My Little Shoe Box Scrapkit: Happy Sunshine

This is another scrapkit meant for beginner scrappers, or for even children!

I’ve bought these papers quite a long time ago, but haven’t got the time to scrap and fussy cut all the little stuff. Or rather, perhaps not in that cheery mood to do a bright colour layout.

I like the little windmills created here.

And the beetle pegs, which I’ve been wanting to buy for quite some time and needed a use for it.

Materials Used: My Little Shoe Box pattern paper, Echo Park pattern paper, Tim Holtz stickers and paper clips.

Beautiful Always

I love creating backgrounds. This layout is inspired by Tim Holtz video on using perfect pearls.

Perfect pearls bonds very well with water. Hence, I stamped the images using distress ink, which is very watery ink and put the perfect pearls on top of it while the ink is still wet.

Following Tim Holtz instructions, I spritzed it with some water for the ink to run, before drying using a heat gun. As you can see, the first row of images, stamped using barn door, the ink ran too much. First time doing it, not experienced enough. The other two images, stamped using walnut stain turned out much better.

The background of the paper was then created using a mixture of distress inks, peeled paint, spiced marmalade, stormy sky, vintage photo, walnut stain.

I wanted to dry some mixed media today. So I used the story book paper to create the effect by sticking it down using matt gel medium.

But I guess I need to be more daring and stick more paper and white wash it more.

If you look close enough, the background also have some glimmer paint stamped images. It’s another of my newly bought gadgets.

I like how the background turned out in this layout. I hope you like it too!

Materials Used: Manila cardstock, distress inks, 7 Gypsies pattern paper, tags, G45 tag envelope, metal tags, ribbons, Tim Holtz alpha cards, metal charms and key, Unity Stamps.

Chloe's First Layout @ 4 1/2 Years Old

As I didn't have classes today, I decided to pamper Chloe a bit, by giving her a one to one personal START class.

She didn't do quite badly. I thought she cut well, considering she was using a less than a dollar scissors. She asked for the edge distresser to distress the sides of her paper, which did shocked me quite a little. But that came only after she stuck everything on the cardstock. So too bad, too late. And she also specifically requested she wanted the pom pom at the bottom of the layout. She loves the foam dots and was acting like a big girl in deciding which embellishment to pop up.

It's really lovely to scrap with your kids. It's good interaction and fun. Hope those with kids out there will try and have as much fun as I did.

Laines, where It all Begins...

My first interaction with scrapbooking is when I got Karen to do some souvenirs for the guests attending Chloe's first birthday party. I wanted something unique and memorable. Karen being a very good scrapper, did fantastic souvenirs that was exactly what I wanted.

Subsequently, after admiring the souvenir Karen did for a long time, I decided to signed up for SDU@ Laines. Didn't know why I choose Laines over the other store. It was just coincidental. Since it was the June holidays when I started SDU, I had all time in the month to scrap and buy stuff. Throughout that month, I was practically at Laines even before their shutters was raised.

I love the smell of Laines, the smell of borders, the smell of wheelock. The moving out of Borders was sad enough. And now Laines. Sigh~

Decided to remember Laines and my beginnings in this blog entry by posting my first layout. (Pretty horrible now that I look at it.)

I really love the warmth and helpfulness of all the people who works/worked @ Laines. I really love the family feel, which I guess it's why when I'm feeling down, that's the first place I go to.  

I end off this post with my second humble beginning @SDU with a 2 page layout.

I remember how impressed I was when Sharon showed me how to distress and introduced my first love, glossy accent.

Wheelock will never be the same without Laines. But I believe, the family feel of Laines will be the same if not better at the new home.

March Merly Sketch Challenge

I love this month Merly Sketch Challenge.

Coz there is a cool butterfly that is double layered. And Graphic 45 has it's lovely metal butterfly with brads? That's just exactly what I needed to complete this sketch.

I loved the tab part in the sketch and wanted to make it a little more interactive. So I recycled the same technique of the pull out tab, for more journaling. Though, it's a overuse idea, I thought it was quite apt in this sketch.

I layered the background with quite a number of different things. I love the brown woven thing. (I don't know what's its called, but I love it) And also since this layout is meant to leave lots of empty space, I decided to play with some paint. I so happen to found my credit card which was missing for months (already had a replacement, so it's a useless card now) and use it to create streaks of black. I love the way it turn out as a background behind the photos.

Did this layout while camping overnight in school and manage to find some Tim Holtz film strip around. Love how it turn out with the wordings and black and white photos.

The final layout

Materials Used: Authentique pattern paper, Prima pattern paper and flowers, Graphic 45, old curiosity shoppe butterfly, metal butterfly and brads, Tim Holtz Sizzix film strip die, Echo Park pattern paper, Trims.

Graphic 45 Unique Sweet Secrets

First, I need to thank Sharon for linking my blog to hers. I'm so touched. She's such a nice and powerful shifu. And I'm really happy that she's one of the top 30 finalists in the G45 call for DT. Hopes she gets in and I could hardly wait to copy see her fantastic projects. She's such a good scrapper and can easily create brilliantly beautiful things out of nothing. How I wish one day I can be like her.

Just like shifu, I love vintage stuff. Hence, I have been keeping the new curiosity paper till I have something better and more concrete in mind. I thought I had it today. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be what I expected. Probably next time it would be better.

Though, there are still a couple of new things that I tried to play with in this layout. I've glossed the butterflies and use a penknife to carefully lift their wings off the paper, creating more volume to the layout.

Tried using the wooden spools to wind the ribbons. Had fun dabbing the metal flowers with alcohol inks. And I love Graphic 45 packaging tags. They are so good to use as backgrounds.

I wanted to create a little shop that sells vintage and random stuff at the corner of my layout. But it didn't turned out too well. Hence, these vintage random stuff are clustered at this corner rather than "the shop".

Also tried my hand at Prima's resist canvas. It didn't turned out to be what I originally wanted. I wanted it brown with a tinge of gold, and some green (signifying moss) at the edges. Unfortunately, the brown was too empowering. I should have watered it down more.

But I love the new Graphic 45 pegs. They are so lovely. I was desperately trying to find a space to fit this in. I guess this is the only place that would fit.

This is also the first time, I tried creating a "secret pocket" for journaling.

Materials Used: Graphic 45 Curiosity pattern paper, Metal flowers, trims, pegs, envelopes, Prima resist canvas, Tim Holtz brads, tags, glass bottles.

Basic Grey Scrapkit- Friends Together

As this is a scrapkit meant for beginners, it doesn't involve much technique. I thought the layout turned out pretty soft and sweet, which is exactly what I wanted, without much techniques.

Fussy cut is probably the only thing you need to construct this layout. The roses, birds and butterflies are all fussy cut from a very nice piece of Basic Grey Curio paper.

Added some tags from the echo paper and prima paper. Misted the doily paper so that it's not too raw.

I love how the Tim Holtz film strips create some much of the 3D effect. I've got tons of them lying at home.

And the little pen tip that comes with wordings. So classical.

Materials Used: Basic Grey pattern paper, Tim Holtz film strip, pen tip and peg, doily paper.