CSI # 75 : Today I was so . . .

. . . .   Proud!  Yes indeed I was. Today (well 5th June actually!) I was extremely proud to watch all 3 of our kids head out the door to the school bus on the first day of their exams. For Joe this was his final time at school before heading off to Uni in September and for the twins it was their first taste of State Exams as they sat their Junior Certificate Qualifications.

I used the the CSI CaseFile #75 which included using a door element on your page.  Ummm, not too sure about that but then I remembered the Prima doors that came in a My Creative Scrapbook kit a long time ago which I had put to one side as I was not too sure on how to incorporate it onto one of pages.  As the kids were standing at our front door I thought this could actually work. The door to their future . . lol  

I decided to use the door accent to hold my journaling (apologies for the fuzzy pic  . . .  my precious DSLR is broken so this was taken with a very shaky hand and my phone!)

Stop by CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration to see how everyone else solved Case #75!

The Cross Bearer . . .

This is my layout for the weekly challenge on UKS this week.  These photo’s are really precious to me – here’s the story behind them:

We live not far from Malin Head, Co Donegal. Its a beautiful place to visit, it’s so peaceful up there and the views across the Atlantic are  stunning. On a good day you can spot dolphins and basking sharks too. We go up there a lot for walks along the cliff tops. A long the clifftop pathway there sits a cross. It’s been there forever (according to the older locals) and has had visitors from all over the world. It’s an old wooden cross that sits wedged in a pile of stone. In April 2012 we had storms like we had never seen before here, the wind and rain was fierce!  Lots of damage was done to builds and tress and we lost power a few times. Once these storms past the weather went back to the usual bright but breezy and occasionally wet  April days. It was one one of these days that we headed up to Malin Head for our walk and to take some family photo’s in readiness for a scrapping retreat I was going on. When we got up there we noticed that the cross was gone!  We were all sad to see it missing and set about having a look round to see if it was lying somewhere abouts. Tony spotted the cross way down the cliff edge sitting near the water!!  He was so pleased he spotted it, and he took it upon himself to climb down and retrieve it. I was so proud of him but worried at the same time, those cliffs are dangerous. His Dad went with him all the way down and guided him back up carrying the cross. He was so proud walking along with it propped up on his shoulder. He put it back in its resting place with a great big grin on his face. Mission accomplished!

After a fair break from scrapping I'm really enjoying getting back into it. I’ve changed up my style a bit, introduced some new techniques / styles that I have been inspired by via Pinterest and also tried to incorporate a wee bit of the art journaling style too in particular hand writing my journaling straight onto my pages, something I hardly ever did before.

Gotta love Facebook!

We all love Facebook right ?  I certainly do although if you looked at my ‘wall’ you would probably think I hadn’t even been on there for months. I don’t post to my wall much and I don’t update my status . . .  BUT I’m on there everyday. I use it mainly to socialise within Groups that I am in and to spy on our kids.

Last Friday the kids broke up for the Summer (here in Ireland the Summer holidays run from the end of May until the start of September!  Crazy . . . unless your a kid then I suppose it’s pretty awesome) so as you can imagine there were a fair few photo’s popping up on the Facebook pages of the kids celebrating the end of term. I was really pleased to see this photo of Amy pop up – I love it! She had a really tough day emotionally as she had to say goodbye to some friends and teachers as she moves on to the next chapter in her school life. One of her friends snapped this with their mobile phone and I just love the expression on her face and new immediately that I had to print it out and get it onto a scrapbook page.

I used this week’s case file from CSI which gave me the colour scheme of lemon, pinks, green and black. The background paper is by Lemon Owl and already had a lot of arty texture to it which I just enhanced with some stamping and acrylic paint.

I was torn about how to do the journaling and finally went with hand written.  Since I started doing art journaling I have gotten used to just going with the free flow handwriting, it was something I was uncomfortable with before because I thought my writing was a bit messy but I’ve learnt to embrace it.

The look of art journal meets traditional scrapbook is something Im really liking. Best of both worlds eh!

Check out the other entries on this case file here – CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration

Thanks for stopping by!

Still Learning!

I thought I would share the next few pages of the Journal Soup class by Kate Crane that I am taking part in on 21 Secrets. Ooh there is so much to learn!  I’m loving it.  Playing with glue, paper, paint and crayons is making me feel like I a child again back at school creating art ‘just because’.

I have already made a few decisions about the mediums I prefer, the style I like and the things I shall be avoiding. Drawing is definitely on the ‘avoiding’ list!  I loved creating the background on the angel image and then it all went wrong when I started to draw the angel. I stuck with it  though and decided to journal about how drawing is not for me. I’ll keep the piece in my soup box as a reminder that I should avoiding free-hand drawing. If you look close enough you will see that I tried to paint over the terrible eyes and nose I drew on the face but as the paint dried it became visible!  Oh well, just another reminder of how not to do it . .lol

The piece in the bottom right corner was fun to do too. It involved using lots of different techniques including making my own stamps (Im in love with Speedy Carve Foam) I didn’t use a quote or journal on this piece, instead just keeping it as a visual reminder of the techniques Kate used in the class.

My box is starting to look very colourful!  I’ll keep at it until the box is overflowing. Did I mention already that I’m loving this art journaling business ? 

Thanks for stopping by
Dee
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Something a little different . . .

This weeks challenge on UKScrappers was to use the sketch provided, blue (and / or pink) and stamps or punches. I wanted to play along as my scrapping had come to a complete standstill and I am pushing myself to get going again. I decided to try something a little different and had a go at creating a background. I used some water colour paints to create the splashes of blue taking inspiration from the pattern on Joe’s shorts. I doodled a pattern with a black liner pen again inspired by the pattern on the shorts. It’s clean and simple and Im really pleased with the finished page.

Here’s a closer look at those shorts! 

I like the way the page come together and I will definitely be using some different techniques on my layouts in the future. Maybe that’s why things came to a halt, everything got so ‘boring’ or ‘samey’ – time for a change up I think. There is so much inspiration out there that I need to tap into!

Thanks for stopping by.
Dee

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