Aussie Scrap Source

countdown to christmas: cosmo cricket

With all the lead up until Christmas, December is Mel's most favourite month of the year. Wrapping gifts, putting up the tree, playing Christmas carols, baking combined with all the general day to day chores makes for a fun month. Mel decided to create a mini album to record each day during the festive season using a consistent colour theme and simple design throughout the album. There are 24 double page spreads inside, one for each day before Santa Claus makes his appearance.

The beautiful patterned papers and embellishments throughout the album are by Cosmo Cricket (Jolly by Golly range), plus a little bit of red bling (Hero Arts, red metallic decor) and some Crate Paper chipboard embellishments. The front and back covers were created with two pieces of Tim Holtz Grungeboard (basics - stripes) and the swirly background was hand cut from a sheet of Breezy Freezy (Jolly by Golly) and then mod podged into place.

Each double page includes a spot for a photo and an opposite page for journaling. As Mel works her way through the album (adding photos & stories) she will also include titles and/or a few more embellishments where needed.

In Mel's words: The Christmas mini album was exciting to create. The Jolly by Golly papers are super adorable and have such a lovely colour palette. Roll on December 1st so I can start adding photos to the album!

countdown to christmas: stampers anonymous

Few would doubt the fabulous creativity versatility of stamps; especially those from Stampers Anonymous and the creative fabulousness of Tim Holtz. This line of stamps has designs that can either be used in combination or singularly, and, suit a range of creative styles. Here Louise has used just one of the many cling mounted Christmas designs by Tim Holtz to create 4 Christmas cards.

 

To add visual interest with the first set of 2 cards, Louise has embossed the stamped pattern, and then applied concentrated amounts of Luminarte pigment paint and Tattered Angels Glimmermist to highlight the intricate patterns; in the body of the Reindeer, and amongst the foliage of the trees.

  

With the second set of 2 cards Louise has replicated the embossing technique with the Tim Holtz snow flake stamp, with a Luminarte polished pigment paint backround effect.

countdown to christmas: sei

Janine has used the beautiful SEI Christmas Mint papers and embellishments to create these pretty cards.  She likes to keep her Christmas cards quick and simple and the stickers were perfect for quick cards.

countdown to christmas: hero arts

Mel really loved being able to play with the beautiful 'Large Christmas Circle' Hero Arts stamps to create her cards. To begin she chose two stamps from the set, stamping them with red ink onto white cardstock and then cut each one out around the scalloped edge. The stamped embellishment was then foam mounted onto her prepared cards, some doubling as snowmen tummies and others popped inside tiny speech bubbles just for fun.

Mel used some Cosmo 'Jolly by Golly' elements for the card backgrounds and added a splash of bling (Hero Arts metallic dots). In Mel's own words "I now have a new favourite set of Christmas stamps - they're just so super cute and I really love the font used for the wording"

countdown to christmas: tattered angels

If you want to make a gorgeous homemade present to give someone at Christmas, Tattered Angels have some beautiful products to create with.  The base of this wall hanging, is actually a 12" x 12" stamp.

By using permanent ink, the image can be stamped onto transparency and layered upon. Steph then used the new Tattered Angels Bingo Cards as her base and built layers on top of that. Using the Tattered Angels Glimmer Chips Steph sprayed it with different color Glimmer Mists and added White Glimmer Mist to give her embellishments a soft look. After adding a few extra embellishments, you can punch two holes in the top of the transparency, add ribbon and you have a Christmas Pressie ready to hang !!!!!

countdown to christmas: quickutz

 

Caz decided to make some (hopefully all) of her Christmas Cards this year so thought she would try out the Quickutz ornament shapes for something different. There are 2 shapes on the one die, the elongated one as shown here and a round one shown on some of the next cards. She decided to see how many different ways she could use the dies to make her cards.

 

To create card number 1 caz used some of the lovely wide strano ribbon stiffened with some of the Ribbon Stiff. She then added layered co-ordinating Heidi Swapp felt flowers with a brad through their centres.

 

Card number 2 is made with Heidi Swapp papers with Some Heidi Swapp Bling to add a touch of Christmas sparkly. Caz just cut up the bling circles and a bling crown and used segments of them on the ornaments.

 

Caz has cut ornaments out of the beautiful Hambly Screen Prints overlays and layered them over a Hambly silver rub-on to create card number 3. Some metallic paper scraps were used for the hanging ribbons and ornament tops.

 

 

To create card number 4 Caz ran the ornaments through the Quickutz machine with a an embossing die in it to create lovely embossed swirls on them. She hung them on wrought iron looking flourishes cut with the Quickutz machine as well.

 

Card Number 5 was created with the gorgeous Glitzmas papers from SEI. All the extra work is done for you as the papers have glittery sparkles and shiny varnished accents already on them.

countdown to christmas: crate paper

 

 

Carole created this very vibrant Christmas layout, using the gorgeous Crate Paper North Pole Collection. Carole loved all the gorgeous, Diecuts and stickers, which she layered and created cute elements with. Carole also used Crate Paper North Pole Brads and Basic Grey swirl gems for something a little extra, and to give the Christmas feel.

It’s all in the details with Carole’s layouts, so enjoy some of her close ups to appreciate them all.

countdown to christmas: basicgrey

 

The chipboard pieces in the BasicGrey Eskimo Kisses range make hand-made Christmas cards a cinch!

Kathie loved the little eskimo children, houses, and Christmas trees and has made a set of cards to house them.

 

Kathie has used white cardstock and patterned paper to create cute little backgrounds for her chipboard embellishments. She cut undulating cardstock hills and adhered them over the top of a patterned paper background. After outlining the edges of the cardstock with a fine black marker, she added the chipboard shapes on top.

 

Pink Paislee Glitter Stix adds a Christmas sparkle to these frosty cards.

 

BasicGrey Bling It Rhinestone Dots decorate these Christmas trees. Kathie's used dimensional tape to highlight a couple of the trees, which are made from simple triangles of coordinating patterned paper.

countdown to christmas

 

Every day for the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you inspiration for christmas… in the form of cards, layouts, mini albums and gift ideas so be sure to check back regularly and see what our talented design team comes up with.

To kick it off Janine has used the stunning Scrapping Clearly Christmas Tree to create this beautiful album for her new born son.  Janine loves to use Hambly Transparencies when working with transparent albums and she has also used the lovely clear border stickers which are also perfect to be seen from both sides of the acrylic.

Finally she strategically used the Hambly Christmas stickers and some hand-cut flourishes from the SEI Christmas Mint range to finish off the album.

 

weekend inspiration: luminarte

 

Suz will find any excuse to use her collection of beautiful Twinkling H2O’s, they’re right up there along with Glimmer Mist as her favourite arty products, but because Twinkling H2O’s are little cakes of water colours applied with a brush, you can be much more exacting about exactly where you want your shimmer to go.

Here Suz has given Grunge Alphas a rainbow effect combining the delicious little cakes of colour to celebrate her bookworm boy who always has his nose in a book.  Grungeboard is perfectly designed for applications such as this and Suz loves how the shimmer settles in the embossed crevices, further bringing out the pattern of the grunge board. She has also edged her cardstock in the same colours, which include Key Lime, Solar Gold, Ocean Wave and Persimmon.

 

For this layout Mel combined the bright and beautiful Sassafras Lass papers (green apple, cotton candy & tutti fruitti) then embellished the page with Cherry Arte chipboard swirls and circles. The chipboard was given a nice thick coat of paint using Luminarte's divine Polished Pigments. Although it's difficult to see in the photos, the Polished Pigments paint give such a luscious finish and creates a real shine when dry.

Extra dots of colour (using the paint) were also added to the green apple patterned paper to complete the page.

product focus: acrylic albums

 

Although sometimes tricky to photograph, there's something magical about an acrylic album that makes you want to look and touch it over and over again. For this challenge Mel used a 4" X 6" Scrapping Clearly mini album and various papers and punch outs from the Amber Road range (Pink Paislee). The small size is perfect for scrapbooking all those mini photos and each finished page helps compliment the next one, with little snippets showing through the acrylic album along the way.

On the front cover Mel chose to add some dimension by adhering the Twiddleybitz Love Bird (lightly sponged with ink), which goes beautifully with the autumn theme throughout the album.

inspired by: garden / nature

 

 

The inspiration behind this project came from the photos themselves which Carole took at Gecko Valley Winery in Gladstone, such a wonderful place to wine and dine, and the surroundings are so gorgeous, as you can see by the beautiful roses. Carole used the "Cupid" Collection by Pink Paislee to compliment the colours in the photos and to set the scene for this pretty layout.

 

 

 

 

Inspired by the sweet pom pom tree growing in her backyard, Mel hand cut out a series of cream clouds (from the Earth Love range by Cosmo Cricket) and scattered them around the photo to duplicate the pom poms. The background sheet of paper (also by Earth Love, Cosmo) created a lovely, soft feel to the page, while the handcut leaves reminded Mel of days spent in the garden.

weekend inspiration: sei

 

SEI En Route was a great range to show off one of Jaimies favourite holiday snaps. The range of colours is very rich with the added bonus of copper foil papers. A simple title and epoxy stickers keep this page photo focused.

 

Caz has use the beautiful Moravia papers and accents to create a little album about herself. Pages include her love of reading, music that is important to her, her bad habits, hopes and dreams for the future and what makes her laugh amongst other things.
The Moravia collection has some papers and accents that are flocked and some that are metallic. It's lovely and tactile and definitely not your ordinary run of the mill scrapbooking supplies.

 

 

We have Ally from Canada to thank for this fun, bright layout using the SEI En-route papers. How tiny and cute do those little guys look against that HUGE machine? Thanks for sharing Ally.

Thanks to Jackie from Utah for sharing with us the following two pages to celebrate her Son's graduation. Jackie writes proudly "My oldest son's graduation. He is the father of my 2 adorable grand kids, a husband, works full time as a baker and goes to school full time and I am extremely proud of his accomplishments, but even more so of his character."

She has used the beautiful Moravia papers which work so well on layouts about males and added touches of glimmer mist to her lettering and the papers for added interest.

 

These seriously gorgeous cards using the Moravia range are part of a set created by Patricia from Virginia. She discovered that the papers go really well with the Tattered Angels Glimmerchips. Thanks for the idea Patricia and also allowing us to share your lovely work with our blog readers.

product focus: calendar pages

 

 

When we think of calendar products, it's easy to assume that the only thing that could be done with them is to create something to record dates and times. Not so, as you can see with this layout by Nic Howard. We have seen our calendar products used for yearly calendars, layouts recording the events of one month, highlighting one special day, and we think they'd be perfect for an advent calendar but Nic has done something a little different.

When creating this layout, Nic used two different Webster's Pages products. The first was a 12x12 sheet of patterned paper with a gorgeous month's grid on it. Nic had chosen to theme her layout around 'every day' and thought the papers depicting 'time' would be perfect.

The second product is a smaller journaling block, in which Nic has listed days of the week in Paper Trunk alphas. Perfect to finish a layout depicting time, with gorgeous Websters Pages products!

 

Nicole wanted to make a compact summary of some of the events that happened in her family over last year in a quick and easy to look at format. She created this little album from Jenni Bowlin calendar pages, trimming the pictures from the top to only use the calendar section.

On the back of each of these calendar pages she attached patterned papers and different embellishments from her stash and also used the calendar pages as a base for a major event from each month. With chipboard covers, this little album is easy easy to handle and a cute little keepsake that summarises a year.

inspired by: jewellery

 

Nic has been travelling the East Coast this year working at the craft shows and seems to "acquire" a new Pandora-style bracelet from each show. What better source of inspiration to scrap about travelling to these shows than the very bracelets she collected at them?

All of Nic's bracelets are silver, so she started with the grey base and added black and red bling and buttons, mimicking the colour scheme of each of her bracelets!

    

Pearls are no longer considered jewellery from yesteryear, these days they are making a comeback. Jaimie used pearls as an inspiration for her page - she remembers being fixated on her mothers precious strand of pearls and used Basic Grey Opaline half pearls to depict them. Added in tiny swirl designs keeps the embellishment interesting without taking away from journaling or photo. A small cluster of buttons, bling and chipboard tag keep the page girly and sweet as was intended.

While Inking over stickers has created an eye-catching title.