Craft Banner for 1 Year Old's Circus Party

Ruby blowing out the candles on her Circus tent cake at her first birthday party. Some clown holding her.

Shapes cut using Couture Creations nesting dies and Cuttlebug.

First Birthday Banner

Sunday was my daughter’s first birthday party with a circus theme. I had to create something special for her. Every month for the past eleven months of her life I have taken a photo of her with her teddy bear on our old oak, red linen covered armchair. Same bear, same chair, same girl one month older each time. From helpless bemused infant propped in a pillow to feisty, yelling character spilling out of the chair with energy I’ve watched her change. Now I want to celebrate it in a banner. 

Craft Banner Tutorial using Nesting Dies

Having never made a banner before I thought I’d do a practice banner. So I started with a four letter banner spelling out her name. Once I got the hang of it and realised how easy the cuttlebug makes it I was brave enough to commit to twelve more scalloped shapes for the backgrounds and twelve circle shapes for the monthly photos. Incidentally now would be a great time to buy a cuttlebug if you don't have one as the Scotties online Mega Mid Summer Madness sale is on till 2/3/2014.

Step One: First I cut out the scalloped circles in American Craft card stock in Rouge using Couture Creations scalloped nesting dies.

Step two: Next I cut out circles of  Die Cuts With a View mat stack  in two alternating  patterns using the Couture Creations plain circle nesting dies in a size smaller than the red scalloped circle. You could also use Spellbinders circle nesting dies. My circus theme colours were red, black, yellow and white so I was looking for anything in those colours in dots and stripes.

Step three: Finally  I stuck on poster letter stickers from my stash to spell out the name. Some that could work nicely are Kaisercraft Hello Sunshine stickers. Then I attached the smaller patterned circle to the red scallop shapes using dimensional tape so they would stand out and have a little dimensionality. Self Adhesive foam squares would be good for this. I used a hole-punch to put two holes in each circle and strung some ribbon through. Easy!

The first half of the banner showing months  1-6.

And voila! My party guests could see a little snapshot progression of my gorgeous little bundle getting bigger. And I found a way to celebrate her birthday through my love of craft.

The second half of the banner showing months 6-10. 11 and 12 not pictured here.

The name banner hanging on her cot with instagram filter on image.

More from this author can be found at: http://crafterlala.wordpress.com/

Thank you From Scottie crafts

Well the physical shop closes today  at 4pm for the final time (22nd February 2014) and its time to say goodbye to the instore customers, current design team and the lovely ladies in the shop.

We have had an amazing few years and we thank all our customers for your patronage and support. We love our little community!

To our amazingly creative inspirational design team  current, past, in house and guest designers we thank you so much for everything you have done for Scottie Crafts. You have done amazing creations to inspire us all!

To all the ladies who have work in the shop thank you for all your hard work and going above and beyond to make Scottie Crafts the best it can be.  Good luck and all the best for your future.

Scottie Crafts will still be online for you to purchase your crafting supplies.

THANK YOU!!!

End on a high...GRAPHIC 45!! WOOP WOOP by Tash

Hey guys Tasha here with a couple of fun and easy projects.

I was lucky enough to receive the super gorgeous Couture paper stack from Graphic45.  As you can imagine I couldn't wait to start creating.  I just love all the images, rich colours, and attention to detail that G45 always delivers.

My first project is a card it measures 13cm x 13cm and to be honest I literally just cut...adhered and then embellished.  This paper is so yummy you can't really go wrong :)

For this card I focused on red and black.  I just cut the images out...even did some fussy cutting (arrgghh) distressed it all with the edge of my scissors and layered it all up.

Embellished with some goodies from my stash and there you go...love how it came out and can't wait to make more :)

Here are a couple of close up pics of the layers.

My next project was just as easy and fun to make.  I've been really into altering these old frames I got from a garage sale.  The ones I have been recently up cycling, I have been doing in shabby creams and whites with lots of crochet doilies and fabric flowers, appliques and lace but this one I did using some paper from G45 stack and not only Tasha-rised it but glamour-ised it also :)

This earring holder helps to keep all those earrings from getting tangled up, easy to see, and gorgeous to boot.

 This is my favourite piece of paper in the whole stack and I just had to bring the blue out in it.  I have a weird compulsion to always have my flowers in a cluster and they seem to gravitate towards the corner.  I'm working on it.

Sooooo. there we have it guys a couple of lil projects made with love and heaps of yummy supplies.

As you probably know this is my last post for Scottie Crafts and as I sign off I would just like to say that I have really enjoyed creating and sharing something that is far more than a hobbie even more than a passion...it's something that starts from within and oozes out  of me uncontrollably.  I am truly in my happy place with glue gun and paper in hand.  Thank you so much for joining me on this wee journey

and also a big thank you to the Scotties Team for the opportunity to create with such amazing products.

There are still a few projects that I am creating with supplies I still have in my DT kit so please come and check out these links if you want to..."follow" me..."pin" me..."subscribe" to me and/or "like" me.  <3

https://www.facebook.com/WithAllMyArtSoul

http://www.pinterest.com/tashchanwai/

http://withallmyartandsoul.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/artsongandsoul

Thank you so much Scottie Crafts and fellow designers

xxxxx

Tasha



A little tag and a long goodbye

Hello everyone

Here it is my last Scottie DT post, very sad indeed but as they say the show must go on, so with slight teary eyes here is what I made this week.

 

As soon as I saw this Paper from the new Kaisercraft Telegraph road collection I knew I had to make some kind of vintage dress form with it, and as I have never made a tag before I thought I would give it a go!

To make this dress form I cut out a piece of chipboard using the Tim Holtz sewing room die, ran it through the spellbinders Bricks and Bark embossing folder (love this) and gave it a touch of distress ink to really bring out the ridges. 

Then I cut a rectangle of the designer paper, sprayed with a little water to make it pliable and starting from the middle pleated in some ruffles for my skirt.

  the bodice was cut with the same die and I just trimmed a little v for the bottom and trimmed off some of the paper around the sleeve area.

I then adhered a little lace on the bottom edge of the skirt and stuck it all together with some hot glue. Wallah!

 

To finish up this tag I added some of the designer paper, prima pearls, some of the Telegraph road collectables and also some seam binding which I altered with Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany Distress inks and stains, and then I just added some faux stiching with a gel pen.

And that's it,This little tag couldn't be simpler and took nearly no time to put together (great for me this week with a sick buba) and there was so much variation and inspiration that came to me while making that im sure there will be many more tags in my future.

 products used this week

                   

Now for the soppy bit!

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has come to the blog to see what the DT girls and I have created for you each day, All of your lovely comments have been cherished and I only hope that we have managed to inspire you to try some new techniques or get out some of your goodies and just play around.

Please come and visit us soon on our personal blogs to see what we get up to next.

Now to the Scotties team, I think its easy to say that we all love each of you so much and wish you all the best for the road that lays ahead of you.

I want to thank all of the ladies who were always so friendly and easy to chat with in the shop, Big, big love to Wendy who gave us all so much insperation through classes, samples and the fantastic weekly instalments of Wendys world which were a hoot when you spent half the time raiding supplies to take home yourself!

To Bev, the work you did putting together this design team, answering our never ending questions, and the love and care put into each of our monthly packs was just epic and we will all be forever grateful and in serious awe of you.

And to Adrienne, I know Scotties is your baby and its also the reason I got into papercrafting so both you and Scotties will forever hold a very special place in my heart.

Before I wondered into Scotties I had no idea this beautiful world existed, and now here I am with an overflowing craft room, my own blog, and a place on the fabulous design team with such a talented bunch of ladies who inspired me every week to come up with something that I hope was worthy of sitting next to their projects, and I would just like to say the biggest thank you for bringing me, and im sure many more into this fantastic world or paper, bling and a lot of laughs (and paper cuts) I am so grateful that I got to be a part of it.

Goodbye for now

Kristy xxx

A New journey - Sarah Groen

This is a sad occasion for me today - my last post for the Scottie Crafts blog.

I have really enjoyed designing with these Kaisercraft ' Now Boarding' Papers. Although they are a travel themed collection they are versatile enough to be used for many other pages. Here I have used the 'journey' theme to refer to a figurative rather than a literal journey. The last two weeks have been very busy in our family as our youngest little boy turned 5. In NZ turning 5 is a big milestone as a child usuallystarts 'big school' shortly after his 5th birthday. Benji seems too little to be a school boy - look how tiny he looks in his uniform and floppy hat! Nevertheless he is excited about the transition and his big sister Sophie is absolutely thrilled to have a little brother at school with her. 

I used a Ranger mask (also from Scottie) to make the big black ink splats on the background page. I piled up patterned paper, tags, ephemera and stickers to mat my photo, basing the design of the layout on the current sketch at 'Sketchabilities'. 

I really loved this sketch so I adhered fairly closely to the positioning of elements, adding a cluster at the bottom left of my page to hold the journaling and balance out the 'weight' of the page. 

 I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the awesome staff at Scottie Crafts all the very best for the future. These ladies are such a talented bunch and I have gained so much inspiration, encouragement and support from Scottie Crafts over the years that I have had the pleasure of being part of their team. I will so miss popping into the store whilst my girls are at dance, chatting to Wendy, Adrienne or Bev and leaving with far more than the 'white cardstock' I had intended to buy :) 

Very best wishes everyone from all the Groen family!

Hello Sunshine Collection - Pocket Scrapbooking - Louise

 This week I am using the Hello Sunshine Collection to do some pocket scrapbooking.  I used a 4x4 pocket protector from the WRMK multi pack.  It is a fun size, although a little awkward if you are using precut 3x4 cards, I had to do a bit of trimming and jigging.

As you can see though it looked really cool once it was all finished.

After printing my photos I matted them onto a mx of co-ordinating cardstock and 4x3 Project Life White Cardstock cards.

I then cut my 12x12 into 9 peices of 4x4, then trimmed to mat onto cardstock.  I added my photos and then embellished with alphas, washi tape and stickers.

I used both the A & B sides of the 12x12 to mix the patterns up.

The end result is fun and colourful and perfect for pocket scrapping as it is interesting to look at. 

Thanks loads for joining me today - Happy Scrapping :)

Couture Creations Doily Card by Sue Butler.

Hello Everyone.

The 'Les Fleurs' doily from Couture Creations is my favourite, I loved how it cut so cleanly without wax paper on my Big Shot. It lends itself beautifully to make a pretty card.

The first technique was to use modelling paste through part of the doily as a stencil onto the Pink background.

Next altering the doily after it was cut, by smooshing with distress paints; dab two colours of paint onto your mat, spritz with water then run the doily through, may need a few runs to have the desired effect. (dry between each run.)

 I then versa-marked a few areas straight from the pad and applied Aged Rose embossing powder and set with a heat gun.

 Layers add dimension and interest, so the Tulip was stamped with versamark and clear embossed, coloured up then fussy cut. 

The circle was smooshed in the left over paint on White card stock and dry embossed.

The small centre cut is from the doily, and this was stamped with text.

Adding the finishing touches:  

For me it has to be more texture; lace and stitching.

Two different ways to use the doily, creating an appeal that is pleasing to the eye.

  This is my last post for Scotties:( as you are all aware the shop is closing).
 I have enjoyed designing for you all these past 6 months, I will continue to create over on my blog: (Here).  Love you to pay me a visit sometimes.
So it is a sad farewell from me I will miss this and the shop very much.

Smiles:)

Sue

Products used:

Distress Pens	Victorian Velvet	Distress Paints	Light Texture paste.	Versapark Pad
White Gel Pen	Couture Creations-Les Fleurs Doily.

Pocket Scrapbooking - One Mum's third attempt

I thought it might be refreshing  to take a break from scrapping baby photos since dealing with baby stuff is what I do most days at the moment. I decided instead to delve into my collection of photographs from my O.E. back in 2000 when my boyfriend at the time, now my husband, and myself travelled through Italy and made a day trip to Venice.

It's a long overdue project and it's a bit of a different feeling dealing with these photographs which were taken with a old-school SLR not a digital. I had an accident with the storage conditions being a bit damp and I don't have negatives for a lot of these and these definitely are the only copy. So storing them in these acid-free pockets will be good protection but it does mean I was forbidden from doing anything fancy to the photographs themselves.

My inspiration for getting stuck into this project was the super lovely Now Boarding range of papers, stickers and stamps from Kaisercraft. I just love all that grungy, antique travel ephemera. 

I used the same Captured theme journal cards from We R Memory Keepers that I used in my previous baby themed spreads but this time i just chose the more mustard cards and less of the pink and mint green. Then to get them to all tone together I used Wild Honey distress Paint from Tim Holtz or Mustard Seed Distress Ink or the Tea coloured stain from Tim Hotlz. It's amazing how versatile these journal cards are because there are so many options within the pack and then you can convert them to your will using tints of colour.

In this photo you can see I have stamped a tag image that says 'Memories' using Kaisercraft  Now Boarding travel themed stamps that go so nicely with the Now Boarding paper stack. I cut a hole in the journal card and tied some parcel string through to give some interest to the page.

I did some journaling on the Stamped area using Becky Higgins Project Life pens which come in a pack of three line weights of archival ink ready for writing your thoughts on those little lined journal cards.

Here I have tried everything in my arsenal to tone down the colour of this particular journal card that I initially distressed with some mustard seed yellow to make it pop less off the page. The yellow was really eye-catching and it didn't need to be the centre of attention so I tried distress stain in tea distress ink in Rusty Hinge and Distress paint in Wild Honey. I even used my mini mister thinking that I could try some of those beautiful techniques Tim Holtz does to tags.

I used the pop out embellishment from the now boarding paper pad that said "Paradise Found"  and then I cut a strip of stripey paper from the same pack.

Bellisimo!