Sweet | Sheena Rowlands | Sewing

Hi there UK Scrappers x Sheena here again x

This months challenge is sewing. I know this isn't something everyone likes to do but it can be a great way to add some texture and interest to your scrapbook pages.

Sweet.

For this page featuring my new Nephew and a crocheted horse I've just made him I decided to use both machine and hand sewing as I know not everyone has access to a sewing machine.

I used the sewing machine to firstly sew my cardstock to a patterned paper border leaving enough of a gap to bend the cardstock edges slightly. Also for the first time I stitched my photo to the matting layers behind and I really like how this looks so will probably do it again.

From the Pink Paislee - Little Adventurer range I die cut a number of circles of different sizes. I added interest to some of these using complimentary coloured thread, either by chain stitching around the edge or by adding french knots to the circles with animals on, adding to the border that was already there.

Adding sewing to embellishments in this way is less scary if you are new to sewing than adding directly to your layout. If you are not familiar with some embroidery stitches there are some good you tube videos you can watch whilst you practise. 

I finished my page with a die cut title and some wood veneer from the Little Adventurer range.

I hope you feel inspired to try sewing on your creations and please do share them with us over on our Facebook page or if you have any sewing related questions we would be happy to help x

Till next time x

Simplify | Di Willcox | Sewing

Hello there scrap addicts! It's Di here today :)

Has anyone started, or even finished, a layout involving sewing yet?! And if you have, have you shared it with us in the Facebook group?

For my sewing layout I've created a 'quilted' background by using a triangular quilting template, I was given, to shape the papers. I used papers from Pink Paisley 'Indigo and Ivy' and OneCanoeTwo 'Saturday Afternoon' to reflect the muted colours in the photo, which was of one of our rural accommodations in Italy.

I used some embroidery thread in complimentary colours and sewed around a selection of the paper pieces in different stitches, just because I felt it would add interest to the overall layout!

I love the rose gold foiled elements that feature in the 'Saturday Afternoon' papers so fussy cut some flowers to fill the bottom left hand corner and a single one in the top right corner, along with a journalling card.

I finished off the layout with a few embellishments, the name of the place we stayed and a foam backed house that is also foiled.

 This whole layout surprised me in the fact that I chose to hand sew the quilted pieces, when I usually reach straight for my sewing machine when stitching is mentioned! 

Hopefully this has inspired some of you to give it a go, it doesn't have to be anything complicated, and enjoy the challenge ;)

Di x

Smile, Laugh, Play | Sheena Rowlands | Fussy Cutting

Hi there UK Scrap Addicts x Sheena here again.

Our challenge this month is Fussy Cutting. When I think of fussy cutting I think of cutting flowers from patterned papers so I wanted to do something different for this challenge.

I had a root through some of the patterned papers in my stash and found this one by Pink Paislee for Paige Evans and felt it had potential so I got fussy cutting.

Smile, Laugh, Play.

From the patterned paper I cut out all the 5 full scalloped circles with a little white border to help them stay whole.I tend to do this type of fussy cutting in front of the TV but with a tray on my lap to catch the bits!!

Once cut I positioned them one at a time on the patterned paper background machine stitching them down. Once they were all sewn down I curled the scallops a little.

I added a small photo and embellished around it with Paige Evans die cuts from a number of different ranges.

I hope you are inspired to do some fussy cutting and please share with us on our UK Scrap Addicts Facebook group.

Till next time x

Night Time Sparkle / Jackie Ashton / Sequins

Hi crafters, Jackie here with my take on this months challenge - Sequins and Glitter.

For this month my layout is very minimalistic for me.

Night Time Sparkle

The photograph is of the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower - not only at night, but it was on the hour and it was sparkling - the photographs didn’t capture the actual sparkle, as it was over very quickly - but I managed to get the spot light beaming from the top.

I wanted the background paper to be slightly distressed, so added a thin layer of white gesso and added some squeezed lemonade oxide ink over the top using the packaging technique.

I added some sequins to thread, which I criss-crossed on the page, adding a few sequins to each thread.

I printed 2 copies of my photographs and added 3D foam to them, adding a die cut frame, which I cut in half to the edges of the photograph and added 2 label under my photographs to add some journalling.

For the title I used some mini alphabets from my stash and the ‘sparkle’ word is from PinkFresh Studio Joyful Day collection.

Don’t forget to share your layouts over on our Facebook page, we would love them using months challenge.

Thats all from me this month, till next time.

Happy scrapping

Beautiful Ordinary Life | Karen Moss | No Cardstock

Hello, hello - Karen here with my page for the No Cardstock challenge.

Almost all of my pages involve white cardstock in some form or another and so the thought of making one without my beloved white card was quite a challenge.

Fortunately, I had some papers from the Indigo Hills 2 range by Pink Paislee and these papers are very sturdy so I thought I would use these.

I fussy cut the wreath and the sprigs of flowers and then also cut some bunches of flowers from the revers of the paper with the sprigs on.

I cut away part of the wreath and added the sprigs of flowers above and the cut out bunches of flowers at the bottom.

After adding my photo, all that remained was to add some die cuts from the same range.

I have a YouTube video here of how quickly this page came together.

Karen x

Marvelous Day | Kirei Baldwin | Small Photos

Hi Scrap Addicts!

Kirei here with my layout for this month's theme which was to use small photos on a layout. I love using small photos so this was right up my street!

I used a fab cut file from the Silhouette Store by Paige Evans and backed the little hanging photo frames with patterned papers from Pink Paislee's 'Pick Me Up' collection (also by Paige Evans!). 

I attached three photos to the cut file using paper clips. My photos are printed on a Canon Selphy using the '4 up' setting with borders. I like to use a border on my photos as it helps them pop from the page.

I embellished the cut file and photos using stickers from the 'Pick Me Up' collection.

I then added a title, as there are lots of lovely word stickers in the collection I made up a rather long one straight down the page which helps draw the eye back up to the photos.

I added some journalling at the top of the page and called it done. Really love how this turned out!

The rest of the Team have been creating with this theme all month so there is lots of lovely inspiration for you! So why don't you join in with this month's 'Small Photo' theme and share your layouts over on the UK Scrap Addicts Facebook page.....we love to see what you create!

Thanks for looking, happy scrapping!

Waste Not.... | 6x6 Paper | RamblingsofGeo

Waste Not...

Something different from me this month, a pink happy 12 x 12 layout as its my Birthday today! - woooo 

I am very conscious of the amount of waste that we get from scrapbooking, and you will always find me grabbing things out the table bins at crops, yep, i said it, im a scrappy bin diver, and proud! 

One mans junk, is another mans treasure!

For this layout, i used the branding strips in my 6x6 paper pads to layer up behind my photo to make a nice colourful background. 

I have tried to completely finish a Pink Paislee 6x6 pad, the Fancy Free one. I have 11.5 pages left, and no unused branding strips. Wooo

It feel so good to use things up!

Please also check out the process video of this layout, if you give it a go please leave a comment and share on our facebook group.


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You / Sheena Rowlands / 6x6 pads

Hi there Scrap Addicts x Sheena here again .

This month we have been challenged to use 6x6 paper pads to create with. When I looked in my stash I realised I do tend to buy a 6x6 paper pad if there is one available in a range of paper. So I got a few out on my desk ready to play.

You.

I started by picking 6x6 papers that I liked together from 4 different Paige Taylor Evans paper ranges for Pink Paislee. The great thing about 6x6 papers is that with the pattern shrunk to this size I find it much easier to use the larger, brighter patterns.

I cut the papers I wanted into 4 inch squares and arranged them onto white cardstock, when I was happy with their placement I machine stitched them down giving them a quilted effect. 

I've used 10 different patterned papers to create this background!!

I matted my photo onto white card to help it pop from the busy background, then added a small area of embellishment around the photo using die cuts and journalling cards from the same ranges.

Have a root in your stash, do you have 6x6 paper pads just waiting to be used?

If so, give our challenge a go x

Till next time x

Happy Heart | Niki Rowland | Choose a Shape

Hey there UK Scrap Addicts! Niki here with you today. This month's theme is to choose one shape and carry that through your layout. I've chosen a star shape. I Started off by cutting a star cut file out of star patterned paper (cut file is a freebie from the Stick it Down challenge blog) which I then backfilled using turquoise paper. Becuase the star cut file was cut from a busy patterned paper the internal stars needed something solid behind them to make them stand out.

Once my cut file was in place, I added my photos and a large star tassle embellishment to the right. These were by Dear Lizzy and the ribbons came in all different colour and this one happened to go really well with my layout and photos.

I then went through my stash and pulled out as many star embellishments as I could find. I was predominantly using the Wild Child collection by Pink Paislee but many of the stars in that were from the boy collection and too dark for my layout but I managed to find a few that worked. I also had three packs of puffy star stickers from Freckled Fawn so I went a bit crazy adding those in coordinating colours.

I added gold Heidi Shine splatters and drops and then went looking for sequins. I pulled out a few sequins in the right colours as well as some tiny gold star sequins too. I dotted these around my background.

And after adding some journaling at the bottom that's my layout complete. I have made a process video for you to view below.

Thank you so much for joining me today, I hope you've enjoyed my layout and my process video - see you next month and happy scrapping xx

Find me on my own blog: Being Scrappy and on Instagram as @nikiclaire

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!