World Cup Challenge Number 4

This Wednesday World Cup Challenge on The Studio is full of choice:
Use the world cup mascot as your inspiration. Did you have a mascot that saw you through your exams and is still a fixture in your bedroom? How about those photos of a visit to the zoo that you've not scrapped yet? Perhaps you fancy scrapping in yellow and green? Or maybe you fancy using long threads like the lion's mane or spots on your LO? You should check out the FIFA website if you need even more inspiration. They say that Zakumi will be the first on the dance floor and last off so you could even scrap some dancing photos for a tenuous link :) And he has his own Wikipedia page too! Oo, the possibilities are endless... I decided to try to keep the colours of Zakumi so chose some green and yellow paper with some complementary yellow paper and green flowers. The photos are of our Eurovision party at the end of May. We went all out on the Euro theme and I made desserts from 18 countries in mini form so that people could have all of them if they chose. Tony and I dressed up too :) I chose spotty paper because Zakumi has spots and added a thread below the desserts photo to represent his mane.

Exhall Birdie House

Back in March Claire very kindly asked me to be a teacher at the Exhall Summer Workshop. I agreed and was really looking forward to it and then she asked me to do an altered birdhouse. Well, as you'll see from my blog, I don't really do altered and the very thought terrified me. Add to that Steph's idea of the technique focus being UTEE and I was completely lost :) Thanks to Suze Wienberg via You Tube and a phone call to Julie the UTEE queen I got the confidence to at least have a go and in the end I'm quite pleased with how it turned out:

If you'd like to have a go at making the house with the kit and instructions then you can get one here. But be quick because Indigo Mill is sadly shutting down :(

Thank you Claire for taking me out of my comfort zone and to all the girls who came to the class and gave it a good go :)

The Studio Challenge: Scrap Summer!

I find summer photos pretty easy to scrap. They're always bright, focused and fun so they lend themselves to scrapbook pages really easily. That being the case, I'm all up to date and I didn't have any photos for this challenge. Instead, I decided to print out some photos from google images that depict ways in which I will spend my summer this year. I also printed a title and the Buzz lightyear on to safmat and stuck them directly on to the page, and a post it note with a pin stuck in too. Some great bright papers from Cosmo Cricket, BG rub ons and bright summer stickers and some bunting stamped using banana frog stamps finish off the LO. Now, it was only earlier this week that I told fellow UKSers that I couldn't see myself ever using bunting but I figure it's the in thing right now so I should record that fact. It looks okay.

Materials:

White cardstock

Cosmo Cricket Snorkel- Umbrellas and Carbonation

Basic Grey Wholy Cow rub ons Summer

'Fun in the sun' ribbon from stash

Safmat from Indigo Mill

Banana frog stamps (Paperchains)

Staz on

World Cup Challenge Number 3

The Wednesday World Cup Challenge on 'The Studio' is a golden oppurtinity to get scrapping.

Some matches have to be decided by the golden goal and/or penalties- use gold on your LO and include 5 of something to represent the number of penalties each country gets to kick.
My LO is 'buttercup baby'. I used five papers/scraps for my five things including two prima packaging and the gold cardstock for the gold. I don't use a lot of yellow but my buttercup photo worked well in this case.

Exhall Summer Workshop Sneek Peak

I was really pleased to be asked to teach a class at the Exhall Summer Workshop this coming weekend. It should be great fun!

Studio Challenge: Turn off the Sky

Today's challenge on 'The Studio' got me thinking. Amanda said 'Grrr! What gets right on your nerves? Tell us all about it with a spot of creative therapy! Get it off your chest... you'll feel much better for it'.

I know that for a great number of people the planes being grounded during the volcanic erruption in Iceland was very irritating and expensive but for me it was great. I loved the clear blue skies without the scars left by planes. I loved the quiet despite living on a Heathrow flight path. I don't really notice them on a day to day basis but when they were allowed to fly again, I really noticed them and they really annoyed me. Gone was the tranquility and quiet. Gone were the clear blue, perfectly unaltered skies. Grrrr!

World Cup Challenge Number 2

The Studio Wednesday World Cup Challenge today will depend on where you live...

This one is a luck of the draw! Scrap using only the colours on your country's flag (and black).
Red and white's not too bad a colour combo, although it did need the black to give it something! I decided to keep to the footie theme and scrapped my feelings about World cup fever this year. The journalling reads:

I love the run up to the World cup and the camaraderie that it brings. I love to see the flags on cars and hanging out of house windows. It fills me with pride to be English. So it's with sadness that I see so few cars with flags flying and I don't remember seeing any flags hanging in houses. Perhaps that's because the media told us that flying the St. George cross is seen as racist by some people or perhaps it's because Capello has clamped down on it but...What world cup fever?'

Here's hoping England do well and the World Cup fever grows :)

Chinese Whispers Group 2

I really struggled with this LO that I received for Group 2 this month:
I had to rearrange it to make it work for me in my LO 'Everything goes better with butterflies!' with the strip under the photo and the circles arranged around the photo, but I do have a LO I'm pleased with now though :)

The Studio: Scrap thirteen

Today over on The Studio Amanda's challenge says: As it's the 13th June, I want to see your pages about the number 13! It could be that you're a firm believer in it being an unlucky number, or maybe it's been lucky for you. Perhaps you just want to list 13 things you love about your hubby. It's up to you, but 13 must be there somewhere!

I hardly ever scrap photos of my when I was younger so this gave me the perfect excuse to do just that. This is me on my thirteenth bithday when I thought I was grown up with my melon balls for a starter and Sara Lee chocolate gateaux for dessert ;) I used some Sassafrass lass (Woodland Whimsy- Life is Beautiful) paper for this one and hand cut all the flowers out of it.

World Cup Challenges

Well, the World Cup celebrations began last night with concerts across South Africa and the host nation will kick off the first game tonight. And over on The Studio Challenge Blog the World Cup Challenges start today :)

The first challenge from Amanda:

Do you get excited about the World Cup? As a bonus challenge this weekend we'd like to see your World Cup inspired pages! If you are the kind of person who can't wait for the madness to be over then you could scrap about the country you live in or your kid's soccer team instead.

My little boy has suddenly become interested in the St George Cross and why there are some cars with flags on so I've had to explain about the World Cup. He's also started using the word 'Why?' repeatedly in the last two weeks as they all do and eventually all those 'Why?'s lead us to the supermarket to buy some England gear ('Why does that car have flags?', 'Why does he want to support England?', 'What's the World Cup?', 'Can I have a flag on my car?', 'Why can't I have a flag on my car?', 'Why can't we go and buy me a England top now?') :) He looks like such a proper boy in his England top and cap. So cute!

Chinese Whispers Group 1

The Chinese Whispers LO I received from Debbie in Group 1 this month was her 'Red Sky at night'. Pretty isn't it! I used it to inspire my LO "Mastering 'sit!'"

The Studio Challenge: Con-dem Britain

Amanda's challenge today on 'The Studio' says 'Have you ever scrapped a page about someone you've never met? Now's your chance! It could be your idol, or just someone who has touched your life in some way, but you've never had the pleasure of meeting them.'
My inital thoughts were to scrap the author Richard Preston who I've never met, but who had a big affect on the direction that my life took.

Then I decided to scrap the election. Here are two men who together are going to influence our lives for the next few years(probably). I was totally obsessed by the election this time aound. I enjoyed the politics, the debacle that is Sky News and the 'what's going to happen? nobody knows!' feel of it all. For the LO itself I printed out some photos of key moments and some embelishment images, made a paper rosette, used a felt tip pen to colour white lace because I didn't have time to go to the stash shop, used safmat to record the 'google' title from the day of the election and the coins falling to the bottom of the page and cut out empty alphas for the title. I also inked the edges with the ink pad face down on the paper and included some of the quotes I'll remember from the election.

World Cup Teaser

Even those who don't like football (or soccer) will probably be aware that the World Cup starts in South Africa on 11th June and will continue right through until 11th July. That's 64 mathches and a minimum of 5860 minutes of football. Think of all that extra scrapping time you'll have whilst the other half sits glued to the TV or goes down the pub with his mates! What will you do with yourself? Well don't fear. Check out The Studio Challenge Blog on 11th June for a little something to kick off the World Cup with.

The Studio on Facebook

If you've not already found 'The Studio' on Facebook then we're here at last :) Make sure that you tell all your crafty friends about us using the handy 'Suggest to friends' button.

And don't forget to check out the new Challenge blog on Sunday 6th June for the relaunch of the weekly challenges :)

Starter for Ten: Through the Keyhole

I really enjoyed this CJ which asked us to show snaps of our homes. I took lots of little photos and then used scraps of paper and black rub ons and I'm really pleased with how it came out. I also found a use for some of the hundreds of little butterflies that my son punched out of old envelopes.