John Cena Part 2

My second John Cena LO and the first one featured me and John Cena, this one is of course my son and WWE´s number one star at the moment. I usually do not do the LO´s with me before I do the ones with my son but this time I did it on purpose. The LO below I had already planned and I knew it was going to take a lot of time to make so I delibaretly waited with it since I wanted my son to be on the spectacular LO. I dont think it came out as spectacular as I had imagined but still it is a bit different!

As you can see I have been trying to create something like the old game consols you could play on in game arcades before the time of Playstations and X-Boxes and whatever they are named now that you play at home. Everything you see on the LO is hand cut, except the letters at the buttons that were created in my wife´s Gazelle. All other letters, buttons and the 8-bit John Cena figure (which is altogether 29 small paper pieces) are drawn and hand cut by me. The big John Cena-text is mounted on black 3D-cushions, the buttons are also elevated by 3D-cushion and the rings around them are stuck to the background paper at the outer part of the rings and lifted up by glue-buttons at the inner part to give it a more realistic look. Two shiny cardstock, one for the background and one for the "TV-screen", lots of Glossy Accent and patience I never thought I had (especially putting the figure together) I finally succeeded in finishing this one that has been in the making for months. It was nearly ruined by my wife´s cats who were up chewing on it on the scrapbooking table but I managed to cover some of those parts up. I guess they could not read the cat-chphrase "You can´t see me". I dont like cats (but my wife does so they are still alive and well!)!



Game on, just insert a quarter and start playning!



The 8-bit figure consisting of 29 pieces, Glossy Accent, glue and a lot of patience (and some unprintable words).



A close up of the letter and the camo-paper that was perfect for Cenas character.



The buttons with the ingenious (if I may so) rings around them with a slight leaning that was really difficult to fix!



And last but not least, the joystick built in different levels.

Kelly Kelly

Living in Sweden means that you have to go abroad if you want to see wrestling live and me and my son have done so for a quite a few years now. When we started doing this wrestling was top priority but has as the years have gone by transferred into a father and son trip where the wrestling has become more of an excuse for taking the trip than a must. Sure, we go see the wrestling event but it´s really the time we get to spend together that I really treasure and I am quite sure it´s the same for my son. Another thing we do during our trips is track down the wrestlers whereabouts, not that we are screaming hysterical fans, it´s just that the "chase" is fun and we get to play detectives. And we are quite good at it since we have not failed yet. This year in Finland we stayed at the hotel where the wrestlers had stayed previous years but not this one. Me and my son had to put our wise heads together and sure enough, a few clever guesses, gut feeling and a little luck later we stumbled upon the wrestlers again. I have a few stories from those meetings regarding scrapbooking since I had all my LO´s with me but I will get back to that in later posts. Anyway, when we do meet the wrestlers and the Divas we humbly ask for photographs with them and 99 % of them take time for a few snaps and some chatting. The last few years my son has had a camera as well so even I have featured with a bunch of wrestlers but never the Divas. My son on the other hand, he gets lucky everytime!

This LO features the lucky little thing I call my son, and he is not as little anymore since he has outgrown me, and the sweet little thing that is named Kelly Kelly. I really had no clue what to do with this one but with a name like Kelly Kelly I just had to use that. Her beeing a happy and sparkling lady I decided to do a LO just using glitter paper to match her smile on the photo. It took some time, since most of the things I do are handcut, to cut out all the letters and I had glitter everywhere, literally everywhere, over me and the scrapbooking room. I have decided to never, ever (to paraphrase the wrestler Chris Jericho) to use this kind of paper again! Kind of came out OK even though it was not as I had imagined it before I started.



Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly...

My son who should wipe that smile off his face and the lovely Kelly Kelly

A close up of some of the hand cut letter all mounted on 3D-cushions.

The Miz

That´s me back again with yet another picture of my son and a wrestler, namely The Miz, or Mike Mizanin which is his real name. The photograph was taken in Helsinki this year (it´s still 2009 when I write this) and in the background you can see another WWE-wrestler passing by, Carlito (who will be scrapped later since I have a few other photos featuring him, me, my son and another person!).

It is getting harder coming up with new ideas so my LO´s do take longer to make now since I really have to think them through so I dont create exactly the same things I have done before. This one for instance is based on an actual storyline in the WWE where The Miz got "signed" to the RAW-brand (the WWE has three brands, RAW, ECW and Smackdown) from the ECW and he made a big fuzz about him going to the flagship of the WWE etcetera. He also has a catchphrase which is, "I am the Miz and I am awesome!". So what I did was kind of copy the RAW-logo and wrote "Miz" instead and just took the "awesome"-part and did something similar. A lot of punchinella, silver and red, to get that metal-feeling from the logo, a few extra photos (taken by me at a live event) to show off his cocky image and where one perfectly matches the A in awesome. A Basic Grey-paper in grey to continue the metal-theme and Bob´s your uncle! Quite happy with it even though I probably could have done a wee bit more. But knowing myself I stopped before I went overboard this time.

And by the way, yes, the Miz is awesome! A really nice guy even though he portrays a heel.



The Miz pointing at my son who is wearing a The Miz shirt!

Close up of the Miz-logo.



Close up of the Awesome-logo.



A closer close up just to show how I worked in different layers.

The Big Show 2009 part 1

Yet again it´s been a long time since I produced something for my scrapbooking album, and the blog. However it´s not entirely true since I have been busy with a few projects which have taken more time than I thought from the beginning. Those will surface in the near future but in the meantime here is an in between project and it features me and the big "Big Show", a mountain of a man. As you can see in the picture the Big Show is enormous. I am quite a big lad (but considerable smaller now since I have been working on that with good results after a summer with lots of rain, and food) but I nearly disappear beside him. Big Show beeing big and strong, and playing a heel character on the WWE RAW show one could be frightened of him but he was the gentlest giant (and the only giant) we have ever met. A real cool guy who was both funny and kind. Kudos to him!

But the actual LO then! It´s easily explained because you can see where I was aiming. Big, american and a little show as well. Everything is of course drawn by me and then I cut templates with my trusty knife. The B-I-G letters are mounted on 2 mm 3D-cushions and the S-H-O-W are mounted on 4 mm 3D-cushions to get a different height and some life in the LO. It is of course the American flag, the star spangled banner that has been my inspiration and the letters just had to be big considering the Big Show himself. And him beeing from the US and the US itself beeing a large and strong country, a perfect match. Cant tell you what make the papers are since I had to clean up quickly so I would not mix everything with the 4 LO´s I have in the making. Those will hopefully show up soon.

The LO, me and the Big Show

A close up of the letters

And a closer close up!

John Cena, part 1

Lately I have used this sentence quite a lot, "It´s been some time since I scrapbooked ..." and thats not an understatement! Since we moved to Karlstad from Falun there just has not been any time for that, even thou my last project has been in the making for a couple of months. Strangely enough, after beeing extremly satisfied with the finished result, I discovered I had made a very similar LO before! I had no idea that I had when I was creating this one and I had certainly no intention to make a similar one either. It kind of took away some of the joy! Still, I am happy with this one in it´s simplicity even thou it was not simple to make. The LO features the WWE wrestler and movie star John Cena and me. My son and I were fortunate again to stumble over the wrestlers on our last trip and since we both had our photos taken with most of them I have a bundle to scrap. Next up is John Cena and my son.

So the actual LO then. Four different papers from Basic Grey (oh yeah!), Cosmo Cricket, Crate and Prima Marketings Cavalier Collection. The idea was simply to mimic one of John Cenas logos and somehow get myself and him into the mix. It was hard getting the big round shapes round(!) and to get them to fit and that took some time and some patience. The patience was really tested when I cut out the letters that I made in a military style and tried to glue them onto the LO. QuicKutz QuickStik proved to be a life saver. The round yellow background I chose since Cena has the same shape on his yellow T-shirt and my letters are in the same colour as the ones on his shirt. I was going to fix a white shade as well but decided that it was to difficult to get it perfect so I glazed the letters instead. I like glaze=). Not much more done really except some chalking and a ... of a job trying to fit and glue everything together. I do think that everything is perfectly fitted, to the millimeter! The next one is even more complicated so we will just have to wait and see how long that takes. So, here it is,



John Cena and me, the Chain Gang!

A close up of my letters and glazing. Sometimes I do think that I am good, even great has crossed my mind!

Arn Anderson

And here we go again and this time it is an LO with the former wrestler and member of the wrestlingstable The 4 Horsemen, Arn Anderson. For some time I have been quite proud of this photo and thats all because my son never had his photograph taken with this wrestling legend. For once it was an exclusive that only I was featured in but that is not the case anymore. Once again me and my son have been on a trip and this time he met Arn so I cant rub that in his nose anymore! Still it was worth the trip since I have a bunch of new photos with both me, my son and most of the wrestlers from the WWE RAW-brand so I have booked a seat in the scrapbooking room for this summer.

Back to the LO, after reading the above you can all count out why I have four horses on the LO. The template for the horse I drew some time ago when my wife was going to make a birthday-card for a friends daughter (or something like that). I cut out a nice brown horse for my wife and she was happy with it. I was also happy with the template but could not for the world find a place on my LO´s for a horse. Arn Anderson changed that. I also cut out a black shade in sort of velvet paper which is quite nice in reality but not so good on photos. So it was basically 8 horses that had to be cut out, by hand of course, and it did take some time and some patience as well. I might not be the most patient guy but this time I managed to keep the "#@*-words to a minimum. When finished I glued the horse plus shade together and then I mounted (haha, sometimes I am hilarious!) them on 3D-cushions. The background for the photo is a Basic Grey paper which I thought looked similar to the T-shirt I am wearing on the photo. Black and white flowers and other stuff (sometimes I do question my "maleness"). The swirls are from Quickutz and the fonts I just made myself after finding something similar on the computer. I also cut out shades for them in a dark shiny CS. A little stickles here and there and it was ready. I like the black/white theme with some sparkling shiny silver bits and I am quite proud of my horses but somehow I just did not like this one. It kind of looks nice but there is nothing special about it. Well well, you cant be happy with everything and I do have quite a few ideas for the next ones so I am not to sad over this.

Arn Anderson, the Enforcer, and me, the missing link!

A close up of one of my mounted horses.

Lilian Garcia

This LO I can finally say finally to! It has been in the making for some time now and a constant headache with everything that had gone wrong. So, finally! As you can see it has a feminine touch and it was rather difficult getting there after all the dark and "male" LO´s I have been creating lately. It features Lilian Garcia, the announcer of the WWE RAW-show and the lucky little ... I call my son.

I immediately knew how I wanted this one to look since Lilian´s not only an announcer but also a singer. The letters I wanted to look like music notes and pink/red/girlie colours would not be in the way. Some flowers, bling and ribbon were also spot on. I started by drawing the LO just the way I wanted it but I soon discovered I could not get it exactly the way I wanted it. I had it all pictured in front of me but my drawing skills did not do my planned creation justice. Thats when my brilliant mind got to think of my wifes Bosskut Gazelle. It truly is a magnificient machine and it succeeded to cut out the letters my old shaky hands failed with. An absolute fantastic background paper from Imaginations, the above mentioned girlie-items, a little Stickles, 3D-cusions and it all fell in place. If I may say it myself, and I may, I just think this is one of the better ones I have created.

The happiest boy on earth and Lilian Garcia

A close up of the musical name and the arrangement of the LO

Flowers built out of three parts and a red stone to top it off.

Cody Rhodes

And so I am back (from outer space!) with another LO and this one is pretty basic. It features Cody Rhodes, and the son of course, when they met in Barcelona last fall. This was a difficult one and that is much thanks to Cody´s personality. I mean, he is a really nice guy and all but there is nothing that really stands out in his character. I usually pick my motives for the LO´s from the characters but this one just had me puzzled. I started out with the letters and I am partuculary proud of them since I just sat down and cut them out by hand, without looking at anything else. I added the red stripes (shadows) to get a 3D-look and then put them on my original choice of background-paper which was red. It did not work at all. I eventually found this black paper that had Family, history, legacy and tradition printed on in a corner and I fell for it straight away. Cody is currently in a wrestling-stable called Legacy with Ted DiBiase and Randy Orton (two other second generation wrestlers), his father is The American Dream Dusty Rhodes and his brother is Goldust, Dustin Rhodes. Extremly fitting in other words. It still looked a bit empty so after a lot of thought and even more shapes and other stuff that I tried to spice up the LO with I settled for some bling and some Diamond Dots. It´s not to shabby, especially considering I was totally blank on ideas, but it could probably have been better if I would have given it some more time. But time is something I am very short of these days.

The somewhat empty LO, still, it´s colour coordinated!



A close up of the letters that are mounted on 3D-cushions.

Kofi Kingston

Time for another one and this time the LO features the jamaican/ghanan wrestler Kofi Kingston and my son of course. I am in a bit of a hurry at the moment. The father, the son and the holy album with LO´s are planning another trip and I would like to have a few more ready by the time we are leaving. One never knows, we might run in to a few more wrestlers, which is never sure but if we do it would be nice to get some autographs on the album/LO´s. I currently have four LO´s in production and this is the first one I completed.

I have used two Basic Grey-papers, one Crate and six different CS. The whole idea was to lift Kofi Kingstons jamaican gimmick so I started out with the flag as a background. Looking for inspiration and ideas on Internet I found this picture of a rastafarian lion (yes, it must be the smoking thats hollowed it!) and I thought that it would fit in nicely. I drew the lion, as good as I could, cut out a template and then cut out two lions in a shiny black CS. It was a time consuming procedure with many non-printable words to spice it all up. The yellow/green/red-flags are of course "reggae-colours" and I also used the colours as a background for the photo but deliberately put them in a different order because it looked stupid with the yellow on the left hand side. I know, sometimes I am a bit strange. My wifes Bosskut Gazelle was kind enough to cut the name out for me, in blue to match Kofis shirt. It saved a lot of the time I "wasted" on the lions. A little Glossy Accent from Ranger made the letters look even better. I do like to cut most things by myself but I must admit that the Gazelle is a handy tool and that I will have to learn a little more about it when we finally move down here (and here would be Karlstad) for good.

And what about Kofi? Well, he was a very nice and pleasant person who signed the album, took time for a chat and also posed for a picture with the father. But that LO will have to wait till after the summer.



Kofi Kingston, the son and the LO I am quite happy with.




A close up of one of the lions I cut out. It took some time!




Nothing like a little Glossy Accent to shine up a LO.

CM Punk

I have been waiting to do this one for some time, for numerous reasons! First of all I knew that I wanted to do the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. Why you might ask and the answer is quite simple. CM Punk has never revealed what the CM in his name stands for, a lot of people have guessed and Cookie Monster is one of of the guesses. Punk has never acknowledged that but he has shown that he appreciates the humour with that guess so I thought it would be fitting. Trying to find paper with the right colour and the "fluffyness" of the Cookie Monster proved to be quite difficult. I have bought quite a few different papers on the Internet but when they have arrived home they have either been the wrong colour or not fluffy enough. I tried to cut papers so they would look fluffy but that did not work out at all. Eventually it was my dear wife who found the paper and made my day (she actually always makes my day and I could not live without her). All the other papers are cardstock except the eyes (white) that are photo-papers. I wanted something really shiny white and that was the best choice.

Living apart from the scrapbooking room (and my wife) has proven to be quite difficult and I cant wait to move down to Karlstad in June/July. You never get to finish things since there is other stuff that has to be taken care of as well during my limited time in Karstad. I drew the templates for the letters and the Cookie Monster here in Falun and took them to Karlstad on one of our weekend trips. In Karlstad I cut them out but never had time to finish the LO. On our next trip I cut out the actual embellishments but never had time to glue it all together. The weekend after that I tried to glue it but chickened out when the monster started to fall apart. Comforting myself with cookies (what else?) during the week in Falun I persuaded my wife on the phone to help me with my little project and she did when me and the kids came down to keep her and the cat company the weekend after. If I ever have any problems with scrapbooking, or anything else to be honest, I can always turn to dear wifie and she solves it. Sometimes I should probably try a little harder myself first (I will work on that, I promise!)!

Anyways, I like the LO, it´s fun, just like the Cookie Monster! And it looks a lot better in real life, the "fluffyness" comes out more natural then.



The Cookie Monster with a mouthful of my son and CM Punk

A close up of the text and the hand that does not show so well on the photos but is much clearer in real.

Mickie James

The choice of embellishments and the actual layout for this one was easy. It just had to be a kiss! When we met Mickie James she was overjoyed about our sign that read We flew in from Sweden just to see Mickie James. She kissed the sign and left an inprint of her lips on it so I just had to incorporate that somehow. Mickie was also a very loveable person and not afraid to cuddle her fans (well at least my son got close as you can see on one of the photos) so I really wanted to make something "sweet" out of this one.

The background paper with all the kisses is made in Sweden, the lips and the backgrounds for the photos are Basic Grey and the text is a regular red cardstock. The nice bling suits Mickies persona perfectly and the roses, that I bought at Annas Scrapbooking in Karlstad, are just to symbolize that little extra that Mickie gave us. And they do look good as well! Everything is of course handcut and designed by myself. I am fairly happy with this one, it´s not so complicated and was not to hard to do and it came out just about the way I had imagined it (which is not always the case). I tried to keep it simple and maybe I should try that more often.

Strangely enough my son never looks that happy when I try to cuddle him, in fact he usually runs away instead!

A close up of the roses bought at "Annas...". One of these days I will try to make my own, ha!

Ted DiBiase Jr

Sometimes I feel that my ideas for LO´s are a bit to complicated and that they take far to long to create. And since me and my family are in the midst of moving to another town I cant really have any projects laying about. But I really wanted to make one more LO before we moved so I started to think of something more traditional. A regular ordinary scrapbooking LO, thats what I call this. I made it just in time, there were but a few boxes left to be carried out from the scrapbooking room when the final touches were fixed to the LO. Had I continued for a few minutes more I might have traveled to Karlstad in a moving van instead of our car since the moving crew carried everything, without exception, out from our old house. It will take some time till I make my next LO since I am staying behind in Falun for a few months with our kids (so they can finish their respective class in school). My wife will hopefully keep the scrapbooking room warm until I move down and fill it up with lots of new stuff that I can try when the rest of the family sets sail for Karlstad (and I have no doubt that she wont!). Anyways, here it is, regular scrapbooking with a touch of Trent. Everything is of course handcut and I made all the templates myself. The idea for the lightning bolt and the letters above it I gladly stole from Elvis Presley´s TCB, Taking Care of Business. The letters for Ted DiBiase I cut out from cheap white cardboard and coloured myself plus added a little red stickles. Some bling, some tearing, chalking and the thought that three is a magic number made me think that ordinary scrapbooking aint half bad! I could have told you what brand of papers I used but the piece of paper I wrote everything down on magically disappeared in the process of moving. All I know is that its seven different designer papers plus the white cardboard.



Ted DiBiase, a really nice guy, and my son, a really nice son.

A close up of my handywork!

Shawn Michaels, HBK 2008

I always find something wrong with my LO´s when I am finished with them. Something I would make different, change of colour etcetera. This one, featuring Shawn Michaels, HBK, The Heartbreak Kid, The Showstopper, Mr Wrestlemania and so on together with my son was different. I thought it was nearly perfect when I was finished with it! I admired it for some time, patted myself on the back and suddenly I decided that a little sparkle on the letters would make it even better. I wish that somebody would stop me on occasions like these. Anyways, I am still content with the idea. All the photos in the "star" are from the show we saw in Barcelona and then there is of course the on with my son and the man himself (I also had my picture taken with HBK at the same time but thats another story and another LO for later). I used three different Basic Grey papers, all grey/black but just a little difference in the colours. A black and a white cardstock for the letters. The actual shape I got the idea (or stole rather) from the logo for the upcoming Wrestlemania XXV in Texas and since HBK is from Texas the star-theme was just right. Everything on the LO is handcut, the small WWE-logo, the letters and the "star" are all drawn by me and then cut out as templates and eventually cut out in designer papers with my scissors and knifes. It did take quite a long time to get everything right but it was worth it even though I messed it up a bit with the stickles. One of my better LO´s if I may say so. HBK was a really nice person but I will save that story until I make the LO with him and me.



The actual LO and you can see that my son is really happy with meeting HBK.



A close up of the "Shawn Michaels"-letters that were extremly difficult to get in the right position when I glued the black part on the white.



And here you see it from a different angle.

JTG Cryme Tyme

And thats another Cryme Tyme-LO finished and this time it features the other wrestler of the tagteam, JTG. And of course, my son. This one I tried to keep similar to the Shad-LO I made before so They would look good together in the album. Its 4 kinds of Basic Grey and some CS. I used green acrylic paint this time to create the frame, my wifes Bosskut Gazelle cut out the " Cryme Tyme Institute..." for me and that was easy. Separating the little buggers from the CS the machine cut in and glueing them to the LO was a different story! Everything else I have made templates for by drawing by hand and cutting out with my knifes and scissors. From having no plan att all for this one it avtually turned out quite well, if I may say so.



A close up of my "graffitti"-letters.