Photo Stacks - Pretty Girl

In my continuing effort to catch up on the projects I have been working on, here is the 3rd installment of my photo stacks project.  For details on how they were made visit my blog post Photo Stacks - Boy Themes.

This post is showing of the 2 girly themed stack that resulted from my efforts.

Papers by Fancy Pants:

Dancing Girl - Dancing Girl
Dancing Girl - Tutu
Dancing Girl - Hip Hop

The same three sheets of paper were used to make both stacks.  The papers were reversed and the order changed to give them a different look and feel.  I had lots of fun creating funky edges on these two.  Simple, fresh and girly...  They will be fun to use in a future project.

Thanks for stopping by to check out my Photo Stack projects.

Keep smiling something crafty could happen today.

Elle

Photo Stacks - School and more

This post is a follow on from my post about how to make the photo stacks...so if you missed that one and want to know how they are made look for my post about Photo Stacks - Boy Themes.

The top photo stack is sort of school themed, mostly because I put the paper with the words 'Spelling' on top.   I used the same papers in a different order for the next one and it doesn't look at all school like. Any ways, I have old school photos so I can see where this one might be used.  I also left this one without any punches or edging.  I wanted to have one that was nice and plain...lol.

For both the stack above and below I used papers by Fancy Pants - All Fall: Spelling, Recent, Fall Splendor.

I love how you can just put the papers in a different order and the photo stack looks completely different.  The other thing that gives this stack a different appearance is the use of punches and dies, each page has a decorative edge which I think gives it a great finish. 

Both of the above photo stacks where made with the following papers:

Fancy Pants - Delight: Garden, Bubble, Potpourri

I think these two would be great for a birthday or some party type theme.  Cant wait to see how (and when) they get used!

Again I just mixed up the order of the pages and in some cases reversed the paper and instantly a different look.  Add the variety of punches and dies and you can come up with some pretty cool photo stacks - at least I think so.

Hope you enjoyed this look at my photo stack mania..two more posts to come with the rest of my completed 'Stacks'

Keep smiling something crafty could happen today.

Elle

Photo Stacks - Boy Themes

Inspired by Heidi Swap  (link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhOvgFNvJy4) and her use of Photo stacks in her memory folders, I though this might be a away for me to capture more photos on a scrap book page.

So... I went to my 12x12 paper stash and grabbed a stack of papers, then I sorted my papers into bundles of three.

Next I took my paper cutter and cut all the papers to 6' x12'.

Keeping 3 sheets of 6"x12" per stack I then set about scoring the papers to create a graduated effect.  I tried a few measurements but the one that worked best fro me was to score as follows:

On the 12' side score:

1st sheet @3.5"
2nd sheet @4.5"
3rd Sheet @5.5"

Fold, stack and then either staple or sew - I sewed mine, and it was easy peasy.  Finally decorate to taste and style.  I used the envelope punch board to create some tabs and otherwise used all sorts of punches to create variety on my photo stacks - Note I made heaps and it really didn't take that long...more posts to follow with pictures of the others.

So, the photo stack above has two sheets of paper and one sheet of Stampin up vellum.

The papers used for for both the boy stacks were:

Fancy Pants - Rough and Tough: All Star, and Wishing Star

And here is the second stack...the papers are ordered differently and I added a layer of Kraft to this one for more variety.

The awesome Chevron punch used on these two stacks is a Stampin Up punch - I want it!  (Note - I used this one at a friends house).

And here is a little picture of my very old sewing machine...I have had this little baby since I was bout 8yrds old.  After I wiped the dust off and threaded up the needle it was clear sailing with the sewing.

The photo stacks are now ready to be added to any project or used as they are and each has lots of space for photos.

Thanks for visiting my blog today.

Keep smiling something crafty could happen today.

Elle

Prima Art Venture 2014 - The missed opportunity, the kits and finally the glee

I booked early for the California Prima Art Venture scheduled for January this year and I can tell you I was excited for the better part of six months, I anticipated the event with glee...  But as luck would have to have it...I never made it to LA in January .  This was pretty disappointing but life happens..

Luckily for me, the people at Prima were awesome, they sent me all the goodies from the retreat.  And those goodies came today.  Opening the box was soooo exciting, inside were these awesome pizza boxes which look totally cool and have one thinking how to reuse them - they certainly cant be discarded!

Five project kits in Pizza boxes, each kit focused on a different Prima Collection...more detail about each kit in posts to follow (I plan to work through them kit by kit).  Each of these kits includes an instruction sheet fro the project - I did see lots of great goodies like stamps and stencils as I browsed the boxes. 

The last kit was in a big plastic bag - I am pretty sure this is the kit from Finabar's class and she is not an instruction kind of gal...I am told that class was more hands on and visual...no worries I can have lots of fun with that.  This kits had not 1 but 4 stencils...Yippee ( More Happy dance), a book and embellishments...ooh!

Also in my big box of goodies were some gifts from Prima.  An awesome canvas tote full of goodness like an Ingvil Bolme distressing tool and craft knife (both formally on my wish list - pretty cool), scissors, two bottles of Glue (scotch and fabri tac), pop dots..

Also a Prima bag brimming with more goodness, paper pads paints, ink pads, flowers, embellishments, mediums.

Needless to say...I have lots of projects to work on now...

Happy crafting

Elle

Junk Journal - The journey to 2013

Hey...More about my junk journal journey - This is a big post as I detail my smash book, junk journal journey.

For my first smash book (that's what it started as) I used a cheap art book, I think it cost 2 dollars.  It had a nasty black plastic cover.

To make it more mine I covered the cover with tissue paper and lost of white pearlised paint and a big ribbon which I also painted.  That's where I left the front cover...as least for now!

On the inside (and I did this much later after I had been using the book a while) I spritzed with some Lindy's Stamp gang sprays...well actually on the inside cover I dripped the spray on more then sprayed...but on the back cover I sprayed.

On the first page I made a note that this was my first smash book and that it would hold anything that I couldn't be bothered to scrap.  And that could be anything...which you can see from wrapping paper from a gift to a metro pass.  And I didnt give any thought to keeping things in order.  AS I found stuff it went in.  Witch was a great chance to pop in little memories about the items.

Even from early on some pages I really like and others I wished could be better...but the purpose of this was to not lose the little mementos I had kept.  And I started to enjoy writing the stories that went with them,. 

About Now we also decide to make a big move, and started cleaning out the house ready for packing...this resulted in two things.  Heaps more stuff for the book and the realization I am a pack rat..sigh 

Even as the pile of of old bits and bobs grew, I was creating new moments as we painted the house and made arrangements to move and that's when this started to evolve into what I am calling a junk journal.  I use that phrase to describe the adhoc nature of capturing mementos from the past while noting current happenings.

One page might be a receipt from Girl Guides camp (a long time ago..) and it could be right next to a ticket from a movie a few years back.

I found myself popping the current days polaroid picture (I love the instant gratification), a the receipt for garden supplies with notes about the progress of our plans in the book in between pages that had things from trips a few years ago.

I kept a copy of an old bank statement and one of my early pay slips, and the junk journal gave me a quick place to record the the history of the document or the memory it brought back. 

Where do you keep old pet records...some of my mine found a way into this book and golly it felt good giving them a home.

I mentioned in a previous post how my junk journal has also become my first art book...and I have to say the pages with the pre prepped backgrounds really pop.

Lost of pages are multi layer, ie things open to show more...

Since I started this journey I find myself keeping more small things that I can quickly pop in with notes to remind me why I kept it.

I think my next junk journal will be more current (I think most of my old keepsakes are pretty close to in, or will be int he last few pages in the book) but I really loved  this journey and the memories it let me relive.

I would recommend Smash booking or junk journal to anyone.  It is fun in a different way to scrap booking.

I am already working on creating the basis for my next junk journal...it will be in a post soon.

Thanks for popping past and if I helped inspire even one person to try this journey I will feel pretty awesome.

Happy craftin!

Elle

Smash Book / Junk Journal - Art Pages

I am fairly new to smash book or journaling.  But over the last several months have got much more involved. 

But this is about how my smash booking has revolved into a junk journal and an art book.

When I started I stuck my bits and bobs on the blank pages.  But then I started thinking those pages needed a bit of a boost.

That's when I started to play around with the art book concept.   This gave me an excuse to play with no set outcome...and I did.  I filled the last few pages in this book with background that pop with colour and fun.

The pages which are all ready for my to journal lures little moment.  But the fun was in playing with my paints sprays and stencils....

Off to fill some of those pages.

Craft happy.

Elle

Mini Album - Fold out Flip Folio

Hey!

I came upon an awesome tutorial by Sabrina at paper-architecture-sabrina.blogspots.com, and knew I had to try it out.  

So, I purchased the tutorial and set to work.I finished this whole album in just a few hours, it all just seemed to come together so easily.  

In the top left photo you can sort of see the closed album, when you open it just keeps opening out. 

So awesome.  Am really pleased with this album and plan to make more in this style.

Supplies:

Cardstock - Stampin Up

Designer Paper - FabScraps (Love love love their papers)

Stamps - Kaszazz

Punch - Stampin Up tab punch

Happy craftin!

Elle

Mini Book - One page album

I love Polaroid pictures, they are so immediate!  So I recently bought a new camera that would fulfill my need for immediate gratification when it comes to photos.  And that meant I had to take some photos.

Given we are preparing to move overseas shortly there has been a lot of activity at home to pack up, clean up and prepare to move.  So I took a bunch of pictures as we cleaned the house ready for sale.  And that meant I needed to pop em in an album.  For this I made one of those little 12x12 one page mini's...and this is how it came out.

The mess as we started to clean out the kitchen...then the unbelievable neat cupboard ready for sale.  A little lace and the page is complete.

As you can see from this picture, two of the pages in this little book have pockets where you can add extra tags.  I used my tags for journaling and extra photo mounts.

Look how neat my drawers looked once we took everything out..  and again it only took  very little embellishment to complete the pages.

The little star on the photo surround was my little joke as the ceiling being sanded had to be repainted because I had previously stuck a whole bunch of stars to the ceiling and they all had to be removed.  It was a big job.

And some photos of some of the lighter moments that occurred while we did the big clean.  

This is an example of the little tags I made to go in the pocket.  I used the Stampin Up Tag punch to make the little tag top.  

The back cover I left very simple as I think this will end up in a larger mini at some point.

Thanks for popping by and checking out my little mini.

Happy Crafting

Elle

Mini Album - Envelope Mini

Hey!  Last weekend I managed to make some time to craft and one of the things near the top in my completely packed craft room (packing to move, everything is in boxes) was some envelopes and my ever favorite Prima Paper pads.

So, an envelope mini album evolved.

For the covers I used Prima Ledger 12x12 paper, but for all the internal pages I used a 6x6 Prima paper pad.

I kept the cover pretty simple  - I loved the paper just as it was, and as this was going to be given away I wanted to keep the outside very flat for easy shelf storage.

 I used the envelopes for the foundation  and simply covered them with paper.

 For extra pages I used the cards that came with the envelopes.

 In most cases I secured the card in to make an extra page.  But in a few cases I left it as a card insert so that the album included extra photo mats.

I added a few tags.  In the picture above I made a little tag card that is in the shape of a onsie...I was going to decorate it more but I ran out of time.

Most I kept the page decoration simple with only the decorative paper.  On some pages I added a border punch creating a holder for photos or tags.

And in other places I added a small embellishment to create a photo holder.

 Lots of space for full size photos
 In my mind As I was making this I was thinking of a friend who is about to have a baby.  And I though this paper was nice given I didn't know if it was boy or girl.

 I used Kathy Orta's hidden hinge binding method.  One thing I did note was to be careful not to join the pages all the way to the bottom of the binding as it makes the pages a little harder to lie flat.

Making an album this way is pretty quick.  I made this one in a day and that is definitely my quickest from start to finish

Thanks for popping by.

Elle

Card - Dress Form, Easel Card

Hello Blog land!  Today I wanted to post pictures of some cards I made for friends this week.  I started off planning to just make one card, but it was so much fun and so easy I made 4.

These cards are all easel cards.  Made using the Tim Holtz Sewing Room - dress form die, Prima papers and some odds an ends around the craft room.

The example above was made with feathers, ribbon and rub-ons.

These 2 cards were each made with an assortment of ribbons and lace.  I was looking for the shabby chic look.   

This one was made by cutting lengths of ribbon and adhering them in place.  I added a little wool trim to spice it up.

Thanks for checking out my card projects.  

Happy crafting til net time,

Elle

Mini Album - USA 1: January 2013

Hey Blogger's

It's been a while since I posted.  But I have been crafting.  Finally got a chance to record a clip of the first (of probably a few) mini albums I will make to capture the memories of my trip to the USA in January of this year.

Now it's time to get the photos in...

Cheers
Elle

Mini Album - Baby Book

This little 6x6 Gate Fold Mini is completely inspired by Ginger of My Sister's Scrapper  http://youtu.be/-bjZ4bkUKNo.

Ginger provides super awesome instructions and I couldn't resist giving it a go.  This is also the first time I have made a mini for the purpose of giving it away.  It came together much quicker then I expected and I really liked the finished product.

The person I gave it to seemed to really like it - she has a a little girl about 3 yrs old and thought she might use it to pop a few of her pictures in.

The album has 6 pages on each side.

I used a combination of Prima's 6x6 Jack and Jill paper pad as well as some nursery rhyme papers I had from a few years back.

Each page is a pocket and I kept the pages pretty simple,

On the last page or back cover the tab can be lifted for an extra photo

 mat.

And this are the tabs I made for each pocket.  I included little journal tabs on most of these as they act as both an anchor for a photo and or a place to right a little comment.