Excerpts from the diary of a designer 2

No Pressure ...

Monday 2nd of January 2017

Dear Diary...

Cannot believe how beautiful it is at the beach ... heard from a friend in Casino that it hit 152 degrees Celsius yesterday!! Soooo glad we have taken this camping trip despite the ever present sand in my shoes/eyes/underwear.   Still. Worth. It !

Wandered up the 'high' end of the park this morning to try and get 2 bars of reception on my phone... if I stand just so with my tongue in just the right spot I can actually get my mail to download and look at facebook. The second I connected 10,000 mail messages appeared .... I waded through them and to my pure and utter delight I found out I made it onto the Imaginarium Design team .... YES! I did a fist punch to the air and promptly lost connection. 
. Bugger. 

After climbing a BBQ block I was able to reconnect and get a good look at my fellow designers .... OMGosh .... I'm not joking these girls are pretty much all spectacular designers.

I'm going to be honest here, I was a tad intimidated at the line up .... Alison Bevis, Leonie Neal-Dawson, Sonia Thompson, Tracey Fowler, Adriana Bolzen, Louise Nelson, Sandi Spink, Solange Marques, Chitose Nakamae, Karyn Schultz, Miriam Hagger, Belinda Spencer, Tanya Palamarchuk and for heavens sake .... Sue Smyth!! Thats Right SUE SMYTH!! 

These guys are ALL AMAZING .... a fact that really struck me while I stalkerishly Goggled them ... I'm feeling a bit worried about my ability to keep up with a group this talented! Not to mention there are certain people in this group who I'm pretty sure have some questionable video footage of me .... you know who you are!!  'Intimidated much Kel?' 

was the very question I was asking myself when I suddenly slipped and fell off the BBQ ... on the upside it was really relaxing in the air conditioned ER room at Taree District Hospital and the staff were all really very lovely :)

Friday 6th of January 2017

Dear Diary….

Am home from holidays …. I have determined that I will not let my awe of fellow designers intimidate me … I will just have to get extra clever in order to keep up with their brilliance :) 

The first chipboards I have to use are these brilliant arrows and chevrons …. 

I’ve decide to jump in with a set of cards … with beach holidays still fresh in my mind I chose some of Kaisercraft’s beautiful beachy 'Island Escape'  papers and made this set of 3 step cards… I kept the chipboards raw as they complimented the beachy feel of the papers perfectly as they were … I love it when embellishments can pull projects together with so little effort :)

then I spent the whole afternoon stressing that

 I just hadn’t put in enough effort!! 

‘Right’ I thought to myself …. 

tomorrow I’m going to do a layout where I actually 

DO SOMETHING TRICKY to the chip board! 

I so hope I dream of said tricky thing some time tonight!!?!

Saturday 7th January 2107.

Dear Diary...

Did not sleep a wink last night  and cannot think of anything Tricky!!!????!!!

Sunday 8th January 2017 

Dear Diary...

Slept like a log but was too overtired to remember dreams 

so if I did dream of something tricky it's long gone now!! :(

Monday 9th January 2017

Dear Diary...

OK so this is just silly now!!!!!!!

I feel like I have massive performance anxiety … 

do you think Sue Smyth has performance anxiety? 

Methinks NOT!! 

I bet if she spit on the ground something unbelievably 
creative and beautiful 

would form before it even landed!!

‘OK’ I thought to myself ‘enough of this nonsense … I’m just going to take my chipboard out and see what happens’ so thats what I did… and I was thrilled with the layout that popped out of my suspiciously uncooperative mind.

I ended up covering this ‘Lazy Days’ title, a round flourish frame and a set of double hearts with Colour Blast heavy white gesso, then using a hessian patterned background stamp and blue ink to stamp a pattern over them all. 

The blue ink helped to tie the chipboard into the blue background of the layout and the blue wisteria pearl vine that I layered around the photo.

getting my hands on the products was all I really needed to do I think because quick as a wink I grabbed some more of this beautiful paper range ( Cherry Tree Lane collection from Kaisercraft) and did a second layout … this time using some glimmer mists to colour butterfly chipboards and black ink and a white gel pen to make the ‘Little Cutie’ title pop. 

I used more of the black ink to create splatters in the background and a sharpie to draw black doodling around the outside that tied the whole layout together. 

   

I just adored those butterfly chippies … and the best bit of all was when I sprayed the chipboard thoroughly with the purple glimmer mist it caused the butterflies wings to arch up slightly … once I stuck their centres down they still had the perfect little natural lift to their wings :) 

I thought this was very tricky!! lol

Tuesday the 10th of January 2017

Dear Diary...

In my house now there are 7 children at home on holidays … for this reason I have decide to abandon the house all together . 

It is a sign of my superior reasoning skills that I can assess and accurately understand the situation as it currently stands … if I clean a surface at this present time it will take roughly 7.5 seconds for someone to dump something on that clean surface ... therefore there is no point in cleaning anything again until the 30th of January when they all return to school where they belong!!

I am not lazy …. 

I am the smartest woman alive!!

So I spent yet another full day out in my workshop creating while my beautiful family continued to spread the school holiday carnage.

I think I’m actually on a roll now …. I have all these beautiful ornate chipboard frames that Imaginarium sent me and I know just what to use them for :)

Kiah wants to redecorate her pigsty of a bedroom in a vintage country theme.

I explained to her that you can decorate a wheelie bin any way you like…

 in the end it’s still just a place for garbage!

She insisted that she would be significantly more inspired to clean her room completely if she had some new decorations to hang in there.

I live in hope….

I am the dumbest woman alive!!

So today I decided to make her a banner in the vintage country theme.

These are the chipboards I used ….

I also used a bunch of flowers and leaves from various companies, white paper doilies and a bunch of gorgeous funky fibers. 

This was soooooo fun to make …. Im overjoyed at how it turned out and really felt like I had succeed in channelling my inner Sue Smyth :)

Kiah  loved it and thought I was extremely tricky :)

With the leftovers from this creative forey I managed to squeeze out one more step card as well 

The extra chipboard I added was this beautiful Imaginarium flourish which anchored the card perfectly.

And so I am done!

I have no more tricks up my sleeve.

It's going to be quite a year trying to keep up with this brilliant new DT

I'm sure this shove in a new direction will do me the world of good :) 

No pressure right?

www.kellyanno.com

www.kellyanno.com

WHAT IS LOVE?

According Anna and Hans in Frozen...

'Love is an open door' 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that

'Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend' 

and Alannah Myles in 1989 told us that

 'Love is ... what you want it to be'

In our family .... this is pretty much what love looks like -

After half an hour of getting them to sit there beside each other I held up the camera to take a photo and when I said 'OK .... show me the love' THIS IS WHAT I GOT ...

My 11 year daughter ( third from the right) took one look at this layout and said 'Oh My Gosh mum .... why would you scrapbook that photo... my hair looks so lame!'

'Really?' I answered.... 'you look this photo and your hair is the thing that worries you?' 

You gotta love kids :) 

And you just gotta love this Crazy Tragic, sometimes magic beautiful life :)  💙💚

No chipboard was harmed in the making of this project... 

these are the Imaginarium Designs ones that were embellished though:

These two Chippies I hit with a good amount of blue embossing crystals then I drew over the top of with a white pen to create the shine lines.

These next 3 chippies I embossed with black and sprinkled some light blue powder through as well.... exept the outlined hearts .... those just got a going over with a black sharpie :) 

Cheers from Kel

Excerpts from the Diary of a Designer

My last post over on the 
Imaginarium designs Blog...

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

Magnolia Lane Layouts

Here are a few layouts I put together using the Australian Designed 'Magnolia Lane' Collection. Sue Smyth created these beautiful papers and I must say they are wonderful to work with :)

Cheers from Kel