using elements from the Simple stories 'Life in Color' range.  The main strip ran the length of the page and had a camera where the photograph is. It also said snapshots of a happy life but as this was taken at a wedding I wanted to change it to day instead. I did this by popping a couple of strips of Glitz washi tape over the Life and added the word 'day' over the top.

I then added ribbon above and below the element to draw out the yellow colour and then a strip of washi tape below and above that.  

I cut in half this Green tag and trimmed the edge off to create brackets and attached them to each side of the photo for a bit of dimension.

Using 3 elements from the Journaling card elements - the yellow striped with the camera element, the section with the 3 tags and the section that is half green/half books.  I trimmed these down, and cut the book half off the green tag and cut 2 of the tags out of the 3rd strip. I distressed the edges of the yellow and green sections and layered these up underneath the photo. I added washi tape to the tags to give them an impression that they were tacked on.

To finish up I added a camera, heart and arrow from Kaisercraft's 'Wooden flourish' pack and some lettering and numbers.  If the colours don't suit your layout why not try one of the My little shoebox range. 

Photography Prompts for February

Hello and welcome back to another months worth of photography prompts! Don't forget to share last months photos on the ATDML # Create Facebook page, I will be sharing my February photos towards the end of the month.

February's Scraplift Challenge

Hello, hello lovely scrappers - are you ready for the February Scraplift Challenge?

This month I chose one of Tricia's lovely pages to scraplift.

So much to love about this page - I loved the rip across the centre with snowflakes peeping out from beneath, the vertical panel with a photo and mixed alpha title, the horizontal embellishment cluster and the glitter hearts.

I gave my page a little bit of a 'Karen' twist by layering two different papers onto my cardstock - I like to have a card border around my paper.

I ripped my paper diagonally and fussy cut some butterflies to peep from beneath the rip.

I too used a vertical panel for my photo and title and used large alphas for my daughter's name - Gracia Rose, and smaller alphas for the filler words. 

 I also punched some glitter hearts to embellish my title block and finally added a horizontal cluster to the left of my page.  

I am excited to see your scraplifts from the January DT Gallery which can be found on the 'Information' section -  at the right-hand side of the ATDML shop site.

January 2017 Gallery Favourites

I'm taking over from all of Karen's Gallery highlight posts last year...just 'cos I really enjoyed her post and flick through our gallery.  We worked with BoBunny's Winter Wishes papers and also Simple Stories Winter Wonderland - you can see all the pages here.

Up first is Tricia's Snug as a Bug in a Rug...made with Winter Wishes - my favourite part of this page (other than the cute photo) is the tear down the middle with snowflakes peaking out - it's such a super idea and really pretty, it draws your eye to the photo in the middle.

Here is one of my favourites from Karen - I love all the little photos and the big title banner down the middle - I often struggle with these large cut aparts and what to do with them.  As always lots of embellishing with some of the stickers, and I bet several layers of foam pads.

Ann created a beautiful page with both the paper ranges, and showed how snowy papers don't have to be used with snowy photos - I like all her cluster embellishments with buttons and layers of washi tape and stickers - loads of details to look at.

Here is one of my pages, that I haven't shared yet - again it uses Winter Wishes and I dug out some silver glitter paste with a snowflake stencil, I also used bits of the beautiful silver vellum in this range which is gorgeous.

I hope you enjoyed some of my highlights.