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.