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Showing posts with label pebble rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pebble rock. Show all posts

Saturday, April 1, 2017

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 :)



http://www.imaginariumdesigns.com.au/products/flourishes?p=2

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! 



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/