Lesson 3

Another day another Lesson over at Jessica Sprague. Todays lesson was how to age your photo and then add hand tinted sections. Great effects! Surprisingly easy when you're told what to do!
This is my attempt at today's Lesson with the original photo so you can see the difference I hope!

Normal
Aged Tinted Once again the frame is a brush out of the course materials by Hof3

Lesson 2

Wow! I am loving this new course at Jessica Sprague.

Today we learned how to use brushes. Really like digital stamps, only you can undo it if you get it wrong! Can't believe how easy Jessica made it seem! I hope I can carry on tomorrow with some more practice.

Here's what I did today.

In this first photo I kept the brushes black cos I quite liked the effect.

We were also taught to change the colour of the brushes so i used colours from the photo in this try. I like both versions. not sure which one I like best! Indecisive Libran!!!!!!

Brushes were course material from Hof3

Project 1

I have started another online course. This time a freebie from Jessica Sprague. It is all about framing and altering your photo's. She teaches her classes using photoshop or photoshop elements. so I have downloaded the 30 day free trial of Adobe photoshop elements to do this course then I will try and transfer this knowledge to my Corel Paint shop pro programme! If this is too hard I will have to save up to buy the full Adobe programme.

Anyway our first project was to add a frame and wordart to a photo. I went through all my Digi downloads and finally came up with this...........

This is a photo from last year.It was a cold day and we went for a walk along Parkgate Prom. They have a famous ice cream shop there and we couldn't resist buying ice creams even in the freesing cold! Here are Gemma and Zoe showing off their ice creams.

Frame from ShopAHolic kit by Sweet digi Scraps bought from GottaPixel

Word Art from Family and Friends word art kit by Nicole Young from Digital scrapbook place

Ready Set scrap Challenge

This is my first attempt for a challenge on Ready Set Scrap.

It was supposed to be for the Word Challenge set by Kristi Brandis.

For this month's word challenge Kirsti would like you to create an item using the following word

"SPECIAL"

and I want to see layering

at least one rubon

and the colour orange in there as well.

Can be any scrapped item

As you can see I forgot to add something orange, so this attempt doesn't really count but I like it anyway. As this is a digital page I used the word 'Special' as my rubon, the photo was layered onto a white matte.

I used the 'Dive in' kit by Kristmess from the Gotta Pixel Store

Award from Shazza!

I have been given this award by my great scrapping and blogging buddy Shazza!

Thank you so much Shazza.

We met on the Soulology Scrapbooking course last year and have been great friends ever since.

Here are the rules-

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Since I haven't been on for a while I am planning to do the discovering at the weekend and pass it on then!

Please have a look at Shazza's Blog she has so many fantastic scrapbook pages to look at!

Blogoversary!

I missed my own Blogoversary! How sad is that! I have been without internet for a while and I missed it! I was hoping to do a Blog Candy giveaway to celebrate. Now I am back up and running I will sort a few bits out and get one going soon!

Thanks Teena from Toronto for your Blogoversary wishes!

Don't forget to check back for the chance to win some crafting goodies soon!

Bye for now

Digi Page

I have been trying out digital scrapbooking again! I am still a major beginner in this form of scrapbooking but I love some of the kits avaliable out there and of course they take up much less room than real kits and you can use them again and again! I have recently joined a site called Gotta Pixel They have some fantastic designers there and some great offers, including free downloads when you join up!
This page was my latest practice page made with the fantastic Spring Breeze kit designed by Isabel Mendez - Crisdam Designs
The gold lettering is an Alpha download called Embossed Gold created by Lauren Bavin and the little gems are from a kit called A jewel a day warm colours created by Elizabeth Weaver. Both available from Digital scrapbook Place

It is quite a simple layout. I love seeing pages created by other people that have loads of embellishments on but when I try it my pages just look crowded!

The photo was taken in 2007 when Zoe was presented with a young persons Jack Petchey Achievement medal through her Girl Guide Unit. She was nominated for the medal for being a reliable and helpful member who helped keep the unit running smoothly when her Guide Leader was very ill in Hospital.

I love the colours of this kit, it was really easy to work with. There are loads more papers and embellishments to use.

I am quite pleased with this page except for the writing. I am having problems using the text tool in my Paint shop programme. When I try to add text to a page it always seems double spaced so it looks odd and doesn't fit in the space required. So this time I used the pencil tool and tried to write using the mouse. A bit childish looking but at least it fits! If anyone has any tips I would be very grateful.

Well Done Shazza!

Wow! I have been out of action for a while and been a very bad blogger. Sorry!
Good news for my friend Shazza though! While I have been neglecting my scrapping and my blog, Shazza is going from strength to strength! She is now on two scrapbooking design teams!!
Well done you!
You can check Shazza's designs (and lots of other talented ladies!) at
http://outofthehatscrapchallenge.blogspot.com/
and
http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com/

Happy Scrapping!

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to say Happy Easter to all my new friends in Blogland and beyond!

I also need to say a huge Thank you to my best blog friend and extremely talented scrapsister Shazza!

Imagine receiving this beatuiful handmade gift from the other side of the world! Shazza I was gobsmacked when this arrived this morning! Thank you so much, It is beautiful!

This is a beautiful handmade felt easter egg with a cute bunny sewn on, sitting in a really pretty decorated box, with a sweet little card! The girls and I love it!

On my part I was very late sending out my easter cards this year so do apologise to my friends and family because of the bank holidays my cards will probably arrive after Easter!

I am off now to try and do a quick scrapbook page for my journaling 101 course that I am so behind on!

Please check out Shazza's blog she has some fantastic scrapbook layouts and other handmade things on show.

Catch up!

Hi,
Long time no see! I have been very busy and not been on the computer for a while. I had my mum to stay for a couple of weeks. we had a great time but time went so quickly! There were not enough hours in a day to fit everything in and then all of a sudden it was time for her to go home. We managed to make a few cards whilst also rearranging my craft stuff. Twice! We started by rearranging all the stuff I had put away upstairs for the holidays and hadn't brought back out yet. Then we had a trip to Ikea and I now have a fantastic new shelf unit that is made up of 25 12 x 12 squares. I have used it as a room divider separating my craft area off from the rest of the room. It has made the room look smaller but I like it. I now need lots more nice boxes to neaten everything up but it has made a big difference and I now have plenty of storage space to keep my craft stuff much neater! and hopefully I will now have more time to craft! We are off for the Easter holidays for the next two weeks so I am hoping to get a few scrapbook pages done and plenty of cards done.

Here is a card I made for my friend to give to her mum. This was an A4 sized card. The champagne bottle was made using Arty Farty templates. Also used DCWV glitter stack, wet paint sizzlets alphabet, Paper flowers, sticky gems and peel offs. As this card was made in the middle of moving my whole room around in amongst boxes and furniture I was quite pleased with the result!

This is a card I did for my god daughter to give to her mum, my friend Sam. I had originally bought this new decoupage for her birthday card but as her birthday is not til next February I thought mother's day would be ideal. SAM is very into her horse riding and is always moaning about her weight so I thought this was a really funny card to make! It is using a new kind of decoupage called "Flippin' Women" they also do "Flippin' men" On the front of the card you see a funny scene but then on the inside you see the back of the scene also decoupaged with something funnier on the back. Check out http://www.lapashe.com/ to see all the designs and stockists.

Here is the card I made for my mum for Mother's day.

I used a stamp I got in a bargain bucket for 50p a couple of years ago, I really like it and will definitely use it again. The patterned paper is from a new set I got at a show two weeks ago and now I can't find it to tell you the name. It's very bright and funky. I will add the name of it later when I find it again! All this organisation and I can't find anything! I water coloured the flowers to tone in with the paper using my whisper brush pens. then added some gems and a ribbon. Very simple but I think quite pretty. Sorry the photo hasn't turned out very well.

This next card was made for a friend to give to her Brother in law. I was told that he was a black cab driver and a Tottenham supporter but not to make too much of the Tottenham bit. So I used my sizzix car front and made a black cab using Do craft gem brads for the headlights unfortunately I didn't have clear ones big enough! But the yellow ones are ok. Then I stamped a football kit onto shrink plastic, coloured it in Tottenham colours and shrunk it down and hung it from the rear view mirror like one of those air fresheners you can get. Drew in the road and I think this one is quite effective!

Last but not least here is the card I made for my nephews birthday. He plays for his local football team and my mum told me their strip is black and white stripes so I based the card on this and folded a shirt from a football shirt paper block and added football boot background paper and a peel off football.

I had a go at my first Digital scrapbook page using Paint shop pro (PSP) tonight. I have used other programmes but PSP definitely gives a more flexible finish. With my other programme I had to place things as they had been designed without being able to turn or alter them. With Paint shop pro I can re size, turn and flip and do all sorts of effects. I am only just learning how it works and for this page I followed a tutorial on Digital Scrapbook place (DSP)for creating your first layout with PSP. They also had tutorials for lots of other programmes too. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow. They even described how to re size the file for uploading onto the web etc. Once registered on the site there are loads of free kits you can download and the kits to buy are very reasonable too!

Here is my first attempt. I kept it very simple for my first practice but I am pleased with the result.

As I have only bought a couple of kits I think all these were from the Digital Scrapbook Place free downloads.

Back ground paper from Back to the 70's paper set by Suzanne C. Walker

Eyelets from The basics set by Valeri Brumfield

Buttons from Button Element set by Suzanne C. Walker

and Bottle cap alphabet by Lauren Bavin

Thanks to all these designers for their wonderful downloads and ideas!

This is the end of a very long post. Hope to be back soon with some more craft projects to show you.

Take care,

Ali