New Banner inspires New Look

What do you think of my new colour pages. I had a new banner made up for my shop a couple of months ago but with the new grand daughter, trips and such, I haven't gotten around to updating it on this blog. In an effort to  try to keep consistency across the board, I thought I would have a go at making the blog look more colour-co-ordinated. I still need to tweak the colours of the text a bit on the side bars but haven't figured that out just yet. Do you find it easy to read? Do you have any critiques to offer?
I choose a butterfly avatar as I love butterflies and the transformation & regeneration that they represent. I have noticed that a lot of my work especially my boxes have a butterfly in them somewhere.

Today's cute little Hedgehog card  also happens to have a butterfly on his nose as well as lots of butterflies hovering around the window card. I have stamped and cut a separate head and attached it on 3D foam tape to give him a little dimension. Both images are from Penny Black and have been coloured with water colour pencils. The inside has been left blank on the inside for your personal message. You can purchase this card from my Zibbet Shop

Blessings to all
Michelle

Added: I almost forgot to thank Judy for designing my banner, business card and avatar  just the way I wanted it. She is so helpful & easy to work for. You can find her here at her Zibbet Shop.

Lilac Tissue Flower

Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged. I have been busy making all sorts of flowers, but I am running out of room for storing the explosion boxes in my caravan.

When out for dinner one night we were given this lovely purple serviette to cleanse our hands and face... instead I hoarded mine and went back to the van and made it into two 3d tissue flowers. I folded the serviette into 4 and then hand cut the wiggly circle shapes. I separated them into individual layers and then reattached them into two piles with a brad in the centre  of each flower through all layers. To make the flowers I then proceeded to scrunch all the layers separately and then partly open them to create the dimension and interesting petal shapes. I think it kind of looks like an old fashioned rose.

To make the box I used my cuttlebug to emboss 4 top card layers through the textile folder and then edged the card with a sponge and colour swiped off an inkpad.
The little flowers were made with a retro punch and a snowflake punch as stamens and touched in various colour inkpads.  For a change some of the flowers are also up on the acetate strips. I like this look. I may do more like this in future at times.

The small leaves are birch leaf punch from Carl and the swirl is a punch again from Carl. The larger leaves are hand cut following the basic shape of the birch leaf punch but using my deckle edged scissors. My butterflies are hand cut and glittered from a long forgotten museum website.

Here is a close up. Feel free to ask any questions.

Camille's Scrap Album: last pages

At last we come to the end of Camille's book. I hope you have enjoyed viewing all the pages. It was a big project to me. Being my first off the page book I think I was a bit ambitious and over my head, but I kept on swimming and eventually got it finished albeit 2 years late. (I had promised it for her 21st!!! - Note to me: Never ever make promises!!!)

The medallion is stamped 5 times and hand cut leaving out a section each time making it smaller and smaller with each layer. I coloured it & glittered the purple sections for interest. The butterfly (unknown source) was hand cut & glittered.

I have always love the analogy of the caterpillar transformation and Christians are a new creation. If a person calls themselves a Christian and a transformation is not evidenced in their lives then I wonder??? but enough of that - none of us are perfect. The quote is computer generated and the shape was traced around it and handcut since my cuttlebug is 4,000 km away. The butterflies (source unknown) are also hand cut. A simple tie and you can pull it open to reveal a hidden message.

This analogy draws upon the new creation verse of 2 Corinthians 5:17
"If any man (woman too!) be in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are finished and all things become like new!"

Do let me know if you find this blog and if you have enjoyed viewing it. It is a lot of work to post it whereas I could be selfishly happy and crafting away making more stuff, but I do enjoy being inspired by other people who have gone to the trouble to make their creations available for all to enjoy and learn from, I thought it time I give back and pass on some love and I hope I can encourage some others to give it a go!

Camille's Scrap Album Pages 13 to 16

Getting close to the end now. Just one more installment after this one. I have gone into so much detail as each page is unique and worthy of showing.

The background you can see on page 13 is done with a crackled paint technique. It has 2 lots of tags that swing out to reveal a single word, such as Memories, Friends, Enjoy, Sweet, Celebrate, Love, Smile& Life. I have embellished with a couple of simple punched daisy flowers with a diamante centre. Page 14 is dry brushed background and has a simple stitched border tag with a heaven smiles quote embellished with metal flower, wire butterflies and hand ink dyed skeleton leaf.

 

Of course I have my favourite pages and 2 of them are right here below

 

 beautiful daughter of God

God breathes and the beauty of nature is revealed

You, Camille, are amongst His most beautiful creation & I am left breathless.

Adapted from some quote I picked up from somewhere and kept. 

I googled it and found scrapbook.com/quotes. It is attributed to S. Brown.

Camille You amaze us... is written by myself.

Now the flowers on these 2 pages are all made from combinations of flowers I have collected over the years mostly from budget $ type shops. I loved mixing the flowers together to get this bright and colourful collection. The butterfly is punched with my new Martha Stewart punch and a colour magazine which I glittered. I also added a pearl beaded string for the trail.

As I said it is one of my favourite pages!

I have been a busy little bee

This is the front cover with my adapted silk flower which I glittered before placing on a stamped background. The butterfly is an embroidery patch.

Since the new year, I  have been busy in my craft room. First off I started to do my yearly clean up though I wonder if my hobby is more along the lines of collecting papercrafts rather than making papercrafts. I have so much stuff. Then in the midst of cleaning and tidying up I rediscover a scrap album that I started for one of my daughter's 21st two years ago and so I determined that I would surprise her and finish the book. I think I procrastinated more because I was a) a bit ambitious for a first time project and b) I was stumped by the fact that the book pages had a jolly big hole in the middle of each and every page.

Pages 1 & 2. The paper was coloured using the direct to paper technique, some rub ons, stamps, a heart charm, foil and gems were added for accents

Inside the little card on page 2 was computer generated.

Pages 3 & 4. Sorry, my photography skills leave a lot to be desired.

Bible verses to live by. Rub ons and felt flower ribbon adornment with stickles as centre accents

 I found these holes to be a big part of my stumbling block. In the end I decided to cover over the holes and proceed with designing the pages. I feel this decision liberated my creativity. There are so many pages I will split the photos over 2 or more blog entries. I will post a few detailed photos that I think people might be interested in viewing in closer details.

Procrastination

I don't suppose I am unique but sometimes I am ashamed of how much I can procrastinate. I can start a project and then move on to something else with all good intentions to come back to the original project and it just doesn't happen. I work best to a time frame where I have a birthday or wedding coming up and that both inspires me and motivates me to do a particular project. (Actually I am the same with housework - if I have all day long to do it, then it takes all day and I still may not get it all done, but if I know someone is coming over then I will make a wonderful effort to get it done and some baking and quite often extra cleaning done (that the visitor wouldn't even know about anyway eg clean out my freezer or some such silly thing!)
 Well the point of all this rambling is to let you know that I started my yearly tidying up of my craft room and I rediscovered a scrap album I started for my daughter's 21st. Only problem is that she turned 21 three years ago. it is about time I finish it for her. I am only going to give you teasers for now and I will post the full book when it is finished and she has it in her hot little hands! I am happy to say I finished 3 pages yesterday and added a few additional touches to otherwise finished pages and now I have only the last page to do.

Early efforts at Explosions Boxes

Here are a few of my earliest efforts at making Explosion Boxes.

My very first one - made for my best friend. Made with commercial silk flowers & rub ons

My first attempt at making my own flowers (from Fred she said blog).

A photo box made with silk flowers

My first stamped box together with my first 3D paper flowers

  I think the silk flowers are nice but I wanted to have a go at making my own flowers.

I wanted a more creative input. It quickly became obvious that butterflies were going to be part of my 'signature' on most of my boxes. I love butterflies. One day I might even try making some.

These butterflies are printed from the internet already coloured. I cut 2 and glue them back to back.