Car Crazy - STB DT

I am sooo excited to share with you my first page made for the Scrap The Boys Design Team. Yay!

But before I share the challenge and my page, how about I show you what is up for grabs!!
This month the amazing people at Faber-Castell have donated two packs of their amazing Gelatos! Why not go and visit their facebook page or website to see their incredible products.

But wait, there's more. Pilot Pen are offering two pairs of 9" scissors and Raquel is handing over an embellishment pack from her private stash!

Januarys challenge is to use the amazing mood board above and pictures of the men in your life to create a masterpiece! You can view the first half of this months reveal here and the second half here!
And this is my page:

I took inspiration from a number of images in the mood board.

The graffiti style background from image number 4.

The road through the page from image 1 and the picture I scrapped from image 3.

If you get some scrappy time this month please put the Scrap The Boys challenge on your to do list!
XoXoX Nicole

Big Sister - WW1

So my layout count for the month is a bit low so far. And this layout I share today is the reason. I spent a looooonng time on it and not for an obvious result.

Big Sister In Training

 The photo was taken in December 2012 not long after I discovered that bub #2 (now known commonly as Jayce) was on the way. Chloe loved (at still does) caring for her babies, giving them bottles, cuddles and tucking them into 'bed'. I used this photo to document about her super nice/caring nature and our confidence that she was going to be a great big sister.

I have once again taken on the White With 1 challenge, this time very happily as it is my favourite colour! Radiant Orchid aka purple!
Although it seems that the wider scrapping community does not sure my love for it. Very few companies produce anything purple (I have actually emailed a few on this topic) and many blog scraps recently have mentioned their dislike for it.

The hold up with this layout was not my usual issue, hesitation to cut the pretty paper, as it is mainly strips of scrap paper from various companies. It was the stitching. Although the papers were all purple they were many different tones and were in need of something to unify them. I decided on stitching which seemed like a simple yet effective solution, until my sewing machine decided to play silly-buggers on me.
Hence most of the stitching was done by hand. Wow was it time consuming!

The star and heart are hand made embellishments from the super generous and talented Charmane from Charms Creations.

Now that it is finally complete and my fingers have stopped bleeding hopefully I can quickly create some more layouts before the month is out.
XoXoX Nicole

P.S. I already have an idea for the next WW1 and I don't even know the colour yet. I believe it has become my favourite monthly challenge.

1st Face Paint - Annas Craft Cupboard & Sassy Scrappers

Last day of May! Wow! I do remember saying "I wont let this year fly by like all the others" direct quote! And woops my bad! Where did it go?!?
I have another layout of Chloe to share with you today! Which came together very quickly!

Talk about inspiration de-railing plans. Everyone in this house hold feel asleep surprisingly early last night and I was cruising through the internet when I came across:

This sketch for May over at Annas Craft Cupboard and

This mood board for May from Sassy Scrappers. I put them together and this layout was done in record time!
It is a little different to my norm.

I have used two pieces of chipboard from WOW both painted and for the first time I used some embossing powder on the butterflies.

I created a little banner from the Kaisercraft Enchanted Garden Collectables pack, in fact the entire layout is Kaisercraft Enchanted Garden including the paper and rubons.

For an extra bit of sparkle I stuck down some sequins after a quick spray with glimmer mist. To add interest I used a toilet paper roll and cue tip to put on some paint circles.
I'm off to enjoy my weekend, hope you do too!
XoXoX Nicole

You & Me - SATW & ScrapFriends

Hello there!
I'm back with your regular viewing, a layout! I suppose a slight difference though, this layout has ME in it. Shock! I absolutely love this photo of Chloe and I (and some eagle eyed views may have noticed it become my profile picture all over the place back in December). It was taken by my camera crazy work friend Toan at the work Christmas party, Chloe did so well! She was super duper tired by the time this photo was taken then had to back it up with another Christmas party after.

You & Me

So because I'm pretty much a junkie for these things =P I designed my layout around the current sketch challenge over at ScrapFriends an online scrap shop that knows how to throw a sale!

I don't think I could have got more exact to the sketch! It was such an amazing design that it didn't need any twisting.

However I was inspired even more so by the current mood board at Scrap Around The World.

This truly is an amazing board and I think I took a lil' some'em some'em from every picture!
The bottom middle picture convinced me to use lots of hearts (not that I need much) and to marry this with the sketch while the top right picture of the cake moved me to make them an ombre from dark purple to light pink both with a stencil and with chipboard hearts.

The top left picture lend me straight to the background pattern paper from Websters Pages Record It collection and I decided to stay there for the rest of the papers as well. It also prompted me to get a bit messy!

I used the bottom right picture of ombre increasing size pots influence the hearts on my page. The full hearts have simply been painted while I liked the hint of bare wood from the outline hearts although they needed a something, twine to the rescue! Just wrap and staple.

The title is a Kaisercraft wood words which said all I needed to say and leaving it bare made it stand out the perfect amount.

I used a stencil/mask to paint little gold triangles around the page and even on the photo also due to the pot picture! Pretty big deal for me! To finish the page off I threw on two flair badges from APOCD.

As I feel that my own hand writing destroys a scrap page I have hidden the who what where when behind the photo.

Thanks for checking out my lastest creation. Why not leave some love in the comments, or hate, I like to hear it all!
XoXoX Nicole

Couple of Cards

Hello fabulous people!
Things have been a little quite around here for a bit. The start of each month always seems to be my busiest time and so far this month the time I have had I haven't been able to concentrate on just one project long enough! Once again too many ideas from way too much inspiration!
But I did manage to sit down a create a lil couple of cards for Brenden.

People that know Brenden and I will know we are definitely not the most romantic couple! In fact we have barely ever been on a date before and Valentines Day... Whats that?!? But for some unknown reason this year on February 14th I was compelled to make a card, so this is what I did:

Its pretty simple, 3 coats of paint from the same stencil slightly moved on 'brick' pattern paper with a punched heart and stamp on a strip of 'wood' paper. Thats it. And lucky I did too because Brenden surprised me with a single red rose!
Not very long after Valentines Day comes Brendens birthday so while I was at it, I whipped up a card for that too. 

Again a very simple design, using the reverse of the 'brick' paper, the same 'wood' paper, 2 MME wood banners and 1 screw brad. 

I'll keep the insides of the cards between Brenden and I. But hope you like the fronts.

XoXoX

Adore

Did we all have a good weekend? We did absolutely nothing and it was amazing!
I have here a layout featuring Chloe and Jayce. Neither of them is looking at the camera or smiling or doing anything overly special, they are just sitting there staring at each other and that is exactly what I love about this photo!

Adore

The design for this layout came from the Kraft It Up September Challenge which can be found here. This month it is a sketch and you all should by now know how much I love a sketch!

I have again kept really close to the sketch just switching two photos for one and circles for a rainbow of hearts. I knew that just all the same hearts would not be overly interesting so I mixed it up by adding a silhouette heart to each line.

I began by stamping some squares of gesso at random spots before sticking down the hearts. I then added shapes/flower/bling of the same colour in a brighter shade.

I really did krafted it up. I was looking forward to finally using machine stitching on my page, I absolutely love how it looks and have been dying to use it, however the sewing machine at the crop was broken =( so the kraft on kraft looked pretty boring. I fixed this with paint. A dab of each colour matching the hearts at the top and then used an old gift card to scrape it down.

I think 'adore' it the perfect title. They truly do adore each other and the definition from the Kaisercraft rubon sums it up beautifully.

Hope you like it.
XoXoX Nicole.

Materials:
Kraft x2
Amy Tangerine - Ready Set Go - Surrounded
Kaisercraft - Run Ons - Words - Adore
Kaisercraft- Clear Stamps - Serect Admirer - Definitions
Kaisercraft - Take Note - Memo
Kaisercraft - Rhinestones
Gesso, Cricut, Resin Flowers

Layout - Before & After

The other day I told the story of taking some family belly photos here and today I share the scrap page I made using the best set.

I struggled with this page for quiet a while! The photo is special to me and I wanted to do it justice.

I had a few options in relation to the theme and color scheme. I could have gone down the love path with lots of hearts or taken the baby road with rattles, bottles and teddy bears. I could have pulled colors from our clothing or made the pic black and white. 

Instead I chose to embrace our back yard and use the fence, rock wall and greenery to guide me. 

Kaisercrafts base coat collection was absolutely perfect for this and ultimately made my decision for me!

I decided to give my scissors a rest from this layout and ripped all the papers, showing the white inside to give it a bit of a rougher layered look. I love the word stick pin from little yellow bicycle, it was hard to decide which one to use, I nearly put them all on.
I print all of my pictures for scrapping using my borrowed-from-mum-with-no-intent-to-return hp photo printer. It is really old and very moody! It refuses to print decent 6x4 photos, always messing up the colour, so I use word, print them on an A4 sheet and cut them out. But sometimes even the A4 sheets will come out with funky colours. This happened with these photos numerous times and I couldn't just throw them out so chopped 'em up and threw them on too at an offset creating the perfect gap for the alphas and date.

I brought the ladder because I thought it went with the backyard-ish theme, but by putting the cut out square 'growing' under it made it more of symbolism of our family getting bigger. I left all the wood/chipboard bits raw to keep with the natural look of the papers.
I wanted to subtly point out that what was written on our belly in the first photo is what we are holding in the second, what better way then to use arrows! 'Magic happens' seemed like a perfect fit cause having a baby is pretty special, amazing and magically.

I wanted to put the word 'family' on my page somewhere and had lots of options in my stash, embellishments, alpha stickers, papers, rub ons etc I decided to keep with Kaisercraft and use there rub on words. However I didn't want it to take away from the photo, so after rubbing it on I got my scissors out of retirement and scratched at the word. Giving it a rougher look and breaking up the solid black making it look lighter.
The brick stencil has been in my stash for ages and what a fitting layout to use it again. I used glimmer mist with it over all of the ripped papers to help unify the layers.

The 'Homemade' bingo card lifts up to reveal my journalling: "I couldn't resist taking photos like this! It took a looong time to get photo #2, it was always raining! But we got it in the end + possibly a cold too!!" It really was freezing!
Thanks for checking it out!
XoXoX Nicole

Materials
Kaisercraft - Base Coat - Weathered
Kaisercraft - Base Coat - Rock
Kaisercraft - Base Coat - Corrugated Iron
Simple Stories - Harvest Lane - Bingo Cards
AC - Thickers - ??
Kaisercraft - Wood - Ladder
WOW - Chipboard - Narrow Arrow Pack
?? - Chipboard - Heart
The Crafters Workshop - 6x6 template - Bricks
Tattered Angels - Glimmer Mist - Creme de Chocolat
Kaisercraft - Rubons - Enchanted Garden
Kaisercraft - Rubon Words - Family
Little Yellow Bicycle - Word Stick Pins

A Layout - Sparkle

Finally a got the chance to complete a layout! Yay! Although it did cost me most of my nights sleep...
I did think my first page back should be about the new man in my life but then I was lucky enough to win the new Kaisercraft Enchanted Garden Collection from the lovely new owners of Anna's Craft Cupboard.

The mushrooms reminded me of Chloes shirt in this picture from way back in March last year when she was just 8 months old. It is one of my favourite photos of younger Chloe! I think it shows her true nature with that cheeky/happy/crazy grin. I can't get over how red her hair looks though.

I never really had a title in mind for this picture until I saw the rub on 'Don't let anyone ever dull your sparkle.' She is sparkling in this picture and that really is something I never ever want her to lose. I used the sparkle kinda as the theme for the page and put nice shiny things around her picture and leading up to the title.

The whole page is Kaisercraft with the only exception being the angel and I can't remember where that came from.

I based the page layout on the Kaisercraft Saturday Sketch #2 for July which looks a lot like this:

Hope you like it. It feels good to be creating again!
XoXoX
Nicole

Materials:
Kaisercraft - Enchanted Garden - Bewitch
Kaisercraft - Enchanted Garden - Charm
Kaisercraft - Enchanted Garden - Allure
Kaisercraft - Enchanted Garden - Rubon
Kaisercraft - Enchanted Garden - Collectables
Kaisercraft - Cardstock - Coffee
Kaisercraft - Sparklets - Hearts
Kaisercraft - Sparklets - Fern
Kaisercraft - Sparklets - Coral
Kaisercraft - Sparklets - Princess
Kaisercraft - Rhinestones - Silver
Kaisercraft - Rhinestones - Soft Pink
Kaisercraft - Rhinestones - Mint Green
Kaisercraft - Rhinestones - Lilac
Kaisercraft - Tiny Alphas - Cotton Candy

Classy & Fabulous

Second post for today.
Got to get it up before the challenge ends.

This is a layout of Chloe licking the glass door while I was outside hanging the washing. I was laughing so much it was hard to stay still for the photos, didn't quite get the best shots but her eyes look soo blue!

I was super excited when I walked into my LSS and saw that Kaisercraft Butterfly Kisses was in stock a lil early, I have been waiting for this collection ever since it appeared on their blog nearly 3 months ago. I brought almost one of everything and instantly thought of these photos.

I used a Kaisercraft Saturday Sketch:

I used two photos instead of one but otherwise I think the sketch is recognisable.

I didn't have a title for this page in mind when I started which for me is rare, title usually comes second to photos. But as soon as I saw the 'Classy & Fabulous' in the Fun cut apart paper, I knew that was it as an ironic title.

The cluster has some Kaiser mini paper blooms which I curled the stems of, an unknown flower and some PP - the purple heart and crochet doily. The journalling is on a Kaiser tag and cover by some Butterfly Kisses scraps and reads 'She is ... CRAZY. Licking the glass door! And just after I cleaned it of course!'

The banner is manly from the collectables plus some punched hearts from the papers, all edged with black. I was going to punch holes through the hearts and have them hang from the twine (like I did on Neanies 50th) but got a bit lazy stick them down and just run the twine over the top

She is CRAZY. Thanks for looking.
XoXoX
Nicole

Materials.
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Giggly
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Sprinkles
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Fun
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Gossip
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Playful
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Sticker Sheet
Kaisercraft - Butterfly Kisses - Collectables
(told you I pretty much brought one of everything!)
Kaisercraft - Paper Blooms - Hot Pink
Kaisercraft - Mini Paper Blooms - Fuchsia
Purple Pumpkin - Pastel Purple Heart Button
Purple Pumpkin - Crochet Doily
My Minds Eye - Kraft Funday - Happy Days Twine
Black Ink