Learning to Fly

I am a scrapbooker at heart, but I do love to get my hands messy and do a little bit of mixed media every now and then ... ok, more often than not, mostly because I love all the textures and colours as well as getting to play with the myriad of products available to create these projects.  Hence this wooden canvas, using texture paste, crackle paste and ink sprays.

I used a piece of wood for this project, first running quite a thick layer of texture paste through a stencil in order to create height and lots of grooves for the ink sprays to run through.  Once the texture paste was dry, I placed the stencil back into the grooves and ran a thin layer of Distress crackle paint through the stencil on top of the texture paste.

I made sure that these products were dry before spraying with Prima Colour Bloom sprays and water.  Once these were dry, I added a copper rub over some of the texture paste, especially into the cracks.

The chipboard cogs were given an "old" look with Finnabair rust pastes (brown, turquoise and copper).

I did add a bit of turquoise paint at accent points (under some of the metal embellishments), spraying it with water so that the paint with dilute and run down.

If this is not something that you have never done before or perhaps have even been too petrified to try it, I hope that you will also get a chance to step out of your comfort zone and get your hands a little dirty.  Give it a try - it can be a lot of fun!  Till next time.

Remember to breathe and relax

I am not really a beach person, in that I won't go and lie on the beach in the heat, getting sand everywhere.  I am more of a "walk along the beach with my feet in the water" kind of girl.  That relaxes me ... but, I sure do love creating beach and sea layouts.

I created this layout with pic's from an island holiday a few years back, using a recent local sea range.  When I saw the papers, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.  I saw an octopus on the www recently and thought it would go perfectly with the seahorses, sea weed and other sea and beach life in this range.

I love how the tentactles curl and extend across the side of the layout.

This was fun! So much fun that I couldn't help myself and created

an additional single layout as well ....

 This range includes some wording on acetate which is perfect for overlaying a photograph.

Hope you enjoy these layouts and the next time your're walking along the beach .....

just breathe and relax and live for the moment.

Capturing everyday moments

It's been so relaxing creating a layout for myself these holidays and what a different layout it is, stretching me beyond what I'm used to doing.

I love creating mini albums but have never really wanted to do flips and flaps on a scrapbooking layout because I'm always unsure how I need to store it so that whoever is looking at it, can use it to it's full potential. Having said that, I decided to try my hand at one of these "interactive" layouts, being inspired by some very beautiful ones that I've seen lately.

I absolutely love all the cacti as well as the colour combination of these papers.

I created a large flap on the right hand side of the layout.

This large flap lifts up and over to reveal a smaller flap with space for quite a few photographs.

There is another large flap on the left side of the layout which lifts up and over to reveal some smaller flaps beneath it, as well as a pullout on the left side.

I heat embossed some elements on both pages and coloured some chipboard elements as well as made some splashes using Tim Holtz Distress Oxides.  I hope you enjoy this layout and feel inspired to create something similar.

With love 💙

Create and Inspire

  

I finally did it! My very first blog and it has only taken me about a year to do so. Blogging is not something I ever envisioned doing (because of time), but we'll see how it goes.  And to celebrate my first blog, I thought I'd share a little mixed media project that I created recently using some of the amazing Finnabair products.

I do like to scrapbook, but I love to play with mixed media.  And if I can combine the two, even better! I created these two mini canvasses to go alongside each other - CREATE and INSPIRE - because, as crafters, that's what we hope to do ... to create the things we love and to inspire others to do the same.

I love using Prima and Finnabair products on my mixed media projects.  The make mixed media so easy and so much fun.

I also love the combination of these two colours ... jade and purple.  I highlighted some of the elements with Finnabair gold wax to bring out some of the amazing details.

And micro beads ... who doesn't love gold micro beads?!

I added a bit of  Ranger "Mermaid" Liquid Pearls to the texture paste and I love the colour!

I do hope that this little project has inspired you to get creative and to go get your hands dirty ... who knows, you might just enjoy it!