I love CJs

I love taking part in CJs (Circle Journals, a kind of travelling scrapbook) - they force me to scrap photos and topics I wouldn't normally do, to try new techniques or colour schemes, and they generally stretch my creative imagination.

The CJ I am currently involved in is an "open theme" one, which means that each book has its own theme and that theme could be absolutely anything.  In today's case, the owner of the book has sent round some sets of photos of her dog, Leo, and has asked us to scrap them for her. 

As soon as I saw the photos of Leo on the beach, I knew I wanted to scrap them.  I knew I had papers and embellishments that would suit the theme and fancied playing around with texture too.  Initially I planned to use colour-cored cardstock and sand it, but I found I didn't have a suitable colour.  Then I thought of using paint.  This is the first time I've used paint directly on to a page before but I'm very pleased with the result

I'm fairly new to using acrylic paints so this was a real adventure for me.  Painting directly on to the page and them journalling and placing rub-ons over the top was a new departure but is one I will definitely be using again.  And I think the twine winding round the photos adds more texture - another technique I will use again.

The "beach party" label on the left-hand side started off as a plain chipboard piece.  I painted it with a pale blue acrylic paint then the brown; when dry, I sanded it to reveal some of the blue below, giving it a beachy, distressed look.  The "beach party" is a rub-on.

I hope she likes what I've done with her photos ...

More photo cards

First of all I must apologise for not blogging for so long - holiday preparations, the holiday itself, and all the work that needed doing when we got home, have all meant that I've been pretty busy for the last few weeks so haven't had any time for scrapping, let alone blogging about scrapping!

But, we're home now and I managed to find a little time to create yesterday, mainly because I needed to create some cards (one of them is for an event in two days time).  So I thought I'd share two of my recent photo cards ...

... this first one uses another photo from the professional photo shoot I blogged about last month - here - and is celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary (last month).  I was so pleased to find some beautiful papers and embellishments that went so well with the colours in the photo

This card uses an old photo, scanned and printed onto glossy paper.  This one celebrates my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary  (the photo doesn't do it justice, the light wasn't very good and the colours look a little washed out) -

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 :-)