UK Scrappers Blog Hop Layout

Hello!

Each day throughout December (up to the 23rd) UK Scrappers have been featuring a different project on their home page - kind of like a blog hop but one blog to visit each day! 

Today it's our turn!

UK Scrappers are offering a prize to one lucky winner who comments on all the participating blogs! More on that at the end of this post.

With just a couple of days to go now until the BIG Day, I thought we would have a little break from "full-on" Christmas themed crafting and so I've made a layout which focuses a little more on our day to day activities at this time of year. 

I wanted to document how we enjoy visiting our local coffee shop to warm up and sip coffees (me) or hot chocolate (her)!

I've used supplies from Echo Park "Keepin' Cozy". The papers in this collection are lovely for winter seasonal scrapping as they're not heavily Christmas themed. 

B sides of the papers!

 I kept the design very simple as at this time of year it's difficult to find the time to scrap so when I do get chance, I want to make fairly quick and easy pages. Less than hour from start to "in the album" is ideal!! I'm sure some of you are the same during the busy festive season.

I chose a piece of kraft bazzill cardstock as my background and two sheets of patterned paper. I started off by trimming .5" off two sides of the patterned paper (green) so that I would have a .25" border to my layout and I "gutted" both the patterned paper and the kraft to make the papers go further and also to use for punching shapes for embellishing later.

I also cut the other paper (red one) to a 12" x 7" panel. 
The edges are inked with distress ink and a blending tool.

Next I layered them all up and adhered in place so that the red strip was about 1.25" up from the bottom edge.

I'm loving instagram photos as the moment and picked one out, featuring my daughter enjoying a hot chocolate, for this page along with one of the journalling cards and adhered them into place.

Three clusters of embellishments using some Glitz heart washi tape, which I tucked just under the edge of the photo, a few punched scalloped circles, some stickers (from "Keepin' Cozy" and Simple Stories "Girl" Sn@p Stickers), wood veneers and enamel dots and my title (using letter stickers from Simple Stories December Documented) is all this page needed before I called it finished!

The supplies used on this page can be found in the S J Crafts Shop!

Don't forget if you visit each featured blog or project each day, leaving a comment (with your UK Scrapper user name) and then go back to UK Scrappers after you've visited the last project tomorrow and leave a comment on the "Blog Hop" thread over there you will be entered into the draw. The full list of projects and details can be found here.

We are currently on the look out for 1 or 2 talented crafters to join out Design Team. Details of our DT call is here and the call is open until 6th January.

All the S J Crafts team wish you a very Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for 2014!

Crate Washi Paper - 10 tips in 10 minutes!

Hello!

Jennifer here today, to show you a video:

Crate Washi Paper -  Ten Tips in Ten Minutes

 10 ideas to use Crate Paper's The Pier Washi Paper on your layouts

I changed a page from this:

(Supplies include The Pier 'Sunscreen' Paper, Summertime Cut Outs, Splash Cut Outs, Label Stickers, Mini Alphas, and Ephemera)  

To this:

Using just this washi paper:

Plus a few tools, and some gems and enamel dots!

Here's the video:

Okay, so it does go ever so slightly over ten minutes because of the images I added for the 'tip' title pages. I also sped some of the video up - so you can watch ten tips in ten minutes but it might take you a little longer than 10 minutes to actually use all these ideas! Of course you can just choose a tip or two to add quickly to your next project.

Here's a couple of detail photos:

You can see "The Pier" collection here! I'm loving it!!

If you make something inspired by anything you've seen in the video let us know - we'd love to see!!

Jennifer x

See more of Jennifer's craft on her blog: Jennifer Grace Creates

Lisa-Jane - Inspired By Winter

Thanks for joining us for the next post in our "Inspired By Winter" series.

If you missed the previous ones you can catch up on those here and here. This week I'd like you to "meet" Design Team member Lisa-Jane.

***    ***    ***

Hello, I'm Lisa-Jane and I'm really pleased to be spending another term on the S J Crafts Design Team!  I have a wonderful husband and I'm a full time Mum to Bella and Louis.  As well as being a total paper-craft addict, I'm also studying Creative Writing part time with the Open University.   

I've always loved cutting and sticking and collecting and telling stories so scrapbooking is the perfect creative outlet for me.  My sister-in-law first introduced me to scrapbooking about 6 years ago but after seeing magazine layouts and the price of basic cardstock, I was too intimated to do any thing more than collect bits and pieces.  A couple of years later, I met someone by chance who was an avid scrapbooker and she tipped my husband off about a local retreat as a Christmas present.  I was exhausted after some rather intensive classes but absolutely hooked!  In the last 3 years I have taken over the house with my papers and embellishments and adhesives!  I think my husband rues the day he surprised me with that ticket!

• What was your last crafty purchase?  Back last week I bought the new Echo Park Photo Freedom kit for a friend who was wanting to start scrapping.  I'm trying to get lots more friends into it so we can get together more often!  I also treated myself to this gorgeous Glitz washi tape - washi tape is my new love!

• Who is your favourite Craft Manufacturer?  - and why? My top three are definitely October Afternoon, My Mind's Eye and Echo Park.  October Afternoon have such great interesting designs in really funky colours which are great for children.  I love the versatility of My Mind's Eye with their classic designs and the ability to mix their collections together and they have such beautiful coordinating embellishments.  The winner for me though has to be Echo Park.  Their collections in the last couple of years have been fabulous with stunning papers at a cost effective price in some gorgeous colourways - what's not to love!

• What is your favourite technique? At the moment I'm really working on my layering technique.  I always ink my edges and sometimes I distress them a bit too.  I love the look of heavily laden pages with lots of little bits and pieces peeking out.  I'll let you into a secret though... using lots of stash on my pages means I can shop for more, right?!

For my "Inspired by Winter" project I created this layout with lots of layers and little sneaks just peeking out.

When I think of Winter I think of cold mornings with pretty patterns of sparkly frosts.  I used doilies to recreate the delicate patterns that the frost leaves on the windows and I used winter colours of white, grey and ice blue, with a hint of sunny yellow.  I sprayed through a doiley with Mister Huey mist and added more Winter sparkle with some white gems and some snowflake patterned vellum to make a little envelope to hide my journalling.
  
My supplies also included: MME Lost and Found 2 6" x 6" pad, stickers from Lost and Found 3 (these two MME collections work so well together), Studio Calico wonderland stickers and Glitz Cashmere Dame washi tape.   

 The Open University year traditionally runs from October to April so the Winter months for me are often spent studying.  Although this photo was taken at my graduation many summers ago, it represents years of being tucked up in the warm with a text book and a highlighter pen. 

With that in mind, I'd better get back to some studying.  

Bye for now

Lisa-Jane xx

Don't forget to stop by Lisa-Jane's blog at Inside My Head