A great start to the year with Sandi's Inspirational Designs



Hi everyone, it's great to be back to share some more of my art and to inspire you to try some new ideas. 

Over the Christmas break I looked at my beautiful family and realised how much my girls have grown up. With these thoughts in mind I went searching for some old and new photos. 

The chipboard pieces I used on this layout were painted with Dina Wakley Heavy Body Acrylic Paint 'Lime', 'Magenta' and 'Lemon' because of their vibrant colours and great coverage. The paper and die-cut elements  I used were from '7 Dots Studio: Peeled Paint' collection. The cheese cloth was dyed with Lindys Stamp Gang inks and the ephemera behind the photos were old Australian children's story magazines.




The chipboard I used on this layout were:

Chris small arrows and shapes board. IDDC0001

Circle border 8 inch IDB0008

All grown up IDP0027

My second share is a magical moment between an Auntie and her niece; my daughter and my beautiful grand daughter 6yrs ago. I just love the beach and sea, the colours on a summers day are glorious and one of my favourite shades of blue. 

The background was created by using a roller to spread Dina Wakley Turquoise and Sky acrylic paints over the white cardstock with a thinned white paint dripped down the centre of the colours. The chipboard was painted with matching colours from the photo with the heart being painted in Magenta and blue hemp cord to frame the photo. The square frame piece behind the photo is cut from the 'Travel shots' chipboard piece.

IDP0196 Sun sky sea sand

Lous heart shapes IDD0070

My favourite travel photos IDW0061

 The third and last piece I'd like to share is a little different where it doesn't physically have chipboard attached onto it's surface instead I used it as stencils and stamps. I needed another art pouch to hold my Dina Wakley paints so I thought I'd make it uniquely mine.



Using my Dina Wakley paints I rubbed different colours over the surface allowing each to dry so I didn't accidentally end up with brown instead of these vibrant colours. Using the cut out section of the heart, crosses and arrow chipboard I used a makeup sponge to add colours. Adding thinned black and white paint in a fine tipped squeezy bottle around the shapes and in scribble writing adds depth and definition to the finished pouch.

IDDL0015 Lous heart shapes

Loolabelles Freaky IDDOO50

Loolabelle's nested Arrows IDDL0018

Nats hearts 1 IDD0042

Loolobelle's nested hexagons IDD0017

It was great sharing my first creations for the year and I'm looking forward to seeing every ones creations this year with our amazing Imagination Designs.

Thanks

Sandi

Moodboard Motivations

This month the design team are working with this deep, rich moodboard 
( source: Pinterest) 

Kelly-ann Oosterbeek is kicking off this post with a layout inspired by all the vintage colours and fob watches found on this moodboard.

Kelly-ann says:

I loved this mood board for inspiration ... in my head Browns/blacks/clocks = vintage.

 I've used a pretty basic background paper for this layout but touched it up with ink and watercolour paints. I also used watercolour paints on all the chipboards and those tufts of grass you can see at the base.

Using watercolour paint can create a beautiful patchy look that mimics age ... here I've painted with brown but used watered down white over that to give a chalky look to the finish.

Water colour paint also has the added bonus of soaking into the chipboard very effectively saving you from having to painstakingly cut in around the edges.

Thanks Kel.

Next we have Sandi Spink with an inspired layout on black.

Sandi says:

I was inspired by a workshop I attended last year held by our wonderful Louise Nelson, the background is a rolled section of white gesso and used a spatula to scrap lines into it whilst wet. I used an antique gold paint to coat the chipboard 'Dress' and Distress Oxide Ranger ink on the 'Now' arrow. The clock/cog piece was covered in Silver Versa ink and then embossed with Tinby Melallic Melts 'Paline'.

Thanks Sandi.

The talented Louise Nelson herself is next...

For the November theme Louise thought outside the box completely! 

Louise has created 3 pairs of fun and funky earrings using her own designs.

 Whilst they wont last forever they will certainly be fun to wear whilst they do.

Louise was inspired by the mood board to use 2 of the colours; black and silver.

FANTASTIC projects girls, thanks for the inspiration.

Where we Create - Part 1

Hello everyone!!

The theme for April is 

"Where we create"

Everyone will share their Creative Space...

a little piece of where they create beautiful projects!!

The Good, the Bad and 

some of the most beautiful rooms..

just like in a magazine!!

Our first share is from the amazingly creative Louise Nelson -

In my little rented half house I have set up my Scrap space in the closed in verandah. Unfortunately it is unbearably hot in summer and unbearably cold in winter, but it is what it is, so I move into my lounge room to Scrap when it's to hot or cold. 😄 This photo is my actual creative space.

Kelly-ann is sharing her creative space... and her friend Sue makes an appearance!!

I am a champion of the everyday scrapper ... I'm too often too busy or excieted to clean up so my space is nothing short of glorious chaos! I represent that demographic of crafters who live by the law that any money that could be spent or organising your craft suplies should actually be spent on more supplies.

 

Wait till you see where Sandi gets to create - how lucky is she!!

My favourite work place is wherever I'm 'Scramping'- Scrapbooking whilst Camping. My hubbie always asks if I have enough lol, but always leaves room for my supplies when packing. Thanks hon. My craft room at home is tiny, so I use it more for storage and spend my creative time on my big coffee table so I can also spend time with hubbie instead of locking myself in a small room on my own. I have learnt to store smart; in shelves and layers, stacking and labelling everything so I can see it easily.

Hope you have enjoyed Part ONE of  

"Where we Create"

Love Natalie xx

Excerpts from the Diary of A Designer Volume # 4

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 :)

Made using paper and embellishments from the 

Indigo Skies Collection from Kaisercraft.

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 using paper from the 

Kaisercraft High Tea  collection....

          

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! 

___________________

Kelly-ann Oosterbeek has been a scrapbook and paper craft designer for the last 18 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

www.kellyanno.com