Challenge # 91 - week of May 27th, 2013

You may have been wondering what happened to the challenge for last Monday. Well, I am sad to say that I dropped the ball. I was away on vacation (tons of scrap worth photos coming your way soon) and I didn't schedule all my posts like a good girl before leaving.

So here I am, with an apology and a new prompt.

And this one is one that has been burning on the back of my mind for a while. It involves a product, a smallish and relatively new product that is addicting and impossible not to hoard. If you are have guessed washi tape, then you are clearly on the same page as me and thousands of other scrapbookers.

This versatile little product can be used in place of adhesive, ribbon, patterned paper. 

And I know our friend Lisa loves, hoards and uses it too...

So show us how you use it. This is the perfect opportunity to try something new with it or make a dent in your stash. And I know you have one, whether it be one or thirty rolls, we all have a little bit of this.

Remember to wow us with your creation by sharing in the gallery with the tag WM#91.

xo,

Pamage

#71 inspired by goodbyes

 A tongue in cheek one this evening.

I was going back over the WM list of inspiration to see which I was missing and realised that the prompt for goodbyes was the next on the list. I had several directions to go but then came across a photo of my sadly deceased iPhone and remembered that I had an even better photo of the first iPhone I destroyed that could make a good, light-hearted page.

And it happened to tie in with the prompt for today over at LOAD - to be inspired by the film Psycho! Yes, the prompts this time around take a bit of thinking outside the box - ha ha!

Anyway, the broken glass reminded me of the film poster for some reason and it all came together from there.

I used my February Counterfeit kit, Urban, which appears to be the kit that keeps on giving - I am still nowhere near the bottom of box. I think I might have to retire the scraps to be honest as I am at the point of getting a bit fed up with it and that is not somewhere I want to be with my kits.

Counterfeit Urban kit, #8

Anyway, I have really made a dent in the list of prompts I've missed which makes me feel good and am ready for some new directions and a new kit I think.

I've said it before and I will say it again but if you combine LOAD with Whimsical Musings with Counterfeit kits you get one big pile of success!

New prompt tomorrow so come back and check it out. We love to see your creations over at out Flickr gallery (here) so don't be shy and come and join in the fun!

#90 inspired by favourite children's books

This one was easy as I had just done one for this prompt recently on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog, so the thought process was fresh in my mind.

Deciding to take it a slightly different direction, I picked up Now We Are Six (which is part of a beautiful vintage book set bought and sent to me by my very good friend Leslie :-)  ) and on the first page found a familiar poem that could have been written for me today just as it felt way back when I first had these books.

And so the poem drove my design and my page.

I used my April Counterfeit kit, Opposite, and added in a few extra items such as the Studio Calico polaroid die cuts which I am in love with and you can expect to see more of them very soon.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge April kit, Opposite, #4

The inspiration poem

I made this sitting outside on my terrace on a lovely warm, sunny, spring day and it felt great!

Please don't forget to share your creations over at our Flickr gallery here with the tag WM#90 - looking forward to adding some children's books to my list of gifts for the young readers in my family!

#89 inspired by tone on tone

Ok, I'm going to 'fess up.

I spent a long time on my layout this week. In fact, I had a picture in my mind of exactly how this layout was going to turn out. I had picked out papers and product. I was excited to put it together. I even had it finished on Sunday right on time to post.

But then I lost interest in it :-( It didn't turn out how I'd pictured it. It didn't seem to work. I seem to have missed the tone on tone effect that I was trying for. I didn't even get a photo of it so I could post it. And now I'm 4 days late!

I still don't love it. I still think I didn't get the tone on tone right. It just didn't work for me.

But you know what? That's OK. Live and learn and move on!

I love the photo I used and will no doubt use it again sometime. But this is not a layout I'm taking apart. I am happy to have it ticked off as a learning experience.

I might try this one again sometime, I was disappointed not to give this prompt the effort it deserved.

Like to share those types of layouts that you've made? Don't forget our Flickr gallery (here) - there's so much to see over there.

#83 inspired by big cities

I promised to try and catch up with some of the prompts I've missed recently and LOAD combined with Counterfeit Kit Challenge is perfect for that.

I loved the prompt WM#83 - to be inspired by Big Cities. Right up my street (excuse the pun!)

We have lots of big city experiences even if we don't live in one any more. I could have made a dozen pages with all different aspects of our big city adventures but I chose to concentrate on our 48 hours in Singapore last December.

I knew I wanted to use my February Urban kit and the papers and colours were perfect for a little contrast between time in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of everything!

February Counterfeit Kit, Urban #7

And then I piled up a whole lot of product from my May Excursion kit to try out a new style that I've been seeing around recently. I was unsure what the layout would be until I realised how busy it had become and the few additions I added from my stash happened to be some travel based items. And then the simple, single photo of Singapore came to mind.

May Excursion kit #8

I'm so enjoying going back in time and finishing off some older prompts.

There is so much inspiration on our site that I hope you enjoy checking what challenges we've posted over the last (nearly) two years. Make sure you share your creations over at our Flickr gallery - we can't wait to see. :-)

Challenge #90 week of 13th May 2013

I hope you're all fine this lovely spring morning.

I've been delighted to be able to spend some more time than usual with some of you over at the LOAD gallery this month, and yes, we all miss Pam desperately, so I'm looking forward to getting back over there after a weekend away from the hustle and bustle of daily creating.

I got caught up with three prompts which is great and the wonderful tone on tone is on the agenda for this evening... all being well.

Which leaves me pondering this week's challenge.

Should we have something a bit off the wall; product based; sketch or colour maybe? Or should I go with something that occupied me last week with a Counterfeit Kit Challenge prompt that I needed to make a layout for and ended up falling in love with the memories?

I bet you can imagine which one I've gone for!

Yes, the memories.

So this week, I'd like you to be inspired by your favourite books from your childhood.

This can be taken in just about any which way you like so have some fun with it. You can talk about the book/s themselves, the characters, tell us why or how you loved/hated reading, be inspired by a book cover or plot, talk about school books you can remember (although that might be unlikely to be a favourite book of course!)

This is the page I made last week. I love how it turned out and for all the memories that it kicked off. I think there might be about 10 stories coming out of that single page of journalling.

So, brush off those dust jackets and pay homage to a favourite book from all those years ago.

We'd love to see what you create this week so be sure to share over here in our Flickr group with the tag WM#90.

#89 Inspired by tone-on-tone

I got the idea for this layout early on in the week after revisiting the page with the paper waves from last week. I wanted a lot of orange on orange.

although my vision didn't become a reality, I do like the tones of orange on this page and all the small elements that add dimension to the orange. 

The black and white pictures (you know I can't resist a photobooth) made it an easy addition to the busy background which was my starting point. I added a little of the teal glitter tape to add another color to the layout. Orange and grey just seemed too sad for this happy page. 

 

the addition of that grey paper was a given once I chose a theme for this page. The graffiti-like messages on this gorgeous paper really reinforce my story - my hidden and visible journaling have the same feel. I love it when things like that fall into place.

I added some foam dots to a lot of the embellishments to create that separation of layers and the distressed edges also helped with this.

I hope you find a way to be inspired by this. I feel this is also a good way to use up stash of a certain color because you can add a lot of elements of that color into the layers. Can't wait to see what you all come up with.

xo,
Pamage

#87 inspired by being late

I promised to try and catch up on all the missed prompts and here is my first one.

As soon as Pam gave us the prompt of being late I had this photo in my head. I have literally thousands of photos of my time in the Philippines and I'm always amazed when I can remember one photo exactly! But this was the one. Because in all my life, I have never been so late as often as I was in Manila.

And that was mostly down to the traffic. Gridlock was something I got used to dealing with and always had my laptop, my mobile and a pen and paper with me in the back of the taxi to while away (literally) hours.

There are a whole book of stories I could write around this topic from my time in Manila but I thought I would start with just an overview as an introduction. I will have to write up my list of memorable lates to write up in more detail.

I'm still LOADing and wading my way through my Counterfeit Kit May kit, Excursion, and was happy to find some products that would fit my story. I added a little bit of blue paper and the little veneer cars as well as the mists.

I tried to make the design a bit chaotic and the lines reminded me of the traffic as well as incorporating the red blue and yellow featured in the Filippino flag.

Any time I capture a snippet of my time in Manila I find myself smiling. Good times. Happy page. Job done.

Thanks for being patient with my inability to keep up with our own prompts! :-) I promise to try harder.

#88 - inspired by seasonal foods

sometimes these stories come easy and sometimes they don't. This week they didn't. I thought long and hard about foods and seasons, but I was disappointed to discover that the majority of the foods I associate with certain seasons I eat all year round...

with the exception perhaps of grilling.

The grilled is only pulled out and put to good use when the weather is nice.

And so this layout was born.


I have a system for selecting the photos I scrap - which is to star them in my photo editing software (picasa) and this particular set had been sitting in that pile for quite some time. But I never tell food stories, so I didn't find a time to scrap them. Until now.

since this was a spring BBQ, I used subtler colors than I usually would and tried to keep it light and aerie.  

I love how vibrant the colors in the photos were. They carry the story in my eyes.

and of course, a cute photo with my siblings to round off the page and give the scrumptious food some context.

What delicacies did you feel inspired to scrap about?

xo,
Pamage

Challenge # 89 - Week of May 6th 2013

Whoa! Hey there. We are already in May. Crazy how fast this year is flying by... Happy National Scrapbooking day, y'all.

But you didn't come here to hear about my year. We are here for scrapbooking challenges with a whimsical twist. And because I know a lot of you are probably participating in LOAD or NSD challenges around the web I decided to keep the challenge simple so you can incorporate this into other projects you may be working on.

So - your challenge this week is to use tone on tone on your layouts. And I found some examples from my own arsenal to share with you and get you started on some ideas

* use tone-on-tone die cuts over paper strips of the same color family

* use tone-on-tone by stamping designs with same color ink as paper

* use tone-on-tone with lots of buttons over a painted strip on your paper - through in some tone-on-tone brads and embellishments for extra whimsy

*add tone-on-tone strips and scraps of the same cardstock over your background to create interest and texture without compromising white space

I hope this has given you a starting point for your layout. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Remember to add it to our gallery with the tag WM#89.

xo,

Pamage

 

#88 inspired by seasonal food

We live in a global economy and can buy and eat anything we want at any time of the year. And that's a wonderful thing. Who can deny the thrill of something exotic in the middle of winter which reminds you of tropical beaches and warmer times.

But there's something particularly thrilling about seasonal food. Real seasonal food. That you can see in the fields along the roads you travel to work on. That you can buy from the farm shop. That seems to be more intense in flavour than anything you can buy in the supermarket. That you know is just a few hours old.

We have a lot of this seasonal food, especially where we live which is on the edge of the industrial heartland of Germany right where the farms begin. And Germany is very proud of its local food seasons. It takes me back to when I was a child and we really did only eat strawberries in June and July.

So I decided to bring together a few appropriate photos as a reminder of yet another cultural difference of living in my adopted homeland. Another series in the making maybe.

I turned to my Counterfeit Kit Challenge May kit, Excursion which is proving really successful and that I have turned to every day of LOAD so far. 5 days, 5 layouts, one kit. It's a smaller than usual kit and I think I might have another layout or two in there before I call it a day. This layout came together really easily and have you noticed a bit more paper than in recent times? It's the Glitter Girl influence. I've recently rediscovered how much I love her layouts and have been playing with more paper. Insert happy smile here.

Love how I managed to find some suitable themed colours in my kit - totally by chance and not at all planned.

I'm determined to catch up on some of the layouts I've missed here at Whimsical Musings during LOAD this month (although I'm also sure that I will not manage a whole month of layouts - too much going on for that) so keep me accountable for that and ask me regularly how I'm doing!! I am going to use the list of prompts that you can find on the prompt at the top of the page and start at the most recent missed prompt and work back. So first on my list is Big City Life. Watch this space.

How did you get on with seasonal food this week? I hope you'll share over at our Flickr gallery (here) with the tag WM#88. See you there.