Quilters Vibe August 2020

Hello Lovelies!

It's time for the August edition of Quilters Vibe!

The inspiration quilt this month was a Dresden plate.   I wasn't going to make one out of paper.  Not happening.  Instead I took inspo from the rainbow and the woodgrain backdrop.

 

I used a cutfile from a fairly new company (Pear Tree Cut Files) and used that as my rainbow element.

I got stuck a little way into the process, so after some searching online, I found this layout by Shimelle (with process video) which was looking similar to what I hat up to that point, I followed her lead, but mine went out of control as it typically does!

Oh well!  It does capture the vibe of my three crazy kiddos, though!  Scroll down for the process video and links to the other QV girls channels.

 

Title

 

Journaling

Cousin Squad

Process Video

Daisie's YouTube Channel

Sara's YouTube Channel 

Christy's YouTube Channel  

Love, and Quilty Vibes!

Boy Mamas Unite March

Hello Lovelies!

What's this?  Another BMU for the second month running?  I guess it really must be a sign of staying inside too long and going stir crazy, maybe?  To be honest, as a Spoonie life in lockdown isn't really any different for me. 

Aaaaanyway, when Sara asked me whether I wanted to do another BMU this month, I told her yes (natch) and she promptly gave me the inspiration piece below:



Oooh nice one, right? 
Great prompt for journaling!  And you know I love a good bit of journaling 

As the cylinders in my brain started up and I pondered my options, she informed me that Jody of SpiegelmomScraps had designed a cut file loosed based on last month's BMU since Sara had some issues getting it to cut properly on her machine. 


OK. That narrows down the options somewhat.  I'm glad cos I don't have to think as hard.  What's that?  It's going in the SMS newsletter AND we have to use sequins??

I'm joking!  Sara isn't bossy at all.  I 💖 her!  And it's lovely of her to offer to include my project in the newsletter!

All those elements combined in my head to come to a single conclusion - make a montage using all the photos from TCD's* season of summer soccer and turn it into a 2 page layout vaguely reminiscent of layout 2.3 from Shimelle's Start With a Sketch class.

Here's the link to the video, otherwise keep reading to see more pics.

Since I'm not a boyMOM, I didn't use that bit of the cutfile (watch the video to see exactly how I used it).  I couldn't really cut off the "mom" and change it to "Mama" because the font had the letters really closely welded together.  Besides I already did that.

The hashtag Jody included reminded me that on my social IG I would use #soccermum when I shared pics so I went with that as the title and just use the subtle "balls everywhere" bit.

I turned each ball into a shaker and it wasn't easy given how thin the outlines were.  I'm happy enough with it, though.

Here is my journaling which I talked a little bit about in the video.

Aaaand the embellishment clusters:

Lastly the full layout

#Soccermum

Well that's all from me for now.  I do hope you take the time to watch my video and also see Sara's Video.

Love, and Boy Mamas Unite!

*Acronyms and weird words <---  

 

Boy Mamas Unite - Collaboration with Sara Scraps

Hello Lovelies!

This is something Sara and I have been talking about since last year and here's the first project in this collab.  It's not going to be anything frequent or super regular...just when mood, time and mojo all co-operate! 

As I mentioned in the video, the inspo for this first layout came from the cut file in question and the laughs we has over it.  There's nothing boy related we haven't discussed and the things we've seen?  Nothing scares us!

We decided to use a cut file which we both found to be hysterical and this was the catalyst to this whole series!  We're just a little bit rude like that!  🙈🤷🤣



Here's the link to the cut file in the So Fontsy store if you're interested

 

Here's my video:

I was inspired by this layout by Glitter Girl and scraplifted it after remembering I was once working though Glitter Girl's videos.

I used a background I made in Sara's Mixed Media Background Vol 1 class and most of the paper I used was from Pink Fresh Studio.  The watercolour paper was Global Fluid Hot Press and it was smooth and flat enough (thanks to a run through the Minc just for good measure!

My Kokuyo dot runner was enough for most things, but Permanent Glue Dots took care of things like the fabric die cuts and things like that.

I have to say it took FOREVVVVEEERRRRR to get the embellishment clusters the way I wanted them.  Looks deceptively easy on the video.  I binned like an hour of footage of just the fiddling part! 😫



Here's the journaling if you want to read it!

Boy Mama Surrounded By Balls

 

Don't forget to check our Sara's video below:

Love, and boy mamas unite!

EWF Design Team Sketch Challenge Part II (using Oct CKC Kit!)

Hello lovelies!

I'm finally FINALLY (at long last) bringing you Part 2 of the Embellish With Flair sketch challenge which Heather and I did together...during October! 🙈

I know it's also December.  LATE December.  Soz, lovelies!  I actually had finished it over a month ago, but since I did a process video (and one with soooo much more raw footage than anticipated) editing has happened sporadically between other things.

It was actually rather involved and as usual I made it far more work than it needed to be!  But that's what I do. Every.Single.Time! 🤦

Heather really put me to the challenge with this sketch.  Definitely not my usual sort of style, but they don't call it a challenge for nothing, right?

I have no idea how I decided to use this sketch with this photo of my adorable niece on her very first Book Week.  I'm pretty sure there was a suitably convoluted train of thought with led to this decision, but overall I think it worked. 🤷

I used my October Counterfeit Kit (I know🤦) for this layout (well mostly.  I did use a ton of scraps...)

I do recommend you watch the process video (below) since I do go into that a little bit as well as walking you though how I made it.  I'm warning you...it's a bit of an ordeal!  I distinguish myself by making a fairly simple task faaaar more complicated than it needs to be!

The rough gesso on the background and anything needing to stick on the seam lines of the "circles" needs more than your average adhesive which gives you three options:

1.  Wet Glue.  Liquid Glue.  Whatever you want to call it.  You need something fairly robust and I hatehatehate any that dry tacky.  Why?  Because my hand-eye co-ordination is lacking at the best of times,  Occasionally it must be resorted to, but normally:

2.  Hot glue.  Even more messy.  Sometimes necessary, but waiting for ancient fossilized lump (which was once a stick) inside glue gun to melt then having to interrupt crafting in order to treat 3rd degree burns is something I'd prefer to avoid if I possibly can.

3.  Glue Dots.  Fast, clean, easy and they come in all the strengths and sizes.  This is my personal preference. They've been part of my life "these 20 years at least". (My fellow Janeites will get the reference!!)

Yes I do actually speak that way and my fambam know when to insert which quote!

Here are the still pics I promised you:

Title (with lots of messy threads! 😍)

"Tone on tone" embellishments and stitching detail

Fussy cut books embellished with tiny Wonder Woman stickers

Large book cut on the Silhouette

That name card that caused ever so much grief (and I still cant stick in s straight line despite multiple attempts! 🙈)

Lilya's First Book Week

Thanks for sticking with me and hope the vid wasn't too frustrating!


Love, and Embellish With Flair!

Scrap The Boys September Challenge

Hello Lovelies!

 

This is one I'm particularly excited about since Rachel asked me to be a GUEST DESIGNER this month on Scrap The Boys!

I also really love this month's theme: "Flower Love"

I definitely don;t shy away from using pink or florals or glitter on boy pages.  I don't do it all the time, but when the mood strikes I go for it!  I have one or two albums where I've set myself the challenge of No Pink, but all the rest are a free for all!

I thought I had chosen my photo and had some ideas on my layout, but as I rummaged through my printed photos for an entirely different project, I found this one!  It immediately called to mind a discussion I had with  Zsoka Marko on Paige Evans' Facebook Group.

Zsoka had made a layout for Paige's design team using the lemon slice cut file and I remembered that she had welded the slices in different sizes a bit like I did, only Zsoka used more of them.  I remembered at the time that this particular photo of my crazy SmallCraftyDude would be perfect to use with Paige's cut file so I stored the information away and it all came back to me when I found the photo.



I had forgotten that the cut file was a single lemon slice (and there was also one of a partial slice) so in order to make a column of different sized slices, I had to resize and weld them in Silhouette Studio.  I also removed some of the detailed lines inside the partial slices in the hope that the outside edge would be thick enough in order to turn some of them into shakers.

Only the whole slices (and the larger ones at that) had wide enough edges to accommodate the adhesive foam in order to be able to fill them with SpiegelMom Scraps xxx sequin mix.

 

While I don't always use themed supplies (and when I do its often in different ways), sometimes a layout calls for not just themed stuff, but all-the-themed-things!  The more the better!  This was one of them.  So many paper collections but so many designers seem to have a lemon paper!  They just keep multiplying in my stash!

I remembered that many also have flowers in addition to lemons and it was this thought that hit me me when I found the photo and realized I could make it work for this assignment.

Once I found a paper that spoke to me (From Paige Evans' Pick Me Up collection) because of its bold colours and slight nautical vibe on some of the papers went with the story since it was about a trip to the seaside (which you cant discern from the photo).  It was only when I went to write up this blog post that I discovered that Zsoka use the same one when I went hunting for her blog post to link to!

I wanted to make a dent in all the fussy cut flowers I have.  I find fussy cutting rather soothing and the best ones I had for this layout were the ones from Shimelle's Starshine collection.

Scrapbook Process Video

Unusually for me, this layout has little in the way of embellishment because the cut file and large clusters of flowers are so prominent.  I just added a few word stickers and pulled out tiny sequins from a different mix to put in the centres of the flowers.



You will notice in the process video that the title is different to the photos here - after I was finished it just didn't seem quite right s I looked it up and removed the superfluous word which fit much better.

 

Go Suck a Wemon

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you check out the design team projects on Scrap the Boys or even play along!

Love and fabulous flowers

Design Team Post for Embellish With Flair (10 Aug)

Hello lovelies!

Today's post requires somewhat of a backstory and while it's not part of my "Inspiration Series" for Embellish With Flair, it could be looked at as a sort of extension to Part 3 which is about scraplifting.  I think I may have even hinted back then that I had this particular layout in it's beginning stages.  I didn't want it to be the part on scraplifting, since it was a much less true example to the original project.

It turned out to be entirely co-incidental that I'm using both the Cat Flair and much of the same paper (a lot from Shimelle's "Box of Crayons" which features plenty of cat and dog motifs of which I used 0! 🤷)

Now for the backstory... in May, my buddy Sara Scraps was a guest designer for Virginia Walker in her Facebook group Confessions of a Paper Addict (known as COAPA).  Virginia released a series of animal cut files including a dachshund for Sara.  I got so excited when I saw there was a matching cat so I suggested I should scraplift her layout since I have similar photos with virtually identical expressions!  You can watch Sara's YouTube Process Video here.

Sweet Puppy Days

By Sara Scraps

As I was preparing to do so, I had another idea!  With Sara's permission I used a photo of her dog and my cat and BOTH cut files.  This meant fairly major changes to the original since I had to squeeze in TWO cut files and figure out how much to keep the same and which modifications to make to ensure the layout was in my style.

The first step was figuring out the size and cutting the critters and loosely planning how they will sit on the page.  Painstaking backing of cut files with paper comes next!



















Sara's style is quite different to mine and I admire it a lot so I wanted to do it justice, but keep the balance in maintaining the things I love.  Sara used paper cut into strips and punched with border punches.  It was the perfect place to start since my punches don't get as much love as they should!

I used two types of punch as well as some branding strips and narrow strips.  I wanted to make sure I included enough black to co-ordinate with the flair and it could get tricky since I was using a fair bit of navy.

It seems as though I always stitch on my layouts, but I don't I promise!  I just felt these borders and strips were begging for it and I could lift up any loose edges for texture.

The background is an older Studio Calico crosshatch (as opposed to a plain white sheet of cardstock), and while I used multiple photo mats and more borders than Sara had in her original, I split the title into two areas like she did using two fonts as well.  This is definitely different for me (I rarely have the title split like this, nor do I have the construction of the two cut files and photos separated, but it was the only way to squeeze them onto the page).

While I was on the punch kick. I punched some pinked circles under the flair to help them stand out and putting them om either side of the title helps with that and to make it a bit more obvious that it's a single phrase.

Can I just say how much I love the refillable dispenser for Mini or Micro Glue Dots?  It makes attaching things like sequins so much easier and less to put away since you don't have to put the roll back in the box!  I definitely need to get a second one for my Micro dots! 

Due to the pattern of the pink paper at the top of the page, the embellishment cluster where Sara put hers would have to come down.  And get a whole lot bigger obviously, because this Crafty Mama is all about All.The.Things! 🤣

The corresponding area diagonally across from the embellishment would be the natural spot to put the journaling.  The journaling and story is always critical for me and especially in this case when it may seem a little weird to scrapbook her dog and my cat regardless of our friendship! The story is less about the animals themselves, but more about our similarities and in this particular case only a fellow Fitzwilliam fanatic and Austen aficionado would co-incidentally name her dog the same thing I named my cat! 🙌🙌🙌

Before finishing off with some puffy hearts, I added tiny tabs with the dates of the photos since they weren't taken at the same time.  In such a case as this, I'd most likely store the layout in the same month of the later photo.

A Tale of Two Fitzes

So you can see how I started with Sara's idea, yet made it look really quite different but simply starting with two cut files.  Even without the other changes, it's a pretty big shake up.

Embellish With Flair Products Used:

Cats

Dogs

Thanks for stopping by and as always, 

Love and Embellish With Flair!