Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Page Remake: Giving Thanks

With the school year about to start next week, and the preparations starting this week, I'm afraid that this blog will again suffer from neglect.  My teaching load is the heaviest it's been and working with five classes (just imagine the endless piles of papers to grade!) will probably keep me extremely busy, but I will promise to try to post as often as I can.  So this might mean that I will be putting up old projects, which - as I am still purging my stuff - I unearth little by little.

But what's up here today is a remake of an old scrapbook page.  When I was in grad school in the US, I kept a scrapbook of sorts (although I didn't realize it at the time).  I have plenty of pictures that I kept organized and ready for viewing in photo albums.  But since we had our pictures printed in photo labs, they came with copies and besides framing them or giving them away, I didn't know what else to do with all the extras.  So I got this spiral scrapbook album where I kept those pics.  It's also useful for housing letters, greeting cards, invitations, brochures, etc.  Although I had good intentions at the beginning, as grad school got more hectic and stressful, I was unable to keep track of everything (sadly, the last entry is from Thanksgiving in 2000).  So when I finished and came home to the Philippines in 2005, I had resolved to redo the album.  And as I became increasingly interested in scrapbooking, I vowed to improve on each of the pages, which isn't really much of a stretch because the pages were mostly pictures and mementos.  There were rarely any embellishments, or even journaling.  Yikes!  But the memories are mostly there, so I thought that I'd better work on it before I forget about it altogether.

This was the "remake" of a page.  After looking through the album several times and getting stuck, I just started working on this page, which is the very last one in the album.  It only had two pictures and it was simple enough.  Now it took me a while to finish the page.  I thought that I wanted to make it an honest-to-goodness layout and base it on a sketch, coordinate the embellishments, and with well thought out journaling.  I am pleased with the finished product, but it took way too long to finish it.  So after this page, I thought that I would just make the process less tedious and more free-wheeling.  This is, after all, a hobby and I plan to enjoy it every step of the way.

Tools & Supplies:  Cardstock (Mint Fancy Papers), patterned paper (Recess), chipboard letters (Dreamstreet Papers), flowers, brads, and conchos (All About Scrapbooking), pen (Dong-A), stamps (Pink Paislee), others - lace flower (handmade).

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

First ever ATC

I first encountered ATCs (artist trading cards) on youtube, on the APieceofCraftdotcom channel, where Marion Smith talks about starting an ATC club.  The cards are basically made to showcase the artist (a business card of sorts), using any kind of medium/media just as long as it's all contained on a 2-1/2" x 3-1/2" card, which are traded among artists (not sold/purchased).  I was instantly intrigued, not necessarily because I wanted to make them myself, but as an ongoing project for an elective I am teaching in school.  My idea was to assign s specific topic/theme for each month and the students swap cards when they're done.  This is was a bit of a challenge for them since the subject is Special Topics in the Life Sciences, so it was cool to see what ideas they came up with trying to interpret scientific concepts in an artistic or creative way.  I had students who were anxious at first as they feel that they are not creative at all, but it really wasn't about the end product being pretty or visually compelling.  It was actually all about their thought process.  And the swap at the end of each month didn't hurt at all.  So anyway, this particular ATC has nothing to do with the class I was teaching, but it was simply me trying my hand at it.  On a scrap piece of black cardstock, I tried out some stamps (Fiskars and 7Gypsies) that I bought recently and heat embossed the stamped images.  I also added some paper flowers (Prima), brads, and bling.  And then I rounded the corners to finish it off.  It's really very simple, but I'm happy with how it turned out.  And I have it on display in my craft space ever since I finished making it.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Glimmer Misted Paper Flowers

After seeing them on many layouts for a long long long (!) time, I finally gave in and got me some Glimmer Mist.  And all I can say is that I'm am so happy with what it can add to my pages/projects.  Just tried them out here on some white/off-white paper flowers to see what the colors would look like (from the left: Meadow Green, Tattered Rose, Purple Pansy, Starfish, Coffee Shop, Yellow Daisy, Olive Vine, and Walnut Gold).  Aren't they all pretty?

Materials:  Prima Got Flowers? (Winter) and Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist kits (Adventure and Garden Bouquet)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Easy to Make Cards


So after cleaning my desk, the very first thing I made was handmade cards.  I have long been wanting to work on these after being inspired by cards that I've seen in magazines and on youtube.  And I have to make a special mention: Kristina Werner's cards are awesome (http://www.kwernerdesign.com/blog/).  Her cards are really pretty and simple, and the way she makes them in her videos is simply inspiring.  Though these cards I made were actually inspired by an insert in a Scrapbooks etc magazine that I got last year.  It's a special on cards: 12 cards for any occasion, and I just wanted to do something quick and easy.  Although these were in no way quick since I had to cut out the flower and star shapes.  Sadly, I have to work some more on my scissor skills, but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

 

Tools & Supplies:  cardstock, patterned paper , ribbon, brads, and letter stickers (All About Scrapbooking), ink (Craft Smart and Fiskars), alphabet stamps (Making Memories), corner rounder (EK Success)

Monday, May 14, 2012

This Desk Is Clean

You're probably thinking, "THAT is clean???", but if you had seen my desk last week, you will agree.  All school year long it has been hidden under piles and piles of paper and miscellaneous stuff, and there was less than a square foot of it cleared for my laptop and space for grading papers.  You see, virtually my whole life is in this room - my bedroom.  With stuff for work (books and plenty of paper), for leisure (many more books, cds, dvds), and for crafts (there's A LOT!), not to mention all my personal effects, it's really overwhelming at times.  But all through the summer, I've been chipping away at the seemingly insurmountable task of cleaning/organizing my room.
The first thing I did was grab most of my work stuff and place them (temporarily) in the living room.  So there are now four boxes and stacks of paper and books sitting on the big bench there.  I've left some of the bigger books to occupy the right half of the bookshelf above my desk area.  Most of the media stuff I've left untouched so far, since I still haven't figured out where to store them.  As for the crafting tools and supplies, I've sorted most of them out.  I just have a few boxes/baskets separated from the rest of it because they're for projects that have yet to be finished.  In fact, I just finished one mini-album yesterday (yay!) so that's one less project to tackle.  I still have a looong way to go.  So I can't post a picture of the rest of the room yet as it still is a disaster.  But I'm definitely looking forward to when this will all be done and I can reap the benefits of an organized space that I can relax or work in.
And that I can mess up again. :-p

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Flowers of May

One of the things that I remember doing as a little kid during summer is offering flowers to the Blessed Virgin Mary in church during the Flores de Mayo season.  And it's really unbelievable how summer just flew by and now we have just a few weeks before school starts.  I had planned on sorting out all my stuff and cleaning out my room this summer which, up until now, is a work in progress (more on that later).  And try as I might, I wanted to discipline myself by not doing anything crafty until all the cleaning is done, but I just couldn't help myself!  So I give in every once in a while and work on small things... and one major project (for my niece's birthday).  Lately, I've been enamored by pretty flower embellishments and so I tried my hand at making lace ones and used a bit of bling for the flower centers.  I think they turned out pretty cute.