How to make paper flower embellishments and split personalities

Digi and paper tag - one side for each side of me

A plethora of flowers

I needed to create a tag book for my uks group and I created a tag that reflected my split personality scrapping - one side digital and the other paper with a huge paper flower. Excuse the photos - the daylight was rapidly going as I made the flowers.

I cut out rough flowers shapes in three sizes of coredination card and three  sizes of circles from  an old dictionary.

I used a mix of pva and acrylic to coat both sides of dictionary paper and left to dry and then crumpled the disks

I then placed a blue disk on top of a flower shape and cut into the card to make more defined petal shapes - ending up with three blue circles and three orange card layers.

I took an emery board to the card to create a more distressed look

I fastened them together with a small flower brad

Finally I pinched all the petals to create a more petal shape

Soon I had a pile of flowers and it cost me little but time.

Paper layouts from weekend

Left my camera at school so took some snaps with iphone but they are not ideal. The first layout is of Lens Guy, youngest daughter and sister in law. I used pink which is a bit of a first for me. The frame around the photo came free with a magazine but was too pink so I layered on some tissue paper I had. The decorative strip was cut out of a smaller piece of paper and I used a thickers glitter alphabet. The journaling was done in the right hand corner using a sakura gel pen.
The other layout is for the Birds cj. I was struggling with this one as had no pictures of birds. I drew a freehand bird and covered it in skeleton leads for feathers and then used images from the Graphic Fairy on the other page. The flowers were punched out from an old dictionary and inked and layered and then I glued small glass seed beads into the centres.

First Foray into posting

I had just posted a message on Shimelle's page about "This is why I scrapbook" and the fact I have no blog. However have blogged before when in Canada in 2007 so just need to get going again... if I can remember what to do.
Without further ado here is front cover. I had lots of fun embellishing a mix of chipboard letters and a metal "h" that I cut out. Watch out for burning fingers when embellishing metal (you would think I would know but common sense seems to disappear when playing with paper and stuff). It is also quite subdued and pink for me but was just trying out some new techniques. On the other side I have started explaining why, or rather what my mini book will be about. Apart from the obvious about having fun and escaping into my own world I have decided it's a guilty pleasure. As I get to indulge myself by buying stash and stealing time for me. Most of my friends view scrapbooking and card making as eccentric. Some wonder why I spend money and time on paper, ribbons and bling instead of handbags and gladrags ... one of my answers is because it lasts for ever. I have written a list about who I am and I think each page is going to reflect a different part of me which should explain the why of the scrapbooking. I hope you follow because I'm not sure I do. Now I have to go as it is my turn to cook dinner and everyone is hungry and I have lost track of time yet again.