Thoughtful Thursday with Aimee Dow

It seems very fitting to me that I should wrap up my stint with APOCD on Thoughtful Thursday. I am sad to be going, but in my absents someone new will come and teach you new and wonderful things. I ashamed to say it, but they will probably have better time management skills than me too. I have got to know Natalie, Anna and Felicity much better in my time here. I have no hesitation in saying they are all truly beautiful women and I am proud to call them friends. My highest praise though, goes to Raquel. She is a diabolical genius when it comes to putting together a kit and that's coming from a colour tyrant, such as myself. I have found her nothing, but a pleasure to work with and I am super excited to continue working with her as one of the Jot Girls. If you are reading this and wondering if one day you should apply for the team, I'm here to tell you "do it!", you could not work with nicer or more talented group of people.

Eh, but I'm pretty sure you didn't come here for a recommendation did you? How about we get down to some craft? Today's project is top secret and by top secret I mean - No one tell my husband.

I'll be using the December Main Kit which is currently $26.60. Just sayin' peeps, that's cheap!

I made a Valentines Day Card for my hubby. This is where you all say "aaawwwww". See, card making totally fits the thoughtful topic. I find masculine cards really hard to make. To me, I always default to the same theme - grunge, but as luck would have it that's my hubby's main theme too!

Can I just jump in here and point out how smart I am. The card says "I love you more than words can say" and the shaker window is made out of the dictionary vellum from the kit. Get it... WORDS! I'm pretty proud of that :P

The gold glitter heart cardstock, and twine are from the kit too. You could have used the orange and blue sequins from the kit to fill the vellum pocket, but I kinda already had a theme going with the gold and white.

But wait theirs more! 

I made an envelope with the Amy Tangerine heart paper! Turns out I didn't have quite enough paper left after Tuesdays layout so I had to include the tear strip, but the best thing is that little pink address bar there looks deliberate AND it's the only place it shows on the envelope. FTW peeps!

Well I hate to say it, but that's all I have to write. I hope to see you all in and around the scrapping traps and until see you next, go send some love! Or leave it here in the comments.

Aimee xx

Workspace Wednesday with Aimee Dow

Hi and welcome to the Betwixt & Between Studio, or if you live in this house, the room I annexed overnight because I got tired of walking back and forth between the Dining Room and the Office, every time I wanted to scrap.

My studio is without a doubt my happy place. I scrap, read, write and hang out in there all the time. So you can imagine just how thrilled I was last month when Ikea asked my to do a home tour. A lot of the photos in today's post come from that photo shoot last December. 

I am very luck to have two giant windows in my studio. A standing bench faces out on to the street, which has it's pro's and cons. It's great for daydreaming, but I am sure my neighbors must think I do nothing, but stare out the window all day.

Behind the door on the right is my Expidit bookshelf. All current kits go in the Pepsi box on the top until it's time to be broken down. The wire baskets are from Typo - from left to right they house twine and ribbon, glitter and glitter tape, Mists and finally ink pads and embossing powder. The Ikea boxes on the bottom keep my mini albums and tools. The ones without lids hold my current projects. I love them so much because they are so easy just to pull out when your working on a project and just dump it all back in at the end of the day. The wicker basket holds all my acrylic stamps.

Behind the door on the right you have my Alex draws and my Project Life filing system. Soon, I'll be starting an organisational series over at Betwixt & Between. I'll go into in more detail then. For now though you should all go out and get yourself some Alex draws. They are by far my favorite thing in this room. All my ephemera packs, wood stamps, adhesives, and cables live in here.

Right about now I will confess to having a bit of a cookbook addiction. I used to have a rule where I could only fill one shelf, but it got really hard to choose. The wire baskets over here have my thicker collection, enamel dots and gems, and of course one just for odds and ends.

Last but not least my favorite corner. Where I start my days and often where I return to think. I love this chair. It's not mine. I came with my husband, but if we ever get a divorce it's the only thing of his that I want. 

Actually, that all looks really inviting. I think I will head there now.

Aimee xx

Tutorial Tuesday with Aimee Dow

Hi! I think maybe I forgot to mention yesterday that I am commandeering the blog this week. I am SO late putting up all my December project's its not funny, but then their to good to waste. Today I am going to show you a totally frivolous page I made with Decembers Main Kit.

I was so inspired by Paige Evan's recent page "Cute Story Recorded", that I thought I'd give hand stitching and watercolours a go for myself.

It's actually not as hard as you would think. First I stitched my city. I used an old Amy Tangerine template to mark my holes and then I stitched using a variegated DMC (Thread that changes colour). There is nothing stopping you dyeing your own either. In fact if you use mists to watercolour like me, it's just a matter of dipping your white DMC in and letting it dry.

I used the gold tag to add a little more detail to the layout.

To add a touch more gold glitter I painted a circle in PVA glue and liberally doused it with glitter.

And there you have it a really simple layout that didn't take much time at all!

Just a quick reminder that the December Main kit is currently on sale for $26.60 and it's a great way to get your hands on some Amy Tangerine goodness, let alone the awesome black and white washi that I can't seem to get enough of!

Until tomorrow,

Aimee xx

Messy Monday with Aimee Dow

Hi! Welcome to another Messy Monday here on the APOCD Blog. I'm here today to get metaphorically messy. I say that because I am not really going to get physically messy. The thought of that terrifies me. Instead, we are going to talk about the type of 'messy' you need to find when your stuck in a creative rut and to help me, I have the leftovers from my December Kit.

Lately, I have had such a hard time creating. It's not that what I do create is bad, it's just... well it all looks the same. It drives me nuts. I want to be innovative, but then my brain and muscle memory kick in and naturally the result is the same. 'Love, Love, Love' is not the same. It's very different.

For starters 'Love, Love, Love' was created on the floor. Sometimes a change of scene is as good as a holiday. It certainly made a difference to me.  

Second: I limited my resources. I only let myself use what was left in my kit box. The only exception being the yellow enamel heart at the top because something had to go there and I couldn't find anything in the box and it was driving my nuts.

Third: I tried a ton of techniques all together. I stamped on the background, I splashed paint around, I sewed and stapled stuff down and then tore them back up. I even tried out an old notebook punch I found.

Finally, I worked hard to create layers and stacks before I put the layout together. This may not sound like a big deal, but for me its huge. There is SIX layers here peeps - for me that's virtually unheard of.

My approach may have indeed been 'messy', but for a change I got the desired result - something that looks nothing like anything I have done before. If you are feeling stuck, why not give a few or even all of these tips a try. You can even pick Decembers kit up on sale over here and try it with the exact same supplies as me. I would love to see what you come up with.

Aimee xx

Friday Favorites with Aimee Dow - Project Life

The question I get asked more than any other is why did I give up Project Life? This is a fair assumption given how often I publish a spread, but the truth is I never did. I do less of it because I find it more time consuming than regular scraping and there is only so many PL spreads I can promise to my Creative Teams - there is only 52 weeks in a year after all. So it was indeed very nice to feel the urge to create a Project Life spread with last months Cupcake Kit.

I am pleased to say I didn't use anything that was not in the kit other than a few Maggie Holmes flowers. All in all it's a pretty simple layout. Lots of photos with a few design techniques that I use over and over again for consistency. An example of this would be the circles - circle stamps, circle cropped photos, sequins, flairs and die cut elements.

I know things are a little hard to see in the full spread photo, but I always aim to include one so you can get a sense of balance.

Week 28 was smack bang in the middle of the winter holidays. I chose to use the kit for this week because Heidi Swapp's September Skies reminds me of winter.

I worked hard to create a lot of layers with the flowers and the ephemera this week because it's unusual to have all 3 girls in our house at the one time. I thought it best to grab the opportunity while I could.

I stacked the transparent flowers over the negative space on this photo.

Then I replicated the same feeling above with the Jamie Olive stickers from Safeway, that we had been collecting for our god daughter. Fear not parents, these were doubles. I have come to learn just how serious a matter these collectibles are.

Finally I built up a poise around the flair to finish out the page and add a little more balance. I popped a few up on foam dots so there wasn't such a contrast in height between the flair and background.

So there you have it. I still got it. If you would like to try a page like this for yourself, last months cupcake kit is still available in the store.

Aimee xx

Workspace Wednesday - The Procrastination Layout Game with Aimee

I have this friend Emma, she is one of my favorite people in the world. She gets the scrap side of me like no one else I have ever met. I love scrapping with her because she always pushes me to get a ton done, but she will tell you I am not the easiest person to scrap with - Not only do I raid her stash at scrap camp, I have even been known to do it while she is at my house scrapping.  And then there is the matter of desk space. You see, Emma is a "work clean" scrapper. It's a quality that I really admire, but I on the other hand, rain holy hell down upon my work space until it looks like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Poor Emma lives in fear of her craft mat being annexed by a new regime, and as well she should.

So what is the point of this story? Well, I wanted to paint you a picture of desk at the end of any given scrap day, because it's relevant to my new found fun. I want to introduce you to a new game I have created. I am a big believer in clearing off your desk at the end of the day, but some days the piles are just so big, I'm not sure where to start. Over the weekend, I was staring at one such pile that contained the left-overs from Love Everyday, the scant remains of my November A Piece of Cake Designs Kit, some off-cuts of woodgrain paper my husband had used for something or other and I thought to myself... I bet I can make a layout out of this. And so the Procrastination Layout Game was born!

The rules are pretty simple - you can only use what is on you desk. I will make a small exception for a cardstock base and your tools, but everything else must come from the piles on your desk. My supplies looked something like this: the star paper, the black and white striped paper, the tag, the sequins and the "hello" are all from Heidi Swapp's September Skies collection. I know this because they are recent inhabitants of my studio by way of the cupcake APOCD kit. The woodgrain is Pebbles Inc, but you are on your own for the thickers, cork circle and heart wood veneer. The wood veneer I found under my lamp so it should probably be carbon-dated. If you are at all like me, I encourage you to give the game a go the next time you feel despair at the state of your desk. It certainly helped lighten my mood, it reduced the pile and it stretched my creativity. 

Well that just about wraps it up for me today. I wish you all very merry Christmas and if you don't happen to get what you want - The cupcake kit I used for this layout is still on sale and I'm telling you it is well worth the money and scrappy happiness.

Aimee xx

Messy Monday - Texture Paste with Aimee

Hi! Welcome to Messy Monday with me - Aimee Dow. I know, right? I was the absolute last person you expected to see here today. When we first started discussing assigning themes to days of the week, I said "Fantastic Idea, uhh but Messy Monday's are all yours.". This past month though, I've been so transfixed by the stencil in the cupcake kit that I thought I would try something new.

I went to stay with my Mum, who is really awesome with Mixed Media. I asked her to give me a quick lesson in gesso/texture paste and what I discovered was really very interesting. I don't hate it. And by that I mean that with enough paper towel and baby wipes to stay clean, it's actually quite fun. This is a huge thing for me. Would you like to see what I came up with?

I used the polka dot stencil on the top with some Prima texture paste. Should I ever attempt it again, I would certainly be looking for a paste that is a true white (suggestions welcome).

I finished the layout off with a few stitched elements. All in all, the only things not in this kit were a few wood sequins I happened to have lying around.

Thank for stopping by,

Aimee

FRIDAY FAVOURITES: Shimelle line with Aimee Dow

Hi! Two posts in one day! How lucky are you?

How awesome was Flis's Mini Album this morning? If you haven't checked it out you certainly should, It's a real work of art. 

While Flis used her scraps to create something really magic, I on the other hand took a different approach. I took ALL my favorites from the the kit and used them all in one page. TADA!

One of the things I really like about the main kit this month is that is jam packed with really new and up to date product like the Shimelle papers and sticker book.

These balance nicely with great neutrals such as the kraft thickers, the beautiful yellow twine and the Pebbles papers. Actually just a quick note on that, the number strip you see as the border between the black and white? That's the tear strip. I didn't even have to cut it off. I just turned the paper around so it was at the top.

The only thing NOT in the kit was the black spray paint. I used to make my studio look a bit more like a crime scene.

No layout of mine would be complete with out a gold a accent. I used a couple of stickers to break up the cut apart blocks because the layout did feel very ridged without it and it helped to add a another layer to the layout.

 I really hope you have enjoyed my favorite layout from this kit.