Lets get Bright & Brave!

 
Hey Magpies! Rachel here to welcome you to October! Seriously, October, how did that even happen? I’m sure it was April like five minutes ago. This month I got to work with the amazing, Bright & Brave collection from Illustrated Faith. The Illustrated Faith collections were the collections I was so looking forward to this year. I love Bright & Brave and I am also looking forward to another collection coming a little later in the year, You Are Loved. I do find the fact that these collections excite me so much, quite amusing. I am an atheist, yet the papers I’ve enjoyed working with and been looking forward to the most this year, are faith based collections aimed at bible journalling! I actually love the challenge of using collections for something other than what they’re meant for. I love using Valentines collections for normal LO’s and I love getting creative with Illustrated Faith and covering up the bits that don’t work for me. I’ve done it a few times here and I’ll tell you my secrets! But don’t count out the Illustrated Faith collections just because you’re not religious, the colours and embellishments in these lines are far too much fun to be left on the shelf just because you don’t believe in god – honestly!
I bought the whole entire Bright & Brave line, apart from the stamps because I’m not into stamping. But I got everything else so if you have a question about a product, leave me a comment here or ask on the Hey Little Magpie Chat & Inspiration Facebook Group and I will do my best to answer it. I wanted to tell you about the Designer Clips, most of the new Bella Blvd and Illustrated Faith lines have these clips in their lines and they’re so much better than I expected them to be. I thought they would be paper or thick cardstock but they’re actually made from a plastic material. So they are a lot more sturdy than I thought they would be. They’re fab! I used one from the Basics Designer Clips, Hearts below and loved this pack.

Another product I made great use of this month is the Heidi Swapp Minc Die-Cut Jumbo Words and I’ve used them on 3 of this months LO’s. On the LO below, the ‘adore’ word is from this pack. This pack is just black die-cut words that I assume can be run through a Minc Foil Machine but I don’t have one. I saw the forever word used on a LO online and loved it so I was chuffed that Hey Little Magpie had the pack in stock and bought 2 of them! They’re great words, you get, adore, hello, forever, enjoy, love & smile in the pack and I’ve used adore, smile and forever this month. As you can see they’re a great size and you can just whack them on a LO and you’re done. I LOVE that! And they’re only £3.99 for a pack of 6 words, I think that’s pretty good value. There is another pack of smaller sized words available too Minc Die-Cut Words which has the words, delight, happy, today, noted & capture in the pack. So you don’t need a Minc machine to buy the products!

My first LO came together so quick! I used the Bright & Brave 3×4 Paper and chucked 6 of those on a piece of black cardstock in a rough grid. The card in the top middle did say ‘just prey’ so I put a strip of washi from the Washi Stickers Book over the word prey, and one of the Paper Pieces Die-Cuts saying ‘love’ over the top of that on foam pads. The top right card said ‘i love you Lord’ so I placed my photo over the word Lord to hide that and used one of the Crate Paper, Cool Kid Silver Resin Stars over the top of that. Also, there were words on the typewriter letter and I covered them over with the title word adore too. So some secrets of hiding bits that don’t suit you!
I’ve used the Heidi Swapp Minc Jumbo Word as my title. I also used the foam heart Thicker from Amy Tangerine’s latest Word Thickers sheet, some enamel hearts from She Blooms and Puffy Star Stickers from Freckled Fawn as well as some arrows from MAMBI, here, here and here, one of the little paperclip bows from Cute Clips – Eve and an exclusive HLM Flair Badge, Document Life and I was done. Such a simple design that can be used over and over again, grids are good!

Here’s a little close up of some of those details for you. I don’t know if you can see the thickness of the Designer Clip here, but it’s way thicker than paper, you won’t be able to rip one that’s for sure, they are strong!


I love the Bright & Brave Paper Pieces Die-Cuts Pack, there’s such cool bits in there. I loved the typewriters and have used both of them. There are a few pieces that I think I will struggle to use, like the pray cloud, the Jesus word and the amen square but I like a challenge! But don’t be surprised if I have a giveaway on the HLM Chat & Inspiration Facebook Group to give away all the pieces I don’t think I can ever use. I would rather someone who would appreciate them, had them, than them sitting unused in my stash.

I used a lot of Nuvo Crystal Drops on my LO’s this month, I am still loving this product! On my LO below I used a line of colours under the papers. When I was little, my Grandmother had this painting in her sunroom and I loved it because it had a row of little coloured bumps on it, and I thought they were sweeties, I loved it when Grammy would lift me up and I could run my fingers over them. So that’s what inspired me to do a line of different coloured dots on this LO and when I showed Mum the picture of the LO, she commented on how she liked them too so I was glad I made the effort and did it again on another LO further down the page! The colours I used here all match the Bright & Brave collection well. I used Carnation Pink, Ripened Pumpkin, Caribbean Ocean, Rhubarb Crumble, English Mustard and Apple Green.

As is usual for my LO’s, this is a simple design that can be used over and over again. I loved the black & white striped paper in the Bright & Brave collection, Bible Journalling and also the bright and colourful circles on the Count The Ways paper so I used one on the bottom and one on top. Then I cut a banner from the Garden Paper to go across the middle and help my Heidi Swapp Minc Jumbo Word title show up. I also used some older Dear Lizzy pink Thickers and some old Heidi Swapp turquoise letters too. The New Zealand shape is something I bought in NZ last time I was there (at Warehouse Stationery for any readers in NZ, they come in a pack of Kiwi icons and I love them and use them a lot – in fact I asked Mum to find me some more packs and she posted them over to me in the UK – thanks Mum!!!). I put a little puffy heart sticker on the shape where Auckland is. I made this LO because I read a thread on a forum about people who live overseas for many years and whether they consider themselves from where they live or from somewhere else. I’ve been in the UK for 18 years now but I am a Kiwi through and through, I’ll always be an Aucklander, it’s the best city in the world as far as I’m concerned and I can’t wait till I can move home again.

I made a little cluster on top using one of the Designer Clips -Hearts. I put it on my page back to front though because the main part of the clip says ‘God loves me’ on it and I loved the colour of the clip but didn’t want those words on my page. So I poked the words part behind my paper and used the frame on the front. Then I used a little pink banner and the true sticker from the 12×12 Sticker Sheet on top.

And here’s a close up of the details, you can see my Nuvo Crystal Drops here, they’re not perfect, far from it but I think as a whole, they look fine and give the fun look I was after.


I decided to take a leap of faith (nudge nudge, geddit?) and order the Bright & Brave Tip-Ins. This is a product that is designed to fit in to your bible… I think. I don’t really know to be honest but I did think there was a chance these might be too religious for me but they’re only £3.99 a pack and at that price I decided to take a chance! I will say that there are maybe 2 of them that I will find un-useable but the rest I can get creative with! I’ve used one on the LO below and it does say stop worrying and start praying – so I cut the word praying off the bottom so it fit what I wanted!

Oh, now guess what, Bella Blvd and Illustrated Faith have come out with a 6×8″ Paper Pads! This is amazing. I have always been a fan of the 6×6 paper pads but the last year or so I have been thinking, wouldn’t it be great if it was a bit bigger? And now they are! The 6×8″ size is great, you can cut that in half and make 2 3×4″ cards for your pocket scrapbooking pages. But also, the 6×8″ size is just that bit bigger to layer under a 6×4″ photo. I was so excited to see this size arriving, it is brilliant and I love it. On this LO I used a sheet from the 6×8 Paper Pad super cute Addison range. Some great colours in that range as well.

So this LO is a little busier than I usually do but I wanted it that way to represent what is going on in my head at the moment. I’ve been suffering with anxiety since last year (I’m attributing it to blood thinning medicine I have to take for the rest of my life *joy*) and I thought I had it beaten, when it came back again with a vengeance last month. I find it quite therapeutic to do LO’s about it and once I saw the ‘stop worrying and start praying’ Bright & Brave Tip-In card, I wanted to use it for a LO straight away. As I said above, I cut off the ‘praying’ and put Living with some Thickers instead. I chose a sheet of 6×8 paper from the Addison 6×8 Paper Pad cause I thought the triangles looked busy and represented a busy brain. I love that 6×8 size. I put a strip of my favourite black & white striped Bible Journalling Paper down the side. I added some small word stickers down the side of the photo and my journalling on strips of white cardstock.
I didn’t have anything else on this LO but I wanted to add more, to make it more chaotic and busy so I got out my Nuvo Crystal Drops again. I did a line of Gloss White above and then below and along the bottom I used Autumn Red, Dandelion Yellow, Bubblegum Pink and m favourite Caribbean Ocean. I also added another strip of Bible Journalling Paper across the bottom too. It made the LO busier like I was after.

Here’s a close up of my Nuvo Drops and some details.


Freckled Fawn has some new puffy star stickers and they are a bit lush! I got both colours, Silver/Black?White and Pink/Mint/Gold. They also do some Glitter Enamel Stars in different colours too and they are fab embellishments too. The puffy ones are really squashy and soft, I loved them! Stars are an easy embellishment, they fit on a broad range on LO’s so they’re a great thing to have on hand and I can recommend all the Freckled Fawn embellishments, they’re all excellent quality.

Hey Little Magpie have some super cute stickers in stock and I used these Puffy Emoji ones on my LO below, they were perfect! Check out what HLM has in stock in the Stationery line, there’s some great finds to be had if you’re looking for something a little different and unusual.

I have scrapped this photo before but I had one sitting on my desk and I just grabbed it and used it again for this LO. It was taken by my friend Sheree on a photography day and I was posing for her and realised there were loads of spiders on the wall beside me! I loved the colour of the Geared Up For Jesus Paper and wanted to use it as my background, but I need some white space on a LO too, so I used a piece of white cardstock for that. I added slim strips of my favouruite black & white striped Bible Journalling paper down each side for a bit of interest. One of the Heidi Swapp Minc Jumbo Words was an easy choice for my title. I dotted around some word & phrase stickers, the Puffy Stars Stickers and the HLM Puffy Emoji Stickers and then I needed just that little something else….. so a line of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Ebony Black was just what I needed to finish off.


I’m not usually a fan of the 12×12 sticker sheets that come with collections for some reason. The sheet you get as standard in a collection pack, it usually goes unused in my stash. But this Bright & Brave 12×12 Sticker Sheet is one I like! It has some good words on it, I like the long border stickers and the alphabet is lush! I like the arrows, hearts, hexagons and word banners on this sheet, they’re quite usable. So I’m very glad I got this sheet, it’s fab!

I’m always a fan of word & phrase Thickers and these ones from Amy Tangerine, Oh Happy Life are no exception. I love using these words & phrases as titles, it’s so quick and easy and I’m all over that! Sometimes I find the words just don’t suit me very well and end up sitting unused in my stash but the words on this sheet are good ones and I used the ‘weekend’ on my LO below.

This is another simple design that is easy to use over and over again. I used the Epistles Paper as my background in 9×12″ size and then added the Bible Journalling paper across the bottom. I added some pencil washi tape from the Washi Stickers Book across the join. My title uses the products I featured above, the alphabet stickers from the Bright & Brave 12×12 Sticker Sheet and the weekend from the Amy Tangerine, Oh Happy Life Word Thickers. Then I’ve dotted around pieces from the Paper Pieces Die-Cuts pack and the Element Stickers. Another little secret was that on the typewriter die-cut, it said ‘prayer request’ so I covered over the word prayer with a tiny strip of the striped paper and just left the request visible. And on the pencils die-cut to the left of the title, it said Jesus Loves in the middle of it. So I covered that over with the scissors die-cut! I also added a Basic Designer Clip, Hearts as well.

 
So there’s some ideas for using the Bright & Brave collection from Illustrated Faith. I hope you don’t discount this bright & colourful collection, just because you’re not religious and don’t think you will use it for it’s intended purpose. It doesn’t matter what you use it for and if you get creative, you can make the whole collection work for you. Of course if you are using this for faith based creations and Bible journalling, it will be perfection! There are a few more products in the collection that I want to work with and show you guys, so look out next month, I will be using the Clear Cuts Pad for sure. I didn’t get a chance to use it this time but it is amazing, lovely thick acetate pages and some lush designs. And I would love to see anything you create with this collection, or anything Illustrated Faith so please share on our Hey Little Magpie Chat & Inspiration Group on Facebook, that’s what it’s there for, chat and inspiration, sharing creations with other crafty types! Love to see you there! Until next month Magpies….