Sunday, August 30, 2009

More Boyfriend Pages in Progress

I can't stop using these papers. The colours go with everything, especially my current favourite: Broken China Distress Ink.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

E's Party

A party for the 2-year old.


Food for the rest of the party while the birthday girl has rice with egg and Chinese sausage.



Then my little eating machine had cake,
and ice cream.



Some entertainment for the guests,
and home cooking
but left the cleaning up for daddy.
A day well spent!!

More Food Pages

I'm back with more of my eating machine!
Do you like this robot?

Friday, August 28, 2009

Space and Pages

Many have commented on my stash from what they have seen on this blog, and asked if I have a space problem. Yes, I am very challenged in this respect. I'm not neat and my belongings have a tendency to spread across all available space.

In the old flat, I had my supplies in several rooms: completed albums in the living room, books and some tools in the study, often-used supplies in the bedroom where I had a big table and some shelves.

Now, while the albums are still in the living room, I have everything else in the study. I still work off the big table and inch-for-inch, I have roughly the same amount of shelf space as before. However everything is within reach now and I am using my supplies more.

The next logical question is: how much more?

I took a count of my pages done in the last 2 years. This is an easy marker as I simply looked for pages post-baby. Grand total: 256 pages (completed with photos) of which 20% are from workshops attended in the early days post-baby. I do have a couple of hundred pages still awaiting photos - I am almost caught up with current photos. That's not counting the mini albums.

The number surprised me because I have underestimated how much I have done after E arrived. Sure, not every page is agonizingly artsy and laboriously lavish. But done. Documented. Remembered.

Now that I have suitably encouraged myself, I am going to set some goals for myself to get even more pages done. Perhaps I should ask the family for their photos.

How about you? Do you feel bad about not making enough pages to justify your stash? I encourage you to just get the pages done and memories recorded before they fade, without fretting over making each page especially elaborate. They ARE special if they are made with love by you.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Next: Top Right

Oops. I think too many of my pages are heavy on the bottom left with embellishments.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Friendly Quizzes

Spending some down time on facebook quizzes. Does anyone go straight to their results without selecting friends?

Does This Bother You?

I can't stand those perforation tufts. I must must must cut them off. Yeah, I'm like that.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Nifty Tip (2)

Thanks for your comments about the previous tip. It is not limited to lining up your alpha stamps since you've rightly pointed out that some acrylic blocks have grids to help with that.

You can arrange the letters around the photos to get a pleasing placement,
form lines,
or shapes,
and fit words into spaces.

Of course, it's also not limited to alphas.
Have fun with your clear stamps!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Food Pages

It's Monday!!! Where did the weekend go? Mine was spent looking after a cranky sick toddler and cleaning up after her mess. I hope she will recover soon and go back to eating her usual amount. I have a lots of photographic evidence of E, the eating-machine! It's her happy time when she will willingly pose for me.

Lots of inking on these pages with Broken China Distress Ink. I love this colour!

Flowers are Heidi Swapp masks and butterfly stamp from Unity. The title is stamped with Fontwerks Steelfish Alphas. I love the clean line of this set.

To create the facing page, I inked the polka dots using a stencil and repeated the floral mask on the right. Tucked some colour-coordinated paper behind the photos.
Since this page is on plain cardstock, I decided I can afford to introduce a pop of colour and some texture.
I peeled away a thin layer of cardstock and fitted a scrap of polka dot paper and three metallic dew drops.
I think I'm hooked on this peeling technique. I'm off to experiment with it! Have a good week ahead!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Nifty Little Tip for Clear Alpha Stamps

Instead of layout out the word in reverse onto the mounting block, put it right side up (sticky side up) on the layout or a grid ruler like I did. This is useful especially if you want to fit the words into a tight space.
When the word(s) are in position, press the mounting block on top.
Turn over and ink.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Sleepy Heads

I've been craving flat layouts.
Just realised that these layouts all show the girls sleeping. Something I wish they do more of.

M I Yr Pillow, R U My Bolster
E always searches out my tummy, even in the middle of the night. Whenever I ask her "Am I your pillow?" she'll giggle and say "Nooooo" cheekily. I'll then hug her and ask "Are you my bolster?" to which she again says "Noooo". But we still allow ourselves to be each other's pillow and bolster.


7:43 am
This is for Aida's challenge using no more than 20 items, and mine are
  • yellow cardstock (1 point)
  • patterned paper, cut into another narrow strip at the bottom (2 points)
  • photos (2 points)
  • broken china distressed ink over masks for the title (1 point)
  • ribbon between patterned paper (1 point)
  • red tag (1 point)
  • rub-on applied to the back of paper, shown broken up after I tore and distressed the paper (1 point)
  • chipboard swirls (2 points)
  • round brads (4 points)
  • heart-shaped brad (1 point)
  • journalling (1 point)
for a total of 17 points.

The Tim Holtz masks make excellent contact with the cardstock, leaving a crisp edge after inking.

This is the companion page. I used at least 15 stamps around the photo to frame it.
Topped with a rub-on title, this page cannot be any flatter!
E is tired out from her bout of stomach flu, she's taking her third nap of the day. The house is quiet, the air is fresh from the rain. I think I'll put my feet up with a mug of Milo.

Have a good weekend ahead!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Photoshopping - A Disturbing Video

Have you seen this? Caution - there is one particularly disturbing photo.
Do you edit your photos to this extent? Do you agree with what is done?

Wednesday Blues?

Trying to shake off this lousy mood.

Wishing for a listening ear, or just a concerned
from any source.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Pablo Picasso

It'll take a lot of art and a tub of Ben and Jerry's, I'm kinda really dusty here.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

The weekend is here. I've had a rollercoaster week. A lot on my mind - purposes, priorities, pursuits. I hope I can find my Answer to all the questions buzzing in my head and my heart.

I took part in summer camp here and completed 22 pages for the fibre challenge.
Love the motivation, but I clean ran out of steam for the final challenge. So I'm taking it slow by rearranging E's pages and putting them into albums, noting which months are missing photos and getting those printed.

Hope your weekend is just as relaxing.

Friday, August 7, 2009

I could have made it for

07/08/09 10:11 am this morning.
Never mind, there's always 09/09/09 09:09 am next month.

so I overslept

and missed 05:06 07/08/09
But there is still 12:34:56 7/8/9 except blogger doesn't post to the second.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Pass the point of no return ...

Sounds ominous? It's the song running in my head as I (re)organise my embellishments and cardstock. Because if this reorg fails, I cannot afford the time and effort to revert to the current system, which is:

Everytime I scrap, I would haul out the whole box of cardstock to choose photo mattes, then heave it back to the shelf. Repeat for the box of letter stickers, another two for ribbons and flowers and the collection of brads, buttons and blings. This is a tiring and inefficient storage system for my embellishments and so I decided to revamp it. Instead of like-things-together, it shall be like-colours-together.

I thought over my sequence for scrapping and realised it invariably begins with pairing the photos with the base paper. Next I will look for cardstock mattes in colours to complement the base paper and photo - these will be for the photos and journalling. Then I will decide on the title (and any subtitle) and pick out stickers, chipboard or diecuts to form the words. Finally I will place embellishments bearing in mind scale, colour and visual impact. Often, I will be thinking "I need a series of red buttons here to link the reds in the other parts of the page", or "I'll use some fabric for texture - ribbons and flowers in shades of purple and some green for contrast" or I'll be ransacking all the shelves for something-anything in the perfect shade of teal.

See - it's all about colours!

Essentially I work with just 2 sets of items - paper-based for all the mattes and stickers, and dimensionals for all the fabric, plastic and metallic doodads.

On to the ambitious change. And here, you get to see the size of my cardstock mattes
- and these are not all I have
- but I'm not showing you the rest.

I divided my cardstock mattes into 2 groups: brights and muted. I have decided against mixing these with the embellisments as they are used at different stages of scrapping. I have also retained my box of alphas because they happen to fit nicely into one box as they are.

I designated 4 boxes for the colour groupings: Red (including orange and brown), yellow (including beige and cream), blue-green, and finally black-white-metallics. I find this roughly divides my stash into equal volumes - I have more reds than blue and greens combined. Into the boxes go flowers, ribbons, brads and eyelets, buttons and blings.

The test drive for this system will take place this long weekend. Let's see how fast the pages will flow out of this system ...

Ribbon Frenzy

When I saw this ribbon ring organiser, I thought "oh, I can do that", but pondered over what material to use and how to mass produce the tag. I've even consider saving the tags from bread - yeah I know, it'll take years to save enough tags for my ribbon stash.

Anyway, last night, in a semi-dreamy state from E's sleep talking (Ashkew me Daddy thaz Mama's pillow), I thought of my Sizzix Picket Fence die.
It looks different from what I remembered while half-asleep, but I decided it might work. So I cranked the Big Kick and several craft foam sheets later ...
my very own DIY ribbon tag.
Because of the width of the slot, I could put 4 to 10 lengths of ribbons and fibre on each tag. And I used 30+ tags, so you can imagine how big my stash is.

Here's my fibre rainbow in all its colourful glory. I lurrrrvvvvveeeee to run my hand through it!
The down side:
It cannot take widths more than 5/8".

In my zealous and pre-Milo state, I cut up way too many picket fences.
Anyone wants some?