Tuesday, September 18, 2012

My Big Red just became better

Many of my scrapbooking friends know how much I looooovvvveeee my 3M Adhesive Transfer Gun aka Advanced Tape Glider (ATG) which I nicknamed Big Red. One thing that bugs me is how sometimes the tape slips off the roller. I read a tip to put a cardboard "shim" over the spool. Well, I like to see how much tape I have left in case I need to pack an extra when I scrap away from home. So ...

With 2 plastic items, I have modified Big Red to be a better and meaner tape dispenser!

First item is the leftover core from the tape. Next, a thick piece of clear plastic - mine was from a recycled report cover, but a flat portion of packaging plastic would work too. I trimmed it roughly into a circle slightly larger than the spool holder and made a hole in the centre the size of the core.

Don't mind the sticky gunk still left on the core, it helps to keep everything in place.

Just fit the clear plastic over the tape spool and pop the core on top. It will click slightly.

Another thing to do often is to clear the take-up spool so that everything rolls smoothly.

I mean, rip off that paper tape, leaving a short 4-6" tail like below:

Then reattach the free end on the take-up spool. I put a bit of adhesive (yeah, some of the sticky gunk will do) and start rolling away.

Here's the set-up:

And another showing the perrrfect alignment.
Gotta love my Big Red!

Monday, September 17, 2012

My special day made ultra special by these:

Made by my darling girls!




Concentrating hard to spell correctly.



Drawing a cake and insisting on putting 46 candles on it. After losing count many times over, she numbered each candle as she went along.

Scalloped cream of "vaneenaa".

All done!

The rectangles with words inside? She said they are messages. Must be screenshots!
 So blessed!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Riding the fun times - and two ideas to share

Did the September schools hols just fly by in the blink of an eye? All too soon it is back to school again.  The little one and I did manage to catch some fun times in a little corner of Singapore where, to her delight and mine, she could sit on vintage carousel horses and I feast my eyes on these nostalgic eye-candy:







Here's the layout that I did to capture that idyllic afternoon.  There are two specific ideas that I want to highlight and I hope they will inspire you to look at scrapbooking tools and products in new way.


First, a twist on a favourite product - the washi tape. I got my inspiration for the background from the many pictures and products (if you're on Pinterest or something similar, you would have seen lots too) of anything OMBRE. My take on it is using washi tapes in varying shades of turquoise, four different patterns in fact, and laying them horizontally from dark to light tones.

Then pulling the colours from the carousel horses, I used a sheet of Prima Zephyr 6x6 paper and cut the oval out so that it forms a frame for my photo. To add some sparkle across the page, I glued down rhinestones in varying sizes randomly.  There really is no rule to the placement - I literally scattered the rhinestones from above the paper and glued them down exactly where they happened to land.

Now let me share a technique that might motivate you to use your embossing folders in new ways.  The oval mat which I coloured in Glimmer Glam Tide Pool and Organic Garden is actually embossed with TWO different embossing folders - Sizzix Elegant Wreath (657086) and Flower Clusters (657255). You just need the very innovative Embossing Diffuser (I used Oval #1 in 657945).


If you are choosing folders to use, it helps if one is more "open" if the other is relatively "busy" as, in my case, the "busy" pattern of Flower Clusters is superimposed on the "open" area of the Elegant Wreath.

But really, any two embossing folders will do. Here I paired the same Flower Clusters with Rays (656650).


The picture below shows the placement of the oval plates on each embossing folder before you run the cardstock and embossing folders through the machine.



I hope you have a chance to try this technique. Do share your creations in the MWL gallery! Have a great week!





Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Mary had a little …

E making up silly songs in the back seat:

Mary had a little calf its skin is black and white
A little chick with rainbow feathers
A little piggy …

Monday, September 3, 2012

Mind the Gab

Recent conversations with E.

E: Mommy can we go to the park at three o'clock?
Me: No, it's too hot at three. Better at four.
E: Is it still hot at four-fifteen?
Me: A little.
E: Okay, then we'll go at four-sixteen.

E: When I came home on the bus that day the construction was blocking the way. They were pouring glue on the road!
Me: Oh, did they use scissors?
E: No Mommy! You're so funny!



Saturday, August 4, 2012

Through the Years

My in-laws will be celebrating their wedding anniversary soon.  Well into their eighties, theirs exemplify the greatest love story that spanned decades and continents.  It is a long and beautiful romance and I wish them many more years of endearing stories! 














Since this is a heavily-embellished layout, I used a canvas board for better support. And it takes the various mists and paints very well.  The slight texture also gave it some "tooth" to grab the stickles, glitter and german glass.

I just picked all sorts of mediums to play with and ended up with about twenty bottles of mists, stickles, dimensional pearls, reinkers.  And that's excluding the Glossy Accent, Beacons and matte mediums for adhesives!  So let me try to list them here: Dylusions sprays in Lemon Zest, Squeezed Orange, Fresh Lime; Distress reinkers in Scattered Straw; Adirondack Dimensional Pearls in Lettuce, Butterscotch and Bottle; Stickles in Gold, Cinnamon, Sequins, Orange Peel; Distress Stain in Mustard Seed, Shabby Shutters and Tumbled Glass; Perfect Pearls in Plum, Blush and Interference Violet; ColorBox reinkers in Pink and Green; Archival Ink in Black.



















My favourite corner began with a juxtaposition of metal, pearls and wood.  After looking at the random items on my scrap desk, I decided to add paper raffia and hemp twine from a previous project to the mix as well. So now I have a good reason not to tidy up between projects - you never know whether a piece of this-and-that will end up as a perfect touch for the next project!



Friday, June 29, 2012

Mind the Gab (continuing the Miss Spoken series)

E: You still headache?
Me: Yes (battling my migraine for several days actually)
E: Is it the aircon blowing at your forehead?

Me: Ouch!
E: Never mind your headache okay? I love you!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Family ... we have a lot in common ... such as our love for jigsaw puzzles.
Here is a layout for MWL capturing a precious moment we shared, fixing puzzles after Sunday dinner.

The photos alternate with clear sheets embossed with Sizzix folder (657490 Love Print) and coloured on the reverse using Dimensional Pearls (Red Pepper, Butterscotch, Lettuce and Bottle) and Stickles (Lime Green and Orange Peel) - using mostly my fingers LOL!  The front was inked with Staz-On (Jet Black and Timber Brown).


I loaded the background with a riot of colours by spraying with Dylusions Ink Spray (Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise, Squeezed Orange and Lemon Zest) as well as inking with the new Spring Seasonal Distress (Peacock Feathers).  A few knick-knacks from my stash of embellishments and I'm done!


I loved getting my hands messy - except when I washed my hands in a hurry and arrived at work looking like this:

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Everyone is complaining about how the weather is so "hot! hot! hot!" and that's my latest layout for Made With Love.  Hopefully these pictures of my girl playing in the fountain at Bugis Junction will offer cooling relief.  I certainly felt good playing with some Sizzix dies, and Distress Inks and a stencil from Ranger.


Featuring a hidden journalling spot revealed by sliding away the photo on the bottom left.

The colours and texture reminds me of batik ...

While I was trying to conjure more cooling thoughts, I got wondering how many butterflies would it take to generate enough wind.  Sheets of real wood die-cut into butterflies.  The butterfly body is wrapped with twine and topped with a seed bead.
Behind the butterfly, the background was painted with white acrylic paint and the Dylusions Dotted Flower stencil from The Crafter's Workshop designed by Dyan Reaveley of Ranger.


As for the title, it's gesso on paper tape using a homemade stencil featuring the Cherish Sizzlit alpha set.  The font is sleek and funky, and it's on sale at MWL.  It's a very good deal since the set comprises both upper and lower case as well as numbers and punctuation - a 35-piece set in a storage box.

Sizzix dies used:
657209 Mini Butterflies Mover and Shaper Magnetic Die
657495 Butterflight One the Edge Die
654546 Cherish alpha set

From Mud to Gold!

You know how you mix Distress Inks and sometimes get mud?  Especially greens and reds, like below:

Festive Berries and Evergreen Bough (Winter Seasonal colours)

And if you add purple, you get muddier mud, if that is possible.
Seedless Preserves (Fall Seasonal colour)

Watch what happens when you add Mustard Seed - I tell you it's magic!!

Don't blink now ...
 Tada!!!  Everything just brightens up!  That colour should be renamed Midas' Touch!

So I declare:
Mustard Seed is the new black!!
I mean, it goes with everything ...

The finished tag:


What, you saw something in the earlier photo?  Yeah, my ink storage gone high-rise:



Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Merry May

May is looking to be a good month for crafting. I have dug into the depths of my pile of unfinished Club Scrap projects and completed four books.
This first is my favourite, featuring the tags from my misting/inking experiments.

The next is a teeny tiny dos-a-dos book weighing in at only 3"x3", it has 3 mini canvases for covers.  I painted the covers with Adirondack Pearls and overlaid with images stamped on clear sheets with Staz On black.
 The instructions for this album was a little confusing and I had to restart it a couple of time.  But once I had the hang of it, it went really well. I like the "V"s made by the stitching at the head and tail of the spine.  The 28 tiny stitching holes were a pain to pierce, though!

And finally the most recent book completed today, after hunting high and low for my Crop-a-dile Big Bite.  A stab-bound book with cover art featuring gelatos, distress inks and a cool image from the Connection kit.
I do have a couple more UFOs waiting for some hardware before they can be completed.  Hopefully they will be ready for sharing in the near future!