goodies from ballarat

I was in Ballarat last week to see “Blood on the Southern Cross” at Sovereign Hill. Whilst there, I went to the Imagination Factory and I swear, after being in Hong Kong for so long – where scrapbooking, much less art journaling, is virtually unheard of – being in an actual physical scrapbooking store was like being in heaven.

I had quite a hard time stopping myself from spending my entire savings account on supplies. Instead, I had to content myself with buying just a couple of Tim Holtz’s Distress Inks (finally, some Tim Holtz products! I have a feeling I would be a fan), some memento dew drop inks and a Tim Holtz blending tool (I saw Samantha Kira using them a few weeks back and I’ve been itching to try those out). I also got my hands on some real scrapbooking paper, which I’m actually quite intimidated about using.

The bits that I used in the page above? It took a lot of umm’ing and ahh’ing before I got the courage to tear the bits needed from the scrapbook paper. I swear I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

This is Ballarat page I did in the convo book. I couldn’t find my normal scissors and had to make do with the puny one that I had since primary school. My fingers were so cramped trying to cut out those letters…

A bit more of the scrapbooking paper that I bought. I want to ask those of you who don’t own a die cutter, how you manage to cut these shapes evenly? I fold my paper into quarters and just cut one corner. But folding scrapbook paper can leave a very ugly crease. Just wondering whether anyone has a solution.

It’s not obvious in this photo, as I didn’t photograph to the edges of the page, but this layout is more “scrapbooking” than my other pages. Although I don’t like the rigid structure of scrapbooking, I think I might incorporate some of its layout elements – if only to make my pages look a little neater.

The photos on the page were printed using my PoGo printer – really happy with the way these photos came out. But I think I need to add a bit more on the page, perhaps some doodling around the edges of the photos…