Orange is the new pink!

I've always been a pink sort of girl...but lately, I just seem so drawn to orange and yellow hues. Maybe it's because they're such bright, happy, summery colours, and with temperatures of 43 celsius right now, summer is definitely HERE!

So I dug out all my orange papers last night and went in search for more inspiration on challenge blog sites. I came across ScrapbookSavvy, and they sure seem like a load of fun girls with oodles of amazing talent! A quick scroll through through their gallery, and I just couldn't wait to join in! Decided to try the 54321 first (what a clever concept!), and this is what I came up with:Now, I don't normally do "simple" and clean very well, so the above is about as simple and clean as I'll ever get. Am so happy with how it turned out though. My 5 embellishments are 2 Hambly stickers, some Hambly transparency (pink circles), a scrap of ribbon, and a My Mind's Eye diecut bracket. 4 staples - tick. 3 alphas are Carolees, Pink Paislee and American Crafts - my favourite alphas around. 2 papers are Scenic Route background paper and the strip off a piece of Sassafrass Lass (the scalloped piece). 1 photo...easy :)

Well, that was fun...decided to have another go, and tried the Cybercrop 321 this time. My 3 colours are orange, white and red. 2 photos - check. 1 rhinestone embellishment = the title. To embellish, I used more leftover strips of Sassafrass paper, more My Mind's Eye diecuts, and a whole sheet of Basic Grey stickers = the flowers. Pity I didn't have enough to make the right and left join up for a complete frame. Still pretty happy with how this turned out though:

Card made from scraps

Decided to use the leftover Prima packaging from which I punched out the hearts from my previous LO to make a card. Realised that they perfectly highlighted the birds in this Basic Grey paper. 2 lovebirds? Perfect for a wedding card :) I Glimmer Misted the alphas for added bling, and added some lace and German scraps to finish off the front.


This is what I'm most proud of though:

Is it a card...or an envelope? The bottom and top flaps fold under, and one tucks into the other forming a sort of envelope.

Finally, drawing inspiration from the fabulous "Start to Finish" cards over at MoxieFabWorld, I decided to create one of my own by adding a Chinese red packet inside, embellished with another heart, German scrap strip, and a hand cut bird. The red packet is very important, as in Chinese weddings, we tend to give money as a wedding present instead of a gift. Have left lots of space on other page for me to write on.

Shop and Crop

You can find loads of fab goodies at great prices here - I know I've certainly received lots of pizza boxes from there myself, lol. Now they have a blog too, and if you hop over there soon to check it out, then link it back to your own blog, the generous girls there may even reward you with some goodies! Woot!

Sidetracked...

So I was continuing with my great scrap room organising project this afternoon, when I came across the red frame which I've had for AGES, and the photocopied photo of my brother and sister-in-law's wedding, which I'd intended for another project but ended up using a different pic instead. Not knowing what to do with them, I laid them aside on the table, only to realise that the frame, well, framed their faces PERFECTLY! Rifled quickly through my Prima stash, and ended up using up some leftover flowers, a Love note journalling spot, and even the packaging from some Prima rhinestones was turned into 2 hearts. Butterflies are felt and are Heidi Swapp. Alphas are AC thickers. There's actually a lot of texture in this that's not so obvious in the pic, as I've added a heart charm in the middle of the lace bow, and the photo sits on top of Glimmer Misted gauze. Love how this turned out - what a fun afternoon! And what's more, this LO also fits the lyrics challenge over at MysticalScrapbooks!

Organising frenzy!

This is my latest furniture purchase. Isn't it wonderful? I found it at Bedshed in Myaree. It's supposed to be a shoe cabinet for a little girls' room, but I immediately thought, how perfect would that be for my scrapping space??? The drawers come out fully and very easily so I can take the whole drawer to my desk, work with it, then dump everything back in and place it back in the shelf - easy!

From left to right on the top shelf, I have Spellbinders folders, Cuttlebug folders, stamps and more stamps. 2nd row, there are chipboard pieces and diecuts, pearly beads and semi-precious stones, brads and eyelets, and miscellaneous beads sorted by colour. Bottom row, I have wooden and plastic beads, mini book findings and frames, jewellery findings with charms and bigger/special beads, and mini books. A couple of mini books too big for the shelf are sitting under it, and the white box next to the shelf holds a couple of items I'm hoping to alter at some stage.

Here is a close-up of a few shelves - the jars look soooo cute in a row!

And finally, this is the last layout I created for the cybercrop at MysticalScrapbooks. For this challenge, we had to scrap a silly photo and have the word "silly" somewhere. The photos were taken in Ottawa, Canada. Couple of friends doing silly poses with the statues. Wish you could see the expressions on their faces, so cute and funny! I'm normally not a very restrained scrapbooker in that I tend to add too much colour/embellishments. Very happy with how this turned out. I'd seen blue/yellow in various other blog sites lately and really liked it, so thought I'd try it. The PP is the new Basic Grey Nook and Pantry range - love those doilies in all different colours! I Glimmer Misted the paper lightly, and also Glimmer Misted the backing of a sheet of Sassafrass stickers, and the doily. I also recycled the backing of a stamp that I own - "very silly". Butterfly is Heidi Swapp. Butterly trail is Prima. Yellow sentiments sticker is Creative Imaginations. I'd actually written on the doily, realised I didn't like my writing, so covered it up with a cluster of blooms, lol...

Mystical cybercrop

The first cybercrop for the year has just started over at MysticalScrapbooks - what a perfect way for me to dip my toe back into the water again after having shelved all my scrapbooking things away for nearly a year!

This first LO was the blind scrap challenge. I have loads of holiday photos still waiting to be scrapped, and this was taken on my trip to northeast USA and eastern side of Canada 2 years ago! As the theme for this cybercrop is "new and silly", I decided to pick out some of my silly photos. Here, to go with the "wild rabbit" theme, I've used psychedlic SFL and Prima papers. Very busy LO, but I quite like it.
This next LO is actually the matching page to another one I did 2 years ago! I actually can't remember anymore what range the papers are. This was based on the sketch challenge over at the Mystical cybercrop. Simply but fairly effective, I think.

Looking forward to more cybercropping for the rest of the week :)

Inspired at last!

Well, after a loooooong absence due to various events, I was finally inspired, after attending an altered book class by the divine and extremely talented Miss Mel to create something...anything... Several hours of blog hopping later, with further inspiration drawn from this FancyPants post, RainbowLady's challenge to recycle, and MysticalScrapbook's stash challenge, this is what I ended up creating:

This is an old unused corkboard that was just sitting in my garage that I decided to paint white and convert into an inspirations board, in order to help me keep my creativity up this year. I didn't mind if I got paint on the cork as well as the frame, as I wanted it to have that messy, vintage sort of look. The next photo shows the basic concept, ie 2 pieces of Sassafrass Lass 12x12 papers from my stash, cut into 3 strips, and stuck onto the corkboard in such a way as to form pockets into which I can place inspirational photos, ephemera, paper scraps etc throughout the year. The photo shows a sheet of KI Memories quotes stickers that I'd used in this project, sticking out of one of the 6 pockets:

The following pictures are various close-ups. The close-ups were taken before some finishing touches were put on, hence may look slightly different from the overview picture:


This first close-up is my favourite part of the whole project, featuring gorgeous Prima flowers and a Glimmer Misted Collections lamp-post layered onto SFL paper :)
The next 2 close-ups show more Glimmer Mist, SFL and Prima goodness, and a pink deer tag from a swap.

I really enjoyed creating this as I got to use up papers and embellishments that I had previously been saving up for "something special"!

Blog candy and possible re-draw

Go here for some awesome blog candy, and on top of that, some amazing card inspiration!

And on a differen note, I haven't got around to posting pics of my 2nd OWOH giveaway...life has been hectic, but will try to get onto it in the next couple of days. However, haven't heard from Lost Aussie, so I might have to re-draw...will wait a couple more days and send another email...let's see what happens...

Drumroll please...

...congratulations go to MONIQUI, who won the first giveaway! And for my 2nd draw (which I will upload pics of tomorrow)...LOST AUSSIE! I'll be getting in touch with you two shortly :)

One day grace...

...for me that is! I know I promised to draw the winner for OWOH tonight, but I completely forgot about it! So I will print out the comments/names tomorrow and draw tomorrow night (being a Friday night suits me a bit better). Hope you don't mind, but in the meantime, if anybody cares to make a last minute comment on this post (or a new comment), you will get an extra draw - how's that? My little way to make it up to you. And because I feel super bad about forgetting and I got way more comments than I thought possible, I will add a 2nd giveaway too...don't know what it is yet, but it will be a selection of items a bit similar (but probably smaller) to the one I posted earlier :)