Shimelle's Scrapbooking Weekend

My favourite scrapbooker Shimelle Laine hosted an amazing free online scrapbooking event last week. It span 3 days and incorporated numerous techniques, layout ideas, storage solutions, inspiration suggestions and more. Every few hours a new challenge was added totally in 16 challenges by the end of the marathon event. I eagerly awaited the next post to see what was coming up next. As I was still recovering I was unable to take part but my head was reeling with ideas. I printed each challenge out and my aim is to do each one and post it on here. This weekend, although still in pain, I decided that I wanted to do some of the challenges and post them before the deadline in order to try and win some goodies. Also to give me abit of focus and most importantly get some scrapbooking done. So here they are.

Challenge 04: Colour Adventure. Scrap with grey, yellow and one other colour of your choice (I chose red).

Challenge 05: Inspiration Points. Take inspiration from a scrapbook page by Wilna Furstenberg. Inspiration points: panoramic photo, side strips, placement, punch work (flowers), scattered motifs (flowers top and bottom), date bottom right, ribbon bottom right, larger image tip left, individual words above photograph.

Challenge 13: Print It Out. Use free printable designed by Little Musings.  

Visit Shimelle's world of pretty paper for this and more challenges at www.shimelle.com    

Scrapbooking Goodies

My Crafting goodies

I took my first trip out in 2 weeks and wanted to make it a good one so I asked my wonderful boyfriend if he would take me craft shopping. Luckily he felt sorry for me and agreed. 4 craft shops , £40 spent and a massive smile on my face later and I was all shopped out.

 A few weeks before I had been looking through a card making magazine and was surprised to find a craft shop in Yorkshire that wasn't too far from where I live. Usually all the stores are Devon, Suffolk, Sussex etc and it is rare to find any advertised that are in my area. Not only was it near but its website title 'everycraftsapound' definitely intrigued me. The shop is called 'Crafty Cards Craft and Hobby Store' in Heckmondwike. It has a wide range of products including Docrafts products, adhesives, Card Candi, ribbon, die cuts, and inks. What tickled me as I looked around was the Man Crèche in the corner with a big leather sofa for all the bored men to sit on and wait. Through the back is The Paper Room which is a scrapbookers heaven. Rows upon rows of 12x12 papers covering nearly 3 full sides of the room. In the middle is a massive set of tables which makes me wonder if they run crops and classes. It is something that I may look into as although its not the nearest shop to me it looks like a well run establishment and it would be fun to gain some more craft friends. Currently I just craft with my best friend but it would be nice to have a wider circle of friends to bounce ideas off. The shop is very reasonably priced and I couldn't believe how much I came away with for the money I spent. It benefited me as they had a lot of random one off items which were reduced to £1/£1.50. Normally they would of been £5 or £6 but they are no longer the current range. You see this doesn't both me. I don't care if it's not the on trend item at the minute. I like a good bargain. My favourite bit of the store is a table full of 'old' scrapbooking 12x12's reduced only because they were not the latest line or because they were the last few. The offer was 10 for £1. I couldn't believe it. It took a while to trudge through them but I came away very happy with 20 sheets of paper. I also bought a couple from the full priced section. Another good thing about the paper room is that they have 12x12 sheets from sets. Often I find that I only like one or two sheets from a collection but that I am not willing to pay the £15 or £20 for the whole pack. Being sold individually is a lot better for my kind of style of scrapbooking.

Although extremely happy with my purchases I hadn't been shopping, in fact hadn't been out of my house, for 2 weeks and so we then went to 'Caroles Crafts' at The Mill Batley, which we had passed on our way to the first shop. The shop is a lot larger than I thought it would be and had a wide range of products. They had a much bigger range of decoupage sheets, Kanban toppers, Hunkydory collection kits and handmade stickers like Jolees Boutique than I have seen at any other craft shop. I was also told, by the very nice and helpful staff, that there is a lot of stock that they can order in. Spread around the store there are large folders jam packed with example pages of what other stock they can order in. I was glad that this store was different to the previous store as it meant that I could get even more scrapbooking materials to add to my already full bag of goodies. All in all a very pleasurable day.  

First Try

A zoomed version so not to give away who the card is for.

I needed to make this card asap as it was a commissioned card that I had been asked for ages ago but because the deadline was quite a way ahead I had put it off. Now I know it is best just to get the cards made straight away as I was worried that I may have to back out of this one if my arm wasn't up to scratch. Am very pleased with the card but it did take at least twice as long as normal to do. I now also know why its good to have cards in stock as I will only be making cards when I feel up to it for the next couple of weeks. I am going to try and get in the craft room when I can though as I don't want to get behind on my challenge. At the start of the year I decided to set myself a challenge to try and make sure that I spend quality time in the craft room. As well as life getting in the way of crafting I noticed that sometimes I would go in my room and rearrange, organise and tidy up and that no actual card making or scrapbooking was getting done. I also wanted a way to divide my time as I enjoy cardmaking and scrapbooking equally but it's not practical to be doing both at the same time due to space constrains. I prefer to get the cards I needs made and out of the way and then say have 3 weeks concentrating on scrapbooking and then go back to making cards. I decided that I would challenge myself to make a card a day, meaning 366 cards this year. Now I knew that I wouldn't be able to find the time to make a card every single day because I work full time and also I didn't want it to become a chore. Instead it is that by New Years Eve I will have made that many within the year. It worked really well at the start of the year. I was finding time and often would use most of one of the weekend days and make an odd card some nights of the week depending on what my day had been like. I was about 10 ahead but will need to review this now as not been at it for 3 or 4 weeks. Don't want to fall behind and make it less enjoyable 'catching up'. While I'm off work I will do some crafting - hopefully both cards and scrapbooking as well as reading up on blogs, websites and magazines for new ideas and techniques.

Docrafts Update

http://www.docrafts.com/Lexon5

Apologises for my disappearance but unfortunately I ended up in hospital last week and although I am home now I am finding writing and using the computer difficult which leaves me with nothing to do but watch tv which is a little boring. I have managed to, over a couple of days, get my Docrafts gallery updated with my latest cards which I made in March. I am unsure on when I might be back to the crafting so please feel free to have a look through my gallery which spans the last 6 years. You can see how my style has changed through out and please have a read of the wonderful comments that other Docrafters have put on.  I always put notes on about the card when I post them on there so please have a little read. I used the layout from a card that I had seen on the internet which I liked to create the card above. Although the end result is completely different in terms of images and colours the layout is the same. I found that this was a nice way to keep things fresh and good if you have got stuck in your own craft rut. I will definitely use this technique again to shake things up again.   

Freebies

This month I have actually got around to sending off my magazine competition entries to see what goodies I can get my hands on. I realised that I buy all these papercraft magazines but I dont make the most out of them, and some of them are quite pricy to just flick though and look at the pretty pictures which is what I usually do. 

Am hoping to win the Serif Craft Artist to have a little play with. I currently only do paper scrapbooking as I prefer to sit down at my desk and gather my papers, embellishments, chipboard, brads, etc together and create from scratch. I like the handmade feel of it as well as the different techniques I can do to create different depths, textures and dimension. I feel like I've really accomplished something as it takes alot of time, effort and thought but I enjoy that part of the process. It makes me feel that Ive honoured the precious memories that I am trying to preserve. That said, I have seen many absolutely beautiful digital and hybrid scrapbooking pages and can certainly see the benefits of this method of scrapbooking. Digital scrapbooking and photo editing can give you alot of freedom -  picture resizing, touching up photos, removing unwanted objects in the backgrounds. I definitely like that mistakes can be undone and that some programmes allow you to manipulate your pages in way you just cant in real life. I especially like the use of overlays in digital scrapbooking. For me I have often thought that if I don’t look to my digital photos on the computer as they are now, in folders, then why would I look at them even if they are digitally scrapbooked. I enjoy getting my scrapbooks out and showing people my latest projects. Taking them to peoples houses who I havent seen in a while and catch up on events using the pages to enhance the stories. I have found that when going through my scrapbooks I not only think of the memory I have preserved but also of the page itself. Where I had to go to get the right shade paper, the exact lettering style, the chipboard images which tie in with the theme. That said I will give this digital scrapbooking lark a go as even if I dont win the platinum edition I have found somewhere you can get Craft Artist compact to try it out so hopefully in the near future I will get a chance to have a go on that and will let you all know what I think.

Another nice freebie would be the Forever Friends Black & Gold Clear Stamp collection. It seems to have lots of nice sentiments, flowers and flourishes and a cute little birthday bear which I can see myself using quite abit. Although I literally have hundreds of pieces of paper and card stock I have also entered to some win Hot Of The Press 12x12 paper packs. I think their designs are gorgeous and I love how many of them have heavy patterns in the corners so they feel nearly done before you even add your photo and embellishments. It gives you a great starting point to start the focus of your scrapbooking.

Well lets see what happens. Fingers crossed.

Scrapbook Magazines

I think I have finally resolved the issue with my magazine subscription. My gift subscription that I was bought last year had expired and I had renewed it but received nothing in the post. After trying to figure out what to do and how to contact them they have got back to me. It looks like the postman must of took his fancy to it as it was dispatched but never received. I wouldn't of  minded him having a flick through it if he'd posted it through to me afterwards. Luckily they have now resent me a copy but it will take 3 weeks as its coming across from America. How will I be able to wait any longer. It does however mean that by the time the last issue comes the current one will also turn up. On top of that the other scrapbook magazine I get will be out. It will be scrapbooking overload having 3 magazines to read. I cant wait!

Blog Revamp

Welcome to my new blog dedicated to cardmaking and papercraft. This will be the new port of call for all my crafting adventures. I will be bringing in elements from all my current online resources into one, craft only, blog. Although this will be the main base for news of my new creations, product and shop reviews and other tidbits I will still be updating my current pages. Until I get the blog up and running fully you can continue to see gallery photos of my cards and scrapbooking at www.docrafts.com and search under members for 'lexon5'. For forum chats and scrapbooking layouts find me on www.UKScrappers.co.uk under 'lexon5'.