Xmas Selfie: Layout for Scrap Africa Sketch 82

Hello there, and Happy New Year to each and every one reading this post! December is a busy month for many in the craft blogging world, but I seem to have done the complete opposite, having had an unintentional blog break for all of last month.

The darkest time of winter has been a bit tough on my family this time, and I hope the new year brings more energy for new projects. January will bring more daylight, that's for sure, and that already helps! Ideas and plans I already have plenty of. More about that soon!

Meanwhile, it' s sketch challenge time again at Scrap Africa!



Here's the sketch by Denise van Deventer.



I didn't do a lot of Christmas themed crafts this year, but now with this sketch I was inspired to. (I think it goes really well with both wintery and summery themes!)



So I chose a selfie with my little one from previous year's Christmas Eve.



I made my layout while we were at our country cottage for the holidays, so I took the extra challenge of having less supplies to choose from. For instance, I didn't use any store bought scrapbook papers, but combined my gelli prints with some re-used packaging material.



The alphabet stickers, the metallic purple flourish washi tape and the date stickers are all I took from my stash at home. The snowflake and the glittery star stickers were bought for the kids at Lidl (supermarket) and Flying Tiger (dollar store, kind of). The tag with a pocket is also from Flying Tiger, and the snowflake paper is from the stickers' package.



I started the background with a gelli print, made the stars with a texture paste through a stencil, and added some splashes with water and my new Gelatos. I got the Bright Colors set for myself for Christmas, and the colors are indeed deliciously bright! The pale blue I used here is just one of the lighter shades included in the pack.



Some red and turquoise Stickles dots give the finishing touch.





I was also inspired by the challenges at Challenge YOUrself (Happy Holidays) and Mixed Media Place (Mood Board).

At Challenge YOUrself, the continuous theme is that there must always be a photo of YOU in your layout! I take a lot of selfies and enjoy scrapping them, so that suits me well. And for those of you who don't already scrap self portraits so much, this challenge is a reason to!



In the mood board at Mixed Media Place, I was particularly inspired by the combination of sparkle and earth tones, different letter types and of course the stars!



Speaking of how dark we have it here in Finland, I looked up today's time of sunset in Espoo and it has already been at 3.28 pm. Here's a photo I took at 4.12 pm. while writing this. Note that it is considerably less dark now that it has snowed! We didn't have a white Christmas so that week it was already pitch black at 4 pm.



The upside of the northern location is that the amount of additional light is really notable each day that the spring gets closer! And of course with snow, blue moments like the one in the photo can be quite special and beautiful.

I've never been to the northernmost part of my country in the winter, during the phenomenon called the polar nights. It means simply that the sun does not rise at all during the midwinter days. In Utsjoki, the next time of sunrise will be at noon of January the 16th, can you imagine that.

Thank you for for your visit! I'm particularly thankful for all the comments, as always.

Dark Green and Hexagons: Autumn Tag for Scrap Africa Sketch 80

Hi! November is here, and it's Scrap Africa sketch time! (Sorry for posting late!)



I was happy to work with this one since I love hexagons.



I've been admiring the cool mixed media tags that people do and wanted to give it a try.

I started by colouring two manila coloured tags with Distress Inks. I often choose to work on more than one piece, especially if it's something fairly small or something I haven't tried before. If one does not work out, there'll still be the other, and maybe it works better in one colour than the other.



I recently got some Prima Resist Canvas Shapes and this is the first time using them! I dyed them with mists and let them drying. Next, I cut hexagons in different sizes, and gave some of them a glossy finish with the Glossy Accents glue. The canvas shapes and hexies would take pretty long to dry and it suited me fine to leave them overnight.



I then went on making layers for the tag backgrounds. I stamped with two different text stamps and heat embossed them using Lindy's Stamp Gang Midnight Teal powder. I also used thin gold-foil striped washi tape and acrylic inks.



Next, I arranged the hexies and swirls in place, adding some white and dark blue sewing thread.



And on top of it, I had these really pretty cardboard and vellum poppy flowers. I still wanted to add a bit of something so I glued some micro pearls on the flower and some Perfect Pearls and Stickles onto the flower and on the side.



Thank you so much for taking a look! I hope to see you again here and of course joining the challenge at Scrap Africa!

Hello Friend − Layout for Scrap Africa Sketch Challenge 78

Hi! Happy Friday, and happy September! It's monthly challenge time again at Scrap Africa!

I felt like making a light and neutral coloured layout with some mixed media elements on the background. I'm still using my Krafty Travel Kit I joined the Counterfeit Kit Challenge with last month.



This month we have an elegant simple sketch with a circle around the focal cluster.



I'm also sharing a couple of photos of how I got the layout started. For the background, a cardstock colour called Straw was suitable for my idea, light but not completely white. I had spread a very light layer of gesso on it previously. The journaling card, the gold and white striped straw and the paper with the crosses or plus signs are from my Counterfeit kit as well as the cardstock.



Due to having a toddler at home, I quite often start my projects at night, choosing materials and trying different layouts. If it's already late at that point, I don't necessarily do anything else but just "sleep on it", and next day I have a better idea of how to go on.

The photo with my messy table below is about a trick I have learned at patchwork quilting.



That is, for checking if the layout still looks mainly white when I add the plus sign paper and the blue journaling card.

Sometimes it's hard to compare the lightness value of different elements from up close, so it helps to look from a distance. Blurring your eyes a bit or taking a blurry photo, like I did here, confirms that the other elements are fairly close to the background in lightness value. I wanted it to be this way so that it's just the photos that pop out from the background, not the whole cluster of elements.



At the point of taking the photo above, my 2-year-old had been drawing beside me, and I wanted have the mark of his pen on my background, too. He and his brother are also the stars of the layout, so it felt like a nice way to keep a memory of his first drawings!



In addition to the doodling, I used mists, white and gold structure pastes, yellow Paint Pen and turquoise Stickles for the circular frame.





The chipboard rocking horse is from Wycinanka. I used blue acrylic paint on it first, let it dry and embossed around the edges with Midnight Teal from Lindy's Stamp Gang. Last layer is clear embossing powder. The separate stars that came with the horse just have the blue paint and the clear powder layers.



Apart from the thin washi tape strip in the top left corner, I felt like no more embellishments were needed this time!





Thank you so much for looking. I hope to see you at Scrap Africa!

Celebrate Cousins − Layout for Scrap Africa Sketch Challenge 76

Hi everyone! It's time to welcome July together with the new monthly challenge at Scrap Africa. This time we have a lovely sketch by Denise van Deventer.



Here it is!



I'm still creating with the kit I created for guesting the Counterfeit Kit Challenge in June!

This was the only paper I bought specifically for my kit, everything else was from my existing stash. It's quite unusual compared to my basic stash, seeing that it has the colourful cluster of print on the left margin, while the rest of the paper has just this delicate yellow geometric pattern. I loved the paper when I saw it but I wasn't sure how easily I would get to use it.



The paper turned out to be an excellent combination with the Scrap Africa sketch and this pair of photos that I printed in black and white.



I was also inspired by the challenges at Challenge YOUrself! themed Geometric Shapes, Challenge Km-shop themed Flowers in Three Ways, and Stamps and Stencils: Floral Frenzy.

The flowers can be found in the patterned paper, in the stamped pattern behind the photos that I embossed with distressed turquoise, in the stamped pattern that I framed near the lower right corner, and in the black and white piece of packaging paper behind the photo on the right margin.



At Challenge YOUrself, the challenge prompt always includes using a photo of YOU in the project, so I'd better mention that I'm in the photo on the right, and on the left is my sister. We had a combined birthday party for all our the four of our boys this year, which was a great idea! This was actually one photo, but it looks maybe even nicer divided into two. I tilted the pictures a bit to highlight the party mood I hoped to catch in this layout.



Just a reminder, Scrap Africa challenges now run for the whole month, so you have all of July to create with this sketch!



Thank you for coming and hope to see you again soon!

Moon Faces − ATCs for Scrap Africa Sketch 74

It's a new month and a new sketch challenge at Scrap Africa! I made a dreamy set of ATCs with a focus on these lovely vintage bottlecap images, or round inchies as they are also called. I think they are also moon faces, so that's how I named the set.



This is our sketch at Scrap Africa - you're most welcome to pop in and see what the other DT members did, and even better if you join yourself!



This month, we also have some very exciting news for all friends of Scrap Africa challenge. As of this month, the challenges will run for an entire month, so you will have lots of time to play along and prepare your entries. Double the time and double the fun!



I was also inspired by the space themed On the Milky Way challenge at ART-Bazarchik.



The background is made with stamping, mists and layered strips of leftover papers.



The Photo Faces collage sheet was bought from an Etsy shop called TinTeddy and it has altogether 48 different faces. I think I'll be using these a lot! I'm lucky to have a round inchie punch just the size, and I gave them a polished finishing with Glossy Accents glue.


1 (available for trade) and 2 (I'll keep this one that's gone scarfaced with the bubbles!)
Edit: These are all traded now, but I have other ideas for using these faces, so there will be more ATCs soon!


3 and 4 (both available) Edit: traded.

Thanks for taking a look and happy weekend everyone!

A Day at the Beach − PL Pages for Scrap Africa Mood Board 73

Hello to you, and happy Friday! It's mid month challenge time again at Scrap Africa, so let's be inspired by this bright and happy mood board with a taste of sea salt!





The patchwork collagey look of the mood board, with all its small bits, gave me the idea to make a Pocket Life spread for this challenge. I was also inspired by the marine theme, the stars, the weathered wood and the pop of orange/red, which also appears in my photos.



I am also joining the Bumaga-Maraka Project Life Challenge , with the theme of Circle Shaped Photos, Altair Art Challenge themed Artwork with a Tag, and last but not least,
WOW! Embossing Powder Challenge, with an Anything goes theme.



The end date in the above banner is wrong, in case you wonder, it's supposed to be until today, April 15.



I began with taking some off-white cardstock to mat the circular photos and tried something new: I decorated the edges of these "frames" with embossing powders to imitate my inspiration of weathered wood.

I don't have a circle cutter so I was cutting the holes with scissors, when it turned out that it was not so easy to cut through the embossed part neatly. This gave me the idea to not cut along the line here at all but to carefully tear along the edge of the embossing instead.



Et voilà, I could see the torn edges repeating the flow of the waves! I inked the torn edges and was very happy with that! I also inked a bit on the insides of the embossed frames, where the cardstock was more recipient to the ink, so the grains of white show better.



I kept one of the embossed cards whole and having just gone through my embellisment stash, I felt like decorating it with a bubbly cluster of white buttons I had come across.



I also decorated a few marine themed wood veneer embellishments with the embossing powders. One of them got a place in this tag...



...where embossing powders were also used to decorate the edges. Tags are a great way to include some hidden journaling inside the pockets!



The dolphin found its way onto the ocean here, just for fun and out of my imagination − we did not really see any marine mammals here.



First time using the cork alpha that I had been hoping to buy for quite some time! I like how they almost blend into the greyish brown shades of the sand.



A few more embellishments: stars, washi tape and a Fabulous button to add up some colour.



I wish you a very happy weekend, hopefully with a chance to enjoy some crafting and/or springtime inspiration outdoors! And those of you on the Southern Hemisphere, a cozy beginning of autumn, of course!



Please pop in to see all the lovely DT work at Scrap Africa and join the challenge until the end of the month!