First Time Skating

So I've been a bit behind on the challenges I try to participate in, but here's a valiant attempt at combining three in one. All three are for the same blog, how's that for having fun!!

Here's a fun little sneak at the kit I'm using for my LSS this month - Carta Bella Well Played - my posts don't go "live" until the first week in September but I used these scraps to scrounge together one last project after I turned in my assignment. ;) Don't worry, next time I'm at the store I'll leave this one there too. 

S.W.A.T. Drill #14 - sketch and stickers (not alphas)

Drill #13 - triangles

Basic Training - altered chipboard

The chipboard is a tag from MME Kraft Funday - as a kraft item it had lines and the word "fun" that I inked over and then doodled arrows with gel pens before gluing down the sticker subtitle and piece of paper. 

Oooo, and totally not related to the challenge at all but something I wanted to pat myself on the back for doing: I've been taking a class at my LSS about hand drawing lettering and I totally love the effect of doing it on the photo. Ultimately, it has flaws, but I am so proud of myself for attempting it on a photo. YAY!

Friends

Hello again, I'm stinkin' excited about this layout for Use It Tuesday. Today we're asking you to do something that captures "trends" of some kind, while using hoarded products.

I glued all these old, misfit chipboard letters (many from Target's $1 scrapbooking supplies) to a piece of album filler paper. ;)

Then I rubbed onto a new piece of paper over the letters with my finger daubers and distress inks. Some of the daubers had leftover color but the one I kept re-applying was Walnut Stain. 

The trend I wanted to focus on was frames, and I included a bunch of them as you'll see below. Also super fun and trendy are the shaped paper clips, the little envelope, and those wood veneers. 

Of the products I used here, the letters are definitely the oldest and probably 4 years old. The frames and decorative brads (from American Crafts Chap) come in next at over a year. 

I don't know why I didn't actually put a title on this layout, but I think not having one balances out all those other letters. There's journaling tucked into the envelope. 

Now, go make some old stuff look new again!

Oh! And for those of you who really want to stretch your stash, the chipboard letters were used in a second layout that I posted yesterday. 

You Rock

If you're here for the Practical Scrappers/Paper Secrets blog hop, head here. 

So back when I was working on my August design team projects for Soul Sentiments I created the following layout using random leftover chipboard letters - it ended up being the basis for the first class I'll teach at the store. 

I adhered all the letters to the page, then painted a very thin layer of gesso over them. Just use enough to  help hold paint on the glossy letters (notice that you can still see the colors of some of the letters through the layers). 

Then I painted over the letters with watered down paint. When it was mostly dry I drew a couple of circles in the middle of the layout with a lighter shade of blue. 

I had already built the rest of the page when I decided that I needed something else colorful on the page, the edges were to boring so I splattered some of my mists in colors that would complement the Echo Park Paper & Glue papers I'd used. 

In a few days you'll see how I used the letters to make another layout before I'd painted over them. 

A wood themed blog hop with Practical Scrappers

Welcome to the Practical Scrappers/Paper Secrets Blog Hop!  We are so excited to have you hop along with us today!  For this blog hop we are featuring the Ten Things Team from Practical Scrappers and members from the Design Team at Paper Paper Secrets Blog. Our topic for this hop is a fun, trendy one that will definitely catch your attention: wood! We have a collection of wood goodies from Paper Secrets to give away and you can get all the details on that below.

If you didn't come from Lisa's blog, head back and start at the beginning with Practical Scrappers, I'll be seeing you again soon.  Here's my project: a wooden mini album using the gear mini from Genuinely Jane Studios. I just love these little books that my friend Sue makes! I thought that a book documenting my boys' love of Lightning McQueen would be important to add to my collection.

I adhered the reds from a pack of Core'dinations/Tim Holtz Shattered Collection Cardstock. I inked up the Thickers with pigment ink so as I applied them they smeared a bit on the cover and I just love how they helped make it a bit more mechanic "greasy."The Tim Holtz metal gears were a nice finishing touch.

I didn't decorate the back side of the cover, but I did heat emboss the ends of the gear on the first page.  You'll see a lot of Simple Stories Snap stickers on the following pages. The circle banner is from MME Kraft Funday and the wood veneers are from Little Yellow Bicycle.

And finally, the back cover. 

Thanks for stopping by, here's the blog hop list in case you've gotten lost:

Practical Scrappers

Charity Hotrum

Lisa Moen

Jessica Arrant

Kristi Biesel 

Stephanie U

Patty Selah 

Karen Sessions

Kelly Holfield

Wendy Coffman

Deborah Johnson

Krissy Clark

Rochelle Spears

Kerri Yarus  

Lee-Anne Thornton

Leslii Wagner

Kelli Fortier

Kim Ryden 

Kenya Guard

Lucy Kelleher

Sue Kithcart 

Brenda Ragsdale

Charissa Miller

Christine Meyer

Sarah Clark

Kelly Jean Guzlas

Paper Secrets

Here's what you can win from Paper Secrets!

You can do any or all of the following to get entered:

1) Be a follower at Practical Scrappers

2) Be a follower at the Paper Secrets Blog

3) Like our Practical Scrappers Facebook Page

4) Like the Paper Secrets Facebook Page

5) Leave us a comment at Practical Scrappers telling us which of those you did :)

You have until 11:59 PM CST on Sunday, August 25th to enter.  A winner will be announced early next week!

Eyelet mini album - Practical Scrappers

It's Ten Things Tuesday at Practical Scrappers and we're bringing you a variety of ways to use eyelets. 

I used soooo many eyelets on this little beauty, a mini album I made for my in-laws about our trip to Seattle and Idaho last summer. 

The pages are made from Tim Holtz Kraft Glassine. I machine stitched the bottoms closed, ran the straight Sew Easy head on the sides and attempted to adhere eyelets evenly based on those holes. 

I used some good ol' jute to hold the pages together. Honestly, I accidentally put the "title" page in the center, but I think given all the dimension it sort of helps keep the whole thing more flat. 

And look it can be displayed standing up. So cute this way!

Thanks for stopping by, now go check out what the rest of the design team has to inspire. 

Zoo Day

It's Friday again! What are you looking forward to this weekend? I'm looking forward to an uneventful, quiet, boring weekend. I might even get some messy fun in if things go well!

In the meantime it's time for "sketch week" at Scrap Your Story, hopefully you'll have time to play along:

Edited: It seems there's some problems with some of the posts right now. It seems this week's challenge is being postponed, watch the SYS blog for updates! Some of you might just have a head start on the sketch. ;) Thanks. Jess

For this layout I used Fancy Pants Designs Park Bench, and some of their brads (but don't ask me which line those are from!). The yellow mesh ribbon is Bo Bunny and the alphas are from American Crafts.

Itty Bitty Change Card

I still think this sentiment is roll on the floor hilarious and am so glad that I decided to play with it for Wednesday's Unity Itty Bitty a Day Challenge. 

I stamped the undies in a variety of Studio G pigment inks, then I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment. It wasn't quite right so I added some coloring with none other than my Crayola colored pencils (maybe someday I'll have big girl coloring implements but for now it was enough). 

Using some Itty Bitty Stamps

For the past couple of days I've participated in the Unity Stamp Co. Itty Bitty a Day Challenge on Facebook (here).  Just a quick peak at what I've been up to:

Monday's card is mostly Fancy Pants Designs papers (the yellow and the bird). The Unity Itty Bitty Stamp is "Family is Forever" and I heat embossed it. 

Tuesday's card features MME Lost and Found 2 6x6 papers and a blue ribbon. The Unity stamps are "Butterfly Effect" and a Donna Downey "Imperfection is Beauty" sentiment.

Now here's hoping I'll be able to keep playing along!

Paint

Morning! Tuesday again, and I'm bringing you some fun for the Practical Scrappers 10 Things Tuesday feature. Today we're talking paint and using it on our projects. 

For my layout I used so.many.tiny.scraps. Not kidding you. I just kept layering and tucking with no care or concern about colors or prints. Layer. Tuck. Layer. Tuck. 

When everything was good and adhered, with none of the white paper base showing, I watered down some white craft paint and started painting it over the page. I painted a couple of thin layers, I really wanted those colors muted so that the photo would star. 

And another close-up.

LSS birthday card

While my LSS was preparing for it's first birthday celebrations I was busy making them this fun card for my design team post at Use It Tuesday today. 

We're asking you to ink up one of those stamps that have sat in your stash for a while, unused/uninked. 

My uninked stamp is that little circle (covered with glitter glue)- it's a token stamp from MME's Dilly Dally line and has been in my stash for a year.

The yellow cardstock is definitely the oldest thing here, over 3 years old, with the dotted MME Lost and Found paper not far behind. The Authentique die cuts are roughly a year old (ever forgotten when you bought something?).

Now don't forget, when you link up your projects at Use It Tuesday that you need to make sure to tell us what your hoarded items are!

Toad's hot air balloon

At some point this past winter we decided to introduce Vance to Wii games, Mario Kart and Mario Party, and he fell in love with Toad and began calling him the Marshmallow. He always "had" to be him, referenced the games with Marshmallow in their titles (wouldn't Mario just die!), etc. It was such a thing for him that when David found a stuffed toy at the store he bought him the random toy on the spot, bonus points went to Daddy for that one.

In June I got all those points back though, I took him to a theme park without David or Rylan (they were sick and we were going with friends). We were at World's of Fun and in the kiddo area (Planet Snoopy) was a hot air balloon ride. Vance was insisting that he had to ride the Marshmallow and I was completely clueless for a bit, and then I saw it:

When looked at in context of Toad, it very much looked like Toad, on the other hand most people will recognize this hot air balloon to represent Japan in the context of "World's of Fun" where everything is country/continentally themed. Oh, Vance. 

This is another one of the layouts that I did for my design team position at Soul Sentiments using Echo Park's Paper & Glue. 

Other products:

WRMK eyelets, Sew Easy sewing head

Embroidery floss, stash

Silhouette cameo and Studio

Flair (oops, it's new and I don't remember)

Ranger Enamel Accents

Cardstock, stash

Space Birthday

Are you glad it's Friday again or what?! I sure am! This is a big week in our household - our wedding anniversary, Rylan's birthday (turned 3!), FIL's birthday, and my store is in the middle of some much needed renovations. Gotta love the chaos.

But Friday does mean that it's time for some fun, and not only just because it's the weekend but because it's time for this week's SYS challenge. For this week's Scrap Your Story theme we're asking you to do a layout that's birthday related.  

These photos are from Vance's birthday party in December. We'd done a Pizza Planet/Buzz Lightyear theme so I paired up the photos with October Afternoon's Rocket Age. 

The background paper was way to textual and balanced for me so I took some watercolors and darkened out one whole quadrant and then faded out toward the center and bottom.

The sketch I based my layout on was Scrapbooksteals MWM Aquamarine 2.

So Much Fun

Every so often I just feel a need to break into an unused kit, today was one of those days. I pulled out MME Find Your Wings and Fly Sky's the Limit (love the balloons!) and set to work. 

As inspiration for this page I used the Aquamarine 4 sketch from Scrapbooksteals. Melodee had a great one photo sketch, but I loved these photos from my childhood and cropped them for better composition and used them instead. 

All the papers got a little bit of inking, I really liked the effect that folding the one corner gave to the layout.

The only thing not from Sky's the Limit was the washi, those were all from MME Miss Caroline packs.

Summer: memories and favorites

I don't pull out my Graphic 45 papers nearly enough, but when I saw their August challenge was a sketch I decided that I needed to work it into my crafty plan for the week. 

I used a mix of Bohemian Bazaar stickers, Communique die cuts, Fashionista papers, and Botanicabella die cuts and papers. Much fussy cutting and a lot of foam dots went into the making of this layout. ;)

Also inspiration came from Scrap Our Stash, the current challenge is to do a layout about something summer and to use 3 or more premade die cuts. 

P.S. when needing help with figuring out if your layout is done don't ask your scientist hubby. He simply complained that it was an ugly shade of green and said I needed to hide more of it. Grrrrrrr. 

Countdown chain

Ten Things Tuesday again at Practical Scrappers and we're all about using border punches. I nearly didn't sign up for this one because I don't really own many punches, and then I remembered some seldom used American Crafts Knock Out punches and I merrily signed my name. Then I remembered that I have a Christmas set, not to be dissuaded I pulled them out a started playing around.

I discovered that the Christmas tree punch looks a lot like lacey edging when done in strips.

That realization caused me to punch every single link in a chain I was going to make anyway - counting down until the Scrapbooksteals Retreat. 

Fifty links later, I'd had to sharpen and lubricate the punch a couple of times. Let the count down begin!

School mini book and another announcement

I really just can't believe that it's time to discuss back to school stuff already. Where'd the summer go? No idea! What I do know is that this is my last year home with both boys, next year Vance starts kindergarten. Wowzers, can't believe he's nearly there already. 

Anyway, back to that announcement that I promised in the title. Wait for it, you are waiting right? I'm on another design team, this time with my LSS, Soul Sentiments. I'm pretty excited because in addition to bringing creative inspiration with new yummy products I get to teach a class. That class is where it really starts getting good (Andie, you'll never guess what we've decided is my project theme. Did you make a guess? Yes!). Using up that stash in creative and trendy ways. Theme.of.my.creative.process. and I can't wait to share it with others. 

But today I'm sharing something new, this mini book uses Echo Park Paper & Glue which is admittedly a little more primary colored that I would have reached for on my own but was so much fun to make. I let the sticker sheet guide my design structure and used a couple sets of dollar bin chipboard mini albums.

Come back Friday for another project I made with this line, my third and final was the inspiration for my class sample so you'll have to wait to see that one revealed. I don't know when that'll go live.