Ruey's Kit Part II - Bubblicious Fun

Here's part II of the May kit by Ruey. This one I followed to the letter becuse the title suited my photo perfectly. The only thing I didn't follow exactly was the cutting up of the paper but that was really my fault cos I sliced the pink paper instead of tearing. So then I had to tear a little bit from each half to get the tearing effect which meant my paper ended up much shorter. So you can see a little bit of the blue paper at the top and bottom of the LO. Oops! So then all this affected the number of shapes I could cut out of the leftover paper (as there wasn't much paper left over). To add to that, whilst cutting the big owl from the paper, I accidentally cut off one of its ears...didn't even realize it had ears. So oops and double oops! Hee...in fact, I made the same mistake with the owl you see popped at the top of the LO but I managed to glue the ear bit back on this one. :-)

All Materials from Ruey's May Kit.

I do not own a 7/8" circle puncher so I had to make do with my 5/8" one instead. I inked the edges of the punched out circles, stuck the alphabet stickers on them, cut off the excess corners of the stickers and then re-inked the edges. This didn't turn out too bad. I'm simply loving my kit LOs cos it brings such a fresh look for my album and is so out of the box for me.

Happy Birthday!!

We celebrated the Hubby's birthday in November 2006 but I only completed the layout below in December. This is my first non-Ty 12x12 layout ever (finally eh) and I guess it is fitting that it is of the Hubby. The Hubby's friend has already commented on how come there are no pictures of the Hubby in any of the layouts that have been posted, so to Mr. B5000 here it finally is. :-)

Materials: Textured Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper; Patterned Paper: The Paper Patch; Snaps: Making Memories; Photo Corners: Heidi Swapp for Advantus; "Happy Birthday" laser-cut title: Go West Studios; "The Big 30" die-cut title: Quickutz (Marisa font); Clear Embossing Ink: Ranger; Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel: Suze Weinberg; Rubber stamp: Hero Arts; Watermark Ink: Versamark by Tsukineko.

This was the layout that I mentioned in my previous blog regarding embossing small die-cut letters with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE). The results for the title "The Big 30" came out really great (painstakingly done and at the expense of the tip of my Quikstik). It was really glossy because I had to re-do the UTEE several times to cover bald spots. The "Happy Birthday" title was less so because I only did one layer of UTEE and the cardstock colour was pale yellow.

This layout also represents my first time at tearing paper. Yes, I think the general reaction would be..."WHAT the 1st time??!!" but hey I am more of a neat freak when it comes to my pages. I think family will be glad to know that I am letting go of this anal nature and that I am beginning to realize that a little imperfection is actually ok. I actually enjoyed tearing paper.

Quick tip for the day: When you tear paper, make sure that you pull the paper directly towards your body and not sideways as you will get a better textured tear that way. (Credit for this tip goes to my cousin LJ who learnt it in her class at Laine's in Singapore - Cheers!).

By the way, do check out LJ's blog at http://jazzscraps.blogspot.com.

My mom saw this layout and was so enticed by the picture I took of the cake (mango flan from the Sheraton Hotel) to the point that she asked me to order the same cake for my own birthday just a week or so ago. I didn't mind as the cake is delicious!!

I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture above but I experimented with watermark stamping on the red paper. I used a rubber stamp and Versamark's Watermark Ink. The effect was rather good actually but I got overzealous in my stamping and the crazy randomness of it did not turn out so well...the messiness of the stamping did not appeal to me at all.

All in all, this is not one of my neatest layouts but at least it got done.