You Are Messy

I'm bringing you another installment in the "Jessica needs to get caught up on this ScrapbookSteals MWM series." Thanks for humoring me, here is Iolite 1:

I'm still really pushing to get through some of my scraps so in no particular order other than the background, which is Basic Grey, the other papers are American Crafts, Pink Paislee, My Mind's Eye, Echo Park, and at least one other. 

The main journaling tells the story about him eating his first dollop of pudding. Seriously, he had less than 1/4 cup of chocolate pudding in that bowl. Somehow it got everywhere anyway! And he loved every second. 

The journaling around the page is about the water color tag - I've been on a mission to use more of my mixed media supplies that I just "had" to have after taking some classes at my LSS. Well, as part of that I've been sharing with the boys and they did a little Faber-Castell Gelato water coloring with me. He painted a small sheet of the paper and then I cut out the tag as a secondary way to feature him. I love how the irregularity of the coloring ties with the messy face. 

Scrap Your Story - mixed alphas

Why is it that when someone wants you to use a technique suddenly coming up with it is rough? I use mixed alphas is titles on a regular basis, but when I sat down to work on this week's Scrap Your Story challenge all I could come up with was one word titles? Yeah, I'm a mess. But I made it work after checking out a friend's challenge blog - more on that in a minute. 

So for Scrap Your Story this week we want to see at least two fonts used on your layout - titles, journaling, random words as embellishments, it doesn't matter as long as they're there. 

Remember I said I got outside inspiration? I went to the Scrappy Friends challenge and Rochelle had posted some word art to use on a page somehow. I picked one tiny section of the text but I think it sort of sums up the point of the word art!

For the other Scrappy Friends:

Kerys: recipe using stars, layering and stamping (the doily/flourishy thing on the star)

Brenda: sketch

Kristi B.: use logo from packaging (didn't manage to include that one but thought I'd include it in case you wanted to play!)

And here's a close up of that title. Isn't it fun? I just love how the boys are holding hands - Vance wanted to help Rylan on our walk home from the park. So cute. 

Most of the papers are BasicGrey PB&J, but there's also AC Amy Tangerine, Carta Bella Beautiful Moments, Cosmo Cricket Joy Ride, and EP This & That yellow cardstock. 

Sticky alphas come from American Crafts Thickers, BasicGrey PB&J, MME Lime Twist, and Jenni Bowlin. 

The word banners are Glitz Designs, then there are WRMK eyelets, MME washi, Ranger Distress Faded Jeans, MME twine with a WRMK Sew Easy sewing head, and 7Gypsies brads. 

I also used black thread for machine stitching. 

The arrow and heart are from the Kiwi Lane Sweetheart mini design templates, the flower, bracket, star, and tags are templates too. 

Ten Things Tuesday - Titles

Good morning! I'm so excited to bring you this post today - my first with the Practical Scrappers Design Team. The official announcements should be made soon, but Christine invited us to start playing along early so here I am! 

It's Ten Things Tuesday and this week we are talking about titles - long, short, mixed fonts whatever. I do love a good title and mixing fonts happens on a regular basis around here! So today I really wanted to add another element to that by framing the word "love."

A little close up of the title, the iRock heat set metal stones are probably my favorite part of this layout. Or is it that Bo Bunny faux leather ribbon? Hmm, yummy.

Originally, I couldn't figure out a way to use the alphas I already owned to make a heart in the word "love" so I decided that the iRock could at least help me emphasize the title. And I love it how it turned out!

The inspiration for this layout came from the Paper Secrets May 15 sketch. 

It's my birthday, I'll get messy if I want to, messy if I want to...

Kudos to all of you who sang that title. You're welcome. ;)

So here's how I had a messy-rriffic birthday:

Okay, that's actually where I started,  I whitewashed some gesso onto this MME Good Day Sunshine paper. 

And the next step takes some explaining. My desktop is made from particle board that I painted before I set it up in my space. When things get messy I don't worry about keeping the board clean - I can always repaint it after all! So I took the damp paper and rubbed it on the desktop which pulled up some of the dried on mist projects AND tore up the paper quite nicely.

Now, I don't normally design on double pagers but I happened to have two of that bicycle paper and was wanting to use them up since they are the last of their kit. To help me, I pulled out some of my Kiwi Lane Templates. 

Part of why I wanted to use up that paper was S.W.A.T. asked us to dig deep into our stashes and use hoarded items. Things that I used that have been in my stash for over a year: MME Andrea Victoria (gold paper), Paper Studios Affinity ribbons (Family and stripes), brads (I bought on Scrapbooksteals so long ago that I can't tell you which company they're from!), Fancy Pants Rough & Tough (trees), BasicGrey Origins (star).

Other supplies used:
sewing machine
Amy Tangerine Thickers
AC chipboard Thickers
Girl's Paperie brown ribbon
WRMK Sew Easy Twine
WRMK sparkly eyelets
MME Indie Chic and Kraft Funday
Ranger Distress Rusty Hinge
Kiwi Lane Templates Adventure 2, Tags 5, Clara Lane 3B, Holiday 8T

Scrap Your Story - cork

For a good two days all I could think about was what I was going to make out of cork for this week's Scrap Your Story challenge - very intimidating since I didn't have any. I also kept thinking about all the cork projects I'd seen. All. Over. Pinterest. 

Common theme there? Wine Corks. That's a whole-lotta dimension on the page until I realized that I could just cut them. 

Let's start with how I did that - using my bread knife I shaved off the curved sides to make the whole cork flat. Then I halved the cork pieces length-wise. Easy enough, right? In theory it is but it does take a little bit of sawing effort to get through the material. If you have access to a saw it might be better to use one. ;)

I really like how they turned out sort of brick like - it complements the background of the photo. 

Then I added brads to them, hoping to give them just a bit more of that brick effect. The cork is so thick still that the brads barely poke through the back. I was fresh out of my Scotch Quick Dry adhesive but had decent success with my Zig pen, we'll see how it holds up in the end and if I have to touch it up. 

I decided to go with flowers because I felt that they contrasted nicely with the roughness of the cork. I know, I know they're pink but I'm okay with that. My Sew Stamper just sort of finished off the page.

Dapper Dudes

I was so excited to get My Mind's Eye's newest collection in the mail that I just had to bust into Collectable "Memorable" for this page based on a Paper Secrets sketch. The twist this week was to use Thickers. 

The Thickers I used are from an older line, so old that I have to reapply glue to each letter when I use them! For this project I also misted them with OA Sprinklers because those babies were white, white, white. I love the way the "Wheat field" transformed them, a perfect color match!

I also did a little altering on the flowers, which were to pink for me. I rubbed white paint on most of each flower and then misted with more Wheat Field. 

The doily stamp is from Unity Stamp Co. "Grandma's Closet," I stamped it with black ink and then the one at the top I heat embossed with Gold Zing! embossing powder. 

You'll notice I busted out one of my homemade enamel dots again, such a nice little touch in that cluster.

Amber 2 layout and a shout-out

Okay kids, here's the deal. I had a life changing experience when my friend, Misty, explained on her blog how to DIY enamel dots. I may already be amassing a large stash and I only just watched the tutorial. 

The video was perfectly timed for this layout. The page is based on the Mid Week Mojo Amber 2 sketch at Scrapbooksteals and I was really wanting something in the elephant's spray that would resemble air bubbles/texture.

I used MME's new Collectable "Memorable" line for the papers, the washi also MME though don't ask me which lines. The elephant and spray were cut from Silhouette Studio files. To make the bigger spray "puddle" I rubbed gesso on the page and then added blue acrylic paint when the gesso was nearly dry and then swirled the two together for texture. Interspersed with my new enamel dots are some periods from the AC Dear Lizzy Thickers pack that I used for the title.

When Going Stops Going

The sun is finally shining here, after a dreary week and then getting a foot of snow in less than a day. Now, some of you truly northerners will say that's nothing for you, but we've been busting out spring wear since December so it was dramatic to say the least!

In those dark and dreary days I got a lot of scrapbooking done and all this sunshine means I can take some pictures and share them with you. 

This one is based on the Let's Get Sketchy Feb week 3 sketch.  

As soon as I saw the hexagons I wanted to play with MME Follow Your Heart. Then I had this feeling of being a little to copy cat because some of the design team used that line. So I busted out my Silhouette Cameo and made my own hexagon mask. I adhered it with my Repositionable Xyron. Misted, splattered, and removed the mask.  Then while all the bits were still on the carrier I misted those in another shade, and glued some back into the pattern. I hadn't used many of them so I stuck down some MME washi, and then piled up the tiny hexies and made "buttons" out of reverse side. The chevrons are the reverse side of that MME Follow Your Heart hexagon paper I was talking about. The heat embossed banner was stamped using Glitz Designs Love Games stamp set. More MME washi and a little heat embossing on the photo and I was pretty much done. 

Smile Often.

I've done the Scrappy Friends challenge for a few months now. I love that it combines so many elements to mix and match. Each friend offers up one challenge and you get bonus entries for combining into one layout. Let's just say that I really, really enjoy the challenge of squeezing all the elements into one look!

My interpretation:

Brenda - Sketch Challenge - yep

Rochelle Spears ~ Color Combo - as soon as I saw the colors I knew I wanted to use MME Lime Twist

Kerys Sharrock ~ Quote Challenge -use sentences from some Subway/Word Art.

Kristi B ~ Stash Challenge - mustaches, pennants, and dry embossing - check, check, check

I didn't really know how I wanted to go about using Kerys' word art, so I started by just using one as the title. I had that decided before I laid out the page. Then I was trying to figure out how in the world I'd get mustaches into it, naturally adding one to the title seemed fun. Then as I adhered it in place I had this idea to sketch on a bunch of 'staches and add some of the other sentences from the word art that describe Rylan or that I'd like for him. I like that doing so supplied a "boyish" and playful aspect to a "girl" colored page (what can I say, the colors matched my Christmas tree so well that I just had to use these pics!). 

Thankful for Food

I absolutely loved this week's DT Doodles at Kiwi Lane. I only had time to knock out one of the sketches though. This one's about Thanksgiving Day foods, things they've liked in the past, this year, and then that they discovered putting olives on their fingers. True family traditions right there!

This one is also getting submitted to the new blog, About a Boy. Their first challenge was to include your boy/boys' name on the layout in some way. I built mine into the title. 

Soul Sisters

I about died when I saw that this week's sketch at Scrapbooksteal.com (Jade 9 MWM) featured a starburst pattern. I love the look they give, but man-oh-man such a lot of work. To make it ever so slightly better, I busted out some of my scraps and gave it a go. Pretty cool that everything except the Thickers were out of the scrap bin! I really need to do starbursts more often. Or not.

I'm also linking this up with the S.W.A.T Drill #1 - to do a page about yourself. S.W.A.T. (Scrap Warriors Advanced Training) is a new challenge blog that some online friends are part of and I can't wait to see what they bring with their drills and basic training and advanced training. Drooling just thinking about it.

Rockin' with my Dad

Ever start a project only to realize that now that you've picked papers that you have to abandon it to help the kiddos, make dinner, etc.? That's what happened with this layout. I'd set out to do it and realized that it was time to start dinner for company. When hubby's alarm woke me the next day I woke with a start! I had a crazy idea about what I wanted to do for this page. 

I have LOTS of pictures of my guys throwing these pebbles at our local park's lake and I wanted to take this two photo Paper Secrets sketch and give it a few more while maintaining the sketch. 

In addition to the sketch, Paper Secrets challenge included using a chevron. I accomplished this with some paper piecing that I then sewed together.

So I laid out what would go behind the multi-colored doily page and stitched the doily paper down on just one side to make a flap. I even decorated the back of the doily paper with another photo. 

The inside of my three page single page layout!

All the papers are My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart, as are the dimensional stickers and clips. There's WRMK and MME washi. The alphas are a variety of American Crafts Thickers and October Afternoon alphas. In addition to machine stitching I used two WRMK Sew Stamper heads. And lastly, Kiwi Lane templates provided some of the shapes, and I used a Lifestyle Crafts embossing folder.

Meeting Buzz

I just want to give a bit shout out to all of my new friends from Kiwi Lane that have joined errantscraps! I hope you all had a good time with the hop and that you stick around for a while so we can all get to know each other better. 

One of the advantages of knowing people when you go on vacation is they show you the sights from a different perspective. My sons will never know Disneyworld the same way as most other kids because my brother works for the Mouse. We planned trips to parks based on where he was working and often he'd have little surprises for us. 

This particular day? Let's just say that we're 99.99% certain that we are genetically related to everyone in the picture (there are days I still swear my bro was adopted) and he made that little boy's day by spending so much time with him. Naturally there were lots of pictures, many which never got scrapped while I was working on our trip album. So.Many.Pictures. Now I'm trying to finish some of those up. 

This page is for the Scrapbooksteals.com Jade 8 Mid Week Mojo challenge. Only two more weeks in this series, have you been playing along? There's the weekly challenge and then a separate drawing for those who complete all 10 in a series. Better get your scrap on!

Earth without art

So my family is in a planetary obsessed phase right now. Vance is into all things planets, rockets, moons. That was the theme of his recent birthday party. The dust around stars is what hubby's studying for his dissertation (don't ask, I don't understand much more of it than that!). 

When I was feeling a little creative but not so scrappy this weekend I busted out a canvas I'd picked up at goodwill and started redecorating it. Earth-themed of course! 

Sort of. 

Now, I have never taken a painting class in my life and many artists out there will know all the reasons why this piece is horrible, but as an expression of myself off the page and into mixed media it was a huge first step that makes me proud.