Hi hi!
Today I’m taking part in what should have been a lovely weekend away at a retreat with the Go Go team but of course, now has to be single file in the comfort of your own home. We’ve all got “tables” which have been converted into rooms on Messenger (like Zoom), and our kits & instructions were sent out well in advance and the lovely teachers are on hand throughout the weekend if we need them. Still very lovely and much needed, even if things are a bit different. One thing that is the same though is the plethora of inspiration in the form of pre-retreat challenges.
There was a really pretty moodboard inspiration which is what I started with – don’t ask me how I ended up here! There was a garden gate and some rain clouds and lots of blues and greens in it too, honestly! With the normal monthly cyber crop last week, we could double up the challenges and this one was actually a scrap lift set by Bramble Fox. I made a bit of a cock up and totally forgot to post it in time for the Bramble Fox draw!
You can see what the page is about. Rain and floods. It looks like there is a burst pipe but when we get lots of intense rain that’s just what happens to that particular drain that happens to be outside our house. Yay… Eventually the water gets so high that it goes over the bump in the pavement and cascades down our drive (we live on a slope) and floods our garage. Yay… Always fun when the kids are trying to get to school – it had gone down a lot at this point!
The original layout was a grid of 8 (I think) small square photos with the larger one off to the side so I took the opportunity to cut down some larger photos instead. This could actually work well when you have landscape and portrait images that you want to use on the same page.
And yes, the title is supposed to be higgledy piggledy – I hope it’s obvious and that it doesn’t just look like I’ve been at the cooking sherry…
I’m still loving the Cocoa Vanilla Boys Rule collection and I finally managed to use one of the frames that I struggle with (is it just me?). I popped it up onto foam and this gave me a good spot to sneak the notepad style Perspextive. I’ve actually kept the top white film layer on this piece to keep it slightly matt in finish which I think works better in a slightly grungy layout with the more distressed look to the papers. Is that controversial?
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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A flying visit for What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday from me this week, all for good crafty reasons. You can see the fall out from part of this in my desk photo this week.
Hmmm… messy but oh so pretty! I’m creating a mini book about the work we did on our ‘victory garden’ last year. I bought Paige Evans Bloom Street when it came out last year specifically for this project. I got 10 papers I think, plus the ephemera, the flowers, the cardstock stickers and the sticker book. When I break, I break hard! You can see the 2 sets of flowers in my bon bon dish as well as the Bramble Fox embellishments that went so perfectly with it. There are flowers, butterflies, wellies, watering cans and umbrellas. It makes me smile just to look through them! I happy to be watching a Paige Evans video too but there’s not connection, just serendipity!
In amongst this I’m also getting ready for a cyber retreat with Go Go Getaway this week – squeeee!!!
Obviously I’d prefer to be there on site but I’m still excited about it. I opened my box to take out the paperwork but aside from snapping this pic I haven’t looked any further. Obviously I’ve seen the classes so I know the kit is beautiful and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in but I need to finish the book first and I’m hoping I might have time for some pre-retreat challenges too. Then I’ll clear the decks and indulge in some paper stroking and sniffing. Or is that just me? I have snacks, alcohol free wine, the rest of the family are cooking and keeping house and I shall scrap, chat and scrap some more. Huzzah!
Last week’s Throwback Thursday. This is one of only 2 layouts from my YMCA weekend several years ago. I was trying a new style with adding some stamping to my layouts. I’m not going to continue with it!
For those “at” Shaz’s funeral Friday, wasn’t the music amazing? I thought Doug and the family did a great job and the setting was lovely. The thing that stuck with me was the sentence “I hope you have as much joy in the next life as you brought to others in this” (I hope I’ve got that right!) A perfect send off. Blessings to you Shaz x
So that’s me for this week. If you’d like to join in with our weekly desk hop, everyone is welcome whatever your craft, you can find all the details at Julia’s blog, The Stamping Ground.
As always, stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
You know I love a challenge and you also know how much I’ve enjoyed joining in with the monthly Go Go cyber crops on Facebook. This week has been bookended by Go Go events with a total of, I think, 15 challenges altogether!
Last Saturday there was the normal monthly cyber crop with an extra challenge from Bramble Fox, and this coming weekend is a cyber retreat! Of course it would be awesome to be there in person and it’s the second one I’ve personally missed out on thanks to Covid but we’ve been sent out lovely kits and instructions and they’ve set some awesome challenges so it’s all good. This is the first of the challenges I’ve managed to do and it was a colour palette with quite pastel-ish Spring colours.
I had my bag of Pebbles Girl Squad out already and the two pieces with the faces on were left over from another similar layout so it came together quite quickly. The colours went really well with my photos of Miss B at her last sport’s day (although we didn’t know it would be the last one at the time!) I hadn’t really had the opportunity to use the paper with the faces on as it’s a bit niche for me but I it made me think of cheering crods at sports day. Hmmm…. crowds… remember those?!
To bring out the colours in the challenge more, I backed the photos onto yellow and popped them up on foam before added them both to a multi coloured stripe. The collection is full of fun phrases that perfectly fitted the theme here so I took the opportunity to use some appropriate die-cuts, stickers and cut aparts.
I needed some more “stuff” so I raided my tiny pieces box and pulled out some more flowers and a few small puffy stickers to finish it off. Every time I dip into this box it feels good! All that colour sorting was worth it. Just don’t mentioned the time I dropped it, fully sorted, onto a hardwood floor…
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE a Christmas film, the cheesier the better. The snow, the laughter, the happiness, the pretty villages, the excitement – it’s all wonderful escapism and a true sign for me of Christmas coming.
For the last few years I’ve been keeping a list of the films, which I usually have on in the background while doing other things. When Paige Evans released this Charlie Brown cut file last December I knew it would be perfect to use to capture this story instead of a photo. Yes I said that. INSTEAD of a photo. This is a photo-less page. There are no photos on this layout. A scrapbook page… with no photos… Yikes!
I normally cut everything on white but thanks to a lady in the Paige Evans Facebook group I cut it in black because it’s a cartoon & contrasts better with the snow and with Snoopy.
With a cut file that has lots of elements, it’s a good idea to think about which order you are backfilling the pieces in. Doing the things in the foreground first (plus the snow on the roof) meant that I could use one big piece to do the kennel rather than trying to work around the tiny lights etc. Designs like this are a great way to use up scraps!
I was so happy with how he came out! For most of the film that this scene is taken from (A Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965!!) Charlie wears a red coat but I wanted to use his back up coat in green to contrast with the red of the kennel.
My initial intention was to print a list to go down the side of the page but his poor little Christmas tree got in the way so I had to snip the film titles up, lay them on double sided sticky tape, snip them again, lay them on patterned paper (to match the border and the lonely bauble) and snip again. This made my left eye twitch… but it meant I could scatter them around the layout without interfering with the tree. If I had planned it earlier I would have worked out that there wasn’t enough room and cut Charlie a bit smaller…
I definitely watched more than these named films last year but my record is 47 the Christmas I had my leg in plaster. Nobody else in the house shares my appreciation of a Hallmark film so they really are my guilty pleasure!
I popped the cut file and the title onto foam and added a Bramble Fox clapper board embellishment to finish off.
No photos, and no enamel dots. Who even am I?! Yes, it looks a bit like a school wall display but I really enjoyed the non-photo challenge and it definitely tells the story in my album, which is what it’s all about.
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
I recently did a couple of pocket pages for my sadly neglected Lanzarote albums and it prompted me to do a quick 12×12 page to get a few more photos into their rightful place.
One of the quickest ways for me to scrap is to create a strip of photos, especially if I have a lot of 6×4 photos to use. You can obviously change the configuration to do 2 portraits down the page or 3 landscapes down the page or 2 landscapes across the page, but the proportions are all similar. You have a strip of photos and then a strip either side where you can add your papers and embellishments.
I really wanted to use the floral paper but I couldn’t mount the photos onto white because the Simple Stories papers are not quite as white as cardstock and it jars my eyes. Instead I found a narrow strip of yellow in the stash I’ve been using for these albums and cut it in half to go either side of the photos for some contrast. I also wanted to use a piece of the soda pops paper because we were at a vin-yard and it was about as close as I was going to get to the theme!
There’s not a lot of room to play with when you fill a whole strip with photos so it cuts down a lot of the decision making and faffing. I did still faff, not going to lie, but less than normal anyway. I added my title and a couple of embellishments and the page was done. The little fan was the perfect die cut for this story where we finally found out why we could see crescents of stones on all the hills as we drove around – wind breaks! Lanzarote is a windy island so the curved walls help protect the grape vines. There you go – every day is a school day.
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
I’ve been really brave this week. No, I haven’t had my Covid jab or been to the dentist, I just got my art supplies out! I’ve been wanting to experiment with mixed media a lot more recently so I rolled out my art-cart and got ready to make a lot of mess! This is where I ended up with one of the layouts.
My intention was to use Dylusions paints to match with the colours on the black floral piece from Pebbles Girl Squad – I’ve got loads of scraps of this to use up! I used a dry brushing technique and although I love how they turned out, they were just too bold for my liking – I like bright colours but I was not brave enough (yet) to work with those backgrounds. I put them to one side and got my Distress Inks out instead.
I taped down my Bazzil Marshmallow cardstock to help it stay flat and then swatched my different inks on an off cut of the same cardstock to make sure the colours stayed as I planned. Then I swiped the inks on acetate and used a water brush to mix and apply them to the cardstock in a patchwork fashion. When it was dry I added a subtle script stencil with texture paste because I really wanted the colours to sing.
I knew I was using the black floral so added the black border (I have loads of them saved from previous die cuts) to frame the design. And also because I had to trim the cardstock where I’d lost the top layer pulling the tape off too quickly… I never learn…
I layered my photo onto several patterned papers including the orangey colour that I matches with the paint to pull out the red in the photo.
Once I’d built up my central area I started to add the flowers to the sort of upside down shelf. These were all bits left over from die-cuts that hadn’t cut through properly and I love the way they pop against the coloured background without having to back fill them! I created my 3 clusters using a face die cut next to the journalling, the bike in the bottom right and the little Bramble Fox lock in the top left. My girl had her birthday suddenly cancelled last year due to the lockdown so it was the perfect embellishment for this layout about her friend cycling past to drop off a card and present.
Finally I added a few gems to my clusters the Bramble Fox “This matters” title. I love how it turned out and I’m really glad that I embraced getting messy. Definitely something I want to do more of. How about you?
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
Good morning good yawning. Is it Friday yet? This week seems very long indeed. But if it was Friday I would have missed What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday and that’s no good. If you want to join the crafty blog hop, please head over and see Julia.
This is my desk as of Tuesday afternoon / evening. I’m having to close my blind earlier and earlier in the day as the sun streams in which is a lovely sign indeed although it does rather spoil my view!
We have, for your delectation, a pile of NHS paperwork for my dad (old people are very time consuming…) and a faceless Charlie Brown cut file ready to begin back filling. I found the red woodgrain in my stash that I thought would be perfect for Snoopy’s house. I’m going to create a list of all the Christmas films I watched last year – I think it was 47 – for my next article with The Artistry, about scrapbooking with no photos. It was my idea and one I didn’t think through before offering it up. Now my left eye is twitching and my hand keeps hovering over my pile of pictures…
My article this week was about using mixed media. I started with a floral paper to match the colours with and ended up with this grungy masculine layout instead!
I shared my belly cast last week for the ‘off the page’ article I did and this little bird house was part of that too. I’ve never paper engineered anything before and even though I like this little fellow (the birdy, not my husband) (well I mean do rather like him too of course) but I think I’ll stick to on-the-page projects in future. I should have 6 articles published in the end here.
Last week’s Throwback Thursday – probably the first time I used a cut file I think. It’s very clean and simple for me! If it were now I would move the photo and title down to meet the stars but other than that, it’s different but I like it.
Hopefully there’s something among this lot to tickle your fancy.
I’ve shown you mine now you show me yours 😉
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
It may only be a once a week thing but right now I consider it a win that I have stuck to something for several weeks. There is so much going on at Pretty Towers, even aside from the obvious current world issues, but I consider my weekly What’s on Your Workdesk snoop’ n’ chat part of a vital self care routine. You can link up with Julia, Queen of the Desks, over at The Stamping Ground.
Let’s start with the very messy desk, which is making my left eye twitch. Fit Bit charging, Traveller’s Notebook diary shouting “can you actually look at me, woman!”, and a postage bag at the back. I had returned some items to a well known shop because they were really poor quality, they had then returned one of them back to me. Apparently it wasn’t their garment so they were not going to refund it. Except that they already HAD, and it WAS theirs. However when I opened it fully, it turned out to be a cardigan from a different well known store that I had had for several years but had… erm… misplaced around the same time that I returned the other items… Ahem…
The pretty bits underneath and behind the lap top are the start of another article about scrapbooking. On the screen, precariously balanced on top of several pens and a pair of scissors, is the article I’ve just submitted, which was all about “off-the-page” projects. This is the one you’ve seen me working on for several weeks with the rolled flowers and other minor disasters etc.
The new glue gun is a bit dribbly but at least it takes the right sized sticks. The leaf die that I was missing is indeed in another bag at a friend’s house. We were on a weekend away this time last year and thought perhaps some things might have to close (ha!) so we took what we each might need ‘for a couple of months’ (hindsight, eh?!) from the tools that we all bring to our crops for everyone to use. Mystery solved. The replacement leaf dies were refunded – I tried everything – shims on the outside, inside, different thicknesses of paper etc. Sometimes you just need to know when to quit. So I cut some sprigs on my Silhouette instead. A couple of people noticed the lack of handle on my Cuttlebug – yes it has been MIA for years. It still works but you just need to be aware of the sudden spin once the die has cut… ask me how I know…
Last week’s Throwback Thursday was another Echo Park travel page, this time from the Devil’s Marbles in Australia. MUCH hotter than the bottom of the volcano from last week (which was inactive but not officially dormant).
And then there is this…
The lovely Twiglet Jo responded in double quick time with my plea for one of her amazing twiddle mitts for Miss B. It arrived at the end of her first day back at school, complete with a poem that made me cry, and she absolutely loves it. I told Jo that she likes wildlife and lo and behold, all these amazing creatures appeared, including the snow leopard which is Miss B’s favourite animal. It is the perfect thing for someone who struggles with change and focus, and just needs to take a moment and breathe. I’ve told her that if she can’t find her ‘grounding mitt’, she might like to look on my desk to see if I might have borrowed it…
Got something in my eye now… see you all soon for a cuppa x
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