City Park kaleidoscope

Have you ever done a photo kaleidoscope? I haven't done this before, but I thought it'd be fun to do one in class. 

You will need the same photo 4 times (2 of them are mirror image) and plants and flowers look especially nice.

 A good ol' classic: paper beads!

It's nice to go back to some old childhood faves once in a while.

If you can make it, I'd love to see you in class next week!

xoxoxo Geli

Create an album with me- title page

In the late nineties I spent 3 years doing volunteer work in Russia. All my friends from that time are literally scattered across the globe now, over 5 different continents, but I still keep in contact with a lot of them. I recently heard that my friend Heidi lost all her Russian photos and since it was her birthday I decided to make her an album with some of the highlights. We shared a lot of adventures during our time there. Not all the photos are the greatest (or in focus), but isn’t that what most people’s photo boxes are full of? If they tell the story, use them! I am scanning all my negatives but some of them have deteriorated badly in the last 15 years. I just wish I had done it earlier.

Tracy from my2angels supplied me with the latest Echo Park This & That, Graceful collection

 and her wonderful and unique embellishments. 

Over the next 10 weeks I will share with you the pages I do, as well as step by step instructions on how to create them yourself. I will do many multi-photo pages and journaling where possible. Flip out things and hidden stuff! It’s there for you to scrap lift, but I would appreciate if you leave me a comment and a link with what you create. Almost everything I use you can get at the my2angels shop. Click on the links to find the supplies I used, but feel free to change what you want.

My measurements are in inches because that’s what my cutter comes with. If you need cm just convert it. The sizes don’t have to be exact most of the time.

So here is my first page. Since it’s a title page it only has one 5x7” photo. And that one is out of focus, but it’s the best one I have.

I wanted to use both front and back of this paper. Cut out an 8 ½” circle from the top right area of the page using either a circle cutter or craft knife. Also cut a ring, 9” diameter on the outside and 8” on the inside.

Flip the circle over and use sticky tape to hold it in place. As seen from the back:

Ink around the inside of the ring and the edge of the background. Glue the ring in place.

Ric rac is awesome to outline a circle, because it’s easy to follow the curve. But the yellow ric rac was a little too bright, so I painted gesso over it to tone it down a little.

Glue it on the outside edge of the ring.

Cut a 5x7” mat, ink it and glue it behind a 5x7” photo at an angle. Glue it on top of the ring like this:

No, we didn’t arrive by hot air balloon, but I used the sticker anyway because it’s cute, together with a couple of word tiles. They are going to be part of my title.

Use a hole punch to make a hole in the middle of the flower sticker and push 5 sets of stamen through (folded in half). Sticky tape them in place behind. They add a bit of dimension to an otherwise flat sticker.

Die cut a doily (or use a paper one) and cut out 2 petals from a large flower. Ink around both before you glue them down and add the flower sticker.

The Charming word tile is in soft antique gold (very nice), but I’m going to add a few silver charms later on and I need them to match. So I used an emery board to gently sand down the title and the outline of the flower to turn them silver. It also helps the word to stand out better. Glue it under the photo.

The brown stemmed flowers looked a little dull here with all the bright colours. They clearly needed some glitz, so I rubbed a little Shimmerz over them. Spraying them in glimmer mist or glimmer glaze would have worked too.

Cover the stamen of a gardenia with Glossy Accents...

...and cover them in red micro beads. Careful, they’re very jumpy! Pour them over the flower inside an ice-cream container (eat the ice-cream first).

Glue it down and add a few more small dots of Glossy Accents and micro beads under the balloon. Add one of the stemmed flower (the spare stamen go under the balloon’s basket) and a red felt star. 

Add 2 more stars (we are on Red Square, after all) and the other 3 stemmed flowers on the other side, together with a passport charm and a title. All your embellishments should roughly follow the curve of the circle.

Glue an airplane charm above the balloon (no, we didn’t arrive by plane either!), finish off the title with letter squares and we’re done! Do a little journaling inside the ring.

I hope you can find some inspiration for all the wonderful my2angels embellies here! 

Freezing!

Yes, it is winter even in sunny Queensland, but that's not what this layout is about. 

When we were in Tasmania, we went to the most beautiful beach, Wineglass Bay. It was quite a trek to get there and back, but so worth it for the beauty. However, the water was freeeezing. These silly photos of Greg are my favourites.

We'll do this project in class next week and we'll make these gorgeous chipboard flowers. Thanks to Linda B for the technique idea!

We'll make the little swirls too. It's actually quite easy to make this layout look elegant, if you prefer. Try adding a few paper leaves to the flowers and of course, no goofy photos...

White with nothing! Can you scrap without colours and patterns?

What do you think? Could you scrap without any colours and patterned paper? I wasn't sure I could, but I wanted to give it a go. You can too if you come to my class next week!

Since there is only white I needed lots of different textures and materials to keep it interesting. There is paper pleating, punching, die cutting, felt flowers, clear embossing, flocking, crackle painting and a foam title. Add some roses and Perfect Pearls, brads and stamen and that's it.

By the way: I have discovered that white comes in many different shades! And they don't always look good together. This was a fun project for sure.

Make it your own

It's really easy to make a class layout your own, with just a few tweaks and changes. This one is based on the hugs and kisses class. 

The obvious change of course is the colour scheme. I love the fresh green and aqua together and it goes so well with the springtime photo of my nephew and niece. 

In this layout I replaced the fussy cutting (told you I wasn't fussed on it) and used up the leftover flowers from another project...

...skipped the glitter butterflies and just punched some instead... 

... and glittered up a laser cut word instead. 

  

So, you can see, it's really easy to give it your own look!

Smile for the camera

Here is a version of the Bicheno layout that I did during class. As you can see, it's quite easy to flip on its head, make it girly, boyish, whatever you want. Thought I'd share.

I used the last scraps of Authentique paper (the rest is on Hugs and Kisses) and some pretty my2angels embellies on it. 

The sweet little camera charm is one of my favourites. It goes with so many looks. I put a little bit of Liquid Pearls in the middle to give it some contrast. 

The red felt heart  (comes in several colours) with a charming pin, an old cotton doily and a die cut doily:

I love it when the girls put on impromptu fashion shows. All their idea, I swear!

Joel at twelve

Ah, those teenage boys are hard to scrap! So I've got to get some good ones in before he turns 13 in September! Plus, I owe him since that pink layout from "Flower girls". So here's a good one for older boys and we'll be doing that next week if you wanna come along.

 I used a sketch from the October Afternoon blog (my favourite brand).

There's a bit of a starburst (me, playing with my new die):

The same die was used for the border on the right. Way too cute and ok for boys, too.
I made a banner with (you guessed it) another new die:

and a bit of crackling to make it look "tough". Joel approved, I hope you do too.

Cheers, Geli