Fairy tale CJ

I've joined a new CJ (Circle Journal - for those who don't know, it's a scrapbooking "round robin" - each person sends round  a book on a particular theme and everyone adds a page or two to it).  I blogged my own book and my own LO in it a while back - here .  I spent part of this afternoon creating my contribution to the next person's book ...

...  the theme is Fairy Tales, and she has asked that we don't use the Disney versions as she prefers the more "dark" original versions of most fairy tales.  I chose to do a LO about Sleeping Beauty and used some of my new Tim Holtz stamps and inks to create an aged and vegetation-covered look to suggest the castle as it is covered with vegetation as the princess sleeps for 100 years.  I had great fun and got very inky fingers ...

 
The paper started off as plain white computer paper - I printed off some extracts from the story then cut and crumpled and inked the paper before adding some stamped images on both the paper and the cardstock.

Photo shoot

We had a professional photo session a couple of months ago.  As well as some copies of some of the best photos, we paid for a CD with some of the photos on, copyright free, so we can use them however we want ... perfect for using for scrapbooking, or for making photo birthday cards, like this one for my Mum -

    
    

I know it's a little early ...

... but I made my first christmas cards of the year today!  No, I'm not super-organised, or totally mad, I just wanted to use some of my new stash ;-)

Vicki, who has taught some classes at my local crop, has just opened her fabulous new online shop so I just had to order some new stash, it would have been rude not to, wouldn't it???  I chose a few bits and pieces, including a perfect pearls mist spray which I thought would look great on christmas cards/snowy scenes.  I was keen to use it so thought I'd make a couple of christmas cards with it ... here's one of them -

The snowflake is a Maya Road chipboard die cut covered with acrylic paint, glitter and glossy accents.  The papers are from a set I bought a couple of years ago (Dovecraft) and the whole thing is finished off with a light spritz of the perfect pearls mist - it doesn't show very well in the photo but adds a lovely shimmery sheen - you can see it a little better in this angled close-up

 
I've got some lovely snowy photos from last December/January that need to be scrapped soon, so I think I'll be using this mist spray quite a bit :-)

Team challenge

As I have mentioned before, I enjoy visiting UKScrappers and have even joined a "team" on the forum.  One of my fellow team members recently set the rest of us a challenge (here on her blog ) - to create a layout using a sketch as inspiration.  So I had a go this afternoon and this is what I came up with

I've followed the sketch fairly closely but have made a few minor changes.  I really like it - it's close enough to my usual style but has some extras that make it feel really different.  Challenges like this make me think outside of my normal "box" and create something a little bit different; in the long run, this can only help my creativity develop.

Crop class

At my local crop today, Vicki held a class for a few of us - we learned how to make a beautiful binder (using mostly Tim Holtz goodies) - I'm going to use mine to store stuff we produce in future classes (Vicki has lined up some good ones for us :-) ), it'll become a book of inspiration, I hope.

The cover came in three parts (front, back and central spine).  We chose Tim Holtz papers (in plain kraft brown but with resist patterns printed on) to decorate both the inside and outside of the covers; these were cut to size and then coloured with distress stains and inks before being stuck to the covers.  The spine was attached to the covers using sticky-backed canvas which we colourised using more inks and stains.  Inside, a ring binder attachment has been secured using brads - this could be used to make a journal, recipe book, mini album ... there are many possibilities (and I may explore some of these in the future), but I will be using mine to store future creations.

The binder was finished off by adding a beautiful knob/handle to the front (there is also an elastic loop attached to the back which can be hooked over this to keep it secured shut) and a "dangly bit" to the spine ...

So, not only a gorgeous end product, but also a chance to try out some products I'd not used before - all in all, a great afternoon's work - thanks Vicki :-)

What a difference a stamp makes ...

... well, after a very busy couple of weeks, I finally found a little time for scrapbooking at the weekend.  I'm still working through family photos from last year, so this is one of my 8x8 LOs - please excuse the limitations caused by the small size and my desire to scrap as many of each year's photos without running into tens of albums for each year!

I loved the paper as soon as I saw it and luckily, although it was originally a 12x12 piece, it still works when cut down to this size.  But after I arranged all the elements of the LO, I thought it lacked a certain something, needed a little extra interest ... then I had a rumage through my lovely new stamps and found the perfect image ... the flying birds are not part of the original paper but are stamped on in a matching ink, and I think they complement the rest of the LO perfectly

Stash and stitches

An exciting package arrived this week - the stash I ordered using some of my birthday money :-)  I chose some more GORGEOUS Tim Holtz stamps and another ink pad (a girl can never have too many ink pads!) ...

I even managed to find some scrapping time this afternoon and use one of the stamps in a LO (not one worth sharing though).

And, as I was asked recently how my orang-utans were going, I thought I'd better post an update (if you missed the original post, it's here ) -