Castle Eltz - scrap many photos on one double layout!

Hi everone, 

I am back from my trip to Germany and I'll be scrapping lots of travel photos in the weeks to come. 

Surely we all have been guilty of pressing that shutter button a few too many times and ending up with oodles of photos from just one occasion. So, what do you do with so many photos? Scrap them as minis of course. In next week's class we'll do just that. Include as many or as few minis as you want and create a double layout that will capture all your memories without filling an entire album. 

♥♥♥

I have a few new dies that help us create some different rosettes:

And if you didn't visit a medieval castle? Guess what- this will suit any occasion. 

  

             Cheers, Geli

             ♣♣♣

Daughter

 I created this sweet and soft page using Prima's songbird collection and one of the delightful charming chains from my2angels. 

This particular one is a "daughter" chain in pink, but you can also get them for an aunty, grandmother, nana or twins in several colours. Just imagine making a lovely Mother's Day card for your Nana with one of these. It includes the chain with the tiny roses. 

Do you see the embossed stamping in the background? I used the new texture stamps from Kaisercraft. There are so many nice background designs, good luck choosing one! This one is called "rocks" and I stamped it with Versamark ink and embossed it with Stampendous Aged embossing enamel in copper. Find lots of wonderful colours here.

Rosettes go well with small paper flowers and are a great way to include small leftover strips of paper.

...And here is a very pretty antique bronze peacock. I added a little embossing with Stampendous aged embossing enamel in ivory. This is one of my favourite embossing powders, it has a little glitter and those beautiful chunks of gold mixed in. I made sure that there was one in each feather before heat setting it.

Explore

I finally got my boy layout done for my2angel's boy month:

 I had another play with Crafter's Workshop templates. They look really cool when you go over it with Rangers Distress inks and a blending tool. 

 Even the negative of a chipboard was converted into a mask. I used texture paste and because I was at a crop at Anne's house, it was a different brand of texture paste that turned see-through by the next day. I am intrigued... Will have to find out the brand.

I did the sewing with washi tape, cause I had forgotten to bring some ribbon. It's pretty cool, I think.

 This rosette die has got to be one of the most versatile tools in my stash. It's great for boys and girls and by trimming the cut-out strip skinnier you can make smaller rosettes. This one has a coin charm in the middle with a bit of Glossy Accents.

 Dangle a cowboy hat and a hammer with the help of a mobile phone cord and the explorer has everything he needs!

 Well, maybe throw in a balloon and a film strip, for good measure. These rhinestones are so much cheaper than the sticky ones and they stick a treat with Glossy Accents.

Cheers!

Natural Beauty

Somehow I have a thing for diagonals at the moment. Look what we'll do in class next week!

photos by Ulrike Schmitt-Hartmann

Too bad the weather is terribly grey and dark today, I couldn't take a good photo. But if you look in real life, you'll see that there is lots of metallic shimmer here and there.

First we'll make our own metallic paint, it looks like gold leaf. You can do silver or bronze too.

The background has those shimmery leaves on it (looks really good in better light). 

I love rosettes and this one started out as a fence! 

Cheers!

Create an album with me - page 3 "Beautiful winters"

Welcome to page 3 of Heidi's album! What would a Russian scrapbook album be without snow! And we did see a lot of snow. 

I am using my Echo Park paper kit and embellishments from my2angels. It's actually more of a summer kit, but you don't need to have snowflake paper to scrap winter photos. I just kept the overall colours fairly cool, with a bit of red thrown in, so it doesn't look washed out. A while ago I learned a cool splatter technique on the my2angels blog. This is coming in handy for a snowball look.

Take a paint dabber and shake it well. Now bang it on to your cardstock as hard as you can and you get these cool splats:

For an icicle look, swipe the paint dabber instead (start from the top and drag it down for a "tail"):

My cardstock now looked like this:

Next cut a 4 1/2" strip of patterned paper and rough up the top edge. Punch two decorative strips of cardstock and glue them along the long sides: 

Sand the edges of 3 photos (each 3x4" big) and stick them down with tape. I left the top edges open because I want to add some tags later. They don't have to be straight.

Cut 3 tags (3x3" each) from white cardstock and add some photos and stickers to pretty them up a little. I have journalling on the other side as well.

Push them under the main photos. This is a great way to add related photos that aren't masterpieces of photography or don't match the colour scheme of your page!

If you are lucky enough to own a rosette die, cut out a 12" strip. It's  so handy because you get all the scoring done in one quick step. You will notice that my strip is longer than my die. That's because I cut 2 and glued them together.

But don't despair if you don't have a die (get one!): You can punch a scallop or zig-zag edge (or use edge scissors) and fold along the design. The strip should be 1 1/2 x 12" long.

Fold it like a concertina and glue the ends together to form a ring:

Also cut out a circle from some scrap cardstock (you won't see it). Spread strong glue all over the circle and press the ring down (pretty edge on the outside), so it sits flat. Hold it for a little while (I put something on top for 2 min)

Decorate the front with a flower sticker:

Glue a snowman and a snowflake charm on an eye pin to make some cute charm sticks with a twine bow:

I bit of foam tape and plenty of glue holds them all in place:

Now put it all together on the page, put a rhinestone on each splatter, add a title and a little bird charm with a twine bow:

And the page is done!

A long walk

Wineglass Bay in Tasmania is one of the most beautiful spots on Earth, BUT it's hard to get to. Basically, it's a 2 hour trek up the mountain and down again, only to be repeated on the way back. Still, it was totally worth it. Here is a page of Greg and the kids at the halfway mark.

Next week's class is sweet and simple, but there are still several nice techniques.

We'll do some texture pasting:

Make some rolled thingies:

and a tulle flower:

Sounds good? Why not come along. You can find all the class info in the top right corner on this page.

Cheerio!

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.

Making ribbon rosettes (with a version for seamstresses and one for the sewing impaired)

Here is a great way of making ribbon rosettes from a tutorial I did for my2angels. Everything I used can be bought there, too.

Take 1m of grosgrain ribbon, 12 - 20mm wide, and gather it in loops with your sewing machine. I simply fold the ribbon as I go. Sew only along the edge of the ribbon. The smaller the loops the better it will look.

Your ribbon is now only about 1/3 of the original length.

Cut a circle (about 4cm diameter) from sturdy cardstock. This does not have to be perfect as it won’t be seen. For the next step I have used a hot glue gun (cause I’m the impatient kind). You can also use Pritt Glue  and hold down each section for a little while till it sticks. Starting from the outer edge, glue on sections of the gathered ribbon until you’ve come all the way around. Then you start overlapping the previous row. Like a snail. You get it.

When you come to the middle leave a small empty space

Now you glue in a Cabochons Flower or an Acrylic Flower, daisy charm or a flower from flower chain. Whatever takes your fancy.

This looks great on a hair pin or a head band too!

Are you a sewing impaired person? Don’t despair, here’s a cheater’s way (though it’s not as sturdy). Stick some 6mm double sided sticky tape  along one edge of the ribbon and peel it off one bit at the time as you stick it on the cardboard circle. Pinch it into loops as you go. I used about 1/2m of ribbon.

 Finish the centre however you like and you’re done in a flash. This is also great for ribbon that won’t sew easy, like the glitter ribbon I used.

If you have mastered the art of pinching and sewing you can do all sorts of cool stuff, even sewing in the middle of the ribbon and using it as a groovy border. Big loops will look good for boys, too.

Geli