Scrapbook Studio Design Team

Only one day to go!!

These last few days have been very busy ones for me, as Im one of those people who leave everything to just about the end!! I figure I work much better under pressure. Today I set about wrapping some of the presents that I finally got around to buying yesterday. Of course, the moment I began wrapping I realized I had forgotten to buy gift tags. One of the down falls of living in the country is not having any shop close by. However, I took a look at my wrapping paper and solved my problem very quickly by cutting out the pictures on the wrapping paper and whipping up a few gift cards to coordinate with the parcels. Below are two of my speedy efforts!

 

 

I want to leave you all with this email a dear friend sent me today, I can relate to it, so guess maybe some of you can also...

T’was the night before Christmas, I'm glued to the tree.
I'm wondering what Santa brought just for me.

Could it be cardstock or chipboard or lace?
Or a Cricut, I said, with a smile on my face.

And that's when I heard him,
"Hi Santa, " I said

"You know....good little girls
Should be in their beds."

"I know I should Santa,
And now I've got caught.

But I was just so excited
To see what you brought."

"Well, let's take a look
In this room where you work.

He shook his head quickly,
And left with a jerk.

I heard him exclaim
As he put it in gear.

"You've got enough crap,
I'll see you next year

Author unknown

 

Thanks Sandra!

 

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas day full of fun, love, happy moments and...lots of goodies!

 

 

Hi there. I Thought you may like to see some of the things you can do with Alcohol Ink. Alcohol inks are acid free, and they dry very quickly. You can use them on glossy paper and surfaces such as shrink plastic, glass metal, transparency's , in fact just about everything!

Check out this link to see how to use them on gloss card       http://glamourgirlstamps.co.nz/projects/AlcoholInkBackgrounds.php

and this link for use on glass                      http://glamourgirlstamps.co.nz/projects/MemorySlides.php

I used them on my Layout below by painting the flowers and leaves onto a Prima Marketing12 X 12" clear printable transparency.

 

Check out this layout by Aviril, over at Scrapbook.com that uses alcohol inks to create the lovely butterfly on the page.

 

Be sure to take up the challenge  to be in with a chance to win a set of Alcohol inks!

Catch you later, Sonya.

Congradulations!

Congratulation's to our very own Louise Williams and Vicki Morris who were two of the very talented ladies to make it onto the Up2scrap Elite team. I am sure we all look forward to seeing your work in print!

Another Congratulation's goes to the winner of the October Sketch challenge, the lovely Beverley. Thanks so much to everyone who took part in my first ever Sketch challenge, I love all of your Layouts and the way you have all put your own mark on the sketch. Wonderful work everyone!

Round 18 of the Bossy scrapper was held last night. and as a special treat Meek put together a very tasty menu and took our orders during the day. Take a look at this for a fine spread!

Appetizer
Bruchetta
Bread and Butter
French Onion Soup
Shrimp Cocktail
Hot Wings

Salad
Caesar Salad
Greek Salad
Tomato and Mozzarella
Cobb Salad

Main Entrée
Fettuccini Alfredo
Steak and Lobster
Vegetarian Stir Fry
Fried Chicken
Baked Salmon

Side Dish
Baked Potato
Green Bean Almondine
Mac & Cheese
Rice Pilaf
Glazed Carrots

Dessert
Tiramisu
Cheesecake
Sherbet
Hot Fudge Sundae
Red Velvet Cupcake

We  chose one order from each category, alas we were only allowed one pudding each!

I tuned into the Cafe at 8pm Sharp with my mouth watering and so looking forward to my Shrimp cocktail, Baked salmon and the other 'tasty's'! What a shock I got to find out that my baked salmon represented orange, purple and white and my hot fudge sundae meant I was to use card stock only! Horror of horror's - I don't 'do' purple and orange!! ... not until Meek sent us to this blog http://colorcombosgalore.blogspot.com/  Oh how I then wished to trade my fudge sundae for Sherbet, that would have meant that I could have a pattern paper background. Wasn't to be.                                                                                                                                                     So with my list of a 12" X 6" layout, a Felt piece, my orange, purple and white card stock and three, or more buttons I lunched into the unknown!!

This is what I come up with

 

Yes. I have played it safe, and not used a whole lot of orange and purple. I am keen now to try  a 12 X 12" full on Orange and Purple LO!

Thanks for the challenge Meek

I would just like to say a big welcome to Fuzzyboots who joined in with the fun and chat in the Scrap cafe last night. If you want to join in the fun all you need to do is register here with a user name and password, then be ready to Log in on Sundays around 8pm. Hope to see you there!                     Thanks for looking, Sonya

                                                                                                                                                 

Check this out

Don't you just Love that wall paper Scrapmeek found! Do any of you have fun ways of show casing your photos or art work?? At our house we have a glass sheet on our coffee table. We had this made some time ago to make life in our house a little more stress free! The children can pop their hot drinks on it, as well as their permanent markers and life's still  good! ANDI get to pop our latest photos under it, or the odd LO (that has no raised embellishments) and the school newsletters that contain photos of our children of course. It always provides a good talking point when friends pop in for coffee.

Last night during the bossy scrapper the 'Boss' alias Scrapdizzy introducted to us something that was all new to me- It 's called Wordle. Check it out here http://www.wordle.net/ if you haven't already. Check out the gallery as well to see how people have used their wordle's!! http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/gallery/ Im sure more Wordle Lay outs will appear here as the week goes on!

Thank youScrapdizzy for introducing yet another way for me to full in my 'spare time'.

Next I just wish to share with you a little about this fun item by 'Collections' that I received in my Design team kit this month. It comes in the way of an A4 sized transparency sheet. This one sheet contains many images that can be cut out and added to your LOs for that little something extra, just to finish off. These would also be great to have on hand for ATC's and cards.

Check out the bird on my page that was cut from my sheet, called Ephemera. 

 Hope you have all had a lovely Labour weekend. Catch you next week. Sonya

Paper Butterfly

Here are my instructions for making a simple butterfly that can be used on cards, or to adorn your scrapbook pages, A whole cluster of tiny butterfly's can look really sweet! Please let me know if you get stuck with my instructions! (leave a message in the comments and I will TRY to set you on the right track!)

1-Begin with a square piece of paper, large or small,thats up to you, just so long as it is square.

2-Next fold the bottom right hand corner up to the top left hand corner.

3-Fold both left and right hand  corners together again one more time, then unfold them ( back to step 2),  all we want from that fold is the crease.

 

4-With the longest straight edge facing towards you (as in the picture above) fold the top point down towards you so that it hangs down a little beyond the bottom  straight edge.

5-Now beginning at the top of the center crease we made before, fold the left hand side down towards the bottom, folding on a slight angel,

 6-Do the same with the right hand edge. You now have one wing!

7-All that is left to do is to repeat the whole thing to make the other wing.

8-Then either draw, stamp or cut a body and feelers, or just a body and make the feelers from wire or something else, use what ever you fancy!

 

The more you make the easier they become! Try making them in a shimmery paper or a coloured vellum.

Enjoy! from Sonya

A little bit of history

Its neat to see in the gallery

http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/gallery/ 

that the ATC cards are taking off and so many people are giving them a go! I have done a little digging into the history of these little pieces of art and just for fun thought I would share a little of what I found out with you.

In the 16th century men had little wallet sized nude portraits painted of their mistresses, by all accounts theses ATC cards were all the rage!! They were sold though, not traded. French artists were the first to come up with the idea to use ATC cards for advertisements. The English followed this trend in the mid 1700's. During the Impressionist age ATC cards were traded among artists to enable them to study one another's styles and techniques. They also traded and sold their art cards for board, food and other life necessities. ATC baseball cards come into fruition in 1887, these were not massed produced, so I imagine they would be worth a small fortune now. As time went on these cards were sold with bubblegum and were then of course traded among friends. It was not until the 1960 that the size of the ATC was standardized to the 2.5 X 3.5 size we know now.

Happy creating and collecting. Smiles to you all from Sonya

Little big things.

  In my Design team kit this round I got some lovely little goodies with huge potential!! Take a look at a few of the things I have created with some of these goodies, on one of my Layouts.

First up, there was a little Brass Stencil by Plaid, I had a play with dry embossing, texture paste and simply tracing around the shape onto shrink plastic. I decorated a little canvas very quickly and so so simply by using texture paste over the stencil. Thought it could be an easy way to brighten up a nursery, or child's room.  

Now, getting back to my scrapbook page... First up the Dry embossing. Very simple to do, just place your card-stock over the top of the stencil which you then place on your light box- or tape to a window, as I did! Then just use a burnisher,as found here http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/theshoppe/product_info.php?cPath=57_215&products_id=3042  or similar, and trace around the inside of the stencil. So simple! I then rubbed a stamp pad over the top of the butterfly and cut it out.

                                        

Next, I traced the Brass stencil onto shrink plastic using a Slick Writer Pen.This handy little pen is quick to dry, permanent(a must for shrink plastic) and non toxic. It also has a nice fine tip. After shrinking the plastic I had a nifty little embellishment for my page.

                                          

Along with the stencil I received a bag of Fancy Pants  Book Plates. Thought it might be fun to use a couple as mini frames so I added doodles with the Slick Writer, which I also used to 'paint' my brads the required shade of green. On the other book plate I added a little bling and a rubbon.

 

                                       

That fun paper you can see is from the Junkitz Range called Flower.ful  the one above is Flower.ful Stripes. The other piece of paper used in this Layout is called Flower.ful Words. The words are so neat that I didn't want to cover them up too much so I used Dimensional Magic, found here http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/theshoppe/product_info.php?cPath=92&products_id=594  to high light one of the words to use in my title.

                                          

Now all thats left to do is to put all of my little elements together! Do be sure to check out the finished page in the gallery. http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2951&cat=675&limit=recent

Sending everyone a little sunshine - from Sonya.

Spring has sprung!

Don't know about the rest of you, but spring came to Duntroon today, was lovely to feel a bit of warmth in the air, only the thought of swapping my ink pads and buttons for gardening gloves and clippers does not thrill me too much!! Spotted this little bit of spring in my garden today.

                      

Now, I was so impressed with the lovely things the design team ladies have been doing with the negative's (or scraps to any non scrappers out there) of their little house's that I just had to find a use for a piece of mine. I used a small left over to make a frame for a photo which I adhered to a hinge, and proceeded to make a little book, something that I have been planning to have a go at for a year or so now! Here is my finished book. Happy to put instructions on if anyone is interested.

                          

Lovely to see all of the Lay outs from last nights round of the Bossy Scrapper in the gallery today, check them out if you haven't already http://www.scrapbookingbydesign.co.nz/gallery/                      Thank you Kelly for being a wonderful boss, and thank you to the ladies still up at mid- night finishing off their page's, it was lovely to have company!!         bye bye for now from Sonya

Hi there, Hope you are all keeping warm and staying clear of the winter bugs that are around at the moment.

Crafters Workshop mini templates... I love what Heidi has done with hers. I have to tell you though, that when I first took mine out of its box I thought- OH my, what ever am I going to do with that! I spent several days looking at it side ways, and went around looking for excuses not to use it! Harhar, well now there is no putting it down!

Take a look at what I have done with it these past couple of days.

First I decided to play with the template with some paint (I feel comfortable with paint!)

I masked around the snow flakes I wanted to use.

Choose some white card stock, popped a dab of paint onto a piece of sponge and began dabbing away.

                              

I gave the paint a moment to dry and after inspecting my flakes thought it would be nice to add a bit of sparkle to the larger flakes.

Now kindyglitz and I sometimes dont get along too well, but with the mask back in place over my snow flake I found it so easy to pop the kindyglitz in just the right place.

                             

Here is my finished 6 X12'' page.

                             

There was no stopping me once I was away! I decided to use the swirls on the template in much the same way on my next layout, this time though I masked, and used a stamp pad directly onto the template to create this boarder.

                              

On the same LO, as I say there was no stopping me, I traced a few swirls onto card and cut them out, then glued them onto my page.

                              

Check out the awesome, new Bazzill Sparkle brads, they have a beautiful sheen,and the gorgeous new Imaginisce paper, this sheet is called Snowy Jo - Santas Secret Garden, Its double sided,  I could not decide which side to use, they were both so lovely so I ended up cutting the paper and turning one piece over ,so both sides showed!

                                

I also made some cards with the template, here is a photo of my favorite one. This time, for a change I traced the shapes on the template, both the flakes and the swirls and coloured the flakes with watercolour pencils. Spot the small peice of Snowy Jo paper that I have used here as well- it was the last remaining peice I had!!

                               

Now, Louise's house's really rock, would love to show you mine, but had best save them for another day, as I do think I have taken up more than my fair share of space on the blog for one night!!

Happy scrapping from Sonya

Hi there

Hi there, my name is Sonya Pickles. I was lucky to win a spot on the design team in The SYTYCS competition run recently on the web site.Visit me at http://picklespatch-sonya.blogspot.com/

I first become interested in papercrafts about four years ago. My husband had a major accident on his motor bike and this saw us spend six months in Burwood spinal hospital. A nurse at the hospital convinced me to join a group of ladies who got together once a week to make cards.By the time we returned home I was hooked on this new pass time. My sister, seeing me busy with my new found hobby , suggested I try my hand at scrapbooking. What's that I asked? I did a little research, went shopping and that was that really- I was hooked!

2: I have been scrapbooking for about three years now.

3: My style I would have to discribe as Fussy. Im big on everything matching and I definitely  sweat the small stuff! Until just recently I would spend about two weeks working on one layout! I am moving on from that now though, and working hard at relaxing my style somewhat!

4:The amount of journalling I add depends on the photos I am scrapping. Sometimes the photo says it all, other times I definatley need words to get the memory across. I love to include inspirational quotes on my pages.

 

5:I am very lucky to have a wonderful 'craft' room. It was a surprise from my hubby , who had it added during major alterations to our home that had to be done to accommodate wheelchairs and equipment after his accident.

6:I am a self confessed perfectionist and a tidy freak, so although I get into some major messes my room is almost always tidy before I leave it.

7:My favourite subjects to scrap are my three children and the little, and big moments in their lives.

8:My craft room walls are lined with  magazines, and when im not creating I usually have my nose in them looking for inspiration.

9: I always begin a LO with my photo first. The paper, LO style and embellishments are all determined by that photo.

10:Scrapbooking is my escape from life and its pressures, I guess thats why I love it so much. You can go to a whole different place when your scrapping!

11:My favorite LO would have to be someone elses!! Harhar, I'm my own worse critic.

12:I love stamps, comes from my card making days I guess, but  I do love to include stamps on my LO's. And with scrap fashion changing  the way it does what better excuse is there for buying another stamp.

1:I dont really have a favourite "scrap colour" but I tend to favour complimentary shades.

14:My favourite scrapbooker? Oh I have so many favorites! If I have to choose I would say that I love my best friend and scrapping buddy Robyn's, scrapbooking as I have seen the love that goes into each page. and I love Vicky Morris's scrapbooking for its total uniqueness.

15: To anyone starting out scrapbooking I say- spring clean now because once you start scrapbooking, priorites change big time! Seriously though, avoid tring to scrap all of those days gone by photos to begin with. Start with 'now' photos and just have fun!