Taking A New Class...

Making male cards (or indeed buying presents for males!) is sooo hard. I'm just off to post the birthday card below after I have written this blog post. In this case I knew what to do straight away. He likes to play the guitar and I'd seen the perfect idea for a card in an issue of "Card Creations". My version ended up like this:

I was pretty pleased with the result as everything is freehanded. And even better - it was made using cardstock scraps only! That is such a great feeling :) And you know what? My old chalk palettes even came out of the cupboard for this project. Yay LOL!

...and talking about projects. As if I haven't got enough already, I signed up for a new class. I must have taken about 10 classes by Shimelle and when she announced last week that the sign-up would open on Saturday for a new class, I of course couldn't resist signing up for this one too. :) I think on my walk to the post office I need to figure out when on earth I will have time to do it LOL!

Keep Practising...

It feels rather unreal for me to think that about 2 months ago I'd never digi scrapped. It feels like I have been doing it longer than that. I think with taking the courses...well, it's made it a bit more "intense" and I have practised more than I probably would have done otherwise. You know, made more of an "effort" to practise...rather than just letting it take it's own time.

[Supplies: 'Dear Diary' by Robin Carlton, Melissa Bennett & MandaBean, 'Skippy Doo Da' by Lauren Grier & Julie Billingsley, 'A Springy Kind Of Fling' by Lauren Grier & Julie Billingsley,
'Foamy Stampy Alpha' by Traci Reed, Template by Aggie Aviso ...all from SSD]

I find both with paper and digital scrapping it's easy to find a "style" that is very "you" and you tend to stick to it (with a few variations of course). So one thing which I've discovered while digital scrapping is templates. It's a nice thing to use every now and then. I think it helps you try new ideas, new placements and just fuels your creativity :)

Working Through The Challenges...

Every Wednesday we get a challenge in the digital scrapping class...it's to help us practise what we have just learnt and to come up with our own ideas for using the techniques.

This is a layout done using the exclusive (to the digi class) "Carnival" kit from SSD. We also had a list of things to do/use/try and had to pick a minimum of two of them. I was intending to pick two but I think I ended up using about 4 things from the list. I really enjoyed this challenge and can't wait for the one next week :)

Alton Towers...

I have a little confession to make. I have never been to Alton Towers. Yes, it's true - never been. People haven't quite believed me when I have said that in the past - never ever been. Until Wednesday that is. The place surprised me a bit. It was like a normal funfair (in terms of the amount of rides etc) but very spread out. A huge place with lots of big areas looking more like forests/parks that you had to walk through to get to the next lot of attractions. A little unusual I thought. God job they had the Skyride that can take you from one part to another a bit quicker. LOL!

We nearly didn't get there tough... We had a long car drive in the morning and about half way through the sky opened and the rain was pouring down like crazy. When we had 5 mins left, the weather was still the same. Not a little bit of rain but just totally pouring down. Even though we'd driven for a long time to get there and we were so near our destination, we were actually thinking of turning around and going home. We decided to brave the weather though and it calmed down quite a lot after a while.

All in all we had a really nice (but long & tiring! LOL!) day out and I think it's definitely somewhere I would go again. Though it will never beat Liseberg for me :)

Cadbury World

Wow it's been some buys days. Ross had two days off and we had some fun things planned. On Tuesday we went to Cadbury World (I SO want to write "Cadbury'S World" as that seems to make more sense and that's what I thought it was called...but it seems like it's "Cadbury World"...which sounds a little strange to me LOL!) We'd never been before and it was a quite fun experience. Lots of reading on signs (think: museum) and loads of videos to watch. Maybe too many videos really.

It was really fun to watch the factory bit, to see how all the bars got packaged and boxed up. Unfortunately the cameras were forbidden in this bit so I have no photos of this. I did get one at the end though where we could see some handmade chocolates being made.
You got given a few chocolate bars as you went along the "tour" (yum!) and it was all a nice experience. Though maybe after smelling chocolate for about 3 hours it was starting to feel a tiny bit (only a tiny bit!) sickly. On the outside they had this place called "Essence"...some more video material and then you each got given a cup full of melted chocolate and your choice of treat. I'll tell you...melted chocolate is nice but when you got to the bottom of the cup you felt like your mouth was glued together with melted chocolate and it was almost hard to swallow. LOL!
You also got a free pass to the "staff shop" where the public normally can't get access. Most people seemed to spend lots money in the Cadbury shop at the end of the tour. I don't think they could find the staff shop. It was NOT easy. We decided to see if we could find the staff factory shop anyway. We had a poor (very poor!) map of how to find it at the back of the pass and it was not easy. We walked and walked. Wondering if we should turn back. No signs at all. Were we even heading the right way? I guess they wanted as few people as possible to bother going to the factory shop! It was miles away and really hard to find. But what a goldmine when you did! Huge (and I mean HUGE!) bags for 50p. Chocolate bars starting at 10p. Bags of 20 (or was it 25?) big Cadbury Creme Eggs for a pound etc etc. People were buying several carrier bags full each!! We decided to not go mad and only spent £6...

"Trying {So} Hard" + Decorating Your Own Buttons Layout Class...

Please feel free to use these instructions to make your own layout. You are free to link to this page from any forum etc if you wish. Please do NOT copy this information and/or photos to use for your own classes/forums/webpages without permission.

Supplies needed:
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Pano Di Tavola (Tablecloth)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Grigette (Snails)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Strisce (Stripes)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco –Tabs & Tags
White cardstock (I used Bazzill)
American Crafts – Thickers – Platforms, Black #42813
American Crafts – Thickers – Gift Box, Green #42762
Doodlebug – Teen Girl – Sugar Coated Rub-Ons
Three flat matte buttons (I used a white, baby blue and baby pink)
Junkitz photo anchors and brads (two of each)

Also needed:
Glue (I use Herma removable)
Black journaling pen
Scalloped scissors
Three small clear jewels (optional)
Three small green/peridot jewels (optional)
Charcoal Chalk Inkpad (optional)

Start by cutting your white cardstock to size. I scrap in true A4 size, so I cut mine to 29,7x21 centimetres (cm). Please feel free to adapt to another layout size if you prefer (remember: you will need to adjust the size of your photos too if you do this).

Pick your photos. I’m using three 10x7,5 cm landscape photos. This meant I could print two photos to a 15x10 cm (6x4) sheet.

Take your stripy paper and cut two strips. Use your scalloped scissors on the top edge of one of them if you wish, ink the edges and attach according to the photo below. You will need to overlap your photos slightly (or cut off the excess).

Cut a strip from the “Tablecloth paper”, 22x1,5 cm, and angle one of the ends. Cut a similar strip from the “Snails” paper, 19,5x1 cm, again angle one end. Ink both pieces and attach, slightly overlapping.

Now, time to have fun and decorating our own buttons. Pick your rub-ons and cut them out. Rub onto your buttons. It’s a lot easier here if you make sure that your buttons are temporarily attached to your working surface (Blu Tack works great!) otherwise they will move when you try and add the rub-ons.

Pick a tag and a circle that you like from the die-cut sheet and do your journaling. Attach to the right, below your photos.

Glue your buttons in place near the end of your paper strips. Then attach the brads & photo anchors at the top right and top left of your photo strip.

Add your title.

(Optional) Attach a few jewels onto some of your chipboard letters.

…and your layout is done!

I hope you enjoyed my class! Wishing you lots of fun creating your own version!

My Latest Class...

As those of you who visit my blog regularly probably know, each month I do a step-by-step on-line layout class for Mel & Jill at A trip Down Memory Lane. I design the classes so that even a scrapbook beginner should be able to follow them. They have lots of step-by-step photos and even details of what size to cut your papers to and how far from the edge of your layout to place them etc (if you need this - of course you can just take inspiration from it and then do your own thing should you prefer that).

June's class has just gone live. So if you have a moment, please do go and take a look. It's all free to do so anyone can take part :) Thanks for visiting :)

Wow, wow, wow...

Sorry I'm just being all excited again LOL! It's Monday which means a BIG layout task for the class I'm taking. I have been working through the video tutorials all morning and just finished my layout.

Isn't it so exciting to learn new things? This class I'm taking is so great and I have learnt so many new little tricks for digital scrapping just this morning. We did the circle arrangement of photos, used a grungemask on the large photo, doing the journaling strips with the black background...And maybe coolest of all - adding an overlay (removing some parts of it and then making it fade in better with the background) and adding a grunged effect to the papers with darkened edges.

I think I will have to practice a bit more before I can remember everything I have learnt today (it's one thing doing them just after you have watched a video...and another to remember the exact steps 2 weeks later) but we get this handy .pdf with all the commands etc to print out so that will help a lot. I must remember to print that asap.

Lilypad

Friday saw some new kits released at the Lilypad shop. I got the chance to play with the "Breezy" kit earlier in the week...

I had lots of fun and ended up making this card...

What else? Hrm...let me think...oh yes I'm soooo looking forward to tomorrow. Another new week for the digital scrapping course that I'm taking by Jessica Sprague and Money means big layout task! Yay! Can't wait :)))

Scrapping...

Been doing some more scrapping (though this layout is actually not from today)...and enjoying looking through all the new releases at the Sweet Shoppe this morning. Yum!

Sakura...

Can't wait for tomorrow. Saturday is the big day each week when all the new kits are released at Sweet Shoppe Designs. It's always so exciting on Saturday morning to see what they have all come up with.

Waiting for that, I have had a play with a very pretty kit by Kristin Cronin-Barrow called "Cherry Blossoms".

At first I was thinking of doing a layout but I changed my mind in the last second and did a card instead. Everything I have used for the card is from the kit apart from white cardstock and some pretty silver jewels.

Avital you asked me where I got the stash from that I showed you yesterday. It's from A Million Little Things. Though, yes, the postage is expensive...I guess you can't get away from that when you order from the US.

October Afternoon...

If someone asked me, for a long time I would have said that Autumn Leaves make my absolute favourite stamps. For the last year...hrm...not so sure anymore. I still LOVE my Autumn Leaves stamps but October Afternoon are definitely a good contender! Love their stamps :)

I have not posted stash photos for ...what has felt like ages, probably because...eh...uhm...I haven't ordered any new stash for a long time. But I have just got some new yummies from the US so here we go...

One reason for me loving October Afternoon stamps so much:

Those owl stamps, the baby deer and the rabbit are so cute. Love the trees! And the journaling/calendar ones will be mega useful.

...and they have brought out some new collections of papers too. When I saw them on the website I was not 100% sure, but I took a gamble and am I glad that I did. They look so much better in reality :)

And finally I couldn't resist getting a few sheets of paper from KI Memories latest collection called "Bloom". There were so many items in this collection that it was really hard to pick.

Loved The First Lesson...

I finished the first lesson yesterday and totally love it!! I learnt so many great things. How to turn a photo into sepia and selectively colour one part, how to round the corners of paper using a brush (wow - loved this!), how to create your journaling in two columns etc etc. I so much enjoyed it!

...and that is my finished layout. I pretty much followed the class instructions...the only thing I did differently was the heart embellishment. In the class the embellishment was "floating" in the big empty blue area of the layout (bottom left). But I wasn't too keen on that so I moved mine and overlapped the journaling block instead. That worked better for me.

You know what I love? Brushes!! I mean, how fantastic are they? We used some brushes on the left and right side of the photo and well, I'm just like ---> wow, love it :)))

Today we got this great freebie for the class. When I read the mail, seeing that it was going to be from SSD, I thought it was great news. But at the same time I thought I might already have the freebie kit with being on the SSD CT. Oh no!! Instead Robin and the gang have been sooooo sweet and designed us an exclusive kit just for Jessica's class:

And before I finish this, I have a message for Lisbet who left me a comment: tack så mycket för att du talade om att min länk inte funkade på Jessicas forum - jag tror att jag har fixat den nu.

So Many Cool Things To Learn...

Due to some problems with the class materials I never got the chance to start on the first class yesterday. Today is a different story. We have a huge class full of cool things to learn. As I type this I'm about 40% through the whole lesson and it's great.

One of the very cool things I have learnt so far this morning is to take a normal colour photo:

...and change it to sepia tone and then re-colour a single element in the photo!

How special does that look? I just hope I can remember it all LOL! But the class is really good in the way that we have access to the class videos forever, so if you forget how to do a certain task, you can just go back and watch it over and over again :) Totally loving it!

Okay I better get back to my lesson.

Very Excited...

Today is the first day of the intermediate "Now We're Rockin" digital scrapping course by Jessica Sprague that I'm taking! I'm so excited!! I really can not wait. I'm going to download all the class materials after I have done my blogging for today and then get started on the first lesson. I really, really loved the beginner's class that I took, so I know this will be so much fun :))

You know what - I need to ask: where is the summer?!? I mean - it's the middle of June and the weekend was so cold that we were almost considering putting the heating on inside for an hours or so. That is just WRONG!! LOL!

[Supplies: Fancy Pants papers, Bazzill scalloped cardstock, Basic Grey stamps, American Crafts Thickers alphabets plus some buttons and jewels]

Snowing...

Well....not really...just kinda snowing - on my layout that is LOL! Sorry if I fooled you into thinking we were having some sort of crazy June weather.

This is a layout made for Make The Moment Last DT:

[Supplies: Basic Grey papers and diecuts, American Crafts rub-ons, ribbon...which I'm afraid I don't know who makes, plus some American Crafts Thickers alphabets.]

Class Done...

I have finished off the June on-line layout class for Mel & Jill at A Trip Down Memory Lane and sent that off now. Yay! I can't tell you too much until the class goes up on the 21st, but I might just whisper: ....noteworthy.....ssssh! ;)

As part the SSD CT we got asked if we wanted to play with the June kit for DAM (Digital Artist Magazine) a few weeks ago, so of course I couldn't resist. I just love practising my digital scrapping as much as I can. Can't wait for the next class to start on Monday - I'm so eager to learn LOL!

[Supplies: 'Heatwave' kit by Leora Sanford]

If you haven't checked out DAM - you really should. It's a fantastic digital magazine which reminds me a lot of "Cards" and "Scrapbook Trends" which has to be the most beautiful craft magazines that I have ever seen. And you know what? DAM is a magazine in .pdf format. For me to say this magazine is amazing is a BIG deal. Why? I hate .pdfs...really I do...the scrolling drives me mad! It makes me feel claustrophobic and well...I just hate .pdfs in general LOL! But I L-O-V-E DAM. Why? Because it WORKS! One "magazine page" is "one page on your screen". No horrible jump/scrolling! So I never thought I would say this but I totally love, love, love the .pdf DAM magazine!! :))) Go and have a look for yourself - its great :)

Love Her Cute Stuff...

Quick blog post today :)

I've been doing some more digital scrapping. I just love the fantastic kits that Mindy Terasawa makes. They are just so unique and super, super cute!!

[Supplies: 'Pear Crisp Kit' By Mindy Terasawa (Designer Digitals) and template by Bree Clarkson (SSD)]

I'm off to continue working on my next on-line (paper) layout class for Mel & Jill at A Trip Down Memory Lane...

So Excited...

I have just finished taking a beginner's digital scrapping class by Jessica Sprague and couldn't wait to get signed up for the next course. The registration opened yesterday and I now have my place for Now We're Rockin'! Yay! I really can't wait for Monday to come and the course to start :) Jeannette: you asked me if I'd be going this class and the answer is ---> yes :)

I have learnt so much doing the first course and I'm really enjoying experimenting with digital scrapping. I will never, ever give up my love for paper scrapping, but it's nice to have an alternative too for those days when you just don't have the space or energy to get your paper supplies out.

I've been practising my digital scrapping and reviewing what I have learnt so far. This is a layout I did the other day:

[Supplies: 'Adorable Me' by Misty Cato & Betty Jo Martin (SSD)]

Cupcakes...

First of all, for anyone who's cupcake mad - they have the cutest cupcake pyjamas and nighties in Primark at the moment! Knickers too! LOL!

Okay straight onto some questions:

Jeannette - you were asking about Jessica Sprague's "Up and Running" beginner's digital scrapping class. I totally love it and I would seriously recommend it to anyone. Of course if you have already done some digi scrapping, it's probably too basic for you. But for a beginner it's great :)

Kimberley - you asked about how I re size photos/items in Photoshop. I don't actually LOL! I do what I need to do in Photoshop Elements (editing my photos, making my digital layouts) and then I use something called Image Resizer for Windows. It's something I have been using for years now. Totally love it and so easy jut to right-click from Windows Explorer and use it that way :)

And before I go...I have been making some more cards. I just can't resist all the yummy kits at Sweet Shoppe Designs:

[Supplies: 'Skippy Doo Da' by Lauren Grier (SSD), white cardstock, charcoal chalk ink by Colorbox, 3D foam pads and Stickles glitter glue]

"Grattis" is Swedish for "Congratulations". :)