Scrap camp - Away in WA

In April we went away on our first full scrapbooking camp. It was lots of fun and very tiring. If you go on one, prepared to eat and sleep poorly.

Rochelle and I were very excited. My luggage was extremely heavy and difficult to carry from work to Perth Train Station; as we were taking Rochelle's car, she had packed it to the roof with the entire contents of her scrap room.

The camp was run by Scrap Away in WA. We camped at Lake Leschenaultia, and food and bedding were not provided. We slept in a dorm room on bunk beds, one bunk bed to a person. I highly recommend taking something to block out nighttime sounds, or just don't sleep until 2am. Or maybe it was 4am, I was too tired to read the time properly. There was also plenty of fridge and pantry space for food.

We had groups from two shops attend. These were Scraptique and Tomorrow's Memories. Scraptique set up a stall, and we could buy papers and a large assortment of stickers, embellishments and so forth. Made with Memories were showcasing their new line of silicone moulds. With these you can press in clay or pour in wax or UTEE, and pop out your own embellishments. Rochelle was extremely impressed, and a new toy was added to the collection- the moulds and a Melting pot. I am letting her test it before I buy one, but the effects I saw on another blog a while ago now make more sense, and looked very good.

There were several competitions during the camp, mostly raffles which cost $2 per entry. There were also two competitions for a scrapbooked page. One involved taking a layout and putting your own twist on it; the other was a challenge to use at least 4 items from the goodie bag we were given at the start of camp.

These are the layouts I completed at camp:

Layouts completed at Camp

The following is the one I completed for the competition involving using a "sketch", or pre-drawn layout. Please excuse that it is sideways, blogger rotates it every time I upload it.

Competition Layout

I found the camp fun, and I feel much more prepared for the next one this weekend.

Ancestry Classes

Jo and I have recently started attending a year long scrapbooking class at our local scrap store, Made with Memories, called "Ancestry". We meet every second saturday of the month to work on a page. Both Jo and I have used this class as an excuse to start asking about our family history and get out all the old family photo albums. Last time I went to visit my mum she gave me three boxes of old photo albums, which I started going through today. 

The first ten albums to sort through

The cover page of the Ancestry Album

Ancestry Album pages

Ancestry Album Pages

Most recent page from class

I am going to use this class as an excellent excuse to go through all my grandmother's photo albums too and see what I can find. So far it has been an emotional journey.

I will post more pics once I start assigning photos to pages.

Kaisercraft Off The Page Project 1 - Nine Drawers

I started these drawers just before Christmas and they took a lot longer to put together than I originally anticipated but the process was very relaxing and quite rewarding. The packet comes with the plain wood pieces, and you have to assemble them after they are decorated or you will run across problems.

First, assemble all the pieces lightly together so you can easily take them apart again. Use a pen and mark all the inside areas that you are going to paint with an X, and the parts you are going to paper with a O. I recommend papering all the sections that you will see, on the outside of the drawers and also on the inside bottom shelves (see pic). Paint the rest of the surfaces including along the thin edges of the wooden pieces. Some areas are more difficult to paper than others, and this will also save paper on surfaces that wont be seen.

Note: if you are going to put any borders or such inside the drawer slots then you will need to layer some PVA glue over the top to make the surface smooth, otherwise the drawers will catch as they slide in and out.

When the paint is dry you can start attaching the paper. I chose a ‘memory’ theme for my drawers, and pink and pale green as the main colours. Choosing the papers to use was the most fun part of this project, as I wanted to create an eclectic mix of papers that would complement each other but also look really funky. The most beautiful papers were used on the outside and I used more plain and stripy papers on the inside. I also recommend that you put the outside papers on last (the top and sides) since that way you wont accidentally make a hole in them when you are assembling the pieces.

The edges of my pieces were decorated with a white lacey punch border, and i inked the edges of every single piece so that you cant see the white where the paper was cut. The ink can also cover any spots where the glue has leaked, paper isnt exactly straight, paint may not have been applied 100% evenly etc. I used a gold ink to give the project a more distressed/ vintage type look.

After assembly and gluing down the sides and top, I added my final decorations. These included butterfly cut outs, flowers, velvet ribbon, flourishes and a nice memory quote which I mounted on chipboard and inked the edges. I also mounted the quote on some hessian to give it a bit of pizazz.

For the front of the drawers I used a mix of papers that I really loved. I added some stamped words such as “fun”, mischief” and “carefree” which were mounted on chipboard and inked. I outlined the words in stickles to make them a bit more three dimensional.

The musical notes on one of the drawers were backed by burgundy velvet ribbon, with the bottom of the notes done in liquid pearl (latte colour). Finally, I finished the drawers off with some large pearl brads as handles.

To finish off the piece, I cut out the words “Memory” using chipboard through my cuttlebug, inked the pieces with VersaColour ‘Seafoam’ and then covered the letters in light green glittery embossing powder and set it with my head gun. The words were mounted on the very back edge of the top behind the butterflies and stuck down with PVA glue. You may have to hold each letter in place until it is partially set so that they dont just flop off (learned that the hard way!!).

There, all done! What do you think??

The first post

This is the very first post on the scrapbooking blog of Joanna and Rochelle. Now off to create!