Sassy Scrappers moodboard

I love this mood board at Sassy Scrappers:

I was immediately draw to the aqua/black/white colour combination.  I've never really been a 'bling' kind of girl, but lately I've been dabbling with gold touches a bit, and really liking the results.  This is the layout I created:



And a little detail shot (because I've been playing with my old butterfly punch a lot lately):



Materials:
Glitz Designs Beautiful Dreamer - Polka patterned paper
My Memories Glitter - Bright Gold cardstock
October Afternoon Farm Fresh - Farm Yard patterned paper
American Crafts Thickers - Jewelry Box alphabets
FWAB Maddison - White flower
Kaisercraft Rhinestones - Brown
Product packaging (black cardstock)
Harlequin washi tape
Zva mini rose
Kaisercraft 2cm white paper flower
Finishing Touch Ideas black paper flower
Black mini brads

Market Chic

This month has flown by sooooooo quickly, and I have so many unfinished scrap projects on my desk dining room table.

At Lasting Memories, our fourth challenge theme for the month is Anything Goes (as long as it's a LAYOUT) ~ so I thought I'd share this one:



I do like "anything goes" themes because it takes the pressure off a little ~ no need to stick to a theme or a colour scheme or a sketch ~ just scrap away!!  At Lasting Memories we are also happy for participants to combine our challenges with any other challenge blog criteria - it's all about getting those memories recorded onto a layout and sharing for all of us to enjoy.

I had fun heat embossing the flowers and recycled tags on this layout ~ something I don't do often enough!

My layout design was inspired by this picture at Pixels & Paper:

What I did:  I overlapped four large circles (doilies) to create the background of my layout.

The colour scheme of my layout was inspired by a challenge at Scrapbook Fantasies: Create a layout using only white and gold.

Materials:
Prima Nieve - White paper flower
Kaisercraft 2cm White paper flowers
Green Tara 4cm Petals - White paper flower
Tsukineko VersaMark - Watermark inkpad
Moonglow King Midas Gold embossing powder
MFT Die-namics - Little Letters alphabet dies

Big boy's toy...

I loved the challenge at Scrap the Boys this month - with the wonderful theme of Big Boys' Toys.  I had so many ideas, it was hard to choose just one.  My husband is constantly tinkering with all manner of "boys' toys" and I have quite an odd collection of photographs of his projects.

On our recent winter break we stopped at Wallangarra and enjoyed exploring the old rail station and surrounding rail yards:



I used some old generic papers and kept the embellishment to a minimum, but I did play around with ink and embossing powders on the title:



Materials:
Bazzill Basics - Starmist cardstock
Kraft cardstock
A2Z Scraplets Cog Set 3 chipboard shapes
MFT Die-namics - Little Letters diecut alphabets
Tsukineko VersaMagic - Sahara Sand fluid ink
Gel-a-tins Gelly Powder - Northern Lights glitter embossing powder

Another cafe, another layout...

This layout is based on the July sketch at Life. Paper. Scrapbook.



The photographs were taken with my daughter's Android tablet. She created the photo montage in under a minute, using a really basic free photo collage app, and then we printed it at a photo booth while we were there.  Gotta love instant gratification! 

I was also inspired by these challenges:
* Just Two Mid West Girls ~ Bust that Journal Card Stash! {I used a sheet of kraft cardstock journal cards to make my layout base AND I used two Tattered Angels cards}
* Flying Unicorns ~ It's All About Wood {I used a wooden stirrer from Zarraffa's, and a wooden ladybird}
* Frosted Designs ~ Flowers and stitching {I frequently use lots of each on my layouts!  This layout has black machine stitching around the photograph and journalling cards, and I have also used hand stitching to secure the tangle of jute string.  And SIX different kinds of flowers...}



Materials:
My Minds Eye Life Stories - Journaling Sheet #2 cardstock
Tattered Angels Vintage Seasons - Timeless Romance calling cards
Kaisercraft Mini Alpha - Cream letter stickers
Petaloo Flora Doodles brown silk flower
Prima Essentials - Everyday Vintage paper flowers
Bella! Flowerz - Black silk flower
Kaisercraft 5cm Taupe paper flowers
Green Tara 2cm Gerbera - Dark Chocolate paper flowers
Brown silk roses (from my haberdashery stash)
Cosmo Cricket Earth Love - Borders (fussy cut heart)
Jute string

Cafe Chicks

This year for the winter school holidays we took a short 2-night break just over the border... and it was COLD COLD COLD! I got some great photographs during our trip, so I couldn't resist printing a few to scrap this week.  I always find new photographs are a fantastic motivator for my scrapbooking (despite the mountains of older photographs that are still waiting for me to catch up).

This layout is based on the July sketch at Blue Fern Studios and the July Black & White challenge at Flying Unicorns:



I used BFS Tweet Friends chipboard. I painted it with several coats of gesso, then heat embossed with a clear powder to give a lovely shine:



I have to say, sticking just to black and white was really difficult, but I do love the result!


Other materials:
Authentique Classique - Elegant Four patterned paper
Authentique Classique Compounds stickers
Coredinations Black Tie Affair cardstock
Making Memories Boho Chic - Tiny Alphas stickers
Paper doiley
Black striped cardstock (recycled packaging)
FWAB Kate's Corner flourish
FWAB Maddison - White flowers
Kaisercraft white paper flowers
Green Tara 1cm rose - black
Green Tara 1cm rose - white
Bella! black polka dot silk flower
Sullivans Regal Trim - white
Celebrations Clear High Gloss embossing powder

Flight

I have an endless supply of photographs of our chickens and ducks... so I do love using sketches that inspire me to find new ways to scrap them.  This is my latest layout featuring Topple.  I used the July sketch from C'est Magnifique.  I haven't used torn paper like this for quite a long time so it was fun to just rip into it!



My choice of paper and embellishments was inspired by several different challenges:

* Flying Unicorns ~ It's all about wood.  I used a wood grain patterned paper (I had actually passed this old Kmart brand paper on to my daughter, and was embarrassed to ask her for one sheet back again!)  and a wooden flourish, which I painted with gesso to blend in better with the background.
* Really Reasonable Ribbon ~ Things with Wings {I don't know what brand the ribbons are because I raided my offcuts bag, but there are two different grosgrain ribbons, and one floral printed satin}
* LESSology ~ Sew Lovely {I used denim fabric scraps from an old pair of jeans - I never throw them away because there's always another pair that needs patching, or scrapbook pages that need fabric!}

The detail shot shows a close-up of the extra criteria from each of the challenges:  the wood and woodgrain pattern, ribbons, and denim:




Materials:
Cre8tiv Stone & Wood patterned paper
Kaisercraft Curls wood flourish
Paper doiley
Denim fabric scraps
American Crafts Thickers - Rainboots puffy alphabet stickers
Prima E-line - White paper flowers
Kaisercraft paper flower - blue
Zva Creative Soft Blue Transition mini rose
Kaisercraft Pearls - Pewter

BUTTONS

Hello, and thanks for stopping by my blog.

I'm excited to be joining in a blog hop in celebration of the 200th challenge at Lasting Memories.

If you've arrived here from Karen Wilson's blog ~ welcome!  If this is your first stop, please be sure to hop back to Lasting Memories to start the hop so you don't miss a thing.

Our challenge this week is BUTTONS. We are looking for buttons, buttons everywhere on your layouts.   The DT has gotten creative with buttons on our layouts and we hope you'll be inspired.

Along the hop,  each of us has a letter for you to collect.  You will need to unscramble the letters to spell out a short scrapbook-themed phrase (hint ~ it's two words) so don't forget to jot down my letter which you'll see below.  When you've completed the hop, leave your answer in the comment section back at Lasting Memories.  Comments will be moderated so there's no peeking!   Link up your LO... and... our grand prize winner will receive a $25 gift certificate from A2Z Scrapbooking Store!

To celebrate our 200th challenge, you'll see that some of us are also offering a little blog candy on our personal blogs but you have to visit us to see who!   I'd love to give away some lollipop flowers with button centres, handmade by me:



Everyone is welcome to join my giveaway {You don't have to join the blog hop, although that would be great too...}  All you need to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me how you like to use buttons.  I'll leave it open until the end of the month, and draw a winner on 1st August.

Now, time for my reveal... I was inspired by layout sketch #95 from Feeling Sketchy to create my layout design:



I love patterned buttons of all kinds - striped, floral, and ~ my absolute favourite ~ spotted.  I used some pre-made buttons on this layout (stripes and spots) and I also decorated my own.  You can see a close-up on my sneak peek at the top of this post.

My button technique ~
Altering buttons is so easy to do: Use paint, gel pen, permanent marker, liquid pearls, correction fluid, or even nail polish!  I just grabbed a white Signo gel pen and drew some little dots around the edge.  There's no special technique involved, although I recommend going slowly so the pattern doesn't smudge before it has a chance to dry.

Materials:
Ribbon Girl Red, white & blue mixed pack buttons
Green Tara 6cm petals - Fire Engine Red paper flower
Jenni's Jewels handmade flower
Fancy Pants mulberry flower
UPK Gallery Winter is Coming - Letter from Home patterned paper
Bazzill Basics cardstock
Paper doiley
Vintage book page
Prima Rondelle alphabet stickers


Your next stop on the hop is Denise's blog.   Have fun and happy hopping! Don't forget my letter:

Here's the full HOP LINE UP:

Lasting Memories
Claire
Jane
Kimberly
Karen W
Karen B
Denise
Michele
Elizabeth
Darcy
Jackie
Toni
Lasting Memories

10-08-2014 Edit to add:  My layout was selected as one of the Top Picks at Feeling Sketchy:

Hot lunch...

I created this layout as a companion layout for this one. It's not quite a double pager, but I used the same colours and some of the same products so that the first flows into the second:



The inspiration for this layout design was the Scrappy Friends criteria:

** Brenda's sketch:  I followed the sketch but I stacked the photographs so they fit better on my page.  All there other elements are there.
** Rochelle's Tic Tac Toe:  I used brads, stars and tags
** Kelly's word challenge:  I used the word HOT in my title

Materials:
Crate Paper Emma's Shoppe - Inventory patterned paper
Pink Paislee Cupid - Postcards patterned paper
Echo Park Life is Good - Brown Floral patterned paper
Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety - Sunshine patterned paper
Bazzill Bling - Sparkle cardstock
American Crafts Thickers - Subway foam alphabets
Fiskars Round 'n Round - Large circle punch
EK Success Paper Shapers - Double Circle punch
Ribbon Girl Small Polka Dot - Red spotty buttons
Carolee's Creations AdornIt - Tiny Whoopsy Red alphabet stickers
Red mini brads
White heart mini brad
Pompom trim - aqua 

Party of 2

This layout was inspired by challenges from Scrap & Play and Paper Secrets:

 

What I did:  
* I modified the sketch to use two photographs instead of four.
* I used the following items for the prompt word, SPLASH ~

S> spots
P> pompom trim
L> lollipop flowers
A> alphabets
S> sewing
H> heart

My colour palette was inspired by colours and bling factor in the inspiration board at Off the Rails Scrapbooking:

Materials: 
Crate Paper Emma's Shoppe - Inventory patterned paper
My Memories Glitter - Bright Gold cardstock
MFT Die-namics - Little Letters alphabet dies
American Crafts Thickers - Jewelry Box number & asterisks
Fiskars Round 'n Round - Large circle punch
EK Success Paper Shapers - Double Circle punch
Ribbon Girl Small Polka Dot - Red spotty buttons
Charm's Creations Heavenly Heart - White/Gold/Cream 
Pompom trim - aqua 

Kings' Palace

I've been really busy at work the past few weeks and haven't had a lot of free time at home for scrapping.  But I've been sorting through some of my photo files and thought I'd upload a little off the page project I completed earlier this year:



What I did:  I altered an old baking tray tray by sanding it back to get rid of the rust, then painting with outdoor paint.  We have a seeming endless supply of heritage green paint in the shed!

I glued some large die cut monogram letters (Daisy D's Gypsy Harvest collection) onto the tray, and outlined them with marker pen before coating the whole lot with varnish to seal it.

The end result is a sign for our king quail enclosure (hence Kings' Palace) which is eye-catching and just a little bit different.  Here's what it looks like attached to the hutch:

Lasting Memories

This week at Lasting Memories, we have a sketch challenge.  I love using sketches as a starting point, but quite often my layouts look totally different from the original sketch.

This is the sketch:

And this is my take on it:



My layout was also inspired by Scrapbook Fantasies Weekly Challenge # 27: Create a layout using patchwork as your inspiration.   My background circle and side border are made from scraps (Bo Bunny, Echo Park, Scenic Route, Dream Street) "patchworked" together using machine stitching:





Other materials:
Collections Elements Window Tags chipboard shapes
Prima Sprites 2 - Green mulberry flowers
Carl Daisy - Mini punch
American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Thickers - Bliss glitter alphabets
Kaisercolour Spearmint acrylic paint
Colorbox Catseye - Mint fluid chalk
Kaisercraft Pearls - Pewter

The tumbleweed story (continued)

This week at Lasting Memories our theme is My Country, and the challenge is to scrap a layout about a place you love to visit in your country.  Last month I made a layout about the tumbleweeds we encountered on our driving holiday to Lightning Ridge.  I have made a companion layout to tell the full story (click to enlarge and read the journalling):



The journalling is a bit more detailed than my blog post was.  The last line of my journalling reads:  I love that there is so much that I have yet to learn about our country. 

My layout design was inspired by Sketch #272 at Creative Scrappers.  It was a challenge for me to do a layout without pictures, but I was quite happy with the result.  It has made me realise that for ALL of my layouts, I need to get back into the habit of doing much more journalling.

Materials:
K&Company Mira - Chocolate Rose patterned paper
Cosmo Cricket Nutmeg - Autumn patterned paper
Basic Grey Sublime - Cinnamon patterned paper
WorldWin Colormates - Orange cardstock  
Cuttlebug Floral Fantasy embossing folder
Portacraft paper flowers - orange
Bazzill Basics Bitty Blossoms - Arroyo satin flowers
American Crafts Thickers - Niki Riki glitter alphabets
Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type alphabet stickers

Adventure Awaits

Love, love, love this mood board at Life.Paper.Scrapbook:

I was inspired by the colours, the layered documents, and the words "adventure awaits".

My layout design was inspired by Sketchabilities #118:



I'm also submitting my layout at Scrapbook Fantasies for their challenge to create a layout about bird/s.

Materials:
Cosmo Cricket 2wenty Thr3e - Postcards patterned paper
Pink Paislee 365º Degrees - Daydream patterned paper
Polar Bear Press Rustic Retreat patterned paper
Prima flowers - assorted collections
Bazzill Basics Primula - Slate Blue paper flower
Kaisercraft Mini Alpha - Cream alphabet stickers

Swirlydoos and shopping my stash

I created this layout using the June sketch from Swirlydoos:




I used some new photos and old papers, and I also 'shopped my stash' to join in the challenge from Scrap Our Stash:

Scrap Our Stash criteria:
* punches (3 types - heart, butterflies, daisies)
* diecut (Spellbinders - Nestabilities Beaded Oval)
* flowers (3)
* tags (2)
* buttons (3)

The challenge at A2Z Scraplets this month is a fun one too - it's a puzzle challenge, to include each of these shapes:

A2Z Scraplets challenge criteria:
Scraplet ~ title, inked in black
Arrow ~ handcut from patterned paper and layered onto my tags.
Heart ~ punched from patterned paper, outlined with fine marker, and positioned behind the title.
Zigzag ~ machine stitching in black thread
Clock ~ layered with paper flower on righthand side of layout




Other challenges:
Crafty Ribbon - Anything Goes - I used gingham ribbon and plain satin ribbon

Materials:
Kaisercraft Sublime - Vogue patterned paper
Kaisercraft 5cm Lime paper flowers
Prima Brights Mix paper flower
Heidi Swapp Ghost Shapes - Clock
A2Z Scraplets PL Word - Love this Life chipboard title
ColorBox Catseye - Black pigment ink
May Arts gingham ribbon
Kaisercraft Rhinestones - black

Perfect Day

In May,  I played along at Country View Challenges for the first time, and I was thrilled to be offered a Guest Designer spot for July.

This month the theme is Stencil It.  I am very new to the world of mixed media, and it is only recently that I have started using stencils on my layouts.

For this layout, I used a 6x6 stencil to apply texture paste to my base cardstock.  It took quite a while, because I had to wait till the first application dried before I could reapply the stencil to the next part of the layout, because of the wide overlapping edges.

When it was dry, I painted over the top with Twinkling H2O's water colour - which was really fun!  Not only did I get an unexpected resist effect, but it is also very shiny!  Unfortunately the photographs don't do it justice.

I used a sketch from Chic Tags to create my layout, and this is what I created:



And here is a little detail shot of the stenciled texture:



I'm also submitting my layout at:
* Scrap Challenge Yourself - Oh boy!



Materials:
Scrap FX Whirlpools 6x6 stencil
LuminArte Twinkling H2O - Garnet watercolour paint
Kaisercraft Pink Damask printed tape
Portacraft paper flowers
Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type alphabet stickers
Bo Bunny Passion Fruit Dot cardstock
Chic Tags Vintage Note Stamps journal tags