LSNED 2011 - 1st September

Welcome to this years Learn Something New Every Day attempt. Last year I crashed and burned about the middle of the month. This year, I hope to be more successful. I have a pile of stash, a proper album and my trusty blog to catch the daily thoughts. 

LSNED this year is exciting for me as I'm 12 weeks pregnant. Originally I thought of doing an in-depth book about what I need to learn about being a mother. But the first thing I have actually had to learn is that pregnancy has made me really tired and has lessened my attention span quite drastically. So that idea has gone out of the window. Instead I will just reflect on the day and note down my lessons in a nice list fashion, possibly adding more detail if required, or the list is short enough.

Then, when I feel up to it, I will put the posts into my album. I'm using up an 8x8 album that my mum got me a year or so ago in the sale at her local craft shop. Its a purple, Papermania postbound album. Before I get to the middle of the month, I will need to hunt out 10 more page protectors, but I have a bit of time. I've dug out loads of purple and silver cardstock, ribbons and embellishments in a serious stash busting excercise. Hopefully it will look lovely and stylish. Or like a big purple fiasco. Either way is good!

So here is today's list of things I have learnt.

1. My first real pregnancy craving is dijon mustard. For breakfast I had a cheese and mustard sandwich. Nom-tastic!
2. My early morning queasy-ness hasn't quite gone.
3. Even though I'm really happy now I'm pregnant, it doesn't stop me from waking up in a grump for no apparant reason.
4. It is very difficult to reply to random emotionally effusive e-mails and texts about the baby from people who I am not very close to. Not yet worked out what to say.

Hoping that your September 1st has been lovely and you have learnt something really cool. 

Love Elliefantasy xxx

Creating titles

A few posts ago I had a bit of a rant about how much trouble I had in creating titles for pages. A little while after that I managed to get a set of Papermania alphabet stamps which were identical to some letter stickers that I had and particularly liked. I have also made a visit to Boots and had ordered a load of prints of my nephew as he is my main scrapping focus at the moment, the place where I seem to find the most inspiration. One of the sets I liked was 3 pictures, taken at very different ages, but all in variations of Arsenal outfits. Immediately a title "Growing up as a Gunner" sprung to mind and I've taken the opportunity to create a really bold title. The page isn't finished yet but I've done the work on the title.

I started by stamping in black and then inking the edges with a gold ink stamp. But it just didn't look striking enough. So I then decided to ink the pages, but I knew I wanted the letters in white, as they are on the strip. So I Glossy-accented the lettering and left it overnight to dry. The lettering really lends itself well to Glossy Accents as the nib is just as big as the gap. How fortunate is that!

So here you can see all of the parts of the title. (I apologise now for the photo's but I have a short focus lens and I was going for arty farty shots with short depth of field!) The next evening I got out my Aged Mahogany Distress ink pad and blenders. I inked over the whole title, wiping off the lettering immediately with a babywipe. And the lettering came out crisp and white. I was really impressed with how it looked and just how easy it was to do.

Once dry, I re-inked the edges with the gold and it gave a really good, aged look but still with the basic Arsenal colours. For the Gunners part, I've stamped my large, plain Dimension fourth letters in gold and cut them out. I have the photos matted onto white with gold edging and then onto navy blue card, but that is as far as its got. I can't decide whether to mount the titles onto the navy blue as well before they all end up on a nice bold dark red piece of 12x12.  But as far as lettering goes, I'm quite happy with this DIY look.

For those who don't use them, I can't recommend baby wipes enough. You can get the really cheap ones that you wouldn't necessarily use on a baby, but they clean stamps up immediately, as well as glue and ink on my messy sheet. They pick up glitter better than anything else I've found, and even me when I get a bit sticky! 

Love Elliefantasy xx

My Day in Photos - A quick Explanation

Hi

For those who are confused about yesterdays post, it was Monday's prompt from Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers. I got to it a bit late, but the gist was to take 4-10 pictures of your day, either Monday or Tuesday.

Now Monday was actually spent having a lovely family bbq at my mum's, a totally spontaneous thing and really nice to do. But we didn't get back until late, and I didn't get round to checking my e-mails until after work Tuesday. So cue me running about to take a few photos during the evening to try and simulate a bit of a day.

As I am one of those unfortunates who has a day job to support their hobby, I don't to think that the day really begins crafty-wise until after 7pm. So the 1st picture is to simulate getting out of bed in the morning. The 2nd is my desk at 7pm-ish; me with my fav lil person reading through my e-mails whilst having a drink. 3rd picture is pudding (self explanatory). 4th picture is my desk before I posted but after I'd finished for the evening. 5th is to denote having a nice shower before the 6th; bed and a book.

So that's me for Tuesday 26th April 2011. Why not let me know what you were doing. 

Love Elliefantasy

My Day in Photos

Little Linky

Making some storage pt 1

The leaning tower that you see above is a pile of distress-inked pieces of card which are going to form a home-made felt pad storage unit. I've been playing about, looking at a couple of links and think I have good idea of what I want to do. This is not what I thought I was going to do when I started, but that is all part of the design process. But its a nice task to last me the week so we'll see what we make of it.

Once upon a time (well over 10 years ago) I did Graphics at GCSE. I wasn't very good at the technical and detailed drawing side, but I did enjoy the design elements and picked up a few good habits and a few ideas about how to make nets for making boxes. I also did Art at GCSE, but again was not accurate enough at drawing to be very good.  I found that struggling with the technical side of both subjects somewhat diminished my enjoyment of the creative elements and I came away wondering if I was as creative as I had originally thought.  I wish that Scrapbooking had been on offer as it mixes the design side of my graphics training with the arty and messy side of my art training. I don't have to be super accurate to produce some lovely pieces and best of all, no one is marking my work!

I'd love to hear if you have any skills that you picked up at school which influence your crafting or if like me, you have found that crafting has unlocked some potential that you didn't know, or wasn't certain was there.

Love Elliefantasy xxx

Decopatch & Back to School with the old Bloggeroo

Two fold post today chums. First (and with pictures) is my Decopatched Elephant. Yes, that's right, you heard me. Decopatched Elephant. Whilst planning our trip to Ally Pally, my mum mentioned a stall called the MDF Man, who we went to see. But right next door to them was The Decopatch Place. We stopped in at the start, and then again at the end of our trip (we only managed until about 2pm before we had spent ALL our ££) Our other craft show buddy decided to get some papers for the MDF scrapbook that she had brought, and after watching a demo, and looking at the papers with her, I somehow managed to leave with one of their kits to decorate an elephant in quite bright pink and red papers. 

Needless to say that the look on my OH's face, when I returned home and explained this final purchase, was perplexed and amused. Even I wasn't quite sure how this was going to turn out. My friend was interested because she was looking for something a bit new and different and this is certainly something we hadn't really come across before. But having spent some time on Friday, and then finishing it off this evening, I have found another crafting obsession. Its so easy to do, and very very relaxing. I've made it through 3 episodes of "Desperate Housewives" and am feeling very chilled but still like I have created something. I wont bore you with the science here of how to do it and what you need, please do have a look at the link above if you are interested. But it looks like a lovely way to make some really individual gifts, if that is why you like to craft and its a break away from all the other things, something that can easily be put down and picked up whenever you want. For those confused about the flap at the bottom and the slit at the top, its supposed to be a pot for me to put my change into at work, rather than the flapjack/chocolate bar machine of Evil.

So, back to school with my blog. Just in time (thanks to a timely tweet reminder) I signed up to the follow-up to Blogging for Scrapbookers, which is called Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers. Hopefully this 3 week course should enable me to tighten things up and get it all ship-shape. Todays post is all about connecting with all of you lovely people out there (somewhere I hope) So please drop me a line to say hello. And sticking with a theme here, why not leave a comment about a technique or craft that you have found "new and different" or one that you find you return to just to relax with. 

Please be prepared for a mass 3 weeks of posting. Hoping that your day has been as pink and shiny as this little elephant
. 

Love Elliefantasy xx

Alphabetti Spaghetti

A lot of what I do with cards and scrapbook pages results in the need for some kind of writing. Either stamped, peel off, stickers, printed etc etc. And I never ever seem to have the right thing. I feel like I am constantly buying alphabets but when it comes to crunch time I just don't have something to match the project. If I was better organised I would plan all my pages in advance, matching up kits before I even put glue to pretty paper. But that isn't fun if you do it all the time (I am just guessing, I have NEVER managed to do it for one page, let alone many.) Some of my favourite pages are ones that just come together without a lot of effort, but I have a 5% success rate in finding good letters and having enough of them to make the associated title. 

Today I popped into Hobbycraft to spend a £10 voucher on some non-crafty bits and came away spending a bit more and with some crafty bits. One of which was a packet of Papermania alphabet stamps. The main thing that attracted me was that it was the duplicate of some stickers that they do, but now I can do my own alphas in my own colours and have exactly the words I need. Plus they are a decent size, which is not easy to come by and they are not often that cheap. Dimension Fourth do a lovely set of alpha's in a blobby version of Times New Roman, either in plain or in funky patterns. I have a set but unfortunately have chopped the top off my U. The queue was too big at Ally Pally to bother them with random queries but I shall be e-mailing soon to investigate the possibility of single letters. I also am the proud owner of Zoo Alphabet by Penny Black. Unfortunately they have only had 1 outing so far, but now I am perfecting the art of the pro-markers (and worked out how to stop them bleeding) I will have another go soon. 

I have also delved into the world of printed alphas and these have also worked. I recently made a 360 degree card for my mum and didn't have enough of some chipboard letters that I had brought from Dunelm. So I poodled into Paint Shop Pro, downloaded some new swirly brushes and made a pattern. I then wrote some text over, first ensuring that the fill colour was sent to transparent. Printed off, cut out and glossy accented and I had some fairly good little letters, albeit in a fairly over the top shade of purple. I do have the robo if I can sort out using it, but sometimes you want something nice and quick and lets face it, the robo isn't really. I also like to make the absolute most out of any card that I cut so just 1 phrase isn't good enough.

So what is the point of this ramble. Well partly it is that, just a ramble. Partly it is a plea to any manufactures who might possibly maybe have stumbled upon this blog by accident, please put in loads and loads of vowels and useful letters in your packs. And partly it is to share some ideas that I have had to try and solve this perennial problem.

And 1 final tip for you all (in case you hadn't stumbled upon this yourself) With silver peel offs and permanent brush pens you can get a lot more coloured peel-off letters than you think.  Don't bother with the pro-markers, its a waste of their capabillities and the ink doesn't spread well. But 3 or 4 goes with a good old fashioned brush pen and you unleash a whole new world. 

Love Elliefantasy xxx