Saturday, March 26, 2016

If I was a girl! - DT layout for Scrap Our Stash

Hello,

The second challenge of the month at SOS is always a sketch and stash challenge. It's a really cool one too! I hardly ever create a layout based on a sketch, mostly only for SOS, but I really enjoy it. I like to follow the sketches closely, I'm not sure why actually. I might change a couple of things here and there, but you can always recognize the sketch in my layouts. The stash challenge part is awesome because very often I really have to go through my stuff to find something from the list! Luckily so far I always did find something - I don't know what that says about the size of my stash ha! So here's the sketch, come play along with us, we'd like to see what you create! As always there's an awesome prize too!



I've been creating quite a lot of girls' layouts for friends lately and so I've been on a kick :D. Maxim was goofing around a couple weeks back pretending to be a girl, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to create a girly layout for fun! Here you go:





For the stash challenge I've used graph paper and gold from column 1, hearts from column 2 and ink from column 3.

Hope you enjoy! See you soon X

Monday, March 21, 2016

Frames frames frames - on layouts and cards!

Hi there,

This is going to be a short post with loads of pictures, mainly because I am in a rush, ha! If anybody is interested in how I made any of these layouts or cards, just let me know and I'll do a write-up!

So it is my turn on the I Kropka blog today so I am sharing my projects with their gorgeous chipboards for this month. I asked Marta (the owner) to create some doodle and alpha chipboards for me, because those things I love to use all the time. She came up with several sets and I am so in love with all of them! I mainly used these on my layouts now. Plus I made some cards, one for my friend's birthday and some for Easter. Hope you like! 

Thanks for stopping by! X

































Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Pinch me, this is surreal!

The same day I received the news I will be guest designing at Shimelle, the amazing Paige Evans contacted me if I want to do a guest designer gig for Pink Paislee. I just asked "Are you serious?!" I mean who in their right mind would say no to that?! I mean come on! So it's safe to say it was a pretty damn good day! It was already many weeks ago and I am still over the moon! I cannot thank Paige enough for thinking of me and having faith in me, and Pink Paislee for making it possible! I will forever be grateful!

I was asked to create 3 layouts, a card and something extra with the beautiful new C'est la vie collection. I will be honest, even though I find this collection absolutely stunning, I probably wouldn't have bought it because it's so soft and feminine and I pretty much only scrap my son's photos! So I was a bit worried as to what I will be able to come up with! Then I received the goodies...and held them in my hands...my goodness! So chic! I had this idea that I would ask my best friend to send me her and her gorgeous girl-boy twins' photos and then I will make this series about them. Well she is about as lazy as I am so instead of selecting her favourites, she gave me access to hundreds of photos to choose from ha! Because this is the part I really enjoy the most (NOT!)...going through photos, especially when they are so gorgeous and bring back so many memories! The process takes ages and it's so emotional. But, I managed! In fact I made 7 layouts, a couple of cards and a mini album! I am down to scraps, I have never used up a collection in its all entirety before! 

First let me show you the layouts!

Some weeks ago I saw a sneak peek from Heather Leopard on Shimelle's IG account, it was a bunch of stitched hearts. Absolutely stunning. Right then an idea hit me: I'd make balloons from hearts! And then I found the perfect picture, the babies in a basket at their 1-year photo shoot! That totally requires balloons, right?! I pinched two holes in the photo and hung the basket on the threads! There was even a number 1 in the cut apart sheet, great!




Second layout contains several photos, simply because there were so many gorgeous ones in the series, I could not choose. Ashley Horton has a new class at Big Picture Classes called Photo Focus and with each lesson there's a free cut file. So the cut file I am using here is one of those. It's perfect for multiple photos and of course the hearts fit my theme well! I put some photos in the frames and other frames I backed with patterned papers (I love patterned papers, can you tell?!). Then I put the whole on pop dots to give the layout a bit of texture. To finish off the layout I added embellishments all over the page.




The third layout features a big circle cut file which I cropped from Paige's full page background cut file, just because I love circles. Then I backed up the file with patterned papers, added tags, ephemera pieces, frames behind my photos so that they stand out more. For the title I used those awesome mirror letters, they are absolutely amazing! I hope there will be a full alphabet like this one day! I normally add some journaling to my pages, but in this case my best friend has to do it once she receives them, if she wants ha!




For the next layout I wanted to use those gorgeous acetate letters from the ephemera pack! They are so very pretty! Since this one is a boy layout, I didn't use much pink, just as accents, and rather focused on green, yellow, black and white! The camera cut file is also from Ashley's Photo Focus class. 



For my 5th layout I got inspired by a sketch from Ashley for Hip Kit Club! I really wanted to use her sketch but I had no time for other layouts that week, so I simply used it for this! Like I said, I love circles, so this spoke to me of course. This is the first layout where I used something that wasn't part of the C'est La Vie line. The gray wood grain paper I used for the background is from Pink Paislee's Cedar Lane line and the white textured card stock is Bazzill. I simply cut several circles in different sizes, layered them over each other, first glued then stitched them down (except for the smaller ones: I just distressed the edges of those with my nails). The photo was also trimmed into a circle shape. I added a few sentiments from the sticker sheets, a couple of acetate pieces and those awesome cork/gold glitter hearts! Some doodling around the edges and I called this page done.




The last two layouts are sort of related! I used the same lace cut file from Just Nick: on one layout I used the positive, on the other the negative pieces. When I first cut this in the blue floral paper and removed the file from my Silhouette mat, I was left with the negative pieces still on the mat. They looked so stunning, I had no heart to throw them away! So what I eventually did was I put glue on every single piece while still on my mat and transferred the whole file onto another patterned paper. Luckily the B-side of this paper was this amazing ombre pink! For both of these layouts I used pieces of the acetate cut apart sheet, another favourite of mine from this collection! On the last layout I used some gold glitter American Crafts thicker words for the title because I did not have enough letters left  in the C'est La Vie collection for anything meaningful!







Up next: the card! Well I'll admit, I never do cards! Mainly because I have so many photos I always have the feeling I will never be able to catch up with my layout - so I never spend time on cards. But these last weeks I made a couple and I so enjoyed the process! Something different! On this card I used one of the acetate pieces from the cut apart sheet, I stitched it on in a couple of places with gold thread. Then I fussy cut some of those gorgeous big pink flowers from one of the papers. I had a couple of leaves remaining from a previous project (the cut file is from The Cut Shoppe, I believe it's in the Funky Florals set) and I figured they would fit here perfectly and add a bit more texture. To finish it off I added a cork heart, a sentiment sticker and some twine, et voila!



Last but not least I have a mini album to share with you. I think this was my favourite project! I do not enjoy the planning part (which pictures to select for which background, in what order, what color, what size arrrgh too much for my brain!). But once I start cutting the pages and put them together...It's so exciting! For this album I made a single heart from a gorgeous The Cut Shoppe background cut file. I loved the fact that the heart has two sides, one for each of the twins I figured! Eventually I only did a couple with this separation, the rest are full hearts. I took photos of both sides of the pages so you see how I decorated them. Normally I would have used more embellies but unfortunately everything from the C'est La Vie collection is sold out here. So I made do with what I had! I even made a vellum pocket which is everywhere right now and filled it with confetti I cut from scraps! I stitched around the edges of all hearts to give them more interest and also, so nothing falls apart anytime soon!




I hope you enjoyed my projects and I could inspire you in some way! If you were not sure before if you should buy this collection, believe me when I say, you will not be disappointed if you do! Every single piece is gorgeous and as you can see, I even managed to do boys' layouts with it!

Thank you again Paige and Pink Paislee for this fantastic opportunity, I enjoyed every single minute of working on these projects! Thank you all for stopping by and checking my post XXX