I've made another video. This time just a process video in high speed

Here's a better photo of the finished layout

I've also recently made a Facebook page where I'll be posting process pictures, finished layouts, anything that I find interesting, and eventually some freebies.

So I had a cool idea to make a scrapbooking video that's like a quick tutorial or a breakdown, basically showing how I made the layout. And with the help of my filmaker boyfriend, I made this stop motion video.

 I hope you guys enjoy the video, and please feel free to give me feedback.

I finally made a quilt after years of wanting to try this hobby. I made it for my boyfriends 22nd birthday. The process of making it was stressful at times. I made mistakes but somehow fixed them, and I was running out of time to finish it. Since I'd never made a quilt before, I didn't have any tools or much of an idea of how to make one. I decided to make it cheaply and not buy any tools (except for a new pair of fabric scissors), so I'll explain my process with this quilt.

Choosing the colours was one of my favourite parts. Sam's favourite colours are purple and yellow but I didn't want to use too much of those colours and have the quilt look girly. I thought I'd incorporate those colours in it somehow, but in the end I went with just blue, brown and white. Blue and brown is one of my favourite colour combinations and it's very masculine. I decided to buy some pre cut squares of fabric as it's easier and I wouldn't end up with too much fabric left over at the end. I found a 5 pack of blue pre cuts and went from there, adding single squares of brown fabric that seemed to match. I also bought 2 metres of plain brown fabric to use as the backing. I ended up cutting squares of that and adding them to the front of the quilt as well.

Since I didn't have a rotary cutter, I cut out each square one by one with scissors. This was time consuming and annoying, but worth it for just one quilt. If I ever take up this hobby more often then I'll definately invest in a rotary cutter.
I chose to cut all the squares 15x15cm so I cut out a cardboard template of this size and traced around it 9 times on each piece of fabric then just cut on the lines.

To make sure each square was the correct size, I pinned them onto the cardboard template and trimmed off the excess. So i cut 88 squares twice.

Then I took over the dining table and laid them out how I wanted. I stressed a lot over this, mainly about the size it was going to turn out. I realised it was going to be a little smaller than a single sized bed, but I really couldn't be bothered buying and cutting out more fabric then laying them out all over again. After I sewed the rows together, I took the last row and added it to the side, making it just a tad wider. 

Once the front of the quilt was completed, I added some embroidery. I used an embroidery frame thing to keep the fabric nice and stretched and drew with pencil the shapes and words I wanted and then hand stitched over them with embroidery thread.

Then it was ready to be basted. I stressed out about the batting having creases in it and tried spraying it with water and putting it in the dryer. It made basically no difference and I decided to just leave the creases. I went with the Elmer's school glue method of basting. I didn't want to spend hours doing the safety pin method, that sounded like way too much of a hassle, and I didn't want to spend $30 on spray glue just to wash it out. Elmer's school glue was cheap and quick to do. I just laid the batting on the floor, then laid the backing fabric on top and spread them both out as best I could. Then I folded the backing fabric back halfway and started squirting the glue onto the batting all the way across and about 10-15cm lengthwise at a time. I then just laid a bit of the backing fabric over the glue and spread it flat again. I did this till I got to the end, then just did the other side. The glue showed through in areas but I didn't worry about it too much. I left it to dry overnight, then did the same technique with the top of the quilt. I started running out of glue so just added water to the bottle. Once it was completely dry, I added a few safety pins just to hold it together better. The creases were still in the batting but disappeared when I started the quilting. 

The quilting process was a little difficult at times. Again, I didn't go out and buy a quilting foot for the sewing machine, I just pulled it through. It overlapped the fabric quite a lot where the stitches meet, but it's not really noticeable. I used the lines where the fabric meets as a guideline for the stitching, lining it up with the right side of the foot. I had to roll the quilt up to get it through the sewing machine.

For the binding, I used denim fabric and machine stitched it on. I tested a small piece of the denim in water before I did the binding and the colour ran. This made me stress about washing the quilt, so I decided to make some big temporary hand stitches around the edge of the quilt and chucked it in the washing machine with some colour catchers. I was really worried about washing it and having it fall apart or the colours washing, and I was worried that the fabrics I hadn't pre washed would shrink and ruin it (I only pre washed half the fabric because some of them said not to wash). I washed it on a cold gentle cycle and nothing bad happened so I washed it again on a short regular warm cycle, I wanted to make sure the glue washed out. While I left it to dry on the dining table for a few days, I cut out strips of denim basically the same way that I'd cut out all the squares. This was way more of a nuisance to cut out. After cutting out 1 strip, I folded the fabric so I could cut 7 more strips at once. The fabric was difficult to cut through and they turned out slightly different widths, meaning they didn't quite match when I sewed them together. I didn't worry too much because I needed to get it finished, and once it was all binded, it turned out fine anyway.

I love the look of the finished quilt and I'm so proud of it. My boyfriend loves it too and he really doesn't care about the little imperfections I made, like the messy binding stitching and the overlapping fabric. It doesn't quite fit on his bed, he has a king single. It fits fine when the bed is made and no ones in it, but when someones in it, it's obvious it's a little too small. I think it's more to make his bed look nice because it falls off his bed every night anyway lol.

I finished my course a month ago and don't plan on doing anymore study. I gained a Diploma in Digital Media Advanced and achieved it with Merit. I've had a pretty stressful year at times and almost couldn't wait for the course to end, I was desperate for a holiday haha. These are just a few of the things I designed this year.

Beauty Salon branding

Wedding stationery template for actual client

My personal logo

I haven't done much scrapbooking this year, only about 1 layout and I've competed a few months of Project life. Shortly I'll make a post with some of my recent Project Life pages, how I've changed it to suit me and how I've been trying to catch up. I'll also post up my first quilt that I've made and how I made it cheaply.

It's been awhile since I made a heritage layout, also a while since I used Thickers lol. While searching for an old photo which was already photocopied, I came across 15 unfinished layouts, most of which were barely started. They were all put away because I got stuck on ideas etc for them. I made a new goal to get round to finishing most of them one day. Anyway, I took this old photo from one of them lol. 

Also, my Grandma recently turned 90, so I made her this quick card.

I'm 3 weeks into my course and im currently swamped with homework. Gonna do a huge catch up this week, enjoy the 5 day weekend, and then get started on the next assignment, which I will be more productive on and use my time wisely.
I'm also starting to fall more behind on project life, so I'm going to start setting time aside most nights for scrapbooking/pl.
tfl.

I've decided to continue Project Life in 2013. I find that it's a great way to document everyday photos that I take that would otherwise just be stored on a computer and never seen by future generations and stuff.  I'm pretty behind at the moment, with a few months of 2012 to catch up on, but I'm determined not to quit this project.

For my 2013 title page I used a mix of simple Stories, MissTina, and Becky Higgins.

Also, I'll be going back to study in a week. I thought I had till July to prepare, but I got a call a few days ago because a spot opened up in the earlier class and I was offered it. I accepted it and was excited, till I realised it was a week and a half away. Not the greatest amount of time to pay course fees, sort out student allowance, fix the broken zip on my bag, and mentally prepare myself. So I'm a tad stressed, and nervous because I've heard that Digital Media Advanced is really intense.

 Finally went back and completed April and May, which had been almost complete for ages.
So in these months I got sick on easter and again on my birthday, had a small kitchen fire when I turned on the wrong element, got really close to 2 people from the Twilight wolf pack, did photography stuff for course and turned 22, so quite a lot of interesting stuff happened lol.

May includes an insert of extra photos from when I walked around town and took heaps of photos for my homework. I cut a Becky Higgins page protector in half. I get my Dad to print my photos at his work because the printer is a lot better quality than my home printer, his printer quite often prints out darker than on screen, so these extra photos turned out way to dark. I might get them printed again at a photo kiosk cause everytim I look at them it bugs me.