Laura Rumble - Crafter

Here's a round up of some heart themed makes from the last few weeks. First up is a heart embossed background for a CAS(ish) card.  Coverplate from Time For Teas Designs, bird stamp from MFT, sequins and sentiment from Pretty Pink Posh.  I love the quilt-y puffiness of embossing with a coverplate but I'm never completely sure the best way to capture it in a photo. Now a run of layouts, some more 'hearty' than others.  I really wanted to use up as many of my puffy heart stickers as possible.  It became clear that just a scattering per layout wasn't going to do the job... My cut file, patterned paper from Pinkfresh Studio, bits and bobs from the depths of my stash.  (This type of cut file is great as you get two usable pieces, one the opposite of the other.  Picture where this is blue being white and where this is white being blue.  I'll share the other layout soon...) I changed tack and went all out with the stickers... This is based on an old sketch of...

I'm up to my old tricks again... Pinkfresh have a new collection coming soon so I need to use up my hoarded PFS stash to make space for the new goodies! This navy floral is an absolute stunner and the mint with delicate white motifs is in my top 5 ever papers.  This is the ends of my third or fourth sheet of the mint paper! The photo featured skyscrapers and I tried to echo that with my paper placement.  Columns of paper at differing heights positioned to look like a cityscape.  I also stash busted by stickers gathering all of the coral tones I could find.  I clustered them on one 'building' to look a little bit like windows. As I was using so much colour and pattern I kept the rest pretty simple with the only embellishing coming in the form of a thread nest with initial alpha sticker and four fishtail flags tucked under the photo.

I don't know about you but I get overwhelmed when ALL of the new collections come out at once.  It's especially bad after Creativation when American Crafts releases what feels like 100 collections at once.  There also seems to be a supply thing and if you don't buy straight away you miss out forever .  I wonder cynically if that is all part of the plan.  Then there is Cocoa Vanilla and Pink Fresh too... mustn't miss out on them either.  This time I decided I would place one order for all things under the AC umbrella.  Lottie Loves Paper is my shop of choice and I had a good browse and made a list.  Then I crossed off most of the things on the list when I realised how many sheets of paper that would be!  I settled on 5th & Monaco (paper pad, ephemera and stickers), Paige Evans (one sheet of the pastel diamonds) and Maggie Holmes (four sheets of paper and the sticker sheet).  I was so excited by 5th & Monaco and yet it has ...

Very excited to share my second project made using the April Lollipop Box Club kit 'Secret Garden'. Lisa has included a little pot of paint in this month's box and added a suggestion that we paint some leaves.  I was having a meh day and this was exactly what I needed. Painting is something that is very therapeutic for me, especially repetitive painting.  I spent some time painting leaves and sprigs with varying amounts of water and pigment, using gentle pressure on the bristles to create the curved shapes. I encouraged the blooms and watermarks by adding extra paint or water to leaves when they were half dry.  For me this is a fab no-pressure get-lost-in-the-moment kind of activity. When I'd filled up the paper I had a little puddle of paint left on my desk so I smooshed a gessoed sheet of book paper in it.  I used this as a base to build up a background allowing layers to dry (or more accurately speeding up the drying with my heat gun) before adding mo...

This layout is from mid-April 2018.  I can't remember any details unfortunately - another reminder to myself not to leave things languishing in drafts for so long! I'm liking the lose mixed media and the gentle colour scheme. Now that's what I call layering! I'm off for an ice cream, thanks for stopping by!

I don't know about you but I get overwhelmed when ALL of the new collections come out at once.  It's especially bad after Creativation when American Crafts releases what feels like 100 collections at once.  There also seems to be a supply thing and if you don't buy straight away you miss out forever .  I wonder cynically if that is all part of the plan.  Then there is Cocoa Vanilla and Pink Fresh too... mustn't miss out on them either.  This time I decided I would place one order for all things under the AC umbrella.  Lottie Loves Paper is my shop of choice and I had a good browse and made a list.  Then I crossed off most of the things on the list when I realised how many sheets of paper that would be!  I settled on 5th & Monaco (paper pad, ephemera and stickers), Paige Evans (one sheet of the pastel diamonds) and Maggie Holmes (four sheets of paper and the sticker sheet).  I was so excited by 5th & Monaco and yet it has sat there un...

Hellooo!  This month's Lollipop Box is called Hello Spring and there are bunnies... and the birds are singing outside - happy happy! My first creation with this month's box is a spread in my hand made TN.  This TN has the theme of rainbow.  The photos can be of any subject, in any order; the only thing that matters is that it will read in rainbow order (ROYGBIV on a loop) when finished.  This is a spread for green. Everything used except for the L is from the kit.  I've cut frames from a patterned paper, used the gorgeous foiled washi, used stickers and cut aparts...  I caved and used the tassel too.  Half of me wanted to save it for another project, half of me wanted to use it here even though it would make everything a bit chunky.  I've added it to the edge of the page so it shouldn't prevent the TN from closing.  I quite like the idea of a really chunky notebook now, so that may be the route I take. Here's the video: ...

Sharing a layout I made over the weekend for one of the Lottie Loves Paper challenges.  (The challenges are still open here !)  I had a bad weekend healthwise so this was a simple layout made with shaky hands. The cut file is called Love Puzzle from Pretty My Page.  You can buy the download here or the pre-cut here . The cut file does the heavy lifting on this page.  I cut it on white and backed it on black for maximum contrast.  I picked my path through the maze (there are two ways you could go) and added lazy sewing in blue thread.  Lazy sewing is using one stitch per straight instead of the usually multiple stitches of about 6-10mm. I embellished minimally with puffy heart stickers and a stamped tag for the title.  That was the sum total of my weekend!  I consoled myself by looking at the 100+ layouts made by my scrappy friends and am so full of ideas now that I may just burst! Thanks for stopping by!

I've pre-ordered some of the new Cocoa Vanilla collection from Lottie Loves Paper.  You know what that means, don't you?  Yep, I'm trying to use up some of my CVS stash so the new stuff will fit in my box!! I took a sheet of mixed media experiments from last year and cut out a load of circles.  I went old school... drawing around a cotton reel and cutting them out with scissors.  Sane people would use a punch, I suppose, but hey, whatyagonnado. These circles form the base of my layout.  I also trimmed the photo into a circle.  I must have run out of luck as it was wonky and didn't look anywhere close to circular.  I got into that vicious circle of trimming... just a bit more on this side to make it more round which turned into needing a bit more on that side.  I rescued it with a die and everything returned to calm. I added lots of white sewing to the circles and to the corners of the layout.  It's subtle being mostly white on...

Catching up on a couple of layouts made for YouTube hops last year... First up is a layout made for the UK Scrappy YouTubers Cooperative.  This is a new-ish venture and I hope you'll see more from us all soon. I used a colouring page that I had painted with watercolour as the main feature of the page.  I cut all the flowers and leaves out and layered them behind my photo. The purple piece was a watercolour experiment that turned out too cool to throw away! I mounted the white on a yellow glitter 12x12.  I gutted the middle and used it to cut out some yellow circles.  These circles help to tie the border in with the centre of the layout. I went through quite a few choices before I settled on the yellow... white, grey, sage, a few purples, blues, red and black all failed the test!  Looking back they were all fine but none of them popped like the yellow did. Here's the video: And this one was for World Kindness Day... I pull...