Art Journaling with Scrapbook Paper

Hello all,

I have a little something different to share with you today! I'm still using the French Flea Market Collection  for this project, however this time I decided to use my new art journal and mix it up with some watercolour. I didn't even use a photo on this spread, I just went with what I felt like creating!

I bought this sketchbook for £1, cut it down to traveler's notebook size, and I was ready to go! I started by just having fun with the background, using lots of water to allow the colour to move around and blend. I used colours that matched the hues in this floral paper from the Flea Market collection; I knew I wanted to use this sheet somehow in the spread. A top tip is to leave each layer of watercolour to dry before adding more, and go from the lightest colour to the darkest; I have a handheld heat tool to speed up the drying process! 

Once I was happy with the colour of the background, I tore up the scrapbook paper in a random fashion (tearing it towards me, to create that fluffy white edge!) and layered it up on the pages. There's no real rhyme or reason for this, I just thought it would look nice! That's the fun of art journaling for me, there are no rules. I used a pocket and journaling card on the right-hand side, decorated with a sticker from the 12x12 sticker sheet, just to add a few thoughts I had while creating the page. (This was quite personal, so I've flipped the card over for the photos!)

To add a bit of interest, I decided to layer up some watercolour leaves with little floral stickers from the sticker sheet, and some fabric leaves from Prima. I finished the pages with my usual additions of enamel dots, tiny word stickers and some doodly borders.

There you have it! A super simple art journaling page, which was a lot of fun to create. I really hope you enjoyed taking a look at my process.

Chloé

Blog / YouTube / Instagram

Dream On with You & Me and Pinkfresh Studio

Hi Tracee with you today, hope everyone is enjoying some nice bank holiday crafting time!

I was looking around for inspiration this month and joined in a Scraplift challenge (the page I scraplifted is at the bottom of the post) over at a US site called Paper Issues. I used one of the new Pinkfresh collections called Dream On.

You & Me

The colours for my page were inspired by the blue and oranges that are in the Puffy Sticker pack and I stuck mainly to these colours, bringing out my distress inks for a mixed media background.

For my background I used the Delight sheet from the collection. Along with the puffy stickers I used lots of bits and pieces that have been sent to me in my DT kit over the past few months, I gather them up and put them in a little box and each time I make a page I have a sift through to see if there is anything I can use.

I used some cut files again on my page and I used the Tim Holtz distress inks on them to create an ombre effect. I added some texture paste through a stencil to my background also. Instead of using lots of patterned paper behind my photo I tore strips of washi tape and layered them over one another.

This is the gorgeous page by Rachael Lowe I chose to scraplift 

Hope you have a Happy Scrappy day and for this page and all your crafting needs please pop over to the SHOP

Bo Bunny - Down By The Sea - Part 2

Hello! Lynn here, back with the second post using the lovely Bo Bunny Down By The Sea collection.  

I have used another photo from the same holiday as before, taken back in 1967 on Woolacombe beach, brings back many happy memories.

  

My base is a sheet of Lagoon Bazzill, and this time no gutting took place, as I needed the card to show through the cut circle, and to support the page. 

I used a plate to draw a circle in the centre of the 'Paradise' paper (previously cut down to 11.5" x 11.5"). I then cut this out roughly with a craft knife and heavily distressed the egdes of the paper, the hole and the circle. Then I inked all these edges with Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink. I tucked a little Burlap behind the tears in the edges of the paper.
The blossoms and burlap are from Papermaze, please ask Vanessa if you can't find them on the shop website. 

I have used more Dusty Attic Chipboard on this layout. I few pieces of chicken wire tucked under the photo and an anchor.

The chicken wire was not treated with anything, for the anchor I used a layer of Ground Espresso and another of Antiqued Bronze Distress paint. I then coated the anchor with crackle glaze. 

I ran three strands of Baker's Twine around the circle and caught it in place with glue at several points.There is an amazing collection of twine to choose from at Papermaze.

Next I embellished the layout with stickers from the Down By The Sea Combo Sticker Sheet. I did my journalling on one of the tags. I added more twine to the tag stickers.

I scattered pearls and gems around outside the circle, these were odds and ends from my stash, but again there are plenty available from the Papermaze store. 

Finally, my title was created using some American Craft Thickers - Aqua Lullaby Glitter Letter Stickers, and some old Prima letters. 

I would love to see your creations if you make a layout with this collection - have fun in the sun and creating layouts of your holidays.

Thanks for looking.
Lynn x

distress paints/stamp platform

This post includes a product review, using older paperarsty stamps by Kay Carley and distress paints

Firstly a product review the new tonic/Tim Holtz stamp platform. I purchased  this one some time ago so i have given it a good road test. The base is made of strong plastic and this is where your card or project sits, on two edges there is a ruler guide, and a lip to butt your card up to. It comes with 2 super strong magnets ( not shown in the photo) which hold the card or project in place. Hinge on the opening part of the platform is super strong and flips, one side is deep so it will take rubber stamps and the other takes clear stamps which is clearly marked. This tool really helped with my project this week because i could stamp and then re-stamp in the correct place, so my stamping was crisp and clear. 

There aren't may down falls to this tool, its very well made, a little heavier than other stamping platforms, hinges appear very robust the only down fall i see is, i would like more than two magnets as I'm a bit of a messy crafter and tend to lose things 

on to this weeks project, an altered small hessian bag, recently purchased from a large craft store. As you can see I'm no quilter and the machine sewing is poor but, i kind of like that effect. So taking a piece of canvas cut to around 8.5 inch square which i primed my with gesso. You can use white gesso but here I've used clear and allowed to dry. Backed my treated canvas with a bond-a-web sheet and used my stamp platform to stamp the Kay Carley paperartsy stamps. Stamped a couple of times to get that clear crisp image and that's where the stamp platform comes into it own. Using a masking technique i was able to create a flower cluster, with flowers from both stamp plate sets one and two.

Once stamped, on to the fun part of painting and for this I've used 4 distress paints weather wood, broken china, chipped sapphire and picket fence. If i wanted to make any of my blues lighter i added some picket fence. I die cut a circle from a post it note to create a stencil so i could paint a perfect circle on 3 of the flowers. Used some quilting squares cut up to frame the piece, a small metal tag to the bottom of the project to finish the piece. Adhered with bond-a-web and small but of hand stitching, completes the bag.

Finally a new summer holiday activity has been super popular on Facebook called Felistowe Finds. Basically its taking stones from the beach, decorating them and putting them back on the beach for someone else to find. So after a day at the beach collecting stones i finally got round to painting some, my son wasn't that interested so armed with the distress paints i came up with these. Mainly hand drawn, one uses a stamped image from stampotique. So this week I've kind had lots of painting fun. i hope everyone is having a wonderfully creative summer holidays

Love you Most........ using Golden Grove from Kaisercraft

Hello there, it's Anita here today.

I have been working with some left overs of the Golden Grove Collection, from Kaisercraft.
( For some reason in my first photo of the whole layout the page seems to have taken on an orangey hue. It is definitely more yellowy in real life....as you can see by the other photos lower down this post)

 The soft, rich gold reminds me of late summer hazy sunshine and we head out as often as possible for some evening walks locally. One evening in particular we visited Pevensey Castle and although the castle itself was actually closed, you can still walk around inside the castle walls and enjoy the sun casting it rays across the grounds.

For my layout I used various left overs from my earlier page using the same collection, Be Grateful  and added a couple of other sheets.
My page was made using 2 halves of different sheets, cut diagonally and held in place with a band of paper.

Originally I planned this to be a nice, clean sharp page.....HHhmmmmmm...... well I don't do clean very well. I thought I would just give it a little gentle dab and splat here and there with a Distress Stain .....well that led me to then giving it a little squirt of Dylusions Spray . Unfortunately the dabs I had already done were not dry and the spray merged with it and made a bit of a murky mess!!!

At his point I felt like throwing the page away, however, not one to admit defeat easily, I rummaged around in my boxes of stash and pulled out a pot each of gold and green embossing powders. 
I sprinkled some little piles of each colour onto the murky splats and also sprinkled some in different patches across the page. I then heated with a gun from underneath the page so it didn't blow the loose powder away and actually quite liked the result....Hurrah!!

I mounted the photo on some Bazzill and then added lots of fussy cut flowers and other bits and bobs from the sheets. I also printed out some butterflies onto white smooth cardstock and added a few to the page.

So.....I guess the lesson I have learnt here is even if you think you have completely messed up a page when you are part way through it....carry on, even if its in a different direction. Its surprising how they can come out sometimes.
For the lovely Golden Grove collection and many other beautiful Kaisercraft products ( not to mention a huge range of every scrapping item you could need) please pop over to the SHOP.....there is also a rather good Summer SALE on, don't leave it too long and miss out!!

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy the rest of August.....especially the sunny days.

Warmest wishes
Anita xx

August Cropping

Can you believe it's time for our monthly crop again? August and the summer holidays seem to be flying by!

This month's crop kit uses Bo Bunny's Secret Garden collection, rubber stamps and the chance to experiment with PaperArtsy Infusions.

As usual we are at Otley Village Hall from 10am until 5pm. Please drop us an email if you would like to join us for some cropping fun.

Starting a new Creative Journal.....Disney Style

Hi! It's Lisa here today and I'm sharing my new Disney Creative Journal.

We are about to start a new Disney adventure and I wanted to have something to document our stories when we return. I'm usually a 12x12 girl, but we have so many 12x12 albums in the house now. I feel like I find a new way to document that takes up less space.

I love my 12x12 scrapbooks, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I'm not always sure my every day stories are fully 12x12 worthy. 

This is why I've recently started creative journaling. It takes up less space and I find them quicker to make too.

I started off with lots of the fun Say Cheese III collection from Simple Stories on my desk.

You can view this line here. It's perfect for those of us who love Disney.

It's this book here that I'm using as my creative journal.

I've started of with a double page as a welcome to my book as you open it.

I used some of the cards from the Snap Pack. I just trimmed them down to fit and I also ran some of the matching washi tape down the sides of of the pages.

As it's the start of our trip I thought I would start way back from when we first booked our villa. That was 751 days ago as I type this now. It's so fun to look right back.

I've used a photo from our last trip almost 3 yrs ago as I thought it will be fun to compare when I add the new photos from this year.

I'm really pleased that I've started this new journal. I feel ready to go and create some new memories now. These Simple Stories Say Cheese collections make it so easy to record all these happy memories.

I have a YouTube channel here where you can see me creating this.

Thank you so much.

Have a magical day.

Lisa x  

      

One for the men...

Hi Carol with you today…. this time of the year really pushes me, creatively, with two male birthdays within 10 days! So, with my thinking cap on I thought I would make a male themed card for my post today….

Using a 6x6 card blank as my base I cut sheets of paper from the Prima Vintage Emporium 6x6 paper pad.  Using black soot distress ink and a sequin waste stencil some texture was added to the cut sheets of paper.  The base sheet was adhered flat to the card base….some string was wrapped around the smaller sheet and then fixed to the base using silicone gel.  

I made an error with the cogs, I checked the shop and thought I saw them there so went ahead and used them, unfortunately they are not, however, I have found these chipboard cogs, cogs die and Tim Holtz gadget gears which would work brilliantly - cut out using chipboard/thick board (save the backs of your paper pads for this - great recycling!!).  The cogs were painted using acrylic Paint in golds/browns/and black and dry brushing over with turquoise and orange.  Metal elements were then used to add some "manly bling" - a stamped sentiment was embossed with Gold embossing powder onto black cardstock and then adhered using silicone gel.

TFL xx

Echo Park ~Once upon a time Prince

Hello, it's Anna here today. I'm taking a break from Photoplay's Summer Bucket List collection and today I have a layout to show you using the new Echo Park collection - Once Upon a time Prince. I loved it as soon as I saw it, it's great for little boys, castle or medieval day trips and stories with peter pan elements too. There is another collection Once Upon a time Princess which is as equally charming.  Take a look at the links above to see for yourself.

I've recently returned from a holiday in France, where we visited a medieval city. I knew that this collection would be great to use.

I just had to use some of the journal cards, which have gold foil detail. I formed a grid style layout with three 3x4 photos. I mounted them along with the journal cards on the reverse of the Royal Kingdom paper.

I used strips of paper along the top and bottom of my layout. I finished by cutting out some strips of cardstock for journaling and adding element stickers (which are really lovely)!

Supplies Used:

• Royal Kingdom
• Journal Cards
• Enchanted Forest
• Bows and Arrows
• Element Stickers
• Cardstock

Thanks for looking!

I'll see you soon with some more from Summer Bucket List. Have a great weekend. 

Anna

X

Simple Project Life Pages

Hi all,

I hope you're having a wonderful Friday! I apologise for the photos in this post; I've been having some problems with my camera so had to make do with my phone.

Today, I thought I'd share some simple pocket scrapbook pages with you! This year I'm really trying to simplify my pages, and use less embellishments. My aim is to fit one whole year of scrapping into one album... but we'll see about that!

For this project, I used the French Flea Market collection, specifically the cut apart sheet and 12x12 sticker sheet. I also added in some coordinating cardstock to back my photos, tiny word stickers from my own stash and some enamel dots. That's it! I feel like the page came out beautifully, and I barely used any supplies at all.

I loved this polka dot card from the cut apart sheet; the bunting was already printed onto it. I thought it would be a perfect journalling card, so I stamped the date at the top and journalled about our week. Finally, I added some texture with tiny word stickers and enamel dots... so simple, but I think the card looks lovely. I did the same for one of the filler cards; I trimmed it from the cut apart sheet, stamped the date on the top and journalled around the edge. Perfect!

The 12x12 sticker sheet from this collection has some gorgeous floral elements, as well as banners and flags. They add the perfect little something to a photo, without going over the top (and I don't mean that in a negative way! All of my albums are usually "over embellished".)

I hope you've enjoyed seeing these pages! Have a lovely week.

Chloé

Blog / YouTube / Instagram

Girls Just Wanna have Fun

Hi, Tracee with you today to share another layout I created with the Simple Stories Sunshine & Happiness collection. I usually end up with lots of scraps from my pages and the pieces aren't usually big enough to keep and yet to large to throw away, so by using a die cut background piece I was able to utilise some of those scraps

I roughly cut around the flowers individually then adhered the scrap pieces to the back in a random style. I added enamel dots to the centre of each flower, this time I matched the dots to the flower. I have a huge stash of enamel dots, I seem to have become addicted and instead of hoarding them like I usually do, I used quite a few on my page, there is a good supply of them in the shop and you can find them here . I also added word stickers called "Little Bits" by Bella Boulevard and these also come in a great range of colours.

Instead of a alpha title I used one of the cut aparts that is found in the 6 x 6 pad, I layered it and then added a couple of staples for interest. The girls that are found throughout the collection make a great little embellishment. I hope your summer is a fun one!

For supplies for this page and all your papercrafting needs please head on over to the SHOP

  

cards/ kaisercraft lilac whispers

this post focuses one of the new kasiercraft collections that is in the shop. Its a mix of purple, light green, and cream papers. I did start with making a layout but it just did not work and there was no way of rescuing the page. So i went back to my roots and went about creating some cards. 

I made sure that they were all very different showing how versatile the patterned papers are. 

This first card below used the prima doll stamp with paper piecing. The fish tail on the mermaid is created using a scalloped edge paper punch, alongside lots of layering of paper and some glitter card stock.
The background is patterned paper and tulle layered over the top and stitched in place. Added sequins and a floral circular die cut that was among my own stash. The shop stocks lots of different prima doll stamps and all would work with these papers

Next card uses torn patterned paper layering and white lace. The focal point is a laser cut frame embellished with paper flowers and leaves, this card also has tulle and a sentiment on the bottom of the card also cut from the papers. Alongside is a small simple card of matting and layering. A die cut circle with a paper doily added and a banner strip placed on top. The sentiment is from the waste part of the bottom of the papers

These two cards from the next trio set, again use simple techniques. The first is torn patterned paper matted on to plain card stock, a sentiment from the collection and lots of punched flowers from the scraps of paper and clear sequins to add interest. The second is a background of the patterned paper, added a swirl die cut, a sentiment added and a small paper flower to the side.

The last card uses again torn paper and lace ribbon all stitched in place, a sentiment added with extra machine stitched to add texture

it was fun going back to my roots of card making. I would say invest in a good bone folder, and a set of circle dies if you have a die cutting machine, a sewing machine to add texture to card bearing in mind that paper blunts needles, use your old paper punches, and finally when looking in charity shops pick up some  old buttons or fabric as they can add interest to any card.

Bo Bunny - Down By The Sea

Hello, Lynn here today. I hope you are enjoying the summer holidays. This month I have been working with the delightful 'Down By The Sea' collection from Bo Bunny. It is ideal for August seaside holiday snaps. I chose this photo of my little sister from a holiday back in the 1960's.

For the base I used Arctic Bazzill Basics cardstock. The bubbly side of 'Tide' paper was trimmed down to about 11.5" x 11.5", then distressed and inked with Distress Ink. I gutted a small piece from this paper, from where the matting will cover the hole! This was flipped over and used as one of the mats behind the photo.

The mats in order from largest to smallest are:
The grid side of 'Lagoon'
The ombre side of 'Tide' gutted from background earlier
The scroll pattern side of 'Seahorse'.

In between the layers I added 'Down By The Sea' stickers and scraps of papers.

I took some Dusty Attic chipboard pieces (String Frame and Mini Branches #2) and treated them with some Stampendous Frantage Embossing Enamel (Aged Teal), this complements the teal in the papers and adds a little sparkle as well. A length of aqua burlap ribbon and some cream antique lace runs across the layout under the photo.

Embellishments include some glass nuggets and a sea glass seahorse from my stash together with some blossoms, sequins and dew drops all from the shop.

My title is made with American Craft Chipboard Thickers and some letter stickers from Kaisercraft's Base Coat collection.

Hope you have enjoyed this sea side themed layout and I will be back with more later in the month.

Thanks for looking
Lynn x