Cleaning up at a Refreshing Blog Hop!

I was really pleased to be asked by Jennifer Grace, to be involved in one of her blog events again.  Jennifer is one of my co-designers at S J Crafts and her events are always full of inspiration, ideas and prizes and I always find new blogs to follow and projects to try.  

This event focuses on Jennifer's word for the year which is "Cleanse" and so those of us who are guesting on the blog hop this weekend have all made crafty projects to share based on something along those lines.  You can find out more about the blog hop the associated prize at the bottom of this post.   

I pondered Jennifer's word "cleanse" and very much wanted to tie it in to my own word for the year - heart. She suggested water themes, decluttering, healthy living, letting go etc and all those things could fit with my own word in some broad way or another.  I began to tackle a layout on the subject of letting go as a way of allowing myself to register that there was something I had to temporarily put on hold.  Some aspects of my crafting endeavors need to go on the back burner for a bit because my mental health needs to take priority and is taking up a lot of time right now.  I sat down yesterday to put the title on it "Letting Go... For Now!" When I looked at the layout so far though, I didn't like it.  I decided to to start over and the word "clean" kept coming to me, probably because its something I need to focus on in many ways.  However with only a short time available I needed something I could conjure up but that would take me forward in trying to free my mind and my home of some clutter.  I needed something to help me achieve order in the house.  Here's what happened....

Firstly I carried out a partial scrapectomy of the unwanted layout in order to keep the cork print (From Simple Stories, Daily Grind) to attach to a baking tray.

I trimmed the cork paper to fit inside the flat area of the tray.  Then I trimmed it again.  And again.. ahem... I brayered Mod Podge to adhere the paper to the tray and to get a firm flat surface.  I still got air bubbles but you can't see them.  Mod Podge dries clear so you also can't see where you've run the glue along the edges to give them a good seal.

I needed to be able to hang my schedule board up and luckily there were 2 drainage holes in the tray that I could thread ribbon through.  I used bottle tops for my magnets so I punched a pinked circle and added a blob of glue in the centre to adhere them.  

I also wanted to use a few wooden pegs but I didn't have time to wait for paint to try so I added a strip of washi tape to the fronts.

When I bought the bottle tops a while back I also bought some matching epoxy circles so I added one on top of the punched circle.  Then I remembered that I was supposed to put letter stickers on the paper circles first... ahem... Then the circles popped out because the glue in the middle of the tops wasn't touching the paper so I had to redo the glue around the edges...ahem... It was going well at this point, yes?

Next I added some magentic tape to the backs of the bottle tops.  You can see the size that I used here was really small because I only needed them to hold a scrap of paper really.  Later on, when I came to take the photographs I discovered that the magnets were too small  to hold the paper through another layer of paper and Mod Podge.  I discovered this when the wind blew slightly and I spent a while rummaging around the garden for the bits of paper and magnets!

So with those bits done, I could move on finally... I covered the back of an envelope with matching paper (it was actually Christmas paper!) to keep all my bit of paper in.  I folded back the flap and stuck it down then decorated the front.

I started assembling the magnets on the board which proved quite tricky because there was a lot less room than I thought!  I made a title of Chores and added some flowers but there was little room to add anything else that wasn't part of the actual scheduling.  

I pegged the envelope on the board to hold the individual chores and made another magnet from a button to hold the things I need to do every day.  In time I will laminate all the chores and the daily list but I'll wait until we move and have sorted out how different things might or might not be!

So this is the finished article (minus one of the chores that I never found in the garden...) We have a list of the days of the week down the side with room for a chore  (you need to leave enough room on the slip of paper for the magnet to sit on without covering the writing) and then the rest of the chores go in the envelope.  The pegs marked B and L are for little chores for Bella and Louis to complete.  I'll keep these on circles so we can tell the difference when they are in the envelope.  The green theme is to go with our kitchen which is where I will be hanging this pretty schedule.  

Thank you Jennifer for giving me a prompt to do something I've been meaning to do for ages and something that will hopefully help us start sorting out our cupboards ready for moving if / when it happens!

So that's my contribution, I wonder what the other people on the hop have come up with?  As always, if you comment on all the blogs in the hop, finishing at www.jennifergracecreate.com to let Jennifer know you've been all the way around, then you'll be in with a chance to win a refreshing prize pack featuring Glitz 77 and My Mind's Eye Izzy items, total worth over £25. All entries must be received by Monday the 9th of June at 10.59pm BST. 

Your next stop along the hop is Louise: http://scrapbook-me.blogspot.co.uk/

I hope you enjoy the weekend as much I will!

Bye for now
xx

Divided Loyalties - Part 3

Last week I said I had one more set of projects to share using the cut-apart cards from Simple Stories - Homespun collection, and here they are!  

The sentiment on this piece really spoke to me as something we need to remember in this house.  I mounted it onto some pinky-red patterned paper from the collection and then onto one of the larger pieces in the cut-apart cards.  I used an old frame to show it off so that I can use it as a piece of home decor in our new house.  The photo was taken when I was on a retreat in the Cotswolds with some great girls - isn't the garden wonderful!?

I added a sticker to the top left corner directly on the frame for added interest.

 Then I added a branding strip and a couple of pieces of chipboard at the bottom right for balance.  I can't wait to get it on the wall in our new home.  Its such a great message.

Talking of our new home, sadly our vendors still haven't found anything they like so we are still waiting... rather impatiently.  While we were on the retreat, one of the girls gave us all a little gift bag and inside it was a small Moleskine, ideal for keeping in my handbag - thanks Mel!  Initially I had thought about making a mini book with book rings and adding in some note paper but this was perfect.  I needed something to keep with me for keeping track of everything regarding the house move and the Homespun collection has such a lot of lovely homely icons and sentiments that it was a great match.

 I embellished the front cover with one of the cards, a couple of brads from the collection and some chipboard.  I then embellished each section within the book using only stickers and papers because I didn't want to add too much bulk.

Each section has a side tab and the dividers are decorated front and back.  The tabs have been cut from two of the longer thin sections. Here I stitched around the house picture and I love the effect it gives.  I have kept the decor section larger than the others because I have lots of ideas for our new abode! ;-)

This telephone was a perfect match for the contacts page and all of the letter stickers are from the collection too.  I really love the border strip on the "Dates" page which I cut from one of the longer pieces.

 More stickers and stitching.  The kraft labels were a wonderful addition from another lady at the retreat - thanks Jaki!

 Some of the cards were perfect on their own and some needed another element or two or some washi tape.

 Yes, I have a section on Decluttering our current house and yes I have spelled declutter wrong here...

And finally the back few pages of homely comfort.  Some reminders of things to ask and things to remember to tell the new owners.

And the back cover with some chipboard.  I love the way you can see a sneak of the other bits and bobs inside.

So, I hope you've enjoyed this series of ideas for using pocket page collections outside of pocket dividers and I hope that you can see past the sections as they are and consider using them for other projects.  I've still got a fair bit of the collection left in some larger pieces so I can still have more fun with this pretty range.  If you are inspired by something you've seen in these posts then please do let me know in the comments and if you have made something please do share a link so we can have a look too!

With thanks to S J Crafts for supplying such a great collection.

Bye for now
xx

WOYWW 258

I'm late to the Wednesday party this week because I had a little accident in my craft room... I lean't over the side of my chair to get something from the floor and it tipped over.  I thought I had just hurt my hip where I landed but as yesterday went on I realised I had done something to my opposite shoulder blade.  I think its triggered an old pinched nerve but it means no crafting or training today :-(  

This was my desk as I left it yesterday afternoon.  The pile of Echo Park Off The Record in the middle is for some DT work - I just love the summery colours!  The Simple Stories pile at the back is for my One Little Word project and I'll be taking that to the crop on Saturday.  The Promarkers still need labeling and putting away and the pile of magazines on the left still need to be ripped up for my OLW project too.  But it all looks better than it did the hour before!

I needed to seriously sort some stuff out as you can see.  I still can't find my heat proof mat and my heat gun which I must have put away at some point getting ready for the house sale but it will turn up.

I was trying to find my mat to make some enamel dots from some beads that I liberated from my daughter's supply.  They need a bit of work but I am pleased that I can use some of them.  The ones that are more blobby than dotty can be used by the children - win win!!  That brown bead that hasn't flattened at all was an experiment - it was an Aqua bead and didn't change shape at all but it was blue to start of with!

Talking of my daughter... she made this yesterday...  It says...

To Mummy and her friends, Love Bella

Make your own design on any coloured piece of paper.  I maked this when I was 5.

Bless her!  Setting challenges already!

This post was brought to you by What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday hosted by Julia at the Stamping Ground.

Bye for now

xx

Divided Loyalties - part 2

Following on from my previous Divided Loyalties post with S J Crafts, I have two more layouts to share with you today that use a collection intended for use in divided page protectors.  These collections are so versatile if you think of them as smaller pieces of paper rather than set sections that have to be used in certain pockets. The colours in the Simple Stories Homespun collection lend themselves to a wide range of subjects but there's a definite focus on home and family.  

Family

This first layout featuring my two crazy children makes use of one of the beautiful full pages which has a bit of embellishment printed on it already.  It means that you don't have to do much more than add something between the two areas and you have a really quick layout.  I simply added some 6x4 cards in a messy stack so that unlike the previous post, I didn't have to do any creative patchwork to cover gaps and joins.  

I used one of the journalling cards as it was because the sentiment fitted well for my photo but it is very easy to cover them up if you like the writing area but the wording doesn't fit.  I added some brads and stickers from the collection and made my title with the chipboard and finished off with a few enamel dots.  Very quick and another memory captured.

 Love

This bright layout features my two great-nephews (which makes me feel exceptionally old...) having a bit of a smooch, or trying to!  Here again I've used a full sheet from the collection because the hearts fitted the theme but the bright colours stop it from being too feminine.  I've used one of the larger strips (4x12) to layer the photo and to act as the title piece by adding an ampersand and their initials from the sticker sheet.

The journalling appears on a 3x4 card and then I have matted the photo onto a 6x4 and then onto one of the larger pieces from the collection.  This black piece had an ideal border (which you could stitch) but I didn't need the sentiment underneath so it worked really well for this mat.

The cute flower is from the brad pack and I also added a couple of flowers from the chipboard set too. I backed one of the larger brads onto a pinked circle punched from a spare card that I knew I wouldn't use as it was.  I love adding things like this to a paperclip to make my own embellishments.

I finished off by adding some branding strips and off cuts from the journalling card to the top corner to balance the design and then added a heart sticker with pop dots alongside other stickers and chipboard pieces.

The end result is a fun layout about two cheeky boys who love being together.  And we still haven't used a divided page protector!

I still have 2 off the page projects using this collection to show you so check back soon for more ideas on using those collections intended for divided page protectors.

Bye for now
xx

WOYWW 257

If it wasn't for the plethora of sharp objects around me this morning then I think I would fall asleep on my desk!  Its been a busy week but today is a day for washing (boo!) and working on One Little Word (Yay!).  The gorgeous rainbow chevron paper is part of the Simple Stories Daily Grind collection that I'm using for this project which has been sadly neglected recently but I'm exciting about doing this month's painty prompts - stand well back, paint will be splashed about!  

On my desk this week there are also some new things - last year's Spring Summer Promarker pens (reduced to £10 for all 12 in Hobbycraft!!) and some things that came free with a magazine (the scrabble tiles, chalk speech bubbles, card pack).  Also these rather yummy bright pink bottle caps which I hope to make something out of very soon.

 One of the many reasons I am so behind with housework and am needing an art day is this....

A very long line of toy cars...  Over 2 kilometers actually we think.  The end result was smashing the World Record for the longest continuous line of toy cars which finished at 24,189 cars!  A team of staff and volunteers (including myself and Management and both children) laid them out all around the Beaulieu Motor Museum, twisting and turning around and about and doubling back, all around the inside and the outside and up and down the paths.

This was part of Bella's area - a line which had to be changed several times as the logistics of counting versus opening doors etc proved very tricky indeed...

 This was the area that I stewarded while the official count took place.  The line at the bottom of the picture went right across the walkway and the rules are that the line cannot be broken until the count has been completed.  Which took nearly two and a half hours.  While people in wheelchairs and mobility scooters were trying to get around!  But they did it!  All the cars will now be sold off to raise money for Naomi House Children's Hospice so I hope they get lots of lots of funds as a result.

My knees, feet, and hands are blistered from crawling and I have sunburned nose.  I'm just pleased it wasn't raining!  Oh and that car there... its a Gordon Bennett!  I couldn't help saying Gordon Bennett, what a lot of cars!  Well... it was a long day...

If you are a crafter of any sort and you'd like to share your work space or whatever you are working on this week with other kindred spirits then please do link up with Julia who is the host of this wonderful world wide snoop entitled What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday.

Bye for now

Divided loyalties

Good grief the Spring is marching on isn't it?! One minute we were drowning in rain filled fields and overflowing rivers and the next minute the garden centres are sunny and crowded and we are awash with hayfever and the smell of cut grass.  It is nearly time for the children to go back to school after the Easter break and we've been away to Wales and I've been on a craft retreat too.  Of course now the house looks like a bombsite and there is a pile of laundry bigger than my mother so the house looks a far cry from the tidy pictures on the estate agent's website!  

The good news is that we have found a house but the bad news is that they can't find anything yet. So in the meantime I will cherish the space in my current craft room and try not to buy anything else to go in it!  It is very hard though when you come across wonderful collections like Homespun by Simple Stories.  I was immediately drawn to the variety of primary colours and sweet designs however, like many companies and collections these days, Homespun is designed with pocket pages in mind.  Now, I love using pocket pages for big events like holidays and Christmas but I don't want to use them for the every day stuff really.  Does that mean that we have to miss out on such collections or can we be a bit creative and use them for our standard pages too?  Let's see shall we?  

The Simple Stories divided pages come in a variety of styles so the collections are not just 3x4 and 4x6 journalling style cards.  I wanted to see exactly what I had to work with so I trimmed all the cut apart sheets in to their various pieces.  I went through and selected the ones I wanted to use as they were and kept these in a separate pile.  Any others were fair game for being used in other ways and this meant that I could fussy cut them, use them for layering, punch shapes from them, etc.  

Family

One of the first pieces that really grabbed my attention was this 6x12 woodgrain section.  The wording and design on the bottom make a great title and so another option would have been to use just that portion.  I love the whole piece though and I think it makes a natural home for the striking photograph.  I did a little photo shoot of my niece and her little boy so most of the layouts from that day probably won't have much in the way of journalling other than perhaps the first few.  

I really liked the eclectic bunting near the title so I used the matching design from the sticker sheet on pop dots for texture and interest.

My next use of one of the pieces was to make a photo mat.  I cut down the photo slightly to make it fit onto the standard 4x6 card but I wanted a second mat too.  Here's where you need to get a bit creative! I really liked the pattern on the card but I knew I wouldn't use the sentiment so I could cut an L shape to expand the parameters a bit.

I'm no good at sewing so this is the nearest I get to patchwork!  I added a punched shape, a sticker from the sheet and a heart from the chipboard sheet on one corner

To cover the other corner I used the same punched shape, some banners cut from the branding strips and one of the beautiful brads from the same range.

Elliot

There are going to be quite a few layouts from this little photo shoot so I like to mix things up a bit by using some A4 pages too - they fit just as well as any other page protector in my American Crafts D Ring albums.  For this layout I decided to use the 3x4 cards to make a grid of the photo, a journalling block and then 2 for decoration.

 I used a piece of red A4 card and cut out the middle to use as a mat for the whole grid to lift it from the beautiful floral paper.  The designs on some of the cards are so pretty that you really don't need to add much to them.  Here I've just extended the design a bit with a chipboard heart and a button tied with baker's twine.

I drew the design together by using another button diagonally opposite and used the stickers from the alpha sheet for the little title and mini tag.  Branding strips and thin off-cuts ground the design and then I finished off with some fun bobble trim.

So far then we've used a 6x12 piece as it is, used branding strips and off cuts and punched shapes from a "spare" card for embellishments, made a grid from 3x4 cards, used one as a journalling card, used one piece for a title, used another "spare" card as a photo mat.

But if you are still undecided about using divided collections on standard page then I still have 2 more posts to show you lots of other ideas too!

Bye for now

xx

Always the shadow



Sometimes a photo perfectly captures a moment or someone's personality.  Now and then a photo can capture a feeling too and sometimes it can help you to put things into words.

 

This photo was taken at Christmas on a rare sunny day.  Everyone seems to have had lovely weather again today except for parts of Wales which has been cloudy and misty - typical!  I still managed to get out for a gentle stroll on the beach here in Newport though (the one in the photo is the next bay round in Moylgrove) except that this time I was on my own.  I'm waiting to have the aerial fixed after the storms earlier in the year and having some much needed head space. 

After many attempts to find the right medication for my depression, we've come to the end of the road with it really.  I'm in the process of writing a blog post about what it feels like (boy won't that be a jolly read!) but right now I can't even scrap - that's how bad it is.  I'm going to try something a little outside of the box when I get back in a sort of last ditch attempt to make some progress.  I don't want to be the shadow blighting the lives of my family and friends.  I want to be there with them, enjoying the sun.

Supplies List
Patterned papers from Crate Paper "The Pier"
Letter stickers from Simple Stories "Homespun"
Enamel dots inside the flowers from My Mind's Eye
Wood veneers from Studio Calico "Hearts & Arrows"
Cardstock from Bazzil Basics in Kraft
Other items from my stash

Bye for now
xx

One Little Word - Part 1

For my One Little Word project and documenting my 40th year, I knew I wanted something vibrant that I would love using for a long term project.  As part of my birthday present I treated myself to the Daily Grind collection by Simple Stories.  I first saw it when Sarah bought the S J Crafts shop to the local crop and I totally fell in love.  Alongside the full collection pack of papers, cut apart sheets and 2 sets of stickers, I also bought the 6x4 Snap cards, the ephemera pack and the chipboard pieces.  Having everything coordinating like this means I can keep it all together for the year and it also makes for speedy scrapping - win win!

I wanted something striking for the title page to separate it from my normal pages in my 12x12 album (instead of the conventional albums used for this class by Ali Edwards).  The dark woodgrain with the printed elements was perfect for this page which doesn't need journalling because the written parts are all to follow.  

I used the circular calendar sticker to signify the year long project and I obviously used lots of hearts because that is my word for the year.  The little woodgrain letters are part of the collection pack and I added a few Thickers for dimension.

The printables that come as part of the class are meant for specific page protectors but I wanted to make mine work with my normal size of album.  This means I have to tinker with the arrangements a bit and fill in blank pockets etc or, like here, use the printables on a standard layout.  I matted the Intentions page onto green cardstock and then matted that onto that fab speech bubbles paper.  The red frame is the reverse of the title page.

 I am really enjoying using the bold happy colours and I know this will help inspire me to keep up with documenting this project through a year which I hope will be full of positive changes.

I've almost completed the next couple of tasks which are in pocket pages so I'll share that here soon and then it will soon be time for February's prompts!  I'll let you know how I'm getting on with actually living with my word then.  Wish me luck!

Bye for now

xx