Friday, May 25, 2012

I could use a bit more pink in my life

It's not often that I design with a softer color palate, let alone with pink. But when I saw that the challenge at MME was to use colors/embellishments that were opposite the sex of the subject in the photo I just had to jump on the opportunity! I teamed that challenge up with the sketch over at Paper Variety for this layout.

If you look at the PV sketch you'll notice that there's two pictures in their version, I just couldn't get two pics together that I loved and kept coming back to this one instead. I did keep the rest of the overall structure and am quite happy with how it turned out. Though given that this one is sort of about my photography skills/learning the new camera *and* I called him a pretty boy it won't be going into Squishy's album, it'll go into the one about me!

Paper Variety Sketch

As far as resources used, this one's all MME and quite a few collections at that! There's 12x12 Lost and Found, 6x6 Lost and Found, Abbey Road, Pretty Please, and Out and About (and one piece of scrap that has the MME "look" but I'm not positive about).




Thursday, May 24, 2012

Three pages and a happy dance

It's time again for the Paper Girls Challenge Blog - #8. This time Sheryl challenged us to bust out some stashed chipboard and use it up! Well, I've only been scrapping for three years so my stash isn't big, but these alphas from BasicGrey Oliver no longer have their coordinating paper so they'll do.

MME 6x6 Lost and Found 2
MME Lush 2 Orange (journaling tag)
MME Indie Chic Washi Tape
MME Follow Your Heart - Be Amazing chipboard and twine
October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Color Box Chestnut Roan, Ocean
BasicGrey Oliver alphas
Stampabilities stamp (background)
Blue cardstock and paper clips, stash
Turquoise 4 - Love
No kidding. I love the way this turned out. So fresh and springy! Kristy's sketch had a banner at the top and as soon as I looked at the pics I knew that what it really needed to be was a garland -- and BasicGrey Origins had perfect flowers too! I was also excited to use the triangle paper, I've been seeing a lot more of these and it was surprising to find them in an older line.
BasicGrey Origins - paper, fussy cut flowers, stickers, alphas
BasicGrey Doily
Prima Crystals
MME Abbey Road brads
Petaloo flowers
Glossy accents
Embroidery floss, green 
Turquoise 3 - STOP
And because I'm playing a little posting catch-up here it is. Basically the only crafty thing I did last week. I've been wanting to scrap this pic for a while. Squirrel literally fell asleep playing and in the process flopped backwards like that. Funny to watch! 
Fancy Pants Kraft Kuts paper and stickers
MME Lush 2 Orange journaling tag
MME Abbey Road chipboard stickers
MME Follow Your Heart tag and twine
Jillibean Soup - Christmas Chestnut Soup
WRMK eyelets
Black textured paper, stash
happy dance: while I was at mom's for Mother's Day she was showing me a gluten free cookbook that she was wanting to try out on summer break. I quickly downloaded the electronic version and have been mixing up GF flours for her and testing some of the recipes. Wow! I've never been impressed with the GF stuff she's shared with me, even from boxed mixes. Most hasn't been horrible but not great. The two I've tried have been awesome and have fooled my coworkers. Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Double Peanut Butter Cookies. I'll try to take pics of my next endeavor.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Mother's Day weekend

Poor little blog, I've neglected it for over a week. Eek! The next couple of days I'll be playing catch-up/posting a lot so that I can get challenges posted - got a couple of those already done, just need to take pics. 

Well, here's a photo round up of what I did while I was at my mom's for Mother's Day. I'd ended up packing all my MME scraps (which I store separately from other scraps because I have so much of it!) and the leftover embellishments from Follow Your Heart and Lush 2 Orange kits from Scrapbooksteals and some random other stuff like Target Washi, Stickles, glue, scissors, etc. I figured by narrowing my options down like that I'd make my life a lot easier.

Pretty much everything was either an embellishment from MME or I fussy cut it no other major techniques used but they still ended up cute and I got a lot done in the short time I was there! Thanks for looking. 

Target Washi, Tim Holtz Stickles, Orange Lush 2, Follow Your Heart

Orange Lush 2, Follow Your Heart
October Afternoon Mists, Follow Your Heart, Target Washi

Note: showed mom how to make Misty Buck's washi flower here and tested out glittering paper by running it through my mini Xyron instead of glue stick/liquid. Can I just say, AWESOME?!?!?! I'll never glitter the old way again.
Orange Lush 2, Follow Your Heart

Orange Lush 2, Follow Your Heart
 
Follow Your Heart

Friday, May 11, 2012

Procrastination

A couple of years ago my mom and I happened upon a LSS while we were out running errands. It happened to be National Scrapbooking Day, and since then we've managed to scrap together on that holiday. This year my family had stuff going on so we planned a rain date and we'll celebrate this weekend. While I was packing for the trip I got really distracted, the following is what happened - one project finalized and one start to finish. Procrastination? Yep, packing for crops at my mom's is always so hard!!

First up, the Paper Girls Challenge Blog's newest challenge (#7). This challenge was to follow a sketch by the fabulous Charity Becker. 
Best Buds
Having recently been part of a discussion about making your own dimensional stickers I set to work with the stickers and some fussy cut circles from Fancy Pants' Kraft Kuts. It really added a lot to this page! The only things not from Kraft Kuts were the mini alphas (Jenni Bowlin) and the brown cardstock, brads and cording (all stash). Shapes were inked to smooth out some rougher cutting using Color Box Chestnut Roan.

Then, I took the Scrapbooksteals.com MWM Turquoise 2 by Kristy Lee and started playing around with Amy Tangerine Sketchbook. I'm really liking this kit, can't you tell, and I thought the springy colored papers were perfect for a page about the Easter Eggstravaganza at my parent's church! 

Egg*cellent
Most of the strips are the barcode strips (I love when companies design on that part!). One brad is stash, but the rest of this is all Amy!

Guess I've procrastinated long enough - time to get that bag packed!

Monday, May 7, 2012

Rainy Monday Crafting

It's a drizzly, stay inside sort of day so I decided that I'll work on some more of those National Scrapbooking Day projects that aren't due for a couple of days.

But first up are some regularily scheduled challenges.

Up first we have Authentique's May Sketch. LOVE it!  And I love the way that my interpretation turned out. I used Blissful for all the papers, alphas and die cut pieces, ribbons were stash, ink was ColorBox Chestnut Roan, flowers were hand made from vellum and their brads are American Crafts Chap.


This page is doing double duty for me, I'm also entering it into the Paper Variety's challenge: use a handmade flower in a project. I had to learn how to make a flower to accomplish this, and let's just say there's a lot of options out there! I read so many great tutorials before throwing up my hands, grabbing scissors and paper and just having at it. 

This one is MME's first May Challlenge: use brads creatively.


Now, normally I don't scrap about myself and I definitely always use a picture. I don't know why I decided to do this diary sort of entry about what the month of April was like for me, but I did and I am really happy with how it turned out!

All that orange (paper and brads) is from Lush 2, the dark paper is from Lost & Found, the "celebrate" chipboard sticker and twine is Follow Your Heart. Ink is Colorbox Chestnut Roan.

And last, but not least scrapbooksteals.com MCM 83.


For this card I used Authentique Blissful papers, die cuts, and alphas again. Twine was from MME Lost and Found, gems and ivory cardstock were stash.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

National Scrapbooking Day = lots of hard work

Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day, which somehow translated into "weekend" for me. Wow! Did I do a lot?! I've decided that after this weekend I'm doing a little reset on the whole project challenge. I'm pretty certain that I've done about 50 projects and have cheated a couple of times on the thing anyway, but we're pretty much equal so it's whatever.

To start the weekend off I did the Scrapbooksteals.com online crop challenges.

Challenge 1/Turquoise 1 by guest sketcher Misty Buck

on the hunt

I used BasicGrey papers for this - an older kit called Origins. I bought it on clearance right after falling in love with their Oliver collection. This is the first time I used it and think I may have fallen in love with BG all over again! The buttons were stash, but some are covered with stickers from the kit. Thickers are Amy Tangerine. Mini Alphas are Jenni Bowlin.

Challenge 2: Turn back time. Pics had to be from before the individual was 25 or younger.

Start them young
This is almost all Amy Tangerine Sketchbook, including the fussy cut flowers. There's one piece of misted paper from me testing out the mists when they came in (I did say that I cheated on the challenge, right?!). The mini alphas are Jenni Bowlin. The Thickers are also Amy Tangerine. Notable for this page - the pink card in back swirls out to show more journaling. This pic was taken at my grandma's just after Papa died, the grown-ups were making arrangements and I was busily using one of my Christmas presents. Context is interesting for the future but isn't the point of the page so I wanted it hidden.

Challenge 3: Sassy Spring. Needed to have spring colors and a flower.

I think you're camera perfect
This one is all Echo Park This & That. I love this collection. It very much complements the colors I put on the boys. It was a fun challenge to work with - incorporating a flower (these are from Prima) into the page, especially with such masculine papers, but I felt that the flower just spoke spring and not girlie. 

Challenge 4: Stitching. The inspiration piece was a quilt block and the final project had to have some sort of stitching on it. 

Ties that bind
I literally cut up my oldest scraps into 2x2 in squares and stitched them (and the picture) together with my machine (a first using that for me!). Then, remembering some older quilts I've seen in this fashion I "joined" corners with purple string or with brads (stash). The journaling tag's brown border was scrap lefttover from this week's MCM and I think it's Fancy Pants. The inside is more misting practice. Mini alphas are Jenni Bowlin. Thickers are American Crafts.

Then I moved on to a couple that Echo Park had.

NSD Challenge 3: scrap lift from the design team. I lifted the idea of the quilt on a card from Kandis Smith's project.

remember 2012
This & That makes another appearance here in everything except the machine stitching and those mini alphas (Jenni Bowlin). Having already sewn something together this weekend I thought that her card design would be a good opportunity to practice my stitching abilities!

NSD Challenge 4: follow the sketch

my boy
More This & That here. Flowers are Prima Sprites, some have EP brads and others have stickers at their center.

Then some more one from BasicGrey. ETA: I had originally only done one challenge, but Scientist took the boys for a walk so I decided to squeeze out a couple more before bedtime!

Follow the sketch.

cheese

I combined two for this one: stitch on the page (I'm getting pretty good at that!) and use mixed fonts.

passionately driven
Again, more Origins. The stitching here is really subtle, and it needed to be with all the paper mixing I did! It's a border around the two smaller pics. Then the mixed fonts - the word "passionately" is from the Origins stickers and "driven" are foam Thickers. 


The regular Paper Girls Challenge Blog Challenge (#7) was to make an Artist Trading Card (aka ATC), taking inspiration from their blog hop.

springtime themed ATC
I'd never done an ATC before so this was a little weird for me. Apparently they get traded around by crafters, almost like baseball cards. Now to find a card swap I can join so I can get more practice with these guys! Everything from this card was from my scrap folder, but I'm fairly certain that the card itself was Fancy Pants Design. 

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Two cards and a mini


In the last several months I have spent more and more time online building my craft: gaining inspiration, reading blogs, learning techniques, supporting other crafters. As part of that, I've joined not only the Facebook community on Scrapbooksteals but frequently post on the status messages and contests of a number of my favorite manufacturers. And last month I won a fantastic kit for doing so!  Amy Tangerine Sketchbook from American Crafts. YES!! Can you say amazing?! And so much - I thought it'd be a few pieces but this is a whole kit.  I love all the colors that Amy Tan uses.



It's almost like there's two sides of me - My Mind's Eye (slightly romantic) and Amy Tangerine (way fun). All through my childhood and adolescence I would pendulum from one color spectrum/design style to the other so that really isn't a surprise to me. In junior high I was all about the day glow and by my sophomore year all I wanted was Victorian era-esque furniture and burgundy/hunter green *everything.* Seriously. Back to brights in the dorm, plum in the bedroom when we got married, and you can see the edge of our current bed in the pics below. Maybe I just think this is weird because my parents have had variations of peach and green in their room for my entire life.

Anyway, when I opened up Sketchbook this afternoon I immediately knew that I had to use it for the mother's day cards that I needed to make - my mom and MIL.

This one's for MIL - had to keep it flat for mailing, but I LOVE it.
Fussy cutting, washi tape flower and dimensional stickers make this fun,
but not suitable for mailing. I'll hand deliver to my mom on Mother's Day weekend. 
I got the idea for the washi tape flower from Scrapbooksteals.com's How To'sday a few weeks back. Misty Buck did a fantastic job and I've been waiting for an opportunity to lift that project!

This week I've also been busily making my second mini. I really like the way it came out  --- so much more interactive and decidedly a step up from the last one. Now trying to decide if I want to keep it or gift it. I added little scraps that say where to journal or add pics (with dimensions) in case I gift. Hmm...

 This time I used (mostly) MME Lush2. There's a couple of scraps from other MME collections, ink is Colorbox, pennant stickers by Jenni Bowlin, ticket sticker is Glitz Designs, stamps from Girl's Paperie, Zing Embossing Powder, red twine from Jillibean Soup, Prima Flowers, and library envelope from Silhouette Studio.

front cover

first page, photo booklet closed
first page, photo booklet open (5 photos total)
one large photo, one small, and a journaling tag
Three photo areas and one journaling tag
last page, photo booklet closed
last page, photo booklet open (5 pages with journaling on "vertical" page)

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