Monday, January 30, 2017

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.





http://www.seriouslyscrapbooking.net.au/home

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?

_____________________________________

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 ...

www.kellyanno.com



http://www.kellyanno.com/




10 comments:

  1. kellly-ann you are soooo funny, delighted you are along for the ride with the team, I cannot wait to see what you come up with lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lol ... the feeling is mutual Sue ... I also cannot wait to see what you come up with each month... I promise not to go as far as stalking ... but you know there's a line there that's well with approaching 😍

    ReplyDelete
  3. Welcome to the team!! LOVE your beach cards and the layouts are awesome! The Vintage banner is simply spectacular! I love it!!! Looking forward to seeing more of your work!! TFS!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the welcome and encouragement Barbra ... I'm gonna need all I can get standing next to this many flipping awesome designers lol xo

      Delete
  4. Wow Kelly-Ann, you just described how I feel regularly when I see my fellow design team members and their amazing work!! I too am constantly searching for some trickiness! Lol. Love the way you've written the blog post - fantastic and congrats on your DT appointment!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Sarah ... it must be the designers curse ... we are doomed to the never ending pursuit of something that bit more trickier than the last thing we made!! Bhahahahahaha ...

      Delete
  5. Kelly your work is nothing but amazing - thanks for sharing a bit of your wild and funny life :) it was awesomely funny to read :) big hugs X

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Adriana ... and can I say what an absolute pleasure it is to be back on a DT with you again 😃👍😘 xo

    ReplyDelete
  7. You are hilarious!! You've set the bar high for yourself for next blog post!! lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL .... dont say that .... you know I have enough paranoia going on already to sink a ship!! And a great deal of that is because of you and the AWESOME stuff you've been churning out by the bucket load .... trying to keep up with you and Sue Smyth will be the end of me one day!! he he he

      Delete