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Here’s my proof that why yes, I can stamp!

Or something like that *wink* *wink*

My first layout for Craft Origine!

Which brings me to a nice reason for being on a stamp-DT: A non-paper DT means I’ll get an excuse to dig into my non-DT-manuf stuff more often! Because yes, I’ll freely admit that when you have obligations for this and that manuf you’ll use your older, beloved non-DT-stuff less and less (although I think I am pretty good at balancing this atm, having a number of non-paper-DTs already :) ). Stuff on my layouts include American Crafts, papers from Prima, Crate Paper, KaiserCraft and Pink Paislee), tags from Elle’s Studio, Pink Paislee, MME and yeah, random bits and pieces from here and there.

So, I’ll freely admit I don’t have much experience with stamps, hence I’m probably easily impressed..which I’ll admit I became, using the Craft Origine-stamps. It took the ink (Archival Ink) so easily and yielded such crisp, detailed and rich impressions. I don’t think I really needed to push as much as I did (I do that when I’m afraid the stamp won’t stamp off easily sorta).

Nice, aren’t they? (Yes, yes – I didn’t notice until it was too late that I didn’t make sure the duck-stamp had ink all over before I pressed it down. In fact I saw that just as it touched the paper…and when I redid the stamp, well, I didn’t hit exactly on the lines :p)
Nevertheless. The stamps I’ve used comes from Anniversaire (the numbers), Enfance (the duck, sentiment and rocking horse) and Recettes (the bunny!).

Alright. I’m excited and honored, and looking forward to see how I’ll solve this with “I’m-no-stamper”-thing combined with being on a stamp-DT =)
Feel free to check out the Craft Origine store, the Craft Origine blog (it’s in both English and French) and the other (French! I’m the only Norwegian there o.O) girls’ blogs: Céline Le Guay (Marianne), Gaëlle Fauglas and Karine Cazenave-Taipe.

The other day I got an email asking if I’d like to join a design-team.
One that manufactured stamps.
«Um, stamps? Me? Ehh..sure you got the right person?» I asked back, pretty confused.
Because yes, it had to be asked. I don’t see myself as a stamper, so I couldn’t fathom why someone would ask me to join a stamp design-team. Well, long story short, and after ensuring she actually knew I didn’t really stamp, and after having seen samples of her stamp-designs, I agreed to join the team. I mean – 1. It really is flattering when someone actually have checked you and your work out and still ask you to join and have faith in you (thanks Virginia!), 2. The stamps I’ve seen and tried so far are unmistakenly cute, sophisticated and vintage-y and actually stamps I wouldn’t think twice about using and 3. I’ll admit I’m curious and pretty much always up for a challenge.

So. Bring it on!
Say hello to Craft Origine stamps!

I’ll share more of my layout later when it’s on the Craft Origine-blog, but for now – here’s a peek …and yes, I stamped on it after having sewn stuff and all. I’m oh so brave (or cocky) ;p

And in the meanwhile, do say hello to the design team of Craft Origine :

• Céline Le Guay (Marianne)
• Gaëlle Fauglas 
• Karine Cazenave-Taipe

Now excuse me. I’m gonna prowl the stupid webstores waiting, longing, needing my new Eizo-screen to enter their virtual shelves so I can get myself a proper screen to edit photos in ASAP!

I see the announcement is on.

This is pretty ridiculous, but somehow I actually made the Prima design team o.O

It’s weird, I think this year is the third year I’ve applied to the Prima DT, hmm..yeah..third I believe.. So I didn’t have any hopes this year, but hey, it’s become a sort of an annual ritual, so I figured I’d try once again.

And now that I actually made it… I’m scared. And a little bit excited. No ok, pretty much stoked. And terrified, cause it’s like…Prima, you know?

Haa!

Here’s the rest of the gals…lots of crazy Prima-talent here, so I honestly almost feel a bit like an outsider :p

AnnaMarie Mondro

Anna Dabrowski

Karola Witczak

Stacy Cohen

Trina McClune

Leslie Ashe

Maiko Kosugi

Jamie Dougherty

Trudi Harrison

Heidi Kelley

Anna-Marie Wolniak

Stacey Young

Hege A. Lundquist <<—Another Norwegian! Whee!

Emeline Seet

Marie-Nicolas Alliot

Steph Devlin

and ofcourse, the DTcoord Sharon Laakkonen, who has Norwegian blood in her veins! Yay! Teehee =)

=)

As there’s NSD and Mothers Day in the US, there’s lots of giveaways going on.

Crate Paper are giving away two $100 Crate products for a lucky commenter and the commenters mother. Just hurry here and leave a comment before Monday.

And as for Glue Arts, well, they seem to always have giveaways with each post. Right now you can have a chance winning this adhesive-kit seen above, plus some extras. And well, the DT is always filled to the brim w/spectacularly creative ideas and step-by-step instructions. It sure is intimidating being on that team! :p Nevertheless. You can find their blog here.

If you check the many scrapbookmanufacturers blogs this weekend I’m sure you’ll catch lots of stellar chances for winning giveaways and stuff.

Speaking of giveaways. Haha. This isn’t a giveaway. Or well, it sort of was, I guess. I finally got around to clean up my room *some* (unfortunately not all…sigh..lots of clutter and stuff here still!), and dropped four boxes of SB-stuff to the local Red Cross. Yay me and all, or something like that. Before anybody says “gee, how kind and generous”, well, not really, most were either really really old stuff (like, three year old stuff gathering dust on my shelves) and/or things I’ve received from various places for free and no longer needed. I’ve been wanting to unload this stuff for a while now but hadn’t gotten around to it until I did an interview w/the leader of the local Red Cross and she mentioned how they wanted to go more creative and stuff during the free activities they offer toddlers and their parents. I had to stop the interview and tell her something like umkay Im not sure if I should say this while I’m at work, so this hasn’t got anything to do w/the job, this is just me speaking personally, but would you like some SB-stuff to help pursue the creative goal maybe?

It was a lucky break, I mean, I’ve been pondering if they might want some of my stuff for their various activities (they do lots of really nice stuff for the local people) but not really dared ask them before thinking it’d be too silly, so when she actually said they’d want to arrange more creative stuff but hadn’t really gotten started yet I was like oyy here’s my chance after all :p

So if you have lots of unused SB-stuff making you feel bad and all (because it just sits there..like my stuff did), well, it really does make you feel much better to be able to give it away. Feel free to ask your children’s school/kindergarten (our kindergarten has gotten stuff before too), the local hospital, or the local Red Cross to ask if they perhaps would use any of this stuff…make room for more new sb-stuff! ;)

Images courtesy of Camera+ and Diptic

Have a lovely weekend…ours sure is, w/homemade chocolatecovered strawberries….mmmm! Totally delicious!

Before starting the catchup-post – I’d just like to say thank you for the nice comments to the babypictures of Lykke :) And if anyone would like me to photograph their babies, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I love babies and I need practice learning how to shoot them consistently good so I’m cheap for the time being ;) (I also do weddings and stuff by the way ;p) Right. ‘Nuff selfpromoting =)

Looks like “all” the other DT-stuff decided to get posted all at once – that’s just so typical (once I create stuff I hate usually having to wait to share them) – so it seems like all of a sudden I have a lot of projects to share..

This is an exploding-box I created for my nephew when he got confirmed. You can find step-by-step-explanations here. The materials used is mostly Father like Son from Fancy Pants Designs, plus a tag from Elle’s Studio inside.

  This box only has one layer – I think that’s more than enough for my use. I sewed pockets for money on the sides – this is something Polish Agnieszka usually do, and she totally rocks these boxes!

Then there’s this shadow-box made from a canvas, made as a tutorial for Crate Paper. Which tbh seemed like a great idea inside my head, and still is I guess – I just wasn’t all that satisfied with the end-result. Prob should have done a few things different, like diff. papers and stuff. Ahwell – live & learn! Plus I’m too lazy to redo elaborate tutorial-stuff! :p The materials used here are papers, stickers and chipboards from the Brook and Paper Doll collections.

And then we have these lovely (*wink*) monochromatic cards for Pink Paislee. I do my best to pretend I can be snarky too ;p

Gotta say I adore Pink Paislee’s Halloween-line Hocus Pocus. It’s different from the usual Halloween-stuff out there – in a good way, trust me.

I dunno – I see no harm in these cards – just harmless fun – but I guess – there’s some people I wouldn’t give these cards to because I wouldn’t be too sure how they would react. What do you think?   Oh, and look, the 6x6 pad fits perfectly inside these 6x6 cards (duh). =)

Might as well get done w/the catchup for now, so here’s the rest of the photos from Papirfesten :)

Eli in front of the landmark hotel.

Up close..

Visiting Oddbjørg’s lovely home :)

Trying to get Lykke to cooperate – to not much avail :p

Awesome circlethingie :p

Eli w/weird antennas! (yes, this was a planned shot in case you wondered :P)

A shot of me and Liz Hicks. Meeting her was really nice, she used to be my contactperson in Tattered Angels (when I was a TA-educator). Tbh I was not sure if she would remember/recall me, so it was a pleasant surprise when she indeed did. She seemed to be a really lovely person, walking around talking to everybody just like that – I sure wish I was as outgoing as her! I tend to only dare go to&speak with people I know in advance! I’m glad she asked for the photo as I was too wussy to ask myself! Haha :) Now I have a picture of me and Liz, yay! :)

Here she is again, demo’ing for a lot of very, very focused women :)
(And while I realize that being taken pictures of while teaching/demoing is just something you have to accept, I can only dream of looking as gorg as she do when teaching PACS later this year. Sigh. Be gentle with me please :p)

And lookie *wave Eli & Gry* – we didn’t try the local menu, but we noticed it seemed real cheap – 49NOK for a child? ;p

Gry came all the way from Belgia, so she brought chocolate and um, Rum for us (yeap, blaming Gry for that one alright, let’s ignore who actually requested it mkay? ;p).

I’m not sure why this picture, but eh, yeah, iPhone – me wantsssssss……

Cheers!    And finally, a group-photo of me and my lovely room-mates (whom unfortunately aren’t to be trusted if you’re standing in front of an elevator OR if you leave your camera unattended in the room…COUGH! COUGH!)

Right! Think I’m caught up now – only have to share the stuff I actually managed to create during Papirfesten (no small feat if you know me – I rarely manage to scrap at crops, and always end up with “need-to-finish-at-home”-projects…but not this year – I finished two layouts & two cards, yay!) – just think a few of them will go to various DTs, so not sure when I can share come to think of it :p

Right, gonna wrap this looong post w/urging you all to drop by my dear & talentful friend Ellen’s blog (she’s also my librarian! Well, not really mine, as she belongs to another faculty, but still :p) – she’s celebrating her blogs 4th anniversary with a lovely giveaway – you have three chances to win either of these items!

Once in a while scrappy bloggers explain their scrap-process and I for one really enjoy reading about why people do the choices they do when scrapping, following exactly how their layouts came together.

Figured I’d do the same just for fun. Just because :p
(Only difference being that I scrap pretty simple, so it´s nothing exciting or "new" really, but ohwell :p)

This layout started with these two post-it notes. My oldest one wrote down some fave-sites on the post-it note to the left. The youngest punk saw the note and decided to copy it on her own. She keeps doing that these days – loves to copy letters and stuff. Ofcourse I thought this was pretty cute, and decided to keep both notes & scrap them.

First task was to figure what to use. I wanted the cute elephant-transparency (from Hambly) in lime. And I wanted to be better at actually using my transparencies, and have admired Sasha´s (an incredibly awesome scrapper whose official Hambly-work I´m missing) useage of transparency on plain cardstock in the past. Decided to go for dark brown, and to use it on kraft. Added a third yellow rectangle to balance up the two notes. Odd numbers are sort of better than even. My initial idea was to have the dark brown cardstock as a slim rectangle in the middle with the three yellow notes spread across it. I even cut the transparency & cardstock the way I thought I wanted it. I’m usually impatient that way.

Anyways. Turned out it didn’t really work out visually as I had thought. Bummer.

So I rotated stuff some and played around and saw something that might work.. The solid block of cardstock anchored the three notes. And the transparency I already cut was wide enough to cover two of the notes, which seemed to be more aestethically pleasing than having it covering the whole place (and having to find a new transparency to cut into :p). Goodie!

And found a leftover-photo I never got around to scrap. A generic photo which could be used for this. Yay.

Figured I’d use this Studio Calico-stamp as my title..

..and thinking the layout needed something red to match the picture. Found a perfect sized strip of Hamblys "Le Romantique"-paper that was left over after cutting it into lettersize for an earlier project.

Mmm nice. Adding red to the layout really refreshed it!

There – journaling added (I like journaling to be added in strips instead as a solid block of text on cardstock), title about to be stamped. Love using ministaples btw :) (For Norwegians: BAMBI som fåes i bokhandelen er desidert et av favorittverktøyene mine til scrapping - liten, nett og søt og ikke minst SOLID - stifter gjennom så å si alt :) )

I’m not really into stamping, and usually think it looks too plain/flat when I stamp w/reg ink….so decided to emboss the title, making it more shiny and stand slightly more out :p

Thought the layout needed just a teeny bit more red splash though (plus - having the color red thrice on the layout is good)…

And since I’m sorta weird and usually prefer to have some sort of visible edges on my layouts I decided to add a red frame around the center. A slightly whimsical one, as I've never been one for rigid c&s-ish stuff.

Pulled out my sewing-machine ofcourse. Tadah. Me like. Three yellow notes. Three red elements on the layout. Anchored bottom. Enclosed by a whimsical frame to ease up the rigid-ish centre. Mm I’m satisfied. Even though I sort of think I’m not too good at embellishing and tends to keep stuff pretty basic. OHwell. Can’t win’em all.

Hope you found this slightly interesting and didn’t mind me babbling about this particular process. I’m usually pretty impatient and cut stuff first before really checking whether it actually fit the layout or not sorta. Kinda a go-along-and-see-what-happens kinda scrapper. (aren´t we all?)

:)

Materials used: Hambly-papers and transparency, Studio Calico-stamp & gelly! embossing-powder.

Have a nice weekend – I know I probably will, with a few scrappy friends cropping with me here tomorrow…..just hope they don’t expect a shiny clean house cause…cough (oh, who am I kidding…you know me, rite? Ignore the messiness! ;p) :p

Did you see the new Pencil-Lines post?
With the new and enlarged DT we split in two groups, so I’m not due until next week – but do check out what the other girls did this week! :)

This layout was for the product spotlight over at Fancy Pants, on the Vintage Valentine Die Cut Papers :)

I dunno – I may think I’m so hilarious&clever now (spelling “diz” instead of “this” - ha-ha – and if you wondered – that’s to be read as a dry/sarcastic “ha-ha” sortof), no idea how I’ll feel about this in a few years. Ohwell. I like it now though! :p (and yeees I suck at blogtitles too so eh yeah :p)

I dressed the strip-paper up w/white tulle and made a plaid edge outta it on the..eh – edge :p

I really wanted to make this as romantic as possibly, so I grabbed a few very old bits & pieces (old as in being on my table or shelf for YEARS!) to put together this flowery blurb. Kinda like how it turned out :)

The hearts on the die cut paper got the glossy accent-treatment, so the hearts stood out a bit. Pwetty!

Here’s a Hambly layout I did the other day.

I hate how it’s photographed – it’s so much prettier irl. *sigh*

Have I mentioned how I love wideangle+close up?
Shot w/ISO 2500 btw =)

I just followed this girl to a birthdayparty she’s attending, with this little giftbag:

A tube-formed giftbag, made outta Fancy Pants Designs’ “Dancing Girl” papers and stickers.

Although I loved the colors of this collection, I initially wasn’t sure if it was “me” (despite me having a little girl :p) – but it has proven to be quite handy – especially when needing to whip up something for little girls.

The ribbon on the tag is tied to the clip (from an older FP line) which holds the sides of the “bag” together. I purchased a few “Hello, Kitty” watches on ebay for such occasions – but the bag they came in looked drab, so I think I’m gonna make such cute custom bags for all of them whenever needed.

My first CHA box arrived today – sweetness!! (Being an international at CHA times usually sucks – my dt-boxes are either delayed or I don’t get anything until after CHA. But hey, I really shouldn’t complain should I? *cough* ;p)

Anyways. The box was from Pink Paislee – and seriously – it’s gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. You may chose to not believe me, considering I’m on their team and obviously would sort of be impartial and all, but really – I’ve always loved how their products seem so sophisticated and they truly truly do not disappoint this time around at all. Just look at the colors (above) – looovely – and the flip notes!!! Gorgeous! I’m in love!! Check out the peeks on their blog and comment for a chance to win some Pink Paislee goodness you too! :)

I see Hambly just came out with a peek aswell (the two first images got me all excited!! Love the screenprinting), and Fancy Pants Designs will soon start their peeks aswell, so keep checking in!

Other things I’m looking forward to CHA-wise (from what I’ve seen so far):

• Cosmo Cricket’s collaboration with Core’dinations with awesome cool textured cardstock.
  (and their new lines looks pretty dandy aswell – I’ve really loved their last few collections and am glad they’re continuing coming out with stuff I personally like haha)
• I am in love with the bright colors of Lily Bee’s new line appropriately named “Hello Sunshine”! So need to get me some!
• I have to admit I haven’t been that big of a fan of Crate Paper in the past, but there’s something about the colors and design/pattern of the new lines that seem enticing to me.
• I’m intrigued and hope to be able to try out both the Shimmerz Pearlz or Tattered Angels Glimmer Glaze, which both seem to be glimmerish paint..?
• Prima always pull out awesome designs and especially gorgeous embellishments – this CHA is no different. I’m especially rooting for the flowers with glitter/glass beads on them and I think I spotted a few lines I wouldn’t mind bringing with me home :)
• Once again Sassafras is different that what’s out there (imo) – lovely (slightly) kitschy & retro. I really love the design, look and colors of the new lines, but am not sure if I would be able to scrap with them. Wouldn’t mind giving it a try though! :D
• October Afternoon hasn’t disappointed with their latest collections, so I’m excited to see what’s new from them – haven’t seen anything yet…
• Collage Press is another small manufacturer that have had lovely lines in the past (I like how they seem to be full of colors and grownup-ish in patterns), so I’m also interested to see what they’ll come out with next.
• And ofcourse – American Crafts and their colors and patterns never fail to make me happy :D (And I’m loving the new Dear Lizzie collection – esp patterns, colors and ribbons!)
• Studio Calico is also worth mentioning – I really like their attempts at the paper-market.

What about you? Seen anything worth drooling over lately?