Bloom where you are planted - 10 Things Flowers

I have a secret, nay forbidden love of flowers. Probably, it's been exaggerated because as a boy mom there aren't many excuses to bust them out! 

Well, one day recently I wasn't feeling like entering any challenges and thought I should work on some sort of ephemera that I could give as a housewarming present for some friends this summer.  The only mission I had was to use premade flowers (the Ten Things feature today at Practical Scrappers) and to get really messy. 

Bloom where you are planted

I used modeling paste over a stencil from The Crafters Workshop. As it was drying I stamped and heat embossed with gold Zing using a Mini Market background stamp. 

While the paste continued drying I watered down some old grey acrylic paint (read clumpy craft paint) and started washing it onto the page. Then I dripped one of my misters across the top - later it evolved into flower stems. Have to say that I l.o.v.e. the way the ink filled into the cracks in a very moss/ivy/organic way.

Most of the flowers are from Prima's Sprites collection, the netted and sheer ones are from Imaginesce, the big cream ones were saved when my mom did a little destashing. All of them got a little rub down in some Ranger Distress Gathered Twig ink. And some of them were garnished with some Distress Stickles Pine Needle. 

Now I just need to buy a frame the next time they're on sale. 

Other products used:

Large Alphas: American Crafts Thickers

Small Block Alphas: Authentique

Twine: won it in a scrappy challenge, the tag said honeydew on it but I think that refers to the color

Brads: Paper Studio (small) and American Crafts (large) 

Puddle jump

What a short weekend, just dropping by to post this layout for the Scrapbooksteals MWM Aquamarine 3, and then it's back to chasing kiddos. 

I used Fancy Pants' Park Bench for this, I just love how the colors really let these photos shine. Some of those brads are from American Crafts Chap. And I used lots of pop dots.

I'm also linking it to the following Scrapbooksteals MCM challenges:

# 32 journaling
# 36 life

Practical Scrappers - 10 Things Tuesday - letter stickers

Today at Practical Scrappers we're bringing you 10 Things to do with letter stickers. I made this way fun background with a bunch of black sticker letters and then die cut out circles to show the paper underneath and to act as frames for my photos. 

All the letters I used for the page were from alpha packs where I didn't have many normal titles left, I mean, there's only so many words with the letter "u." There are letters from 3 Bugs in a Rug, Pebbles, and Echo Park. 

The page is about the boys using one of those kiddie video game/exercise bikes not hooked up but as a way to reenact The Lorax. They even went so far as to make sure their costume included a bike helmet and air plane pilots goggles since the main character, Ted, wears them while riding. Safety first! Ahh, the irony, Vance's injury that I scrapped here happened on "Ted's Motorcycle" and did not involve his noggin.

Anywho, after creating that page I just had to find uses for some of those circles I'd cut so I made a couple of cards. I just love how the randomly placed letters look as a design element on the cards!

Now I sort of wonder if multi-colored alphas would look as good... in the meantime, head back to Practical Scrappers and check out what the rest of the design team has prepared. 

Big Attitude

Welcome to Tuesday! Today is a new reveal over at Use It Tuesday and guess what we have for you?! A fairly open-ended challenge is what! 

We're asking you to answer: "What was I thinking?"

I know several on the team went with fashion choices in their photos, some went with the purchase of supplies, I explain in the journaling why I've hoarded that title card for two years! 

Basically, I thought the word attitude had to many negative connotations but then I realized how big of a difference their attitudes are. Both have such big personalities and on a day to day basis we embrace that in how we interact with them, but I needed to finally own it by using that card! 

The first hoarded item on this page is the 12x12 BasicGrey doily that I misted and then applied modeling paste over, two years old. The various scraps of papers came from my scrap drawer but all of them are at least a year old! I don't remember when I bought the green flocking, but it has to be pushing three years by now (and rarely used). The oldest things here though are the paper clips and border strips - those were from my mom's stash (that I rescued) and are at least four years old. 

DIY Embellishment week with Scrap Your Story

Thanks for stopping by on the Scrap Your Story blog hop! I'm so excited to be part of our first hop - haven't all the projects been fab?! There's some serious talent around here!

 This week instead of bringing you one technique and interpreting it several ways, we're bringing several techniques and showing you how to do it yourself. I love me some DIY embellishments, you probably do too!

I've put together some photos of how to change the color of your brads using embossing powder. I have to say when I needed this technique I found two ways to do it - one where you just heat the brad crazy hot, add the powder and then heat again. It didn't work for me, might work for you. Instead, here's what I found worked:

Start by gathering your supplies - brads, pigment ink, embossing powder, heat gun, and something sort of long that can hold the brad so you don't burn your piggies. (I could have used tweezers or pliers, but those are on the other side of my apartment so I used a petal roller and it worked fine. Lazy, I know. )

Use your tweezers to hold the brad. Or petal roller. ;)

Ink that little brad up! I used black pigment ink so it'd be more obvious in the photos but any color works. (Personal recommendation, I'm always for using up your stash and since the ink is gonna get covered up, maybe grab some ink that you rarely use because the color really isn't your thing.)

Dip the inked brad into embossing powder. Uncoordinated, I know, but I couldn't quite get the coverage I wanted by dipping into the jar so I poured some out into this old photo box lid that I use for messy projects.

Nicely covered, you'll notice I should have wiped the ink off the petal roller before using the embossing powder. 

Heat that baby up! Sorry, no photos of that in process, again coordination is not my thing. Make sure you keep going until it's smooth and glossy, sort of like a candy coating. Seriously, looks good enough to eat! 

Now here's the layout I used these ones on. Honestly, the gold brads would have looked decent, but I just love how the teal coordinates with the Carta Bella Beautiful Moments papers. 

And a close-up of the brad. 

I have so many brads that just plain don't match anything - I know what I'm going to start doing with some of them! This was so quick and easy, I think it took me about 10 minutes to do all four of these, plus two others that I didn't end up needing. And that was with taking pictures and trying to keep little boys out of my lighting!

Now go check out all the inspiration from the other Scrap Your Story designers!

I'm linking this up to the Scrappy Friends Challenge:

Brenda: sketch challenge 

Rochelle: inspired by challenge (Celine Dion's song "Make Me Happy" slightly modified to "Because it makes me happy")

Kristi B - clock/calendar (calendar tucked behind the title card)

Products:

American Crafts Zing! Teal embossing powder, gold brads

Colorbox black pigment ink

Carta Bella Beautiful Moments

Lifestyle Crafts embossing folder

Ranger Distress Ink Worn Lipstick

Glitz Design calendar stamp

Silhouette Cameo/doily file

Sewing machine, black thread

Art Journaling

I've been attending a book club at my LSS about doing art daily. Which was really good, because the author focuses on doing little things, multi-tasking, and just plain finding some time daily to create. All things I do in some measure. What I didn't expect was that since this is a book about mixed media art how into it I'd be getting. 

These are the first two projects based on the guided work in the book that I did. See all those goodies that I use on a regular basis anyway? scraps of paper, old paint, modeling paste, buttons, markers. I've been having a messy good time!

I'm curious to see where this adventure leads me, but for now I'm having some fun learning about the techniques. 

Ten Things Tags

Tags are one of those paper crafts areas that I really haven't delved into. Sure I use them on a pages or layouts on occasion, but they aren't the elaborate ones that people make and trade around. I wanted to make my Practical Scrappers 10 Things Tags post something more along that line than I've typically done.

I recently went through and labeled all the toy boxes/baskets in the house using the name tag badges and a couple of luggage tags like this one: 

In the boys' room I didn't care that the tag looked nice so I'd just scribbled the label on the insert on the reverse side, but the basket that I decided to decorate sits in the living room and is the toy time out basket. It needed to be nicer, slightly masculine, but still have texture.

The base paper that I used to cover the tag is MME Kraft Funday. Both large stickers are from EP This and That Charming. The alphas are Glitz Designs. The bottom gem is a WRMK eyelet. Both the jute and top gem are from packaging around some Bo Bunny trims. The brown ribbon is MME Lost and Found.

And here it is, hanging on the basket:

What's your favorite way to use tags?

Make a wish card

This weekend I had the supreme pleasure of cropping at my LSS. As much as I hate the pressure of packing I always love to get away and be with others who "get it."

You may have seen the influx of crafty this I posted (Saturday, Sunday and now today!), basically I created a lot of fun goodies and didn't make a single design team project. I did get a lot of things done, like swap projects and birthday cards, all of which met challenge goals for some of the blogs I'd been neglecting. 

This one is linking up to the SWAT Neon challenge.

Products:
Coordinations Cardstock
MME Quite Contrary 
Black album filler paper
Glitz Designs stickers
WRMK sewing head, embroidery floss
Glossy Accents

Freedom of Summer

Summer  just doesn't mean as much to me now that I'm "grown" but freedom I totally get - say hellllooo to a mom of preschooler/toddler aged boys!

Last summer we took two week trip to the Pacific Northwest, spending most of our time in Washington. We tried to give the kids plenty of down time from the "touristy" stuff (whale watching, Space Needle, zoo, etc.). These photos are of one of those moments - playing below the Space Needle. 

Sorry for the poor photo, I was having lighting problems but the close-ups give you a good idea of the textures and colors of the paper.

The sketch a Page Maps, hosted on Paper Secrets (and due tonight which is why I'm not reshooting the layout!), the twist this challenge was to use textured paper. The texture here isn't one of the natural ones listed but more of a rose print. Originally that paper was white and I colored it with a variety of mists (mostly a couple of Mister Hueys but I know I grabbed October Afternoon Set Sail Sprinkler to color the darker areas.

I'm also linking this to the SWAT and Scrap Our Stash RWB challenges (included in the S.O.S. was to use three premade stars, mine are some Little Yellow Bicycle stars I bought recently on clearance and those MME Kraft Funday sticker stars that I've had for almost a year).

Products include:

Authentique Glory stickers and papers

LYB Burlap star stickers

MME Kraft Funday sticker and chipboard stickers

Girls' Paperie ribbon

WRMK eyelet

vellum, stash

Carta Bella Beautiful Moments Freedom Sticker

Mists from Mister Hueys and October Afternoon

Ranger Distress Broken China Ink

Scrapbooksteals Birthday Crop Challenges

For those who stop by frequently, the fact that I love shopping at Scrapbooksteals is no surprise. Great deals on some of my favorite lines, fun online community, and lots of scrappy challenges. Naturally, when there were challenges to be had in honor of their birthday week (4 years already, where has the time gone?!) I "had" to play along.

The first challenge was to use only 4 somethings in a layout - I chose patterned paper, stickers, glitter glue, and jute.

I even used this week's Aquamarine 1 MWM sketch to complete this one! I'm also linking this layout to   The Paper Girls Challenge Blog - use 3 or more journaling cards challenge (my cards were cut from the patterned paper)

Supplies: Carta Bella Beautiful Moments paper and stickers, Studio G glitter glue, Little Yellow Bicycle jute.

Challenge 2 was to create a project about the year 2009. It could be anything related to the year - Vance was born at the end of 2008 so other than first Christmas all major milestones happened in 2009 AND we found out Rylan was on his just before Vance's first birthday so lots to potentially document that year! I ended up just choosing some photos I'd passed over while scrapping "in order" and did a 6 month round up. 

This page was loosely based on the Scrapbooksteals MWM Peridot 7 - a sketch I didn't interpret in time for their weekly/series challenges but still wanted to play with.

Supplies: MME Follow Your Heart, American Crafts Thickers, Authentique die cuts, stash vellum, pop dots, Imaginesce Dino Roar ribbon

The third challenge was to use your favorite Scrapbooksteals vendor: I chose My Mind's Eye. I then went on to choose the only paper pack that I've purchased twice from SS - Follow Your Heart - seriously my favorite MME line.

 This is a mini book that I made for an exchange, it is totally ephemera which is a first for me.

Supplies: I'm not going there for this one, but there's a few bits and pieces from lots of places, some Authentique word stickers, lace from Michael's, Prima Rub-ons, but all the paper is MME. The book itself is a prize I won from Genuinely Jane Studios.

Challenge 4 was to use 4 varieties of washi on a project, again all my washi is from MME. (Uh, trending shows that I use MME a lot.)

Sorry about the photo quality, I took them at a local crop and wanted to get them posted ASAP so I could be included in the challenges. 

Spell - SYS sketch week!

"How do you spell?" "What does that spell?" "What rhymes with ___" and any sort of similar variation on the theme fills our conversations with Vance. Which is totally cool and doesn't really phase us anymore, we guide him to sound it out himself typically and then go back to our own devices. But when he brought me a can of soup and the letters 'd' and 'y' and told me he'd spelled candy I knew that it had to be a page - that's a new level of word building right there kids! 

Needless to say, the two Instagram photos I had of him playing around with magnet letters fit perfectly into this week's sketch at Scrap Your Story.  We want to see your take on the sketch - feel free to flip it, rotate, use it as an inspiration point - just make sure if you deviate to far that you tell us!

For mine, I started by pulling out some old My Mind's Eye Quite Contrary, I don't even know when it was released but it was some of the swag I picked up at last year's Scrapbooksteals Retreat. I paired it up with some of the chipboard embellies from Kraft Funday and a journaling card from Lush 2 Orange. 

Now I pretty much stink at drawing so I pulled out my handy Silhouette Cameo and had it cut a series of tiny circles two form the two circles. I hand stitched them with WRMK embroidery floss. 

The title banner was designed to say "party" but I inked it up and then covered it with pieces of a used coffee sleeve and glued the Thickers onto them. 

After I got it all in place, I felt like the circle was really crowded for my journaling and that the opposite corner was to bare so I closed in the page by writing my journaling around the outside - honestly a favorite technique. I loved the white pen journaling so much that I did a little doodling with it to help tie the bright white into the rest of the layout. 

Use it Tuesdays - Birthdays

This week at Use it Tuesday we're asking you to bust into your stash and do something birthday related - card, layout, project. Just make sure to use those hoarded items!

For my very first Use It Tuesday DT project I made these little favor boxes for Rylan's upcoming birthday party. Hard to believe that he's turning 3, and like his brother at this age he's all about c.a.r.s. Now, being the creative mom that I am this is not going to be a simple repeat of Vance's party (though I'm considering bringing back the mini donuts in place of birthday cake... tires of course!)

The boxes were cut from a new file from the Silhouette Store and new cardstock, but everything else is hoarded including the crayon cars!

The white paper is filler from albums (which means anywhere from 6 months to 4 years old!), the red is a piece of scrap from Fancy Pants Rough and Tough that's been in my stash for over a year, the black ribbon is from Paper Studios and 4 years old, the red Silhouette sketch pen is over a year old and had never been used. 

Now for those crayons - I was in charge of our church's nursery for a while (2 years ago) and replaced all their broken crayons with brand new out of pocket. I couldn't just pitch the crayons, and I'd seen a pin about melting crayons to make valentines and loved the idea. 

I didn't have any molds as small as the original blog post but I did have these awesome cake pans with mini cars! What a lot of crayons went into these. The crayons in the boxes are as big as those pictured for a total of 8 car crayons. I'd intended to regift the crayons to the nursery kiddos at Christmas and forgot so they sat in my closet the past couple of years - I'm glad I finally have a purpose for them. 

**Side note: Sooooooo, I couldn't find the pin I'd used, guess I didn't actually pin that idea. But here's a good explanation of how to go about melting your own crayons.

I'm linking this up to Scrapbooksteals.com's MCM 33: Celebrate.


ETA: Also linking this to the Moxie Fab Birthday Creations Week - tags and wraps  Challenge.

Scrap Your Story - something from childhood

At Scrap Your Story this week we're asking you to bust out those photos that are from childhood - yours, the children/grandchildren, favorite toys, or something that reminds you of childhood in some way.

I went a little away from my personal trend of scrapping the boys' lives and pulled out a photo of my own childhood (and lots of pink papers!). This one is from Christmas when I was three, hugging my little sister.

Such a simple moment in a box full of highlights - Christmas presents, birthday presents, graduations. I loved it! Plus it seems like a good reminder that my boys really do love each other and just because a hug around here turns to rough housing doesn't mean I need to get involved. At least not right away. ;)

I'm linking this up with the Paper Girls Challenge Blog - sketch challenge.

Papers are from MME Follow Your Heart
Flowers and Thickers are American Crafts
Ranger Distress Worn Lipstick ink
Stickles

Practical Scrappers - Red, White, and Blue

It's time to bust out the ol' red, white and blue at Practical Scrappers today! I very nearly went with a more traditional use of the color scheme (aka something patriotic) but when I saw those cute cupcakes on the back of this Authentique paper I knew I needed to scrap about our adventure helping out at the Food Bank.

For inspiration, I used Scrapbooksteals MWM Peridot 2 sketch. 

Papers are from Authentique Celebrate and Glory and Fancy Pants Rough & Tough

Alphas are American Crafts Thickers and Girl's Paperie chipboard letters

American Crafts Chap ribbon

Studio G white glitter glue

Ranger Distress Fired Brick

Practical Scrappers - 10 Things Tuesday - Stars

In my household the topic of stars comes up a lot. And by a lot I mean a few dozen times a day, part of it is that Vance is totally into outerspace stuffs thanks to Buzz Lightyear. But even more than that, David is getting his phD in...wait for it... astrophysics. Yep, we talk about stars a lot so when Practical Scrappers decided to highlight 10 things to do with stars I was super excited! I need some ideas too!

For my project I went origami. Most of the stars that I played around with were very 3D so I finally settled on this background star that reminded me of stars that quilters use. The grey pointed thing coming from behind the photo is also an origami star. I squashed it sideways a bit so that it would lay more or less flat on the page - it was supposed to be a five-pointed star and folding it over the way I did it needs another point. ;)

"Twinkle Twinkle" is seriously the most sung nursery rhyme in our household - Vance sings it pretty much all the time, well, anytime he's not playing his imaginary trumpet (thanks for that Little Einsteins!). 

For this layout I used:

Papers: Authentique Glory, Blissful. American Crafts Chap. MME Ooh La La.

Washi: MME 

Alphas: Authentique, American Crafts Thickers

Other: sewing machine. black thread. Studio G glitter glue

Another Design Team Announcement!

I'm pretty excited about this one too! I've been asked to join the design team at Use it Tuesday. Any of you who've been around for a while know that they inspired a great purge in my stash - as in using my stash and trying to do it as *awesomely* as possible. It's pretty exciting to take a whole bunch of old goodies and make them look new!

Every other week we'll bring you a challenge to use those hoarded supplies, and I sure hope you'll play along with me.