It's a Creative World

INCHIES re-visited.

 While we are taking a summer break I thought it would be nice to revisit an old post from the Weekend Workouts we did last year.

 Hi Lynne here

My challenge for the weekend is to make some inchies.  I have seen so many pretty ones and ideas for using multiples I thought it was about time I made some myself.

This one was made to go in an album as a gift for a teacher at a workshop I went to.

 
My computer mouse had broken and rather than just throw it away, I wanted to investigate what was inside.  There were some bits and bobs, just perfect for something different to add.  The feathers were cut from a peacock feather. Unfortunately the photo doesn't show the glimmer of the feathers.  I used a blob of glossy accents and arranged the feathers.  A fine sprinkle of glitter was added to the glossy accents.

Another way I've used inchies is to decorate a larger piece of card or paper and then cut it down into inch squares and decorate them furthur.

 

Do try making some inchies, they are great fun and very addictive.  It's a great way to use your scraps.

Have a fun weekend.

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Dolly here with some inchies that I confess I didn't make especially for this challenge but I hope they might inspire you.

Firstly this is a set of vintage inchies I made for a swap a while back. I loved working on this sort of scale. I think it is the dolls' house addict in me that comes out.

 
The backgrounds were all made of photo paper which was coloured with alcohol inks as it made such a lovely shiney effect - like jewels.

But I couldn't stick to vintage now could I! Come on - you must have seen it coming!

I made a set of cat inchies and put them on a layout. And the cats are all my own cats. The three I have now feature but also the three I have loved and lost.

 

This is the inchies on their own

 

and finally something that is sat on my desk as I sit typing. I loved inchies so much I wanted to see them all the time.

So I bought some little building blocks which were just 1" cubes. It was great fun to paint them and then cover them with little inchies which had pictures and text and names on.

 

Now wouldn't you just love to make a set of these with your favourite photos on?

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Hello, Eleanor here, who knew what you'd find inside a mouse? and I'm CApTivated by those gorgeous blocks from Dolly.

I've made a small canvas, inspired by Julia Stainton, with an inchie border, using these materials:

with which I did this:

I adhered my photo first, and then a border of inchies:

In another style, since I read this post, by Alexa, I've been experimenting with the art of Zentangling.

I've found 2 inch squares of chipboard, or twinchies, are a perfect size for little zendoodle samples, as a reference guide for which designs I can accomplish (and like).

I carry blank cards and pen with me when I go out, in case of 5 minutes to draw another sample. Now I need to make a box to keep them in.

No surprise to find I'm addicted! Stay tuned, after the weekend, I'll show you what I made next with little squares.

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Weekend Workout 22 - Colour Palette

Hi everyone - Dolly here with a challenge for you all - a colour challenge this weekend.

As part of a class by Shimelle I was introduced to this amazing site

http://www.design-seeds.com/

 Design seeds has the most amazing colour combination cards and they are just so beautifully showcased.

Apart from making you want to scrap and giving you hand to do that – they are just beautiful to sit and drool over.

Have fun enjoying the site but the weekend workout challenge for you all is to use this colour card to inspire your creativity.

 

 It might be a page, a card, a home décor project. But let the colours inspire you to create.

I used the colours to make a clock for our newly decorated library.

The clock was one I had had for years, always meaning to decorate it. This was the perfect opportunity.

I painted the edges of the base board cream and then used a truly gorgeous piece of K and Co paper from the Blue Awning range (my favourite range ever!) Part of the paper is flocked and lightly glittered as you can see here.

 

 

I used some scraps of wallpaper samples (the paper that never made it to the decor in the room) to cut some butterflies and to add to inked and stamped papers I had made to match to make the flowers.

 

 
 

I also used scraps of the same sample wallpaper for the text (well it is in the library so it had to mention books). The paper has a gorgeous shiny stripe that looks lovely in real life.

 

I hope you can see how the colours in the sample inspired the piece of work.

 

 

I hope that the colours inspire you to create. Do leave us a link so we can see what you have come up with.

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Thanks Dolly, it's such a cool, restful palette, it was a pleasure to use. (and that site is a fab resource)
I chose taupe linen, and pale robin's egg stranded silk for rows of simple embroidery stitches, sampler style.
On top, I placed a photo of my grandson, on a vertical piece of cream mountboard for contrast, with pale jade ink sponged edges.
Placed in a thrifted frame, it gives me joy.

I miss him.

Eleanor

x

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 Hiya Claireliz here, with my attempt at this gorgeous colour palette.

I had a photo in mind for this as soon as I saw the colours, it's one of my friend Jo, taken at a friends wedding the other week. Jo is one of my closest friends, she is also very crafty, she gets just as excited over new stash & pretty things as I do, and we can giggle & eat cake for hours on end...

 

For the journaling I used a quote from Bernard Meltzer (although I changed the "he" to a "she" to make it fit.)

A true friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg, even though she knows you are slightly cracked.

A quote I feel sums up our friendship perfectly.

I loved working with this colour palette, & will be using it again, I also really enjoyed using a girly photo with colours that I would usually use for more masculine layouts. Thank you Dolly :D

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Weekend Workout 21 - Button It

Hello, my name is Eleanor, and I have a button drawer. :)

For weekend workout number 21, I challenge you to use buttons. Anywhere. Anyhow.

Here's my button love, it's a framed piece, or it will be when I find just the right frame (I know, I'm always saying that, lol) hopefully it will be framed before my pearl wedding anniversary in 2013.

Do you have plenty of buttons? Here are mine:

Do show us what you do with yours!

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Hiya it's Jayne here.

I am showing two things made using quite a few Buttons. I made a scrapbook layout a while back, I just love the texture of all the cream buttons on the moon... The little Alien was drawn by my youngest daughter.  :)

 

I also made this card for Christmas last year & it's great if you want to use up a lot of Buttons... I like the pastel colours but you could use more 'Traditional' colours if you liked. It is very simple but effective. I don't recommend posting it though as it is a little heavy !

 

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Weekend Workout 20 - HP

 no, not the brown stuff in a bottle, Harry Potter of course.

Eleanor here, with weekend workout number 20. The theme this weekend is anything and everything remotely, vaguely Harry Potter inspired.

I haven't seen the last two Harry Potter films, I'm waiting until I can watch them both, one after the other, in the comfort of my own home, with the kettle on, and on, and on, and home baked goodies to munch.

My children and I have all loved the books, and so I decided to create another artist's canvas embroidery, like my Heidi one, this time printing a page from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where the sorting hat makes a first appearance, onto artists' canvas, and stitching over it with the image from the title page of every book - the Hogwarts coat of arms. (It takes ages, the canvas is stiff, and my fingers are sore, but I love doing it.)

 Does Harry do it for you?

xx

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Hi, Dolly here.

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I was one of those people who queued to get the books at midnight and devoured them within the next day. I love them. OK so I started pretending I was reading them for school - just to check they were OK for the children. But I convinced no one!

Both of these pages were made using Dawn Inskip kits from her store at Scrapbookgraphics, especially this one called, appropriately enough, Wizardry

 

and these have to be the two cutest little Hogwarts trainees ever!.

 

Have fun creating wizardry of your own.

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Hi!

Glittery Katie here and I love, love LOVE  the Harry Potter and I couldn't wait to get my hands on the last book of the series:

 

Hope you play along!
Love GlitteryKatie xxxx

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Hiya Claireliz here, I'm another one who is a huge fan of Harry Potter, the books reignited my passion for reading aged 21 & my love of Harry Potter is something I am lucky enough to share with my 5 year old daughter - who happens to be called Hermione :D

As the summer holidays are upon us & the weather has not been fab here by the seaside we put on the Harry Potter dvds (the less scary ones) & got out boxes of lego & here is what we've been making...

                                       
 
 
 

We have 2 Harry Potter legos sets, Dumbledores ofiice & 2 shops from Diagon Alley (I want all the Harry Potter lego sets & to build them all in my attic - a bit like the train sets people have - a full on Harry Potter World but I don't think hubs would let me lol) and we made our own huge Hogwarts...

if you look closely you can see a lego troll in the dungeon...

 

we also found a boat with oars from a Pirate set of Lego...so now they can cross the lake to Hogwarts...

                                      
 

Hermione asked if she could have some more Harry Potter lego for Christmas this year as we had such fun making these, so as long as she's good & I can play with it too I think I'll be collecting Harry Potter lego for her ready for Christmas :D

So show us your Harry Potter magic, looking forward to seeing what you make :D

C xx

Weekend Workout 19 - LACE

 Hiya Claireliz here with this weekend's workout.

The challenge is to use some lace.

I love using lace on all kinds of projects, mini books, scrapbook pages, altered items & sewing projects. I decided for this challenge to create something from fabric, so I had a go at making a brooch, but it was larger than planned so I changed into into a fascinator. First I took a strip of lace & hand stitched running stitch along one edge & ruffled it around so it started to form a circle...

 

keep on stitching until you end up with a flower shape like this...

 

I did the same again with a strip of navy blue net which I folded in half lengthways...

 

& with a cream strip of net which was also folded in half lengthways...

 

The cream net is the largest piece so I took a circle of felt & stitched it to the back of the cream net flower...

 

Then I added the next 2 layers, one at a time with just a few stitches to catch them into place (with the felt on what would be the underside of the fascinator) so that it looks like this...

 

I then stitched in a few glass pearl beads...

 

On the underside where the felt is I stitched 2 hair grips...

and taadaa...

 

This was my first attempt at making fascinators & I suspect I may be making more, infact thinking about it this will co-ordinate with my outfit for my friends wedding next week. 

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Dolly here with a little snippet of lace too.

One of the things I love to use lace on is a heritage page or project and I have a heritage page to share which seems to show what I mean.

 
 
The page is of my husband's grandmother and great grandmother and actually his great grandfather too as he is in the photo that the little girl is holding up.

The strip of lace just softened the page a little and added to a heritage feel.

You know me - I like to do things digitally too, and digital lace adds feeling just like real lace.

I wanted a really soft shabby chic feel to this page and the lace helped create that.

 
and finally, an example of using some lovely cotton lace to make something pretty and feminine and just a whole lot of fun.

 

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Hello, Eleanor here. Like Dolly, I too have used my lace on a notebook, only mine is somewhat tattier.

It's a music notebook, as any musicians may guess by the title :) for my notes about songs, lyrics, and piano pieces, and details of sheet music I want to buy.      I think I will even use Kel's excellent tutorial for 'tipping in' extra pages, using manuscript paper so that I can jot down a tune, or even compose one, lol.

Anyway, here it is, chipboard covers, modpodge base, half of a vintage lace-trimmed hankie on the right, and strips of cotton lace on the left, chippie letters and metal charms. All sponged lightly over with white gesso, and finally, when dry, sprayed with a mist of watered copper acrylic ink.

a closer look:

xx

 

Weekend Workout 18 - UPCYCLE/RECYCLE

After losing some weight (25lbs - so far!) I decided to take some clothes to the charity shop. However I am always having a little potter sewing so I thought I would use some fabric from the clothes rather than always buying new.  I am teaching my daughter to sew and I thought this would also be a good, cheap way for her to practice as well.

I started with my jeans...........

and we ended up with this bag.........

The new kitten loved it ..........

Let's see what you can upcycle in your house.  We will certainly be creating some more items from my jeans.  Have fun  Joy

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Hello, Eleanor here.

Joy's workout theme gave me the perfect excuse to get out the Gesso and Modpodge.  First I read some interesting thoughts, here, so that I could use the correct term.

(I discovered that I'm not upcycling, as that would be now useless products into new ones, with a greater value, neither am I recycling, as that would be making something into something completely different from the original. I suppose the tea caddy is re-purposed, but the chest of drawers is simply redecorated!   Never mind, I had a go, and enjoyed it!)

I acquired an old wooden tea caddy which didn't go with anything,  so I painted it with white Gesso

 

and covered it with scrapbooking paper. A few coats of Modpodge and it's just what I need for storing hair elastics and clips.

With the materials still out on the table, I looked around for something else to cover, and found this:

Which, by the same process involving matt white gesso and modpodge, became this:

for organising more of my dressing table clutter.

Now then, what else can I find...

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Oh those are fab projects.

Claireliz here, I have a large basket filled with things that I've saved to alter over the years, one of these was this little tin....

 

My husband bought it when it contained some toffees & then told me he'd bought them because he thought I'd like the tin for something, he was right, as it's the perfect size for those little sheets of paper you get in memo blocks & it seems that we're always scrabbling round for a bit of scrap paper (well, I am anyway)

I covered the lid of the tin with some American Crafts polka dot paper...

 

And glued some lovely strokeable ribbon around the sides of the tin...

 

To embellish the tin I used my Banana Frog Pharmacy Stamps to stamp the word Notes onto cream card, cut them out, inked the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink, then glued them down.

 

The large cream flower was actually a ring that I picked up for 99p from The Works, I just used pliers to pull the ring part off, then glued it onto a Kraft Journaling spot (Jillibean Soup), & attached to the tin...

 

I've now filled it with paper & put it on my desk, so I can always find a piece of paper to write down those random thoughts as they occur.

C xx

Weekend Workout 17 - CELEBRATION

Hi everyone

Dolly here and because it is my birthday weekend I thought we’d have a bit of a celebration for our weekend workout.

I challenge you to scrap something that makes you happy, to record a celebration of some sort, to make a celebratory card. To do any sort of crafting that brings a smile to your face.

And your double challenge, should you choose to accept it, to use bunting. You gotta love that bunting. It is everywhere and features heavily on scrapping pages and cards as well as home décor.

Here are some ideas to get you motivated.

I scrapped this page of my best friend’s daughter doing what youngsters do best – just celebrating the joy of life, of being young, of endless possibilities. The bunting just adds a touch of fun and celebration.

 

This page had to have lots of bunting on it as it was a celebration in every sense of the word. It was our street party for the Royal wedding and we decked everywhere out with union jack bunting and so the page recording it had to have it too. The bunting is from Dawn Inskip's Fever Pitch kit.

 

And remember that you can make your own bunting or print out digital bunting. I made the page below with the same kit by Dawn Inskip but printed the bunting and cut it out.  I used butchers twine across the page as the 'cord' and anchored the bunting to it. Simple to do and very effective.

 
Bunting is quick and easy to make from scraps of paper and can pretty up the simplest of pages. Here I just used scraps of red papers and stuck the bunting on to the page along red wool.

 

 

 

And of course, birthdays are the perfect celebrations – so here are my two favourite little girlies each celebrating their first birthday – just 5 years apart!

 

 And finally, apologies for this being totally out of season, but bunting is great for home decor. This adorns my fireplace at Christmas.

 

So come on – celebrate with me and make some happy pages or some happy home décor or some celebratory cards.

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Hello, Eleanor here, with a layout celebrating big sisterhood (and a wee nod to bunting in the patterned paper below the turquoise ribbon):

My daughter was so so proud to be a big sister to her tiny baby brother, and such a help to me. She took her role very seriously, and they are very close even now, although he towers over her.

I've also made some stash-busting bunting (actually it's more of a streamer) for a summer party, either to stand on a garden tea party table, or to hang in a window, or even to drape around a bush.

First of all I found a simple butterfly template online, and drew it onto some card. I then cut out my butterflies from patterned paper scraps. Cut as many as you like, an even number.

Lay them out in pairs, and glue like this:

Keep them in pairs only for now, don't glue more than 2 together at once.

Then, with all your pairs made,

Keep adding pairs on top, with the glue dots on the wing tips of the top butterfly in each pair, until you have used all of your pairs.

Now go and find somewhere to put it:

Yes, that will do nicely.

I hope IACW readers find something to celebrate this summer.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Dolly

xxx

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Weekend Workout 16 - Russian Doll Inspired

Hiya Jayne here. 

One of my favourite possessions is my Russian Doll collection. I have old ones, new ones, dolls on bags, key chains & necklaces. My daughter has to put up with me, and has them on clothes anytime I see one. I am going to Prague soon so hopefully I will get another one for my collection.

Your Weekend Workout ...is to create a piece of craft inspired by Russian Dolls ...it could be something nesting in something, Perhaps just the folk style painting inspires you or the primary colours, or perhaps you too have a Russian Doll obsession :)

Today I have made a Scrapbook page (below) with a photo of some of my Dolls. I haven't got a huge collection but it's slowly growing. I have cut a Doll shape out of paper & the flowers have inspired me for embellishments, though these are very simple.

 

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Hello, Eleanor here.

I've made a set of 5 notebooks from small to large (7x7 inches), decorated with paper pieced Russian dolls on mount-board.

I drew the faces with fineliners and gave them rosy cheeks of Promarker, plus a little something in their hair. The inner pages are of assorted patterned scrapbook papers in a toning colour,

bound with the Bind It All .

These were fun to make, and are a little gift for a special someone.

Then again, I might just keep them as, like Jayne, I've had a thing about Russian dolls for years; you may remember my drawing a couple of years ago for the A to Z project:

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 Hi Debbie here with a fabric version of Russian Dolls.

One of my friends recently had a very important birthday, suffice to say it was a little over 21. I decided to make a bag and a pin cushion as she has just started sewing!

 

The fabric was printed using a normal printer. I just stuck the fabric to some card using re positionable adhesive spray and ironed the image to fix the image.

I hope she will find the matching pin-cushion useful.

Debbie

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Hi Claireliz here.

I had a tiny scrap of russian doll fabric that I wanted to use, but didn't know what I could use it on, then in a flash of inspiration I decided to cover a little notebook (ok, I'm lying about the flash of inspiration, the fabric was on my table, next to a small notebook  when I realised the fabric was the perfect size to cover the notebook lol)

 

I used Gel Medium to glue the fabric to the front of the book & a couple of post it notes to protect the pages as I have a tendency to get carried away when using Gel Medium...

 

I then spent an hour trying to find my book binding tape so I could cover the frayed edge at the top of the notebook, but I couldn't find the tape & its whereabouts is still a mystery so I used some self adhesive ribbon instead...

 

I stitched a little glittery button onto the the elastic closure & now I have a cute little notebook.

C xx

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Weekend Workout 15 - STAMPING

Hiya Claireliz here, with this weekends Weekend Workout

The challenge for this week is stamping, create anything you like as long as it has something stamped on it somewhere.

I love art journaling, even though I'm fairly new to it but my collection of stamps seems to be increasing since I've started my art journal, so today I have a journal page to share with you...

 

I've used several different stamps on this, first I covered my pages with Dried Marigold Distress Ink, then stamped the frame which is an Anna Griffin stamp (& one of my new ones) using coffee Archival Ink, then I used another new stamp on the next page that was supposed to be text like book pages all jumbled up, but it didn't stamp right so I grabbed the Rusty Hinge Distress ink & smooshed some over the top. I used one of my favourite Stampotique Stamps (Miss Snotty) to create the girl in the frame, she doesn't have a neck on the stamp so I drew one on card, coloured it with Promarkers along with the rest of the image & stuck it to the page, I used a roller stamp to create the number border, I also used the coffee Archival Ink again, I've had that stamp for years & it's one I randomly use whenever the mood takes, in this case it serves as a reminder to count to 10, the words are from a Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous stamp which I've had for years but never used - I know, shocking isn't it! lol I then rubbed a bit of Tea Dye Distress Ink that I had already on some cut & dry foam just to blend it in a bit. So I've used new, old & under used underloved stamps on this page, I'd love to see what you make so don't forget to leave us a link.

C xx

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Hello there, Eleanor here, with a little bit of stamping as per Claire's challenge.

My grandboy is 1 year old next week, and when I saw some fab hot air balloons on a scrapbook layout by a Scrapfactor contestant - Sutty, I knew I wanted to make some. This is my card for the boy, with stamped clouds (Unity) heat embossed with that old favourite, seafoam white:

Thanks Claire for the challenge, and Sutty for the inspiration.

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Weekend Workout 14 - USING EPHEMERA

Welcome to our first weekend workout in July.

This month I set the challenge of using ephemera, if you sign up there are loads of free resources on Flikr.com here. This is the website I have used for this project but there are many free downloads available on the web.

 

I painted the background of a canvas board with yellow acrylic paint and then used a stencil to paint brown dots. I then went over to add orange dots, and painted over the whole canvas with white paint to tone down the colours. I used a sponge to apply the paint as it covers the board very easily and uses less paint, so dries very quickly.

I went around the edges with the sponge to add brown on all the edges.

Then I printed my ephemera sheets and started cutting out shapes for houses. They were glued on with pva, and I printed the words home sweet home. The finishing touch was a wired edged ribbon I used to hang the canvas up, finished off with a bow.

 

 

Hope you will have a look at Flikr and make your own projects with ephemera.

 Debbie x

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 Hello, Eleanor here.

Debbie's challenge fitted in just nicely with my current crafty activity, which is the construction of my very own SMASH books.

EXCEPT... mine are called STICK IT books, for obvious reasons (and because 'smash' just didn't sit right with me, felt too aggressive for this 'over 50' who loves to keep happy, gentle kinds of ephemera) (and now has somewhere to stick it).

I got rather carried away, trying different styles and techniques for the covers. Here is the first one, which was textured chipboard, which I zendoodled, stickered and rub-onned:

 

and here is number 4, (yes, I know!) which is possibly my favourite, because I worked the title to fit under the transparency, and zendoodled again, but in a letterish way:

Here are a few pages ready to be filled; I am using book rings, rather than the bind it all, as I want the option to open them up to insert a programme, or a leaflet, or birthday card:

Paper I like, stamped shipping tags and a pocket.

I have used lots of different writing paper sheets, like this Japanese one, above, and a Japanese paper bag below.

Into these books I am sticking my ephemera -  like this (a photo of my mum taken about 60 years ago, a note from my son, a cross stitch from inside a card):

and these (photos of old friends):

and these (a card from my husband, a drawing from my son, and the NATO alphabet - don't ask):

I have just one rule - for an item to qualify for sticking in, whether it be a map, a little note from a child, a photo, card, ticket, recipe, concert programme, invitation, song lyrics, poem, menu, postcard or even a lock of hair, it has to give me pleasure, bring a smile to my face, or quicken my heart. That's it. No nasty stuff, no horrid things, just happy mementoes.

Like this one:

Have you made your own Smash book? Let us know, we'd love to feature it.

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