As promised....

.....the flower tutorial:

Some of the photos are blurred-sorry about that but I think you will get the idea!!

You need scissors, glue, a cardboard circle 1"-1.5" in diameter, and crepe paper strip around 1" wide.

 Apply glue to the cardboard circle. Cut the crepe paper into roughly heart shaped petals.

Scrunch up the bottom of the petals and start adding them around the outside of the circle.

Continue adding petals into the centre of the circle.

Cup the flower in your hand and scrunch the petals towards the centre. You can be quite rough at this stage.

Lightly spritz the flower with water, or if you want to change the colour, then use glimmer mist, or ink.   Allow it to dry scrunched up -or use a heat gun.

Lightly tease the petals out a little and add a centre-button, gems, brad-whatever you fancy.

If you want you can add some glitter glue for some sparkle too.

And that's it. Easy, quick, and very pretty!!

A layout..

Well, after receiving that box of stash, the least I could do to make a layout. And I did!!
Here it is:

So first I used the doilies as masks, to make the white space under the photo. The mist is a mixture of glimmer mists and mica mists, as I didn't have the right colour. I also used a butterfly mask. I used two shades of blue glimmer mists with the butterfly mask. I saved the doily mask and used it under the photos.The fabric flower was beige so I died it with food colouring and squirted it with glimmer mist to better suit the colour palette.

This pink flower is a handmade one. It's really pretty and if you pop back later in the week I'll show you how I made it!

My daughter took one look at this layout and told me she didn't like it, as it was too pink and I should have used more blue!

Well, what does she know?

Yummy Stash

It's a long time since I came home to find a box of stash waiting for me. But that's exactly what happened today-and what a great box of stash it was too....

....cardstock, including this lovely pink spotty one....

 Crate paper...

 Echo Park

 Girl's Paperie, Prima, K&Co and more...

 and  lovely handmade card that says

'I hope this gives you a lift'

Well it sure did!! A gorgeous box of stash-and all that for only £20!!! It's one of Handmade Hannah's special grab boxes, available only if you join Hannah's facebook group.

Just have to get scrapping now!!

Mimi's Bakehouse

Emily and I discovered Mimi's Bakehouse in Leith last Sunday. We were going to have a drink in Cafe Truva, which we love, but then I spotted a very pretty cafe almost next door, and it was just about full, so I figured we should investigate. Wow, cake paradise-big gateaux, dainty tray bakes and pretty cupcakes. Emily had a huge slice of Chocolate Maltezers cake, and I had....a scone with jam and clotted cream. Emily thought I was really boring- all those yummy cakes to choose from and I went for a scone. The thing is, I LOVE scones and Mimi's didn't disappoint, a soft melt in the mouth fruit scone with a touch of cinnamon with rasberry jam and a generous serving of clotted cream. Delicious!!!

I took some photos-and Emily pulled faces for the camera, and today I made a layout  to remember our introduction to Mimi's. I have a feeling we'll be back!!

So here's my layout:

There's mica mists, Hambly, Kaisercrafts, Pink Paislee, Dream Street, and Echo Park- a real mixture.

More Distressing...

Following on from my last post I thought I would show another layout using distressing techniques. I wanted to make a modern, fun and colourful layout to show that distressing does not need to be confined to heritage, romantic or nostalgic layouts.

So let's look at the techniques I've used:

• Freehand tearing of the red and brown background papers
• Scratching with a pokey tool and tearing around the scratch lines on the shaped yellow paper and the flowers. This way allows greater control over tearing the right shapes.
• Scrunching and smoothing-the brown paper and the flowers.
• Rough machine stitching-leave threads hanging too.
• Sanding around the heart and the photos.
• Rough pleating of the narrow paper 'ribbons'
• Painting the edges of the paper. Edges are normally inked, but I used red acrylic paint instead to add a touch of brightness.

I really like the lollipop flowers on this layout. They remind me of the ruffles of the flamenco dresses we saw while we were in Barcelona, and so they are an appropriate embellishment for this page I think.

What I think is interesting is that this layout, and the one in the previous post, both use distressing techniques AND the same range of Basic Grey papers, and yet they have totally different moods.

Distressing..

I've been very busy this week, making Christmas cards-yes you heard right...Christmas cards!! I got a magazine commission to make 6 Christmas cards. It came as a total surprise, because I'm not really a card maker! But I've been cutting and pasting, and tearing and inking, and I'm nearly there. But since I can't show the cards I though I'd post a layout that was in The Scrapbook Magazine recently for a feature on distressing techniques I wrote.

Click on the photo for a closer view.

This has tearing and sanding, inking and curling, crackling and misting. The papers are Basic Grey.

I have two main ways of distressing edges I thought I would share.

The first is tearing the paper against a scalloped edge ruler. This gives me control over my tearing and gives a nice edge, which you can see on the rose paper under the photo.

The second technique I use is to get a pokey tool-paper piercer thingy- and roughly score and gouge along the edge of the paper, then tear along the scratch /score line I made. I then get a sanding block-just one from the DIY store, (not an expensive craft one), and rough up the edge even more. That's the method I used around the edge of the layout.

And the photo is of my two when they were young and sweet!!

Miss those days!!

Anatomy of a layout

Here's a new layout I made. I really love this layout, so I thought I would tell you how I made it , and why I think it works. The colour is not all that accurate here-it's Kraft cardstock, but looks a little grey on my screen. First I used  Tim Holtz mask and graphite glimmer mist for the scroll. I then added the Kaisercrafts rub ons to the right hand side of the page. After that came the patterned paper and the die cut fleur-de-lis (spellbinders). The photo was adhered to the diamond patterned paper before adhering, and  finally the journalling spot, and the title were adhered. Oh, and the red gems on the rub ons were added!

So why does this layout work?

• limited colour palette-neutrals plus red.
• the colour palette picks up the colours in the photo
• the patterns of the paper and other elements pick up the patterns in the photo-the lines of Emily's shirt echoed in the paper, and the scrolls and ornamentation of the Trevi Tountain echoed in the masking and the rub obs.
• the layout is well balanced: the block of patterned paper balances the photo block,  the journalling spot balances the circle of the rub on, and the quite dominant black of the rub ons is balanced by the white space of the layout.
• the photo is clearly the focal point-but is slightly off set for added interest.
• the photo is grounded on the die cut trim
• matting and inking edged defines the various elements and provides cohesion between the elements.
• the gems add interest and a bit of sparkle.

I hope that little bit of disection was helpful-let me know if was- and I could do more in the future!

Flower Tutorial

I  love the quilled flower that I made for the card in the last post so I though I'd make a tutorial showing how I made it.
Click on the images for a larger view.

1. Take your paper and score at 1cm intervals.

2. Cut you paper into strips between the score lines.

3. Join some strips together with glue. I made mine about 1 metre long.

4. Fold the strips along the score lines. Fine a thin implement-like a pokey tool, or a skewer.

5. Start to wind the strip around the tool. Try to keep it quite tight.

6. Glue the end into place and hold it tight until it has stuck firmly.

7. Cut more paper strips about 1.5 cm wide and glue together to form one long strip-but don't fold it this time. Cut 1cm into the strip, taking care not to cut through the strip-if you do, don't worry, just glue the two pieces back together. You will now have a long fringed strip.

8. Glue the fringed strip to the circle centre, and start to roll again. Glue the end when you've finished rolling.

9. Take your pokey tool and tease out and bend the fringe backwards to form the petals. 

This flower is a great way of using up your patterned paper strips.

Add a centre-buttons, brad, gems-whatever takes your fancy.

I love them!!

What do you think?

By the way, I'll be doing more tutorials in the future so you might want to become a follower if you found this helpful.

Making cards

I've made a few cards recently, which I'll post over the next couple of days, but for today I want to show the card I made following a challenge prompt over at Scrapping Outback. The challenge was a 'lucky dip' type challenge, and  I had to use eyelets and rolled paper. That was quite a challenge as I haven't used eyelets in years. and was sure about the rolled paper either. So I did a quick google for rolled paper, and that led me to quilling. Now I'm not normally a quilling kind of girl-it always looks quite old fashioned-and not in a vintage way!!
But then I came across this. and knew I wanted to incorporate one of these flowers on my project. So having made a flower the card fell into place really quickly, and I LOVE the end result. Love the white on white.

What do you think? (Click for a better view)