An 8.5X11 challenge layout and a great YouTube channel for you to discover :)

Happy Saturday to all!  I am so glad you could join me for another layout share.  I know I have been MIA for the last couple of weeks; life interfered with my play time LOL. Nothing major, just extra work and finally some lovely summer weather !!!  How have you all been?  I have quite a few things to share so I just might be doing a few posts this weekend and over the next week.  But first, the most important one for today :

I want to share a layout I made for my  friend Kelly's  500 subbie YouTube challenge.  She is froggie251 on YouTube and here is the link to her channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/froggie251/videos .  If you don't know Kelly, hop on over to her channel, sit back and enjoy.  She does some great stuff.  Kelly makes 12X12 layouts but also does Project Life.  She is a joy to watch and to listen to.  Lately, Kelly has participated in a couple of collaborations with a two other great YouTubers - one on project life (with Hannah Lemieux), where they challenged each other to use mixed media on some of their PL cards.  The other collaboration, also a mixed media challenge, is with Mari Clarke.  Mari makes an art journal page and Kelly integrates some great mixed media techniques on a 12 X 12 layout.  Such fun!

You still have time to participate in Kelly's challenge as it closes tomorrow, on the 19th so as soon as you finish reading this ;), get cracking!!!  LOL.

Here is the layout I made:

This turned out vastly different than the idea I had when I started to make the page.  Firstly, I wanted to make a 12X12 and secondly I mentioned to Kelly that I was going to try and do a mixed media background, in her honour :).  As you can clearly see, neither happened.

I did make a background on a 12X12 piece of black cardstock.  To reduce the starkness (yup it's a word in my head) of the black, I gesso'd the page.  I did add some water to make it more of a wash but obvously not enough - first booboo.  Then I used a star stencil with some texture paste, which I coloured with Italian Sunset Glimmer Mist.  I wanted to match the pale coral in my photo mat and on one of the layers.  The colour matched perfectly - yay - but in the end it was way too pale on the background.  So when I put my photo block on that background.... I hated it!!!  OK, well,  start over I thought - but hmmm, no more black 12X12 cardstock!!  So 8.5X11 it became.  I used my punches to cut some circles out of that MM piece which you can see in each of the three embellishment clusters. In the end, I do like the outcome.

The supplies:  I used my Scraptastic April Darlene main kit and add-on to make this page with very few exceptions :

• The black cardstock and the pale coral carstock that I used to mat the photo, are both from Stampin' Up
• The stencil is from Simon Says Stamp
• The mint foam thickers are from my stash - they are Dear Lizzy. The black alpha thickers may be from a previous kit - gosh how I love that font :)

There is no story to tell about this photo - it is simply of my boy Chopin sleeping the afternoon away after quite the play session with Sophie !

Thanks so much for stopping by and sticking with me to end end of this post.  Thanks so much Kelly for a fun challenge and congratulations on reaching 500 subbies.  I love your channel and am sure that you will be at 1000 in no time at all.

Have a great weekend everyone.  I will be back soon.  Hugs xox

 

A 12 X 12 grid-style layout, a great YouTube channel and a fun challenge :)

Good morning all and happy Thursday!!!  I am so sorry that I have been neglecting you lately - life just sometimes interferes with my scrappy time, or at least my bloggy time.  I have had a lot going on lately.  Nothing dramatic, just everyday stuff with work, an elderly mom, family and so on... But I did manage to put the entire weekend aside for scrapbooking during INSD weekend and made four layouts.  I will get a post up showing them soon (next post, I promise :) ).

In the meantime, I am here today to share a layout I made in response to a fun challenge by one of my Facebook group, and YouTube, friends.  Jen Stokes is a very talented scrapper and a fellow Canadian.  If you don't know Jen, you can find her on You Tube here:   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAdrCaIYRPvV1lWjhTe9s9Q/feed 

She started making videos fairly recently - around Christmas time I think, and has already reached over 6oo subbies.  She has an awesome giveaway and challenge going on until June 1st so go on over to her channel and check it out.  Her challenge is a fun one - she asked that we create a layout that is scraplifted, or inspired by, one of her layouts - the first 15 or so that she created on her channel.  So I sat down and watched the challenge video, where she shared each of those layouts again - I made notes on the ones that I thought I would scraplift for this challenge, or the ones that inspired me for colour, or placement, or page design.  I spent a good hour doing my homework.  And then...... I scrapped something totally different LOL.  Jen's first and third layouts were grids, which I don't do very often but always like the end result.  Here is my layout, scraplifted from Jen's third YouTube process video :

The supplies:  The majority of the supplies used on this page come from my March 2015 Scraptastic kit - Rivers and Roads, but there are a few bits from olders kits and from my stash:

• The background paper is from Dear Lizzy's Serendipity collection (One fine day) and the layering paper with the multi-coloured dots is a Scraptastic exclusive (Hooray)
• The 4 X 4 cards that I used in two of the quadrants (to rest my title on, and for the journaling) are from the cut-apart sheet in Shimelle's first collection
• The doilies are from an older kit, as is the bow
• the alphas are from my stash (Simple Stories and Dear Lizzy) and so are the enamel dots (they are MME)

The story:   Well, I wouldn't really say there is a story per se to this layout.  It is more of a fun everyday moment that I captured.  My cat, Chopin, just loves it when my sister's cat Sophie comes to stay.  She was with us for about 10 days in April while my sister and BIL were away.  This layout is pretty much the story of their days together LOL ... Play, rest and repeat !!!  Oh and there is a little eating, and snuggling with me, in there too LOL.  I will have to make another page documenting those aspects.

So there you have it.  Thanks so much for joining me today.  Please leave me any comments, or questions you may have.  I love hearing from you.

Thanks Jen for such a fun challenge!  And, again, if you don't know Jen, hop on over to her YouTube channel (just follow the link above).  She is also a member of the Victoria Marie Facebook group and of the nicolejones911 group.  If you aren't a member of either of those groups, well ... get with it, LOL (said in a true Victoria voice ;) ;) 

Hugs to all xox

An 8.5 X 11 layout, a great you tube channel and a fun challenge !!

Happy Thursday scrappy friends!  We have a "heatwave" LOL ... the temperature is minus 10 deg C today but that brought a little snow, just enough to mess up the rush hour this morning but I have the day off so woot woot!

I made my second ever 8.5 X 11 layout and I must say I am really starting to like this format.  Once I got the proportions sorted, it became quite easy and I love the result. This size of layout, and this particular page,  are totally inspired by one of my favourite scrapbookers - Rory Vaillancourt.  She is on you tube as "Kateroar" and is also a member of the Scraptastic Design Team.  Rory is immensely talented and makes lovely layouts and great videos. Her voice is so soothing and relaxing as well LOL.  She is also quite active on our various facebook groups.  If you don't know her, head right on over to You Tube.  As a double bonus, she is hosting a challenge right now.  The requirements are super easy - be a subbie, make a layout and link to it in the comments section of her challenge video. The prize is totally awesome as well !!!

This layout is really a scraplift, not of a specific layout of Rory's but rather more generally of her style, design and some of the techniques she uses often.  I used a monochromatic colour scheme.  The banner under the photo was given texture by using my crimper (gosh I don't even know when I last used it!!) and then distressing, and inking the edges.  I used some vellum behind the photo and then some fun foam to pop both the vellum and the photo up.  All "Rory techniques" LOL.

Here it is : 

The story behind this layout is very simple really.  The journaling says it all:  "My day is always brighter when I meet a kitty or puppy along the way!"

The supplies come entirely from the mega kit I put together using my January Scraptastic kit along with the leftovers from the October main and add-on, as well as the TLN kit.

I must say that I am really happy with this layout - it is one of my favourites so far this year.  

Thanks for the inspiration and motivation Rory.  And of course, a big thanks to all of you who take the time to read my blog, like and comment on my layouts whether it be here, on instagram (mooreilly), or on our various facebook groups.  I am so very lucky to be part of this fantastic community. 

Cheers!

Layout in response to the fun challenge by Jenny Box for her 500+ You Tube subbies

Happy Sunday to you all !  I hope you are having a good one.  It is rather a cloudy autumnal day here but the temperatures are still reasonable - 11 deg C so far today (it is noon here).  I am still fighting my flu bug but went for a long walk this morning to help clear my head and my sinuses.  It seemed to work ... yay !

Two blog posts in one weekend you say?  Well, yes.  This second one is for a challenge by my You Tube friend Jenny Box (you will find her under her name on You Tube, and she is also part of the nicolejones911 facebook group).  If you know Jenny, you will know that she is Australian and that she makes awesome layouts.  She has two "trademarks" - layering and black ink splatters.  I think Jenny is the queen of layering; she makes it look so effortless and the results are always beautiful.  She also finishes each page with some black India ink splatters in two corners of her page.  The perfect finishing touch.  Jenny challenged us to take on her trademarks on our own pages!!  What fun, but a challenge indeed.  So without further ado, here is my response to her challenge and my 5th layout with the Scraptastic Boys of Summer kit :

What I did that was new to me :  Firstly, this page is a lot busier than my normal style but I really like the outcome.  Normally, when I use a lot of bits of patterned paper on a layout, I will use cardstock, or a very subtle pattern, as the background but this time I went for the bold because I wanted the star PP as a  background since the layout is about Oliver's (the golden retriever in the picture)  bed and both he and Cali (the queen kitty LOL)  are sleeping.  Secondly, I clustered the title in a block down at the bottom of the layout so that it sort of acts as an embellishment cluster as well.  

This layout sure made be appreciate Jenny's layering talent even more because I did not find it as quite as effortless as it looks when Jenny does it :).  But I enjoyed it and I will certainly do more layering on my layouts as a result.  Thanks Jenny.  I used Mister Huey's mist for the splattering but I will be buying the black India ink because I like the effect much more.

The supplies: I used a few more supplies from my stash add-on this time around, to bring in the pet theme.  However all of the papers are from the kit with the exception of the grey cardstock behind the star PP, which is Smoky Slate by Stampin' Up, and the yellow-gold plank paper (which I can't quite remember where is comes from - I know it is recent and it is a 6X6 pad).  The other items from my stash add-on are :

• The dog and cat wood veneers are from Studio Calico
• the bone sticker, good dog sticker, paw sticker and kitty face sticker are all from the Simple Stories dog and cat sn@p collections
• the rest of the stickers are from the kit
• the alphas are mainly from the October afternoon's Daily Flash in Nightfall
• as I have already mentioned, the mist is from Mister Huey's

The story :  Well there isn't much of a story here, the photo is pretty much self-explanatory.  Cali, who is my sister's older cat just loves sleeping in the dog's bed.  We could never understand it because Oliver's bed, which came with him from the Rescue organisation, was pretty stinky no matter how much my sister washed it LOL.  But since it was the one thing Oliver was used to, they kept the old bed for the first year after he joined our family.  Early this autumn, Deb couldn't stand that old bed any longer so she went to buy Oliver a new one.  This photo was taken on the same day !!!  Cali got to the bed first LOL... and Oliver just let her be.  He never nudges her or tries to get her out of his bed.  But, if one of the cats gets within a yard of his food bowl ... oh my, that is a whole other story !!!

So there you have it - the story of Oliver's bed, or should it be Cali's bed?  

Thanks so much Jenny for this fun challenge, I really enjoyed it.  And, if for some reason, you don't know Jenny, get out from under that rock and search her out on You Tube.  Her videos are as amazing and her layouts.  

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I will be back soon with another layout and more ramblings.  Hugs xox