SDC 33 – Use scraps

OK, so I am calling these paint chip strips “scraps”.  As they have been in my stash for easily 5 years, I think they qualify.

Not a whole lot more than yesterday, if I’m honest.  I really wanted the bargello effect to be on display and everything I tried (stamping, embellishing, ribbon, flowers, whatever) just detracted from it.  So simple  was the way to go – def. a “less is more” look.

I have had the felt speech bubbles in my stash for ages as well, and never could find a use for them.  But for this card, they worked well.  I did have to type the word on plain white card, as the original green-and-cream ledger paper was simply too dull against the vivid paint chips.  It looked wrong.  Inside, it says:

Growing old
is mandatory.

growing up
is optional

which I thought great for a birthday card.  I have a few “young at heart” people with birthdays coming up and this is simple and colourwise right for a man’s card, I think.

I have been looking at Bargello designs, and I like the look of the varied width strips, although to be honest perhaps better on a bigger canvas than card-size.  It gives an interesting effect, almost the illusion of motion, and that is something that might be fun to play with. Another day, for sure.

So, UK people – will I see you at the Newbury Stamp show?  I’ll be there on Saturday.  If you see me, say HI!

WOYWW 108 – a card

I’ve been playing with a few things, as you may know, and today I have a combination of a few of them.  First, a bargello, and next, paint chip strips.

I sliced the paint chips, which naturally have a gradation of colours, and created the bargello background for a card – the SDC this week is for using scraps, hence the little Stampotique fellow in the process of being Copic-coloured! I hope the paint chip strips count as scraps, albeit not in the scrapbooking sense.

I’m liking how it’s progressing and think it will work nicely in the end.  We’ll see.  I am still not happy with the sidebar iPad display, but am determined to simply accept that something about my sidebar is forcing the footer bits to appear in weird places and spend no more time on it.  At least until I fancy a fresh look – maybe n the fall, maybe for Christmas, who knows?

I missed seeing the lovely Ludgershall ladies this month, but next month is a 12 hour crop ao very much looking forward to that.  Not least because I can bask in the glow of the lovely Julia, she of WOYWW.  Now, off to hop around some inspirational blogs, and, no doubt, do a bit on Pinterest pinning while I’m at it!  Such a good way to keep track of things that inspire me. Have a good one,

A New Look!

I’ve been playing around with my sidebar again, and the theme was clearly a bit flaky.  every time I think I have it sorted, and I look in my iPad the display is totally wonky.  Driving me a bit mad, it was.

So I went looking for a new theme that had the required elements – a two-column layout, custom header, and custom colours. Found one I like well enough, but typically there are issues. First, the header is a different size to the one I created for the past theme.  And I can’t seem to be able to change the link colours (the blue with the green I chose annoys me a bit) and the footer appearing in the sidebar STILL isn’t solved.  Grrr. I am giving up on this. I’ve said that before but now three themes and unless I don’t use the footer at all it just goes wonky on the Pad.

I grabbed the header from Shabby Blogs, and added a background colour as well as my blog name to it, got it to the right size for WordPress (all the headers there seem to be blogger/blogspot ones) and kept it very simple.  I hope it all works fine for you, if you’ve come to visit me!

Now, I need to test out a few last things, put some laundry in, and tidy up.  Then I hope to get on with something a bit crafty.

So busy

It’s been a day of catching up on paperwork, DDs parent’s evening tonight, DSs last exam day, and so much other rubbish that I haven’t really had a chance to do much crafting at all.  Oh well.

Tomorrow looks clear, except restocking the fridge, and Wednesday too, maybe, but Thursday is a teacher’s strike day, and prep for DDs transition review next week.  When the kids were very little the holidays were anticipated with dread, but now I quite look forward to not having to get up quite so early and days when we get to set our own schedules a little more.

But I do hate to let so many days go by with no crafting at all appearing here.  I have recently been spending a bit of time, like many, on Pinterest.  So much fun, and great for finding inspiration without having to read 1000s of blog regularly. One thing that I seem to find appealing is paint chip strips.  These were SO popular 10 years ago, and they never really went out of fashion totally.  And people are finding lots of fun things to do with them, from wall art to punched-heart garlands.

Hunting back through my photos of projects, trying to clean up iPhoto a bit, I found this little book I made (I think for a UKS cybercrop class) and it reminded me just how much fun these little colourful strips can be.

It must be old because I used a QuicKutz alphabet on it!  Anyway, it’s a little bi-fold mini that opens to reveal:

…two little side of paint chip strip pages.  With the heat today it seems the the right thing to share.  and seeing it has given me some ideas for updating.  I made another one of these at the same time, more pink and pretty, that I can only find this photo of, using the old index prints from rolls of film commercially developed,

It’s clearly not finished here but I’m sure I added bigger photos where possible, quotes, etc.

Now I know I have a stack of pretty strips stashed somewhere.  I think I had this in mind when I collected them but I think I will have to change tracks now and look at flag books again.  Everything old is now again, isn’t it?

 

Bargello

I had to laugh. I remember seeing a project in Somerset Studio, so may years ago I can’t tell you – certainly the first year it was published.  It was, if I recall correctly, by one of the Magenta stamp women.  It was an absolutely stunning paper bargello.  I had some paper set aside, considering how to best attach it, when I saw the make-your-own-tape post.  I thought it looked fun, but hoped that the adhesive might solve my problem of a good solid bond with no wrinkles.

So I got that yesterday but DD was feeling unwell and wanted her Mom so I took advantage of that (usually she is ALL about the DAD) and whiled away the time watching her shows with her browsing.  Imagine my surprise to see someone, just YESTERDAY, posted a bargello card! OK so I know this is not new, people use it on cards a lot, it’s been used in quilts for a long time, and in needlework, but how funny the coincidence.  And back to the whole Google thing, can I find the darn post now to link to it??  I am pretty sure it was a tutorial, pretty sure it was a major site, pretty sure it was mostly orange… Argh! I WILL find it, but I may have to go back to my iPad and google from there to do so.

Anyway, mine is sort of a practice item, sort of not.  What I loved about the original one I saw was there was a lot of stamping and inking on it.  I decided to test out the idea I had for the adhesive.  First I cut up 12 sheets of scrapbooking paper into strips.  This is all Rouge de Garanche. Loved it (still love it just not for scrapbooking right now)

I unrolled a bit of the adhesive roll and started sticking the strips.

I just kept sticking and sticking them, making sure to butt the ends right up against each other.

Then I trimmed away the adhesive at the sides (the roll is wider than 12 inches) and sliced that into strips across the first stripes and all along the length.  Then you stagger the strips, shifting up or down one square to create the bargello pattern. I played around with a couple of patterns

You don’t really get a sense of exactly how BIG it is except that green self-healing mat is about 28 inches across.

The adhesive is cool for the tape-making, but not good for this as although it does put Xyron like adhesive on it, you do need to rub pretty hard with the little squeegee thing to make sure it is fully adhered, and you cannot then peel off the whole strip as one piece – the adhesive breaks and you get 100s of sticky little scraps that you would have to adhere one by one – Ha! No WAY.

But I love how it looks and will def do one that is more atsty but I will use this one as well – I just need a BIG (frame size) sheet of paper to adhere all the strips (with the backing in place, I think LOL!) and then I can hang it up.  Or maybe do two or three little canvases, squares, to hang in a row.  Not sure, but it is too pretty to just shelve it, and the strips are too big to use as card backgrounds. And this way I get to use some of my prettiest papers that I don’t see using as my scrapping style has changed.

 

WOYWW 107 – nothing!

What’s on my W this Wednesday? Nothing. 

Why, you ask? Well because this is winging it’s way to me:

And when it arrives, I’m going to make these custom tapes!

well not THOSE exact tapes as I don’t have that paper, but something like it.  I’ve been buying, when I see it, some fab wrapping papers from Paperchase.  I think a couple of them will work for this very nicely, thank you.

So at the moment my desk is less than inspiring but you will find lots to inspire you at Julia’s Stamping Ground , this and every Wednesday. Check it out!

A double layout!

This week on the scrap Factor contest we posted the theme for next week, for the contestants to work on.  It was to take an old layout, one from your earliest scrapping days, and re-do it in your current style.  It got me thinking about stuff I once seemed to do all the time but now, for whatever reason, I don’t seem to do ever. Not sure why, I just don’t seem to think of these techniques or products.

So first, this is a double page spread.  I almost can’t recall when I last did one of them, whereas once I was passionate about doubles, feeling that the whole one-photo on a layout thing was just not efficient and I had too many photos to useless than about four.  The 4-photo-layout blog was a favourite place to visit, but sadly, I don’t think it is updated anymore. While I certainly came around to the appeal of single-photo layouts and have done LOTS of them, I still tend to use two or more more often than not.

Next, I used journaling, printed on vellum – and coloured vellum at that! My new printer doesn’t handle the inexpensive vellum I used a LOT for a long time, but I came across a whole binder full of page protectors FULL of coloured and patterned vellum in my travels through my scrap room and I thought Why not? The printed handled “real” vellum much better than the office supply version, with no smearing. Yay! and I journalled a LOT – again, something I always did, and now if I manage a date and a short paragraph I feel like I’ve done well.

And I attached the vellum with coloured brads.  Lately I have gone back to silver, gold, and the copper coloured ones more often than any other,  And even so I used them very infrequently, more as a decorative item then a functional requirement (ie to actually attach something.

I also used a pack of pre-cut die cuts from Bazzill.  since I got my Craft Robo, and backed that up with a Cricut, I have had no need to BUY die cute, so these have to be many years old.

Foam stamps.  I do still use them occasionally, but once they were the only letter stamps I had and I used them A LOT.  I still love them.

Painted edges and stamping with paint was also something I did a lot and never seem to do much at all now.  Brushing the edges of a photo or paper with paint is a trick I learned from Shimelle,  It gives a real dimensional look, much more so than inked edged, as the paint itself is a bit…gloopy? Well, thick anyway.

The journalling is all about how DH promised me that he would take me to Lake Como.He did, and we had a fab lunch out on the patio f a lovely restaurant overlooking the lake.  It was just stunning.

So what I think is this – while I love all these products and techniques, when I look at this layout I imagine it could have been made 5+ years ago.  In some ways the products and techniques really date the layout.  Maybe it is using all of them on one layout.  Maybe I looked at the stuff and rather than try hard to drag them into  2011 I sort of fell back on the way I have always used them.  I think the next time I would look at them more critically and really see if I could give them a more modern twist.  Is that possible?  Maybe.  Maybe it’s just a matter of taking ONE of them and adding it to something that is bang up to date scrapping-wise. Maybe that would make the techniques and products look fresh and new.

But in any case, these photos have languished in my photo stash for so long, just getting them on the page is great.

I should take a close up to add because one thing about doubles is that photographing them as a single unit means the detail is lost in anything other than quite a huge photo! I may do, but poor little muffin (DD) is home sick today and I promised I would sit with her for a bit.  Much as I would like to spend the day at my desk or crafting on the floor, I have her home with me all day so infrequently that I really want to spend the time with her, especially as she asked – usually it’s all about the DAD, so I’m going to grab the moment.  I may even take a photo or two….

Serendipity card and a musing

First, the crafty bit.  I’ve still been playing with those circles, making good use of the smallest of scraps, and I managed a card out of one of them.  Might do nicely for a graduation card:

But actually I am more interested, almost, in what I can do with the leftover bit after I punch out the circles.  I’m sure there is a card in here somewhere, somehow, but I’ve not hit on the perfect composition yet.  I may not, but I am convinced I cane come up with something.

These are so easy to make and I love creating something from nothing.  I have another idea for my strips of scraps, but I need to sort it out in my head first and maybe do a little planning.

In the meantime, I thought I would mention something that has been annoying me for ages and now I know the answer as to WHY.  There is a new book due out called The Filter Bubble.  It’s subtitle has the clue: What the Internet is Hiding from You. I was happily reading a rather in-depth review and I discovered something.  OK, so I knew that Google tracked searches, but I didn’t know that since 2009 it has used up to 57 “data points” about me and my searching habits to personalize my future searches.  And that includes info on the computer you are using.  It was like a lightbulb going off – PING!

I have long been irritated by the fact that in the wee small hours, I might do a search on my iPad to find something crafty or scrappy.  I’ll find something that I want to explore further in the daylight hours and the next day I go to my desktop, do THE EXACT SAME SEARCH and do not get, in the first 25 hits (if at all) the thing I am looking for, that maybe was the top hit on my iPad search.  This idea of search personalization is the reason why.  So now I know – I thought it was ME.  It’s not, it’s THEM.  And I’m still mulling over the info and looking forward to reading the book.  At this point I’m not sure how I feel about that, really.  It annoys me that there is info out there, stuff I may have been searching for repeatedly, and can’t find, that maybe I am not finding because Google has decided, based on my past search habits, I don’t really want THAT answer.  Humphf.

Sunday-someplace-else (How about Orange?)

I love this site – always something interesting there.  I thought this little project that I bookmarked was a good one to highlight today:

Using stuff you may already have (basic paper clips, scraps of fabric and fabric stiffener) they look adorable as bookmarks, yes, but would also be darn cute on a scrapbook page, or maybe on a card, clipping a bank note or a gift card – a sort of double gift!

Have a good nosy.  I’d be surprised if you didn’t find a good handful of stuff you can’t wait to try.

 

Still trying to sort my projects

OK, I had a few reports from people that my images were not showing up.  I think I’ve sorted that.  I was trying to be clever 🙂 I have a private blog for testing things out – that lets me make a change over there, see if it works as I expect it to, make any corrections, and then make the change on my real blog.  I adding lots of the images to that blog, then just linked to the images to display them here.  It works fine on my desktop, and was working OK on the iPad, but Wednesday I noticed the little blue ? instead of the images were displaying.  Also on the iPad the titles of the sections don’t appear over the sections, instead you see the two headers for the YouTube projects and the Stampotique projects together, then all the little images together, which is annoying.  If I re-order the widgets, it puts a bit of the footer into the sidebar.  Now I know why DH gets frustrated when programming, when you seem to be doing things right, expect a certain outcome, and yet it doesn’t do it right!

So I hope this has at least solved the problem of the images showing up for everyone.  If not, do comment and LMK.  And I’ll have to have DH have a look at the split display .

On a side note, I am still making those serendipity circles for my craftyness (see WOYWW 106) and will probably have a few more to share.