Life and Scrapping

second iweek video...

After my fun busy weekend with friends in the Belgian country side, it was back to business... read back to loads(!) of laundry and unpacking many weekend bags...

and my scrap bags of course...

(you didn't think that i would go away on a trip without taking some (ahem) supplies with me, now would you?)

The cotton balls where a local and much needed purchase, because i found myself having a crochet class all of a sudden! 

One of the 'girls' wanted to make a cute stuffed animal as a baby gift and she took some crochet books with her, hoping i could help out... luckily my skills in that department were not too rusty and i could reproduce the basic steps! So, not long after three of us found were crocheting away, and progress was made: the friend who need my help -and who had never crocheted before!- completed a very cute frog that same day! 

I even found a bit of time to work on my canvas pages, so i you're curious about my progress, watch this... you have to turn up the volume a bit, at least on the first part... i really need to fix the lack of sound when i use my build in laptop camera!

 

 

 

Starting a new iweek page and a busy weekend...

Because i want to make good use of the supplies i have gathered over the years (tucked away in various corners of my studio) in my fabric album, i thought of an easy way to keep them at hand...

voila... what do you think of this...

I can cram a lot into the rolling carts, and it's easy to store the whole lot of stuff under my desk!

and... neatfreak as i am... all my supplies are nicely organised in the handy clear containers, which fit perfectly into the racks...

unfortunately i've a very busy weekend ahead, so not much chance of creating... but i will try, cause i really want to use this stencil, cut from thin clear sheet on my Silhouette...

I did manage to stamp the fabulous hollyhocks (Donna Downey shape) on page 4 of my fabric album so, i leave you with that for now!

Have a great weekend!

More 'iweek' fabric album pages and a video...

My pages are coming together very nicely... playing along with iweek is so much fun!

Used the Glimmer Screens with Vintage Pink Glimmermist (both by Tattered Angels) and some extra touches distress ink in pink and orange (wild honey and spun sugar) on page one...

And then used my home made foam stamp with yellow acrylic paint (MM sunflower and sunshine yellow by Ranger)... oh goodie, i like it so much!

On page 2 i used the runway mask with dots (Heidi Swapp) and MM paint in Plum and Rose Petal on a base of orange glimmermist (Flower Power)... dragged the sides through the leftover mist after spraying...

Oh, and i always spray in a cardboard box (with one side cut loose for easy access)... i've covered my whole work surface and yours truly in ink too many times, wink!

On page 3 i used a CK foamstamp (kit of the month) with more pink MM paint (strawberries & cream and rose petal)...

Oh yes, and more foam stamp making (i must be mad!)... (both Silhouette shapes; leaves by Karla Dudley and Flourish by Donna Downey) see the video below for more details about those...

I used the leaf pattern after adding some color (Distress ink  in worn lipstick, spun sugar and scattered straw) to the third page...

Oh yeah... now that's happiness right there...

And... as mentioned... i finally made another video... the sound isn't truly fab in the beginning, but... be patient with me people... it's only my third video, so i'm not even close to something that can be called a tiny bit professional... but... practice makes perfect, and after installing new video editing software on my computer, i'm planning to do a little more filming...

 

Hope you had fun watching?!

 

 

 

Ramblings of a busy mom...

What is it with boys? (If you have them too, you might recognize my ramblings about my busy life these last couple of days...) Never a dull moment in my house...

This last week i was a single mom, because Gerard was on a work trip to Montreal... so it was hands on for me... but i handled it quite well, and managed to combine al my daily tasks (getting Stach to school by bike every morning, then working at the office, taking care of Stach (and often a bunch of his friends) after school, cleaning, cooking, laundry, reading bedtime stories, the whole deal) between 7.oo am and 11.30 pm... so, i treasured the small bits of free time  i had like they were diamonds...

Last Sunday i had such a treasured moment in my studio, and then the doorbell rang... so picture me, running down two stairs to the door, with a dripping paint brush still in my hand, opening the door to discover my beloved sun completely soaked and dirty and yucky, from his waist to his shoes!! 'Hi mom... i was kinda pushed into the water...' Yes, i could see that... and smell it too! Well, after getting him out of his wet clothes, and putting him directly into a nice and hot shower, he told me he was playing with a few friends at the mill near the water... a place were he's not supposed to be at all without telling us or adult supervision!!! Anyway... i guess he has learned his lesson, because he promissed me by himself, after explaing me how scared he just was, not to go there again! Sweety pie!

And then i found myself doing more laundry, and cleaning his shoes, instead of creating in my studio... sigh...

 

Donna Downey project...

Still totally inspired by Donna Downey's inspiration week! Making those images transfers two days ago was so much fun... i was happy to finally use my jar of Golden matte gel medium that i bought especially for this purpose over a year ago! And i had a lot of unused photo's from our Milaan/Verona vacation tucked away in boxes... so i made myself some extra transfer pages today...

I found out that, to get a more smooth transfer on plain canvas, it's best to apply two layers of gel medium (apply the second coat when the first is dry... that only takes a few minutes!)... see, not a bad transfer, compared to the original picture!

My canvas pages started to buckle a bit after the transfers, and that bothered me... so i decided to coat the back sides with white gesso...

 

and after ironing them (after they were dry, and with a paper towel on top) they were perfectly flat!

Donna used a few of her fabulous foam stamps on her pages, which i -unfortunately-  did not have! But... i bought some of her Silhouette designs months ago, so i thought i'd use those to make my own stamps!

Neat, don't you think? The Silhouette does not cut foam sheet, so i had to do the cutting myself... but that did not take to long actually, and i'm very happy with the result! Going to try them tomorrow!

My pages are ready for layers of color... i have 10 of those now, all white washed so the transfers blend a bit with the canvas background! Hopefully i'll have some free time to spent in my studio again... Gerard is in Montreal this week, attending (and speaking on) a few seminars, so i have my hand full on daily duties, taking care of Stach and work at the office!

But he's sleeping over at a friend tonight, so yay! I can sleep in a bit tomorrow morning!

Have a great weekend!

Paper organisation and a Donna Downey project...

Oh dear... i don't know about you, but if you're a vivid scrapper you might find yourself in a similar situation as i found myself in last weekend... sitting on the floor of my studio, completely surrounded by piles and piles of patterned paper of all sorts, color or manufacturer... all because of the need to re-organize...

You see, last year i bought this hand made paper storage cabinet at the local annual flea market...

thought it would be perfect for my ever growing pile of patterned paper, that i used to store like this...

Well, long story short... it took me hours to get it all done...

but finally i can say that i'm the proud owner of a very neatly (and completely labeled!)  filled paper cabinet. Hurray... and the best part? I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that i don't have to every buy another sheet of patterned paper in my life, wink! I have enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life...

And that brings me to Donna Downey's current project... the inspiration week! We all know we buy to many supplies, but hey, that's a well know fact among scrappers. But buying is one thing, not using it is another story... so...she got me all inspired to get a lot of stuff out of the storage boxes and start playing around with them...

(Oh, Donna used a fabric album from her Prima canvas line, but i did not have one of those... so i decided to use some sturdy cheese cloth fabric that i had laying around... see, using stuff a have already... i just cut it to an 6 by 8 size, and will make it into an album when the pages are done...)

The first step was making image transfers with golden gel medium! Yay, finally i got to use it... and i did some mighty fine transfers, if i may say so...

Color copied a few photo's on my inktjet printer that we took years ago, when visiting Milaan and Verona! It's really great fun, making a transfer on fabric, and very easy too!

So, first step done... now i'm digging through another box of supplies to find my masks, stencils and foam stamps!