The Story Within {Precocious Paper Birthday Bash Blog Hop}

Hello! Hello! Welcome to the Precocious Paper Birthday Bash Blog Hop! If you’ve been following along the hop and have just arrived from Rebecca's blog My Cluttered Corner then you’re heading in the right direction. If you’ve only just joined us, then you might want to start at the beginning by visiting Perfectly Precocious. Need an incentive? Then how about the chance to win your share of $100.00 worth of gorgeous hand-rolled roses, fantastic felt flowers or delicious paper embellishments? Hmmm. I thought that might get your attention!


So, what’s all this in aid of? Well, the super lovely Tessa Buys is turning 30 and she’s celebrating with a Birthday Bash Blog Hop, sponsored by her rather delectable Precocious Paper Etsy Shop. I’ve long been a fan of Tessa’s handmade embellishments and you’ll have seen them appearing in lots of my scrapbooking layouts and paper projects.So, when Tessa asked if I'd like to contribute to her birthday celebrations, I did a little "whoop, whoop."

When I received these beautiful, fabric flowers I was so enthused by the gorgeous yellow colour that I really wanted to scrapbook something fun! It has a much brighter, lighthearted feel than my usual pages and I love it! Along with the fabric flowers, I've added a felt leaf, a wired leaf, some polka dot ribbon and a gorgeously dinky blue pin - which came in one of my samplers earlier this year. (Everything else is from my Counterfeit Kit.)

So, do you think you might like some Precocious Paper goodies to create with? Yes? Good stuff. Here’s how you can win your share of $100 worth of beauties...

1. Complete the entire blog hop and leave a comment on each of the blogs and you might just win the grand prize – the September, October, November & December Monthly Samplers – worth $54!
2. Follow Tessa’s Blog Perfectly Precocious and you might just win a $20 credit to the Precocious Paper Etsy Shop.
3. Like the Precocious Paper Facebook Page and get another chance to win a $20 credit to the Precocious Paper Etsy Shop.
4. And, be sure to leave a comment on this post, because Tessa will also be giving away credits to random participants throughout the Big Birthday Blog Hop.

And, even if you don’t win, you can use this checkout code - CRBBHFREE – until the 5th September to receive free shipping and a thank you gift. Not bad, eh?

Your next stop on the blog hop is Yara's blog It's Summer Everyday. Happy hopping! x

Nearly, But Not Quite, Autumn

It's nearly autumn. I can feel it in the air and I am so excited. Every year I eagerly anticipate the return of thick tights, scarfs and woolly jumpers. And, of course, the return of slightly colder weather and the odd rain storm that make me feel justified in staying indoors to craft and drink copious amounts of tea!

I busted out one of my autumn stamp sets earlier today, just to start playing around with some ideas that I've had in my head for a little while.

I used just one of my stamp sets from Make The Day Special (Unity's Harvest Of Memories) to create the card, because it comes with so many different little leaf stamps and the perfect sentiments. To make sure that I could easily stamp the leaves in a circle, I actually cut apart one of the longer stamps to make each leaf an individual stamp. Shock! Cutting my stamps!

The resulting card isn't quite what I was expecting. It's one of those projects I think is 'nearly, but not quite' but I'll definitely going to be trying this again with some different colours, techniques and probably a bit more layering. It's good to experiment, right?

*** By the way, if you've not visited Make The Day Special for a little while, be sure to take a peek at Emily's new stock - there's new Zig Pens from Kuretake, Papersmooches Stamps from Kim Hughes and there's some fantastic reductions in the August Sale. ***

Travelogue {Inspired By Explore}

I may have been away for the majority of Shimelle's latest class - Explore - but I returned to an inbox full of inspiration. I've been working through some of the journalling prompts, coming up with ideas for new scrapbook pages and one thing became extremely evident. Unlike the majority of scrapbookers, I've never really concentrated on scrapping my travels - I love to travel and I have learnt so much through my experiences - so this is a major omission.

It might be a little difficult to create entire albums for each travel experience - it's so much easier to create in the moment or at least while the memories are fresh. So, I've decided to create a travelogue. One album to house all of my travel related scrapbook pages - and I'm going to focus on the journalling. I want to tell the stories of the places, the people and the memories.

I've started simply - using this month's counterfeit kit - by creating what might become a section/title page. The photograph is of Notre Dame and the journalling is simply printed information from our Paris Guide Book.

The style is a little different for me, but I'm liking the super, simple layout which has lots of room for journalling. I may be adapting this layout throughout the album! What is me, though, is the embellishment cluster - a cute flower, some sparkle, a leaf or two and a couple of diecuts. Good enough for Shimelle's Signature Accent Challenge, right?

A Confession & A Craft Catch Up

I have a little confession. I scheduled all of my Make The Day Special DT Projects for while I was away, but never even thought about scheduling posts for them over here on my own blog. Duh!

So, here's a little crafty catch up...

This little note card uses one of the longer, background stamps from Beautiful Botanicals, along with one of the sentiment stamps from Sophie's Sentiments.

Using an ink in a similar tone to my cardstock, I simple stamped back and forth to create a subtle background pattern on my base. Then added my sentiment and a handmade ruffled ribbon flower. Done in minutes!

This bright and beautiful card uses three of Lawn Fawn's most popular stamp sets - Jessie's ABCs, Blissful Botanicals and Bon Voyage. Jessie's ABCs is a super set full of letters - upper and lower case - along with numbers and punctuation. It even includes multiples of some letters, making longer words and phrases easy and quick to stamp. I can now stamp my own sentiments whenever I like - versatile and easy on the pocket!

So, to use the sentiment I'd stamped, I then created a card to showcase it a little. The background is created using one of the stamps from BLissful Botanicals - stamped in the 'sing along' colours of the rainbow - and the clouds are from Bon Voyage.

A little tag that I made using some of the leftovers from a project using my mist inks. Little cards and tags really are a great way to use up all of those scraps you have lying around!

The base of the card was already misted in autumnal colours, so I wanted to create something 'earthy'. I used the corner stamp from Lawn Fawn's Blissful Botanicals and coloured it using Promarkers, then added a suitably nature inspired sentiment from Unity's Naturally You. Quick, simple and, yet, extremely satisfying!

And, of course, today's teeny tiny card...

I just love this cute label stamp from Unity's Garden Variety set - which is part of the Make The Day Special's Amazing August Sale. The label can be stamped with or without the 'Genuine' sentiment, but I left it in and then squeezed in some extra alphas from Lawn Fawn's Jessie's ABCs and made a little 'congratulations' card with a difference.

And if that's not enough inspiration for you, do head over to Make The Day Special to catch up on all of the projects from our amazing design team.

Have a good weekend folks x

Garden Party {August's Counterfeit Kit}

Balloon hats and wooden spoon puppets aside, I missed making things while I was in India. So, once I'd had a bath, a good night's sleep and a properly brewed cup of tea (who would have thought you couldn't get a good cuppa in India?) I decided to act on my urge to create and headed into the craft room to put together a Counterfeit Kit.

This month there were four inspiration kits to choose from, all originally available from My Creative Scrapbook in September 2010. I liked both the Main Kit and the Album Kit - but because there's less than half of the month left and I'm not a speedy scrapper - I combined what I liked from each of the kits into just one main kit for me to use. I'm calling it Garden Party.

I loved the floral elements from the papers and embellishments in each kit, along with the use of small repeat patterns and vintage style flourishes. I also adored the colours - pink, turquoise and green - and, although it looks as though I haven't used much pink in my kit, some of the sheets have pinks on their reverse sides. I love how versatile this makes my kit, without making me feel as though it's too big to work with!

Having restrained myself with my paper choices, I went a little crazy with my embellishments. I've pulled out three alpha sets, tons of pretty flowers from my stash and some super pretty die cuts. I've also added a couple of cute little birdcages that I stamped using Elegant Birds from My Cute Stamps.

Hiding under the flowers in the bowl, there's also a ton of buttons, beads and brads. Everyone needs a little bling every now and then, right? And let's not even talk about how much ribbon I've pulled out of my stash!

Back Home

So. India was amazing. I'll be sure to tell you all about it soon. But at the moment I'm still catching up: on sleep, on washing, on blogging.

And, more importantly, on hugs from The Steve.