Welcome to our May guest ...

Please welcome our delightful guest designer this month, Krisy Podolak with her gorgeous layout inspired by our floral artwork for May.

My name is Krisy and I am currently a stay at home mum to Poppy (4), Leo (3) and Autumn (2) I am a scrapbooker from way back before scrapbooking was an actual thing. I was one of the 2016 Scrapbooking Memories Masters. I am an eclectic scrapper and my style varies however mixed media is almost always featured. I love inks especially and texture. I am excited to be teaching at this years Brisbane Scrapbooking Expo too.

www.facebook.com/popleopod
www.instagram.com/popleopod
www.popleopod.wordpress.com

Here are a few of my favourite layouts ...

Remember ....

You still have time until the end of the month to upload your own take on this challenge.  All details are on the blog sidebar. We'd love to see what you can do with our inspiration this month.

Our May mid month reveal ...

Welcome to our mid month reveal.

This month we feature this amazing artwork by New Zealand artist Michael Sass called The Garden as your inspiration. 

CRITERIA - FLOWERS

And some beautiful floral inspiration from our second team ...

ANNA

 I was inspired of the happy colors, the flowers and the fact that it is Mothers day this time of the year. It's photos of my mum and my youngest daughter, love this pic of them 

ANGELIKA

I was inspired to use flowers on a Mother's day card. I was inspired by the pinks and purples, as well as the green leaves and golden flowers.

KAT

I was inspired to scrap a photo of my sister and I in a garden similar to that in the artwork. For the flowers I used floral patterned paper, flower die cuts and a floral flair.

TONE

KAREN

The inspiration I have taken is the abundance of flowers.

KRIPA

My flowery layout with lots of fussy cutting. I hardly use flowers so this was way out of my comfort zone.

JANE

This artwork made me think about what might be hidden in gardens amongst beds of beautiful floral blooms.  This photo is of a cow sculpture we discovered in the gardens of a lavender farm in Tasmania and I thought it perfect for this hidden theme I was thinking about.  I wanted to use very bright and bold floral paper to try and emphasis the hidden aspect - the  layout design is based loosely on a page I really loved by team member Anna Uhras.

Now it is your turn, we'd love to see your own interpretation. You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.

April winners / May tutorial ...

I will be announcing our April winners shortly but first I would like to introduce you to our Tips, Tricks and Techniques for April brought to you by team member, Anna Uhras.

Step by step by Anna Uhras

Today I will share a step by step tutorial of how I made one of my layouts from the end of 2016.

The technique for my background is pretty easy but you got a striking result.

This is nothing I usually do but sometimes it is fun to try something different and you can even use this technique for cardmaking.

I picked some different Distress inks and used my distress ink tool to apply the lovely colors just randomly.

It looked like this when I was done.

Now I wrote some swirls with a glue-pen and applyed some clear embossing powder.

(I also stamped some stars and "splatters" with an ordinary embossing ink pad)

The powder I used is UTEE and that gives you extra thick embossed motifes.

(I use my heat gun as it is heat embossing)

After that I use a black Distress ink with my Distress ink tool to cover the whole page but as you have clear embossed those swirls they will resist the black ink and stay in the bright colors underneath.

Here you can see how it turnes out.

To help the swirls to pop i take a babywipe and wipes away the overage black ink from the pattern.

I love the result, those bright happy colors against the black is soo cool.

Now it is time to arrange your papers and embellies and finish your page.

I think the background worked very well for this photo of the castle at Disney Land.

Here is the whole page.

Hope you have gotten some inspiration here today.

Can't wait to see your interpretation of this months challenge.

Anna xo

now onto our April winners .....  thank you to all who played along with us last month.

Our main winner for April is #2 Brenda Caldow with this amazing page.

Our random draw winner is #7 Robyn

Donated by Judy Willey

 Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me on jjjustjane@bigpond.com with their postal details. You have until the announcement of the winners for next month to do so. Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar. 

Our Creative Team highlight from last month is Tanya with her delightful layout.  She will receive a little surprise something from me.



Please don't forget to enter this month's ARTastic challenge. All the details are in the left sidebar. Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.

Hello sweet May ...

In the lead up to Mother's Day here in Australia, children of all ages (and their Dad's) will flock to florists, newsagents, fashion stores and day spas, on behalf of their mum, spending around $2 billion. A lot of them will get crafty too creating wonderful works of art in school classrooms just ready to present to Mum.

The biggest spending will happen at restaurants and cafes but around $200 million is estimated to be spent on flowers.  Selling flowers is an important business for Mother's Day!

So it appears we can all look forward to being taken to lunch and given a beautiful bunch of flowers - now what woman wouldn't like that!

So during May as a tribute to Mother's everywhere we invite you to join in our monthly challenge where our criteria is to use flowers on your page.  We feature this amazing artwork by New Zealand artist Michael Sass called The Garden as your inspiration.  If you would like to feature your own Mother, Grandmother or yourself with your children please do but it isn't mandatory - we just want to see those flowers!

CRITERIA - FLOWERS

A little about Michael Sass ...

Michael Sass migrated to New Zealand from South Africa in 2000 with his wife, Kathy to be with their two daughters. Having been in business all his life, Michael pursued art seriously for the first time when he semi-retired in 1998. Art has always been his first love and, although during his school career he won many prizes for art, he was not encouraged to do art as a career. He did two painting courses with the celebrated South African artist Dale Elliot in 1998 and has been painting ever since. His preferred medium is pastel but he also does oils and acrylics – mostly in landscape realism. Since arriving in New Zealand, Michael has exhibited at numerous exhibitions and was been honoured with a number of prestigious awards.

This year we are putting the ART back into ARTastic and our main prize each month will reflect that -  this month featuring a lovely apron to help you in your arty pursuits and some pretty flowers of course!

And as always a lovely prize pack for our random draw winner ...

Donated by Anna Uhras

And now some amazing inspiration from the first of our team ...

TANYA

I loved all the flowers in the painting so tried to use as many as I could on my layout. Seeing that it was a Mothers Day Tribute I have used a photo of my daughter who will miss her first mothers day with me as she is heading to Europe the week before!

EVELYN

For my layout I used a very romantic picture and I used the queen of flowers on it - the rose!

JUDY

I have chosen to use a monochromatic colour scheme using flowers. I have used a photo of my mother taken in the early 40's I think and I wanted a vintage feel.

HELENE

I have flowers on the background paper, used a flower patterned stencil, fuzzy cut flowers and layered flower embellishments.

ELAINE

I  just had to use a photo of my children as it is a Mother's day tribute . I loved how this painting had so many colours and I used that as my inspiration. I also challenged myself to use flowers on a 'fun' page.

MARIA

Flowers always inspire! On my layout, there are many different flowers : paper, knitted, metallic and chipboard.

TRACEY

I loved the colours in the painting and this old Bo Bunny paper was perfect for the background. I also found some old iron on butterflies that were a great colour and lets face it needed to be used. The something new is the Cocoa Vanilla accents and words. This is my beautiful Mum with two of her granddaughters.

Over to you ......

Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on May 31st, 2017.  We'd love to see your new paper, digital, mixed media or off the page entries. Why not try doing a pocket page spread?  Please no back-dated submissions.  

 Please note:- You may combine our challenge with a sketch challenge only - no other combining will be accepted.  Please include our inspirational picture and challenge details on your blog post as well as provide a link back to us at ARTastic  ... and don't forget to tell us how you were inspired by our challenge.  You may enter more than once in any month as long as each submission is with a different creation.  International entries are very welcome. 

Please call past on the 8th for our announcement of the April winners and our ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques for May. 

April highlights ...

We'd love to see a few more entries for our challenge this month - I hope you might find some creative time to yourself over the next few days and join in with us. 

This month we feature an ANZAC tribute artwork by Kenneth MacQueen called Wild Poppies.  Our criteria this month is to use splashes of red on your page.

Here are just a couple of layouts that have caught our eye this month ...

 

An amazing page from Viga Anton

A stunning card from Robyn Oliver

There is still time to play along with us - hope to see your entry soon.

Welcome to our April guest ...

Please welcome our lovely guest designer this month, Katie Howard with her wonderful layout inspired by our artwork for April.

The artwork was just the inspiration that I needed to scrap some photos from the dawn service we attended for the 100 year recognition of ANZAC day, and I happen to have some flairs especially for the theme too. I was also inspired to recreate a watercolour kind of background with the dots of poppies like in the artwork.

Hello, my name is Katie Howard and I am a self-confessed obsessed scrapbooker! I am from Brisbane and live with my husband and three teenage kids. I have been seriously scrapping since around the time my youngest was born, so around 13 years! (that surprises even me!) My proudest scrapping achievement was being asked to be a Creative Team member for Scrapbooking Memories. As far as my style, well, it is a little hard to define! I dabble in many things, but probably the most consistent thing on my pages is layers and embellishment clusters. I have been known to dabble in mixed media backgrounds, but also like clean lines, so I call my style – “go with the flow”!

I am currently designing for Charms Creations, Rainbow Splendour and Scrapbooking Top 50 and have also had the pleasure of being a part of Kraft+, Scrap the Boys, Scrap the Girls, White With 1 and D’lish Scraps.

You can find my blog here: www.katiehs-life.blogspot.com.au, and I must admit, I don’t update this quite as often as I should! But most of my projects usually end up there. You can also find me on Facebook in many of the scrapbooking communities and groups.

Thanks for having me at ARTastic!

Katie x

Thank you so much for joining us this month Katie.

Remember ....

You still have time until the end of the month to upload your own take on this challenge.  All details are on the blog sidebar. We'd love to see what you can do with our inspiration this month.

Our April mid month reveal ...

Welcome to our mid month reveal.

This month we feature an ANZAC tribute artwork by Kenneth MacQueen called Wild Poppies.  Our criteria this month is to use pops of red on your page.

CRITERIA - Pops of red

We'd love to see your entries - this isn't difficult, just add some splashes of red to your layouts - this can be paint or ink, or enamel dots, rhinestones or even buttons.  Add some flowers, hearts or stars in red.  It can be any theme at all it doesn't have to be related to a memorial day.

And some fantastic inspiration from our second team ...

HELENE

As Sweden has not been to war for over 200 years we do not have any memorial day similar to ANZAC. I therefore just picked a photo that goes along with red. My pop of red is a rub-on "tattoo" and splashes of red mist.

TONE

The photos are taken in a small zoo....and the title says "Are you snotty?

KRIPA

I made an art journal page using a little pop of red and a quote which i imagine our war heroes would agree with: A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings. Believe in yourself.

ANNA

I made a card this time ❤ I was inspired of the red poppies and the watercolor effect. I smooshed with some red distress ink +water on my background . The sentiment is inspired of the tribute/remembering theme.

ANGELIKA

JANE

In 2015 and 2016 a local community group undertook a massive "Poppy Poject" to handmake thousands and thousands of poppies for the 100 Year anniversary of Gallipoli and WW1. These were made with crepe paper and a lot were done with crochet - a truly massive job.

Now it is your turn, we'd love to see your own interpretation. You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.