Primo Colón

It´s time, it´s Scissorhands time, and it´s about time! One could say that I have been sort of busy, or rather really really busy the last two years so my scrapbooking production has been, well, it´s exaggerating calling it production since my visits to the scrapbooking room have been scarce. A few LO´s have been made so here they are, without vivid explanations about techniques and choices of paper since I just cant recall what I have done and what I have used. One thing is sure thou, scissors have been used and most of the papers are probably Basic Grey. So here I am again with the "missing" LO´s and I can also gladly announce that I have started up again.

This one is of the wrestler Primo Colón, the brother of Carlito (who I will be making at least one LO of since we met him as well) and my son. Primo originates from Puerto Rico and that´s where I found my inspiration, stars and stripes but still not the USA. I liked the papers, nice colours that reminds one about old painted wood, a bit rugged from the wind and water that most certainly comes from living on an island! Oh well, I am making it up as I go along, it will get better in future LO´s!



The actual LO with the son and Primo



The stars have been mounted on black 3D-cushions (as well as the letters PRIMO) and then I also cut out shades. Letters are handcut, stars cut with a Cuttlebug.

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.