Building Bricks: a Scrapbook Page

When Get It Scrapped asked me for a page on which I had combined some embellishments in stacks, I had all kinds of ideas -3D flowers, maybe, or butterflies with decorated wings - but as I flipped through my photos I thought the best plan might be to find a picture in which "stacks" had some real meaning. And then I found one of the Berlin Wall.

I have already scrapbooked a sizeable number of my Berlin photos. But those ones of the wall: I keep picking them up and setting them back down again. I remember the night the wall was breached. I remember a little of the before and more of the after and I understand, now, that what I knew was not nearly enough. 

We stood beside one of the remaining sections last summer and the tour guide began to unpick its story for us; and if I were being fanciful I might say that it felt a little as if he wanted to hand us brick after brick so that we might build up our own understanding of what it had been like, before everything changed.

So I stacked up bricks with my embellishments, with the result that I saved the journaling for another page (of course I have more pictures). The layers do a fine job, I hope, of illustrating how it felt to be there, in 2016, with so much to discover.

More ideas for combining embellishments here at Get It Scrapped

December Projects at Gossamer Blue

My sister and I went Christmas shopping yesterday. It's our special annual tradition and this year it felt as if we had got in there early: that is until, in one of our favourite shops, we were given Advent calendars. "You're going to need those tomorrow!" the girl said. 

Of course! How could I have spent last week making pages with the beautiful December Gossamer Blue kits without registering just how close we are getting? 

I made this one:

because I wanted to use the pompom hat card from the Life Pages kit. It's true. I can hear myself sounding more and more like my own mum, especially now that I'm doing a lot more knitting. "You need a hat! You should pull that down over your ears! You aren't going out without a coat! Let me hold this up against you to see if it's long enough yet.."

The little ink splash stamp is from last month's kit. I like a touch of black to hold everything down on the page and this is the perfect size. The woodgrain layering piece I cut from some Fancy Pants packaging.

Then I made this one:

I hope the close up gives a better view of the dimension..

Those are Pink Paislee rub ons underneath a couple of the diecut butterflies.

And finally I made this one:

Because Christmas tree embellishments aren't just for Christmas... 

...and the pieces from Pink Paislee's Moonstruck collection have more than a little magic about them!

Maybe you remember how excited I was when we spotted what looked like the Hogwarts Express? 

Next stop: recording my December Memories. 

November Projects at Gossamer Blue

Oh, I'm so glad I'm talking about scrapbooking today! That way I don't have to tell you about knitting, yesterday, and the 246 stitch pick up. That's a whole lot of sweater to get back on a needle again..

So, scrapbooking. It's November, she said, stating the obvious, but, hurray! I have always looked forward to autumn kits most keenly. I can't wait for a rifle through the paper to see if there any leaves to cut out, any embellishments to help me record my favourite stay-inside activities, any hints of what we might expect of December. And November at Gossamer Blue has it all. This is what I made:

First of all

I did a diary page. Yes: an excuse to use the leaf rub ons and cut out some leafy stamped images; but, after a couple of weeks of no real scrapbooking I did so want to cut paper, so I began without any real plan in mind. At one point this was almost a photo less page; but at the last minute I trimmed a picture of me holding an autumn leaf (taken from my instagram feed) into a little banner.

More and more, these days, my pages are turning into diary entries rather than the stories I began my scrapbooking by recording. I suppose I've told lots of the family tales I've had stored up and now we're all moving forwards.

Or perhaps looking forward, to our next adventure

I also made this one:

which came about because I wanted to see what I could do with the map printed on a 6x6 piece of patterned paper from the Shimelle GoNowGo pad in this month's Bits & Pieces kit. Of course I cut round it! I mean every word of the journaling: it could have been easy to look at this pair, on their phones, instead of looking up and around on a walk round Berlin, and roll my eyes. But although, of course, I do shout look at that! all the time when we're away, I'm still glad to see them happy to stay in touch with friends. When I was that age we didn't have that opportunity and a long summer holiday could feel isolating for a gregarious teenager. I don't mind the phones, honestly, most of the time. Unless someone feels compelled to keep up a running commentary of cricket scores..

So far,then, that's what I've scrapbooked for November. I still have a clutch of red and natural toned pages on my desk, from the Main Kit, because I'm starting to think about Christmas cards..maybe..just a little..

You?

Everything here made with the beautiful November selections at Gossamer Blue right here.

Extra, Extra...

...Extra, extra...I'd love you to be able to read all about it. But it turns out that I have really quite a sick husband to care for. We are waiting for more test results. So I don't have a lot of words today, just a few quick pictures of a couple of extra projects I made with the October Gossamer Blue kits. I hope you like them.

I have a card:

The background is done with a Maggie Holmes rub on pen. Honestly? It started out as an experiment and then when that went slightly awry, I kept going to see what would happen next.

And a layout:

about a visit to Anthropologie. The paper cutting came first

before I'd even decided on my subject, because I wanted to take this sheet of Amy Tangerine paper and trim round lots of the leaves. Once I'd made a jungle, I realised that it reminded me of the kind of thing you might see as a display in Anthropologie.

The gold letters I pieced together from a whole selection of phrase stickers I knew I wouldn't use separately. And the tassel? Well, it wouldn't be Anthro without a tassel.

See you soon!

October Projects at Gossamer Blue

October has always been a favourite month for me. The crisp air! The colours! That hint of new beginnings wrapped up in tradition. It's everything at once. And a good time to be a scrapbooker. 

And, maybe, a cardmaker? As it's World Cardmaking Day today, I'd better start my Gossamer Blue October projects with

 ...a card. I made a set for my GB blog post later in the month, but this one has a slightly different look so I pulled it and here it is. It's mostly Crate Paper Gather collection and the sentiment is from a rub on pen , in the Life Pages Main Add on. I used some chipboard pieces on this one and I do have a tip: if you want to reduce the dimension a little bit for a card going in the post, take the chipboard piece, adhere it to some waxed paper (or a glassine kit packaging bag) and then try to peel if off again. You should find a couple of layers of chipboard want to stay behind on the paper, and that's great because you can leave them there and stick a reduced height embellishment onto your card.

Next I made this page:

about our summer trip to Berlin. We had a great time, as long as we kept our blood sugar levels topped up. For this one I took my cue from the peeling posters in the photo (you can't really see it here, but that photo is popped off the page, slightly higher than the other) and I ripped and wrinkled a selection of paper from the Main and Add On kits

to combine with embellishments from the Amy Tangerine diecut ephemera pack in the Main Add On.

And finally, I went back to my new favourite size, 8.5x11, for this page:

This one uses a couple of cards from the Life Pages kit, and the big wood veneer numbers - for the year - from Dear Lizzy in the Main Kit. For my journaling, I marked on my card where I wanted my words to sit, put it through the typewriter and then stuck the black frame (from Amy Tangerine) down afterwards. I added a doily from my stash. Those little birds! They're by Maggie Holmes and I think I used every last one. You can find it all at Gossamer Blue.

Check. Mate.

Today I'm talking Guilty Secrets. Not the I've got a stash of sugared almonds somewhere in the house and I'm not telling anyone where to find them kind of secret. Nor even the you don't want to know what's buried under my patio kind. No: I mean the sort of thing you don't generally mention in public unless you are forced into a corner. See, for me it's board games.

I simply don't enjoy them. It's not something I tend to shout about because..well..there's always a whiff of a bad loser about someone who doesn't look forward to a bit of monopoly round the fire of a winter's evening. And I'm not. A bad loser, I mean. I couldn't be, given that I was always picked last for every sports team at school, ever. Games? I shrug my shoulders at them. I have thought about it, though. What is it that makes my mood sink and the excuse making part of my brain go into overdrive every time someone says Cluedo? Maybe it's the sitting in one place, the not being able to do anything else with my hands whilst it's going on, maybe it's just that I'm not very good at waiting my turn, maybe I'm still traumatised by that Christmas we tried to play Sorry! No: I'm not going there.

Get It Scrapped asked for a page inspired by the design of a board game. I panicked, don't mind admitting it. Most of the games they suggested I hadn't even heard of (interesting point there: are favourite games different depending on where you come from?). But I let the idea sit for a couple of days and I eventually came up with a checkered design very loosely based on a chess or draughts board, and a play on words, and a whole other slew of shudder inducing situations. There was this one time, with a gorilla suit...no: if I tell you about that one, half of my family will probably never speak to me again.

More board game inspired pages at Get It Scrapped

A New Adventure: My Process, My Way

I climb up the stairs, thinking about what I'm going to find at the top. I have a lot of paper to put away. I know that much. I sit down in the middle of a scattered selection of scrapbook kit contents, on the floor, where the frenzy of the beginning of the month page making usually begins.

I start slipping pieces back into packaging and, underneath a sheaf of sheets of patterned paper, I find a photo. It has browns, greens: a picture of me taking a picture of a view of the Scottish Highlands. It was meant for use with my Gossamer Blue August kits, the colours were perfect. Distracted, now, I pull out the bag of August bits again and within minutes I have a layout planned. I post my progress on instagram, because I'm pleased with it. Then I go back downstairs.

Days later, when I return, I pull apart the bones of my layout. It's not what I wanted. I start again. I swipe gesso over my background cardstock and wait. I have spotted the sewing machine, threaded to hem curtains; and because I'm loving a sewn-over-paint-y look right now, I start thinking about stitching. I paint part of my page with October Afternoon Mary Mary blue ink. That leaves an uncovered gesso part, but I'm going to let it stay. It adds texture.

I spot a Life Pages card, flowered, grey, pink, mustard, so I grab my papercutting scissors and trim each tiny flower away from the next. I lay my photo on the painted part of my background and begin arranging the flowers to hold it down. On my desk I see different flowers, pink and grey, cut from a Paige Taylor Evans sheet in this month's kit. I don't need the pink flowers, just the branches; but I don't cut them off. Instead I tuck them away, hidden under my photo, where they will add another layer, lift the photo slightly without being seen. Then I take everything back off the cardstock again, because I haven't stitched yet.

 I sew. I lay it all out again. I trim another Life Pages card, a survivor from my original layout plan, into a banner. Now I need a grounding piece: again, a Life Pages card, navy, contrasting enough to pull your eye right across the page whilst bringing out the smoky blue mountains in the photo. I use navy alphas, then, to lead your gaze back to the left again, so you can read the journaling. I balance those two with a couple of navy enamel dots to create a triangle. How about another one? A second triangle to get you moving right round the page? I like the idea of something natural, so I tip an entire jar of wood veneers onto the floor. I pull out cows, little horses, but I settle on birds to draw attention to that sky.

Am I nearly done? I want to add a little map paper, so I trim an extra banner. Maybe that's enough? I take a photo. I post it to instagram

then I think again. I add inky black splashes. I take another photo. I see some little stars scattered on my desk and I lift three and arrange them along the top and more weight there seems to make the banner hang more successfully. I like how the stars hint at the reaching sky in the picture. I reckon I'm finished.

I make it all up as I go along....

Shift a Little

It was my turn on the Gossamer Blue blog on Monday. I had two new pages to share. When I'm thinking about making a post each month

I try to come up with a little push to get you started. You know, for those times when you open that box of supplies and you love it all, but you don't know where to start (which sometimes happens precisely

because you love it all). Or when you look at your desk and it's covered with bits of paper and half used packets of embellishments

and any one piece would be fun to play with, but you can't decide which piece to pick up first? Happens to me all the time, so what I hope I put together

over at Gossamer Blue is a starting point, a nudge in the direction of your scissors.

Or, possibly, your paper trimmer. Or maybe even a couple of sticky dots. Let's scrapbook.

Everything on these pages was scrapped with pieces from the September kits at Gossamer Blue: stickers, chipboard and papers by Crate Paper, Cute Girl; white phrase sticker and bow by Pink Paislee; label stickers and little stars from the Life Pages exclusive kit.

September Projects at Gossamer Blue

And so it's September. Just like that. I looked at the school children, all freshly dressed in their fine new uniforms yesterday,  and I thought about how we are travellin' on here. Instead of queuing for gym kit and trying to make exercise books hold up to heavy use by wrapping them in last year's Christmas paper, we are paging through the Ikea catalogue and talking about the best way to build your own bath panel. Because our girl is moving to a little house just down the road soon, to begin her first year at university.

And that's where I started with the September kits from Gossamer Blue.

This page uses a spur of the moment holiday photo, which turned into a favourite, and a mix of pieces from the September scrapbooking and Life Pages kit. The layers behind the photo are journaling cards from the Life Pages kit; the teepee, phone, banner and hearts and stars are from Crate Paper's Cute Girl collection. The phone: without even really thinking about it, I reached for the phone sticker: and then I realised that when I moved away from house, into a rented student house, we were excited to find the phone box wasn't too far away. We wouldn't have to walk for miles to phone our mums. Funny what you remember, what sticks (and what it leads you to stick) many years into the future. And funny that I only noticed after I was finished that you can see her mobile phone sticking out of her pocket.

The "currently" is from the Life Pages stamp set.

My second page uses a photo from our trip earlier in the summer. We were browsing the gift shop in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, she saw the crown, she couldn't resist. Do a Little Princess face!  I said, remembering the Tony Ross books we loved to read together when she was little. If you have read them too, you'll know she got it just. right. 

The "storytime" stamp is from the Life Pages kit, as are the stars. The yellow frame is by Pink Paislee, from the Main Kit and the beautiful, bright alpha is

from the Main Kit Add On.

I made several other pages and a set of cards with this gorgeous selection from all the new releases. More to come! And you can find it all at Gossamer Blue.

All There in Black and White

Before I start I have to tell you that I can't say anything about Bumper Gate, or Crash Gate, or even Gate Gate, as it is variously known round here, because I'm under some kind of embargo. Or maybe it's a restraining order? It can be a little difficult to keep up, living with a half-way-to-being-a lawyer

Keep Up, or Keep Your Head Down; both are good options, with Keep Your Head Down just having the edge right now, what with - well, you know what with. It wasn't me! I don't get to drive the little white car nearly often enough. It's a lot of fun round the city, easy to park, too, except when - sorry, sorry, I can't seem to stop myself. Come on, Sian, think of the consequences.

Maybe I should talk about the page instead. It came about because Get It Scrapped asked for a layout using an on trend colour combination (for this new blog article). I don't often begin with the colour, so I let this one stew away in the background for a few days until I realised that all I needed to make a start was a black and white photo, which would give me a free hand to choose any fresh colour combination I liked. It was chance that about five minutes after deciding this I spotted a pin of a picture from Instyle magazine: pink and green it would be.

I had a different title in mind when I started; but this one appeared in my head as I worked and it was too hard to resist. It's a jokey reference to the whole colour combo idea, and to the photo, and, of course, to those rules. You can read the rules for yourself. I have nothing to say, except it wasn't me! And I can play The Smiths in my own car, thanks!

With grateful thanks to Get It Scrapped, for another page which probably would never had been made without their suggestion. I've been with the team for three years now and I'm delighted to say that I'm staying on next year too. It'll be my pleasure

Best Foot Forward: My Process, My Way

I wait til the house is quiet, everyone settled into late Saturday afternoon, and I creep up the stairs. I have a page in mind. There is a sheet of pale blue, soft, perfect for a background, lying on my desk. I pick it up, knowing I have a photo of blues and whites, with just enough black to set it off..

Pale blue paper from Fancy Pants Designs. Labels from Gossamer BLue

I have two prints of my photo. one 6x4, one half that, so I make a quick decision about proportions: big canvas? small? prominent photo? I go for my new favourite tarter point of 8.5x11, for each page I've made lately in this size I've been pleased with.

So I trim my paper and lay on it the smaller photo. This is a page about going to the opticians (or is it? isn't it really a page about age?) and for that I like the notion of having the picture in amongst other pieces, so you have to pick it out, decide what you are looking at and how it fits. Can you read the next line? Is it an "0"? maybe it's a "c"? Are the dots clearer on the red or the green?

I have black in my photo, so I pick out some black accents for my embellishments: black glasses from Fancy Pants Designs Puffy Shapes. There are words on that sheet of puffy stickers: it would be a challenge for me to use "Grandpa" on any page, there is a definite lack of Grandpas in this family. But if I snip at it it becomes "grand"

which is a word we use a lot round here for any test which goes well.

I think again about alphas, then. I want hand cut letters you can just about see; and to get the pattern of flowers the right size I cut them from journaling cards (Simple Stories Snap! pack, Gossamer Blue August Life Pages Main Add On) instead of from a larger patterned 12x12 sheet. I lift a black pen and add outlines. It looks wrong: too much black in the wrong place on the page, so I have to cut my letters again, just squeezing another set. 

Now I'm hunting through the Life Pages kits I see labels I could use for extra journaling, a perfect little sticker that says "looking forward". I mount them on scrap card so I can play about with their position. I cut a speech bubble from another Life Pages card, pick up a fine nibbed pen so my writing looks as if I've thought about it, slowly, carefully, and I fill it with words.

I toy with all my elements, moving them round the page. I decide I want a border of darker flowers, so I must trim more of that pretty pale blue away, leaving a neater space. Time to commit. But it's not quite right. I need something to hold it all down and pull my eye right round. I have green threaded into the sewing machine. I slide my blue background under the foot and stitch freehand in repeating wavy lines round and round, driving my frustrations at my eyes into that paper. Then it's done. 

The sticking down is the quick bit. If I go slowly I go backwards, changing my mind again, so I work quickly. And, then, before I call it finished, I set it aside and I walk away. It won't be finished until I have one more look. Tomorrow.

A page for Gossamer Blue, August.

Boots to Bloom In: Adding Layers

Once, when The (Not So) Small One was a little girl, she got herself all dressed up to go to a birthday party; and then she wrapped a scarf round her neck and she was ready to go. When she came home, she said that all the mums had told her that she looked just like me. Well observed. Not the looks, obviously, but the scarf, for that would be me, no doubt about it.

She's all grown up now, with her own style, which, thanks to a special order birthday present, includes a pair of bright blue Doc Marten boots.

I'm still a scarf wearer. I layer. And that's not just my age talking. I've always done it, in scrapbooking too. I find it hard to resist adding just one more piece (though when I'm layering on paper I try to add meaning with every detail I include. Meaning, or purpose).

By which I mean, let the layers work for their place. I have a painted over book page to show that her school days are over, flowers to add emphasise to my title, a bow to bring out the detail of the shoelaces in the photo, and I hope that brought together they give my layout greater emotional depth.

That's the fancier way of putting it. I could just as easily say that adding embellishments to squares is a lot of fun. The advantage of building on the squares is that you don't have to glue the end result to your layout if you don't like it, or if you take one look and decide that it would better suit another project. It's a win, win before you even begin to factor in the stash usage.

This page was originally made for the new Get It Scrapped article Scrapbook Ideas For Creating Pages With Rich Layers. 

August Projects at Gossamer BLue

Funny thing about holidays, isn't it? It takes a lot longer to clear up the aftermath than it does to gather it all up to take away in the first place. Or maybe you aren't like me. I always have a stack of leaflets I've collected, and random postcards, and half a rucksack of other stuff I have to rehome in the week after our return. So I was even more delighted that usual to be able to take a break and open up my new kits from Gossamer Blue.

I had been looking forward to the new Simple Stories Bloom & Grow collection, which I knew was going to make an appearance this month; but I've been equally captivated by the Gossamer Blue  all exclusive Life Pages kit. I want to use every last piece! So that's where I started, adding its softer shades to a layout 

before I really began to explore the Main Kit. As I don't keep a Life Pages album I am more than happy to showcase the patterns and designs of the LP cards on my scrapbook pages. They make layering easy. The Fancy Pants Designs alpha I used is from the Main Add On kit and I turned to it again for my second page

because I was so pleased with the character that font seems to add to a layout. Something about this one, I thought once I'd finished, reminds me of our copy of The BFG, with that font and those colours. The thermos flask puffy sticker is also from Fancy Pants and in the Main Add On. There is a chipboard sheet from Simple Stories in that Add On too, with gnomes. But they're for another day. I have more scenery to scrapbook first!

At the Drop of a Hat: Using Metaphors in Scrapbooking

As I'm editing my holiday photos and working out how to tell my stories from far away, I'm going to share a page about home today.

It's the layout which changed its mind halfway through. Get It Scrapped had asked me to begin a page with a metaphor, for this article Use a Known Phrase as Metaphor so I tossed around a few ideas and came up with the hat plan. 

We were discouraged from using well rehearsed metaphors in our writing at school, in English class, but especially in our History essays, so I was intrigued to discover how my journaling might be shaped by the trick of starting out with a well known phrase.

Ah, now what happened was that I started out at one place and ended up somewhere else. I had intended to use "drop of a hat" as a trigger for a list of activities I enjoy - at the drop of a hat I'll log into my Amazon account, turn my music up loud, head for a museum - but a dinnertime conversation and a couple of special pocket page cards (from a Cocoa Daisy kit which I bought as a one off treat and keep coming back to) and my idea took a turn. The resulting layout has turned into a favourite.

So how about it? Could a phrase you have repeated many times in the past turn into an idea for a new scrapbook page for you? More suggestions at Get It Scrapped.

Fly and Have Fun

Fly and have fun when the exams are all done?

Well, a couple of weeks ago now we finally found the light at the end of the tunnel; and although we are saving the flying

for later on in the summer, we are off to have some fun for a few days. We're taking a break! Hope to see you back here in a week or so (though you might find me on instagram before then...)

All supplies for this page from July at Gossamer Blue.