Adding Colour with embellishments by Cathy S

Hi All,

It's good to be back again and to be able to share just a little inspiration with you this month. I chose to follow our moodboard theme of colour bombing and create a very colourful layout.

So here's just a few tips to share with you about making a colourful layout without it being overpowering:

1. Start with a white background.... it makes the colour pop all the more.

2. Choose a few colours and stick to them for all your embellishments... I chose Red, Blue, Yellow and Green with subtle touches of Orange.

3. Use different embellishments in different colours to add to the effect... here you will see stamping in distress oxide inks, brads, letter stickers and cardstock diecuts.

4. Turn to your stash and see what works... I found a marbled effect piece of card that I made over a year ago which worked perfectly for my paint/arty theme.... just cut a few strips and voila an embellishment for my page. I even found a piece of inked blue paper that I used to matt my photo.

5. Keep your journalling in a neutral colour (I typed mine) so that it doesn't distract.

Hope these tips help the next time you want to add lots of colour to a page.

Happy scrapping.

Cathy S

Cancer awareness ribbon with Cathy

Hi Crafters,

It's Cathy with you today.

I am sure that we have all been affected either directly or indirectly by someone who has had cancer. In South Africa, this past weekend has been our Cansa Shavathon which is all about generating awareness and showing support for cancer sufferers and survivors. My Mom had breast cancer in the early 90s and has been cancer free for over 20 years.

As a reminder for myself I decided to make a little 3d cancer awareness ribbon.

I found a clipart ribbon shape that I like and turned it into a cutfile. As this was a flat shape I then added a few strips for the sides too... the zig zag edges make is easier for bending round the curves.

Oh and remember to cut two of the ribbons for the front and back.

Glue the sides to one of the pieces then glue the top piece on top.

Using the same cutfile I made the insides slightly small to cut out the ribbon in pretty pattern paper... I cut a base and then the middle pieces from a different and lighter pattern.

I raised the lighter pattern with foam to give the ribbon a bit of dimension before decorating with flowers, buttons, bling.

Hope you are inspired to make a project that is slightly different to what you normally do. Till next time.

Calendar Tutorial with Cathy

The year is drawing to a close and it's now definitely time to be thinking of getting your dates in order for next year. Well that's where my tutorial today might just help you out a bit. Why not make your own desk calendar so you never loose track of the date, plus this is the perfect project to de-stash your ever growing pile of leftover scraps.

I've made a few of these calendars over the past few months and have given them as presents. They can easily be custom made to suit your style. How's my how to:

1. Collect old cardboard boxes and cut them to the size you want. I made each of my pages 17cm squares (just because that's the size I could get out of the cardboard I had on hand). You will need 7 pages... a front and back cover plus the six months.

2. Dig around in your stash and find cardstock and pattern papers in the colours you like. I used some plains and some florals and trimmed them all to 17cm high. Where the pieces where smaller, I joined two together to make a pattern. I also trimmed some old book paper for some of my pages.

3. Next up I punched and diecut lots (and I mean lots!) of flowers, circles, stars, butterflies, tags out of all sorts of leftover scraps. This is one way of de-stashing your ever growing pile of scraps. These pieces I used in abundance on my pages to pull everything together.

4. I found a blank calendar template that I like (it's from Heidi Swapp from a few years back) and I added my own dates to it. I sized this to about 10cm wide and printed them out on an A4 cardstock. I trimmed these to size and then matted each month on a different colour cardstock (again using up some of my leftover stash).

5. I crazily decided to die cut my month letters using an alphabet die I have... this took ages (and even some maths) to make sure I had the right number of each letter in each colour. Next time I might just cut them out on my silhoutte instead! You could also use stickers or stamps if it makes life easier.

5. Once I had all my bits together I assembled the monthly pages. Here's the results:

Remember this is your calendar and you can make it however you want. My pages are simply a guide. I've added various techniques on some pages, plus extra bling, micro-beads, faux stitching, etc. Just something of interest on each page.

6. It is easiest to do one side of each cardboard sheet first to make sure that you keep the pages going in the right direction. The order will be

Front cover	January
February	March
April	May
June	July
August	September
October	November
December	Back Cover

7. Decorate the front and back covers as you like... I left mine fairly plain. They just add extra stability when you stand the calendar on your desk. (Optionally, you could leave these off and only use six pages.)

8. Once your pages are all done, punch each page at the top and then thread them onto some rings. Tie ribbons around the rings between various pages just to add extra detail.

Stand it on your desk and enjoy.

Till next time.
Cathy

Making Inky Rainbow Paper with Cathy

Hi Cathy here with a fun inky rainbow tutorial. I made some cards and boxes to store them in but wanted to make a band to go around my little box. Here's how I did it:

First up I took an A3 sheet of watercolour paper and applied seven different inks directly to the paper. I mainly used Distress Oxides, except for the bright pink on which is an Artistry ink. Once I was happy with the mix of colours, I liberally sprayed water all over the page and watched the magic happen.

I re-misted a few times to get the inks to blend. The photos look very blurry but in fact that is just the ink mixing.

Once I was happy with the blend, I left the papers to dry naturally and then cut each piece up into about 8 strips which I then wrapped around my little boxes.

This is the perfect way to make your own elements for pages, cards and more... let your imagination run and have some inky fun.