Pass the Page Blog Hop

Last weekend I was on the annual crafty bloggers weekend away. This is the fourth one held and we've created a few traditions along the way, one of which is Julies Pass the Page.

Julie organises the order we go in and sends the first person (me this time) a photo of her layout, that person uses it influence their page. A photo is then taken of that page & sent to the next person on the list, and so it continues until the end.

We had the great unveiling of layouts at the weekend away, & now we're sharing them with you :)

The blog hop starts at Julies blog before you get here

I loved the way Ju had written on the rays, actually I liked all of what Julie had done so used quite a lot of her ideas.

From here you should now hop on over to Jackys blog to see what she did with my page.

Sweet 16

Sometimes you get drawn in by a sketch, as soon as you see it you know you have to give it a go, this for me was the February challenge at scrapology.

All of the examples were beautifully feminine with lovely flowers, which wouldn't work with my lads or my style. I wanted something grungier, more teen boy to go with this photo from Zacks 16th birthday, so I went exploring my papers.

Teen Angst papers immediately grabbed me, as they usually do, with a few other papers and embellishments.

As most of my teen angst papers are now scraps the squares worked perfectly with them.

If anyone has any teen angst papers by We R Memory Keepers they want to pass this way, give me a yell as I've almost run out & love them ... or if you know where I could get some, I'd be really grateful.

Gingerbread

for Christmas my lovely other half bought me a Cricut Explore, and I am finding it so useful.
Such as for the layout below, based on the February sketch from the Me & Mini blog.

I found I didnt have any gingerbread embellishments so went searching online for ones I could cut out on my machine & came across quite a few. With a little bit of altering & running of the machine I was sat sticking "icing" onto "gingerbread shapes". I could then put together my page, keeping it fairly simple as the paper is so busy and I wanted the photo to remain the centre of attention.

Friends

With it being the last day of Frosty Festivities I went back and looked for things I might not normally do myself. I found a few to use on a layout which I could tie in with this weeks UKS challenge.
The challenge is to....
Use 5 or more paper/card layers
Use 3 or more washi tapes
Use 10 or more small embellishments

I framed a photo with beads as suggested HERE, the photo was a little bit too small so I extended the top with white paper which I then could cover with the beads (inspired by THESE)
Other areas of inspiration from Jennifers event were.....
Stencil all over the background of a layout or project
Make your wood veneers extra sparkly with gilding flakes or glitter
Heat emboss the edge of stickers, or paper, die-cuts, etc
Use glitter through a stencil
Mix up different colours of embossing powder - A blend of gold & gold sparkle embossing powder.

I would like to say a huge thank you to Jennifer for holding Frosty Festivities, I've had great fun entering the competitions, seeing what you've made and joining in. As you can see, I got heaps of inspiration from it.

Relish the Moment.

The inspiration I got from Frosty Festivities helped me with last weeks UK Scrappers challenge.
The challenge was to include.....
* Ribbon/twine/string/raffia
* Rectangle(s)
* 1 photo
* Stamping and/or embossing

I started off with a large rectangle aperture in the red paper, showing some of the yellow dotty paper having taken inspiration from Jennifers Giant Aperture christmas layout. It was missing ... something ... once I'd finished so I cut out a kind if wave from the aperture .... is this still classed as an aperture?

I also took inspiration from the prompts...
"Put three bits of ribbon/string together to tie around a project""Use a play-on-words phrase""Use contrasting patterns next to each other (eg geometric and floral)"& "Put a phrase on top of a photo"

These are definitely not patterns I'd normally put together but they do go. & with space on the photo detracting from the main subject (Zack eating a hot dog) this became the perfect space to fill with a title.

Creative Zone

What always impresses me about Jennifers work & events such as her latest, frosty festivities, she always manages to think outside the box, so I decided to try & add this thought to my scrapbook page, to think outside the photo.

In this case I tried to extend the photo, first by mounting it on paper of a similar colour.

I wasnt happy with it so got my paints out and went over with this. I sponged with greens and blue, then stippled with gold and browns to try & match the autumn leaves.

Jennifer had started with a monochrome page and felt it needed a pop of colour. I decided to do the opposite with this page. The paint being the pop of colour and I wanted the embellishments and title to be monochrome. I layered up embellishments, and a journalling block. Adding also buttons, beads brads & even a shaped paperclip.

I think this technique really draws your eye to the photo, not my usual style but I rather like it.

RAU Cirencester

I've had this photo (taken by the talented Julie) printed for almost 2 months now but kept putting it down, not sure what to do with it. I liked the technique Jennifer used in her frosty festivities of misting, stencilling & stamping so thought I'd try that as I had a brick stencil. First I misted in yellow, then blocked off some of the mask so there would be space to journal & misted this in brown. Finally I added a "You are here" stamp in brown. I wanted it to be seen but not to stand out to much.

I mounted it onto blue, a splash of colour against the brown, and then mounted again on a sheet of brick wall patterned paper. I also added a blue title. There was something missing, the page was too plain, I needed something to join all the mounts together and soften the line below the photo.
Brown ruffled lace seemed the perfect addition. soft and somewhat opaque.

Snowball fight in Summer

Last weekend Jennifer held her second Frosty Festivities Event on her blog. I love her events as not only are full of inspiration & tutorial but its also all for free!

I made the above layout using several posts for inspiration.
I initially decided to use Elf as my movie inspiration (mentioned in THIS post), and wanted to use it with my summer snowball photos. Jennifer suggested starting with a title (post HERE) so I googled for some buddy the elf snowball quotes & came up with the one I used.

Though I could fit photos on a single layout I went with a double having read THIS post, and began looking for both christmassy & summery papers & embellishments. Having found some christmas wood patterned paper covered in dots which reminded me of snowballs, I cut it into strips (from THIS post) this gave it a look of planks of a fence or a sledge.

The title didnt really make sense without buddy though so I found an image of him & printed it out fairly large (20cms tall) finding inspiration from THIS & THIS post.

The page needed a bit more texture so I added half pearls, buttons & wrapped bakers twine around a photo (inspiration from HERE). I had some old wooden butterflies that I wanted to use but the colour of the wood clashed with the wooden paper panels so I took on THIS suggestion & painted them white.

I finished off by adding the PL cards, & journalling before sticking everything down

A Heroic Anniversary

Where did September go? I know some of it went in a medicated haze while my system got used to my new tablets, then there was a fantastic crafty bloggers weekend away, trips out cycling, & so on & so forth.

Talking about the weekend away, here's one of the layouts I made while there.

I used the sketch from Scrapologys September challenge & was inspired by the colours of ironman, red & gold with black outlines. There's a lot of blue in the photo as well so I decided a bit of misting would bring this out nicely.

Santa's little helper

The challenge at Scrapology was to use Trellising on our layout, they also provided a lovely sketch.
Luckily I'm currently borrowing my friends die that looks just like trellising.

I based the colours around the card I had saying "Santas little helper", Rys work shirt & a touch of gold to glam it up a bit.

Going Dotty

The technique this month in Simple Recipes* is to create a paint confetti look. Using the sketch, which I rotated 90 degrees CCW, I created this layout of my sister doing her work experience 9 years ago.

The dots are a mixture of poster paint dots, some topped with glossy accents & melted beads.
I tried to keep the dotty theme going with the papers I used & washi tape.

A Fresh Start

Sometimes you come across a layout that you love, want to scraplift & dont want to alter too much about the placement/items etc. I found such a layout on UKScrappers during a challenge, if you're a member on uks you can see it HERE.

I had several other photos to go with the main photo so turned it into a double layout.

Road Trip, & the hop keeps going.

Remember last monday I took part in the blog hop that just keeps getting bigger & bigger!? Well if you dont you can have a look HERE, if you do then you might be interested in looking at Ruths blog HERE as she continues the hop. Fay is still planning to do a post but as life has currently got in the way (we all know that feeling) I've told her not to sweat the small stuff, and post it when she is able to.

I would like to show you a layout I made for a UKScrappers weekly challenge using a sketch from Me & Mine blog.

I suddenly realised that black chevron washi tape was perfect for tyre tracks & buttons with a piece of yellow card in the centre matched the wheels on the jeep. I stuck to the colours of the jeep, such as the paint work, wheels, & the imagery of driving through muddy land giving brown.

Shh...

Simple layouts feel like I'm kind of cheating, but I do love this one I made. It started with, yes you guessed it, a challenge from the Refresh Your Craft & Soul event, to keep it clean & simple, something I dont tend to do with my layouts.

I knew I wanted to use a polaroid frame to highlight Kai in the photo. Initially I went looking for a sheet of paper to match the colour of Kai's outfit. I came across this one & allowed the image on it to lead me. I took the colours from the hot air balloon for the frame & tags. I took some chipboard clouds & covered them with white flock, the same with 2 brads. Finally I tried to copy the font by the image to use on the tags.

A Cats Christmas Joy

Dont you just love a sketch! Jennifer gave one as part of her Refresh your Craft and Soul event so I went looking for photos. Last month we sadly had to have Blue, our cat, put down as he was so very very ill, and it was lovely to come across photos of him so well and happy. They were from our first christmas together back in 2002. Back then it was rather fashionable to use the colour blue in the christmas decorations so I wanted to use that colour on the page.

The title are letters covered in micro beads & then glossy accents. & I had to use these cat wood veneers, so cute!

Strong Boy

Teal, orange and white are beautiful colours when put together, and these are the colours Jennifer challenged us to use using a colour palette.

These colours reminded me of the All About A Boy paper range so I located mine and set to work on a layout.

3 Layers of Resistance

I really enjoy using the resist technique, it reminds me of my childhood, using candles or crayons to draw something & then brushing over with watercolours. Now I get to play with a slightly more grown up version, stamping, using clear embossing powder & then brushing over with sparkly watercolours.

I havent used this technique in a while so, inspired by Jennifers "Can you resist it" blog post I decided that I wanted to create a page with barely anything but this technique. I came across a photo of Banshee sitting on my old computer monitor back in 2005, with a fairly plain colour scheme in the photo I wanted to brighten the page up so went for the colour scheme in this months challenge at SJ crafts, orange, pink white & gold.

I started with the top layer, stamping flowers & a butterfly, embossing powder, heat, painting over with orange, allowing to dry & then cutting out. While waiting to dry I did the second layer, large flourishes, & more flowers, painting over with pink.

Once I knew the size of the second layer I could work out where to stamp for the bottom layer. I did use 3 small patches of flowers but mainly used winged insects on this layer - dragonfly, butterflies & bee. I also stamped a lined journalling box to use. I painted over this with a gold colour

I selected white letters for my title & painted these pink to match the page & waited impatiently for everything to dry. I could then layer everything up, write my journalling & stick the title down.

Being such a pale page really makes the photo pop, and the more you look at it the more you see with the resist technique.

Man at Work

Growing up we slowly learn to stop "messy play" in line for more constructive methods of play that are usually a lot cleaner. As children we're told off for making a mess & getting things dirty, so when I want to try a grungier layout I get this sense of unease. I think my main concern is "what if I LITERALLY mess it up", make a total pigs ear of it, waste a whole lot of stuff & dont like it in the end.

Well, with a bit of inspiration from Jennifers "crafting without fuss" blog post (part of this weekends blog event she's holding called "Refresh Your Craft & Soul") & this months Scrap 365 sketch I just got on with it.

I used some washi tape before stencilling with punchinella & plenty of acrylic black paint, I then added a few streaks of black paint as well. With the page about my son doing work experience at a publishers I wanted plenty of representation of ink and printing which I think this effect did quite well.

I started layering the photo up but found I really didnt like the lines behind it on the background going horizontally so I turned it around. I also found there was too much going on in the background of the photo so I inked around the edges with brown & black ink to bring the eye more to the subject in the photo.

With the browns & the blacks the page was looking a little dark and dull so I decided to brighten it up with some gilding flakes. I die cut a clock face, painted it & once dry added the flitterglu & gilding flakes before adding it to the layers. I also stamped some clocks & cogs to the background sheet with flitterglu & again used the gilding flakes on them. A few layered embellishments and a cork title finished the page off before adding the journalling.

Rides in Rhyll

Looking at the photos I wanted to use I took yellow & green as the main colours on them so wanted to reflect that on my page.

Having read the 3rd NSD challenge at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog, and wanting to add another colour to the layout, I chose to make a triangle of red embellishments on the page. I added tags and brads and attached them giving a burst of colour, guiding your eyes around the page.

Every Colour of the Rainbow

Recently I've got bolder & bolder with using colour on my layouts, but non have been as bright as this one. This Counterfeit Kit Challenge was to use all the colours of the rainbow, so I used them on a double layout & I love it!!!!

The colours of the candles on the cake were rainbow coloured so I knew these would go perfectly whatever I did for this challenge, and the page grew from there.