Unboxing Cloudy Cow bundles

Sunday Smashbook Show and Tell 5

This week Smashbook Show and Tell is coming on a Sunday, not the usual Saturday. Yesterday my boyfriend dragged me out into horribly busy old London Town and when I got home I was too exhausted to write my blog post. It seemed silly to put off my post for a week just because it was a different day to usual. Anyway it still makes for an alliterative title :P

So onto this weeks pages! You can see the process of making these pages (and two other, unfinished ones) here.

Firstly a bright, neon, alien, weird page.

This might be my favourite page I've done so far. I couldn't really say why, I just think it all works together and is eyecatching and fun.

The main image is a postcard I bought from Paperchase, I don't know who this alien dude is but he looks awesome. The yellow polka dot square behind him was a paper bag that I think was part of the packaging from my Mrs Brimbles order. I chose to put it on this Smashbook page with slightly wonky grid lines just so there was a hint of a background but the main focus was on the image and colours.

 

I bordered the page with 2 neon pink washi tapes. One is plain and quite thin (from Tiger) an the other is wider and has white stars (from The Works). I added two stamps, a shooting star and lightning, because I thought the black would really pop against the bright yellow and pink and the shapes seemed to fit with the image. The stamps are from Paperchase but I got them on ebay and have no idea what collection they were originally from or when they were released.

Finally I just wanted to add some small stickers to add interest and break up the page. I chose these neon orange arrows from Paperchase. I just wanted to make this page as bright and eye-searing as I could!

The next page is more of a jumble, which actually I'm really pleased about. I'm trying to make my pages less themed and more 'free' and less structured. It does have a sort of circusy look to it though. 

I've covered up most of the backing page (this time it is a proper non-wonky grid) but left a bit down the bottom which had a nice quote.

 

The pink and white striped thing was another paper bag from an order, complete with a little thank you sticker. I bordered two edges with a candy-striped washi tape (from The Works)

  

 

The weird little oll is a sort of business card type thing from a shop called Bobby Dazzler. I also added an old membership card, a business card from my shop Callooh and Callay, a Moomins clothing label and half a cinema ticket. There was no real reason behind any of these things, I just played around with loads of scraps to see what I thought looked good.

 

Down here I added a little illustration of a monkey (I have no idea where it came from) a nice vintage style pointing hand sticker from Ikea and finally I added some red star stamps because they went with the circus-ish look of the page and some tiny neon yellow gems to add colour.

Thanks so much for reading. I hope you had a great weekend!

xxx

A flip through the Kikki K Cute Paper Lovers book

Let's Smashbook! Session 4

A closer look at my first Cloudy Cow and Mrs Brimbles orders

A haul from Mrs Brimbles

A couple of weeks ago I made an order from the wonderful Mrs Brimbles, A UK stationery shop run by awesome blogger and youtuber Anna Brim. Mrs Brimbles has lots of goodies that are hard to find in the UK and is also the home of the Brimbles Boxes, a selection of stationery subscription boxes. I really really want to subscribe as past boxes look lovely but sadly I just can't afford it right now.

Anyway onto my haul!

 

First up I got a few sets of stickers.

These are some sweet, small weather icons by the brand Daisyland. I think they'd be lovely for decorating my planner and sort of tracking the weather. 

  

I really like that there are some more unusual stickers (like planets and shooting stars) along with some really cute classic images of sun/clouds etc.

 

Next I got a packet of woodland themed sticker 'flakes'. These are mainly bunnies and toadstools and are absolutely adorable.

 

The bunnies are just insanely cute and I love the classic red toadstools.

.

Possibly my favourite item in my whole order were these next stickers. More sticker flakes, this time unicorn themed.

 

These are just unbelievably beautiful. I absolutely love the illustration style and along with unicorns there are awesome ice creams and stars and suchlike too!

Both packs of sticker flakes were £2.49 and you get a load of stickers in the pack, a good handful of them and a pretty even spread of all the designs.

Next I got some Christmas and Halloween items which were on sale. I got two packs of ephemera.

This one has a vintage Christmas theme and is all die-cuts, most of which are double sided.

 

And this one is vintage Halloween themed and as well as die-cuts it contains some buttons, ribbon and tickets.

I also got these Halloween dividers which I hope I will be able to cut down and use in one of my planners.

Here are just a few of them:

 

You get 13 dividers for £2.49! 4 of them are plain, solid coloured but the other 9 are beautifully patterned with a different design on each side.

Then I got a couple of Washi tapes. One white with black hearts and the other Fair-isle design (which was also on sale) 

 

I got this sweet little fox pen for 99p. I bought it to go with my Nordic Nights organiser but then found a matching pen in Paperchase. Still it's a lovely skinny pen which writes very nicely and thinly and the foxes are adorable.

Finally I bought this card with seagulls. I just loved the design and it will probably be put into my Smashbook sometime soon.

 

So I hope you liked having a little peek at my order. I'm actually going to upload a video of this and my previous Cloudy Cow haul so I can show you the ephemera and stuff in better detail. If you're in the UK you should definitely check out Mrs Brimbles as they have some great US brands at fair prices and even if you're international you should have a look at some of Anna's own designs because they are lovely.

Hopefully someday I will have more income and will be able to subscribe to one of the Brimbles boxes!

XXX

Saturday Smash Book Show and tell 4

This is just a tiny little Smashbook show and tell today, matching my video session here I haven't been able to do much Smashing lately as our boiler has been broken and the room with my desk in was just too freezing to sit in!

This first page is less themed than most of my previous spreads but still not really random, I was sort of going for an old, murky, green/grey look. I've completely covered the original Smashbook page. The main image is a page from a vintage 1950s knitting pattern catalogue which has become distressed in a very pretty way. I also put a strip of grey washi tape on the top and bottom borders of the page just because the main picture wasn't quite big enough.

 

On top of the knitting pattern page I added a fortune-teller card from a friends performance art type thing and beneath that a ticket for Little Shop of Horrors where the ink has run or been stained in, what I think is, a very pretty way.

  

At the top I put a strip of light yellow washi with feathers just to break up the page a bit and then finally added a little playing card embellishment. I felt that it went with the page as, even though the colours don't really match anything else, it looks sort of faded and old like the rest.

    

This next one is part of a double page insect based spread (you can see the other half here)

The smashbook page that I used was lined with a drawing of a jar of flies I tore up some tissue paper with foil butterflies and glued it haphazardly to the page, hoping to look a bit like torn wallpaper.

 

I pasted in a big image of a piece of sculpture by Tessa Farmer and added some yellow washi tape as I wanted it to look like the picture was stuck to the wall with masking tape.  In the bottom left corner I placed a picture of  beehive and in the right bottom corner I trimmed a piece of my Pestival flyer advertising the 'bee hive ball' and added a little bit of the same feather washi tape from the murky green page just to add some visual interest.

 

Finally I scattered some insect stickers (from Paperchase) over the page.

And that's it for today! Our boiler is now fixed so I'll be making some more pages and other stuff soon :)

Thanks for reading and I hope you had a great Saturday!

xxx

Unboxing and first look at the compact Zip Saffiano in Pear

A review of the Paperchase Nordic Nights personal planner

I saw this planner a while ago when googling the Nordic Nights collection and I just had to have it. For the longest time it was out of stock on the Paperchase website (it is currently out of stock but has come back repeatedly) but luckily my local Paperchase had it so I grabbed it as soon as I saw it.

So let's take a look at it.

Here it is. As you can see it has a large, beautiful image on the front in a limited palette of white, 2 shades of pink, teal and yellow on a very dark blue fabric background. There is a small, green fabric trim around the edges.

  

More under the cut

Let's Colour! Session 1

Colouring book review: Let's Color Circus by Sarah Walsh

A stationery haul from Cloudy Cow!

So last week I got a little-ish haul from Cloudy Cow; a shop run by the wonderful Daisy of MyGreenCow, who was one of the bloggers who really inspired me to start my youtube channel and subsequent blog/instagram account etc.

Some of the stuff I wanted was out of stock but I still ended up with quite a few lovely bits.

  

So here's what I got:

First up these brightly coloured alphabet stickers

  

The stickers are printed on clear plastic so will blend in on any background and have all sorts of bright colours and patterns. You get 78 pieces (3 of each letter) for £1.90

 

I got this little tassle planner charm in bright bright pink. It comes in this sweet little organza bag.

 

They come in lots of different colours and with gold or silver chains. I've put it on my Nordic Nights Paperchase organiser (review coming soon) 

 

Now some sweet little Totoro magnetic page markers. There are 4 different varieties but I had to pick the one with the pink Totoro! 

 

Next some cute owl stickers. There are 10 different designs with 5 on white and 5 or Kraft coloured backgrounds. They're mainly owls but with some other bits too.

 

Next more stickers! This time a sheet of them with tonnes of different, insanely cute designs. 

 

It's hard to tell in the photos but the stickers feel almost like washi tape.

 

And speaking of Washi tape, I got 3 kinds! The Spider web design was on sale for £1.50 and the others were £1.80 each. My favourite design is probably the multi coloured hearts, it's simple but just so pretty

 

So that was my first Cloudy Cow order but I'm sure it won't be my last! Shipping in the UK depends on the amount you purchase, I think mine was an odd amount like £2.06 or similar. One thing to note is that currrently orders only ship once a week on Fridays. I made my order on a Thursday and it arrived on Saturday morning so it was processed really fast. Everything was great quality and a fair price. So check out Cloudy Cow here and be sure to check out Daisy's blog and youtube .

Saturday Smashbook Show and Tell 3

Hi everyone!

These are probably some of my favourite Smashbook pages so far. I can't really say why, I just really like them. Although I still feel they could all be busier. I think my problem may be overthinking the pages. Instead of just 'Smashing' stuff in I'm very hungup on composition and theming the pages and so on. I need to get a bit looser and more free.

Anyway if you'd like to watch this being made you can see my video here 

This first page is meant to be a pink, girl, gaudy, tacky mess.

I started with a page in my Smashbook which was pale pink with diamonds all over. I then layered a piece of holographic/iridescent pink wrapping paper and a fabulous postcard of Barbara Cartland.

 

Look at her in all her soft-focused glory.

 

I then finished off the page with some slightly metallic gold gum paper stars and pink fabric bows.

 

I feel like I need to get some pink Marabou to frame the whole page!

My final page for today was this pest/insect page. The original Smashbook page was a sort of textured red-orange back with little fly doodles. The main image was the cover of a booklet from the 2009 South Bank Centre Pestival season. Every summer the South Bank Centre in London has a sort of themed festival type thing with food, concerts, art and so on and Pestival was themed around insects.

 

At the bottom I put part of a flyer for a music night I went to which is an antique-ish looking image of Beetles in bell jars. It's slightly damaged but I didn't mind that.

Then I also added  this little image which was also in the Pestival leaflet. It's a photo of a piece of sculpture. I wanted to make the page look like a posterboard or bedroom wall where someone had just stuck up images. To try and achieve this I added some small, messily ripped bits of washi tape. Finally i added some little 3D insect stickers from Paperchase all over 

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these pages or my Smashbooking style in general. If anyone has any tips on being more free with my pages that would be amazing.

But anyway thank you so much for reading this and I hope you all have a great saturday.#

xxx

Let's Decorate! Session 2

Let's Smashbook! Session 3

Saturday Smashbook Show and Tell 2

These pages are all featured in my first Smashbooking video which you can see here. I hope you enjoy a closer look at them!

My current basic Smashbooking approach is to find one main 'thing' (be it a photo, flyer, postcard etc) that I'm drawn to and to then build the page around it.

So for instance with this page I chose a page from an art exhibition leaflet I had gone to and then tried to find other elements that I felt complimented it.

 

I found the main picture was quite calming to look at so I wanted to try and keep that soft, dreamy feeling. I chose this softly textured, buttermilk coloured page of my Smashbook with little 'Brain lint doodles' and then added some light grey and yellow washi tapes to just break up the page a bit.

To match the washi Tape I added this lovely feather I had

and then I finished the page with this little card. I got this from one of those mechanical fortune telling machines you get in arcades and fairs and things. I'd previously kept it in with some art supplies and it's been a bit marked but I think that works with the rest of the page.

 

Usually I like my pages to be a bit more busy than this, but I think this page is finished. I like it being a bit sparse, I feel like it works with the softness of the colours and images.

The next page wasn't very well documented in my video as my camera was playing up when I was making it. 

I've never been to the 'Fleet Air Arm Experience', I just found a flyer for it on holiday a few years ago and had to keep it because I find it hilarious. Why is there a giant boys head floating on top of the helicopter? And just look at his face:

 

Just look at him!

 

Anyway I chose a sort of school workbook style lined page from my Smashbook for it, then covered it with interwoven strips of thin, bright coloured washi tape. I bordered the image with more washi tape and added a neon sticky note arrow and some brightly coloured stickers. I might add more to this page if I find something bright that works in the composition but for now I like it as it is. 

This last page is themed around a Dia De Los Muertos altar card my Dad brought me from Mexico.

 

I couldn't find a page in my Smashbook that i felt went with the card so I used a piece of decorative paper I had from a pad from Tiger. Then I used some red lace style tape to border it. 

 

Finally I added some little wooden decorative hearts. 

 

Here's the card opened up: 

My favourite of these pages is probably the first, yellow one. I just feel like I've composed it quite well. What do you think?

Have a great Saturday everyone!

xxx