Scrap the Girls January moodboard 2017

Hello and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Let's hope 2017 brings us all happiness, success, and makes our dreams become realities!!! I have a few dreams, goals and plans, I really want to put them down on paper and make them happen!!!
This month is my last reveal as a Design Team member for SCRAP THE GIRLS CHALLENGES! I have loved my term over there, there's a great bunch of inspiring girls, and we are handing over the reins to a new bunch of peeps....yet to be revealed.
Here's the moodboard, which was a very challenging one, I have to say:

I couldn't find any papers to help me with the colours, so I decided to focus on the metallics in the image, and I stamped and embossed some Kaszazz mandala stamps in gold, wine and copper. It looks very shiny!! (Hard to pick it up on the photo!)
It's a bit of a thrifty layout this one, as the stickers are all from a paper pack I bought for a couple of bucks at the Salvo's store!!! I mounted them all onto card for dimension, add a few flowers from Green Tara and Seriously Scrapbooking, and finished by embossing a chipboard word from Kaszazz.

I love this pic of Mum and I, which was taken on our recent visit to Adelaide!!!
TFL,

Scrappingclearly DT post August 2016

Hi all! Today I'm sharing my 3rd Scrappingclearly post for August!!! I can't believe it's nearly the end of the month!!! I'm really happy with this layout, featuring my two beautiful kids from 8 years ago!!! they look so tiny!!!

My inspiration for this layout came from a class with Nicole Nowosad, over at Big Picture Classes!! I've been a member with them for quite a few years now, and their new website and classes are just amazing. For a small monthly fee, you have access to as many classes as you can do, and they are constantly coming up with new ones. Take a look if you haven't done before!!! 

I even broke out the sewing machine for this one...OMG..It's been awhile! Must be the new desk Hubby built me, more space, and using more things because I can!!!!

There's lots of layers behind my photo and I wanted it to pop off the page, so instead of going mad with the magic mount, I remembered a tip I learned a long time ago, and cut a large square of chipboard and taped that to the back instead! I've popped some vellum between the layers, to soften the mix of patterned papers a little. I've used the gorgeous Shimelle, Starshine and Maggie Holmes Open Book collections!

My embellishments: wood veneers by Studio Calico, Kaisercraft die cut push bike and a few flicks of Heidi Swapp Colorshine in navy. All other cut outs are from the Starshine papers!!! Love!

And there you have it!! A very colourful mix of Tertiary coloured patterned papers!!! Somehow, I think that it all works. Hope you like!

Scrap the Girls August moodboard DT page

Well, hello, it's the 1st of August, and that means a new month and another new challenge. Yippee! I absolutely love this month's moodboard over at Scrap the Girls, I know you will too, it's just stunning!! Take a look....

I was immediately drawn to the image in the top right and thought my Kaszazz Mandala stamps would work a treat in my background.

First I added a coat of clear Gesso to my white cardstock, then sprayed some Dylusions inks and water. When that was dry, I started stamping my background. Aswell as the Mandala stamps, I also used some other Kaszazz stamps, the mesh stamp & net stamp.
I've used some Colourblast, colour paste in blue through a stencil and also used it to colour my chipboard arrow and feathers. (Which was one of the fab pieces I got from a prize I won from Dusty Attic.) It is stunning!              

Actually, I did alot of colouring on this page!!! I coloured the flowers with Dylusions sprays and used Alcohol ink Art markers to colour bits of the Mandala stamp. Flowers are from Scrap Matrix and Merci.
There's some free glitter stickers and a paperclip from an old Scrapbooking Memories magazine, some twine and hessian, 7 Dots papers, stickers and journal tag, (which I've hidden), and a gorgeous Kaisercraft clear word sticker.

Hope you like my layout, it's one of my favourites I think!! TFL,
Tania

My Kraft Plus challenge entry

I have been frustrated this week, back and neck troubles have kept me away from my happy place at my craft desk. I thought I would try something smaller for this challenge, so I made a card. Here is the inspiration board from Kraft Plus...

Wow, what a fantastic image!!! But, it overwhelmed me a little. Once I sat down and looked at it, and individual clusters, I could let the inspiration take over. I started with a Gesso background, a bit of stamping and then some Colour Blast colour paste. I received the cool ship, chipboard piece & travel  tape from a pocket letter swap, and used lots of twine in the background. Then just stamped all my travel words in different colour Archival inks. Hope you like it!!!

More than Words mini challenge

Well I just scraped in with the deadline to play along over at More Than Words!!! they are a relatively new challenge site, and I am loving all of the beautiful entries to this mini challenge, so many elaborate tags!! Mine is not quite as elaborate, but I had fun playing with my Perfect pearls, and gold paint mixed with texture paste!!! The chipboard butterfly is from Kaszazz and there's some Craft Queen Ribbons in there!!!

You can only play along with the mini challenge on their facebook page, which you can find here!!

A bit of Mood board inspiration!

So just sharing my take on the Feb 2016 Moodboard Challenge over at Scrappingclearly!
I just Love these blue colours and with the butterflys, it immediately inspired me to telll the story about my butterfly tattoo and why I got it!
Here's the gorgeous Moodboard:

And here's my take on it:

I was inspired by the lovely colours, the butterflys and the Morroccan Tiles.
I used some Kaszazz cardstock, Heidi Swapp & Blue Fern Studios papers, There's a journal spot which came from a FREE paper with Scrapbooking Memories Mag. Washi tape, a Chipboard title from Blue Fern, Stamps from Kaisercraft & Kaszazz, Dylusions spray inks & paints. I found my gold paint dabber and did some stamping with the Morroccan tile background stamp and love how this came out! I also used the old faithful Gesso and some Alcohol Ink Art markers!
I did some hidden journaling, describing when and why i got my tattoo and what it represents to me!

More Scrappingclearly cybercrop pics

Hi, well as promised, I have the last couple of projects I completed for the Australia Day Cybercrop over at Scrappingclearly. This next one was called a Tic Tac Toe challenge! We had to pick a row in a tic tac toe board made up of shapes, then use those 3 shapes on our layout! I have to say, this is probably one of my New favourite layouts this year!!!!

The shapes I used were a love heart, (wood veneer), a rectangle, (paper strips, and speech bubble), and an arrow!!! The gorgeous papers by Webster's pages, made this layout come together so quickly and easily. Not to mention those beautiful crocheted doilies and flowers, which were sent to me in my pocket letter from the lovely Rikki Graziani, from Scrappingclearly!

The last layout was alot of fun, it was a blind crop, which means we were given a bunch of instructions and the materials needed, and we had to create a layout based on this information, I just love the way it turned out, and I loved seeing everyone's interpretations of the given criteria!
Check out the acrylic paint drizzled around the outside of the page, gosh, that was scary, but fun!!!!
I used my die cutting machine to create the star embellilshments, and some chipboard bits, and a bunch of scrap papers! Always good to stash bust the old papers!

Art Journal page tutorial, by ME!!!

Hello, so as I made a promise to a few people who wanted instructions for this Art Journal page: ALWAYS BELIEVE, here I go with the how to!! I created this page for one of the Art Journal classes I teach, and it was a big hit. The creations made by my students were awesome, and i loved seeing the different takes!!!

So, as with most journal beginnings,
1 .YOU NEED TO GIVE YOUR PAGES A GOOD COAT OR 2 OF GESSO!!!

2. DIG OUT THAT STASH OF LACE YOU HAVE, ANY COLOURS, RANDOM BITS, LONG, SHORT, ANY BITS, AND ADHERE THEM IN STRIPS DOWN THE LEFT OF YOUR PAGE. (I used multi medium for an adhesive, but any collage or fabric glue will work!)( I STARTED LONG, & STAGGERED THEM, GETTING SHORTER AND SHORTER.) I STOPPED ABOUT 3/4 THE WAY BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE.
3. DO THE SAME ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE, STARTING AT THE EDGE WITH LONG BITS AND WORKING YOUR WAY BACK TO THE MIDDLE, TOP OF PAGE, WITH THE SHORTER BITS. ONCE AGAIN, STOP ABOUT 3/4 OF THE WAY ACROSS.
4. NOW YOU NEED TO HUNT THROUGH YOUR STASH OF UFO'S (unidentified objects, we all have them, in a tin, or a jar, and you have probably been collecting them for years!!! Guess what, Art Journaling allows a space for you to use them!!!!)BY UFO'S, I MEAN, METAL TRINKETS, BEADS, BROKEN JEWELLERY, CHARMS, FOUND ITEMS ETC.
5. YOU WILL ALSO NEED OTHER EMBELLISHMENTS, LIKE FLOWERS, CHIPBOARD BITS, OLD KEYS!!!
6.  NOW BECAUSE I DO WANT TO CLOSE THE PAGES OF MY BOOK, I WENT WITH FLOWERS, & A CHIPBOARD KEY, BUT YOU CAN ADD EXTRAS, AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT TOO BULKY!
7.  FORM A CLUSTER OF FLOWERS, OR EMBELLISHMENTS IN THE BOTTOM LEFT AND TOP RIGHT HAND CORNERS OF THE PAGES, AND WHEN YOU ARE HAPPY, ADHERE THESE THINGS TO THE PAGE. (Please note, I have gemstones on my flowers, but they will be adhered to the page at the very end!)
8.  ONCE YOUR GLUE IS COMPLETELY DRY, MAYBE THE NEXT DAY IF YOU DON'T HAVE A HEAT GUN, PAINT OVER YOUR ENTIRE LACE AND EMBELLISHMENT AREAS WITH MORE, WHITE GESSO. MAKE SURE YOU GET A SMALL BRUSH FOR UNDERNEATH THE FLOWERS AND CHIPBOARD BITS, TO COVER COMPLETELY IN WHITE!)
9.  WHEN COMPLETELY DRY, SPRITZ THE ENTIRE PAGE WITH A LIGHT COLOURED SPRAY INK. PREFERABLY ONE THAT HAS A SLIGHT SHEEN OR SPARKLE TO IT!(I used a perfect pearls spray mist I made up myself.)
10.  ONCE THIS IS DRY, GRAB YOUR STAZ ON OR ARCHIVAL INK AND SOME BORDER STAMPS, OR BACKGROUND STAMPS, AND STAMP RANDOMLY ALONG THE EDGES, OVER THE LACE, IN BETWEEN EMBELLISHMENTS, WHEREVER ELSE YOU FEEL IS GOOD AND DO SO ON BOTH SIDES.
11.  NEXT, PICK A LIGHT C0LOURED DYLUSIONS SPRAY, (or other spray in your stash), I USED FRESH LIME, & STARTING WITH THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER, (TURN YOUR BOOK UPSIDE DOWN, SO YOU CAN SPRAY FROM THE TOP OF THE PAGE,) SPRAY SMALL BURSTS AND LET IT RUN DOWN THE PAGE. ( JUST DID IT OVER THE LACE AREA TO ONCE AGAIN CREATE A STAGGERED LOOK!) UNSCREW THE LID OF THE INK AND USING THE STEM, FLICK SOME INK DROPS RANDOMLY OVER PAGE.

12.  WHEN THE INK IS DRY, TURN YOUR BOOK UPSIDE DOWN AGAIN AND DO THE OTHER CORNER, REPEATING PROCESS. (IF THE INK DOESN'T RUN, SPRAY SOME WATER OVER THE TOP OF IT TO THIN IT OUT, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A CRAFT SHEET OR NEWSPAPER UNDERNEATH!)
13.  YOU WILL WANT THE DYLUSIONS TO BE COMPLETELY DRY BEFORE YOU SPRAY YOUR NEXT COLOUR, SO A HEAT GUN WILL COME IN HANDY TO SPEED UP THE PROCESS!- CHOOSE A 2ND SPRAY INK COLOUR, MINE WAS BUBBLEGUM PINK, A REPEAT THE PROCESS FOR THE FIRST COLOUR, BUT USE IT SPARINGLY, JUST A FEW BURSTS, REFER TO MY PHOTO! (I have tried to keep the centre area clean with plenty of white space for your quote!)
14.  DRY 2ND COLOUR & ADD A 3RD LIGHT COLOUR, LEMON ZEST WAS MY CHOICE! (This is also a good time to add any small areas of stencilling if you wish, I used my honeycomb stencil as a stamp with Dylusions ink and did a little randomly on the page.)
15.  WHEN THE INKS ARE DRY, YOU CAN DO A BIT MORE STAMPING WITH YOUR CHOSEN BLACK INK, (I did some music notes, and Script& Newsprint stamping!) (See photo!)
16.  NOW, IT GETS EVEN MORE 3 DIMENSIONAL!!! CHOOSE YOURSELF A COUPLE OF STENCILS, SOME TEXTURE PASTE, MATT OR GEL MEDIUM, OR IF YOU HAVE NONE OF THOSE, GESSO WILL WORK. I ONCE AGAIN, FOLLOWED THE PATTERN OF THE LACE AND ADDED TEXTURE PASTE THROUGH ONE MY STENCILS, ALTERNATING DIFFERENT ONES, AND BEING CAREFUL AROUND THE EMBELLISHMENT CLUSTERS. DO THE SAME ON EACH PAGE. *Once this starts to dry, and over a few days, you will notice some magic. The colours of the Dylusions, will be soaked up by the texture paste and you will see the colour in areas of your texture paste.














17.  WHEN THE TEXTURE PASTE IS COMPLETELY DRY, PICK A DARKER SPRAY INK COLOUR, MINE WAS POLISHED JADE, AND GIVE A FEW VERY SMALL SPRAYS IN EACH CORNER, TURNING THE BOOK UPSIDE DOWN FOR THE BOTTOM LEFT, AS BEFORE! *I watered this colour down as it was quite dark! Spray over the top with the water spray.

18.  ADD ANOTHER LAYER OF TEXTURE PASTE, USING A DIFFERENT STENCIL, AND WHEN DRY, ADD A 3RD LAYER OF TEXTURE PASTE IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER DIFFERENT STENCIL.
*While you are waiting for each layer to dry, you can have a look at your stash for your quote. (I used up words from parts of rub on quotes, stamps, stickers, magazine cut outs etc. I backed all of my words onto cardstock.)
18.  CUT EACH WORD OUT LEAVING A SMALL BORDER OF CARDSTOCK AROUND EACH ONE, THEN BLEND AROUND THE EDGES WITH SOME DISTRESS INKS. * I used Shabby Shutters, Milled Lavendar & Peacock Feathers. Set aside till the wet mediums are all dry.
19.  WHEN PAGE IS COMPLETELY DRY, STAMP A DREAM CATCHER STAMP, OR STAMP OF YOUR CHOICE IN BLACK INK AT THE TOP LEFT AS SHOWN, AND AN ARROW STAMP DOWN THE BOTTOM RIGHT. I ALSO STAMPED A SMALL SCRIPT STAMP NEXT TO THE DREAM CATCHER. WHEN INK IS DRY, COLOUR THE STAMPED IMAGES WITH DISTRESS INKS & A WATER BRUSH. *I use my acrylic block to dab some ink on, then spritz with water or use a waterfilled brush.


20.  ADHERE YOUR QUOTE TO THE PAGE AS SHOWN, OR WHERE YOU WOULD LIKE IT TO GO.
21.  I ADDED A FEW MORE FLOWERS, WHICH I COLOURED WITH DISTRESS INKS AND A WATER BRUSH AS ABOVE.
22.  ADD YOUR GEMSTONES TO CENTRE OF LARGER FLOWERS, AND ICE STICKLES OR OTHER GLITTER GLUE TO THE CENTRE OF SMALLER FLOWERS. *The Dylusions magic will happen again with the glitter glue and will soak up the colours of the inks.

So there you have it, quite lengthy, but a really fun process. Can't wait to show you some more projects using these techniques. Make sure you leave me a comment if you are here, especially if you are going to have a go at this page, would love to see the end results!!!

Kraft Plus Handwriting Challenge

Well, I have always kept a journal, been a journaler, love Art Journaling, letter writing etc. But when it comes to my scrapbook layouts, I get so carried away with the photos and the design and the pretty stuff, that I never seem to save alot of room for journaling!!! So, am I ever thankful to Kraft Plus for setting this challenge this month!!! I think this has to be the most handwriting I have ever fit onto one layout, and used it as the background. Feeling very proud!
Here's the prompt from Kraft+


And here's my layout, showing a photograph of myself as a 4 yr old, with my Mum and her friend, and their enormous BEEHIVE HAIRDOS!!!

I started my background off with some texture paste & a  circle stencil, mixed with paint and it just evolved from there. I've used a little washi, which I picked up at Harvey Norman, and the majority of papers/PL cards are from Simple Stories. There's also some enamel dots from Francheville, chipboard title from Bella and Scrap Matrix and a bit of Heidi Swapp ephemera.