Acrylic Pieces for the Iron Crafters Challenge

 A regular challenge I like to participate in is the Iron Crafters Challenge. With a new mystery product to include on our layouts each month, it gets me deep diving into my stash.

The mystery item for February is acrylic pieces - titles and such.

Well these are basically non existent in Australia. I never see them in any scrapbook store. So generally when they are called for, I have to substitute for something else. Sure, I can get them from overseas, but the postage just isn't worth it unfortanately.

BUT this month I didn't have to substitute as I remembered that I got a free acrylic title with a kit I bought from Color Rush Studios. This was the layout I made using my one and only acrylic title...lol

I love the simplicity of this layout. The square on square layered design is on of my favourites. It is so easy to do and very effetcive. You can gut  the middle of the papers too to save on paper, but I'm too lazy to do that. Plus I have sooo much paper and trying to use it up. As I approach 60 I feel the need to downsize my stash not keep it....lol

The embellishments for this layout are a mixed bag. Some are from the Color Rush Studio kit and some are from my colour boxes.

The nutcracker, the three trees, the car and bundle of presents are from the kit, the rest are from my green colour box. What is my green colour box? I have a box assigned to each colour, and when I am finished with a project, the left over embellishments sometimes end up in their appropriate colour box. This normally happens when I have stamped or die cut something, or when I only have a few left from a packets or am just too lazy to put them back in the collection from where I got them...lol

I use these boxes a lot. They are especially handy when I am not using a collection pack or kit to make a layout. Sometimes I will just start a layout with patterned paper and the photos ,and that's when the colour boxes come into their own for finding items to add to a page. Many times the layout goes in a completely different direction to what I first anticipated purely because of the things I find in my colour boxes.

As I have mentioned before, the collection I used was from Color Rush Studios. And yes I did get it from the USA and paid the expensive shipping for it. But I fell in love with it and it was nutcracker themed. I love nutcrackers! They didn't ship to Australia at the time it was released, so I contacted them. They went out of their way to add overseas shipping to their offerings, so how could I not buy it after that!

I do love their acrylic items in their store, but again the shipping....uggh. Maybe I should look into making some myself. I know what I need to do it, just need to determine the demand I guess.  

If you are in Australia, would you buy acrylic titles and embellishments made here?

If you don't follow me on YouTube, here is the process video to watch.

Thanks for dropping by.

Have a scrap happy day.

Cheers,

Narelle

Base Pages for the win!

 Do you ever not scrap because you are time poor? Well let me tell you a little trick.

Use base pages! They make for quick pages that anyone can find the time to do.

I used a premade base page to create this layout for the latest Paw Your Way Into Our Hearts hop.

There are so many ways you can make base pages. Here are just a few :-

• Follow a sketch
• Use scraps.
• Use PL cards.
• Recreate a favourite layout.
• Or just wing it!

I have lots of videos on my YouTube channel about Base Pages. I have collated them all in a playlist here.

For this layout I started with a base page made from Project Life (PL) cards. I just haven't taken to the whole PL or pocket page style of scrapbooking, but I have a million of these cards in my stash. So what better way to use a few at once than by making a base page from them.

Then to complete the layout, it is as simple as selecting your photos and embellishments. Easy peasy!

And talking embellishments, they don't always have to match the theme of the photos. Sure it is nice when you do have things that coordinate, but as you can see on my layout, I had one dog themed embellishment.

When you don't have coordinating embellishments that is when you can fall back on the basics. Cameras and arrows never go astray in these situations. If your photos are outdoors, then you can always include trees, leaves, flowers etc. Always look for the less obvious embellishments too, like my magnifying glass with the word explore on it. I'm sure when the designer made this one they were probably thinking holidays, trekking, things like that. But I made it work on this page as my dog was exploring a new walking area.

Another great embellishment that never looks out of place are words. Just make sure to not overwhelm the page with them, unless that's the look you are going for.

I love how quickly this page came together, and that's thanks to the design work basically being done already by utilising a base page.

Make sure to check out the process video too.

Thanks for dropping by.

If you have any questions, please leave me a comment.

Until next time, have a scrap happy day.

Cheers,

Narelle