Poetry Fun

My intent with all journaling is simply to tell the story. On this page, putting the poems inside a "book" shape helps to focus the attention on them. The four simple words on the accompanying tags says all that needs to be said to tell the story.

Paper Inspiration

Where do you get your inspiration?  This double-page spread was inspired by the paper itself - from an older book by Hot Off the Press called, BJ's Gold and Handpainted Papers.  I looked at the lovely flowers and thought, "I have a stamp that would work with that!"  It's a little hard to see in the pictures as the camera doesn't pick up the glimmer very well.  I used black Staz-on ink to ink the outlines of the flowers onto the picture frames. Then I colored them in with Marvy markers. The final step was to take a yellow-gold gel pen with glittery ink and go over the flower petals.  They really sparkle on the page!

If you look closely, you'll see that I did something that I often do with background papers that have pretty images on them.  I cut around the image itself so it could overlap my picture frames. I love that look!

I discovered another neat trick when I did these pages. The challenge was attaching them to both the frame and the page without getting adhesive on the pictures themselves (since they are vintage photos, I'm trying to ensure they're easy to remove if needed for some reason). I discovered I could easily manage with TWO of the clear photo corners for each corner of the pictures (except where they overlapped another picture). I put one on the corner with the adhesive side facing down, then the other on the same corner, over the top of the last one with with the adhesive facing up. Since the front and back of the clear photo corners are different sizes, and since they are slightly offset, this gives me a sticky part on both the front and the back of the corners of the photo. The front attaches to the frame, the back attaches to the page. Works great!

Stacked Dazzles

I LOVE the outline stickers called "Stacked Dazzles" for making great focals for cards that look like you spent a lot of time, but actually go together quite quickly.  They can be used individually or stacked to create pretty designs.  Here is a graduation card that I made for my niece. Her school colors were black and red.

For this card, I alternated mounting the Dazzles on red or black paper and then cut around them close to the Dazzle and attached them to the card front.  If I hadn't been wanting to keep it flat for mailing, I would have given each layer a bit more dimension by attaching them with foam dots.  The greeting was cut out using my Silhouette.

Halloween

With Halloween nearing, I suppose I should address this theme.  However, I must admit that Halloween isn't a holiday I care much about.  The devilish themes and all the extra candy - I can easily do without those!

I DO have some darling pictures of my daughter and her cousin dressed for Halloween and some day I will get those scrapped.  However, one doesn't actually have to scrap about Halloween to evoke these themes.  In this page, I was struck by how many of the thermal areas at Wai-o-Tapu (in New Zealand) had been given devilish names.  This brings in a rather understated undercurrent of a Halloween theme to my page:

• The font for the title is one that reinforces the "devilish" part of the title and the colors support this -- especially the color of the "Devil's Bath" that is repeated in the striped paper.
• The embellishments reinforce the Halloween time of year, but you can still see my reluctance to fully embrace the Halloween theme, with my choice of leaves for embellishments rather than something more sinister.