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Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Chins Out with Heather



Hi all
I love this photo, my friend, she doesn't and just might shoot me when she sees this post, but that's ok I'll sweeten her up with a bottle of wine and some chocolate 

I thought the flairs matched as we were having a great day and were slightly mad. Let's all face it, we have all taken photos were we have tried to hide chin rolls.

The layout has layers of texture paste flowers, fussy cut flowers as well as layers of Prima flowers.








Sunday, August 25, 2019

Rainbow of Possibilities by Alex

Hello lovely Flair Enthusiasts!

Alex here and I'm awfully sorry I'm late with this post, but I have a good reason I promise!

I have been meaning to revive my poor YouTube channel...all year. 😳😳😳

It has been languishing with just a few videos for the longest time and I've spent the last 10 days or so making videos for various assignments and battling technology dragons. 🐉

I am aiming to make videos a regular part of my creative process spread over my various Design Team and personal projects.  The quality of the set up and editing is not what I'd like, so it's a work in progress and only to get better.

So what did I make?  Well, as usual there is a story behind it (isn't there always?) and it starts with the Counterfeit Kit Challenge.  Click on the link to learn more (it will take you to their August challenge), but in a nutshell they provide inspiration based on a past kit club kit in order for people to be inspired to put together their own kit using stash,  It's a great way to breathe new life into older supplies.


Aaaanyway, my kits are always huge and it frustrates me.  If I like the kit I have no problem keeping it together and working from it even after the month is over.  It will be the case with this one since I started late in the month (I wasn't even intending to play along) and this layout I'm bringing you today is just the first one.

If you'd like to see my kit and read my thoughts on that (along with ANOTHER video 😮) here is the relevant post on my blog.

Today's project has a lot less paper than I'd normally use, and a lot more "stuff".  It often happens that my layouts take me along for the ride and they just do their own thing.  While it  definitely didn't turn out EXACTLY as I imagined, I'm actually really happy with it and pleased to use the flair in a different way.  I mixed up the various collections since I was working with colour and at the same time, motifs were critically important.

It was all about rainbows inspired by those gorgeous Oobi dresses my nieces are wearing.  The background paper from Shimelle's Glitter Girl line reminded me so much if them, and I wanted to scrapbook the Instax photo too.  I'm trying to mix the sizes up a little bit.

All the pieces in that huge rainbow mean something to me as they relate to my lovely nieces and I think there are EIGHT flair badges?  That's gotta be some kind of a record for one scrapbook page, no? 🤣. Here are some close ups of the embellishment rainbow:




I was also happy to add some things that I often pull out and end up putting back like those fabric tabs by Basic Grey.  I stitched them down at one end letting them still flap about.  You know by know I love colour and texture and using all-the-things.  Infact, this layout could just about be called all-
the-flair!

The journaling on the surface was about the dresses, but on a deeper level it went into how those dresses (and many other like them) are a reflection of how I feel about those girlies who are just pure sunshine and rainbows.  Everyone who meets them is enamored with them.  You can't come away grumpy after seeing them!

You are a Beautiful Rainbow of Possibilities Scrapbook Layout



I wont bore you with more detailed info and anecdotes about some of the embellies, so if you'd like to read about those, they'll be in my version of this blog post!

Thanks so much for visiting!

Embellish With Flair product used:

Hello My Name Is... Set 2

 












Butterflies - Red













  
Citrus Slice













  
Emoji - Love





















 

  

 Butterflies - Blue












3 Tone Stars Purples


 











Love, and Embellish with Flair!

xx Alex

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Card making with Heather


Hi All

This month I went with a card. I love the vintage prettyness of the Pion Design papers, and that the butterflies match perfectly wth the Embellish Wih Flair butterfy flairs.













Saturday, August 10, 2019

Cats and Dogs by Alex

Hello lovely Flair Enthusiasts!


Alex here and today's post requires somewhat of a backstory and while it's not part of my "Inspiration Series", it could be looked at as a sort of extension to Part 3 which is about scraplifting.  I think I may have even hinted back then that I had this particular layout in it's beginning stages.  I didn't want it to be the part on scraplifting, since it was a much less true example to the original project.

It turned out to be entirely co-incidental that I'm using both the Cat Flair and much of the same paper (a lot from Shimelle's Box of Crayons which features plenty of cat and dog motifs of which I used 0! 🤷)

Now for the backstory... in May, my buddy Sara Scraps was a guest designer for Virginia Walker in her Facebook group Confessions of a Paper Addict (known as COAPA).  Virginia released a series of animal cut files including a dachshund for Sara.  I got so excited when I saw there was a matching cat so I suggested I should scraplift her layout since I have similar photos with virtually identical expressions!  You can watch Sara's YouTube Process Video here.

Sweet Puppy Days

By Sara Scraps


As I was preparing to do so, I had another idea!  With Sara's permission I used a photo of her dog and my cat and BOTH cut files.  This meant fairly major changes to the original since I had to squeeze in TWO cut files and figure out how much to keep the same and which modifications to make to ensure the layout was in my style.

The first step was figuring out the size and cutting the critters and loosely planning how they will sit on the page.  Painstaking backing of cut files with paper comes next!



















Sara's style is quite different to mine and I admire it a lot so I wanted to do it justice, but keep the balance in maintaining the things I love.  Sara used paper cut into strips and punched with border punches.  It was the perfect place to start since my punches don't get as much love as they should!

I used two types of punch as well as some branding strips and narrow strips.  I wanted to make sure I included enough black to co-ordinate with the flair and it could get tricky since I was using a fair bit of navy.

It seems as though I always stitch on my layouts, but I don't I promise!  I just felt these borders and strips were begging for it and I could lift up any loose edges for texture.

The background is an older Studio Calico crosshatch (as opposed to a plain white sheet of cardstock), and while I used multiple photo mats and more borders than Sara had in her original, I split the title into two areas like she did using two fonts as well.  This is definitely different for me (I rarely have the title split like this, nor do I have the construction of the two cut files and photos separated, but it was the only way to squeeze them onto the page).

While I was on the punch kick. I punched some pinked circles under the flair to help them stand out and putting them om either side of the title helps with that and to make it a bit more obvious that it's a single phrase.

Due to the pattern of the pink paper at the top of the page, the embellishment cluster where Sara put hers would have to come down.  And get a whole lot bigger obviously, because this Crafty Mama is all about All.The.Things! 🤣


The corresponding area diagonally across from the embellishment would be the natural spot to put the journaling.  The journaling and story is always critical for me and especially in this case when it may seem a little weird to scrapbook her dog and my cat regardless of our friendship! The story is less about the animals themselves, but more about our similarities and in this particular case only a fellow Fitzwilliam fanatic and Austen aficionado would co-incidentally name her dog the same thing I named my cat! 🙌🙌🙌


Before finishing off with some puffy hearts, I added tiny tabs with the dates of the photos since they weren't taken at the same time.  In such a case as this, I'd most likely store the layout in the same month of the later photo.

A Tale of Two Fitzes


So you can see how I started with Sara's idea, yet made it look really quite different but simply starting with two cut files.  Even without the other changes, it's a pretty big shake up.

Embellish With Flair Products Used:

Cats




















Thanks for stopping by and as always, 

Love and Embellish With Flair!

xx Alex