# 34 Inspired by Tablescapes

Lovely ladies,

clearly our Lisa is the master of all things pretty and pink. I loved her tablescapes and was clearly inspired by all the pretty Easter colors.

I decided to just put together the base for a page inspired by the colors and then add photos. This allowed me room to play, which is what I was going for this week.

I added the brads in both corners to drive the eye around the page.

I also had a bunch of brads still on my desk from last week's prompt and decided to use them up in a row

I mounted the photos on craft cardstock which I distressed a little.

Thanks for playing along for another week.

xo,

Pamage

#34 Inspired by Easter photos full of prettiness

Phew - what a week.

Last weekend was busy with family and filled with chocolate - most of which was brought back with me to hoard for times when I "need" my Cadbury fix. And since I've been back, I've been busy with stuff I can't share just yet but let me tell you that I have been cutting and gluing and sanding and inking all week.

But I managed to find time this evening to put together a little page from my challenge to you last weekend.

I wondered if I should make it more difficult for myself, perhaps taking the challenge is a different direction but in the end, decided to just use one of the pretty photos I'd posted and wrote a few lines about how I feel about decorating for my Easter dinner as well as mentioning a little cultural difference over here.

I scattered a bit of journalling around my page à la Pam but still need to practice that! I used my April Counterfeit Kit, Blossom, with its full-on colour palette and just played with layers and pretty stuff.

I'd like to get around to making another couple of pages with the other photos but we'll have to see how that works what with LOAD coming up and various other commitments. Another list of layouts to be added to my inspiration list I suppose!

If you had time to create this week, do share with us over at Flickr with the tag WM#34. How pretty can you go?

Challenge #34 week of 9th April

I'm scheduling this post ahead of time as I should be on the road right now as this goes live, heading home after an Easter break. I know that we are lucky in Europe to have two Bank Holidays for this and the four day weekend is always a treat :-)

So, I'm sitting here with a To Do list as long as my arm of bits and pieces to get one in the next 24 hours feeling a bit sorry that I'm not doing my usual über-pretty Easter table decorating this time around. We often have a large family dinner on Easter Sunday or Monday and I like to go to town with the pink, fluffy decorations - seems appropriate somehow!

And then I thought that all that prettiness shouldn't go to waste. Therefore, in honour of Easter bunnies, I'm posting a few of my over-the-top favorite Easter photos for you to use as your inspiration :-) I'm interested to see which bit you'll take into your creating this week.

Short and sweet - ready, steady, get scrapping :-)

Share your creations with us over in our Flickr gallery with the tag WM#34.

We love seeing the contributions that you share with us each week - each of you makes both of us very happy :-)

#33 Inspired by Old Stash

Hello ladies. Did you go on a hunt through your stash? Well, I did. And I found some pretty cool treasures. I pulled them out to inspire me.

Look at all that cool stuff. Gel pens! I mean, I haven't used those since 2007. I was surprised they haven't dried up. And all those chipboard shapes, I got a bucket of those in 2006. The stickers I used to love to hoard and those plastic template shapes which go way back to 2002. 

I didn't force myself to use all of those items, but just let myself be guided by them and came up with two layouts.

unique big apple

I kept this layout pretty close to my current style with paint splatters and mix-matched patterns. However, I did incorporate an element outside of my usual style by mounting old jolee's boutique NYC stickers on black chipboard. I followed Shannon Tidwell's advice and used the entire sheet on this layout - and concentrated to a small area. I really liked the idea of the stickers overlapping each other, but the colors felt off. I didn't want such a stark contrast. So I resorted to the vellum still in my stash and added a new york city quote and some chipboard photo corners to complete the block. I like how it came out in the end and that the stickers were put to good use. I also drew some lines with my gel pens.

long beach

This layout was a little bit different from what I've been doing lately, but thanks to the colors I used and the timeless grid sketch, it still feels current. 

With this layout I managed all of the following:

* matted photos

* chipboard photo corner & embelishment

*felt embelishment

*handwritten title

* plastic frame with paint

* eyelets

* textured cardstock (no patterned paper)

I had fun visiting memory lane with my stash - and hey, I still have a bunch of stuff on desk which i might use on a couple more layouts.

I hope you found new ways to use your old items - and had some fun along the way. Can't way to see what your came up with in our gallery.

xo,

Pamage

Challenge #33 - Week of April 2, 2012

Who's ready for another challenge?

Last year on twopeasinabucket.com, Shannon Tidwell ran a series titled Products You Love Every Which Way. I loved participating in that free class {you can still check out the archived lessons}. Every month it felt like I discovered something I didn't know about my own stash. It was quite wonderful.

Here are a few examples of pages I made inspired by this class -

this was part of "chipboard" month

this was part of "border sticker" month

All of the ideas Shannon offered used new and trendy products... but it made me wander what these pages would look like if I was learning to use up my stash in 2001 or 2005 or even 2009. 

So your challenge this week is to dig deep in your stash and find a product that you collected for a while and no longer use - and use it! Lots of it!

One of the keys I learned from Shannon is that products look better sometimes when they are grouped together in large quantities. Sometimes when we are using up our new products we are stingy in how we use them up, trying to stretch them. Using perhaps just the one butterfly from the pretty new set of stickers or just one of the border stickers from the brand new release. 

However, this challenge will provide you the perfect opportunity to splurge a little with how you use a product on a page. For example, I plan to find a use for all those eyelets (was I the only one that bought 300 of them and used just 5?) I have collecting dust in my stash. And I plan to use them like I use buttons or brads...

If you think about it, you bought so much of it back then because you loved it. And so what if it's old? Give yourself permission to use it and to use a lot of it. And add a few new products to make your page look fresh and current and fitting to your new style. You will love the results. I promise.

What do you have a ton of in your stash that you no longer use? Vellum? Stickers? Die-cut shapes? Fluorescent paper? chalks? Jolee's layered embellishments? Metal tags? Decorative scissors?

Are you willing to play along with us this week and put these items to good use?

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

xo,

Pamage

#32 Inspired by a relationship not yet scrapped

Hello friends!

Another lovely week of spring has gone by and here we are again.

I am super excited to share this page - because it is about a person we all "know".

As I pondered the challenge this week, I really searched deep for all the people in my past that I hadn't yet scrapped. The ones I found missing were stories I wasn't ready to tell. 

Then, I moved on to present relationships and was pleased to find almost every person has a page - or two. Almost every person. Almost.

I was so happy when the inspiration hit me - Lisa was the one person missing from my pages!

I "met" Lisa during LOAD of February 2011 and we became fast friends - albeit through the internet.

So here's my little homage to my special friend

 of course I added loads of pink - that is Lisa's color after all. But I mixed it in with the yellow - because that's my happy color and I think she has more sunshine than she realizes...

 I also added the pretty glittery ribbon because it seemed like the perfect glam accent for a Lisa page.

 The photo I "stole" from one of her photo albums and I hope she forgives me, but I wanted a clear shot of her pretty face and this picture seemed perfect even if it is a few years old. 

Thank you for the little nudge in getting this story done. Like Lisa I feel there is so much more to say so I will be adding a 6x12 page with all the little anecdotes about our projects together, including this endeavor to bring you weekly challenges.

I hope you were able to dig out a story of a relationship previously not scrapped and get it down on paper. I would love to see what you made over on our little gallery {tag WM#32}.

I will be back soon with another challenge for the new week. Thank you again for playing along with us and sharing your memories with our little community.

xo,

Pamage

#32 - inspired by a relationship not yet scrapped

I had such a fun time with my Filipino friend last week. Two days of chatting and reminiscing and catching up and getting to know her and her husband all over again as well as introducing them to my new home country. I hope that she had as much of a good time as I did.

I warned you that I knew I would be scrapping about sweet Alice and I've kept true to my word. Although after two days of carrying my camera around and snapping many photos, I realised that most of the shots of just the two of us are on her camera so I desperately hope to get a full copy of her set when she gets home. Does that ever happen to you? You look through your photos and realise that the ones you thought you took are different to what you actually have!

But first, I actually want to share one of my favourite non-people photos I captured when we were in Cologne Cathedral which is a fantastic example of German Gothic architecture. Just to share so to speak! But it did make me realise that I ought to scrap about my love of architecture in a way that I haven't so far. So there is a connection to this week's prompt :-)

Anyway, on to my layout. I used my Counterfeit Kit again as I wanted the design itself to be quite low-key compared to the message. I made the full 12x12 layout and even journalled on it before realising that the story itself hadn't been told. And so the matching add on 12x6 was created where I wrote out more about our friendship.

There is quite a lot of hidden symbolism here as I realised that the kit had three of the colours of the Philippine flag (blue, white and yellow/gold) and that Alice was wearing red in the second photo which was the fourth colour. I stitched a few scattered stars across the layout again, as a nod to the flag and I added a tiny bit of extra red to my kit to just make the red and blue a little more obvious.

Chevrons made a happy return but I added the stitching for interest and to change it up a bit.

Of course, by adding the extra 12x6 page and not making the two sides at the same time I now realise that there are four blocks of chevrons and eight stars - both even numbers (sorry Pam!) and I too like to add elements in odd numbers. Therefore, I might add another star or three to make that an odd number. Can't do anything more with the diagonals to I'll have to think about that! But all in all, pretty happy with this and even if I never made another layout about Alice (although I hope that I will of course!) I now have her documented in my collection. And that's a good thing.

I'm excited to see what relationships you're going to share with us.

Another week is almost upon us and another prompt too. I'm looking forward to seeing what Pam has in store for us.

See you over at our Flickr group ;-)

Challenge #32 week of 26th March 2012

Happy Spring! And from our corner of the world, Happy Summer (daylight saving) time! We turned our clocks forward on Saturday evening here in Europe and wow, that extra hour of evening light makes such a different - pity about the darker mornings! I can feel the improved mood of everyone around me as summer starts to look more likely!

I'm actually writing this prompt early on Sunday morning as I'm going to be ever so slightly busy the next 48 hours as I have a visitor coming to see me. Someone I haven't seen for coming up to 14 years. My best friend from my time in the Philippines is touring Europe at the moment and is taking a detour to drop in to me in Germany (!) for two days. I think we are both really excited as this could be the last time we ever see each other. I think the chances of me getting over to the Philippines again is remote - it's a REALLY long way away! LOL.

But her visit got me thinking that I've never scrapped her or our relationship before. I have a small collection of pages from back then but mostly "me" focussed, and that's sad don't you think?

Which got me thinking about our next prompt. So this week, I'm challenging you to scrap about a relationship from the past that hasn't reached your pages yet. You can bet that I'll be featuring Alice on my layout this week but it doesn't necessarily have to be a friend, or even a person if you want to take the idea a little wider.

As well as recording my friendship with sweet Alice, I'm thinking that I could record my relationship on a wider level with the country itself:

Just realised that I have a wonky horizon! Will have to correct that. 

The weather there - hot and dry or hot and wet. And I didn't do anything with the colours of this photo! This is really a storm rolling in - it was intense!

I could talk about the company I worked for, my relationship to the work I did and of course, the wonderful colleagues/friends I had there

I had a pretty big hate/hate relationship to the traffic!

And I fell in love with the culture and made some amazing short trips around with friends I made there:

None of these ideas have yet been scrapped and now I have a whole list!

I hope you'll join in and think about someone or something that might have been neglected on your pages. Don't forget to upload your creation to our Flickr gallery with the prompt WM#32.

#31 Inspired by Spring

I was worried that this week I would experience the same creative block I seemed to be under last week. Even though I supply the prompts, sometimes I struggle finding the direction I want to go in and often I struggle to be inspired!

So it is extra-refreshing when it happens. And this week it happened. I started off easy on myself by finding a layout I loved and scrap-lifting it. I feel that picking up a starting off point like that allows me to focus on adding the little elements that make a page my own, while taking the guess work out of the design elements.

Since I knew all the elements I needed I just focused on finding papers and patterns that reminded me of spring. I also added some butterflies and buttons in those shades. Overall, this page helped me feel inspired to create more. So I did!

 For this page I used a color combination provided by Lain for the Scrap Happy inspiration for March. It was the perfect color combo for this Julie FFB crayon-watercolor resist technique {here}.

 I also wanted to show you the drawbacks of journaling right on top of your carefully painted background - you can mess it up! But luckily I am the type of girl that embraces imperfection. {see those almost invisible little strips of paper that allow me to re-write the words i fudged. yeah, I spelled girls as GILRS.)

And since my first two pages weren't really Spring related, I felt I had one more story left in me. This time I used a pretty simple sketch, provided by Lain for Scrap Happy. The simple sketch allowed me to use creative license on the items I use in filling up the designated spots.

 One of the new techniques I tried this week was this gesso+stencil+paint technique. I rather like how it turned out even with all it's imperfections.

I hope you had some time to be outdoors this week and enjoy the simple pleasures of spring. If you had some time to play, we would love to see what you came up with, just add the tag WM#31. Lisa will be back tomorrow with surely a fun challenge for the upcoming week. And just remember we will be at the discussion boards all week to help you along with finding inspiration. So we will see you there!

xo,
Pamage