CTMH Australasian - Love is all you need - Blog Hop

 

Hello, and welcome to our 'All you need is Love' Australasian 'Close To My Heart' Blog Hop. 

If you've arrived here from Maz Wood - aMAZing Creations, then you're in the right place.

 

If you've landed here by accident, no problem! 

Please join in by following the link at the end of this post.  

With February not far away, there's lots of creative thought around the world for the 

upcoming Valentines Day, often associated with young love or perhaps a secret love, 

and the sending of anonymous cards.

Not so in our house. We have no teenagers anymore, but we will be celebrating our 

38th wedding anniversary in March.

The recent paper pack called 'Now and Forever' is a beautiful collection of designs in a 

colour palette that is right up my ally! So I decided to try and use all of the papers!

Before I share my project though, I think it's worth mentioning that although I've been 

scrapbooking for over 20 years, I have NEVER, EVER prepared a layout in advance 

before today.  

My normal practice has always been to start with the photos and work from there. 

But with no appropriate photos for the theme, I've got out of my comfort zone and 

am now, with a finished layout, feeling incredibly well organised! 

I just have to remember to take a selfie of us both on the 30th March! 

With a base page of Mulberry, I initially trimmed the design paper to leave a half inch frame, 

but then added a layer of vellum in between. 

 

 Nothing is stuck down at this stage.....I just wanted to get a feel for how things would fit. 

My next step was to decorate the heart shape. 

For this I decided on paper tearing, and used a ruler to rip a strip of each design in the 

packet. 

Using the versamat to line things up was helpful, and ensured that the strips were 

reasonably evenly spaced. 

Once the strips were adhered, it was just a matter of turning the heart over and trimming the 

edges.

 So now the layout looks like this.....

 Then it was time for some embellishments and a title. 

For the title, I used the retired postage stamp thin cut to make a mulberry frame. 

The lettering is also from a retired stamp and alphabet, but stamped in Mulberry ink on 

Ballerina paper. 

For the embellishments, they are all off the sticker sheet, but I did use a piece of discarded 

ripped paper to give a base on the bottom right. 

I think that helps to balance the colours used in the different papers. 

 

Finally, I just love the zip strips in this pack too, so I made a co-ordinating card 

(with a spot of paper weaving) that I may give my husband.....or I may just keep it to use on 

the second page if I end up with a double page spread. 

I suppose I could always give him the card and then ask for it back.... 😂

 

This exclusive and beautiful paper pack has a range of matching accessories, including 

stamps, thincuts, co-ordinating cardstock, and even some embroidered embellishments. 

BUT...the whole lot are only available until the end of February, while stocks last. 

Contact your CTMH consultant to place an order. 

If you don't have a consultant and are based in NZ, please contact me or place an order 

through my website. 

I'd love you to leave a comment below, before heading off to the next stop,

Doris Taylor Creative Inspirations.  

 

CTMH Australasian 'Are We There Yet?' Blog Hop

 

Hello, and welcome aboard our 'Are we there yet?' Australasian 'Close To My Heart' Blog Hop. If you've arrived here from Maz Wood - aMAZing Creations, then you're in the right place. 

If you've landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.  

As suggested by the title of this blog, today we are featuring the paper pack, 'Are we there yet?' from the January - March catalogue.

When I first saw this pack, I wasn't sure I'd be able to come up with much, due to the lack of travel over the past few years. However, inspiration struck early one morning and now, I don't think I will have enough of it to cover all the things I've thought of! 

In 2017, I was one of a group of four photographers who travelled to Tiri-Tiri Matangi Island, off the coast of Auckland in New Zealand. The island is a sanctuary, free of pests, where birds and plantlife flourish naturally. If you're ever in the area, and appreciate nature, it's a great visit. 

Being photographers, we wanted to be there for the best light times - sunrise and sunset, so booked a bunk room for a few days. 

That meant taking clothes and food for three days, sleeping bags and pillows, as well as towels and of course all our camera gear. You can imagine the pile this amounted to for four women!

So.....the photos of our luggage at the beginning of the trip is what came in to my mind while I was thinking about the paper in this pack, and what follows is the resulting double page layout.

Starting with the suitcase paper, it occurred to me that it was ideally patterned to be fussy cut. So I cut around the suitcases to give a shaped border for each side of the layout, and then tried out the photos to see how they would fit.

Looking at the chosen paper with the photos helped me decide that the layout needed a bit of a boost of colour. With the yellow and blue in the paper and in some of the photos, I decided they would be the best accent colours. 

So, using the yellow/arrow paper from the 'Are we there yet?' pack, I used one sheet below the photos on the left, and another piece on the right. 

This leaves some white to help highlight the photos and balance the white in the border paper. 

I also added the zip strip across the bottom of the page. The arrows blended well with the arrows in the background paper. 

To bring in some more blue, I mounted the photos on the left hand side with the lighter side of sapphire cardstock. 

The next thing to add was the title. I chose to use honey butter card stock with toffee coloured ink. Honey Butter is one of the colours mentioned on the reverse of the zip strip, so it was an easy choice. 

Toffee is also included and makes a nice contrast to the honey butter. I also used the foam dome sponges to mark some toffee ink around the edges of the words. My thinking was that it would help separate them from the yellow background paper, and it seemed to work well. 

Because the name of the island is quite long, I didn't want the title to overpower the photos, so I chose  the pennant banner alphabet to use, and to cut the words up so they could be loosely arranged at the top of the page. I also added one of the stickers from the pack, which says 'The Adventure Begins'. 

The next step was making some embellishments to put in opposite corners, just to break up the suitcase paper a little bit. I chose a third paper from the pack and made some circles with the thin cut circle shapes, giving the embellishments somewhere to land.

 The suitcases and camera stamp and thin cuts were perfect for the subject matter on this page, so I just used those from the stamp and thin cut pack. But I also had to include some little rubber suitcases.....they're soooo gorgeous!

Finally, a few journalling strips on the left to balance with the white on the right, and we're just about done!

Add some journalling, and voila!

This exclusive 'Are we there yet?' paper pack and accessories are only available January - March, while stocks last. Contact your CTMH consultant to place an order.

If you don't have a consultant, and are based in NZ, please contact me or place an order here: https://lyndamowat.closetomyheart.co.nz

I'd love you to leave a comment below, before heading off to the next stop, Doris Taylor Creative Inspirations. 

'SCRAPBOOKING' and The Scrapbooking Photographer

All of a sudden, 2023 is here! I have to say I’m excited to start this new year. So many plans, goals and opportunities are afoot, it feels like my whole life has been moving towards this moment. 

Which of course, it has!! 

Hi, I’m Lynda, The Scrapbooking Photographer’. Thanks for stopping by, and reading my introductory blog. Future blogs will hold all sorts of tips, ideas, and information on both scrapbooking and photography, plus layout ideas, but I thought at first it would be prudent to introduce myself and share some background.

‘The Scrapbooking Photographer’ blends two of my passions. It’s a great description of what you’ll find here in the blog, and across my other media…..You Tube, Facebook and Instagram. Here’s how the scrapbooking part of it came about……

Circa 1970 - I have very vivid memories from my childhood of an old tin absolutely full of black and white photos. Every now and then Mum would get the tin out of the cupboard and look reflectively through the photos, telling us kids about the people who were in the photos. I was mesmerised by the stories, and the fact that these people ‘in the tin’ were my ancestors. 

A selection of ancestors in the tin!

  

Fast forward to the year 2000, when I was introduced to the art of scrapbooking…..or memory keeping as some prefer to call it. To say I was excited by what I saw would be a huge understatement. By the time I got home I was literally shaking with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell my husband about this new ‘hobby’ I’d found. My initial enthusiasm all stemmed from those old photos in the tin. Finally……I had a plan to preserve them and write some of the stories that went with them. 

                       

 Following on quickly after that excitement, came the realisation that, as a Mum myself now with two young boys at the time, I had a responsibility to record our own family pictures and stories. No way did I want to end up in a tin, like my ancestors had! 

 

So…..the scrapbooking passion began. With some wonderful guidance from people who became and remain life long friends, I learnt through workshops and idea sharing, how to preserve those old family photos, as well as preserving and recording the developing history of my own growing family. 

For the past 22 years, the time available to scrapbook has varied. Sometimes life gets in the way, but it has remained my number one hobby throughout. Now my husband (John) and I are grandparents, with no children left living at home. We live an idyllic rural life, in the centre of the North Island in New Zealand. We currently share our lifestyle property with two beautiful Golden Retrievers (Pippa and Gracie), a cat (Morty), and a chicken (Petra).

Of course, as the family grows, so does the need to get those photos printed and preserved (along with the stories), for future generations to enjoy. 

These days, we don’t keep all our new photos and memories in a tin, but we do tend to store a truckload on our phones and other devices. To me, it amounts to the same thing. In time these photos will become the stories of the past. Those photos, sitting in our phone or even saved in the cloud, were taken to record a special moment, a memory, an event…..but who will see them while they’re on the phone. And who will know the story behind the photos in the future, or the names of the people in them? 

In May 2022, I became a consultant with the company ‘Close To My Heart’. Their products are beautiful, easily obtainable in New Zealand, and reasonably priced. Their products cater to both scrapbooking and card making, so as a consultant I am now enjoying doing both. Also as representative of the company, I am able to access a plethora of ideas and information to share with others, and turn my passion into a small business. But….since I’ve been working with this company, the thing I’ve enjoyed the most has been helping others to preserve their memories. Everyone I work with has a different reason for their projects, and a different level of interest in the ‘artiness’ that’s possible (but not essential), so my goal is to cater for all levels. 

If you’ve got photos languishing that need to be preserved, perhaps I can help. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube as ‘The Scrapbooking Photographer’, or you can email me at ‘thescrapbookingphotographer@gmail.com’

Thanks for reading blog #1. All comments welcomed, if you have time to respond below. 

In case you’re wondering, the photographer part of ‘The Scrapbooking Photographer’ is a whole other part to the story, so watch this space🙂. If you subscribe, you'll be sure to get the notification when the next blog appears.

Cheers,

Lynda