My nan and I

I've again used Little Yellow Bicycle love letters paper for this page. The grey swirly bit is a T!m Holtz mask. How cool. I've used the negative of the mask which I don't think they were designed for cause if was a lot of work to make it happen. The black chipboard swirls were silver bella ones and I've just coloured them. Flowers are prima, kaisercraft droplets and a fiskers punch. The distressed corners is something that Mel Cook taught me. Thanks Mel, ur a gem.

Just a card

Have used the slice machine to cut out the leaves, prima flowers, kaisercraft brad and my minds eye paper. The scallops were made with spellbinders and the stamps are hero arts, inkadinkado and autumn leaves. The pic on the right is the inside.

forgive the photography

I've stamped acetate and placed it across the photos. How hard is it to get a decent shot!!! I've taken about 40 pics of this layout and this is the best I can get it. I've used Little Yellow Bicycle love letters paper, acetate, maya road chipboard tree, bazzill scalloped edge and the stamps are Heidi Swapp, Hero Arts and Autumn Leaves (trying to keep promise to self to use my stamps on pages more often).

A couple of weeks ago I bought a Basic Grey magnetic cutting mat. Apart from a bit of cutting this is the first layout I've done that I used it for. I love it. It is like having four extra hands. The little magnets hold everything in place and each time I picked something up to apply adhesive the little magnets were able to be used like guides to where it was to be stuck. No more knocking my page and bumping stuff all over, and also when I'm trying to work my pages out, I like to hold them up and look at them vertically. Love it!! Best tool I've bought in ages. Got it here.

ink blending tools

Look what my husband has done for me. I found something similar on a blog I was reading last week. Instead of having to spend $12- each time I want another blending tool he bought a piece of timber from Bunnings for $4- and there was enough to cut 23 blocks the same size as my tim holtz ones. I've glued the blending foam to each one and labelled them. On the ranger site they have PDFs of all the ink and paint names and you can just print them from there. I'm not going to put any handles on them cause you don't use the handles anyway. You can see in the picture that I don't have enough foam pads to do them all so if anyone knows where I can buy more please let me know. The blog I saw this on is craftystorage and there's heaps of great storage ideas.

My nan and pa

Today I've just done a simple frame for a photo of my nan and pa. I've used k & co ancestory paper and prima flowers.

Here's my 2 latest.

This first one is a kaisercraft star album I did of some of my nephews kinder photos from last year. I put a piece of acetate in the middle of the book, sewed around the edge of this and added a fancy pants felt dinosaur to the page. I think it looks really cute. A list of the items used can be found here.

This next one is again my nephew, this time at his Maccas birthday party. It's a really simple page but still took me a couple of hours to do and I love how it turned out.

Way to go Idaho!!

I did a page and I'm happy with it!! I'd been reading on Debbie Johnsons and Melissa Kennedys blog about simpler scrapping and the reason why they scrapped in the first place.

I've never scrapped to preserve memories, I think the photos themselves do this. I do like though that our photos are looked at more since I started scrapping instead of just being hidden away in a box somewhere.

We all have different reasons why we scrap. I do it because it's a hobby, it's relaxing and I get to play with pretty things. It's all creative for me. I don't care who gets to keep (or throw away if the case may be) my albums in 100 years time. I scrap for my pleasure only.

So after reading their blogs I decided I needed to go simple and see if that helped get me going again....and it worked. I grabbed an old photo and a piece of bazzill and started from there. No layering, no measuring and no sorting through mountains of papers. I love this page :)

Ho Hum

Well I know I mentioned it last week but I honestly can't budge my rut. I thought I'd take my own advise and make some cards to try and kick me out of it, so we'll see. I did a page for Chandon Craft this weekend and I stuck and pulled apart the pages 3 times. I have 3 pages here that I've cut out and have ready to stick down but I just don't feel right about them. I just feeling that every page I'm doing lately looks the same. I'm trying to find new direction I think but it doesn't want to come naturally. Typical isn't it!! Today is the 1st day of my 4 weeks off work and I just want to paper craft. I have decluttered my room today so am hoping that may help.

Here are the cards I've just done. There's a couple I don't mind. Don't u just love Penny Black stamps. So cute. Half of these are just 5 minute jobs. A couple are my take on some Heidi Swapp ones that she does a tute on here.

I'm off to try a layout now

Oh and I'd really love to know how everyone is doing the photo collage thing on their blogs......please :)

kaisercraft argentella

is gorgeous. I bought a new stamp folder last week and it comes in a raw form for you to build and decorate. The folder holds 20 stamp sets. Had been wondering what papers I was going to use and then as soon as I saw these gorgeous black and white ones I knew!!

I also finally got a pull-ez. Really wanted the black one but none left so I settled for blue. I did think I owned heaps of ribbon but I still have quite a few holes left in mine to fill so great excuse to get some more.

Spread the love.

A couple of weeks ago Debbie Johnson gave me this blog award and I kept forgetting about it. You are supposed to choose 6 people and spread the love award around. I've only put 4 here cause it doesn't seem that long ago since I did a couple of these.
Sarah, love Sarahs list on the sidebar of her blog with all her scrapping challenges.
Anthea, I know I've put Anthea down here before but her cards are just gorgeous. She's earnt herself a well deserved spot on the basic grey challenge blog and is being published. She's also set herself up an Etsy store.
Mel Cook, if you haven't been to her blog for a while then go an have a peak at some of the way cool stuff she's been up to lately.
Tammy James, sorry if your sick of these things Tammy but I just have to put you here. Your pages are awsome.

im in a rut

creatively. I've been moping around my craft things for the past 2 weeks feeling like I don't know what I'm doing and that I'm not very good at this thing anyway. Usually if I feel a lack of a mojo I will make some cards to get back on track but I haven't been bothered to make them either.

I've spent the last week doing this page. Different from my other pages and not sure yet if I like it or not. It started cause I felt like colouring in and had some Prima paintables in my stash. I've also used Prima rue 88 and creative imaginations dare to dream papers and mesh which I've had for ages too. The rest of the products are; pink paislee paper, heidi swapp mask, corner and clear circle thing, prima and green tara flowers, maya road metal blossum and key, k & co brad and hambly rub on.