DAD Layout With A Painted Background

I’ve not been scrapbooking as often lately. I think one reason for this is that I don’t have any recent photos printed, nor any new supplies to play with! So I printed this photo from last weekend on my Canon Selphy, and I had fun scrapbooking it today:

My Dad’s 60th birthday was back in March, but due to my Grampa (his Dad) being ill in hospital we didn’t celebrate then. Now my Grampa is home and recovering so my Dad came down for a visit, and we celebrated belatedly. We cooked him this towering chocolate sponge with strawberry jam, whipped cream, and sliced strawberries, with a drizzle of chocolate sauce on top. It was yummy!

I had to search for some inspiration for this – when I’m not scrapping as much I definitely struggle more to get started! I chose THIS LAYOUT by Missy Whidden as my inspiration – I liked the big letters with a painted background. So I cut some letters to spell ‘DAD’ using my Cricut Explore, and chose my background cardstock:

I used a paintbrush and some watered-down white acrylic paint to paint the background in a scribbled manner, and also added some splatters:

Once the white layer was dry I repeated this with red paint, though I used a sponge to apply the bulk of it rather than a brush this time:

Once the red was dry I inked the edges of the letters using a green brush pen, then stuck them onto the background – using repositionable tape so I could lift them up and tuck things under if I wanted to:

I adhered the photo with 3D foam tape.

Now it was time for the fun bit, adding journaling and lots of embellishments. I liked how the embellishments overlapped the letters on the inspiration page, so I made sure to do this on my page too. I also made sure to use the number ’60’ because that’s the birthday my Dad was celebrating. I didn’t want the numbers to be the big part of the page as it seemed mean to shout his age out!

I got to this point and then felt like the page still needed something else. I knew I’d be adding enamel dots but that wouldn’t be enough. So I dug out a few wooden stamps – my favourite being one that says ‘eat cake’ and stamped them around the page before adding the dots:

I had to stamp the ‘eat cake’ one with Stayz-On ink as I tried with pigment ink first, both grey and then black, but neither of them showed up very well – here’s what the grey looked like at first:

The ‘you’re awesome’ and ‘happy birthday’ stamps worked fine with black pigment ink though:

I really love the effect of the big letters:

I think I ended up with a fun, happy page to suit my Dad and his cheeky temperament!

Now I need to go and order a big pile of photos and start scrapbooking more again!

I hope you are having a great weekend,

Jennifer x

Wood Slice Ornaments & Gifts

(This post is part of my Frosty Festivities 2015 Blog Event – see a list of all the posts HERE)

These wood slice ornaments and gifts are so fun. I want to buy a bunch more slices so I can keep these all for myself, and make more for gifts! My favourite is the penguin keyring, which I’ve added to my bunch of keys already – no-one else is getting that!

Those are Little Miss’ hands in the photo above. The slices are about 5 – 6cm tall.

I don’t have a tutorial as such for these… because they were so easy there’s not much instruction needed!

The slices I used were Amy Tangerine’s Finder’s Keepers Wood Slices. When these arrived I was a bit disappointed with them. They were a bit thicker than I thought they’d be (about 5mm deep – not that deep but a bit thicker than I’d like for scrapbook pages). They also just looked messy – mainly because a lot of bark had fallen off. But they were greatly improved when I decided to scrape off the remaining bark with a craft knife, so the edges looked clean.

In the below photo you can see 4 slices on the left which I had already removed the bark from before realising I should take a photo. The slice on the top right still has the bark attached but it hasn’t been well sliced – the surface is very uneven. On the bottom right you can see a piece of bark which came off in one neat ring, that’s how loose it was:

I decided that 2 of the slices would have magnets stuck on the back, and 2 would have holes through the top so they could be hung for display. So I set about trying to make a hole. Unfortunately hubby had taken his drill to work and I was too impatient to wait for him to get home. So I tried to make the hole with a nail and hammer:

As you can see this didn’t go too well, as I split the wood. At first it was just a tiny crack but when I tried to make the hole bigger (thinking I could cover up the crack later) it completely broke apart. But that did mean I had a piece to experiment with, and after trying to use a screw and a screwdriver (did not work at all) I discovered that I could make a good hole with an old paper piercer! It’s important that I say OLD paper piercer, you wouldn’t want to do this with your only one as it will blunt it. I have 2 paper piercers as I blunted one years ago, so I keep that for tougher materials like this. If you have a drill that will work best!

Once I’d figured out how to make the holes I just needed to decorate the slices. This was super easy.

For the first one that would be a magnet I used the Hero Arts Lia Griffith ‘Deck The Halls’ stamp set to stamp a deer in black in the middle (with chalk ink), and two leaf garlands in gold around the deer. I did heat emboss all these, but I don’t think it made any difference so I wouldn’t bother next time! I also dotted some Mod Podge on so I could add some fine red glitter dots too:

For the next magnet slice I stamped a circular sentiment in the center (from Avery Elle ‘Joy To The World’, using Avery Elle’s ‘Cherry’ Pigment Ink), then added a thick layer of Mod Podge to the outer edge, tipping glitter on to it as I went:

For my two slices with holes I painted the centers – one white and one black, both with Martha Stewart Satin Craft Paint. Then I stuck a gold sticker (from My Mind’s Eye Christmas On Market Street) on the white slice, and painted a penguin face with white, orange, and more black paint on the black slice.

I chose to paint the majority of these slices because they had more imperfections in the wood, which is fine as I know wood is a natural element so it can’t be perfect, but I still didn’t want those showing on my finished items:

Here’s what they looked like all decorated. I did spray them with a layer of matt spray varnish as well – I’d certainly recommend varnishing one if it’s going to be a keyring:

Once the varnish was dry I tied twine through the one which would be a hanging decoration (I had to use a darning needle to get the twine through the hole), then I had a flash of inspiration and added a keyring to the penguin, and I glued magnets onto the back of the slices with no holes using superglue:

Then they were all done, ready to gift to someone for Christmas, or in my case, keep them all to myself!

Be Inspired:

Paint a penguin face on something round, or use a penguin embellishment or picture

Add stamping, glitter, or paint to something wooden (eg a wood box, frame, slice, or wood veneer shape)

Use the phrase ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ on your next project

I hope that’s given you a few ideas! Which wood slice do you like the most?

Remember that commenting on this post, and any post that goes live during November 2015, will count as another entry into the Grand Giveaway {NOW CLOSED}, but only if you’ve registered your interest in winning that prize right HERE!

I’ll be back again at 8am GMT tomorrow with the first sponsored giveaway!

Jennifer x

Will He Jump? An Autumn Scrapbook Layout

Today I have an Autumn scrapbook layout to share, as I’m feeling the change of season here.

I created this for the Hip Kit Club DT call which ended at the beginning of this week. You had to make one layout in response to the call and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep the page a secret or not, but I’ve just seen that someone asked on FB if it was okay to share it and the answer was yes! I also used a Cut Shoppe file on here so I’m going to link it up to their September monthly challenge on their blog HERE too.

Will He Jump?

This photo is a perfect example of my cautious children. They don’t like to take risks and would always rather hold my hand if they are going to balance on something, or try to jump. I did end up having to hold cheeky boy’s hand after I took this photo!

I used a prompt from the Hip Kit Club Members Forum on Facebook, which was to ‘use embellishments around the edge of a large shape’. As you can see I chose to use a leaf – for which I bought a new cut file set called ‘Leaf It To Me’ from The Cute Shoppe on Etsy. I cut one of the leaves from a piece of woodgrain patterned paper using my Cricut Explore, then I started working out how to arrange things around it.

I started with a bit of stenciling on the background paper, using a Happy Scatter ‘Scattered Triangles’ stencil with some Avery Elle ‘Fizz’ ink and a Tim Holtz ink applicator tool:

I sprinkled some gold mist dots on the background paper too.

I pulled out a bunch of different bits and pieces from my stash to match the colour scheme. I wanted to use a kraft speech bubble, but it was a bit boring so I used a Shimelle True Stories ‘Burst’ stamp and some Avery Elle ‘Cherry’ ink to jazz it up. I made sure to put some felt (foam would work too) under the speech bubble when I was stamping, to give a bit of wiggle-room, so that no detail was missed out from the stamp:

Then it was just a case of moving things about until I was happy with them! I went for a nice eclectic mix as usual. The red paper triangles were cut using a free download from the Hip Kit Club Shop – you just have to create an account using your email address, and then you have access to free cut files even if you aren’t a subscriber! Score!

I loved using these bright foam Thickers for the title to make it fun and punchy:

Placing some elements (like circles and triangles) so that parts of them disappear under the photo helps tie the page together – it looks intentional and not just like you threw a bunch of stuff on a page!:

I loved making this layout, because cheeky boy has started school now, and this photo make me think of all the times we went for a walk while his big sister was at school. I’m so glad I capture moments like this.

Is it feeling like Autumn where you are in the world? Have you made an Autumn crafts? leave me a link if so!

Jennifer x