Halloween in Wonderland...

A few years ago, when we first moved to Houston and right after we were married, we had a Halloween party at our house.  Somehow, I conviced my hubby to go along with my plan of being Alice and the Mad Hatter.  (I alsmost had him dress as the white rabbit, but he wasn't havin' it....).

I can't believe that I have never scrapped these photos before!  It must be becuase I was waiting for the perfect papers to come along, and of course Graphic 45 came out with Halloween in Wonderland!!  AND it was part of the Scrapbook Circle Spooky Hallowen Kit this past month!

I cut out all the images from the paper to use on my LO (the cheshire cat, the rabbit, the green, and the tweedles...).  I also used some of the cards around the border of my LO and as a title.  Some scraps for a moon and a little ink distressing around the edges of the paper, a few bats and stars, and voila!

Hope you have a very happy and safe Halloween!  I can't wait to share some photos of Charlotte in her costume I made!

Loving Crate Paper...

So I have been in love with the Restoration collection, and have been frequenting the Crate Paper blog lately.  They have a sketch challenge going on (ending today), so I decided to whip out some of my other CP lines and went to work on the sketch!

I used: Brook, Mia, Lemon Grass, Restoration, and School Spirit!!!  I really love the colors I ended up using on this page. 

This photo is of my mom and my uncle, and my grandma and grandpa, when she was about 4 or 5 during Thanksgiving dinner.  I have been working a lot with some older photos lately and I love it!

Going to a friends house to crop tomorrow night and can't wait cause I am workin with my Novemeber Scrapbook Circle kit which you can preview HERE.

I missed you Sketchy Thursdays...

I'm bad.    I haven't used a Sketchy Thursday sketch in a long time, and I LOVE them.   So I'm gonna start again!!   I loved this weeks sketch.  This LO came together so fast!

I used more of the Dear Lizzy Enchanted papers. I love the hint of navy in some of these papers, so I picked up on that with my border and my title.   My background cardstock was embossed and I went over it ever so lightly with some pink ink.  I stitched a circle with white thread just so it was barely visible.

I am submitting this one for Girl's Week, too, and the AC Studio blog.

The letter stickers are LYB and the flowers are ( I think?) Prima.  Brads are from the new MME Lost & Found collection.

I also did the sketch challenge this week for My Mind's Eye blog.  The LSS where I work just got the entire Lost & Found line in and of course I bought all the papers!!   The challenge on the blog was to use the sketch and to use black on your page. 

I backed a lot of the papers and the photo with a thin line of black cardstock around the edges.  Believe it or not, there are only two sheets of patterned paper on this LO!  The damask print is actually a piece of kraft cardstock that I embossed with my new Tim Holtx embossing plates from Sizzix.  I then inked the embossed area.  These plates are SO awesome because they give a very deep embossed pattern.

Do you think Charlotte will be mad at me when she grows up for showing her baby boobies on a scrapbook page???  I almost covered them up with some of the circles, but I thought that would be too obvious!  I think she kinda looks like a boy in this photo, too.  But she is still charming, adorable, and ever so sweet!

In other news, I sent in my first projects for S.E.I. yesterday and I am so excited for them to post next month!!!   I hope I did the products justice!!

More coming tomorrow...... 

Creative titles....

...are not something I am good at!   :)   Here is one that I thought long and hard about and decided on "cousins".....

But despite the title, I still love this page!  I have been dieing to do a girly-girl layout using the American Crafts Dear Lizzy Enchanted papers and I have had these photos sitting around for a while....they are a perfect match!  The colors are just spot on....

I punched and pleated some paper strips of the aqua paper and fussy cut out the flowers from another piece of patterned paper.  

I also used some old AC rubons in black for a bit of detail.

My FAVORITE thing about the Enchanted line are the "notes" cards that have tickets and journaling spots of all sizes!!  Wasn't it perfect that there was on that said "3...Something Magical"???

Oh and AC, I forgive you for not choosing me for your design team this year....how can I not.....I still love all your stuff.....maybe next year!!!

Check out the "Girl's Week" challenge at the AC Studio blog! and a chnce to win a prize this week during "Boy's Week" by leaving a comment.

More Scrapbook Circle...

Well I have been finishing up some things with my October Scrapbook Circle kit.  I just loved all the colors in this kit.  It was so fun to work with!

On this first LO, i really messed up!  You see, I was going to use the Pink Paislee Parisian Anthology paper and spray it with a bit of pink for my background.  Well I sprayed way way WAY too much and i hated the way the paper came out.  So I salvaged what I could, and cut out the doilies from the paper. 

I have to say I just love the way this turned out!  And pink and yellow aren't really a combo i use often, but I am diggin' this one.  This sketch, by the way, is from Stuck?! sketches.

OK, so I know what you're thinking...yes, I let my child play with these cords.  She loves them.  She thinks they are necklaces.  On her little Fisher Price car, she tries to "plug" them into her steering wheel.  It is cute. 

I used a sketch from a new challenge blog called Get Picky.  You shoudl really go check it out!!  Looks like there are going to be some great sketches and challenges!

 On this day, she had just gotten done with lunch, and had tons of food in her hair, so I wet it down and rubbed it with a washcloth.  Then she started playing with her cords and I thought she looked kinda like Einstein in this photo...:)

OK, this last LO was not made with the Scrapbok Circle kit, but rather with some papers from Crate Paper.  There was a challenge on their blog to create a fall LO, and I have been meaning to scrap this photo for a while now.  Also, I used a sketch by Ronda at Cocoa Daisy (oh, and I think Ronda is on the Crate Paper team, too!).

I loved mixing the Lemon Grass line with the Restoration papers.  In the background, I lightly stamped with a new doily stamp that I got at Archivers, and a Tim Holtz stamp that looks like scribbled lines, too.

Well DH starts his 7 night shift tonight which means I will be scrappin away for the next 7 days!!!  Woo Hoo!

Some Halloween and a Wild Goose Chase.....

My mom was visiting for 6 days, so I haven't done much lately.  I had my trip to Archivers last week and I got 6 layouts partially done.  I just have to go back and touch them up a bit.  Those I will post soon.

In the meantime, I have a few other layouts that I have been meaning to share.  My Tips, Tricks, & Techniques class is coming up at Lonestar and this class we are doing machine stitching. 

I have been in love with the new American Crafts releases so that's what we are using!  This page is all American Crafts Boo! Collection. For this LO, we are doing a combo of straight and zig zag stitching.
I can't believe that Charlotte was this little only a year ago!  :)

For the title, I cut my letters out of vellum on my cricut and went over them a bit with some white Smooch ink to make them stand out a bit more. 

This next double pager we are using the City Park Collection.  I love the colors and the brightness of these papers.  We have some big ponds in the front of our community and there are lots of ducks there that are pretty used to people.  Charlotte loved chasing them around.

There are some zig zag stitches along the top edges and through the middle strip as well.

Lastly, here is a page I did using the Halloween Kit from Scrapbook Circle.  I just LOVE this kit!!!!  It has the cutest combo pf papers and embellies.

I made Charlotte a mouse costume last year because she used to squeak a lot.  And I know "squeak" is spelled like that, but I wanted to spell is "squEEK" kinda like "EEK...a mouse"....get it????

Some Kit Club Reveals...

Well it is the beginning of the month which means lots of kit club reveal!!!

So I have already share a few Lo's with the Crop Addict October Kit, and here are two more!

I had these photos of Charlotte in her "car" which matched some of the papers in the kit beautifully!

The background paper was a bit busy, so I toned it down a bit by adding a rectangle of gesso in the middle to frame the photos.

My journaling is actually about the day that we got this car and daddy and I had to put it together, and how Charlotte was SUCH a big help!  :)


We went to the Ozarks last fall, and I took so many photos that I was overwhelmed and never really scapped about our trip.  So this kit inspired me to do that! 

I used the back sides of some of the Jillibean Soup papers as the background, and cut out the shapes from the MLS papers.

The next kit is another absolutely gorgeous kit from Scrapbook Circle!!  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Parisian Anthology papers in this kit.  You can color them any way you want with mists and inks.  There is a great video showing techniques on the Pink Paislee blog HERE.

So my friend from college came to visit a few weeks ago, and we went to this little town with a whole bunch of boutiques and fun shops.  There was this hat store where we of course had to try on a whole bunch and take a lot of pictures!

I misted this page with 3 different types of glimmer mist and then wiped it with a baby wipe to spread some of the inks around.  I love the effect it gave.

I also misted and painted some of the artisan foam elements that are in the kit, too.

The kit come with this awesome set of 7 Gypsies rub ons, and yes, I used the entire sheet on this page!  It really gave me a new found love for rub-ons!

OK, so I convinced my hubby to let me go to Archivers for the ENTIRE DAY on Wednesday!!  I am so excited I can't wait!  I have a lot to be working on!  So there will definetly be more blog posts coming up!  :)

Beware of Drooling Mice! Crop Addict October Kit and more...

Before I get into October, I have ONE last LO to share with my September Scrapbook Circle kit.  Yes, it is all gone.  There's nothing left.  And I want another one.  Loved it!

So I did this techniqie with transparencies, and I tried misting them with glimmer mist.  I cut then out on my cricut, sprayed them and let them dry for a while.  I added a light coat of hair spray to keep them from smudging (I know there is an art prodcut intended for this purpose, but I didn't have it, and I DO have a big can of hairspray, so i used what I had!)  :)

I love the way that the mist pooled on the transparency.  Next time I think I am going to do a lighter coat, just enough so you can see the shape.  The page that I cut from witll make a great masking shape, too!!

Move over September, OCTOBER is here!  One of my favorite months, and of course lots of new kits coming out!  Here is a SUPER fun kit from Crop Addict!

Here are the first two of the four that I have created!

The grey cardstock in the kit was PERFECT for the grey costume that Charlotte wore last year (and yes, I made it!  ).  I did some misting and stitching on the background paper, and I love how the stitching came out.  I was thinking shattered glass and spider web when i was making the pattern on the paper....

I loved the Halloween papers in this kit!  And wanna know something STRANGE????  I was cutting the orange "newspaper" print paper, and was about to punch something out of it when I actually stopped to read the text....it was from the Syracuse newspaper!!!  You'll see....its on there!  How strange!

Anyways, I made this simple sketch to go with this LO for the monthly challenge this month on the forum, so go check it out!  Oh, and I love the title of that page!  :)

The add on kit includes these adorable Jenni Bowlin Halloween Bingo cards!!  They were perfect for matting some photos on!

The felt stars that come in the kit are actually not black, so I painted them with my paint and voila!  They made the perfect accents for my page!

And I never really thought about the Pink Paislee Queen Bee line as Halloween-y, but now I think it is the perfect fit!  And since i still have some of this in my personal stash, I just might have to use it on this year's pages because...well Charlotte is gonna be a......can you guess?  :)

OK, two more coming your way tomorrow that I have to add the journaling to tonight!!!