The time has come...

Well, the time has come to wave goodbye to our DT and welcome the new team! We will be going back to our old format of fortnightly challenges, with a monthly sponsor. Challenges will be posted on the first and third Sundays of each month :)

So in addition to myself, I would like you to welcome back four members of the DT:

Anna White-Sharman
Jules Dix
Tessa Buys
Valerie Mangan

And please give a warm welcome to our new DT member, Julie Jacobs!!

As we are not posting a 'proper' challenge this week, I will share a layout from each member of the team. But, I will make it a little fun... scrap lift one of these layouts for the chance to win a £10 gift voucher from Scrap Rat! Post your entries in the comments section of this post.

***Edited to add, the deadline is 31st Augst for this challenge and all entries for August challenges.***

Amanda

Anna

Jules

Julie

Tessa

Valerie

We can't wait to see your scrap lifts! Have fun :)

24th July - Layout Challenge

Ready for another layout challenge? Hope so! Sadly this is the last challenge with our current design team, next month it will be changing again.
This week Amanda designed a sketch for us to play with!

Here's what the design team came up with.

Anna

I had great fun using this sketch, I love the butterflies so I had to make a feature of those, I used a mask and painted over the edges of it so the outline was left.

Heather

Lisa

I loved this sketch.
I've used mostly Studio Calico supplies on this LO.

This week Jules from the Project team has joined in with her take

I thought I'd join in with the layout challenge this week, as the sketch was perfect for these photos of Mojo that I've had for some time, just waiting for the right project!

We would love to see what you came up with so please link your layouts up!

Wednesday Extra: Altered Chair by Julie

Hi everyone! Julie Tucker-Wolek with you here today and I want to share a chair that belonged to my Father when he was about 3 or 4 years old! :)

I am going to give a spoiler here and show you WHAT I did with his chair! AKA ... the final result first! :)

I just love how this turned out! Now let me show you what I started out with and how I turned this....

Into my "new" chair I have shared above :)

 My Dad's chair started off yellow, and along the way someone tried to paint it blue, but never finished it :)

Now let's see what I did with the chair....

 First, I started by spray painting the chair green :)

Then I got a Prima Mask that I used with white spray paint to create my flowers on the chair :)

Yep! That is me getting down and dirty with the spray paint! :)

Now let's see who it turned out with the"masked" flowers on it :)

I used all Prima goodies on my "new" chair (oh, and some Tattered Angels mists and Tim Holtz distressing ink!)

Prima papers to make my paper flowers-

Then I misted them...

Now, its time to decorate! :)

Prima trim around the edges...

Distress ink around the edges of my Prima paper to make my "bouquet" holder!

Making the paper wrap for my "bouquet"

Some Prima buttons to cover the spot that I stapled the paper together!

Now, to put my bouquet together! I put tissue paper in the base of my Prima paper wrap to fill in some of the gaps and have a place to glue my Prima paper flowers too! 

Some Prima journal cards to help my title stand out... 

These Prima mistable titles are amazing! I love them!

Some of the flowers I made with an added Prima flower!

Almost done! :)

Here she is! :)  My final project! :)

A beautiful Prima butterfly!

A fun Prima birdcage! 

I truly enjoyed sharing this with you! I hope you enjoyed it also! Thanks so much for stopping by! 

~~Julie~~

Sunday Card Challenge

Hi Everyone - time for a fresh card challenge here at The Studio. This week Amanda gave us a nice, simple summer challenge to use some chipboard on a card. Let's jump right in with some design team inspiration!

Val

Feeling the summer vibe, I used some colorful Cosmo Cricket chipboard stickers for my card.

Brenda

Brenda's focal point is a chipboard journal spot.

Natalie

I love the look of raw chipboard with happy and bright papers...makes me happy :)

This chippy is from an Australian company called 2Crafty...they have some gorgeous chipboard on offer!! I also used some curling ribbon to add some dimension to the card.

Amanda

I also used chipboard from Cosmo Cricket along with some scraps to create my card. Bright, summery colours... although the sun seemsto have disappeared this weekend where I live!

Now we'd love to see your take on this challenge. Be sure to link up your projects in the sidebar.

Have a great week!

Wednesday Extra: Handmade Notebooks by Jules

If you're anything like me when it comes to crafting, then you probably can't bear to throw anything away - but the question is, what do you do with all of those scraps of patterned paper? Well here's a great way to turn some of them into fabulous handmade notebooks!

You will need some pieces of patterned paper, plain or lined paper for the pages, either embroidery thread, ribbon or a Bind-It-All, and a few embellishments to decorate.

To make the smallest book you will need a piece of double sided paper which is long enough to be folded in half (mine was 4.5"x8.5"). Cut several sheets of plain (or lined) paper slightly smaller than your patterned piece. Mark the centre point on the plain paper and then make two more marks above and below the centre mark (the distance will depend on the size of your pages, my marks were 1" apart). Using a pokey tool (or similar) pierce holes through all of the plain pages where you have made your marks.

Take a needle and embroidery thread and sew down through the centre hole, then back up through the top hole, down through the bottom hole, and back up through the centre hole again. Tie the ends together as close to the paper as possible, making sure that you tie round the thread running from the top to bottom holes (this is to stop the knot pulling through the centre hole). Trim the threads and then fold the paper in half. Take your patterned piece, ink the edges and loosely fold in half. Add a line of glue down the crease and adhere the folded spine of your pages into the cover. Add embellishments to the cover and you're done!

For the larger square book the steps are very similar to those of the smaller book, but when you're piercing the three holes you need to go through the cover as well. As your binding will show on the outside of the book you can pretty it up with some ribbon instead of embroidery thread. 

Since the cover is included in the binding, there's no need to glue with this method, so all that's left is to embellish.

Finally, you can use smaller scraps of patterned paper to create a handmade notebook by using a Bind-It-All to finish the book. I used two pieces of the same paper to create my front and back covers, but you could use plain card for the back if you prefer. Another advantage to the Bind-It-All is that it doesn't matter if the inside pages are different sizes, so I was able to use the offcuts from the first two notebooks to make this one.

Use the Bind-It-All to punch holes down the side of each of your covers and the inside pages, and then bind with wires. A few embellishments on the front and you've got a really professional looking notebook!

I hope you're inspired to get crafting with your leftover scraps of patterned paper - if you have a go at any of these methods, link us up as we'd love to see!