Introducing....

You may or may not know that karen who has worked at papermaze for a few years has moved onto pastures new...we will miss her lots! But it does mean that i get to introduce you to the newest member of the Papermaze team...Lou Collins...

She has joined the ranks of ladies that will be packing your parcels for you and also she is going to be the newest member of our design team!

Here is what she has to say about herself...

'Hi, my name is Louise and I am married with two young children, plus two older stepchildren.
I have been scrapping for over two years, and was a card maker for a few years prior to this. I have appeared live on QVC's Craft show, and was awarded 'Scrapbooker of the Year Runner-Up' by The Scrapbook Magazine in 2009. I am now part of theScrapbook Magazine's Design Team, and although I have designed for kit companies and challenge blogs previously, I am currently concentrating on my new job, working for Papermaze!

I have two styles which I often use, these are: distressed and flowery, and bold and masculine! They are total opposites so I tend to alternate between the two. I love to use white space on a page, and like to add little finds such as clothing tags, barcodes, pins, buttons and labels.

I am really honoured to be designing with Papermazes gorgeous products, and look forward to sharing my creations with you.'

here is her first layout for us..using the new MME Lost and found Collection...

 
and some close ups...


 

You can find the lost and found here , swirls and gems here and flowers here.
Keep an eye out for her pages and projects on the blog! Lou is is wonderful to have you on the team!

October Afternoon Seaside

So Summer is (depressingly!) over, the days are cold and grim and the next celebrations to look forward to are definitely autumnal. How can we cheer ourselves up and remind ourselves of the wonderful Summer days we have just spent? By breaking out the October Afternoon Seaside collection of course!

I'm a massive fan of all things October Afternoon - I have yet to see a range I don't like, and the embellishments such as the shape and label stickers are just as good as the papers. So I was thrilled to receive one of the latest ranges from Papermaze to work with last month. The papers are all themed in a very British seaside way - lots of deckchairs, shellfish and lighthouse embellishments and the papers are all called things like Beach Chair and Yellow Bikini, just for the amusing associations I'm sure! It's makes a nice difference to what can be the normal exotic type of beach-themed papers we get from the States, where I'm sure they enjoy much better weather than we do!

I decided to use my papers to scrap this year's trip to the Isle of Wight - an annual event with Ed's family which they have been doing for as long as anyone can remember, and which I have been part of for the last six years as well.
I started with the gorgeous die-cut paper as a base, and kept the rest of the colours blue toned to match with our outfits in the photo. I went for a hint of red to lift the page and avoid it become too 'samey' as well.

I created a few embellishments for the page, like this one based around the safety ring sticker which came from a gorgeous set produced by October Afternoon for this range. The crab at the top of the page is also from this set. I punched a red heart from scrap paper and pierced it with a pin, and adhered it to the sticker using foam pads. The letter stickers are by Making Memories.

My title was created using the same Making Memories stickers, combined with a range of American Crafts Thickers foam and vinyl letters. The quote is from a sticker set by 7 Gypsies.

Get that Distressed Look

Hi, it's Lisa here today.
I'm going to show you how I create that distressed look on my projects.
Today I'm making a card, but these techniques can be applied to scrapbooking and other crafts too.



For this card I have used:
A card blank
Bo Bunny - Mamma Razzi papers
Jenni Bowlin Tickets
Tim Holtz - Distressed Inks
And a border punch and scissors.



My patterened paper has already been cut to size, so now I need to distress those edges. I like to use a long edge of my scissors. You do need to be careful when doing this. You can also do this by using a distressing tool, which you can see here.
I carefully scrape along each edge of the card to create that rough look. Don't worry if it tears slightly, that's all part of the look.



This piece can be stuck onto your card blank.I then use my distressing inks to ink along the edges like this. I find by inking the edges, this really adds to the distressed/vintage feel. The inks are available in many colours.



Using my scalloped border bunch, I've punched 2 borders and layered up. The egdes of these have also been inked and a piece of thin 3mm satin ribbon threaded through.



I've turned my Jenni Bowlin Tickets into little tags by adding a hole at the top of each and adding the same ribbon. A small piece of sticky on the backs and sticking on the card, it looks like I've made a pocket.



And here's my finished distressed style card. x

Is it too early....

Is it too early for christmas cards??? Well probably...but i loved the new Christmas Line from Basic Grey that i just had to use it!

The colours and the patterns on this line are outstanding! So i grabbed some and made some cards...

 

and this one...

There are two papers that if you do buy this line you HAVE to have...this one and this one oh and this one as you can see on the first card that i made i used these to cover the background as they made a beautiful backdrop!

Soooo yummy! You can see the line here....

A little October Afternoon

You can't go wrong with a little October Afternoon! I find all their papers so versatile, and you can mix 'n' match between collections so easily, too.

I decided to go minimal with this layout, and used just a little of the more gentle patterns from the Fly A Kite collection, to keep the emphasis on the photos.

I began with cutting the papers to the sizes I wanted, and chose a neutral kraft cardstock as my background:



I then decided to round the edges to soften the look, inked them too, and added an extra strip to give the design some breadth:



Having laid it all out, it seemed the page lacked something, so I dug out a stamp roller I'd never even opened, and had a play, creating a dotty background. I used ink, but paint would work equally well, if not better, and you could use any sort of pattern stamp for this, or even bubble wrap:



I also ended up misting the top piece of patterned paper, to add a little bit of glimmer interest, which unfortunately doesn't come out well in the photos, you'll just have to imagine it!



Finally happy with the background, I laid out my photos, title and journalling, adding some bling, flowers and ribbon detail (find pins here). And here is that funny little passport face!

Pink doesn't have to be girlie!

When I had finished my first two layouts with the Echo Park A Walk in the Park papers, I had quite a few scraps left over, so I decided to put togther a third page with the leftovers. Because most of the papers I had left were in small pieces, I decided on a 6x12 layout, and kept to the same subject matter of a day out in the Peak District. I had this gorgeous shot of my husband, his brother in law and nephew on a bridge in the valley, but I decided to break with convention and use pink accents to scrap about 'the boys'.

I cut a strip of the colourful grid paper and gave it a scalloped border using decorative scissors and my Cropodile. The piece of blue paper acting as a base for the photo was a scrap left over from my paper piecing layout - I simply trimmed the edges to size. The little journalling blocks were cut from the back of one of the papers, and I layered them up over the bottom part of the photo.

I stuck with the white paper flowers and used a range of colourful brads as centres. The bird embellishment is a die cut by The Girls Paperie Paper Girl range.

The tile is made up of a combination of pink chipboard American Crafts thickers and some My Little Shoebox alphabet stickers. The little date stickers is by October Afternoon.

Even though the page uses colours that may not normally be associated with masculine subject matter, I hope the final layout proves you can break all the colour conventions and still make a successful page!

Saturday sketches...

Morning...todays saturday sketches is done for us by...Kerry Bruce...

Here is the sketch that i sent her..

and here is what she created...

and some close ups...

She used Papers from Scenic Route...butterflies are nestabilities and Martha Stewart and the brads are from basic Grey...

Thanks for joining in Kerry and sharing your gorgeous page with us!