New blog for a new chapter

I am excited to say that I am so thrilled to be getting my new blog up and running.  It has taken some time to get it all together and looking just the way I wanted, but here we are with a new look and new way to share my craft.

I will be having some exciting things happening on the blog over the coming weeks, so please stay tuned for more posts.  There will also be some giveaways as well!

Why a new chapter you ask... well you will need to wait for some more posts to find that out... but that won't be long away!  Posts will be more regular now that I am not trying to set up a new blog at the same time :)

In the mean time... if you are new to my blog, you can check out my work via the tabs above and included are links to the respective posts for a great deal of my work so that you can see the origional post on my previous blog without having to sift through a heap of posts to find what you are looking for.

Please update your link to my blog if you are a follower or have me on your blog roll/list

www.beckbt.blogspot.com

Helmar and Robin's Nest blog hop

As a Helmar designer I am bringing you some wonderful teaming between Helmar and yummy products from Robin's Nest.  My favourites would have to be the dew drops... they are just so cute!  I scattered a heap on this layout to give the effect of water droplets.

Leave comments on the blogs for a chance to win $10 purchase vouchers (one being given away to one lucky visitor on each blog you visit) and a grand prize of a $20 voucher on the Helmar and Robin's Nest blogs.  That is a HEAP of chances to win!  So be sure to visit and leave comments.

Well I hope you are enjoying the hop and if you aren't yet on it... head on over to the start of the hop for some wonderful inspiration from two teams of designers.

CSI Case file #39 Always believe layout

   

For this layout I got a little creative with the case file.  I started by using photos that would completely contrast with the colour pallet in the form of the bright purple dress. I did pull this in carefully re-creating the flowers on her dress out of cardstock.  The blue of the water also helped to do this being included in the colour pallet.

Sketch: I rotated the sketch 90 degrees to the right, giving me a very different feel for the sketch.

Evidence: I included old book pages in my texture work with the screened flourishes. You can see these in the close up shots below. I also decided to do my journalling in the form of rub-ons that would deliver the message of the layout.

Testimony: I included the journalling on the photos, with the main part of the journalling being framed in circles.

CSI's Most wanted

I was SOOOO excited to see earlier in the week that my entry for Case #37 was chosen as one of the 'Most Wanted' layouts.  It was such fun to play along that it was just a bonus to have been one of the chosen 5!

UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Tell Your Story. It's our tagline, and here at CSI, it's one of our missions to get our members to delve deeper into journaling--to document the meaningful bits and pieces that make up our lives. We would like to shine a special spotlight each week on a member who did an exceptional job telling their story. Clickhere to see an archive of all our Star Witnesses.

Mind Power by Helen Wallace

Helen's story is so powerful and poignant that her layout was almost unanimously voted on to be Star Witness this week. Helen writes with such strength and compassion that we were transported back to her childhood classroom with her. Our hearts were touched and we wanted to hug little Helen and shake a finger at those teachers. We also admired how artfully she incorporated her journaling into the design of her beautiful page. Helen Wallace is a CSI treasure. Her gift for storytelling takes our breath away. This is what the "S" in CSI is all about. Thank you for sharing another piece of your heart with us, Helen.

Each week, five layouts that caught our eye will be chosen to feature as our "Most Wanted." With so many amazing layouts in the gallery, it was incredibly hard to narrow the "lineup" down to five, but here they are, in no particular order. (Please click on the title beneath the layout to take you to the layout in the gallery where you can leave the creators some comments.)

Memory Keeper by Emma Stafrace

I Love This! by Ayeeda

 

 

My Boys by Beck Beattie

  

Distant Harbor by Zanka

 

Smile that Bursts by Jasmine Shea

If you want to see what I did, check out my post here for all the details.

CSI Case file #38

So I feel like I have really found the challenges that I enjoy most, I think because they really get you to think outside the square, push you to journal, have changing colours and elements to include and the amount of amazing inspirational layouts done by those participating make it all the more enjoyable.

So this week I gave Case #38 a go.  These colours really stretched me and I think most of all I loved the prompt of pets.  This picture has been sitting in my 'to scrap' folder on my computer for a while now, and it just worked so well with these colours!

Here is the case file:

You can check out the full detail of the case file here.

And here is my take on the challenge: 

I used the grey in the background, brown in the frame and other elements, green in the frame around the photo, doily, title and flowers.  The blue was used in many of the flowers, paper doilies, ribbon, matting of the photo as well as the main strip for the middle of the photo.  I enjoyed using newspaper to create the off white colour punting accented with off white twine all in the shape of the flourishes pictured in the sketch. 

The journalling was really important to me so I added this in brown text on white vellum so that you still get a hint of the design beneath it.  

In the background I enjoyed playing with my pan pastels for the first time.  I used a mixture of yellow and two greens to achieve the desired colour for the Window lattice stencil, to which I added some stamping in brown foliage layered over the top. 

To put this layout together I used my Helmar 450 Quick Dry as I wanted a really strong for the wooden frame and for all the material flowers.  I also used my Helmar liquid Scrap Dots for some of the flowers and the bunting.

Ribbon Carousel and Helmar Blog Hop

Ribbon Carousel Blog Hop

Today the Helmar Design Team are teaming up with the designers at Ribbon Carousel, to bring you a jam packed Hop filled with with crafty goodness!  

Ribbon Carousel has some wonderfulribbon organizers and that is how this amazing company started. Today, we get to feature some other wonderful products that they carry, so hop along with us and have

fun.

For my project I created this cute little card with some cut out pumpkins I learnt how to do with my Pazzles Machine back at the Papercraft's expo in Brisbane earlier this year. They just seemed perfectly matched to the ribbons I received to play with.

To put it together I used Helmar 450 Quick Dry (the perfect partner for ribbon), and Helmar Acid free, which you can purchase direct from Helmar Here (Australia) or Here (United States).

Now, lets talk prizes!   

Hop along with us today and leave some blog love for our The Designers of Helmar and Ribbon Carousel for your chance to win!!

The Helmar prize is a complete 12 pack of Zapdots, including clear, black and white in circles and squares both in 1/4" and 1/2" sizes! 

The other prize up for grabs is a $20 gift certificate to the Ribbon Carousel Store!  

Ready to hop?

CSI challenges - SO MUCH FUN!

Well this month I decided to try a different sort of a challenge.  A great friend Renee Aslette put me onto the challenges over at CSI which push you to include a number of different elements, while giving you a great deal of choice with how you go about it.

I am just loving how different challenges can push you in very different ways.

There is a challenge that goes up every week and you get a week and two weekends to complete them.  How great is that!!  Aside from the great challenge... the work uploaded on there is simply AMAZING I am so inspired by all the work from the different ladies that take part.  Again I think that it is because there is a number of different elements included in each challenge.

OK so enough chatting here is my take on the challenge:

Here are the details of the challenge:

THE SCHEME - USE ALL 5 COLORS

• The Ink Is Black - black, from the book on the left - 21.16.22
• The Page Is White - white, from the white parts - 253.253.253
• Gray Reverie - medium-light gray, from the tape recorder reels - 214.213.219
• Electric Blue - deep sky blue, taken from the table - 53.172.240
• Red, Red Wine (Goes to My Head...) - dark red, taken from her shirt  - 154.212.214

THE OUAS SKETCH - USE THE SKETCH AS INSPIRATION FOR YOUR DESIGN

• You may interpret the elements in the design as you wish, but use the basic composition of the sketch.
• You may flip or rotate the sketch to suit your design.
• Have fun!

EVIDENCE - USE AT LEAST 2 ELEMENTS

• Use stripes and dots
• Use wrappers/ packaging
• Use a book page
• Pen work/ doodling
• labels
• Use a craft knife
• Circles (inspired by the knobs and reels)
• buttons (inspired by the knobs)

TESTIMONY - USE AT LEAST ONE ELEMENT:

• Use a song title or lyrics as inspiration for your journaling (inspired by the tape recorder).
• Handwrite your journaling.
• Take a break - break your journaling across several journaling spots.
• Write your journaling on note paper.
• Do your journaling as a diary entry.
• Inspiration Words: -- daydream, break, think -- use these as inspiration for your journaling, not just as a title

My take:

Evidence: Dots and stripes & Buttons
Testimony: Handwritten journalling broken across various spots

Here are some detail pics of my layout:

I used a number of different bits and pieces to create this one.  Again I used the My Mind's Eye 'All is Bright' collection (I love this for a Christmas paper - non Christmas theme)  the colours are just divine.  I also used some paper alphas and stickers from Echo Park's 'Dots and Stripes' collection.  Love this as there is always something there to team up with whatever I am working on.  To top that off I also used some paper from Authentique's 'Celebrate' collection.  To create my background and embellish from the top layer down, I used a number of different Tim Holtz Distress inks to blend, mask and stamp in layers. I also used Faber-Castell Pitt pastel pencil & Distress markers for the Chevron masking.  The stamp sets I used on this layout are Prima's reversed wall stamp & script stamp, and My Mind's eye's The sweetest thing, 'Happiness' and 'Remember' stamp sets and the 'Fun Day' stamp set.  I also used my favourite TCW, Reversed Chickenwire stencil and Scrap FX's Chevron A4 stencil. To finish all of it off I added some old Kaisercraft rubon's I had lying around in my rubon stash.

To put this all together I could only use my favourite product... HELMAR of course!  I used  Helmar  Premium craft glue and liquid scrap dots on this one.

Do you know you can buy from  Helmar direct?  Head on over to the website to do so Here (Australia) or Here (United States)

Hope you have enjoyed my share today and head on over to the CSI ning site and take part in all the fun!

Winners announced and Australian Spellbinders Event

I have had a BLAST over the last couple of days teaching at the Australian Spellbinders Event for retailers hosted by Down Under Direct.  The event was fantastic and I got to meet SO MANY wonderful ladies who came along to learn and be inspired.

I was also fortunate enough to get to know Stacey, Kim and Linda from Spellbinders.  They are beautiful ladies, and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to spend a little time with them over the couple of days.  I just know that it will translate into my future projects.

Here are some pics of the event.

My class pieces

Teaching

The ladies from Day 1 - Pic from one of my fellow DT members Teresa

 A pic with the Spellbinders peeps

A pic just the Down Under Direct peeps

I just loved spending time with everyone, just wish I'd have had more time to chat!  

OK so I am sure a few of you would like to know who is getting some chippy.

In no particular order if the following ladies could e-mail me their address:

Tone-Lill

Renee Aslette

Denise van Deventer

you have some chippy coming your way!

A giveaway

Today I got some exciting news and that was to find out that my entry for Scraptherapy's August Sketch won.  How excited was I when I logged into my computer tonight to see this.  I really enjoyed this sketch and can't wait until September's is posted.  This sketch was just so beautiful to work with.  This was my entry.

You can see my previous post about it here.

And if that wasn't enough I was also lucky enough to have one of my layouts win 'This One's a Winner' won for the month of August as well!  This is the layout I entered... totally one of my favourites as this and another layout I did at a similar time were pivotal my scrapping heading in a new direction that I love.

It was a layout I did as part of a Helmar & Faber-Castell partnership promo the previous month.  

I just LOVE this challenge blog and had been meaning to enter time and time again.  Well I am EXTRA glad I got off my butt and entered even more now!  I love it even if just as a way to share my work more, and hopefully inspire more people - to win is a bonus!  So if you have never been over to the site - head there and check it out.  You also don't need a blog to enter, you just e-mail off you picture and it will be posted on there.  I also love that I didn't need to create anything specific which really works for me some months when life gets a bit busy.

With all this love being given to me... I want to share it around, so I thought what better way than a give-away!

So I will be giving away 3 packs of chipboard each of them EASILY over $20 worth (including mostly Twiddleybitz chippy) to some of my lucky followers.  To be in a running to be one of the 3 lucky peeps, you need to do the following!

1.  Let me know your favourite project of mine and how it has inspired you by leaving a comment below.
2.  Follow my blog
3.  Make a post sharing my giveaway on your blog OR share on Facebook (tag me in the post), please add your link to your post (not just your blog) to your comment left below.

You need to do all of this by 11:59pm Monday 10th September Australian Eastern Standard Time.  And it is open to internationals!

It is easy to have a look through my work by clicking on the above tabs.

Good luck Everyone!!!

Over the coming weeks I will have some VERY exciting news to share as well as another give-away, so you will be wanting to keep my blog in your following list to see this.

as always...

Hand made flower vines

So who needs to spend loads of money on flower vines to match in with your projects when you can easily make them yourself simply with paper

I recently made this layout using pretty much just Bazzill Cardstock teamed up with colour and stamps.  If you would like to see how I created the vines with the bazzill cardstock, head on over to Down Under Direct's inspiration for my blog post for some brief step by step instructions.  The flowers are made by rolling  up large pieces of cardstock as well as various Spellbinder's flower dies (full product list on the post).

So give it a go and save yourself some money, matching your flowers perfectly into your project.