Pockets with Pizzazz

Back again, this week I've been trying out a few of my own embelishments. There has been great discussions  in the FB groups about making our own enamel dots, by baking Perler Beads (Hama Beads). The oven temp seems to be the biggest debate..I have found that the best temp for my electric fan oven is 150c for 45-60 minutes. Using a baking tray and baking paper, space out all the perler beads, which takes a few minutes, then very carefully transfer them to the oven, if you knock the tray they all fall over and you have to start again (I know, I've been there !). Some people have been clever enough to stack one on top of the other for slightly larger dots, and some have cut them in half for smaller ones, I think its good to experiment ! 

My other DIY experiment was to use cork and stamp onto it. I managed to get hold of some small circles of cork from Wilkinsons, used to stop furniture getting scratched. and just stamped straight on it, peeled off the backing and voila! I have ordered a very thin 1mm thin self adhesive cork sheet, with this I should be able to punch out my own circles to stamp, and also run it through the bigshot with some of my dies to make words to use on the pocket pages, I can't wait! 

I was lucky enough to get hold of the new 'Aqua' Project Life Core Kit from Becky Higgins, it was released for Europe & Australia only - I'm sure it will be released in the US in the near future though.......I've used it for week 11, I love the choice of bright colours, and I cut one or two of the 3x4" up and used them to decorate the bigger 6x4".

WEEK 11:

WEEK 12:

This week turned out quite colour co-ordinated , mostly thanks to the green Kermit onzie !!!

I'll be keeping my eyes open for some more DIY tips, and trying to resist all the new CHA releases. There is a lot of new Stash due out in the UK in the coming weeks, I know I've got some new Prima to play with, and I managed to get hold of some BO Bunny which will be making an appearance.....

Till next time Elaine x

Pockets with Pizzazz

Halloooooo this week !!
I luckily had the opportunity to use some of the new pinkpaislee Hello Sunshine collection! I recieved the 3x4" cards, the striped alphabet and the chipboard sticker set, I sooooooooooooo love these cards, they're rainbow coloured and mention the rain & sunshine often - ideal for the UK weather! Not wanting to sound greedy/ungrateful or anything, but I would have loved the stamps and the ephemera that go with this set too ! It was supposed to be released at the end of March, so should be in the UK shops sometime soon I'm hoping.
We had another busy week, a part DIY scrapbooking weekend away Nr Swindon, with lots of people turning up with Pocket Pages, which was very inspiring and a brilliant laugh ! Some OH, SO, Cold, photos of -27degrees from one of my boys in Canada - I nicked them off Facebook, anybody else do that with their elusive offspring? Some clothes tags, I love to include bits and pieces that are not from the kits....and I used a great big cup cake found here: http://gb.trapletshop.com/craft-wooden-shapes that I decorated with the chalk pens and stamped on.

This week I went slightly overboard on photos - what do you do when you take too many !!!! I decided to scrap some traditionally, but I also wanted to include some of them in the Pocket Pages album....luckily I had just managed to get hold of some of the Becky Higgins Project life, Design F inserts. I carefully chose some more photos....I didn't want too many extra as they were of the same event, but I'd had my 'Big Camera' with me, and that always seems to take really good photos, that I need to include. 

There are quite a few different inserts from different companies that are not complete 12x12 size, you could use them as inserts or make a complete album from them - whatever suits your lifestyle.....

A bit more of the pinkpaislee in use -  its so summery !

Going Back Week 44 and 43

I thought I might as well show you all the work I've been doing on my Pocket Pages going backwards for last year too...Its nice to be up to date, but as I had taken loads of photos last year, but never actually started, I've had to make a big effort to catch up....I'm actually back to week 23 now, so over half way there !!

I think the gorgeous sunset was the inspiration behind the colours this week, it looks a busy week !

Week43: I had a weekend away at a lovely retreat, near London, we were very industrious with our scrapping. We visited several scrap shops first and brought lots of stash !

Pockets with Pizzazz

I usually use the Design A style pocket page every other page to allow some continuity in my album. I use one with portrait style pockets for the alternating weeks. However, this week I used a Design F style. This consists of one 6x4" landscape pocket, and 10 3x4" portrait pockets. What a challenge: this took so much longer to do than a normal week. I was lucky that I had a lot of photos to fit in, and it wouldn't matter if they were small, and I'm so glad that I had my typewriter to do the journaling. Trying to find suitable cards for each picture and embellishments took a while too.

Whilst I like my mixed colour, heavily embellished cards, I sometimes wish I could do plain and simple - it would be so much quicker!

Week 7

This week was heavily weather related, with the big storms sweeping the UK. Whilst out walking the dog I captured the photo of the rainbow over the hospital - it was rather magical I thought! I also documented the incident involving a fallen tree and the dog falling in the flooded river, rather scary at the time.....

Week 8:

Having used the Design style F pocket page last week, I realized I had to repeat the process all over again this week......I think it is a good page to use, if you have loads of photos to use up of very mundane things, that need more journaling than photo.

I really liked the texture of the Houmous packaging that we had this week, so I decided to use it in one of the smaller pockets along with an ampersand die-cut made with a electronic cutting machine, and a small portion of a 3x4" card - its just a bit different from normal!

I also experimented by printing 6 photos (using Picasa) on  5x7" photo paper instead of 6x4", I think I like the slightly larger photos for the 3x4" cards, what do you think ?

That's all for this week folks....next time I'll be using an insert to show what you could to do when you have too many photos for the week and I'll be using some newly released cards from Pink Paislee that have found their way to me !!!!!

Thankyou for all the lovely comments on previous posts, they are much appreciated

Elaine x