Saturday 30 September 2017

Guest Designer | Marie Boyle

Today we welcome our last guest designer (for the time being at least!) Please welcome Marie...

My name is Marie, I'm 28 and I'm from Durham in the UK. I've Scrapbooking and crafting for around 8 years now! I pretty much exclusive scrap Disney holiday photos!

So my layout! I have exclusively used the Simple Stories Say Cheese collections which I got from Hey Little Magpie (my favourite UK based Scrapbooking website!) and obviously the collection is perfect to scrapbook a Walt Disney World photo! My friend snapped these when I was pulling a stupid face with my Mickey Ears on and I just think it's the perfect Disney photo! And the colours in the photos go great with the Say Cheese collection! 

I started with a piece of white 12x12 textured card stock as a nice blank canvas. I then added some yellow and red paint splatters to the background to tie in the colours. I then added some Mickey Mouse print tissue directly in the centre of the page to break up the background. I then cut out the perfect piece of journalling paper from one of the cut apart sheets and pinched holes in the top to make it look like I had taken it from a notepad. Once this was stuck down I angled my photos the opposite way and propped them up with some foam pads.


I then went through the embellishments and added them mainly down the sides of my photos and added red and yellow enamel dots all over the page. I also added in some red thread on either side of my photo to make it look extra fun! 

Then it's time for some journaling! I had quite a big space to fill! Once that was done I went over the page with some black paint splatters to make it look like ink on the journaling (I love that look!) 


I then inked around the edges with a yellow stamp pad and cut a large border piece from one of the cut apart sheets to stick across the bottom.


I hope you enjoy the finished layout!!
Thanks for joining us Marie - love your work! - Laura

UK Scrap Addicts Blog Hop | Competition

Welcome to the first ever UK Scrap Addicts blog hop, a few of us on the team have gotten together and have "Scrapped Our Scraps" and would love to show you what we have come up with.

Each person has a blog post live today with the title "UK Scrap Addicts | Blog Hop" and everyone has been using their scraps to create some amazing layouts for you. On each blog post there will be a link to the next persons post, creating a loop back to here.

So how is this a competition? Well each post will have a letter at the bottom, you simply need to collect all the letters, unscramble the word and then enter it into the rafflecopter widget below. The competition runs from 9am 30th September to 9am 5th October. A winner will be drawn and announced here on the 6th October.

The prize is a Traveler's Notebook Creative Kit from UglyBugPlans, Washi and stickers from PrettyMyPage and an adorable pumpkin charm from Sarah.

All you have to do now is get started on the loop, visit Michelle HERE and find the letter and link to the next blog post, don't forget to leave a comment on each blog you visit. We love to hear your feedback on our layouts.

Good Luck


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Love You Like Family | Journalling | ScrappyNerdUK (Claire)

Good Morning Friends.

My layout today follows this months theme which is journalling. My layout really focuses on this element and this is a great technique for when you have an important story to tell.




So I decided to create my journalling in a vertical column from the top to the bottom of my page. For this I used my Cricut to write the journalling but do not be worried or scared to use your own handwriting. Your relatives will appreciate in future generations having scrapbook pages with your handwriting on them (whether you like your writing on it).









I then kept the rest of the layout very simple. This was so the main focus was on the journalling and not necessarily on the embellishments. I used a single strip of paper across the middle of the page and used a chipboard heart with which I layered an acetate piece that said Love.

I used this to create my title which reads "Love you like Family". As the acetate piece needed to be adhered to the chipboard and the double sided tape was showing through, I decided to use a gold glitter bow on top to hide this.





And here is the layout in full. I added in a couple of glitter hearts and a couple of gold word stickers (which are masked by the banner at the bottom and the glare!!). I hope this really inspires you to add some journalling into your layouts. Feel free to scrap lift and be sure to share this with us on the UKSA Facebook page. And don't forget to tag is on Instagram too!!

See you next month!! 

Claire xx

Friday 29 September 2017

What's Up /Journalling / Jackie Ashton

Hi everyone, Jackie here with my bloppost following the theme of ‘journalling’.  I do struggle with journalling, especially having my hand-writing direct onto the layouts, so alot of the time my layouts, have who’s in the photo, location, and the date.  But more often than not, I sometime just put the location and the date, which really is not good for others who might look thought my albums and don't know the story behind the photographs. 

For my layout this month I’ve printed my journalling onto vellum paper and cut in strips and added to the top of my layout.



  
The journalling reads :-

Well Usain didn’t disappoint the crowds when he came onto the training track, 
unlike the other athletes, who had to walk down the ramp, Bolt, being Bolt, 
jumped over the barrier to make his entrance, then pretended to be 
shocked when the track security pointed out that he should have walked down 
the ramp like everyone else. 

His races didn’t go as planned, but it was great seeing him in action.




Even though his races didn't go according to plan, it was so good to see him in action for one last time and also to experience the atmosphere when he appeared at the training track as well as inside the stadium.

Printing onto vellum, did take a while to get right.  especially the lengths of each strips.  I did this by printing onto normal photocopy paper and cutting and placing on the layout until I was happy with the placement.  Then once I was happy with it, I printed onto the vellum sheet leaving a large space between each line, and also waiting a while before I removed the sheet from the printer to allow the ink to dry and not smudge.  Then cut into the strips, having a larger line spacing between each line made it easier to cut the typed strips.

I’ve used the new Shimelle/Glitter Girl collection for this layout, and some flair badges from Feed Your Crafts.




I cut a ‘lightening bolt’ onto my white cardstock background, and backed the space with paper from this collection that has shapes that look like ‘bolts of lightening’.  To give the design more definition, I outlined the edges with a black marker pen.

I distressed to the left of the die cut, with some yellow ink, mounted the photograph with some of the papers, and added some mini word stickers from Simple Stories.

I really like how it turned out and love the subtle look it has given to the page, but still allowing to read the story behind the photograph at the same time.

This is a 2 page layout, the other photographs I did for my DT blogpost for Hey Little Magpie and you can find it here.




Why not give it a go printing onto vellum and adding to your layouts and see how it turns out.

Till next time,












Thursday 28 September 2017

Traveler's Notebook | Michelle Mills (UglyBugPlans) | Journalling

Hello scrap addicts, I hope that you re all keeping well? It's Michelle here from UglyBugPlans with my take on this months topic of journalling. I have a bit of a different video that just a process where I've included a chatty element at the beginning where I explain how and where I do most of my journalling and some different habits that I have and I show you a couple of examples of this.




The process part of the video is rather short with my focus on the actual journalling which I created using some Tim Holtz Big Chat stickers. I knew the kind of sentence that I wanted to create and then chose random word stickers to emphasise and give my journalling an interesting element.



Because I knew the page with the journalling would look cluttered if I tried to embellish too much I decided that it would be the perfect place to use the stencil from this months sponsor Pretty My Page, my original thought had been to use some embossing paste to give the page texture but then I wanted my journalling to be quite fluid so I used a coordinating stamping pad which gave the pattern a lovely depth.


I really hope that you enjoy this video and that if you haven't already subscribed to the UK Scrap Addicts blog and YouTube that you will consider doing so.

https://youtu.be/e1HJFVYC4ts

You can find more from me over on my personal blog www.uglybugplans.com and YouTube channel www.youtube.com/c/uglybugplans

To purchase a stencil like the one in the video and many more paper craft goodies please check out PrettyMyPage

Much Love
Michelle xx

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Epic Fail | Lisa-Jane Johnson | Journalling

It's Lisa-Jane from Pretty My Page here today with my take on getting some journalling onto our layouts.  I'm the first to admit that although I believe scrapbooking should be about the story as much as anything else, sometimes there just isn't a story to tell, and that's fine.  Other times there is a story and we plan to come back to it and add it, but we don't, and that's fine too (there are no scrapbooking police thank goodness!) I am definitely guilty of this!  So for this challenge I chose a photo that had a definite story attached and I made sure I got it down on the page!


I didn't actually have a plan in mind when I was pulling out some papers to go with the photo.  Then I came across this Pink Paislee paper with the diagonal hand writing on and I was inspired to create something similar with my journalling.  I didn't intend to use the actual paper as it was the wrong sort of grey but I'm glad I happened across it.


I wanted to create the journalling on a slight diagonal like the paper but of course you can't do that with a 12x12 piece as you need a bit of extra real estate to allow for the slant.  Luckily the pattern in the paper worked in any direction so I was able to rotate it slightly to give me enough to cover right across.  I trimmed off the corners and then matched up the top and bottom, and voila - I have a diagonal piece that stretches right the way across.  


I wanted to add a contrasting strip in above and below the main piece but it obviously meant I would have the same problem with it not reaching.  The pattern on this piece couldn't be cut on an angle so I broke the strips and stuck the ends down first which left me with a little strategically placed gap to cover up.  I also added some stencilling to add another subtle layer.  I used the Ranger blending tool and the Grunge stencil from the Pretty My Page shop with some Tim Holtz Pumice Stone Distress Ink because the story was partly about the mess in the house during our first lot of renovations.


Before I set to work on the journalling, I wanted to add in any base layers for the clusters so that I knew how much room I had to work with.  I didn't add the rest of the embellishments until afterwards so I could write without being impeded or getting enamel dots stuck to my elbow...  The dots and hearts are from the Pretty My Page shop and the stick pins and metal studs are very old bits from my stash which always makes me feel good :-)


Typically on the day I did the journalling, my arthritis was quite bad in my hands and they did not want to be flexible and allow me to write neatly at all!  I didn't keep to the right slant on the stop half either and I considered redoing the background but, you know, life's too short!  And anyway, the whole story was to do with mess and chaos things being out of place so it's quite fitting really!  In the picture I was taking a moment to try and focus on the positives of the renovations which hadn't gone very well.  We were almost at the point of getting the bath in so I posted this picture on Facebook to say "yay, we are getting somewhere, it's not so bad, etc".


Then 5 minutes later the children were charging around and not heeding my warnings and consequently tipped over the bath bashing them both on the head and trapping them underneath! My son ended up with a huge egg on his head and my daughter was fine until she realised her big brother was getting all the attention and she started howling too!  I do think it is important to journal the not so good things about life too, don't you?!  The journalling here blends with the design because it was intentional in it's placement and the grey background means that the writing doesn't stick out.  I wish my writing was neater but here it becomes part of the design and I'm happy with that.  

Don't forget to enter the journalling challenge on our Facebook page to be in with a chance of winning the prize draw for vouchers for the Pretty My Page shop and as always, we'd love to see what you create so don't forget to hash tag us!

 Now go forth and make pretty pages!


Tuesday 26 September 2017

Fresh Start | Laura Jane Thomson | Journaling


Hello UK Scrap Addicts!  Hope you're all having a scrappy week and are enjoying the selection of journaling ideas for your memory keeping that our creative team have been sharing throughout the month of September. 

This month I have decided to incorporate a cut file which was issued by UK Scrap Addicts for National Scrapbooking Day 2017 alongside a beautiful stencil from Pretty My Page, to show case a photograph taken on a day where my life took a turn for the better and we had a fresh start.


This is my completed layout and I will explain the stages throughout this post:



I started with using the Fleur De Lys cut file which was a UK Scrap Addicts exclusive for National Scrapbooking Day 2017 and is available to download HERE.



I had this cut file in the centre of a sheet of white 12x12 cardstock and in each of the four corners of the white cardstock I used Wilted Violet Distress Oxides using a sponge blending tool through this beautiful Fleur De Lys stencil from Pretty My Page.



Next I layered my photograph onto a couple of pieces of patterned paper, and matted onto a piece of patterned cardstock which I had cut into a banner shape, before adhering to the page.  

Using embellishments from my stash I added floral pieces to two corners of my photograph and a flair badge to the top right cluster, to complete each of these clusters I added some gorgeous enamel dots which are also from Pretty My Page.




I decided to add hidden journaling to this layout by adding a folded piece of cardstock to the bottom left quarter of the page, the front of which is also decorated with the Fleur De Lys stencil, after stenciling the main page I flipped the stencil onto a second piece of cardstock and using a baby wipe to 'clean' the stencil achieved this faded effect.  

Lastly, I added my title "Fresh Start" using yellow Thickers to co-ordinate with my background paper. 



Using cut files in my scrapbook layouts is not something that I am overly familiar with, however I am quite happy with how his page has come together and I personally think that the colours work well together.  


Pretty My Page have recently re-launched their website with more of a focus on Mixed Media products to compliment the beautiful products Lisa has spent so long working on, so to celebrate this launch Lisa is offering our wonderful UK Scrap Addicts readers a 10% discount on purchases made through her website by using the code: UKSA10

Don't forget to check out our September 2017 challenge by visiting our blog here.


You can show your support for Pretty My Page's business by visiting their Facebook page or shopping on their website.

Thank you so much for popping into our blog and reading my post, and I hope you'll pop back soon. 

Laura xxx






Monday 25 September 2017

Run Wild | Jess Claire | Journalling




Hi guys welcome back to the UK Scrap Addicts.  I am so happy to be here talking to you all today about journalling.  Personally I value the words almost as much as the photos and I wanted to share some of my favourite journaling tips.

You can find my process video for this page here

Firstly I keep a daily journal.  Each night I write a little about the day in my travellers notebook insert.  It only has about 10 lines per day which means I can keep up.  This makes scrapbooking past weeks so much easier because I can look back at what we did that I didn't have photos of.

When planning my journalling I try to focus on the story I want to tell.  I try to get the facts in.  If you struggle with journalling think about the WHO, WHAT, WHERE and WHEN of the photos.  Even just these few facts can tell the story.  I also try to think about how I felt.

Now onto the techniques.  For my Project Life pages I use a variety of techniques to include journalling on the page.  The main one of course being journal cards, here is where I tend to tell the main story of the overall page.



I also add writing onto or around photos and on labels for specific things to say about the photos.

I like to use tags hidden in behind photos for journallling that I don't want to be visible to everyone looking through the album but I know it's there.

Adding word and phrase stickers can also add words and sentiments to your page for a little more detail.

I hope these ideas help with your journaling.
Have fun scrapping.
Jess




Sunday 24 September 2017

Kiss, Cuddle, High Five | Niki Rowland | Journalling



Hi UK Scrap Addicts fans! Niki here with you today with my take on the September theme which is 'Journalling'.  When I scrap I rarely start with the story, I usually begin with photos or products and include a relevant story if it fits but this time given the theme is 'Journalling' I thought about which story I wanted to document before I looked for anything else.

I have put together a process video for this layout which can be viewed below:



The story I chose was one about my little boy and how he always asks for a 'kiss, cuddle, high five' whenever we part, instead of the usual 'goodbye'. It has become a daily ritual but it is not documented in my scrapbooking anywhere and it is such a lovely little thing between us that it definitely justifies a whole layout dedicated to it.

Even though I knew I would journal about the story, I wanted to make it the main focus of my layout so I began by cutting those words in a large size on my cutting machine. This way I have managed to incorporate those words as the main focus of my layout - they are also part of the journalling.

Once cut, I used my We R Memory Keepers typewriter to type the explaination of the story directly onto my die-cut background.


Once my typed journalling was in place I could then move on to creating the rest of my layout. I backfilled the words and gave my die-cut background a colourful border. The papers I've used are Shimelle 'Glitter Girl' but even thought this collection is very pink, sparkly and girly, I pulled out some of the blue and green papers and created a very non-pink boy layout with them.

I embellished the layout with ephemera and other embellishments from the collection, again picking out all the blue and green coloured pieces and I finished off with a few flicks of water colour paint.



Thank you so much for stopping by today and taking a peek at my layout, happy scrapping xx


Find me designing for Freckled Fawn, Just Nick, Hey Little Magpie, GoGo Getaway, Silhouette UK, Stick it Down, and UK Scrap Addicts. Also on my own blog: Being Scrappy and on Instagram as @nikiclaire

Wednesday 20 September 2017

The Big Slide | Journalling | Sarah (ManxyCatCrafts)

Sarah here today, this month we are talking about journalling.

I like to keep my journalling hidden on my layouts usually on a tag tucked under a photo or cluster. Today's layout is no exception. I started out with black cardstock and added silver texture paste through a stencil from Pretty My Page www.prettymypage.co.uk


While the mixed media dried I created a paper cluster behind my photo to help it pop of the busy background paper. I used the Cool Kid collection by Crate Paper.


I wrote my journalling on a tag and made a hidden pocket with foam behind my photo cluster for it to sit.

I added my title following the line of the background paper towards the photo.


I added clusters of embellishments around the photo including ephemera, stickers and rubber charms.


I finished the layout with some enamel dots from Pretty My Page and some Silver Color Shine.


That was my layout finished!
You can check out my process video here. https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=uBLicj7TyTU


Be sure to check out the other girls layouts this month and have a peek at the Pretty my Page shop. UKSA10 for 10% off
Have a happy scrappy day!!