Challenge #88 week of 29th April 2013

I seem to be the eternal white rabbit at the moment. But better late than never so they say!

I had a busy, food-filled weekend with my mum in town and we were out and about more in three days than I am usually all month. But that got me thinking about our prompt this week.

Where I live, there is huge excitement at this time of year as the asparagus season kicks off. It's little more than 6 weeks during a normal year and ends just as abruptly as it starts - one of the few truly real food seasons around in our global economy where here in the cold temperate north, we can get our hands on strawberries and the like all year round.

But asparagus season is something very special. We wait around for it. We talk about it. We compare prices and taste across farms. We recommend the best restaurants to go. We buy kilos and kilos of it and then eat it with passion.

And on Saturday, I had my first of the season. Followed by another plate full on Sunday. And that will no doubt be filled with many more plate-fulls before it's all over for another year on 24th June. I'm in heaven!

So, in the spirit of welcoming the white asparagus back to our tables for a few fleeting weeks, I'd like you to be inspired by seasonal food. Or food of the season maybe.

There are many different ways to take this prompt and in the past I've done a few food pages so I will have to put on my thinking cap myself.

Asparagus is ticked off my list with this layout from a few years ago:

As are strawberries (although, who's to say I've said all there is to say about these wonderful delicacies?)

I hope you can find some inspiration in seasonal food this week. Don't forget to share over at Flickr with the tag WM#88. Go on, make me hungry!

#87 inspired by tardiness

like most weeks I had a simple and whimsical approach to this ... and a dark, deep one. So I chose the happy, easy one for this and I'm glad I did it.

I knew who my "late" subject would be and I even knew what photo I would use... but the page design sort of struggled. Anyhow, I stuck to colors that remind me of Gaby (red and teal after a quilt I made her) which are not necessarily easy colors  for me. But I like flipping through and seeing pages that reflect her personality.

I also delved into the world of clusters... yet again... It really isn't natural for me, but I did ok here. 

using Glitter Girl concepts of triangles and clusters I found elements to repeat in each one to carry it through the page and It worked out nicely. 

I also got to use some older stash which is always a plus.

So there you have it. Were you inspired by tardiness this week? Did you have any stories about being late that you had to share? I hope you do!

xo,
Pamage

Challenge # 87 Week of April 23, 2013

So this week's challenge is a little late... 

So is Spring actually.

Which got me thinking. And you know what happens when that happens.

So yes, the prompt this week is a little out there. Maybe not so much. But Time is something I feel happens to all of us - and maybe there is a story or two you need to tell about being late.

Perhaps, an obsession with the White Rabbit... or about how you felt when you found out you were "late" ... or your prince charming coming in later in your life... or just how Spring seems to be running behind schedule this year... Or that pesky personality flaw in yourself or a loved one of always being late. 

There you have it. Your "better-late-than-never" prompt. :) Have fun with it. 

We will post by next Sunday... or maybe we will be late. You'll just have to wait and see. Whenever it is you post, please remember to tag it WM#87.

xo,

Pamage

#86 inspired by foreign words

Ha ha! Stumped by my own prompt. Funny how that happens to both of us!

I put it down to being a little out of mojo right now but I did have a go and flipped through my photos until one caught my eye. One I've been wanting to scrap for a while and the look on the sheep's face just kind of said to me, "Yes, what do you want?!" Two words in German just summed that up and there, I had my base.

Turning to my Counterfeit April kit, Opposite, I picked out some natural colours as well as a hint of pink to pick up the fact that she had such a pretty face.

I managed to keep to my kit exclusively with just three tiny strips of washi being added in along with a few mists. Not bad for this mismatched kit so far.

I truly wanted to come up with something more creative - bringing in something in French maybe (yes, I USED to be able to speak that. It feels like an awful long time ago but I know it must be lurking in my brain somewhere), or bringing in some of those words from German that I find perfect for the job - better than English, or the fact that I'm losing my English a little.

But this will have to do for now. After all, this sheep wouldn't have spoken to me in anything than German would she?!?

Apologies for the late-at-night, slightly-shiny-glare-from-electric-light, colours-a-bit-off photo.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge April kit #3

Loving trying to make these old BG papers look fresh and new. And looky there, a piece of that tricky to use glimmer glass. Success. :-)

Hope you were inspired by foreign words yourself this time around. Don't forget to share over at Flickr (here) with the tag WM#84. Can't wait to see what you create.

#86 inspired by foreign words

one solid prompt from Lisa, a little nudge from Paige Evans and her latest scrap-your-stash video using ribbon to peak behind objects and some of the cutest beach photos I've ever taken... and we've got ourselves a layout.

my spanish words were no-brainers at these are the few words my friend knows and uses. It was a fun way to scrap yet another beach layout for us. a good story to tell.

creatively I have been in a weird funk, so it was fun to watch this page come together and exceed my expectations for it. I created the heart with photos and added all my embellishments before i felt I needed to stitch over it. I am glad I did as I feel it defines this main feature of the page (even if it totally botched the stitching. 

 

 I love how the ribbon adds so much to this page without patterned paper.

i also added a bit of watercoloring to three sides to blend all the elements in better. How I missed my watercolors. It is a great way to customize a background paper.

 

thanks for joining along on another week here at Whimsical Musings. We hope you will play along. Gracias!

xo,
Pamage

#85 inspired by divided page protectors

a few days late, but I did it. I was completely frozen and intimated by this prompt, despite coming up with it and raving about how cool it was last week. Truth is, sometimes I challenge myself too much to come up with something innovative for you guys. But after missing my deadline of Sunday I sat myself down and had a serious talk with myself. No more undue pressure.

So I looked for a story with lots of pictures and not a lot of story left to tell and went to work. I found a gap in between a few pages I had done at the beginning of the year from a recent trip from my best friend and all it took to complete the story was one 9-pocket page protector to get the job done.


this came together so easily and quickly that it felt like cheating again. I just focused on embellishing two pockets on each side and the rest were photos and memorabilia.

I added colors and elements to each side to match the existing layouts. Although I did those two other layouts a few months back, I found some scraps and other leftover embellishments that matched the colors, style or exact products such as the washi.

 

I also tried to repeat elements such as the circles and butterflies on the second spread to create visual triangles for the double-page layout.

 

and of course, I added mini collages of photos to complete the rest of the story.

overall, I feel this was the best way to complete this story. I made a total of 4 pages 12x12 to use up the photos I really loved and tell my story and the rest of the photos from this vacation quickly fit into this divided page protector and my vacation is now effectively scrapped.

(some of you may remember this page from the goodbye prompt at the beginning of the year).

 

thanks for being patient with me. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Is this a technique you can use on your own albums to complete a story?

xo,
Pamage

Challenge #86 week of 15th April 2013

Another week rolls by and here we are again?

Ready?

Wie soll ich das denn sagen? Ich dachte wir könnten ein bisschen in Deutsch machen? 

No? 

How about Français? 

Español?

Italiano?

Yes, you've got it! I'm challenging you to incorporate foreign words into your scrapping in some way. For some of us, that might be easier than for others. I know that for both Pam and I, we live with two languages and can take our pick so to say. But still, I think we will both probably try to find a new way with foreign words.

I know that even if you "only" speak English, then you still know a whole lot of words from other lands. Have a play around with this and try some words out for size!

I've lived here for almost 12 years now and up to a year ago, as a teacher of Business English, I spent most of my time with my native language, learning German as I went along only. Now that I work back in the "real world", I have to communicate a lot in German and I have improved a lot! It's normal for me to flip between both languages within one sentence and that can't be easy for my colleague who has had to learn to follow my haphazard way of speaking. And I'm losing my English if you can believe it. Very often, that new language comes to mind and I am fighting to find the right word. It's made me think a lot about our preconceptions of language - to what sort of people speak what language. How it sounds to outsiders. Which words are "pretty" and expressive!

To be honest, even though I spend my day switching between my two languages, I have only scrapped a handful of pages with any German on them.

I made this one a bit more recently:

Where will you take this prompt today? What words do you have in your every day that are foreign to your native language or where you come from? What language do you wish you spoke?

We'd love to see what you come up with so make sure you share over at Flickr (here) with the prompt WM#86

#85 inspired by divided page protectors

Ha ha! Pam always knows just how to stretch me the most!

This was the first time I've scrapped with divided page protectors even though I have a full set of PL stuff here ready and waiting. I've done some small flip photo album scrapbooks à la Stacy J and that was a lot of fun but a full 12x12 divided into different sizes? New.

I obviously need practice because this took me AGES! Longer than a normal page in fact and even then, I'm not fully satisfied with the result but I have photos and some story as well as a bit of memorabilia captured so it can't be all bad :-)

I tried to use a bit of each of the papers across the three pages and mix up the photos but can someone tell me what I'm supposed to do with the small photos that I use so often - the Instagram squares and the 2x3s? They just didn't "fit" anywhere.

And even then, I had lots more photos to include - maybe I will just put them behind one of the blocks to find later on.

This was hard work but also quite a bit of fun. I think I need to practice and think it through a bit more next time.

 

Another week of creative stretching - thanks Pam! I will be trying this again!

How did you get on? First time, a Project Lifer or just a divided protector fan? Don't forget to share over at Flickr (here) with the tag WM#85

#84 inspired by the ombré trend

I know! I'm late. I'm a bad scrapper and a very bad blogger at the moment. Big apologies.

I'm trying to catch up but honestly, where does the time go?!?

I did manage to get a layout made yesterday evening though and that was a good thing. It's a great stress reliever and I'm in need of that right now :-)

So, I challenged you to take up the ombré trend and get colourful.

Whenever I put these prompts together, I'm rarely organised enough to actually think about HOW I will make mine and I certainly didn't have any papers in mind. So it was pure luck to open up my April Counterfeit Kit, Opposite,  and discover a selection of creams, yellows and oranges which seemed to be calling to be put together. This was most definitely not planned but such a pleasant surprise.

I've been missing using lots of paper on my layouts recently so I decided to just select a group of papers, cut them into strips and use one of my favourite border punches in order to get a large block of colour on my page. I placed them all a bit off kilter to make it look less structured and quite like the higgeldy piggeldy look to it.

After laying them out on the page, I decided that the page didn't need much else. The kit didn't have much that fitted the look I wanted to achieve so I settled on a few resin roses, a couple of über-old rub ons including a Doodlebug alpha which must be four or five years old, and some pearl sprinkles. A few glitter mist splats finished this off.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit - Opposite - layout #2

My journalling is minimal but heartfelt and the photo is one I adore so you can be sure to see that again and again on various layouts.

I loved seeing the ombré effect appear with the papers and I will be trying this again - practice makes perfect I think!

We really hope you share your colour choices over at our Flickr gallery (here) with the tag WM#84. 

Challenge #85 week of April 8th 2013

Hey there. Finally Spring here so I am spending less and less time at my scrap table and more time having fun.

But you all still need a challenge and I hope that is what I am here for...

I know many of you may have jumped on the Project Life train. I still haven't made the leap. But I do love the idea of making a layout with bits and pieces of life instead of a large 12x12 canvas. I am talking about divide page protectors. Those awesome little things aren't exclusive to Project Lifers. In fact, I incorporate them into my regular memory keeping all the time to tell more complete stories. 

Here are some examples -

from a trip to boston

     

  

 and from a roadtrip to Washington DC

you can see I can fit a lot of memorabilia, especially from trips, into these types of layouts... and create mini sections within a larger album of cohesive pages. So there you have it. Your challenge this week is to create a page (or two ... or three) using divided page protectors. Don't have them? No problem! I will post on the forum a bunch of resources from Shimelle and Julie FFB on how to create your own. Have fun with it and if this isn't something you use, just see where it takes you.

xo,

Pamage

#84 inspired by Ombre

Ok, I will admit that I have always been a little ombre crazy. Every before it was popular. Even before I knew the name of it. I used to call it "gradient" which is a much less fun word to say. 

Anyway, I have paintings I did in 2007 that will prove that I was onto this trend way before it started. And I jumped on it's bandwagon from the very beginning, mostly creating my own effects with paints, mists, colored pencils and patterned papers.

So of course, I was thrilled by this challenge - and I wanted to challenge myself in the same ways... but also in new ways. I bring you my two layouts.

 this first layout wasn't all that different from what i've done before except i threw it all on the diagonal for a little twist. love this color scheme and how the photo just stands out. This is a funny/silly story that was just begging to be told.

this next layout I wanted to do something a little different. So I thought long and hard for a story involving ombre effect... and in the end I ended up with something which is sort of a continuation of the page from last week. 

   I cheated a little by using the paint chips I collected when choosing my paint colors to tell this story. I say I cheated because the paint chips are set up in a gradient so I had a ready made ombre effect. I searched long and hard for a sketch to use since I was out of my mojo but ended up just moving things around until they fit and creating my own design. 

 again I added some splats to grunge things up a bit. And since my title was pink I was really happy with the die cut card I found to bring in some more of that color.

Lastly, I used my mistable alphas to created another ombre effect with some inks. I added a lot of pink working up from the bottom and a touch of orange to the tips. 

Overall, I love my two ombre pages almost as much as I love this technique. Thanks Lisa.

xo,

Pamage