Monday, June 21, 2010

Marieke's June Results

Well, I had grand plans for posting early. Oh, well. This month I'm making no promises for next month.

Originally, inspired by Theresa's ferry building card, I was going to make some cards from this month's kit but scrapped (pun intended) that idea and decided to go with another layout. I really need to finish this album and get it out of my life, so I am working toward that for the next day or so and I'm going to push hard to finish it. This layout is one step closer to being done.

I think the cards I had in mind would have turned out really cute, so I may try to do something similar in the future. I was going to use some vintage patriotic images like the one below and make a shabby chic, stitched together card. But I need to finish up Kurt's album, so I decided to go with another layout.

If you are interested in more patriotic vintage images just click here.


Here's the layout I ended up doing:
















In general, I love how this layout turned out. I think the only thing I would change would be to mat the photo collage on plain blue with a thin border. I was inspired by Rachel's layouts to put together a photo collage. It's a great way to get a lot of photos on one page. I like how the Seattle postcard is a photo collage, too. I like how they resonate. There were a couple of other postcards (one with Cyn's handwriting on the back which I wasn't about to paste down), a polaroid similar to the car driving through the tree photo, and a menu from their tea at the Empress Hotel. I decided the best thing to do would be to make a pocket for those items.

Here's something pretty ironic. I got the idea for stitching the pocket and the idea for folding back those pieces on the border from that Creating Keepsakes video I bitched about on my blog. After watching it, I was tempted to keep it, pay the $7 and receive more of them. It was actually pretty awesome and packed with ideas. Here are a couple awesome tips from the same video:

1. Use the back of a mouse pad for the cushion under your paper when piercing.
2. Use your paper piercer to open the little tabs on the back of a brad and roll the handle of your paper piercer between them to smooth them down. It's awesome!!!! Brads don't hurt my fingertips anymore.

I also like the maple leaf. I found an outline of a maple leaf image online and figured out a short cut for tracing it. I laid the printed out image over the red paper. Then I simply took a ball point pen and pressing firmly, I traced the image. When I lifted the paper with the maple leaf image, an impression of the pen marks was pressed into the paper. No need to cut out the image of the maple leaf first, no pencil marks to erase. I decided to add some black outlining to the leaf to tie in the black title. I am getting so sick of black printing. A color printer is at the top of my wish list.

Okay, so I just have to say that I am so excited to do next month and play with the vintage materials Rachel put together. Yay!!!!

3 comments:

  1. Okay, so you know I'm a sucker for storing mementos/extra photos on a page, so you had me at picture pocket. I love the use of stitching (something I always admire but have yet to try myself). I love the photo collage (of course, but also the way you chose to arrange the photos in it). And wow, talk about a creative use of brads!

    Oh, and I loved loved loved how you "hand stitched" around the scalloped border with a marker. So cute!

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  2. I would have loved to see the cards you had in mind with those vintage images. I love them! Thanks for the link. Having said that... I'm glad you made layouts for your project book. The colors lend themselves to these pictures and (not having seen this technique much before myself) - I think the stitching is pretty darn nifty!

    About the peek-a-boo brad idea.. it makes me smile. It's like a the page is winking at me. I like it. Where do you get all of these great ideas?

    And how did you make that white border in Oct?

    I've sifted through the wonderful materials for July. My head is spinning in 3 different directions. I can't wait to see your crafts.

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  3. Well, I stole that idea for the brads and folded back papers from that DVD I was sent from Creating Keepsakes. I didn't keep it. I sent it back. It came unsolicited and the idea is that if you liked it and kept it, they would bill you $7 and send new ones every other month. I've set a budget of $20 a month to spend on new crafty items and I wasn't about to spend nearly half of that on a DVD and follow-up DVDs. But if you've got the money to burn, it was pretty cool.

    The white border in the October layout was made using a Sakura Souffle pen (they come in sets of 10 and I used the white one). The ink comes out a little cloudy but dries completely white. It is the only kind of pen I know that dries completely white on colored or dark paper. Usually, the amount of ink that comes out is perfect but I was trying to be super neat (oh, the irony) and so I used a ruler. Well, the ink traveled under the lip of the ruler in a couple of places and when I pressed down, it spread out and got splotchy. However, I ended up really liking that look because it goes pretty well with the papers. So all's well that ends well, I guess.

    Here's a link to the pens:

    http://www.amazon.com/Sakura-Souffle-Opaque-Puffy-Pens/dp/B000LR4ZDA

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