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Monday, January 2, 2017

Excerpts from the Diary of a Designer



Monday 7th November 2016

Dear Diary .... 
received a card from post office saying I had a parcel waiting to be picked up :)

Broke speed limit twice getting to town and back but did not get booked this time.

Opened package to find to my utter delight a huge pile of Imaginarium chipboard products ... 

THEY SMELL SOOOOOO GOOD!! 

My heart skipped a beat as I looked through them and my mind started whirring with ideas ... actually had a moment of light headedness ... is it normal to experience such euphoria over craft products I wondered???

YES .... yes it is! was the resounding answer ... 

if chipboard can make me feel this good then I will never have need of illicit drugs  
which is only ever a good thing :) 

Couldnt stand the stampede of ideas any longer and sat down and did a page immediately.... 
I had a new paper collection from Kaisercraft - 'P.S. I Love You' sitting on my desk so I grabbed them and got to work :)



I just loved using distress inks on the deep raw chipboard... even the white ink came up a treat on the butterflies on this page. Couldnt resist using some bright green glimmer mist on the rosette circle though just to add that lift of colour to the layout. 

Wanted to get started on another layout straight away... but had to go cook dinner for hubby and 7 kids ... Gosh I hope one of my kids decides to become a chef and starts practising at meal times sooner rather than latter!





Tuesday 8th November 2016

Dear Diary .... 
woke up soooooooo excited about getting to do another page today with my new Imaginarium chippy supply... thought about it while getting breaky...thought about while getting kids ready...thought about while dropping them at school.... thought about it while at the gym .... didnt think about it much after the gym ... was just kind of trying survive the walk back to the car!

Finally got home and got into it .... todays theme .... ARROWS and CLOCKS :)


This page came together in a snap of the fingers ... I was of course swept away with the romance of the layout ... staring affectionately at the hero on the page... 

which was the beautiful THE RAW CHIPBOARD of course!

I did end up using some white gesso to get a nice bright white finish on a couple of the pieces :) 






Wednesday November 9th 2016

Dear Diary .... 
had to go to the kids school for an assembly today .... OMGosh those things are mind numbingly  BORING .... why why why do they invite parents? What do my kids always want me to go? what benefit is there to us all having to suffer through that??

Regardless of horror at having to attend yet another of these events I did my best impersonation of a focused, dutiful stay at home mum .... felt like I totally smashed it!! 
I then bolted back to my workshop to get working on a third layout I had planned.

This time I wanted to try cutting up an ornate frame and using the pieces as corner adorners ... 


I LOVED how the effect turned out ...


I ended up using some beautiful soft finish embossing powders on the title, the circle frame and the two corners around the photo. I used white embossing powder on the butterflies and the hearts. 






After that I really wasn't sure what to do about the outside corner adorners? I got really stuck there for a while and then I thought to myself ... 
WHAT WOULD NATALIE MAY DO? The answer was obvious...

- eat some jellybeans and try again!

 .... so thats what I did ... and it worked - while I totally couldn't find my black embossing powder, I did find a sharpie that managed to do an equally awesome job of getting those corners to compliment the B&W photo :)



When the kids got home from school one of them asked if I knew who the parent was that snored during the assembly that morning... 
managed to smile sweetly and state very matter-of-factly that I had no idea!!?


Thursday November 10th 2016

Dear Diary .... 
I had a class booked to teach this afternoon so I knew for sure I would NEVER get to make a whole layout today so ignoring all house work I got started on a step card the second the kids were at school.

I love step cards ... I can't actually remember how to make a normal card anymore !! oh well...

All I really wanted to do was find a way to use this off-the-charts cute bicycle chippy that Imaginarium created ... it's THE PERFECT size for a card so I was determined to make it the centerpiece.
 At first I thought I would make it silver like a real bike ... but then as I was digging through my embossing powders looking for silver ... I found my lost black  pot YAY !! 

If there is better feeling in the world than finding a long lost craft tool/embellishment 
than I know it not :) 

[inset picture of me doing happy dance]

Providence demands that I now use Black ... so shinny black it is :)





I just got it finished when people started turning up for the class ... tucking it away I was quite pleased that I had managed to finish on time ... class went well .... but I had one last idea kicking around in my head for a project with some of the butterfly chipboards .... bring on tomorrow!!



Friday 11th of November 2016

Dear Diary .... 
the kitchen floor actually made a crunching sound as I walked through it this morning :( 
My mind is telling me to do house work but my heart is crying 'OFF THE PAGE PROJECT'...

I am a creature of instinct if nothing else and must follow my heart in all matters.

As the Michael Lee quote goes...

'Follow your heart, and happiness will follow you.' 

How true Michael ... how true :) 

So it's off to the workshop I go ...

Today I was excited to be using Colour Blast Mica powders as paints on the chip board to create what I hoped would be beautiful iridescent butterflies on a mobile with dangling hearts :) 

start: BUTTERFLIES AND HEARTS

add: MICA POWDERS


Imaginarium chipboard is so generously thick that I decided to decorate the beautiful big butterfly with some Pebble Rock too... I used clear embossing powder to stick them on with :)


Next I twisted some wire together and used some invisible thread to string the whole thing up ... 
add some little rhinestones back to back on the strings and its done !



      






 


The clean up after this last project was of course EPIC ... whilst wishing I had a small army of forest animals to help me with this task ( not unlike snow white) my husband popped his head in the workshop and suggested I get a real job to pay the house cleaner we now need to hire for inside the house ... he gets the cast off next Friday. 
He also gave me a card from the post office, it appears there's another parcel for me to pick up....

I cant wait to get to town in the morning!!


Kelly-ann Oosterbeek has been a scrapbook and paper craft designer for the last 17 years and lives in Northern NSW with her super-sized family.

She has her own line of gloss finish butterfly stickers ( featured on the projects in this post), and sells these along with Kaisercraft Collections and layout kits online ...

You can find her and all her links at :

www.kellyanno.com



http://www.kellyanno.com/