Doing a little redecorating

The boys have officially been upgraded to big boy beds - a bunk bed/loft thing that I found used. Gorgeous oak. As such, the animal patterned sheets and decor are out of there. I left up some of the Cars party decorations that I'd made for Squirrel's party last year. Cars = one side of the window. These gems that I painted and vinyled are on the other side. 

I've had the vinyl and spray paint for a while and bought the canvas from Goodwill for $2 each. Excellent!

The potato silhouette is a traced image of a printable coloring page and the army guys and stars are from the Silhouette Store. 

Total cost of new materials - $4. Not bad. Three walls done, one big wall to go! (The other two walls hold the bed and two of the three closets in this room.)

Babies

Scrap your baby. That's what they said over at the Paper Girls Challenge Blog. Now I don't know about you all, but I almost always am scrapping one of my babies. That's how I roll and why I scrap. It was sooooo hard to chose a photo for this challenge! I ended up digging into my preprinted stash of pics for a photo of when the "baby" was actually still a baby. You know, a little over a year ago. Ha! 

I still had Echo Park For the Record out from having used it in a color based challenge and noticed that it would be lovely with this picture of Squishy trying to stand in a wagon.

After sewing the busy background to the green I didn't do much else - layered some of the stickers onto the pocket I'd made to hold the journaling. 

I have to say I've had FTR in my stash for months and hadn't touched it. I love this paper and am sad that I let it sit for so long! 

scrappy scrap scra-person

I just love to use up some of my scrap stash, don't you?

After spending two days this week modge podging scraps to old boxes (which still need a final seal so I can use them as Christmas gift packaging) I was super inspired to use up even more scraps so I set to work on some cards. And proceeded to spend two days making cards.

In all I made 20 cards in this batch, actually I just made card fronts and will adhere them to white cardstock before shipping them off to Operation Write Home.  Only a few are pictured but it is a fairly representative sample.

The first card also uses the MCM 103 card sketch.

Sadly, I still have a lot of scraps left over. Guess I need to bust out another round of cards soon. Maybe for World Cardmaking Day next week?

Coral 2 - your best girl

When my friend handed me these pics of her and Squirrel after an evening at the movies I wasn't sure how I'd use them. When the MWM Coral 2 posted I knew that the sketch would work well for both sets of strips. After that I basically lifted the entire sketch into my interpretation. 

Your best girl

I used MME OooLaLa for the papers and die cuts (both premade and cut on the Silhouette). Inking with Ranger Distress Inks in broken china and walnut stain. Brads are MME Orange Lush. Two sets of American Crafts Thickers. Some Smooch and lots of Studio G glitter glue with a touch of Glimmer Mist on the leaf.

Coral 2

Up, down, run around

I feel like my mojo is back! All these posts lately -- that means I've been getting a lot done! YAY! 

So today we're talking about the My Mind's Eye September challenge, I missed the first one but the second is about "making it work" aka make a card and page that complement each other in some way.

I chose to use the same papers and then used one design element on both. The papers are from Ooh La La. 

Here they are together:

Just the card. The letters are American Crafts Thickers, from the Dear Lizzy line. I got the idea to fold the paper like that from one of Kristy Lee's pages at Scrapbooksteals.com. She does it a lot, but explained how when the "steal" was Kiwi Lane Design templates. She folded the swooshed paper after inking it and created a customized look that I love! I didn't use a template because my mom has snatched all mine, but I sort of winged it with my scissors. ;)

Just the page:

Now the page was an interesting experiment. Some of my Silhouette sketch pens weren't writing anymore, I took one all the way apart and then blew into it like you'd blow into a straw and pushed the ink out onto some plastic. Aha! There was more ink in there than you'd have expected. Well, when that worked so nicely I decided to take some of the others that had stopped writing consistently and do the same in ink splurts across the background. LOVED it! 

Also, I totally broke from my normal habit and didn't use a challenge sketch. This one's all me. Aren't you proud?! Anywho.

Since I talked a bit about those folds on the card I thought I'd show a close-up of the texture they give. 

Authentique September Color Inspiration Challenge

Fall rolls around and that means lots of inspiration comes in either primary colors or in orange! For Authentique's September Inspiration Challenge they went the orange route - almond, pumpkin, and black - the colors of their new Enchanted line. I own all of three full lines of their wonderous paper so I sort of played pretend, again!

I used an idea that they had on their blog of repurposing the tea tins from Starbucks. You may remember that I've already covered a couple since they posted that project, so this is my third tin. What can I say? I can get the tea for free and then I like the size for holding odds and ends that accumulate in my scrap space.

Anyway, I spritzed some black mist on a piece of Gathering Harmony 6x6, and then folded it around the front of the tin. I covered the rest of the tin with some plain cream card stock that was literally one of my first purchases.

I used a piece of trimmed off 6x6 as a frame for the bird and layered some other Gathering elements on and around, then popped all of it with some pom pom flowers from Fluerettes.

Putting all that black around the Gathering pieces really moved them from the red/orange to more  pumpkinesque, don't you think?

Authentique products:
Gathering Harmony
Gathering Tabloids
Gathering Icons
Gathering combo card (word stickers)

Other products
ATG
Fluerettes
stash ivory paper

Coral 1 - in two takes

It's not often that I find the time to do a repeat of a sketch. But I'd really liked the sketch that Kristy Lee provided for this week's MWM Coral 1. And I really didn't like my first interpretation of it. 

While working on it Wednesday, it sort of came together on it's own and I was loving it! But when I stopped to take a picture I felt like it was way busy. So many patterns! EEk! 

Looking at it while editing it I realized that it wasn't as bad as I'd felt it looked like so it was sort of a bonus that had already scrapped a second instead because now I have two more pages done. 

My favorite feature of this one is the library card pocket - 10 pictures of average scenery shot from a moving car are tucked into that little wonder. 10 on a page? Nice. 

Okay, and then I was just plain entertained by the title "Not Just a Hobbit Tale There & Back Again"

The pictures are of our drive to Lewiston, ID for a family reunion and then back to Seattle during vacation. There and Back. I die. 

This one still has a lot going on, lots of paper scraps used, but cutting the circle to a semi-circle opened it up a lot. You can tell on one slice, but three of the slices have foam dots with their corresponding piece from the other half, providing dimension. I really liked the effect it gave.

All those little pennants and banner pieces are stash scraps. I know that some are from Fancy Pants Designs and Imaginesce but couldn't tell you which collections to save my life!

Everything got a good old school inking and then I ran a WRMK heart distresser over everything!

Authentique September Sketch 1

In the September Authentique sketch the team had a grid of paper squares framing a larger picture in the center. As soon as I saw the sketch I knew that I needed to use it to knock some of my vacation picture stash out of the way - I ended up doing two pages of the sketch, so look forward to a second blog post so I can enter both of them in the challenge!

This one I'm calling "The Races" but it isn't titled on the page because it is the third spread just for this one less than an hour spent at it event. I may belittle it by saying we only stayed an hour, but I seriously think it changed Squirrel's outlook on life to see that race cars are real. HA!

Some of the faces he made were hilarious and don't tell a story but I still wanted to print so this format works very nicely!

Authentique product used:
Gathering Together
Blissful Pleasant
Blissful Euphoria
Journey Tabloids
Journey Icons

Other products
Ranger Distress Ink - walnut stain
stash ribbon
foam squares
ATG

Authentique September Sketch Challenge - 2

Remember the other day when I told you that I made two of the Authentique September Sketch? Well, here's my second entry - another set of photos that while I liked them, they didn't really tell a story on their own but together it's a good summary of the day. Especially given that there are *several* pages already about our whale watching trip.

I did take a little more license with the sketch shape this time, but overall it has a very similar feel to me!

There wasn't much to say or title this one so I used one of the Elements tags to hide a bit of journaling basically saying what I said in the previous paragraph. ;)

Authentique product used:
Journey Elements
Blissful Pleasant
Gathering Harmony
Journey Tabloids
Journey Icons

Other products used:
Foam squares
ATG
Ranger Distress Inks - broken china
MME designer tape - Indie Chic Nutmeg

CSI: 37 Camera Hog

I love when I'm taking a photo and know that it's totally a scrapbook story just because of the process it took to get the shot! There's nothing fabulous about these photos, but Squishy trying to get in the picture the whole time made it funnier and therefore a memorable part of life. Let's face it, the boys do that sort of thing a lot but normally I'm not already trying to take a picture!

For this month CSI has partnered with Once Upon a Sketch and I've loved their sketches and have happily used them to solve the case.

Camera Hog

So in addition to the sketch and the colors I used the following elements:

• Wrappers/Packaging -- see Charity's blog for the inspiration I used to make the flowers
• Pen work/doodling
• Circles - paisley, in the pictures, the brads, the washi

My testimony used the following elements:

• handwritten
• note paper

To The Skies

For Authentique's Inspiration Color Challenge featured the Curiousity collection and I, once again, had to scrounge papers from other collections together. Oh to have enough money to own every collection I adore. It's probably a good thing though, can you imagine the hoarding?! Eek!

I had initially tried misting that airplane onto the 6x6 papers that form the background. Didn't work so well, so I ended up using the negative as a stencil and then colored it in with a marker. Not so bad considering.

Authentique products:

Petite Type Square, SPS008

To the skies

Diction, SJ0004

Free Bird, FBS120 x 1, FBS124 x 4, FBS132 x 1, FBS125 x 2

Classic Type, SCR001

Tabloids, DJ0002

Icons, DJ0001

Other products used:

Zing Teal embossing powder

WRMK eyelets

Sewing machine

Distress Ink, walnut stain

American Crafts Metallic Marker, Teal

Cameo, airplanes shape

And in other news, I made this page the day after it posted to their blog, but forgot to upload the picture of it until today, two days after the deadline. DOH! Thought I'd still share it with you because it was kind of fun to create. :)

SeaTac

This week's CSI: Color Stories and Inspiration added a new twist - using their provided sketch to "solve the case." You probably know by now that I do a lot of stuff with sketches, I love using them as a starting point.

For this week's case I used all the colors required and then for my "evidence" there's a bundle of fibers and I did a little misting, my "testimony" is written as a letter to the boys.

I've already posted it to their gallery but thought I'd share here too. Thanks for looking!

For the record, I love it

I love that phrase, maybe it's because I studied journalism for so long, but "For the Record" is just awesome to me. And the new Echo Park For the Record Documented really knocked my socks off.

Partly because it was free. Yep, they so graciously let me chose a collection in a recent Facebook contest and with the fab colors in this kit, how could I not?! Plus, Lori Whitlock designed it and she's one of my favorite designers I've come across in the Silhouette Studio.

So I'd like to offer a huge thank you to EP for my prize!

Now on to what I created with it the day after it arrived - a page about Squishy getting hurt and not wanting to deal with the bandages. He just wanted to play! Crazy kid, blood everywhere, and he wanted me to let him on our cream colored couch. NOT. But I loved it at the same time, and of course took some pics of his little hands all bandaged up.

This page barely made dent in the kit they sent, so you'll be seeing more of it in the future!

Card party

I did a little scrapping last weekend at my mom's in between other crafty sorts of projects that she needed help with for her school. Alas, I thought that growing up would get me out of such endeavors. Just kidding, it was fun.

Here's the cards I made, all but the first one will hit my OWH pile. All papers use American Crafts Chap, some Thickers, as well as some Authentique word art. Thanks in advance for looking!

 

  

   

Pearl 10 - To the Starting Line

So here we are, Pearl 10. I am really having a hard time believing it! That means it's been 10 weeks since vacation and I am still working through a rather large pile of pics of those two weeks. And I probably shouldn't mention that I bought an album to put them in and I don't think even with adding posts that it'll be enough. I've been using some crazy dimension lately! Oops.

The sketch for Pearl 10 was by one of the design team members. I really liked the circle frame around her pictures and that sort of stuck with me - don't know why I decided to lace it with ribbon.but.I.love.it!

I used American Crafts Campy Trails and some embellies from AC Chap. The Thickers are some of the new customizable ones and I adhered their new Pop! to it. (If you've never worked with Pop!, it's a whole bunch of teeny balls that you pour on like you would glitter. Fun but messy!)

Perfectly Pearl!

A round up of all the Pearl pages so I can enter the Scrapbooksteals.com drawing. ;)

Pearl 1

Pearl 2

Pearl 3

Pearl 4b

Pearl 4a

Pearl 5a

Pearl 6

Pearl 7

Pearl 8

Pearl 9a

Pearl 10

Pearl 9a - Orca

Seriously. Why is it that when I go to pack up scrappy stuff for a weekend at mom's that I always end up making something first? It's sort of obnoxious that I'm that easily distracted by pretty paper. 

For your viewing pleasure I bring you my interpretation of Pearl 9a from Scrapbooksteals.com. The sketch was created by the fabulous Erica Bass (one of my scrappy idols, and let's be honest, I have a lot of them!).

I also tied this into the CSI: color, stories, inspiration challenge 35.

The background paper is Authentique Gathering. The doily is a Silhouette file from MME Oooh La La, as are the brown polka dots, the hexagons, tickets, photo corners, and journaling die cut. The mini alphas are Jenni Bowlin. The Thickers are Amy Tangerine. I used Ranger Distress Inks. The rhinestones and shell stickers are stash. The book page is from the viewing guide that all the tourists got, I coated it with gesso and then applied a mixture of gesso and Zing Butter Embossing Powder and then heated it before stitching the Thickers on. Some of the shells have Crackle Accents applied.

Close up of the "sand:"

Just for fun - What did I ever do before you?

It's not often that the mood to create strikes when I don't have a challenge to work on. No rules to follow is a bit intimidating. For me at least. Rules girl that I am. Ha! But I had this piece of doily left from doing Pearl 8 for Scrapbooksteals' MWM challenge and I had fallen asleep thinking about how to use it. When I got home today I started working on my idea.

I spray misted the doily on the BasicGrey paper, creating a square center as well as coloring the hot pink doily and using it as a mask (three tasks in one! Now that's using your scrap stash effectively.) Two colors later I liked the center's color and depth so I shook a little bit of ink out on the page to get some nice splatters. I inked up the edges of the page and the square with some Distress Inks.

Then I used gesso to adhere the Goodwill doily to the page and to the picture. Added the MME decorative tapes, the brads, and the buttons.

Not happy with how flat it still is, I continued adding depth via Thickers. Good, now add journaling. Add in the faux stitching.

Still flat and lacking, it needed something because that doily was really stealing the show. I crumbled the edges of the paper, letting it tear and smash while doing so.

Then I took that paper doily that I'd misted and layered it piece of solid Bazzill and under the rest of the project. And then it was just right.

Have a great weekend!