Pages

Tuesday 22 April 2014

We welcome Monique ...

our guest designer for April.

Hello, my name is Monique Nicole Fox.  

I live in Maryland, USA and work in DC with the federal government. 
I am the mother of an 11 y/o pretty cat named Angel and a handsome 10 y/o boy.
I love going to concerts, crops, the movies, and friends/family events.
I love being on design teams and meeting new people.  This brings me joy.
I love participating in sketch challenges and manufacturer challenges. 
I love shopping, poetry, goofing off on Pinterest, Facebook, and Scrapbook.com.
I love that ARTastic selected me as a Guest Designer. They are the bomb!!



Here is Monique's take on our inspiration this month.  Such a fun page - totally perfect for this challenge



and two other lovely pages Monique has done.



Thank you so much for guesting with us on ARTastic this month Monique.  It's been lovely having you join us.


You still have time until the end of the month to upload your own take on this challenge.  We'd love to see what you can do with our bright and fun filled inspiration this month.  



Tuesday 15 April 2014

Mid month reveal and March winners ...

Welcome to our mid month reveal and the announcement of our March winners.

We'd like to thank our sponsors for March,  James from Alacraft, Julie from Time to Create and Kylie from Shop and Crop Scrapbooking for their generous support.




ARTastic followers can enjoy 20% off at Alacraft with discount code ARTS20.

Alacraft has free product giveaways every month. Please visit the site and enter your email address on the homepage or on the page indicated in the link and you will be automatically entered into the draw for $25 of free products for that month. People are welcome to enter as many months as they like, they just need to enter their email address each time.

 Alacraft is a family business originating from an established bricks-and-mortar store and stocks a range of quality materials including lace, ribbon, yarn, scrapbooking supplies, stickers, iron-on motifs, quilting fabric, craft flowers and much more.

  Check out Alacraft today!




Time To Create is a family business. We share a passion to create, share and develop the best that we imagine!  We only stock products that we use and believe in. Our stock is always priced at the keenest costing we can do. We support Australian manufacturers and many Australian suppliers and try to have as wide a variety as possible.

Try us and see.




Shop and Crop Scrapbooking is a family business and we strive to bring you all the latest from the Scrapbooking and Papercraft Industry, all our staff are very experienced and talented scrapbookers...We pride ourselves on great customer service, with a quick turn around of your orders of instock items.  We cater to both the online customers and through our store front at 10/335 Hillsborough Road Warners Bay,  We love nothing better than for everyone to drop in, have a coffee on us and browse and enjoy all the great scrapbooking products.


We had some outstanding entries last month so a very big thank you to everyone who entered.

Out TOP 3 winners are ...

Drea Slee who has won a $25 gift voucher from Alacraft.



Wendy O'Keefe who has won a store voucher from Shop and Crop.



  Buffy Burnside who has won a lovely prize from Time to Create.



and our random draw prize goes to Yvonne Yam.



Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me at jjjustjane@bigpond.com with their postal details.  Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar. 


Our Creative Team  favourite this month is Debi Clark who will receive a little something from me.



Next some more fabulous inspiration from our design team.  We are working with the below painting, The Chess Game by  Charles Blackman  with the added criteria of crazy antics, silliness or just having loads of fun.



KYLE


WOW. That was some challenge! I loved the Alice in Wonderland inspired painting and had to go back into my archives BC(d) (before digital camera) to find the pics I wanted to use for this. I took a photo of the chess pieces strewn on a table top and then just cut out the background around it. The chess set is one we got from Mr Bunker after he passed away in the early 1980's. In the photos is myself and my brother.





I've used some of the colours that can be seen in the inspiration image, and made my own background again. This cardstock has had the works, with sprays, gesso stencilling, smooshing with Distress Inks, and stamping.  The photos are of my son, around about 13months old. He loved to get into my washing basket and rock it around the yard. There were often the Woops! moments, when he rocked too hard, but he always popped up laughing. Great fun!





This challenge reminded straight away of my son on his 13th birthday. We went away to do fishing( his passion) and I had smuggled a sponge cake, cream, jelly and beaters in the caravan, for a surprise cake. Good old Michael to all our amazement....went and stuck his face in his serving of cake! At the time I can’t remember whether I thought it was funny or if I was cheesed off....considering all my smuggling efforts! Now I just think......typical Michael!





I think it was the silliness and fun that inspired me here. As I still have some pages to finish for my nieces album, I looked through the pile of photos and found some "silly" ones to use and added some fun and silly embellishments to go along with the rest.




I knew straight away that these photos needed to be used for a silly theme! My girls always have to have that silly photo after the nice serious ones. I was inspired to used colourful papers by the bright colours in the painting. Reflecting my colourful, fun-loving girl.


AUBRIE


I knew when I saw silly, I wanted pics from my son's first birthday!  I was inspired by all of the bright colors, and did a lot of tiny fussy cuts in layers to form a bar of birthday fun down the center of the photo.  I used different amounts of foam squares under the pieces to create depth at different levels.



I've gone all out this month using the colour combination of yellow, orange and black from the painting as well as the theme of chess and of course added in my own dash of madness courtesy of my son and one of those  "things they say" moments.


What fun pages - the team have certainly gotten into the spirit of the challenge this month.

Now we'd love to see your interpretations of our inspiration this month.

 Remember we happily accept all forms of paper crafting for your entry including digital and encourage international submissions.  All we ask is that you create an new entry for our challenge although you are most welcome to combine with a sketch and/or colour challenge if you wish.  You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.
  

Next week we will be introducing you to our April guest designer, Monique Nicole Fox..

Tuesday 8 April 2014

April 3T's ...

Welcome to our April round of ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques where each month one of our creative team will show you are few quick tips and/or techniques to use on your layouts.

This month we feature team member Debi Clark.


Hello & Welcome to my 3 T's for April for ARTastic  by Debi Clark

My Tip is a very simple one, and that is ... Get Your Punches Out!

I cannot throw out offcuts of any glorious scrapbooking paper,
so with the smaller pieces I get out my punches and make a heap of shapes that you can journal on, add as an embellishment, make into a flower – limitless really!

They are all ready for a page, or a card, or an album. Alternately just trim up your pp into squares/rectangles/triangles and then they are all ready for a page, or a card, or an album.





My Trick is again another simple one ... just stick it down, how you like it!

Make your layout or card or canvas, just for you because if you are happy with your project, then it might be one to give away!  I know the recipient will be happy too! Yes, make it just how you’d like it for you!


My Technique is also quite simple and it is one that I have used for a few years and relates to my tip … using those paper off cuts in a journal.

My daughter bought me a La-De-Dah album made by Grant Studio’s (available at Big W or Kmart for Aussie gals), for Christmas, and it is lovely to use this and it is just for me, again! Previously I have just used generic A5 notebooks.


My truly messy desk works well for me …
I find amazing things hiding on there!










Here you can see the cover, and I then added my embellies ... including a photo of little me.












I adhered the punched/cut shapes along with some Kaisercraft or Basic Grey journal tags, and embellies then used a 6 Word Memoir, for each day …just 6 words to sum up what has been going on in my life. Plus I write myself little messages.









Here is a link for some other 6 Word Memoirs you might enjoy -







I am not a Project Lifer, as such but I do have some cards which I like to use up.  There are photo spots in the album so I used a card and some bits to liven it up. 




And then added in some tags, embellishments and punched circles.



Hope you have enjoyed this little read ... happy scrappin'!

Debi




Have fun using your scraps and  punches to create your own stockpile of useful bits. I know I would feel so much better looking at a nice bowl full of tags, circles and scalloped shapes than a boxful of paper offcuts.

Don't forget this month's challenge - details in the left sidebar.  Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Welcome to April - this month is all about FUN ...

Welcome to our challenge this month.  

Today, April 1st,  is April Fool's Day around much of the world. In honour of pranksters and joke loving people, our inspiration this month comes from the Alice in Wonderland series of paintings by Charles Blackman. Criteria is anything goes but your photos must depict crazy antics, silliness or just having loads of fun.

  
Charles Blackman - The Chess Game


Charles Blackman - Born in Sydney on 12 August 1928. He left school at thirteen and worked with the Sydney Sun, while attending night classes in drawing and design at the East Sydney Technical College from 1942-5 under Hayward Veal.

Charles Blackman has in many ways been an influence to many young as well as some established artists. His work has been extremely popular and has a strong broad appeal, his symbolic style of including children, flowers, gardens, cats, dreams all reflect emotions and compassion.

Charles Blackman has an amazing 3613 recorded works sold since the 70s to and including 2004, in 2005 year to date July, his recorded sales is 112 works, these figures are excluding all gallery and exhibition sales nationally. The figures show a solid popularity and there has been an increase in demand for his work in 2005.

Charles Blackman has brought much joy to Australians with his diverse range of subjects and mediums, some of the most popular being - Charles Blackman Alice series, School Girl series started in the 50s, Orpheus Suite - of which the 1998-2000 release of 12 Collagraph images, a limited edition of 70 sets has this month sold out completely with a current RRP of $66,000 a set.




This month we welcome back The Scrappers Garden with the most delightful flower and handmade papercraft and resin range as our monthly sponsor.  Who wouldn't love to win some beauties like the ones shown here?  


We also thank James from Alacraft and Julie from Time to Create for their continued support throughout this year.


And now onto the fun from the first of our Creative team.





There could be a cupboard full of photos of Super Star being crazy but I am usually too busy laughing or running away from him to even think about finding the camera.
A couple of photos of Super Star doing something he NEVER does, a "Where's Wally" page and an inky, interesting technique came together as the starting point for my layout.

It is the journaling that hints at the significance of this adventure!






I loved this painting as I usually do here!!
I was inspired by the yellow background, with orange highlights, and I think I
successfully used these fun photos of Harry at the water play area of our
local pool - he just loves stamping and pounding on the water spurts! Thus the
title!





The photo shows our daughter and her grandpa posing in a silly way. When he does something silly (happens very often) our little girl is immediately doing the same thing. :)




These photos are from a surprise farewell party my daughter organised for her friend. And she was totally surprised !  I have chosen to use the orange from the background of the inspiration painting and also the black and white.




Something funny or silly is this month's criteria and inspiration from
Alice in Wonderland.... I took my daughters upside down "selfie" and
started. My plan from the beginning was to use the colors from the painting
but something happened along the way :)  Using this upside down photograph 
is inspiration from Alice in Wonderland where things are a little bit "different" - and she looks 
kind of funny don´t you think?


DEB

Inspired by the Alice in Wonderland theme, the colours and the checkered board pattern.

Come on and have some FUN this month - we want to see your crazy, joke loving layouts.

Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on April 30th, 2014. We'd love to see your newly created paper, digital, or off the page entries.  Please no back-dated submissions.  You may combine with a sketch and/or colour/technique challenge and international entries are always welcome.  

Please pop back on the 8th for The ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you this month by our team member Debi Clark.  I'm sure you will love what she has done to inspire you.