Close to my Heart scrapbooking and cardmaking products

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31 January 2010

January CRII Challenges


A scrapbooking/card making group I belong to is having a year long challenge to make a card and a layout every month. I'm going to do my best to participate each month.

The January card challenge was to make a card using buttons and/or bows. I don't necessarily like making cards so this is kind of a challenge for me. Still, I've accumulated a number of card making items over time, including quite a lot of stamps, and some pre-made cards. For the challenge I used one of these pre-made cards that had 9 circular holes in the front. I found 9 buttons that fit inside the holes and sewed them on. I added a bow and used a stamp for the sentiment, and as an embellishment at the top.




Here's a photo of the card partially opened so you can see the circular holes.



For the layout challenge we had to make a layout about food and/or drink. I went through my photos and found a number of photos related to food or drink. I was actually surprised to find so many, I didn't realise I had taken them! In the end I decided to do a layout about the time we ate Pad Thai from a street stall in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's a simple layout, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Till next time, happy days!

14 January 2010

Butterfly - Fly


I made this layout from the kit I bought from my local scrapbooking store: Wrapped In Paper. I realise now that I should have taken a shot of the kit before I started. Next month I guess! Anyway, the kit had a piece of Bazzil cardstock, a piece of patterned paper with letters all over it (which I used to cut out the word FLY), and 3 half sheets of patterned paper - the bluish striped one I used at the bottom of the layout, and the brown dot embossed paper (bottom circle under the title, and on the chipboard for the subtitle, top right), and the gold/black paper (top circle under the title). It also contained the two pieces of ribbon, the "ruler" and the buckle.

It was a quite masculine looking kit. I always struggle with these ones, and tend to make them into something not about people. So, it was no surprise I guess that there are no people pictures in this layout! I used the left page half of a double 12x12 Pagemaps sketch from May 2008. I also added two Kaisercraft butterflies, some Kaisercraft rhinestones, a piece of Bella chipboard (under the subtitle), a SU! felt flower, and a Bo Bunny flower.

The pictures were taken on our trip to Cairns that we just came back from. They were taken in the Butterfly Sanctuary. There were so many butterflies there - it was lovely. I really wanted a picture of the Ulysses butterfly. This one is just beautiful but very flighty so hard to catch. I did eventually get a photo from quite far away. It's not on this layout though as it's bright blue, so didn't go with these colours. The butterflies on this layout are: left - a male Cruiser (?); middle a female Cruiser butterfly (I think!), top right - a Cairns Birdwing (I know for sure!), bottom right - a common eggfly (male) (I think!).

The layout won't be on display in the store until next month so I have to wait a while to find out how I do.

Till next time, happy days!

3 January 2010

It's about time!

Well, I've been thinking about it, so it's finally time to do it - start my blog that is! I'm forever entering scrapbooking competitions and mostly you need a blog to post your entries to. So finally now I have one. Of course in between competitions I hope to add some layouts that I've done - I guess we'll just see how that goes.

To start off, here's the entry I made for the end of year Benzilla sketch competition from the Page Maps blog.

Here's my take on the sketch:

I can't tell you what paper I used since it all came from my (rather old, and rather large) stash! The sketch suggested stitching and I was going to use my mini sewing machine, but I think the needle needs replacing as it wouldn't work properly. So, instead I meticulously pierced the paper using my paper piercing tool and my Stampiin' Up! mat pack. Then I used floss to handstitch the brown border. I also used the Windsong template from The Crafters Workshop to draw the embellishments to the right of the title. Then I pierced the paper and used orange floss to handstitch them. After, I added rhinestones from Kaisercraft for some bling.

I hope Becky (or her friend who judges this particular contest) likes my entry. Of course all the entries are great so it's a big ask to win one of these contests.

Besides scrapbooking I'm also a Kaleidoscope artist. That means that I take a wedge out of a photograph and turn it into a kaleidoscope artwork, like this.



I also make customised kaleidoscopes like this one of my gorgeous niece. You can see the original photograph that the kaleidoscope was made from too.



To see more of my work you can go to my website at MemoriesInKaleidoscope.com

Till next time, happy days!

Francine