LittleBirdyScraps

Who's Jenny Agutter?

 

I had to show you this.  Daughter asked me the other day, 'Who's Jenny Agutter?'  She'd been talking to a friend of mine, who has been saying for ages that she looks like Jenny Agutter.  I showed Daughter some googled pics but she wasn't impressed.  Then yesterday I took this, and it made me smile...!

Lots of other stuff to show you, as well.  (Oooh!  Are you excited? Lol)

 

My package arrived from Marit, and in it was this beautiful mini book, for which the instructions were shown on her blog a few weeks ago.  Some details:

 

 

 

 

I told Marit that I could see she is a proper artist!  There is something about the materials she has used, and the ink in particular, that reminds me of all those wonderful art departments I've seen in my time!  I also got some sparkly goodies and some intriguing paper:

 

So, thank you very much Marit, as I said to you yesterday, yours is all ready to go and I just need to get to the post office.  Not my favourite place at the moment, but for you I will make the sacrifice!

Two more sketches on Inspired Blueprints today, as part of the Sketch Bonanza.  Here is my take on the sketch that was made from Nicole's LO:

 

Don't forget to pick a sketch or two and post some LOs to the gallery for a chance to win the Gauche Alchemy papercrafting kit.

I have also altered a CD case that Daughter was throwing out, for a contest on Scraptivity.  We're being inspired by Mambo this week; I've not really gone for the black-and-white aspect of the Latin dances so far, but this one really jumped out at me.

 

I won't bore you with the dozen or so pics I've taken of it - but know that I made that tassle myself!  It's my first effort at tassel-making and hence a bit wonky, but I love it...

Tune in tomorrow for horrific pics of my allotment!

Double Trouble

   

Well, here we are, I've made a double!  I'm not terribly comfortable with these, but there's no doubt they serve a purpose, which in my case is the scrapping of large numbers of photos.  Or, numbers of large photos as with this effort.

Once again I have been at the photo stash pile - despite having ink now! - and used these photos which I really like but which I thought I had printed out too large.

A while ago I saved some tips for making double page LOs, which I'll post here in case they are of use to anyone.  I found them handy, but I can't for the life of me remember where I got them from.  So credit to someone else - I just don't know who!

• Remember to think of the two pages as ONE canvas

• You don't have to use every inch.  Make the LO smaller than the canvas if necessary. Leave space round the edge.

• Overlap papers/photos.  Just don't crop faces.

• Scale is important.  Make embellishments, journalling blocks, titles etc, larger.

• If you feel your photos are getting lost, use photo blocks.  You could put the bulk of your photos on one side and the journaling on the other.

• Repeat elements across the spread to make it cohesive.

• You could try smaller pages.

• Make a clear focal point - maybe highlight one photo by matting or mounting on a strip of pp.

• Consider cropping a batch of photos to the same or similar sizes.

Personally, I think a double is ideal if you have lots of journaling and multiple photos.  I don't think there's any need to over-embellish, I find this a bit boring to do although I know some scrappers make awesome double-pagers!

One tip I can give you all by myself is to buy two sheets of background-type papers at a time.  I really like using the 'plain' options from the Basic Grey collections, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't stock up last time I bought from a sale. 

Here are a couple more doubles I've done in the past:

I was very pleased with this one when I did it and there is still a lot about it that I like, but as you can see I wasn't put off by the fact that I didn't have two matching bits of cardstock.  Hmm.  But I have repeated elements, and there's lots of journaling, but really it could be two single pages.  (Also there is a greasy finger print on one side!  I never eat when I'm scrapping, not sure how this happened...)

 

This is better.  Looking at this I think the way to go is to leave space around the edges, as suggested in the tips above.  Not only does this bring everything together, it leaves space for journaling and for a decent-sized title.  When my man saw this, he considered for a while before pointing out that although it's called To The Beach, there is no beach in the pictures.  Always a helpful comment...

I did another double recently, for Inspired Blueprints, which will be visible on the site some time next month, and then I can show you it!  Yippee, eh?

So - there is the Double Layout Master Class!  I expect to see everyone frantically churning out doubles now!

Who You Gonna Call?

  

First of all, behold the altered LP.  This is another of the projects I did for the DT call.  I must say none of it was wasted - this looks rather nice on the wall beside my bed - the idea is that I can change the photo, since it's just tucked in there.

 

 

That's probably enough details.  Now, today I have been unable to print out any pics because I've run out of cyan ink.  I ordered a couple of cartridges online for a very good price and then realised I'd have to wait for them to turn up.  SO...I have had to resort to scrapping the pile(s) of photos on my desk. 

I made a list of all of them - it's a bit of a pain dragging them out each time - and marked the ones I thought I should do first.  And I've done two of them!!!  Not only this, but I have been using up my stash as well.  I'm only using new sheets as background, so I don't create any more flippin' BITS!

 

This first one is for the This Is Your Life challenge on Scrapdango.  Each month there's a new challenge posted, so that we can make a Book of Me.  I've come to it a bit late so I'm going to be catching up - the challenges are in no particular order; I started with this one because it was one of the photos lying around on my desk.

 

And here is Invisible Teenager showing of his bod again.  I managed to use up the remains of a Pink Paislee Office Lingo die cut sheet on these, woo hoo!  The frame on this one is made from the draw cord that Visible Teenager asked me to help remove from his hoodie.  He knew I would want to keep it before I did...

Scrapping Out LOUD! Tuesday (on Tuesday!)

 

Today's layout for Scrapping Out LOUD! - we had to use more than one kind of lace on the page, so I went totally overboard and used TWO!

 

And here is my lovely cuddly handsome boy Sonny sitting in the basin.  As you do.  Obviously I tidied up a bit before I took this picture and it was very good of him to maintain his pose whilst I relocated half-used loo rolls and piles of wet face cloths.  Please note boxing-in of pipes and tiling, which are all my own work!  (And not a flourish in sight!)

Found it!

Phew...thought I wasn't going to get online tonight; my man and I went over the pub last night and I took both the dongles with me so that Youngest couldn't use the internet.  One went in my man's pocket, and the othe....erm....um....Totally blank!  The thing is that my internet access is limited (I'm only using mobile broadband because I got a 'free' laptop), and my dongle has run out.  Might be something to do with the two flippin hours it took me to order 20 quid's worth of stuff from the Scrapshed sale last night - by the time I got to the payment stage loads of it was out of stock!

ANYway.....turned out, after much searching and tearing of hair, that Daughter had the other dongle in a carrier bag hanging off the handle of her wardrobe.  Don't ask.  Was quite funny waking her up to ask, though, she never wakes up for ages and has a habit of talking in her sleep so she babbled on for a while and I swear at one point she said 'dingle dongle'.

Okay.  The pic above is of my scrapping space.  All of it! Well, that's not strictly true, there is a tall cupboard behind my chair and a big pile of pizza boxes on the thing next to the desk.  'It's getting out of hand', Youngest said very solemnly to his friend the other day.

I keep seeing other people's scrap rooms so I thought you could see mine.  I used to scrap on the dining table but everyone complained - I'm not very tidy - so Youngest dragged his old-style double school desk downstairs and made me move the bookcase into the cupboard (another story entirely).  Then I had to repaint the wall and stand the desk on baked bean cans because, obviously, it's child-sized.  As luck would have it, I'd just cleared out all the decent bits of wood I had, and was forced to construct shelves out of, frankly, crap.

But I love my scrap space, at least I'm down there with the rest of the family.

AWARD!!!!!!!!

And lookie here -

 

Melissa very kindly gave me this award, and I need to nominate five other blogs and tell you my top five obsessions.

1.  Well, it's got to be scrapping.  Eat, sleep, breathe...

2.  Paper.  Patterned, lined, empty drawing pages, even an empty Word document.

3.  Gardening, in the summer (I am a fair weather gardener).

4.  Mustard.

5.  My family tree.

And my five blogs:

1.  Chloe :   http://cloclo1.blogspot.com/   Awesome work.

2.  Yasu   http://ricorico.typepad.jp/blog/  This blog is wonderful, fabulous stuff to look at.

3.  Lisa  http://www.heyhoewarren.blogspot.com/   Lisa's a lovely friendly girl, her kids are adorable!

4. Nicole  http://www.nicolemartel.blogspot.com/  Super-creative Bad Girl!

5.  Jennifer http://www.thepinkroom.typepad.com/  This will make you smile!

Fab Mini books!

I just love this site: http://www.making-mini-scrapbooks.com/pocketfoldbook.html and the fantastic ideas you'll find on it.

Recently I saw, on Cleo Jarvis' site, a mini-book which I didn't know how to fold.  I'd used Making Mini Scrapbooks before, so rather than bother Cleo I went to see if they had instructions.  They didn't, but I sent them an email and, incredibly quickly, got one back from Debi to say that her friend - the talented Jaine Drake - had come up with instructions!  And there they were on the website!

There are loads of other books to fold, too, and the one shown above has a variation using a gift bag which you'll just love.  It's a brilliant way to use pretty gift bags (other than just passing them on, of course).

In fact, since I found this site, my poor Bind-It-All has been restricted to making notebooks.  I'm sure there are some wire-bound albums on the horizon, though!