Liam Turns 11

Crikey! How did that happen?

Liam show real interest and excitement in his birthday this year. It was so cool that when someone asked if was having a party (which he just doesn't do) he said "Yes, with my Dad when he gets home from work!"

I had made him a big cake and 30 small ones to take to his class for morning tea and he had one special one for breakfast!

You Tube video to enjoy

Found this feel good song today - thought I would share it with you.

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Scrapbook Dreams November Challenge

My turn to set the criteria this month over at Scrapbook Dreams.

I chose to go with "Black + White + 1 other colour". Sounds easy but it does take a bit of thinking about.



I have just bought (off a guy at work) an A3 HP Colour printer. It does not do borderless, sadly, but almost. I printed the "Dad" paper and had a wee giggle that for the first layout after purchase I print in black and white! The frogs were free digital elements that I downloaded from the internet, printed on photo paper and popped up on foam.

Finished Book Cover

What fun! Messy, messy, tear a bit, glue a bit, slap a bit her, a bit there!

I used some of the page from the original book for the cover topped with silhouettes cut with my new digital craft cutter. I used a spare jeans button for the "door handle" and when the edges were dry, I sanded and inked them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Reinvented Book Workshop

Now this was really my cup of tea!! Loved this idea and had a lot of fun collating the paper stocks with which to make my new pages.

I had so many thoughts and ideas about this that I couldn't sleep last night so at 1.30am, I got up and glued the binding to the spines of the signatures (or "packets" of pages, as our tutor calls them) so that I could the glue the original cover back on today and get these photo's up, lol.

So.... this is what I started with. An old Readers Digest condensed book that used to hold up one corner of Mum's old sofa:

I took out all the pages:

I then cut various cardstocks, papers and even an old aerial photo printed on film, to size. These were then folded in half, collated into signatures (or sets) of 3, 4 or 5 depending on the thickness of the paper used and then trimmed up neatly.

I used a mixture of heavily textured paper, water colour paper, black paper and printed papers. As you turn the pages you may well come across a page of random size or a pocket to pop in tags or notes. I love the unexpected element of this.
I may yet alter the cover because of course it no longer reflects the contents but I'm not sure yet how I want to do it.

I can see I will make more of these over time - they will make great gifts.

Altered Book Workshop

Gosh - it has been a while since I posted anything! Pretty slack, huh?

Last Saturday, as part of my birthday gift from Mum, I went to a workshop at Pataka Museum in Porirua to get some insight into altering old books.

I had a great time! The workshop was presented by two young artists and I have yet to finish the book but it's one of those projects that you can do in bits and pieces.

This is the book that I started with:



And this is a page I started before I remembered to take a photo:



It now looks like this:



Here are a couple more that I have done:





I used lots of paint and distress inks, masks and additional images. It took a couple of days to get the ink stains off my fingers, lol.

I'm going back tomorrow for a second workshop. This time we will "re-make" a book using the book original cover and making "new" pages for it with a variety of card and paper stocks.

Watch this space for the results :)

The Pelvin Sisters

I have been having so much fun with multi-colour stamping of late. This layout is about my Mum and her sisters.



I love the colours of this layout and the way it just all come together.