Sparkle and shine | Elaine King | Sparkle

Good morning one and all

Today I am bringing you a layout using lots of sparkle as per our April Prompt... I hope you can join in too?  

Firstly I took a sheet of sparkly pink glitter cardstock and used it as a mat for my trimmed down white card background. Now I don't know about you but I find sticking to glitter card is impossible...so to get around that I used wet acrylic glue..Pinflair in this instance. 

Then I took my white card, purchased from Crafts4Eternity . I buy their card stock because they  stocks a 300gsm card that twists and warps far less when using wet mixed media.  I punched out three 'chomped' pieces of the border using a Martha Stewart punch. 

I then drew three concentric circles with a sparkly Kaisercraft gel pen purchased from Merly Impressions. These are my 'Go To' pens for journalling and anything sparkly. I then drew random little hearts using the same pen along the three lines of the circles and added lots of sequins. 

Finally I matted the photograph and added a piece of Unicorn paper (and one other) from the Dream Big collection from Simple Stores that I got from Hey Little Magpie using some of the ephemera from the collection too. I raised the photo up on foam pads for extra dimension. 

Hey presto, one quick and easy layout with lots of sparkle. I do hope this inspires you to give our prompt a try..have fun!

1st Christmas | Elaine King | No Cardstock

Hello everyone

Today I am bringing you a layout made using out monthly prompt of ‘No Cardstock’. At first glance this did seem as though it would be, well, challenging! Lol . However, once you set your mind to it you realise there are lots of papers out there that are ‘neutrals' within a collection so this what I chose to use for my background papers.

The main, pale grey, background piece used here is an ancient piece of paper from my stash and the green heart I used was from a kit I bought from Mind The Scrap last summer.

The rest of the papers are from of one of my favourite collections from Kaisercraft called Mint Wishes. I originally had this collection sent to me when I was on the Design Team for Merly Impressions and it soon became one of my favourite ever collections. There are still some remnants of the kit available from them and some on Charmed Cards and Crafts I believe.

To start with I drew a large freehand heart on the green paper and cut it out using good old fashioned scissors, (you don’t always need fancy tools). Then once I was happy with the positioning I started cutting lots of little banners of varying lengths to create the left hand side of the heart. I always find that using wet glue is preferable in these situations to give you a degree of move-ability when you are figuring out where to place your pieces.

Once I was happy I mounted the photo on more neutral papers from the collection and raised it on foam pads for dimension. I then fussy cut the flowers and arranged them to form clusters. I then added more embellishments and I was done. I confess this was inspired by a layout I saw on Pinterest  but I do hope this has given you more ideas to create a layout using no cardstock and how to use up those neutrals you find in most collections.








One of my friends commented that maybe the layouts may be too flimsy but that has not been my experience at all. The weight of the paper these days is generally very good and with the layering it gives it stability. Once it is in the page protector it will be fine.. trust me! 


anyway.. I do hope you have enjoyed your visit. do remember to come back too though! 

Superstar | Elaine King | 6" Paper Pad

Good morning all. 

My turn up on the blog today showing you my way to use up 6" paper pads. These can be very versatile to use for scrapbooking as they are, of course, already perfectly co-ordinated and even have nice little pop out ephemera all ready to use. 

To start with I found a photo I was keen to scrap, (my Mum and I back in March at her birthday celebration.) She was, conveniently, wearing a black sequin top and I too had a jumper with a silver star all in sequins too. How handy was that? 

Anyway, I went through my, not inconsiderable, collection of pads and found this one from Heidi Swapp which had pale blue, black and dotty papers that I knew would work with my photo. I found this pad at TK Maxx when they used to stock a decent range of craft supplies. 

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I then matted my photo onto some black card that I got from Crafts4Eternity. Michele who runs the group stocks very good card stock that is brilliant for mixed media too. 

Once I had done this I took several sheets of the pad and cut them into 3/4" strips which I then cut further into 2" blocks ready for the herringbone piecing. I then inked all of the edges for definition. This was my practice run

To start I tried all of the pieces on the background card to make sure I had tried all the combinations to form my herringbone pattern. When I was happy I then took to sticking them all down. 

TIP: Use wet glue at this stage as it gives you more 'wriggle room' than DST or tape runners. 

Here it is.. almost straight! lol 

When they were all stuck down and dried I trimmed the overhang off the black card stock from C4E too. I then mounted the photo. 

To finish I added some die cut stars and sequin stars to embellish finishing off with some silver alphas for the title. 

I do hope the team are inspiring you this month to start using up those long hoarded paper pads. I know they are me! 

Thanks for stopping by, do remember to let us know you've visited. 

'til later

Guest Designer | Elaine King

We have the Mum of a hero guesting for us today!  Welcome Elaine and her touching layout...

Hi I'm Elaine and I'm a Scrapaholic! I live in a tiny hamlet called Chiddingstone Hoath in Kent, (somewhere between Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells) and I have been scrapping for about 8 years now and I can honestly say it's almost taken over my life! Lol. Fortunately my long suffering husband indulges my hobby and has recently allowed me to commandeer our entire dining room for my craft room! These days I scrap a lot of my little Granddaughter (aged 2 & 1/2) and of course, my husband, two sons and my daughter in law. 

Both my husband and my youngest son are firefighters in the London Fire Brigade and I have journaled about my youngest son in this layout. He (front centre in the photo) recently attended the Grenfell Tower disaster and my journaling reflects the emotions I felt at this time. Journaling is not something that comes easy to me as I don't really like my handwriting but when I do journal it has to be heartfelt, as in this case. I think it is important to use your own handwriting for future generations so I prefer not to print from a computer for this. 

To create the page I used Kaisercrafts Shine Bright collection and I used a Stampin Up punch to create the small patterned hexagons aswell as a diamond Press stitched hexagon die for the black backgrounds for each of them. 

I also matted each piece of patterned paper on black cardstock as well as the photo and added three black gem brads, a couple of wood veneers and a cork hexagon too. To finish I added the title using black and gold Thickers and a smaller sub-title in black beneath the photo. The little 'Hazardous'  Flair badge was a real find from a friend!

Thank you so much Elaine.  You can find more of Elaine's work here: blog and Instagram