Cuter | Elaine King | Stamping

Good morning all

I hope you are all well and keeping warm in these increasingly cold months? Brr!

Anyway, today I am bringing you a stamped layout with a slight difference! Our prompt was to use stamps on our layouts. Now, I  really like stamping and creating a scene with them..like stamping lobsters and crabs on a seaside page, or flying birds over a countryside view but today I have decided to do something little different. 

I tried to consider the fact that some people have very limited scrapbook stash and may not, yet, have added stamps to their stash (believe me you will in the end! LOL)  So I have chosen to use the most basic of stamps for my sample..the eraser on the end of a pencil! 

To start with I cut a heart shaped piece of paper from some scrap paper and laid this on my white cardstock background. As always I buy my mixed media white card from Crafts4eternity. I then simply pushed my eraser onto a gold Ink Pad until I got a good coverage. I then stamped this little round circle multiple times around the edge of the heart, creating a stamped heart as a border. I then removed the heart paper. 

Once the ink was completely dry (you don't want smeared ink all over your page) I punched a couple of sections of the border from the white cardstock and added some matt gold scraps behind the chomped out pieces. (I love doing this technique as its a little different and it's easy to do). 

To finish I added my sepia toned photo and adhered it with gold spotty washi tape. I then added lots of small Kaisercraft baby themed wooden veneers that I got from Charmed Cards and Crafts. The hessian bows were from Poundland and I cut the title using my Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting device. 

I hope this helps you realise how simple your layouts can be and you don't need lots of expensive equipment in order to create an effective page. 

Thanks for stopping by..see you again next month!    

The smallest things.../ Sheena Rowlands / Choose a shape

Hi there Sheena here again x
This month on the blog we have been challenged to choose a shape and use it as a focus on our pages either in a large way or as embellishments.

The smallest things...

I decided to use one shape to make another on my page so using scraps from Pebbles Lullaby paper range I cut 2 inch squares which I then halved diagonally and arranged in the shape of a heart.

If you try this just be aware of the direction of some of your patterns as initially I had stocks flying upside down on one of my triangles!!

When I was happy with their position I machine sewed them down to add texture. I then embellished with die cuts and stickers from the same paper range and matted my photo on papers from the 6x6 pad and added to the right of the heart. I tried not to cover too much of the stitching as it was a bit of a labour of love!

I finished with a few splashes of watercolour paint onto the cardstock.

I hope you get chance to try this for yourself x

Till next time.

Baby Girl | Kirsteen | Sketch

Hello, Kirsteen here with my take on this months theme: sketches. I LOVE a sketch, esepecially when the crafty mojo has up and left. A sketch helps you to get cracking, stop obsessing (that you're not doing anything) and usually produces something pretty awesome. What's not to love? And you can totally interperate a sketch which ever way you choose. It's a great place to start, creativity on hols or not.

I picked this sketch. It's a huge leap from my recent projects (circles and filling pages full of embellishments is my current bag) but I wanted to challenge myself to try something a little different.

I picked a photo of my neice (I have a scrapbook on the go for all eight of my neices and nephews and my own two little men). I cropped it down to 4x4. With scrapbooks for ten little people all under the age of nine, I'm not short of a baby collection or two. I went with Crate Paper's Little You. I can't tell you how much I love this collection. The chipboard is so thick, the quailty is really impressive. I've bought this collection about five times! I'm not kidding. It's so pretty.

I decided to go for a busy patterned paper for my background. I'll admit it, all that 'white' space was making me quite feel uneasy. I picked this gorgeous grey star print called Perfect. It matched the black and white image of my neice 'perfectly'.

Then, I set about adding embelishments, keeping them close to my photo and all at the bottom of the page in line with the sketch. I didn't stick anything down too much, pressing a little on a corner here and there to hold it in place so I could still move bits and pieces around.

I've used chipboard, stickers and one of the diecut pieces from the collection. I wanted to cluster them around the photo but didn't want too many to go over the photo as I really wanted the photo to stand out.

The chipboard in all it's goodness! Finally, once I was happy I stuck everything down. I'm really chuffed at how this page turned out and I'm in no doubt that had I not used a sketch I'd still be sitting here at my desk shuffling papers. And as it's (Inter)national Scrapbook Day that would've been a tragedy!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all had a great National Scrapbooking Day (I'm off to have a sticky beak at all of your creations).