30 Minute Scrapbook Challenge!

I tried something new with this one - I challenged myself to scrapbook the entire page in 30 minutes. I collected my supplies, set a timer and I was off!

The only thing I didn't get done in the time was the journalling, but otherwise, I reckon that was pretty well done. I love how the page turned out, the colours are great, there's embellishment, it's definitely something I would do again. Fantastic as it cuts out all of that faffing. So simple.

This is again a picture from York, this time at the top of Clifford's Tower, which I had never thought of visiting before. Which is silly, because you pass it with every bus ride into town... There are so many beautiful places in York, perhaps I'll make a mini travel guide, if anyone would be interested?

Oh, and I also challenge you to make a page in 30 minutes!

Sunshine Memories

Aha! Yes, yellow and grey, a colour scheme that works!

This is a page from my visit to York at the beginning of June, and here is a picture of the city walls which Him and me decided to walk around. It was a beautiful day, and it was great to look after the historian in me.

I used a lot of stamping on this age because I wanted to keep the yellows all in these bright tones, of which I only had plain shapes to match. So I just used a heart stamp from Elle's Studio and some little word stamps (I love this 'smile' one) to make my own embellishments. I like the way it turned out, and I'll have to make some more of them. Then all that was let was to keep the circle theme going with a doily, a spotted vellum and some dots.

I love this page. It was an amazing weekend, and I'm so proud of this page as it captures it so well.

Aca-Awesome

Yes, my sister and I went to see Pitch Perfect 2. No, we did not care that we were the oldest people there.

I struggled with this layout too, and I think it was the yellow, I just didn't know how to use it this time. My problem was that I wanted to keep the page light to emphasise the dark pictures. I'm not sure it works though, and perhaps a grey with yellow tinges would have been better suited.

Ah well.

The Crown Jewels

This layout was a realisation to me. I love these sorts of gold, heritage colour schemes, but I really don't have enough of it, or the embellishments for it. The pages have gotten a bit sparse, but they'll do for now.

Visiting the crown jewels was influenced by the state opening of parliament just as the Yeoman Warders were, in that, some of the crown jewels were actually being used at the time of our visit! Seeing them all though was a bit underwhelming, but that may have just been due to the fact that I was close to passing out while we went round...

Maybe just a little bit...

The Yeoman Warders

Another Tower of London post here. A very simple layout, just a little bit of paperlayering behind the photo to allow some breathing room for the amount of writing. There was a lengthy story to accompany this part of our trip, including my being a history nerd and getting huffy over Shakespeare, so I wrote it up onto a strip of old lined paper. And I mean really old, that paper was white once.

I wanted to emphasise the red and gold that he had been wearing as it was an unusual occurence: we visited the Tower on the same day as the state opening of parliament, so all of the warders were wearing their state finery to mark the occasion.

May Favourites

Just a quick one with my may foavourites. I used a picture of my sister and myself, and a journalling card with numbers. It was quite a busy background, so I backed the two smaller pieces with some pink mettalic paper. And that, really, is it. See, very speedy.

Coming Home

Chronologically, this layout is from a while back... it's from the first week of March when we collected all of my stuff from York to take home. I was quite sad with this and I cried a lot, but it's good to document both the good and bad in our scrapbooks. This is life, after all, and it's not all sunshine and roses.

I'm not very fond of this layout. I don't know if it's the colours or the papers or the embellishments, but something just doesn't feel right. It's like stroking an animal the wrong way. It feels wrong, but I can't place my finger on it. I got to use some sequins though, which was quite fun.

"I'm an Historian!"

This is a very simple layout, emphasising the dark contrasts in the pictures... Yup, that's a wall of armour on the left, and a medieval torture device on the right. Because I am interested in that sort of thing.

It was also one of those layouts where I had to get down a story of a long-running joke. I am a history student, and I like medieval, which comes wrapped up in it a fairly large amount of death, torture and executions. So when you're walking around school reading a book on execution methods, it does worry some people. Understandably. So we have a running joke that because it's history research, this somehow makes my morbid fascination with death ok.

Maybe.

So, I wanted a lot of the focus to be on the writing and the images. There is actually very little else on this layout, just some paper layering, some stamping (because this is a Tower of London page) and a ribbon that came at the top of some sweets. Oh and some letter stickers. Very quick and easy.

London Landmarks

Another page documenting my Tower of London visit, this time with a little tip of my own.

Wallpaper Samples.

Free.

Widely available.

Vast variety of patterns.

Very good as scrapbook backgrounds.

Yes, this polka dot is a piece of wallpaper. I added the red spots in as a flash of colour, they were just from a stationery sheet I'd had for years. These little sparkle stickers, too, I'd had for years, just without an opportunity to use them,,, So I absolutely had to work a London bus into here somehow...

The signature stamping doesn't show up well in the picture, but it's in the background of the journalling, very pale blue. I'm afraid it didn't work all too well, which is a but of a shame, but it is noticeable in real life.

I made a Kit

For a while now I've been wondering about subscribing to a scrapbook kit club. However, although I'm not a student for now, my funds are still limited, and I just can't afford that much money every month on supplies that I may or may not use. At least for now.

So I started to investigate a project where people make kits from their own stash. This sounded right up my street. While my stash isn't massive, I'm not fond of the amount of clutter it makes in my room because I have no way of storing things. At least this way, I can use items up, making more room in the long run to trial new things.

There are many different sites and youtube videos that can be used to formulate advice for making your own kits, here are a couple I would recommend:

This video from Inkie Quill

The Scrap Stash Kit Club

I started my kit with this piece of paper below, bringing together the colours of navy blue, the pink and a mustard-y yellow.

This is what I came up with:

The paper I chose as a starter piece was in fact a part of a scrapbook collection kit that I bought earlier this year by a lady called Grace Taylor, so I threw all of the co-ordinating papers into the kit, plus some neutrals from a cheap paper pad from the Range, and some Basic Grey papers.

For lettering, I have our types: The Amy Tangerine remarks letters in pink, teal, grey and orange; he Dear Lizzy (I think) gold foil Thickers; some cream tile alphas and a white chipboard alpha, both from hobbycraft. I think this way I can cover a variety of different sizes, and hopefully make a good dent in these supplies.

I also added in some journalling cards, mainly from my Elle's Studio packs, but also a few from the Project Life Spring and Summer themed cards. My other paper choices include a scrap of a polka dot vellum and a few doilies.

I put all of my diecuts in this bag, some are from assorted packs of  Elle's Studio, others are from the die cut pack that co-ordinated with the Grace Taylor scrapbook kit, so there are some lovely florals in there to be used.

Sticker-wise, the collection pack came with two sheets of stickers which I would like to use, and I've added to that three Elle's Studio sticker sheets, and some Heidi Swapp word stickers. I love all f these, yet for some reason I never seem to use them. Part of the beauty of the kit is to make sure that I do use them!

Here I have two washi tapes, from Sainsbury's no less!

And finally to finish things up, I have some baker's twine, two little blue pegs, some resin flowers, a navy button, a pink flair and some gems.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome of my kit, and I'm really looking forward to using it! It will be a new experience, working to a limited amount of supplies, and I'll keep you updated as to how things go!

Tower To Do List

Next in my Tower of London series includes a large photo of a panorama of the inside of the walls, and a postcard with an aerial shot. I love using postcards in my scrapbooking as they give an overview that sometimes just isn't possible to capture in a day's visit,

I kept the focus on the pictures, emphasising the green of the grass, the amount of which surprised me a fair amount, for some reason it wasn't what I'd expected. Everything was kept pretty simple, another overview page. And, of course, the signature stamping I kept in place, this time along the bottom of the journalling card.

The Tower of London

Ah, the first of several layouts, I guarantee you!

We went to the Tower of London during half term, in order to let the historian in me have a little bit of exercise. It was the most spectacular day,. and we had gorgeous weather for it, but I will save all my stories for the individual pages. This one here is only an introductory page, holding the map and our tickets.

The clocks in the background are actually part of a wallpaper sample that I cut up! Wallpaper samples are seriously a fantastic resource when it comes to free paper, you can just tear a piece off of the tester roll and be off with it. They don't need to know that you have no intention of buying the wallpaper!

I decided that to tie all of my Tower of London pictures together that I would use that little diamond border stamp throughout each page,, just to tie the whole event together in a subtle way in my album, so keep an eye out for that!

Inspiration Realisation: 4

Another instalment of my series where I take my hoarded inspiration and actually convert it into projects.

Inspiration for this round:

First of all, if you haven't heard of Adele from Inkie Quill, what are you doing?! Go check her out right now! Her videos are freaking amazing! I love her to bits, but I'm sort of scared of the youtube community, so I watch as a silent observer. But Adele, if you ever read this (which is highly unlikely), I love your videos so much. Thank you for sharing your - wait for it- radness with the world. and thank you for also reintroducing the words 'freaking' and 'rad' to my vocabulary.

So, inspired by Adele, I decided I'd like to scraplift the layout created in the video above, and attempt my own grab 5 (I hope she doesn't mind!)

My five items are:

1) This 6x6 paper pad that has been in my stash since 2007. Yup. That long. I needed to get rid of it.

2) These wood veneer quotes by Studio Calico.

3) The Elle's Studio Cienna stamp.

4) Some lilac washi tape.

5) And something from my sequin/gem tin.

This is what I created!

IT'S AN OCTOPUSH LAYOUT!!!
Because I am weird and play underwater hockey and when I made my protective glove I dyed the silicone lilac and lime green. Because I'm awesome. Everyone knows its me. Which, when you're playing at the bottom of the pool, is always a good thing, as communication isn't really that easy...

Anyway, the scrapbooking.

I managed to use all five of the products I'd chosen in this layout, so that's the grab 5 part checked. It's a really great idea, and I hope to try it again. In terms of the actual layout, I flipped the page 90 degrees so it ran horizontally instead of vertically. I loved layering up all of the little pieces, the purple and green, though outdated in terms of the supplies in the scrapbook world, remain one of my more favourite colour combinations.

Which probably makes me strange, I know. 

First Job

First of all, a note on the blurred photos. It is done intentionally to protect my privacy, please don't say anything about it.

This was a simple layout that I used to commemorate my very first pay cheque. I know, I'm nineteen, this is pretty late for that sort of first. In my defence, I had not been idle, I'd just done five years worth of volunteering instead, with arguably more relevance to my future employment opportunities. But enough of that rant, it's a defence I've had to jump to several times before.

All the pennants on the layout I cut by hand, just making the most of the colour scheme in the photos and trying to bring a bit of lightness to it. I used an Elle's Studio heart stamp in blue and cute them out as a simple embellishment. Really, it's a very simple layout, for a very simple subject. But, for me, it's very important.

Star Wars Day

As promised, I eventually got around to trying to take my pictures with the less glaring lighting of outside...

May 4th, to nerds (like me) is Star Wars day. And for the first time this year, I did in fact dedicate my day to Star Wars. I watched all six films from start to finish - starting with IV, of course - in that very one day. My eyes were so sore after it...

This is a photo I took while I was watching it, I mean I dressed up and everything. And, I decided to combine it with an image from a piece of Star Wars wallpaper. Yes, you did here that correctly. I bought myself a roll of Star Wars wallpaper (Homebase sale, only £5). I'm determined to find plenty of uses for it... and a scrapbook page is a great place to start.

The actual layout of this page is so simple, you can decipher it by yourself. I was just adamant to use Darth Vader in my album. It really is just too cool.

Afternoon Tea

This is a layout also from April (I was very social in April) about an Afternoon where my friend Nikki and I went out to visit a National Trust Property. Unusual for teenagers? Most definitely. But then you remember that I am an historian, and add in that Nikki is an art student, and it begins to make a bit more sense.

In the process of making this layout I realised that I scrapbook a lot of food photos... somehow I find it more acceptable to take pictures of inanimate objects than of the people I'm actually with. It makes for a more difficult scrapbooking process, a lot of the story - the who, what, where, if you will - having to be told through journalling. 

And I struggle with journalling. 

It's not that I don't like it, I've always loved writing, but I feel it's a bit of a hiccup in the creative process. It  breaks everything up. In addition, I've found that in order for me to be happy with what I'm writing on my page, I'll have to write it out into a notebook first so as to avoid any repetition or grammar mistakes. I don't know if anyone else has a similar process, but if anyone has any tips and tricks to share that may make the whole shebang feel a bit more cohesive, I'd be open to suggestions.

Anyway, about this layout.

The materials are primarily Elle's Studio, working with the pieces that I received in my National Scrapbooking day package. The colour's are gorgeous and work so well together. I just used a wood veneer to add a different texture, and then had ab experiment with some ink splatters. I used watercolour, and as you can see, I got a bit carried away. But the colours are gorgeous, and I hope to try the technique again.

April Favourites

April! Just a simple one, as per usual for my monthly favourites. April was a good month, I enjoyed it thoroughly. And the sunshine was glorious! so good to feel the warmth again!

Both of these papers I'd found difficult to use on a normal basis, so I used them here. I think that's probably the best way to go about these favourites, as a challenge to use those difficult pieces on a layout instead of hoarding them forever more...

Unimpressed

This page sits opposite the one I shared previously, and I maintained the colour scheme across here too. There's even a small slither of the same paper hidden there too!

This picture refers to an incident of great disappointment... after our meal, we ordered a cookie pizza, expecting it to be soft, gooey and amazing. No. It was rock solid, so one of my friends took a knife to it, in an attempt to chisel anything decent off of it. There wasn't any. It was a very sad moment indeed.

This is another layout that I caught inspiration off of pinterest, and it's a fantastic way to use up scrap paper, and all of those odd bits which aren't big enough to use on a layout by themselves. The most hassle is trying to decide where each strip will go,and because the background is so vibrant, the embellishment is allowed to be fairly minimal.

This is a great idea if you want a fairly easy page that will use up a pretty hefty amount of scraps.

P.S. even if the scraps aren't long enough to go all the way across the page, cut them in half, and hide the split beneath the photo... you won't believe how many of these actually use that system!

My Crazy Nutters

And here is my next meet-up with my other lovely friends! This photo was actually taken at a rail station at night... because we're classy like that.

The layout is similar to something I've seen pop up a few times on pinterest, splitting the page in half on the diagonal. It's a very striking design feature, and I enjoyed then creating this trail of embellishments all of the way down that line. I pretty much collated all of the pieces I could find in the colour scheme and threw them at it... This process seems to have worked surprisingly well!

The title is not something I would usually use, but I wanted to use those letters. Unfortunately, there were very few of them left, and this was the only thing I could create that was a) relevant, and b) achievable. Ah well, it doesn't look too out of place.

I actually made this layout before I received my Elle's Studio goodies, which was a shame, because their colours fitted so well to this scheme... I think perhaps this paper was even an Elle's Studio one... I can't remember. But either way, it turned out great all by itself.

Happy Girls are the Prettiest Girls

 I will just quickly say that I am aware that the photos recently are looking a bit funny. I may have to change how I photograph them during the summer, because that wood background is actually a garden table outside, and with the strong summer sun it does something weird to the pictures.

This page sits opposite the one I previously shared, and because the writing was on that side, I had full reign to lay it out and decorate it exactly how I wanted it.

Again, it's quite a simple page, I used a border strip in the background, and then cut out embellishments from two pieces of paper. Finished off with a couple of pieces of wood veneer and a title in mixed fonts (which was an experiment I actually quite like) the page was complete. and a very pretty one it was indeed.

Quote, I believe, is from Audrey Hepburn, and it is very true.