Looks like little effort spent

.... but this weeks Pencil Lines sketch LO had taken the best part of a day. Mainly because I have made most of the elements from scratch.

Here is what I did;

Supplies

BG Lolipop
Valerie Brown digi kit - 'A good Life'
Chipboard sheets
Ellison qk alpha Curlie Girl
Bazille cardstock
MM Notelette (thankyou Mel)
Scraps of cs
glitter
shimmer paints
sheet of transparancy

One of the examples on Pencil lines this week was a LO by Janine which had used several photos instead of one large one. I wanted to do the same, but am usu ally hopeless at croping them to fit. This time I decided that while I was cleaning the photos up in photoshop I would use a layering technique to fit them all into the larger space. This took a while but did mean I could change the pattern and size of the photos until I was happy with the spacing, something you cant do when you are cutting with scissors. I flattened the image and printed it out as one photo.

I gutted the sheet of bazille so that I could double mat photo. Thats when the fun started.

I wanted to match the colours in the BG cs but didnt have anything to hand so I decided to use some of my digi elements as hybrid stash. The flower is from 'A good life'kit although I altered the colour and flood filled the middle with blue. I printed it out and glued on to chipboard to provide some texture. The 'remember this' tag was part of the kit but the summer fun I had to make myself in photoshop. The Butlin book plate was also a digi element printed out onto white cs, glued onto chipboard and then chalks were used to give a fawn appearance. This was glued on using foam pads.

The other chipboard elements I cut from a variety of dies on my zipemate, and either covered in paper, painted with cosmic shimmer or glittered. The title was cut from the curlie girl die cuts in chipboard and blue paper scraps, which were glued over the top of each other and stuck on.



The journalling is computer printed onto transparency.

The florishes on the flower are rub ons from the French twist kit from Scrummy Cafe.

Waiting for the glue to dry

While waiting for the glue to dry on the letters for my latest layout, I thought I would write up what I did to make it again, as it prooved so popular last time.




This layout was done as part of the Summer Stash Bash being run on UKS throuhout August. This one uses a Becky Fleck Page map and is part of the Tuesday Technique challenge - to use stamps somewhere.

Supplies

Fancy pants Floral Chic My sweetie paper
Autumn Leaves florish stamps
MM alphabet stamps
glitter
Some chipboard or back of notepad
Green and white acyrlic paint
Cosmic shimmer powder (blue, green, red, yellow)
Transparency
Doodlepack digi kit by Iona Havenaar
Sheet of transparency
G;ossy accents glue

The sketch called for four photos but I didnt have four in a 'set' so as last time, I had to mess around in photoshop before I could get started. Having picked these photos they seem to match the paper so well I just couldnt resist. And the paper was way too prrruudy to cover up, so instead of using the sketch as it stood I changed things a bit. In order to use ALL the pretty pattern I used my snap off craft knife and a glass cutting mat to cut out the flowers and swirls in the pattern just enough to slip the photos underneath.

I gutted the back of the top photo in order to use the back of the double sided cs as the journalling block.

For the stamping part of the challenge I used the swirl stamp on the naked chipboard, using stazon black ink after painting the chipboard with acrylic paint using a sponge brush. I dabbed white paint into the green to match the green paper. When dry I carefully cut the swirls out and glued on to make the journal frame.

Still using black stazon I stamped the title with the MM foam alpha (gosh its a while since I used those) and then using the same technique as before, smeared glue over them and then glittered with pee wee glitter.

Finally, the bubbles are printed out from a rather old digi kit by Iona Havenaar, called Doodlepack. I resizes some of the round tags which looked a bit like bubbles, printed them out onto a transparency, then used red, yellow, blue and green cosmic shimmer powder to paint a rainbow effect. Once glued onto the LO I added a 'bubble' of rangers glossy accents to make them 3D.

Make do and mend

Back in the 'good old days' scrapping supplies were no where near as plentiful, varied or as easily attainable as they are nowadays. Looking at all the new CHA stuff being previewed on various sites and forums made me think back to when I first started scrapping. There were NO bricks and mortar shops selling craft goodies anywhere within a 100 mile radius of where I lived - come to think on it there still are very few. Internet shopping was very new and scary, international Internet shopping virtually non-existent or something someone else (who was rich and clever) did. About the only three ways to get stash were a) get someone you knew and trusted to post it from the USA, buy from QVC or Ideal World, or c)go to trade shows.

Even at shows, the choice was limited, you were lucky if there was much more than cardstock, a few sheets of pattern paper, and eyelets or snaps. Well that's what I came away with on my first visit anyways.

So in order to make a half decent page, you had to be very adept at making your own embellishments. Paper piecing was all the rage, loads of eyelets threaded with ribbon, that sort of thing. Even when all those things we love to use on our layouts now started to reach us from across the pond, I was still proud of the way I could usually make my own version - shrink plastic, hand cut titles, I even once made a very ornate key using nothing but cardstock, my computer and a ton of glitter. I layered cardstock to make my own chipboard letters. I scorned those that used pre-made items as 'cheating' and taking the easy way out.

I still don't have loads of the latest up to the minute, money and an overwhelming choice often stopping my hand on the buy now button. So I thought I would share the process of this LO that uses so little in the way of modern fancy bits and much of my very old stock.

Oh and my other problem is lack of photos - in the '80's before the advent of cheap digital cameras, processing film was expensive, cameras were for high days and holidays, one film often having to last for nearly 6 months!

So for this layout I only had two very poor quality photos to work with. Thank goodness for photoshop! It took me quite a few hours of cleaning up, enhancing and cropping, enlarging to get these three alternative looking pictures, but I wanted to do Sketch 87 on Pencil lines so I persevered.

Supplies
1 sheet of steel blue bazille
1 sheet light blue bazille
1 sheet of (old) Chatterbox scrapbook walls courtyard blossoms
half sheet of (old) Chatterbox scrapbook walls sky lilac
Black floss (very old reel from when I was at school!)
blue cotton (from a mixed pack bought in sainsbury)
Stickles - star dust
Peewee glitter, light blue (bought in 2000 at that first show!)
Set of chipboard letters (possibly HS but not sure as have had for over a year,) Staedtler triplus fineliner pen black (bought cheap in Sainsbury)
Foam pads bought in poundland
Black stayzon ink
White reeves acylic paint (in Tesco sale)

Tools
Corner punch large and small sewing needles
Herma
PVA glue
Autumn leaves stamp circle jounal/scroll
Chatterbox doodlegenie twitterpated

I double matted the large photo onto light blue cs and then onto the chatterbox courtyard, rounding all the corners as I went on both photo and layers. I matted the smaller photos once onto light blue cs. I positioned and stuck down.

I found a flower on google which I printed out and used in two sizes as a template for the flower (I am hopeless at free hand drawing) I matted both onto the light blue cs and then positioned and using foam squares, made into the 3D flower. At this point the flowers didnt stand out enough so I doodled some stitching around them with the black pen. It seemed logical to follow the stitching around the frames on the photos.







I knew I wanted a florish but wasnt sure how to go about it. I needed a thinking stage, so I left it on my desk and came back the following evening. I used the doodlegenie sheet as a guide and using my coluzzle pad underneath, and the larger needle, I punched out the holes to embrodier the swirls. I really wanted blue floss for the sewing but had to make do with black as that was all there was in my sewing box. When I had finished one swirl though, it was far too harsh against the blue so to tone it down I sewed the light blue cotton around each stitch. Happier I did the second swirl, but I was still not convinced it was right.

In an experimental mood, I used the stickle to run a thin layer of glitter along the threads.

Sewing took another evening up.

Stamping the journalling block took only a minute, finding a quote to go on it that I liked took up another whole evening, and then I hand journalled as by now I really didnt want the fuss of trying to print it and line up all the lines on the stamp.

I came away for another evening to think on how to do the title. I knew I wanted to use chipboard but I only had one pink set the correct size, everything else I had was too big for the proportions. In the end I carefully peeled the pink layer off and then used white paint to colour the letters. This still was too harsh so I used my finger to smear a thin layer of pva glue over each letter and sprinkled with peewee glitter.




I finished off the title with some Heidi Swapp rub ons and I am quite pleased with a LO made mostly from old stock and scraps.