Thursday 28 June 2007

"FABULOUS" CLASS

Class number two :) As usual I am more than happy for anyone to use the following instructions for their personal use but please do not copy them (either to teach your own classes or to post elsewhere online) without permission. Thank you :)


MATERIALS

Green cardstock
Patterned paper:
EK Success Miss Polly's PJ's
EK Success Ringaround a Posie

10" piece pink ribbon
5" piece green ribbon
Fabric flower (double layer)
Bling flower
Heidi Swapp "Fabulous" stamp

TOOLS
Circle Punch or Quickutz circle die
Pop dots
Ink


STEP 1

Cut 2 strips of the stripy paper 1 ½” x 12” (the stripes should go across the way as shown)

Cut 1 piece of pink dotty paper – this should be approx 3” wide and the height should be the same height as your photograph(s).

Cut a small piece of pale pink card approx 3 1/2" x 5"

Cut small piece of striped paper the same height as your pink card and approx 1 1/2" - 2" wide


STEP 2

Adhere your patterned paper to the green cardstock as shown.

-
The 2 narrow strips should be about 1 ½” from the top and bottom edges of your layout.

- the pink dotty paper should be placed against the right hand side of your layout midway between the two strips (this will overlap the striped paper);

STEP 3

Add your photographs as shown (below).

DO NOT GLUE the edge of the photograph nearest the dotty paper.

DO NOT USE GLUE in the middle of your photographs…

…as the photos will make a pocket for your journaling tag.



STEP 4

Cut out some flowers from the other side of the pink dotty paper and attach the “half” flowers to the edges of your layout and against the stripy paper as shown.

Use pop dots to attach the “whole” flowers for added dimension.

Tie two pieces of ribbon together and attach along the lower edge of the photographs using double sided tape.

Stamp title

STEP 5

Add fabric flower and sparkly centre using double sided tape.

Use Quickutz die or circle punch to cut two circles from the green paper and attach to the middle of the pink journaling tag. (If you are rounding the corners of you tag do t

Cut a small strip of stripy paper to cover the edge of your journalling tag – (trim one (long) edge with scalloped edged scissors if you wish)

Attach stripy paper and round corners of journaling tag if you wish. Slip tag under photos.


Friday 22 June 2007

THE GRAFFITI PROJECT ON KELBURN CASTLE

This is absolutely amazing- Kelburn Castle is about 3 miles away from me and I used to work in the cafe there (and sometimes at the Castle too) when I was at school - keep meaning to go up to take some photos but the midgies have been truly awful for the last week or so !!!!.

Thursday 21 June 2007

Friends Class - Beginner's Layout

Well I taught my first class at my LSS Paper Cuts tonight. It went well and they are coming back for more next week :D

I am more than happy for anyone to use the following instructions for their personal use but please do not copy them (either to teach your own classes or to post elsewhere online) without permission.

Most of the supplies to make the LO can be ordered online from Julie or Ian at PaperCuts

Materials

Brown Cardstock
Patterned Paper - EK Success
Stamps - Making memories Philadelphia foam stamps & Autumn Leaves journalling stamps
Brown ink pad
Quickutz tag
Wavy edged scissors
Co-ordinating fibres or ribbon (small piece)

STEP 1

Cut the brown dotty paper into a 5” x 12” piece
Cut the blue flowery paper into a 7” x 9 ¼” piece
Cut the stripy paper into a 1 ¼” strip (the stripes should go across the way as shown)
Cut the stripy paper into a 6” x 4” piece

STEP 2

Adhere your patterned paper to the brown cardstock as shown below.

As a rough guide:

- the brown dotty paper should be approx 1 ¼” in from the left hand side;

- the blue flowery paper is approx ¾” in from the right hand side and 1 ¼” from the bottom;

- the stripy paper is approx 2” from the top and 3 ½” from the right hand side.

STEP 3

Add your photograph.
And adhere the narrow strip of stripy paper so that this slightly overlaps the edge of your photograph

STEP 4

Stamp your title on the cream paper using assorted stamps.
Cut out each individual letter as shown.

Ink the edges with brown ink if preferred.

Stamp a journaling block on the cream paper and cut out – use scalloped edge scissors if you wish.

Cut a 12” strip from the cream paper using wavy edged scissors to make “faux” ricrac




STEP 5

Attach your title and journaling block to the page.
Cut a small tag from the brown dotty paper.
Write place and date on a small piece of cream paper and adhere to the tag.
Use a small piece of ribbon or some fibres to embellish the tag.
Attach the tag to your layout.

…and RELAX!!!


I hope you have enjoyed the class - please don't be shy about leaving comments for me - I love to hear from people :) (new friends and old ones alike!!! LOL )

Friday 15 June 2007

Classes, Ribbons & Stuff

Phew after all that Scrapaganza stuff I am just about blogged out!!

Other news -

Kenneth finally got his hamster about 3 weeks ago - finally after asking for one for a bout 3 years. I am glad we waited though as now he is 10 he is able to look after it completely himself and I am very proud of the way he has done so. He has cleaned the cage out regularly, makes sure Smudge has enough food, clean water every day, he feeds him clover from the garden (don't ask!) and takes him out to play every night.

Kirsty was home from Australia for a flying visit - it was lovely to see her again and her plans for the house they are building sound wonderful - but sad that she is unlikely to be back home again for a while now :( (PS Kirsty - you are allowed to comment on my blog you know :D )

Kirsten is in her drama show tonight and tomorrow night. They are performing the jungle book and this is her after the dress rehearsal last night - she is a wolf, a monkey AND an elephant apparently.


A Million Little Things were having a ribbon blowout event last week so I ordered one or two!!!
There are actually 75 different ribbons there - strano ribbon, broad stripey ribbon, lace, dotty ribbon, sheer ribbon, giant ricrac etc etc etc
And would you believe that the whole lot, including postage was only £13 something BARGAIN or what?


Finally my big news - there is a Scrapbook Shop open in Largs!!! Yes we finally have our own LSS - it is called PaperCuts and is run by Julie & Ian.

I will be teaching the scrapbooking classes and the first one will be next Thursday from 7pm-8pm. I will be doing a beginner's course to start with - one class a week over the next six weeks (although that is not strictly correct - there will be no class on the first Thursday in July cos we are away on holiday that week) - the cost for the six classes (which includes a 12x12 post bound album) is £50.

If anyone is interested please email Julie http://www.paper-cuts.co.uk/shopcustcontact.asp and make arrangements to come along. There will also be a crop for 2 hours after the class ie from 8pm - 10pm on a Thursday evening so again please email Julie if you are interested.

So what with designing my LOs plus father's day cards, birthday cards, a card for my parents 40th anniversary tomorrow...you can see why I have been too busy to finish my Scrapaganza projects! Well that is my excuse anyway!

Scrapaganza Day 3

Not such an early start today (just as well given that I didn't get to sleep till after 2am - sorry Diane!) but still early enough. Up at about 7:30 - reckon I had about 9-10 hours sleep the whole weekend! After breakfast the first class was with Emily Adams


my planner page for Emily's class
- another great and funny teacher - sat next to Elaine and with Jacqui and Karen behind us we had such a laugh in this class - I loved the project which was a mini album based on these coasters and using Blue cardigan papers and stickers - Emily had lots of innovative ideas for using these products so I was really pleased with this class - would definitely sign up for more classes with Emily in the future. I finished this in class too but haven't taken any photos yet.



my planner page for the Heidi Swapp class

Next was the Heidi Swapp class taught by Vivien Bonder - we made an album using the giant playing cards and got messy painting with our fingers. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this class - Vivien was very laid back and once again there were some great ideas for how to use the products supplied. I even finished this in class as well - though once again I have still to add some photos.

Time for lunch and as I had a free slot a chance to pick up some make and takes kits to take home - you get 4 m&t kits in the diva package. I made a small paper bag album there and took away two clipboard kits (different sizes of clipboards) and a little mini folded album to do "sometime".

I also managed to get a ticket for the Bazzill class which included a 6 x 12 album in the kit - Dawn kindly picked this up for me as it clashed with my rusty Pickle class.

my planner page for Lance's class
Saving the best till last - yes I think so. I loved this class made using the Princess Bride papers and I will be doing my best to get this finished as soon as I can, although I have so much other scrapping stuff on at the moment.

Just time to say our goodbyes and wait, and wait and wait for the bus to the airport - still it arrived in the end and we all got there in plenty of time for our flights.

An absolutely fantastic weekend...although I don't think I would ever want to do any more classes than that - I was pretty much scrapped out by my last class and starting to make silly mistakes.

Roll on the next one - oh only 5 months to go! 16-18 November in Haarlem (which is right beside the airport so less hassle with transfers I would think) - See you there?

Scrapaganza Day 2

I was up at the crack of dawn - well 6:30am anyway to be in time for my first class at 8am!!! Yikes! What was I thinking! Dawn & I joined MichelleS for breakfast then headed off to Melodee Langworthy's 31derful Memories class
my planner page for Melodee's class


Whilst I enjoyed the class and Melodee is a lovely warm & friendly person and a great teacher I was disappointed we didn't get the use of the famed chipboard corner rounder to finish off the pages properly. Still it was good to have all the stamps available and I managed to get all the pages done in class so I only need to get around to adding photos now. I also managed to purchase a gorgeous pink file folder kit from a class that Melodee had taught the day before at ScrapSalad ( a dutch scrapbook shop) and I am pleased to say that Melodee has very kindly emailed me the instructions so I am all set to go with that project as well...well whenever I have a minute.

my planner page for the Love Elsie class
I didn't have any of the Love Elsie papers when I made my planner so I "designed" my own freestyle paper. I loved doing this - just some splodges of acrylic (very brightly coloured) paint and some doodles.

This class was taught by one of the Dutch teachers (Peggie Severins - later to become one of my poker buddies!!!) and it amazes me how good the Dutch teachers are at teaching a class in two languages. You really don't even notice. This was my only LO class of the weekend and I managed to finish it in class - I was very pleased with it as it is pretty much my style of scrapping -


Grabbed a quick lunch and a mooch round the scrap shops in the crop room - there was a really good choice of scrapping stash available - lots of stuff you don't often see in real life here. And I picked up my Quickutz bargains - the complete SnowAngel gift set including full alphabet and binder for €25 ! No that is not a typo that is how much it was, and the Sunshine gift set for €45 or it might even have been €40...I can't remember now - but I know it was cheap. There were lots of other good bargains to be had but I managed to resist the temptation of the Quickutz Tote or the AMM Medium tote for only €15 each...but only just.

my planner page for the Junkitz class

After lunch was the Junkitz class taught by Stacey Panassidi. This was a calendar made using the Junkitz Decor Boards. It was a bit on the bright side though so I have donated this to kirsten to finish off. I did like the idea but I think it would be easy to make the boards yourself - they were pretty much just thin MDF boards cut into about 8" x 12", corners rounded and some holes punched in them (the cropodile will do that for you :D )


my planner page for the Fancy Pants class
This next class, taught by Michelle Grant was a bit of a disaster though not the fault of anyone apart from maybe KLM cargo and/or Fedex.

Michelle explained that the original kits had been sent and although they had arrived at Schipol they could not be located in the Cargo area. Accordingly some replacement kits were sent out but when these did not arrive by the Friday morning it was discovered that they had not left Utah due to a Fedex mix up( or whatever carrier they were using). So basically there were 200 of the original class kits sitting in Amsterdam airport and 100 sitting at Salt Lake but none at Egmond so poor Michelle had less than 24 hours to grab supplies and make a kit for us.

This meant that the other supplies she did have eg paint didn't match the new papers and she had to "borrow" some from the album track class - so it was a bit difficult to work with not enough supplies to go around. Still I did like the ribbon, papers, rub-ons and flowers we got in the substitue kit and well done to Michelle for keeping her cool in very adverse circumstances.

This class finished at 3:30pm so as my next class wasn't scheduled until 8:30pm I took the opportunity to explore Egmond a bit - There were some pretty little shops and I got some bargains in one shop that was selling Velvet alphabets for €1 and some little boxes of bling flowers and hearts - also for €1.

Picked up some Stroopwaffels from the bakers to take back home, and had a stroll along the front and over to the lighthouse.


After dinner I had a chance to do a bit of shopping...but I was actually surprising restrained - some scalloped edged bazzill, a few heidi swapp stamps and a Creative Imaginations Bare Elements Peek-a-Book book!

my planner page for the Rusty Pickle class



I loved the Rusty Pickle class - Lance Anderson is always funny - even if he is still telling the same McDonald's pickle story he told in November!!! Loved the mini-book done with the Chocolate Bunnies papers and there are always such great ideas in the Rusty Pickle classes.

Met up with everyone down in the crop room - unfortunately the Scrapaganza forum table wasn't very big so I didn't have a chance to meet up with everyone i would have liked to but hey there is always next time. Predictably I didn't win anything in the raffle but did have fun at the poker table. They were playing Texas Hold'em Poker with the chance to cash in your chips for stash after half an hour - Now I have only ever played this game at home with Robert and the kids but this is now Robert's main hobby as he plays quite a bit on line - obviously all his tales of flushes (hot!!! LOL ) the flop, the river and trip aces have been retained in my brain somewhere and I ended up staying in the game until half past one in the morning. I only got beat at the very end by a ringer!!! LOL - Dyan Reavely's son Ben...who had played quite a bit of poker before! Still it was a good laugh and I did win a "few" buttons at the end of it all!!! will be practicing my poker skills for next time I think. LOL

Scrapaganza Day 1


Wow seems like it was ages ago now!!!
Had a brilliant time again and met so many new people - especially the rest of the "Aberdeen" girls (well that is where they all fly from so Aberdeen girls they shall be LOL ) ***waves*** to Jacqui, Karen, Elaine, Anne, Karen & Tracy, and to Irene & Susan, and it was great to catch up with Dawn and Frances and my lovely roomie Diane :)

No problem with the flights this time although this did mean I had over two hours to wait until the bus transfer. Spent the time chatting to the others who were waiting. Had lunch with MichelleS (***waves hello to Michelle) and a wander round the shops in a search for Kipling bags - we did find some but decided to see how much stash money we had left at the end of the weekend before parting with any money :)

The bus was late (Rolling eye smilie here) and as a result a few of us missed the first half of the Karen Burniston album track - I did feel for Karen who was engulfed with about 7 of us arriving half way through the class - I know some of the girls gave up and just picked up the kits but I was lucky enough to sit beside Vicky who helped me get caught up in no time...so much so that I almost finished the album (including photos in class)...but guess what 2 weeks later and it's still not finished. I will post some photos when its done.

These are the first couple of pages of the planner I made. I had originally planned to use one of Roz's gorgeous Flap books but I soon realised I was taking too many classes for this to be feasible so I ended up using a 7 Gypsies book instead.

After the class finished just after 6pm I was too late to meet up with everyone else as they had already gone to dinner so that they would be in time for their class at 7:30pm. My next class was not until 8:30pm. Luckily I met up with Tracy and she walked down to Egmond with me - the main shopping/bar/restaurant area and the beach was literally 2 minutes walk from the hotel. As Tracy's husband is Dutch she speaks a little bit of the language and managed to order me some Kroketten (which were lovely) and chips!!! Very classy LOL. Mind you I do love the "Chipsauce" the dutch have. - sort of a cross between mayonnaise and salad cream!
It was lovely to sit outside in the sun with Tracy whose company I really enjoyed :)

Then it was time to head back for my next class with Lisa Bearnson. Lisa talked for quite a lot of the class about the importance of scrapbooking and the class kit was a very generous 8x8 album kit (although the class did cost €25 instead of €15 but I thought that was pretty fair)
Lisa impressed me a lot with how open and friendly she was - she certainly made an effort to speak to all the Scottish ladies present as she had just been visiting Edinburgh earlier in the week and explained that she had lived in Scotland for a year and half many years ago - Her Scottish accent was pretty good too.


The class didn't finish until after 10pm and by that point we were in need of some light refreshment so some of us headed back down to Egmond to try out the local bars. At least Diane and I were sort of sensible and were back at the hotel by 1am...no comment on those who stayed out later LOL