Workspace Wednesday: Getting the paints out on travel layouts

I love to create a paint frame on a nice brightly patterned and coloured piece of card stock.
I don't often use enlarged pictures and find that you can create an easy layout with some washi tape, punched out stars and a nifty title.

Some Amy Tangerine cut out embellishments from a 12 by 12 sheet.

 For more of  my scrapping about Barcelona check out this layout of the cable cars here, for a layout with the view from on top of the cable car see here and one of my personal favourite layouts of the market here.

The top ten things to do in Barcelona (if you're lucky enough to be heading there this summer) check out here. 

For the second layout I used white paint to create a mat for the title and I misted the lettering using letter stickers as a negative mask.

Its all about our adventures on the night train in Thailand when we journeyed from Bangkok to Chang Mai.

A close-up of the title...

For more layouts of my Asian travels see here for a layout about Kota Kinabulu and Thai desserts, here for a layout about pad Thai on the Ko San Road and here for a layout about elephant trekking..

I am so jealous of Amy Tan having her babymoon adventures in Thailand at the moment...

Future dad: Note to Self Layout

I created the basis for this layout a few weeks ago and felt it was a bit bland. I liked the yellows and pinks and the layering, but it was lacking something and so I left it for a while. Then last week on NSD some of Shimelle's and Studio Calico's challenges gave me some ideas for how to jazz it up.
Firstly on Studio Calico they challenged us to use buttons on a layout and that gave me the idea to embellish the speech bubbles patterned paper. I stuck them on with modge podge and felt that this gave the layout some of the much needed dimension, as you can see....

 Shimelle's scrapbooking challenge to use spray inks caught my eye and helped me to fill some of the white spaces - I also painted little hearts with the wand on my spray ink.

So now I was feeling a lot happier about design - what about the title and journalling. Initially it was going to be a 'holiday' layout about our trip to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall - but then I realised that there is another story to tell.
So inspired by Shimelle's prompt to scrapbook a milestone and to journal in a letter form the idea of the 'future dad' title was born and the journalling round the edge of the page is all about my husband's fears and excitement over becoming a dad in July.

So thanks everyone for the inspiration and for helping me to complete this layout!

Eden in bloom...

When I was ill a few weeks back I spent a lot of time with my laptop in bed catching up with scrapping videos on Two Peas in a Bucket and one of the mood to scrap videos by Lizzy particularly inspired me as I liked the composition, the misting and the border effect on her finished layout.

On our recent pre-baby trip to Cornwall we were lucky enough to visit the Eden Project and I particularly loved all the colourful flowers and so we both posed for a picture in front of the blooms which co-ordinated best with our outfits! What a scrapper hey?

I liked the idea of getting messy with paint and stencils and so used a doilie as a mask

 and 

smooshed yellow paint on.

I was hesitant about using purple, yellow and red together but I love it.

I used the rule of three with Amy Tan embellishments to add interest to the page.

I liked the idea of creating washi tape flags to embellish the photo.

Hopefully it doesn't look like too much of a scraplift - I just really loved the original layout and it worked really well with the bits and pieces that I picked out from my stash.
Thanks Lizzy and Two Peas for the inspiration.

Elephant canvas for the nursery...

 I mentioned in a few previous posts my intentions to make canvas' for our nursery - ready for our new arrival in July. We are only in rented accommodation so I don't want to commit to a project too big - like wallpapering or painting a feature wall. So canvas' seems like the happy medium.
There are many tutorials on blogs and youtube and I took inspiration from these but went my own way with it too. Below is a step-by-step tutorial - including lessons that I learned along the way.

Step 1 - Decide upon your colour scheme. Prep canvas with gesso allow to dry. Paint one coat of acrylic paint - I applied mine with a foam applicator, but a sponge would work as well. Allow to dry. Apply second coat.

Step 2 - Decide upon your design. We originally wanted elephants and giraffes, but the giraffe silhouettes looked a bit strange and didn't look as cute or convincing as the elephant - so we went for one big elephant and then two little ones. I just got the picture from google.

Step 3 - Cut the design out and then trace in pencil onto chosen fabric. Remember that it will be in mirror image. Cut the design carefully out of the fabric - my fiskars scissors come in hand here.

Step 4 - Attach the fabric with modge podge to the dried canvas. Modge podge all over the top (see third picture) don't worry it will dry clear. I added heart buttons for the eyes with modge podge too.

Step 5 - Allow the whole thing to dry. On the top canvas I decided to outline the elephants in black fabric paint to add more definition.

Tips:

• Pick a dark coloured fabric as the yellow was a bit see through and up close you can see some of the glue underneath.
•  Be very careful that you flatten the fabric down before the clue dries - as you can see the second elephant has a bit of a crease on it. Some bloggers recommended reinforcing it with modge podge first or backing with cardboard.
• The yellow canvas also shows up some of the plush from the fabric and it dried into the modge podge. This, as I am sure that you can tell, was the first one and I might redo it as I think the little imperfections will annoy me.

  I made some canvas' of our wedding in the summer and the tutorial for these can be found here.

Messy Mondays: Painting with American Crafts and Amy Tan

So as July 10th approaches and the little baby in my belly is wriggling away and making itself known I am becoming increasingly aware of the decline in our 'us' time. We often go on spontaneous dates - trips to the cinema, meals out, snacks like ice-cream or smoothie dates and I am sure that this will change as us becomes a three!
So I made the most of our recent 'donut date' and got a picture of the usually reluctant 'model.

I wanted this layout to be pretty with florals and hearts. I went for Dear Lizzie paper, mixed up turquoise paint to create a border and then created little clusters with washi tape, bling and strips of patterned paper.

Please tell me that this won't be the end of it all...that we will fade into the backround. Haha!

Half term highlights...

To combat the back to school blues I will share some of what my half term looked like...

Baked some blueberry scones

Went to a certain Swedish furniture store and indulged in my fav treat

Along with some tasty donuts from a certain America donut place

I think The Belgian looks hot here - but then I am bias!

Did some crafting on a onesie - I shared this earlier in the week

Impressed myself with my chevron creating skills

Ate at So Bar in Knaresborough getting two-for-one using our new free trial Tastecard - fellow Brits sign up now!

Creating his 'n' hers lamps on our bedside tables - Homebase were selling these Habitat lamps at better than half price.

Did some more crafting for the babies nursery - I will share a DIY for this later in the week.

Picked these up at Ikea as well for the nursery - we are thinking of a 'feature' wall of pictures rather than painting

In other news:

• Saw Beautiful Creatures on Orange Wednesday - not usually our cup of tea but we enjoyed it
• Had our 20 week scan and all is well - we are Team Yellow and waiting to find out
• I am totally loving Pink's new song with the guy from FUN
• Watched Nashville for the first time today and think I could really get into it - always been a closet country music fan
• Found Paige's blog through Shimelle and have been having a real nosy around - am totally inspired by her use of hearts, confetti and layering

What have you guys been up to recently?

Pinning Projects to Paint...and other things!

It's no secret that I have been having a crafty drought these past say four and a half months.
I think there are many reasons - mostly relating to the baby growing in my belly.
For instance:

• feeling too sick and lethargic to do anything more creative than channel and web surf
• barely having any photo's from the last few months
• especially lacking pictures of Christmas - where I was being sick a few times a day
• realising a distinct lack of storage space and rapidly accumulating scrap albums
• trying to clear out my scrapbooking room - ready to transform into a nursery

However the nursery is giving me some creative yearnings and I have spent the week pinning craft projects that I hope to work on over this half term holiday.
I will post the top four here to share with you all and to commit myself to completing at least two!

1) Firstly since we don't want to find out the sex of the baby we have decided that colour scheme will be yellow and grey with polka dots and a jungle theme. I loved these spray painted and decorated zoo animals over at Spearmint baby and think this would be a fun project and would look great displayed on the window still or book shelf. With yellow and grey accents of course.

 

2) For me the most ambitious project (since I am useless with a sewing machine) and the one I will probably save for nearer to the birth when I may be able to get some direction from the lovely textiles teacher at my school. I love this honeycomb material - any ideas where to source it in England? Elephants and giraffes are going to feature most heavily in the decor. The tutorial is found here at Sew 4 Home.

 

 3) I love this shadow box idea from Our Day by Design. I have ordered some elephants punched out in greys, blues and yellows from ebay - cheaper than the actual Martha Stewart punch which is £15. I just need to get the shadow box - I seem to think that Ikea stock these quite cheaply? Am I right? 

4) And lastly the project I will be tackling first I think is this animal painted canvas - here is the youtube link. I brought the supplies yesterday and have printed the pictures off ready to roll.  I think I might make the silouette with material and have ordered some grey and yellow fat quarters off ebay this morning. So it may look more like this...

How cute is this? From here.

So there you have it. I do pin a lot, but I also try to actually make some of the things I pin. Hopefully I will have some projects to share with you all by the end of the week,

Messy Mondays: Washi title and glimmer mist mat

Do you remember our anniversary day out at the start of the summer? Three whole years and a grand day out together to celebrate.
I was inspired by my zebra print dress and used my stripy washi tape to coat my chipboard title and I am totally using that technique again - even though it was a bit of a 'faff!' I used lots of scraps of studio calico and tags to create a layered effect. The newsprint paper is perfect for the vintage and grungy feel of the layout.
I created a mat by mixing my turquoise and glittery glimmer mist together - it was quite subtle but added a nice glimmery tint.

 I embellished with paper strips and buttons.

 I added some bling to embellish as well.

 A close-up of the pictures.

Linking up with the amazing soapHOUSE mama over here...

Market value...

So you may recall my sister and I went on a trip to Barcelona over the summer - here are my top ten.I quickly ordered the pictures and have been enjoying scrapping with them.
We visited the market practically every day- the ice cold fruit smoothies were very welcome in that intense heat - it is when I am in markets that I wish that my photography skills were better. In my head I imagine pics of colourful stalls with arty blurring etc, but in reality my pics never live up to the idea in my mind. I have recently ordered a new close-up lens and am hoping my dreams of blur and macro shots will be realised with this new lens.
So back to the layout...I feel that this is sketch / composition that I have used before and think it is inspired by Shimelle. She has a pet hate of putting pictures on layouts that are landscape and portrait and I am inclined to agree that it looks more pleasing to the eye to have a nice line of photos. I used paint to create a border and then put some blue splodges in the corners.

I tied the middle pic up with some Miss Caroline twine to make it stand out.

I used washi in the top edge and bottom edge - overlapping the pictures.

I decorated with punched out starrs given texture with glossy accents, a flag and an American Crafts sticker.

I think turquoise and pink is a great colour combo and it really stands out and looks very bold and fresh. My sister and I were discussing the trial of coming up with titles for our layouts, earlier this week, and I said I often use song lyrics as inspiration or phrases. In this layout I thought of the title 'Market Value' as one of the things that I journalled about was that when we went to the market in the evening we got some real bargains - as all of the stalls were selling their food and drinks off before closing. I am a fan of cheesy puns - how do you all think of titles? Is it the first or last thing you plan in a layout?