Inkspiration for Stamping and Scrapbooking

Some stuff to show you

I've been starting to scrapbook a little more regularly again and it feels great! I've also been doing a little cardmaking as there have been a few birthdays to celebrate in the extended family. So here's what I've been up to the last couple of months:

  This page commemorates a recent trip to Goderich, and was inspired by a Karan Garber sketch which can be found in the Exile Island Week 3 section of the forum at Two Friends Scrapbooking. I love the icecream paper and brads!

 A birthday card for my brother in law. He turned 30 yesterday. Happy b-day Colin! This uses the classic SU set Lovely as a Tree and a background stamp, Weathered.

Another birthday card - this one for my brother who celebrated earlier in July. The cardstock is SU, the patterned paper is unknown. Cardstock was run through the cuttlebug. The hardware is Tim Holtz. 3 colours of fine glitter dabbed on the wings.

I'm getting dd's competitive dance photos scrapbooked. Here's the photo of just her. This page started with another Karan Garber sketch. I LOVED this line of papers and embellies by Little Yellow Bicycle called Zinnia and find the colours work really well with the costume.

This is the photo of her dance ensemble, minus one dancer who was away on photo day. This sketch comes from PageMaps. Same papers and embellishment line since these pages will be across from each other in my album.

This is another birthday card. Karan had posted a sketch challenge on a recent Friday night online crop. I used the sketch for the 12 x 12 page and scaled it down to make this 5.25 x 5.25 card. The bird is from a SU set, Christmas cardinal, but I watercoloured it in blue, hoping to make it resemble a blue jay. How did I do?

This page will become a double layout - I'm fooling around with the other page now. This page was done in with the Two Scrapbook Friends product challenge. These are fun and if your lss doesn't do something like this, you should suggest it.  Each month, the store offers a package of goodies for a nominal price - this one was $3.50 I think. You take it home and make up a page. You may add things if you need to . Then post it to the gallery at TSF. It's amazing to see all the different pages that come out of using the same ingredients.  I added the flecked background paper and the buttons - everything else came out of the kit and features Cosmo Cricket's Snorkel line. I guess August's kit will be available on Saturday. I love the challenge of using items I might not have purchased myself and I get a page done at a pretty reasonable price.

This layout was done in response to the Exile Island week 1 challenge, a sketch challenge by Karan.

I used some glitter mist on the chipboard bird and the background paper under the stamping. The title was done by inking the chipboard and then sprinkling on irridescent ice embossing powder and heat setting it.Other than the chipboard and glimmer mist, this page is entirely SU products.

This is a layout for my wedding album. It's almost done - my goal is to have it done before the end of August. It's been my 10 year anniversary project. We got married in 1998 and the photos were put into an album. When I started scrapbooking in 2003-4, I knew I wanted to scrapbook our wedding, but not until I knew more. Scrapbooking sort of went on the back burner when I started selling Stampin' Up! because the cardmaking became the focus of my business. You'll see this page doesn't have a title, and that is because it's part of a theme album. There are white rub-ons beside the photos on the left that talk about friends, so in person there's a little bit of description although you don't see it onscreen.

I think that's it for now - I'll try to post here more often, as I finish pages or cards. If you have any questions or encouragements about what you see, leave me a comment!

First Post in Eons!

 Life gets crazy sometimes, but I've finally gotten back to one of the things I love: scrapbooking.

Karan Gerber, talented member of the design team at local scrapbook store Two Scrapbook Friends, posted a sketch challenge late last week, which you can see here.

I loved the sketch and had some time to scrapbook this past weekend, so I used the sketch for one of the pages. What do think?

The papers  and ink are all retired Stampin' Up (River rock ink and cardstock and Baroque something designer paper). The large flowers are SU, dyed with River Rock reinker, and the smaller flowers are Bazzill. The large rhinestone brads are also SU. The rhinestone flourish is Prima.

The blushing bride is me, 10 years ago. I've wanted to scrapbook our wedding for awhile, and purposely didn't do that album as my first one. I knew my skills would change, as would my style, as I grew as a scrapbooker, so most of my early scrapbooking is ordinary life kinds of photos, and the special occasion have waited. It's been fun getting to this album and sometime I'll post more of the layouts I've done as I work to complete it. It's almost done now.

Scrapped Wall Art

Look at what I made!

This was a class at Scrapfest in nearby Kitchener, and I finished it up this week by finally putting my photo in it.

This is an artist's canvas frame that's been painted and inked.

The paper is new 12 x 12 printed watercolour paper(non SU!, but we can hope something like this is in the works...). I watercoloured the pre-printed images using my Aquapainter. You could using SU!'s watercolour crayons, pencil crayons or markers to do the watercolouring, but since the instructor - the fabulous  (and Canadian!) Trisha Ladouceur had watercolour paints by Tsuskinko, I think, there and I hadn't tried them before, I used those. We watercoloured the frame and cut the centre out. On a second different watercolour paper, we watercoloured the flower and word and cut those out. They are placed on the square frame with lots of Stampin' Dimensionals. Lots and lots of primas adorn this frame  - Trisha is a PrimaDonna (code for on the Prima design team) afterall! Some Crystal Effects offers some clear sparkle too.

My wedding was a late August date and our colour was a grape-y plum. But I wanted my piece of art to go in my stampin' area which is in these yellow, orange, green-y shades (striped curtains set the tone), so I changed the photo to sepia to better suit the colour scheme. I love this piece and I love have a photo of us in my workspace!

I've got more not quite done projects, so I'll be back soon, I hope, with more to show you (but I also have lots of writing to do for my day job, so stampin' time is a rare commodity these days)  ... Stay tuned!

Happy stampin' and blessings - Ann

Let me know what you think - I love hearing from you!

More Scrapbooking Fun & Blog Candy

It's been a busy week between work, March break, fun time, etc. One of the highlights has been having my mom up for a visit - she left this morning. When mom comes, we always try to make time to make cards or scrapbook and this time we scrapbooked - mom has pictures from her recent trip to the Dominican and I am finally starting my wedding album. I've been scrapbooking since October 2003, so it's about time, right? I didn't want the first album I did to be the wedding album because I suspected there would be a learning curve with this hobby, as with any, and I was right. I love my first scrapbook pages from 2004, but trends & products have changed a lot since then, as well as my abilities. Of course, trends & products will continue to change, and swiftly, so sooner or later, I just had to jump in and start it. This week, I removed the photos from the photo album they were in so that I'm ready to scrapbook them any chance I get. Brian and I celebrate our 10th anniversary this summer, so I hope to complete the album by the end of August. I've chosen to scrapbook not just the wedding day itself, but all the other stuff that went into it - the shower, jack n jill, preparation, honeymoon etc. so that all of it is in one place. I am using the Tye the Knot scrappin' kit from the current catty, Baroque dsp from the previous catty and current cardstocks and embellishments because those green and brown colours work with our outdoor wedding theme. The scrapbook pages posted today are casual in flavour as they chronicle tings other than the big day itself, but by using similar colours throughout the entire album, these pages should flow with the whole book when it is completed.

For this page, I played with the new chocolate polytwill again -  I really like the smooth feel of it. These photos were taken at the Bridesgate Inn in Bancroft, Ontario - a beautiful spa and B & B that Brian and I enjoyed a few quiet days at after our international visitors left. There was a verandah off our room overlooking the lake. The gardens were beautiful and the food was divine. And of course, I was there with my wonderful husband. We've only been back once since then - I wonder if it's still as nice as I remember?

There were a few challenges to scrapbooking this page. One, the photos are pre-digital and were taken indoors under flourescent tube lighting, creating a very green cast to our skin tones. Not much I could do about that... Also, I wanted to include the hand made tickets our maid of honour and best man made, so I had to find a way to incorporate it, even though the colour didn't suit the page - so I matted it with the colours I'm using for the album. And if it still doesn't work entirely, well, "it's something blue" . Actually my something blue was my toenail polish, but very few people actually saw that... except when I was running the bases. Won't that be a fun page to scrapbook!

There were a lot of things that made our wedding day specialand unique to us, like palying baseball in my wedding dress. I'll share some more of those things as I create and upload more pages from this album. Meantime, it's been a VERY long time since I've done a blog candy so we're probably overdue... I've got some stampin' & scrappin' goodies to share. Once I've gathered it one place and gotten a photo of it, I'll show you. Meantime, though, you can enter to win by posting in the comments below a quick story (just a sentence or two) about something that made your wedding unique (or a wedding you went to if you aren't married). I'll select the winner by doing a draw on Wednesday, March 19th at 5 pm EST. Have fun recollecting that very special day, hug the ones you love, and good luck in the draw!

Happy stampin' and blessings,

Ann

Layout of the Month Kits Now Available

My newsletter recipients know about my recent introduction of the Layout of the Month kit, but I maybe I should share it here too, for those of you who haven't signed up for my monthly newsletter yet.

Do you love to scrapbook but find planning the layout to be the hardest or most time-consuming part? Perhaps you don't have a separate area for your hobby and it's not easy to get everything out and then get it all put away again before dinner. Or maybe you just love the convenience of kits, especially when you are heading out to crop - kits make it easy to visit and scrapbook at the same time.

If you said yes to any of these, then my Layout of the Month kit is for you! The Layout of the Month is a two-page kit where I've done the work of planning for you! Your kit will include everything you need to make the layout:

• Complete instructions with photographs
• Cardstock
• Pre-cut designer series paper
• Pre-cut photo mats
• Pre-stamped pieces
• Embellishments/accents

All you'll need is a trimmer, scissors, adhesive, a marker for journalling and your photos. This month's layout, entitled Enjoy, is designed for the introductory level scrapbooker, although a more experienced scrapbooker will appreciate the chance to get a fun layout done quickly. The cheery, gender-neutral colours of the Cutie Pie paper will work for masculine or feminine images. Choose photos that will work with an Enjoy theme - can be a trip somewhere, can be a favourite activity/hobby, can be photos of you, your kids/grandkids, pets, family gathering or outing, favourite meal, etc. To participate in Layout of the Month, kits must be ordered by March 15th and they will ship prior to the end of the month. You can use Paypal or email me to order your kit(s). The cost of the kit is $15 to pick it up at my home studio, or $22 to receive it in your mailbox. Watch for a new kit each month - my newsletter recipients will be the first to see it, and I'll post it here later.

Purchase Layout of the Month Kit $15 (to pick up)

Purchase Layout of the Month Kit $22   (to be mailed)

Busy Afternoon!

Our family was blessed to take a  three week long holiday to Europe four summers ago.

It was an incredible trip. the trip of a lifetime, that included jaunts through France, Belgium, Holland, England and Spain.

In the past, I have sporadically posted some of my layouts from this trip. Today I took the time to photograph every page from the album, edit them, and upload them into an album on the blog. When you open the album, you can click on each thumbnail to see a bigger version on your screen and then click next to see the rest of the pages in order.

I love this page for a lot of reasons. It started out with a patterned paper that is non-SU because I had it from something and wanted to use it up. I had a few pieces from an old SU! Simply Scrappin' Kit - Vintage that I was able to incorporate. In addition to the old stuff, I used some new(er) stuff with the chipboard, and the Baroque Motifs stamp set. LOTS of ink on this page to enhance the feel. I love the look on Sarah's face as she listens to the monologue accompanying our double decker bus trip. She loved those headphones! Boy she sure has grown up a lot in four years!

To see the rest of the album, click on the Trip to Europe album to the left. And be watching for upcoming scrapbooking classes. I've been dreaming about them for a week now, so I guess I am supposed to be planning some! I look forward to sharing more of my love of scrapbooking with you in the near future!

Blessings and happy stampin'! - Ann

Scrapbooking Gifts

Happy New Year! I hope you are blessed with health, happiness, prosperity and love this year!

Yesterday you saw the scarves that our female family and friends received for Christmas. The challenge is making nice hand-made gifts for men, I find, and in our family, there are quite a few men to make gifts for! This year, it was a framed scrapbook page. Here they are:

 

Do you notice a common element? I used the same template for all 6. This simplified the process for me a bit. They all use different paper, photos and embellishments, but the placement of the paper is the same. Sometimes, I rotated the layout to suit the photos better.

If you have any questions or comments about the materials used, don't hesitate to ask! Leave me a comment and I'll be happy to get back to you.

Happy stampin', and blessings - Ann

Woo Hoo I Got Some Time to Scrapbook

My friend Christa and I put it on the calendar and made time to scrapbook this past weekend. I got two layouts of the travel album done - I am so happy! Now there's just one page left, I think...

Here are the layouts I completed on the weekend:

  Wow - sorry about the glare on some of those photos... I'll try again on a sunnier day when I don't need the lights on - good luck to me on that, this is November in Ontario ba ha ha ha!

Anyway, I chose Real Red to draw the red out of the uniforms of the Horse Guards and the Beefeater.

The Cerise designer paper looks fab with it, and I tied in some Basic Black and Brushed Gold cardstock to enhance the regal setting of the photos.

The title: The "B" is a chipboard silhouette from the On Board Letters. I dragged it through the Real Red Craft ink and once it dried, stamped it with the Baroque Motifs medallion stamp in black. I adhered a small scrap of Cerise under the silhouette, and tied some black grosgrain and gold cord on one side. The "P" is black cardstock onto which I traced a chipboard p from the same packet of On Board Letters. There are 3 different fonts of chipboard letters in that package, offering tons of options. The rest of the lettering I did by hand. I stamped the Baroque Motifs filigree in gold ink.

Here's the second layout:

These photos feature our visit to the London Eye, so I really wanted to play on the circle shape. I used the Uptown designer paper and that dictated the colours I used. The layout starts with So Saffron paper and the Uptown paper. The other colours are Almost Amethyst, Wild Wasabi and Basic Gray. The circles are cut out using the coluzzle. The hollow circles are stamped with the doodled circle stamp in the So Much set. For the title, I traced the letters from the chipboard set onto designer paper and cut them out.

There are also a few jumbo eyelets to continue the circular theme, as well as some smaller circles created with 1 1/4 and 1 3/8 circle punches. 

It felt so great to get a few more pages of this album done!

Let me know what you think of them by leaving me a comment. Thanks!

Happy stampin' - Ann