Labour of Love

I'm sorry my blog has been so quiet of late - it's not that I haven't been crafting, quite the opposite. After a great deal of thought, I've reduced my Design Team commitments as I didn't feel able to give my all to all of them. Instead, I've been concentrating my creativity on magazine commissions for Papercraft Essentials Magazine and making minis.

I've scrapbooked for years, and love to make mini books. A couple of months ago I was looking for inspiration for a family history book and stumbled on Kathy Files blog. Well that lady has a LOT to answer for! I'm well and truly hooked. The family history book still only exists in my head because I've been so taken with making other fab projects from her ustream classes and tuts. Kathy's enthusiasm (and laughter) really is infectious and her classes are a joy, certainly well worth joining in on a ustream class, but don't say I didn't warn you, it's HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.

So far I've made nine projects (told you!!) I'm trying to get my behind in gear to get some youtube videos done to show them all, but making and uploading videos is going to take me away from crafting and the withdrawal......well I'll try. Soon. I promise.

Anyway, this one is finished in that all the pages are matted, and the cover is embellished, but I haven't decided on a theme yet, so the boxes aren't filled and it's not overly embellished inside. I've used Graphic45 Steampunk Débutante paper which is stunning - in the past, this would've been a 'stroke only' paper, but to paraphrase Dirty Dancing, 'no one puts Graphic45 in a corner', and it's now reduced to precious scraps. I'm really pleased with how it all turned out - at one point, I got a little carried away with tags and inserts and ended up not being able to close the thing (Kathy's projects are anything but skimpy lol) so I had to remove them and need to make another project to show those off too (you can see it's a slippery slope!)

I'm especially pleased with the cover; I made some roses from coke cans, which I coloured with alcohol inks, die cut and heat embossed some cogs, both Tim Holtz and Spellbinders, to look rusty and weathered, then added some charms and Prima bling - which brings me to this months challenge at Let's Ink it Up. We want you to 'show us your bling'. Our sponsor for this challenge is offering a fantastic $15 to spend in their store.

Thanks for looking

Tracy x