Not at the Beach

It's time for more layout inspiration at CKC today with a challenge to use holiday paper on a non-holiday layout. Anchor's Away is heavily themed for seaside and cruise holidays but equally good for boy layouts and I used it for some photos of my son with his granddad from a few years ago. There were taken in a car park during a shopping trip when the kids need to stop and eat.

The most heavily themed papers are the waves that I used last week and the anchor print (tutorial). I went for a clean and simple layout design to show off that patterned paper.

Supplies:
Green paper from Spring by Giny Scrap.
Rest from Scrap Art Studio's Color Play 9 Collection.

No More Hypos

My little big girlie made my heart wrench when I said good night to her today. Her words to me as I left the room were. "Mummy I don't want to see you in the middle of the night, I don't want to have any more hypos." It's so rough having to wake her up several times in the night to feed her fast acting sugars and carbs to stop or prevent (we hope) hypos. There have been a lot of those over the last few weeks, exhausting for both of us, and it happens to Roo too.

The purples in the new Scrap Art Studio Color Play 10 collection matched well with TJs bed sheets etc and there are a number of arty-grungy-splatty packs that could help express how I feel about that statement.

Here's the result of my evening's art therapy.

Larger version with detailed supplies in the gallery version (click image)

Through the Years

I started this layout over a month ago but got very stuck with it. I've had a little constructive help from a friend to get the balance right and I managed to finish it today. I've used Aria's kit called A Scrap of SteamPunk. I liked it for worn look to my page. The journaling is based around my blog post for last year's wedding anniversary.

Where's The Lifeboat?

I've been drowning in life this month and my creativity has been struggling to breath. I was looking at the CKC challenge I was assigned to for next week and wondering where is the Lifeboat so I can get creative again? My CKC kit this month is nautical, so I did some art journaling to get my head out of the water. Cilenia shared her art journaling process on the Scrap Art Studio forum for the art journaling challenge there so I had a go at that.

Here's my art journaling as it developed following Cilenia's method.

I feel like I'm drowning, so the ocean wave paper would be a suitable base to express my feelings and journal all the things that are pulling me under on top off.

Good job I picked up Giny's paint splats pack, they are fun.

Adding my title using the cork alpha, I'm not sure where I want it just yet, so I'll lay the letters out there for now.

Positive words of affirmation

Finishing it off using papers and embellishments etc. I think Daniel might have a lifeboat station photo somewhere, now can I find it?

Supplies used from Scrap Art Studio Color Play 9, Beautiful Mess 08 by Cilenia Curtis, Collage It Borders by Angie Young, and Marina of Magical Scraps Galore's Cork Alpha.

Princess TJ's Music Canvas

TJ had a bad tummy last wednesday and is still at home as a result. It seriously messed up her blood sugars and they don't have the staff in school to give her the one-to-one she needs right now. She wanted to have a go at her own canvas painting after watching me paint some last week. She finished it this morning.

I took some step by step photos and later in the month will put a post together for the Toucan Scraps Tutorials Blog showing you her wonderful creative process and the techniques I taught her.

Part 1: the Base

Scene of the Crime Blog Hop

Hello everyone, we have another getting to know each other blog hop for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Team today. We are showing you where we do our scrapbooking etc. If you are hoping with us you will have arrived from Andrea's creative space.

I normally show you my desk once a month or so as part of the weekly What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday blog ring, so today I'll show you the entire room.

My new room, or should I say our new room is still work in progress even after nearly 11 months. As the kids and I continue to work our way through our stash finding home for things will get easier. There are 3 doors into the room so I've taken photos from each doorway.

from the conservatory

from the kitchen

from the family room

Next we get to see where the ever inventive Jemma scraps and plays.

Have a great day, and be blessed.

Painting with Acrylics

My mum's doing a fundraiser tomorrow and I was asked to donate something for the craft stall. I did a collection of small (5x7) canvas projects that would also double up as more acrylics practice for me.  I used to paint with Oils, and have switched to Acrylics due to sharing space with the kids. Oils are toxic and take several weeks to dry. Over six weeks of temptation to touch a wet painting would be too much for my youngsters.

I'm still getting used to working with acrylics, there are certainly a few things I can do with them I couldn't do with oils, but I still miss moving buttery paint around the canvas with a pallet knife blending and colour mixing as I go.

A selection of different styles and subjects. I hope they sell.

Anchors Away - CKC May Blog Hop.

We have two inspiration kits for this month's Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop: Shoreline and Totally Rad from Polly Scrap Kits (both sold out). If you are hoping with us you will have seen what our guest designer Sherri and the lovely Andrea managed to pull together from their stash inspired by one of these kits.

I really like the anchors in the Shoreline kit, and as I have still got lots of unused items from the Sea Shore Themed Color Play 9 collection from Scrap Art Studio that I got a few weeks ago in my stash including anchors I chose to go with that.

Shoreline (sold out) by Polly Scrap kits.

I pulled anchors, papers and other sailing themed items from Color Play 9. I couldn't decide on which of Giny's diagonal striped papers to choose so I added the whole pack as well as Green Eyed Lady's Transfers pack. I have a plain clothes peg from the Scrappin Cop and thought It might be nice to "paint" some pegs with Giny's paint splats. I like Angie Young's Map Collage It Borders and as I haven't used those in ages I added those too for the nautical theme.

Marina of Magical Scraps Galore gave a free fun Cork Alpha away for one of the April Challenges at Hummies World. I added some red from Cilenia Curtis's Beautiful Mess 8 and some green from Spring by Giny Scrap. Other themed items jumped out of my embellishments stash by Indigo Designs, Cari Lopez and Wetfish. I'm calling my mix and match kit "Anchor's Away".

I counterfeited the anchor patterned paper using one of the anchor stickers and also made some polka dotted papers too.

I've written a tutorial on how to do this in Craft Artist, the method works for the free cutdown version, Craft Artist Compact too.

I haven't decorated the pegs yet, but intend to do so soon. Your next inspirational stop for the day is with our beautiful, and talented Jemma.

And, if you're interested in joining the CKC team, we are having a call. Details here.

A Special Little Party

Tisha had a fabulous birthday and her party on Saturday was a success. It didn't rain - it hailed down, so we partied in the conservatory.

We don't cover our cakes with icing, but that doesn't stop a birthday cake from looking special.

This cake is gluten and cow-dairy free, baked at low temperature in a silicone baking mould. Tisha and I put a little high-fruit jam on the flower centre and sprinkled coconut to make it look like pollen. She loves My Little Pony at the moment and I washed down some of her little character pieces to add to the cake.

Party Preparations.

It's that time again, time to draw a large tailless donkey, wrap nick-knacks in several layers of newspaper and bake a fancy cake. My youngest's birthday party will be on Saturday afternoon.

We picked up some wooden animal masks on sticks in the clearance area at Hobbycraft. So colouring them in will provide a nice calm down activity (I hope) and also double up as the going home gift.

The father of a girl round the corner who has been invited has a bouncy castle and kindly offered us the loan of it for the party. If the weather is good to us we have a nice sized lawn in our new garden (still feels new even though it's coming up to a year soon) and some out door games that can easily be put in place.

A rainy day would need more preparation and I'll probably turn the conservatory into a party room.

Tisha's Rag Doll

Little Tisha has finished her rag doll. She's so proud of it, I'm very proud of her too.

Rock Pools.and a Dingy

The new Scrap Art Studio Color Play 9 is about the Sea Shore. Having some new beachy kits to play with I returned to some seaside photos that I hadn't finished scrapping from our holiday in Devon during 2011. Anne has a new blog challenge sketch up, and I was inspired by the long photo space at the top and the row of buttons.

Giny made a lovely button alpha for the collection to make my title with.

Those pools are at the Tunnels Beach in Ilfracombe where the Victorians dug tunnels through the cliff to access the beaches beyond. They even built a dam joining the rock lines so that when the tide went out it left a swimming pool behind. We thought that would be a nice safe place for the children to play in the dingy.

I used a sketch again, this one from Split Coast Stampers.

Zoo Hugs in a Sling

My youngest will be five soon and I'm missing those days when I used to carry them around in a sling. When I was looking through my Zoo 2008 photos for scrapping this month I found some sling time ones. My little boy felt so big walking around the zoo until he got too tired and I put him inside my sling. He soon discovered how much more there was to see up in mummy's arms.

Today's CKC challenge is to use a paper bag, I made a digital one using Scrapping With Liz's envelope template. To help me layout my page I used one of Becky's latest sketches at Page Maps.

Pagemaps Sketch April 2013.

Layout Credits

Papers: Thankful For You from After 5 (no longer available)

Animals: Zoo Crewz by DeDe Smith. Turned into digital stickers (tutorial) and added to paper strip.

Scrabble WordArt (What The World Needs)  by Angie Young.

Photo Mask by Maelia Designs (no longer available)

Color Play 9

Oh guys, this month's Color Play collection at Scrap Art Studio is getting me all excited. It's so cool getting to see, and sometimes play with, the new releases early. Love the colours and the theme - so perfect. What you haven't seen it yet? Here's the sneak peek.

Isn't it yummy looking? As usual they will have it on special offer for the first few days. Now is there enough time before the school run for me to play with my early copies? That's right, the kids went back to school today.

If you get excited about Scrap Art Studio art there are still openings on the Marketing Team, we get paid in art. Details here.