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

Messy Messy Mess Mess...

 ...but my mojo is definately here somewhere because I have been so on the ball with the crafting. Scrapbooking or card making, its all pottering along nicely. The problem I have is that every time I go to tidy, I start to just pick at bits and pieces, do a bit here, do a bit there and then its all messy again. Having said that, its quite hard to craft on top of so much stuff and every flat surface has something piled upon it. I had my friends from home up at the weekend, and none were surprised at the messiness of the room, nor at the fact that OH & I have to have seperate rooms. "Stuff expands to fill the space!"

So what have I been doing to create all this mess? I really got into the "In the Meadow" papers that came with a very recent copy of Simply Cards and Papercraft. I made a whole selection of cards, mostly from the papers and die cuts that came with them. I 've sectioned off a few to make some new baby photo frames for a couple of friends. That has lead me on to a mini-book from some other SC&P papers, but I need to find some images. I also attacked the butterfly stickers in the Papermania birthday set and made 6 good cards for general purpose. There is a Double scrapbook page of pics of my nephew and his 2 aunties at Christmas, plus 2 more on the go of me and my best friend, and 1 to be started. All piled up on the desk.

I've also got back into the stamping and really getting the hang of the pro-markers, the mixing and the general colouring in. With Ally Pally coming up, I'm gunning to get some more, the range of greys is definately on my list for blending purposes and Elephant colouring. I read it somewhere on the internet (UK Scrappers I think) and it really does give a much deeper colour, especially to the Reds.  Other potential purchases are some envelope templates that craftwork cards have released and to expand my collection of distress inks and get some blending pads. I have been using stippling brushes and they do give a nice effect. But for the pale colours (which account for 2 of the 3 I have, it really needs to be pads. Or RSI. 

Birthday time has just (literally) come and gone and a lot of goodies have come my way. I've spent the money from grandparents on a few (lots) bits from Crafty Devils, including the new v2 Bind it all, a hobby arts stamp I saw in a magazine (Actually, it was SC&P, again) and some nice santa stamps. I also got a lovely new camera lens, wide angle, which gives lovely short depth-of-field shots for portraits. I took some really lovely ones of my party, very easily with fantastic results. I'm hoping that with it I can get some really good shots of my nephew without using the flash and them being blurred or grainy. And also some good stealthy ones of my family. See this picture of the crisps and dip. I just literally pointed and shot. For those who are interested there is also one of Fishfingers.

When there is some daylight I will post up pictures of all the bits I've made and finished. Its all a bit yellow in here at the moment. I have some ideas for a light box as we have a deluge of cardboard boxes around and a lot of spare white 12x12. Hopefully this should make photos easier to take no matter what time of day it is. 

Love Elliefantasy

What's going on with me

Hello to all of you lovely people. Yes I have been rather absent but very busy. So what have I been up to? 

For most of last month I have been trying to make some progress on my family tree. I have the idea of doing it in scrapbook forms, and so I have started to collect more detailed and throrough information. But the more I looked, the more information I need to find and it is very much spread about. This is not a quick and easy job, but something I need to make headway with so I can make a start on the scrapbooks. 

Mini-A-Month. I have done most of February's, though most of it was done in March. Its a really cool little book based on the theme of Love and the pictures are from a friends wedding that I went to in 2009. I haven't started March's yet but hang on a couple of weeks and something will turn up. 

Cards & Layouts. The pics below are of some cards and a layout that I made at the weekend, the layout is of me and my newphone, opening his present on his first birthday. The cards are made from the kit box that I mentioned in my previous post, just one sheet of cardstock did 4 birthday cards. I've also got the hang of the Tim Holtz bits that I brought at Stamperama, and with Ally Pally just around the corner I am planning to get some more ink pads and other bits.

Parties - With my birthday coming up shortly I had planned a massive Piratey affair. Work and timescale have meant that it's been postponed for a few months, however its giving me enough time to plan it properly and there will be a few crafty bits that I can share with you all. 

So, hope you have enjoyed catching up, see you all soon.

Elliefantasy xxx