Alex here and I'm finally FINALLY (at long last) bringing you Part 2 of the sketch challenge which Heather and I did together...during October! 🙈
I know it's also December. LATE December. Soz, lovelies! I actually had finished it over a month ago, but since I did a process video (and one with soooo much more raw footage than anticipated) editing has happened sporadically between other things.
It was actually rather involved and as usual I made it far more work than it needed to be! But that's what I do. Every.Single.Time! 🤦
Heather really put me to the challenge with this sketch. Definitely not my usual sort of style, but they don't call it a challenge for nothing, right?
I have no idea how I decided to use this sketch with this photo of my adorable niece on her very first Book Week. I'm pretty sure there was a suitably convoluted train of thought with led to this decision, but overall I think it worked. 🤷
I do recommend you watch the process video (below) since I do go into that a little bit as well as walking you though how I made it.
Here are the still pics I promised you:
Title (with lots of messy threads! 😍)
"Tone on tone" embellishments and stitching detail
Fussy cut books embellished with tiny Wonder Woman stickers
Large book cut on the Silhouette
That name card that caused ever so much grief (and I still cant stick in s straight line despite multiple attempts! 🙈)
Alex here and I do apologise that it has been some time since you had a project from me. October and November proved to be tougher than this little Pink Mama. 😳
Anyway, today I'm sharing with you my project that I made for the Quilter's Vibe YouTube collaboration started by Sara Scraps. It's traditionally the last Thursday of the month, except this month it was bumped a week because I wasn't the only one swamped! 😅
How it works is that the four(?) ladies who take part take turns picking out a quilt or quilt block, but something quilty which we can interpret in any way into a layout (and of course YouTube process video).
Here's my process video:
If you watch my video, you'll see how I managed to wreak havoc on a lovely, calm, understated inspiration piece and inject all kinds of crazy into it! I also managed to use FOUR flair badges!😛
I busted out some very precious and super "rare" paper from the vault (who remembers "Love, Elsie" by KI Memories??), managed to measure and cut wrong, change my mind several times and show a somewhat disturbing inability to count to nine. 🙈
In my defense, there was a tradie cutting floor tiles next door and not only can you hear his saw on the video, it never fails to give me a headache. But it's life, right? 🤷
I have to say I don't often do grid-type layouts, but I have enjoyed them whenever a challenge has some my way. Speaking of challenges, I still owe you (and Heather) Part ii of the October sketch challenge! It's finished, but I need to edit the vid etc, so it should follow this one in a few days.
Alex here and I do apologise for my belated post, but I do bring you a video as promised.
I'm not sure whether it's worth the wait, but you can be the judge of that. Would you believe me that I had actually finished the filming and the layout a couple of weeks ago? I think we're all getting the hang of having a semi-permanent recording set-up, but we're always making improvements along the way.
This layout brings together all-the-things! What do I
mean by that? Sorta kinda killing two (or in this case more)
proverbial birds with one stone!
Firstly, I used supplies from my "Counterfeit Kit" to make this layout. You can read more about those on my blog. The process video for today's layout is below. You can can either watch now or after reading the post!
The next thing I manged to incorporate into the layout was the use of a sketch. September's Product Focus in the Rediscover Your Stash group is sketches, so I tried to include them when possible.
The sketch came from Shimelle's free 4x6 Photo Love class from Two Peas days. I stumbled across the sketch on Pinterest and upon recognizing it as one of the lessons, I had a look on her blog and there it was! Shimelle didn't post the sketch, but she shared photos of the two layouts she made and posted them on them on her blog. Here is Shimelle's blog post and it contains a video of this lesson.
The reason I chose this sketch is somewhat lengthy and I do go into more details on my video and my version of this blog post, but in a nutshell I thought it suited my photos except it didn't and I had to make some changes and actually ended up following the sketch more closely than I planned! 🤷
My original choice of photos didn't work out either. Butterflies were Plan B (more about in the video)!, but it ended up for the best, because who makes butterfly flair better than EWF? I was spoiled for choice and I don't even have all of them! 😮
I tell you, sitting down to a layout frequently takes you down a rabbit hole and it tells you what it needs.
So...back to the important bit. Hands up if you have plenty of "vintage" stash that you can't part with.
Yeah I thought so. I have a lot. Today I'm reporting that I successfully got them (OK OK THREE of them) on a layout after languishing in my stash for...I don't know...maybe 6-8 years? I have maybe 4 different packets of these rosettes. I know I manged to use up almost a full pack some years ago, so it IS possible. 🤔
Regardless of WHAT type of item it is that you're hoarding, the important reason is to ask yourself WHY. This will be different for everybody and may include a combination of factors.
Is it the fact that you paid money for it and don't want to feel like you're throwing money away if you get rid if it? You don't have to throw them out. Ask around at local schools, preschools, childcare and community centres...and hospitals too. They often have arts and crafts type programs and are grateful for the donations. You can feel good knowing your stuff will be enjoyed by sick kids.
Not you? Still clutching your preciousssssesss? 🤣 (Don't worry, clearly I am too!) hoarding it for a sentimental reason? Are you waiting for the PERFECT project. Larger, pre-made embellishments tend to be expensive so I can understand that.
If that's you, then I encourage you to read this article by Shimelle on what COULD happen to "special" supplies if you hold onto them too long. Gives you something to think about for sure.
What if you WANT to use them...TRY to use them, but they just look wrong every time.
That's me, BTW. 🙋🙋🙋 (Actually they're all me, but mostly the last one.)
The first tip aI have t getting something to work is to go back to the same collection. Collections are designed to go together, They're made so you really just need to add photos, a pen and glue. I usually mix my collections so this is a step back and chance to refocus for me.
Chances are, if they're older supplies, you likely don't have much (if anything) left from the original collection. So go back to manufacturer if they are still in business. The rosettes I had were all brands under the American Crafts umbrella (I have two packs by American Crafts, one by Pebbles and one I can't remember now). Usually the colours have a certain familiarity about them.
You can also try and pull in motifs similar to those in the original collection, paying close attention to the colours.
For my part, in this particular case, I often felt they were too big...as are many supplies I LIKE, but just struggle to use (often due to size). In this particular instance, spreading them over a two-page layout seemed like a logical way to start. It was going to still take a bit of work since the photos took up a fair bit of space. What I DID like about using these rosettes is that they make a perfect nest for a flair badge! 🙌
They're so old the foam pads on the back just fell off! 🤣
Many are topped with a button and the button is almost always without thread. 😱 Naked buttons make me twitchy!
As you saw in the video, I chose the colours carefully to co-ordinate with both the flair and layout itself. The Pebbles ones had white circles with tiny "happy birthday" text that I never noticed before. Since I don't celebrate them and it's irrelevant to the story anyway, I pulled them off.
This is where you can start to bring the supplies into the modern era by replacing the various layers with punched circles of papers from your layout. Suddenly they don't stick out as much!
Since I was trying to draw attention to the flair badges, I chose not to replace the circles. The white flair against the blue/aqua looked really good. Flair, rather than buttons, gave them a fresh new look and I'm really pleased how they turned out. I can't say the same for all the other parts, but overall pretty satisfied given don't two page layouts
I think what I'm going to do is place all my "too hard" supplies in one basket nearby, so I'm looking at them and through them more often and don't miss opportunities to use them. An actual "too hard" basket! 🤣🤣🤣
Oh you probably want to see the rest of the layout, right?
OK here is the title and journaling (yes I added the butterfly and black faceted gems after I stopped filming!):
And the whole spread:
The Butterfly House
BTW, here are all (or almost all) the BUTTERFLY flairs in the EWF store. I picked some from two different sets. Click on "Insects Birds and Animals" on the right hand side of the page.
I hope I've addressed most of the reasons why you might be holding on to supplies and how to get past this road block. I'll see you sooner than later to get back into the swing of my blog schedule!
Leave me a comment or email if you have any questions. I'll be happy to have a chat about it.
Alex here, and as usual my layout comes with a bit of a back story!
Paper
Issues (an online scrapbook retailer) has a Facebook Group with lots and lots of challenges each month. One of the challenges is a weekly
scraplift challenge when a layout by one of their Design Team is
selected and the mission is to scraplift it!
The one I chose to
scraplift was THIS ONE by MandaJane Ulmer. It was an August challenge
and I thought with the time difference between Australia and the USA I
might just scrape in.
Ummm...nope!
At
the same time, my good friend Sara Scraps' Facebook Group Rediscover Your Stash has a monthly product focus and this month it's not a
physical product, it's SKETCHES! I decided to extend this a little bit
to include scraplifting. I'm really hoping to get a lot of great stuff
done during September, so by doing that I can mix things up a bit and still bash the product focus!
As soon as I saw the sketch I thought of these photos. The main photo made me laugh - I mean who sniffs a shoe right out of the box? 🤷🤣 It also gave me a chance to use up as many of those Converse All Star embellishments that so many collections seem to include. It's an iconic shape and style which makes it easy, so even though his shoes are Nikes, the All Stars will have to do!
A boy layout is also another great way to use up some of my rather large collection of boy Flair and Words 4 was perfect! 👍👍👍 The black co-ordinates with everything else, the words are a perfect match, and the round, shininess helps them stand out at the same time. I deliberately steered clear of round black elements mostly for this reason.
I wanted to use both red and a burgundy sort of shade (which is tricky to find!) since those were the colours in the shoes. Grey and black were the most likely candidates for neutrals and I mixed whites and creams so the more shades the better in that regard.
This was another example of a layout which told ME what it wanted. I wanted to throw in a touch of aqua and maybe lime green and woodgrain, but I ended up pulling all those papers back up again and getting rid of them. Instead I was told I was allowed to have light blue. 🤷🤷🤷
MandaJane's layout has a lot of embellishment, but only a few papers. I wanted to add plenty of layers of the various reds rather than just a single one. It's much more my style and they would look odd if I just put one of each - as though I tried to match them but failed miserably!
I finally finished painstakingly putting together the embellishment clusters in more or less the same spots, but I didn't add the tabs like in the middle of the original layout.
There wasn't a whole lot of space left for ink droplets, but I wanted to bring out the silver in some of the alphas and embellishments. I picked silver and some greys-with-shimmer mists and went a bit berserk if I'm honest! 😳
Here are a few close up of them:
The "love this" sticker is silver but photographed gold for some reason! 😖
The main photo was part of the inspiration for my title along with the fact that this guy is 15 and appreciates more and more of his mothers favourite bands from the '90s! I do love titles with hidden meanings and my boys are pun crazy so they happen a lot!
The original layout didn't have any journaling and I needed some, so I kept the bottom left corner free and hoped it would fit. I tried to write small, used ampersands where possible and it fit! Phew!
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!
Alex here and I'm finally FINALLY (at long last) bringing you Part 2 of the sketch challenge which Heather and I did together...during October! 🙈
Heather really put me to the challenge with this sketch. Definitely not my usual sort of style, but they don't call it a challenge for nothing, right?
