Excerpts from the Diary of a Designer Volume # 5

I've been blogging for Imaginarium again... heres the latest post...

Wednesday the 19th of April 2017

Dear Diary...

What a week!! I honestly have NOT fully recovered from Easter yet...

It was a typical Easter this year, full of kids, fun, stories and chocolate. 

As I do every year I swear I'm not going to touch chocolate, and as it does every year, the temptation gets too much for me and I end up eating all the chocolate I can find!! 

[rolls eyes in exasperation]

Opps...

I dont know why Easter has to look and smell so good ... and a bunch of kids running around  me all day munching on chocolate statues of rabbits is just a tad too 'in your face' for me to cope with ... in any case ...the great chocolate binge of 2017 is behind me now and I'm doing my best to keep busy in its wake... 

now lets  never speak of that particular incident again!

Scrapping as always is my favourite solace during these trying times and today I spent a blissful day creating this simple layout using Basecoat 4 papers from Kaisercraft and Imaginarium Designs chipboards...

Oh how I adore these simple little frames that add so much to a layout with such little effort.

I've simply run over the chipboards with a white pen and added them to the page :)

   

 Variegated colours for titles is my favourite way to treat larger styled chipboard words :) 

Another day .... Another layout ... I love the simplicity of creating ❤

Thursday the 20th of April 2017

Dear Diary...

I was up early today with lots of extra energy ... I love days like this when inspiration strikes and you can get straight into a project :) The children are all on holidays so the house belongs to them again and I just try to keep out of their way.... so it's off to my workshop to scrap, today I had an idea for tearing a circle into paper I just couldn't wait to try...

Using Kaisercraft Sage and Grace papers, some beautiful lace and Imaginarium Designs chipboards I  got stuck into this page...

Another simple title and flourishes where I've just added the colour with ink and then gone back over one edge of the letters with a white pen to create shine lines.

Friday the 21st of April 2017

Dear Diary...

Oooohhhhhhh ..... I'm so excited today ... I was up before the sun and couldnt wait to get to work using these new papers from Kaisercraft .... Bombay Sunrise!

These papers were made for me ... I LOOVVEEEE all the bright colours and vibrancy of it all... on a side note, I did actually spend a couple of months in India back in my uni days and this really is what the colours of an Indian sunrise ( and Sunset for that matter) looks like over the great cities of the plains ... simply breathtaking! 

I used these 'Loolabelles Frame and Bars' (12 inch) from Imaginarium ... I inked them first, chopped them up then constructed them on the page .... man did I feel tricksy after that move!! 

http://www.imaginariumdesigns.com.au/products/designers?p=4

I didn't treat the chip board with anything other than simple colored ink as there was already a whole lot going on in this layout ... but I was thrilled with the end result :) 

 Then I jumped straight into this second layout doing pretty much the same thing with ink and the gorgeous papers. I used an unconventional title this time ... I know 'Bundle of Joy' is meant for a baby ... but hey it worked here so I thought go for it! 

Using unusual chipboard titles is one of my favourite things to do :)

Saturday the 22nd of April 2017

Dear Diary...

Today I'm MAD EXCITED ... 

I'm heading up to Brisbane today to do a Jane Tregenza Patchwork Panels Class with Alison Bevis ... and then tomorrow I'm teaching and hanging with some of my Imaginarium Designs DT buddies ... how much fun can one person have?

...but before the fun comes the work 😔

I'm teaching how to make a quick and easy box card and there are 50 people in the class so I had better get working ... I want to have most of the cutting and crappy boring work done for the ladies so they can just concentrate on getting on with the card :) so I'll be cutting over 750 bits of paper up today and packing them.

Imaginarium Designs has turned out to be 

THE BEST DESIGN TEAM I'VE EVER WORKED ON

When I told them about the kind of chipboards I wanted to have to use on this card they designed me my very own unique board ....

I'm feeling a tad chuffed about this board... it's like having another baby ( but without the messy bits obviously) ... my very own board created by me for my box card design! 

I still cant believe how accommodating Imaginarium Designs are.... apparently this is something they can do for large enough orders ... I'll be back for sure :) 

I actually had tones of these made up and am selling them on my WEBSITE for $5.99 ...

I expect to sell many with the free postage.... I may even be rich one day!!? just sayin 😄

Sunday the 23rd of April 2017

Dear Diary...

WHAT A HUGE FUN DAY!!!

Today I taught at the Imaginarium Designs ACE class ( Alison's Craft Events) along with Jane Tregenza, Sue Smyth and hosted by Alison Bevis.... sooooooo much fun :) 

This is the quick and easy box card I taught...

I started out the day with a headache thanks to small incident with some pineapple lumps the day before... Alison warned me to stay away from them ... but I have a problem with this particular food group... so my 'After Easter Resolution' to never eat chocolate again only turned out to last 6 days ... 😐

For those who don't know what Pineapple Lumps are.. they are quite simply 

THE BEST TREAT EVER!!

Water and Panadol seemed to deal with the sugar headache quickly and we had an awesome day in the end .... Sue Smyth actually used a meat cleaver ...A MEAT CLEAVER!! in her class ... that was impressively noisey!!  

Here is a photo of everyone hard at work ...

This is Sue and I (and Wendy the photo bomber)  while class was going on behind us.

It was a wonderful day and the projects were fabulous ... Sue taught how to cleverly embellish a journal, Jane did a stunning double layout and I did the box card .... there was more Imaginarium chipboards consumed today than pineapple lumps yesterday... which is an impressive amount!! lol

I can't believe it's Monday tomorrow.... it's just as well though

... I'm looking forward to heading back to work for a rest! 😉

High Tea Projects

Projects made using the High Tea Collection from Kaisercraft.

Cheers form Kel xo

www.kellyanno.com

Indigo Skies

Projects made using the Indigo Skies collection from Kaisercraft :)

Cheers from Kel.

www.kellyanno.com

Wildflower Projects

Projects made from the Wildflower paper collection from Kaisercraft and Imaginarium Chipboard.

Cheers from Kel :)

www.kellyanno.com

Excerpts from the Diary of A Designer Volume # 4

I've been over to the Imaginarium Designs Blog again sharing my diary

he he he

Here's a look ...

_________________________________________________

Monday the 6th of March 2017

Dear Diary...

 I was looking over the themes for the April blog posts at Imaginarium today ... to my COMPLETE shock and horror the theme is 'my scrap space'..... Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I knew this would happen to me one day.

I should have finished that damn business degree and become an accountant .... no one cares what an accounts work space looks like!! 

So now have to clean up ....

I hate cleaning up my work space ... I always get 2 minutes into the activity, find something interesting that needs to be put away and decided I just have to use it instead... hence creating an even larger pile of carnage than was there before the so called 'clean up'.

It is a vicious cycle that never ends diary!! And there are no support groups out there for people like me with this particular problem ... I've looked!! :(

and now the fateful day has arrived where I have to make this space public!!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..............

Well.... I'm going in... wish me luck , I'm off to clean my scrap space up so that its presentable for next months ID blog.... I will pack a lunch first of course... but I'm definetly going.....

Tuesday the 7th of March 2017

Dear Diary...

Well I did it ... Ok I didn't ... but I did try!!

I packed myself a small survival kit and headed out to my workshop yesterday and began cleaning.

I would dearly like to say I kept on cleaning, but sadly it's just not true :(

It took about 3 minutes of cleaning the table when I came across this box that went to toss out .... I had a bunch of photos developed and they came in this box....

Just as I collapsed it down and stuck it in the bin I had the thought that it neatly folded to the side just like the box cards I love to make that all fold to one side and go back in their original envelopes ... I grabbed it back out of the bin and stared at it for a bit, folding it backwards and forwards ....

OMGosh ..... this would make THE BEST box card I thought to myself .... 

and that was the end of cleaning!!

But check out this awesome box card I made for my friend who was 

turning 75 this weekend instead :)

BEST CLEANING TRIP EVER!!

It only took one 12 x 12 sheet to cover it all...

It has a couple of acetate strips to support the layers...

These were the chip boards I started with ...

I cut up the bits I wanted and then painted them white 

and hit them with Crystalina Kindy Glitz :)

The message was printed and stuck on the back...

And YES ... it still folds down flat and fits in a very large envelope :)

Wednesday the 8th of March 2017

Dear Diary...

This morning as I walked into my workshop I was still reeling from the 

creative triumph I felt making that stunning box card... 

it had after all been somewhat forged in the heat of battle.

The sensations pulsing through me were both victorious and untouchable!

And then I saw my workspace ... it was worse than ever before ... as cluttered and chaotic as it had ever been ... i sighed and resigned myself to the long lonely road ahead of me.

I cleaned for a solid boring, lonely, depressing, life-sucking, morbid half an hour then I rang my friend Sue and asked if she wanted to go to maccas for coffee .... this of course was a trick question ... Sue ALWAYS wants to do coffee ... any time of the day or night I can count on her to drop what she is doing and join me for a cuppa :) Turns out she was cleaning her scrap room also and couldnt wait to get out of there ... so she grabbed a few magazines and we hunkered down with coffee's to autopsy all the layouts in the latest scrapbook magazine :)

It was an AWESOME afternoon and I came away some great ideas for pages ... 

Thursday the 9th of March 2017

Dear Diary...

I had too many great ideas from my cuppa yesterday to even bother pretending to clean up today, also one of the things I had found while cleaning yesterday was a pile of metal embellishments....  so instead of tidying I got straight in and did these layouts....

          

I love using metal embellishments :)

Friday the 10th of March 2017

Dear Diary...

TODAY IS THE DAY!

I was whinging to Sandi Spink last night on facebook about having to clean up my work space for this theme post next month and she gave me some really good tips..

Apparently you dont just walk up and start cleaning a pile of mess, you need to divide and conquer...

do inks first, sprays next, papers, adhesives etc ...

she assures me the horrendous pile in front of me will slowly but surely disappear ... 

Sandi would know .... she scrapbooks all over the place .... she's an outdoor adventurer when it comes to scrapping so she's good at taking what she needs and bringing it back  :) 

So I tried it .... and IT WORKED!! 

YOU ARE A GENIUS SANDI SPINK :) 

Now let's be honest here ... the piles themselves were not terribly neat, but eventually the piles on my work table receded to reveal an alarming number of coffee cups that had been suspending what resembled a second story balcony of paper supplies. I kept cleaning until I was down to the bottom layer which was where I found this awesome canvas I had started who knows how long ago!!?

I had seriously done enough cleaning for one day so I decided to jump back into this long forgotten canvas .... it's so exciting when you find a half done project and you can just get going with the colour and embellishments as all the groundwork has been done :)

    

Something quite strange began happening though ... I would look at my canvas and think .....'uummmm .... I think crackle medium would work well there' but then the thought would be followed by 'but I don't want to get that box out because I'll just have to pack it back up again' ... I then envisioned Pebble Rocks on it and got all excited only to reason that this too would create a huge mess to clean up ..... in the end I just stared at the canvas ....

 too scared of making a mess to try anything :( 

It was the saddest creative moment of my life :( 

It was with great resolve and strength of character that I then made my bravest decision ever ... I was going to create without consequence! Bugger the mess... I grabbed paints, pastes, rocks, flowers, chipboard ... everything I could get my hands on and before too long my workspace was nothing less than a fallout zone!! Good I thought ... thats the way I've decided it's meant to be!

With my head held high I walked out the workshop turning the light off as I went ... It may be the messiest workshop in the world but I have the time of my life in there, so according to my long and convoluted reasoning it is nothing less than a sacred site!

Of course this did not stop me marching straight up to my husband and demanding we hire a builder and interior designer to prepare my workshop space for the blog post next month.

He looked at me and replied ' Sure ... use one of the gold bars under my side of the bed!' 

AND I WILL .... as soon as I clean a path to his side of the bed!