Beachy Delight - Just Add Ink Annual Blog Hop

With a whole new year of crafting to look forward to, at Just Add Ink we begin with an all-team Blog Hop to celebrate. We do hope you'll join us in creating and sharing, and our theme to inspire you is

Santa very kindly brought me a wonderful scrapbooking page kit so I've made a layout featuring my adorable grandson having a blast at the beach:

I used elements from the page kit but changed them up a little, adding some stamping and chipboard pieces.

Materials used:

• stamps - Gorgeous Grunge (SU retired)
• papers, chipboard pieces, die cuts - Summer Porch collection (49&Market)
• other - Dimensionals, sponge dauber, basic beige ink

The link below will take you to the next blog on our hop, which is Jan. Do please leave everyone some comment love as you browse through the hop. If you get stuck at any point, the list and links of all participants is on the Just Add Ink blog here. 

Thanks for calling in!

Cheers

Kerry

JAI #634 - Anything But a Card

This week at Just Add Ink we are challenging you to...

I made a scrapbook layout and an explosion box, both using beautiful Christmas papers from Mintay. Here's the scrapbook page, all ready for a photo to be slotted in:

The 'merry' isn't attached at the tops of the letters so the photo can be added later. I muted the whole page with some watered-down gesso and added a layer of vellum as well, to ensure the main focal features weren't overpowered by the bright and busy background. 

And this is when I discovered how limited my photography skills are in photographing the box, lol. I hope you'll bear with me for a number of views, beginning with the closed box.

 

The lid features a layered poinsettia and some die cut leaves and I wrapped some luxurious velvet ribbon around the edges.

And here's some views of it opened up.

The tree is a Tim Holtz product which comes white, so it was sprayed with distress inks. As it was a tad too tall for my box I cut it shorter and inserted it into a wood slice.  I decorated it with TH baubles and gold pearls. The 'presents' are some dice I had sitting around, lol.

Materials used: 

• card - mossy meadow, watercolour, vellum, Time of Wonders scrapbook papers (Mintay)
• Tim Holtz products - woodland tree, distress spray stains, baubles, wood slice, velvet trim, mini holiday greens die, aged mahogany distress paint
• other - glue gun, gold cord, cherry cobbler thick bakers twine, gold pearls, dice, gift wrap, chipboard saying (Mintay), white gesso, sponge daubers, paintbrush, ivory pearls

Check out the amazing items my team mates created for this challenge and of course we'd love to see your creations in our gallery.

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kerry

Creative Crew November Challenges - DSP Focus

With the northern hemisphere firmly in Fall/Autumn and cooler weather, the DSP focus this month is Sweater Weather. The colours are chocolate chip, crushed curry, soft sky, Sahara sand and tangerine tango and we are to show them "getting happy together".

For my project I chose to make a hybrid 8" x 8" scrapbook layout using a family photo taken last year in the cooler weather. I changed the colour photo to sepia tones to better fit with the colour focus and so it wouldn't compete with the other elements on my page. Here tis:

Materials used:

• stamps - Fantabulous You (MDS)
• card - Sweater Weather dsp (MDS), chocolate chip, very vanilla, soft sky
• other - timeless type alphabet dies, Big Shot, hexagon punch, dimensionals, two-way glue pen

Tips:

1. The sentiment from Fantabulous You actually read 'I love you to infinity and beyond' so I coloured the 'I' in soft sky so it wouldn't show on the background paper of the same colour.
2. I chose 8" x 8" for my layout size as it fits on an A4 sheet of paper, meaning I could print it out myself. Once I had created the layout in MDS, I exported it as a jpeg file and printed it onto SU's very vanilla paper using "best" quality print.

Why not visit the Creative Crew Challenges gallery over at SCS and see what the rest of the design team came up with to inspire you? 

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kez

Creative Crew October Challenge - Scrapbook and More

CCREW1013SF -- Scrapbook focus: October is Self-Promotion Month. Show us how awesome you are on a scrapbook page, mixed media project or with This and That!


This one had me waaaaaay out of my comfort zone - promoting myself is certainly not something I feel comfortable doing. I thought it would take me a long time to come up with an idea for this, but my SIL gave me a hint and it all fell into place very quickly after that. Here it is, created in MDS:

Well, that's it for our challenges this month. I do hope you will visit the challenge gallery to see what the other design team members have come up with - such a range of inspiring ideas - and maybe even be inspired enough to make a project or two of your own. The link is HERE.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Kez

Heart and Home

I have lived in Australia for 12 years now and I think I am definitely acclimatised to the weather. The first winter we were here, I wore a t-shirt the whole time, occasionally putting on a jumper on really cold nights. No hats, scarves, gloves, etc. Everyone around me was running around in layers of clothing saying "Isn't it cold?" and my reply was pretty much "No, it's not. You guys don't know what cold is!"

Now, I am not saying that Aus doesn't get cold. Heck, I can drive just 30 mins up the hill to Katoomba or Leura and there is snow and coldness aplenty. But we are pretty lucky here in our little neck of the woods and I think I can safely say that in those 12 years, we have had a frost on our back lawn less than half a dozen times. For a girl who came over from Christchurch, that is still an amazing thing!

What's my point? Well, you see, in just over a couple of weeks now, I am going back to Christchurch for a visit, and I have to truthfully admit that I am a little worried about how darn cold it is going to be! Yes, I am concerned at going from a place where 7 degrees is the lowest temperature of the day to a place where 7 degrees can be the highest temperature of the day!!! Christchurch in the middle of winter; what was I thinking????

Still, I wouldn't miss it for the world. I have lived in Christchurch on three separate occasions so far in my nomadic existence, and to me it's a very special place. So today's craft offering is a scrapbook layout I made some years back about this beautiful Garden City.

Created by Kez.

And although of course, when you talk about heart and home it is always where your loved ones are, if we are talking about a place - just one place that is more special than any other - then my journalling says it for me, for Christchurch will always be 'the place my heart calls home'.

Cheers

Kez

Protect yourself!

Before you go any further, prop some cushions or pillows all around you ... you are gonna want a soft landing when you fall over with shock!!! Why? Because after a break of about 6 months (and that was for a workshop), I have created a scrapbook page!!!!!!!!! Oops! there you go! are you OK? did the pillows break your fall? Phew! just as well I warned you!

Two things have prompted me to dust the cobwebs off my scrapbooking skills: (a) it is National Scrapbooking Month (and I couldn't take the guilt!) and (b) the totally GOJUS designer papers SU have this year. OK, three things - (c) the May special on designer papers!

In spite of the price increase from last year, these papers are still excellent value for money - for $17 you get 12 sheets of double sided paper, which works out at around $1.42 per sheet. And this month's special works out to be $1.06 per sheet! You will easily pay $2 or $2.50 per sheet in your LSS and they DON'T have colour co-ordinated cardstock, ink, ribbon, brads, buttons, etc. (Have I mentioned how much I LOVE SU?!)

Now, all of this espousing the virtues of the new DSP is going to seem a little strange when you see my layout, because the larger papers I've used are now retired! But there are two current ones in there, and rest assured there will be more pages to follow! So, drumroll please, in honour of this highly auspicious occasion - ta da!

Supplies used:

• cardstock - basic black (textured), sahara sand
• papers - Spring Showers (retired), Sweet Slumber speciality, Windsor Knot
• punch - word window
• other - chipboard hearts from On Board Essentials, dimensionals, sponge daubers, black journalling pen, black heart brad (stash), white gel pen

Thanks for dropping by. With all those pillows around you, you might as well leave the housework and just keep blog hopping ... much more fun!

Cheers

Kez