Resolutions

Welcome 2017!
Of course I have planned to make more videos, albums, artwork and all sorts of projects. Here it is the last day of the first month of the new year and I am trying not to break the promise I made to my self to finish something. At least today I have a day off from my day job :), so off to work on what really matters: pretty things.

First: a video of a finished album.

Second: another video of my interpretation of project life; more of a week in my life.
As much as I love the big albums that Project Life has on the market and all the accessories, I will never be able to fill it up with daily pictures, notes and other decorations. I had to adapt the style to my crafting skills and time limitation and here it is 90% finished Week 1 to Week 4 of this year.

Third and last (for this month): A painting project in progress.
This is the beginning of this story.
Few years ago, before Pintrest and games on my tablet, I found myself with nothing to do. So I grabbed a canvas and a highlighter and draw some birds.

I found the photo in the 2011 photo folder. The blue highlighter color had long faded. About three days later when I noticed the sketch starting to disappear, I used some acrylic black pain to trace the highlighter lines. The canvas is somewhere at my parents house.

Few moths later, I wanted to see how these birds would look in color. Not wanting to ruin the look of the initial sketch I redraw the birds with some improvements and started to paint. There is something off about the colors. I recently started researching about color theory maybe I will figure out what I can do better. Back then I decided on a pink background and call it done. The painting ended in my friend Tracy's living room.

Fast forward to last year. When the birds came back to me after a very long migration :). Inspired by the new trend of coloring books I decided to once again draw these fantastic birds. This time I approach it more methodically:
     one sketch on paper the size of the final canvas for placement, borders and other space elements         and three small canvases for color, textures and mood
 And so it ends the beginning of this story.

This blog post is getting long so I will take a break here. Will see if I can keep up with my ambitious plans.  

Children's day - day two

And so it happened that another girl from work found out she was going to be an aunt soon. Sometime in March she found out she will have to host a pink baby shower for her cousin. She asked me if I could make a baby girl book. I said I will try and after a few weeks it was finally done. She liked the ribbon closure I made for my first ever  mini album. She also wanted the baby initial on the cover. I enjoyed the challenge of scrapbooking with pink. I was surprised to see how little pink I use in my usual projects. I am still working in figuring out my style and color preference, until then I continue to experiment and play. Enough talk, here it is in video format, my new found passion for no other reason that it takes me less than taking photos of each page.

I decided to take this video a step forward and added some background music. Just in case you are watching this video with the volume on, you are listening to Goran Bregovic - Lullaby.

Stay tuned for day three... (much like my favorite author Patrick Rothfuss, it may take me a while to come up with the end of this series :) )

Children's day - day one

Finally I got to try my hand at one of the most common scrapbookings of all: the baby book.
It started with the arrival of one of my coworkers baby boy. I knew I wanted to make a book for the new baby. The paper I liked the most was Mambi Sheets Oh Baby Boy. I used some stickers from Simple Stories and other bits and letters. The letter page from the kit turned out to be perfect for this project. All the letters for the Baby's initials were the same size, so they made it all the way on the front cover.

 

I was not sure how many pages to make. I usually go through the paper pack and pick out the papers that I think will make interesting backgrounds or inspire me a certain layout. Here there are in no particular order:

Every page is a pocket for a large tag were mom can add more photos or write about the new member of the family. I was very happy with how it turned out. The paper is so cute I did not want to cover too much of it. There is not much blue in my other scrapbook projects so this was a great change of pace. One paper collection seemed to be plenty to complete this book. And not to be overwhelmed with scraps that may or may not work with my other scraps, I decided to glue them down in another album. I used some envelopes and the hidden hinge binding style.

 

My first Scrapbook video!

I was a little nervous and short on time when making this video. In keeping with the history of the motion pictures I made this a silent video. Hope I get up the confidence of speaking while recording. 

stay tuned for day two...

 

Scrapbooks by numbers

I have a hard time finishing scrapbooks because I get lost in the details. I want to add these new flowers I found on sale, and a new paper from a different collection. Then to pull everything together, I have to add some decorative tape and maybe some sparkle... It never ends. I had to set some limits for myself if I want to have a finished project. So this is what I came up with on one crafty day:
 7 days to work on a project
 6 craft envelopes and cards:


5 theme papers

 4 supporting papers

 3 Decorative elements: stamped images, velum, doilies

 2 Cutting tools: Martha Stewart's edge and corner loops
 1 Washi tape 

I did quite well sticking to the recipe. I may have worked on the album for less than 7 days, and I may have used some other decorative elements; but overall, I found that I had all I needed on hand without having to go fish through my supplies. And without further delay here it is:

 That is it for now. Have a great Christmas and a Crafty New Year!

National Craft Month

Last year in March I started celebrating National Craft Month. It was a challenge, it was fun and at the end of it I could not wait to do it all over again. This March was a little bit different. New county, new living arrangements and a new job that keeps me busy. With no time and space at my leisure, I managed to sneak in a few projects. Here it is Exhibit A:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.

Two out of many (2)

I managed to finish another album this month before I leave for warmer weather. It was a last minute kind of deal. I have started a Valentine's day album, just so I can feel up to date with my work, when this tutorial showed up on my Facebook wall. I had about 10 pages of scrapbook paper left from DCWV Butterfly Garden collection and I decided they will be perfect for this experiment. The project took me more time to finish because I got a little carried away with the inking and the fussy cutting and other small details. It was all worth it in the end. I was so happy with the album that I might buy another Butterfly Garden paper pack.
Take a look and let me know what you think.

The covers are held together by a piece of Christmas wrapping paper that I saved from one of my presents from Tracy. She knew I would keep it and re-purpose it so she chose wisely.

One of my favorite pages. I like the high contrast colors and the large design. I do not know how it will look after I add some photos. Maybe black and white photos for this page.

Thank you Ioana for the butterflies. I saved the white ones for a special album, except for this one who got some green ink treatment and a little of the pearl white ink.

Trying to cover up the missing corner of the butterfly paper with fussy cut images from leftover paper. Except for the top green butterfly and the small pink flower on the left all others have missing parts.

Last page trying to use every little bit of paper left. Looks a little missed-matched for my style, but is the last page so it is OK.

Not sure when I will be back with more projects hope is sooner because I received two very special paper collections; one had some printed burlap pages and the other one is the New Lodge Stack from DCWV, both out of my style and comfort zone.

And that is it for a while. Stay scrappy!