My Scraps & More Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome to our "Switchin' Up September" Blog Hop!  Beginning in September, we are switching around our daily challenges in the My Scraps & More forums.  

Starting September 1st on the message boards, we are switching things up. We will still be posting the challenges daily but the themes will all be new!! Here is the line up...

Monday... Mix it Up Monday's (recipe challenge)
Tuesday... Tuesday Trigger (monthly theme)
Wednesday... Word Up Wednesday (word challenge)
Thursday... Throwback Thursday (stash challenge)
Friday... Free for All Friday (anything goes!)
Saturday... Saturday Steal (lift challenge)
Sunday...Day of Rest

To learn a little more about the daily themes, we are having this blog hop. Each of the Design Team members are showcasing one of the days. The challenges that the designers share are going to be the first ones for the month of Sept., so you are getting a little bit of a head start on the challenges this month! Here is the order for the hop...

Start here ---------------- My Scraps & More's Blog
Mix it Up with ---------Audrey
Tues. Trigger with-----Tracy
Word Up with----------- Lisa
Throwback with-------- Wendi
Free for All with-------- Tammi
Steal with ---------------- Missy

All you need to do is visit each designers blog and leave a comment.  Then return to the My Scraps & More blog and leave a comment that you finished the hop!  Let us know what you think of the new challenges!  The hop will run until MIDNIGHT Sunday, Sept. 2, 2013.  

And one lucky winner will receive the new "Paper & Glue" collection from Echo Park!

I am showcasing the Mix-It-Up Monday's, which are simply recipe challenges.  Every Monday a new recipe will be posted in the forum.  Since we are SWITCHing it up, I decided to do a recipe with the word SWITCH.  Your challenge is to use the following items on your page:

S- stitching (faux or machine)
W- white cardstock
I- Inks (mists or paints are fine, too)
T- twine
C- circles
H- heart (more than one is fine)

And here is my page using some Crate Paper "The Pier" collection and playing around with some watercolors!  Would you look at this little guy playing on the dock!?  Wish he was smiling more, but he was busy trying to fill some buckets with water.

I found some watercolors on clearance at Hobby Lobby, so I wanted to experiment with them a bit!  I mixed some of the paints with mists to get some great shades of navy and teals.

I layered some tags, chipboard, stickers, and diecuts.  I like adding my stickers to patterned paper and cutting a border around them and popping them off the page with dots.

Some stitching and some sequins for sparkle. When you see them shimmer on the page, it reminds me of the way the sunshine reflects off the lake.

 I used some transparent Heidi Swapp alphas which I just LOVE!  The color and the transparency remind me of lake water, too!

Now head on over to Tracy's blog to keep hoppin'!

Stay Scrappy my friends!

DIY Puffy Dots: layout, new look *VIDEO TUTORIAL*

So you may notice that my blog header has been updated!  It's about time.  I have been meaning to do it forever, and finally got around to it!  I love the bright floral prints against the black and cream chevron background.

You may notice some puffy dots around the page.  I discovered a simple way to make them quite by accident.  Here's the story:

I was working on this layout below, which is for this weeks sketch on the My Scraps & More sketch blog.  I wanted a way to highlight the waves a bit to make them stand out more.  A white pen wasn't going to do enough, and I didn't have a paintbrush thin enough to paint them.  Stickles were not an option becuase I didn't want glitter, and then I remembered that I had a box of old puffy fabric paints in my craft closet.  I'm talking OLD, here...10+ years for sure.

(Layout info:  I used papers from Studio Calico "Sundrifter" and "Atlantic" collections.)

So I grabbed a white one and tried to unclog it a bit by banging and squeezing it on my craft mat.  The little drops that came out eventually dried, and an idea was born!  Oh and I did use the white puffy paints on my page as you can see here:

So here is a quick, short little video just showing how I made the dots!  After they dry, you can stick them on with liquid adhesive (like I did in my blog header) or  glue dots, too!



DIY Puffy Dots- Audrey Yeager from Audrey Yeager on Vimeo.

Don't you love happy accidents and finding new uses for your old stuff?

Thanks for stopping by!  Stay Scrappy my friends!

Let's Go on an Adventure! SBC lift

Every month at Scrapbook Circle, a few of the DT members get to lift pages of subscribers that they post on facebook or to the SBC blog.   This month I lifted member Fiona.  You can see the post HERE on the SBC blog with her original.

This picture was taken the day before I did this page, and it is very rare that I scrap a photo so quickly after have taken it.  My brother works part time nearby a few days a week and comes to stay with us and the kiddos love to spend time with their Uncle "Ah-Rah" (a nickname that Charlotte made up a few years ago which has stuck!)

I worked with some of the "earthy" prints and patterns like the woodgrain and flowers to go along with the theme of my photo.  I also love the "natural" feel of the cork and wood embellishments, too!

The green isn't a very dominant color at first glance of this kit, but I found a few bits in the OA pack and then I stamped some of the wood pieces with green ink to match.  Lots of layering and distressing above, like the page I lifted!

I wanted to ground these wood pennants a bit more, so I tied them with some twine to the edge of the page. Again, I stamped some of the wood with a reddish ink, and left the other plain.

This kit has given me four totally different pages and I love that!  Will share more, soon!

Stay scrappy my friends!

Pancake Breakfast!

Every 1st Saturday of the month, there is a pancake breakfast at a church near the cottage at the lake.  They have scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, and homemade blueberry sauce for $5!!!  You can't beat it!  And the kids just LOVE the pancakes (they are pretty tasty, I have to admit!).

When I saw this month's sketch on the Lily Bee blog, the big circles just reminded me of pancakes, so I used it for my page.

I started by die cutting the large circle from white cardstock using SCAL2 and my Cricut.  I chose brown and blue papers to go with the blueberry and pancakes theme, and then added in some yellow for contrast.

I machine stitched a frame in the middle of the page, and then just added some punched circles here and there.  I fussy cut the triangles from patterned paper and layered them with some labels and buttons, too.

You can see that I popped the brown paper off the back of the page to give it some depth.

So you might notice that my husband has his eyes closed in the photo. It was the only one I had of him, and he HATES getting his photo taken.  But I decided I needed to use it anyways!  I want my kids to know (when they look back through these pages after year go by) that daddy was there at these events, too!!  So I'm am gonna tell him that he better start smiling, because I am putting the photo on regardless!  :)

Stay scrappy my friends!

Too Rainy Today....GDT for ScrapFriends Yummy Scrap color challenge

I used to hate color combos, but now they are my favorite  type of challenge!  And I was so thrilled to stumble upon Scrap Friends a few months ago where they do a monthly color challenge and have awesome sketch challenges, too!  Plus the DT inspiration there is so incredible...the really artsy/mixed media kind of designs that I love to look at!

I was chosen as a Top 5 two months ago and therefore was asked to be a guest for this combo.

 When I saw the colors, the navy and grey remind me of a dreary day, so I used some rainy day photos.  These were taken at the beginning of the summer, when the kids were so ancy about going outside, but of course, there were a few rainy days when we couldn't go out to play.

As I was creating this page, I was thinking of rain and thunderstorms, so I tried to use things that remind me of that. I used a grey patterned paper for the background and a circle stencil with some gesso.

And the cloud paper from Lily Bee with the navy and grey clouds was perfect!  I used a strip of that with some additional clouds fussy cut out and pop dotted around the page.  I accidentally placed some grey washi on the page and saw that it looked pretty cool going along with the diagonals of the page, so there are some pieces of washi placed around and then I machine stitched over them.

So I needed to find a way to incorporate the orange into my page.  And again, by accident, a scrap of orange paper fell onto my page as I was cutting some other shapes that I was intially going to use.  I loved the way the little triangles looked, so I just cut a few and placed them around.  They remind me of lightning bolts!  :)

The word "today" is a rub on from American Crafts Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm collection, and I put it on a transparency from Maya Road.  I love that these transparencies look like the window the kids are looking through. I did my journaling underneath it.

Be sure to check out the Scrap Friends blog!

Stay scrappy my friends!

A Carousel Adventure! Scrapbook Circle

I am so excited to share my first page as part of the new DT at Scrapbook Circle.  If you have been following my blog, you know I was on the SBC team a few years ago and have been a loyal subscriber for years!  So I am so happy to get the oppurtunity to share my creations as part of the team!

Charlotte was in a wedding in June, and the bridal party went to a local carousel to take photos after the ceremony.  It was an awesome back drop for some great photos!  We had to wait to get on, and the anticipation was just killing her!  :)

I have a little secret that I must share.  I had a few of the patterned papers in the kit already, so I used both sheets on some of my pages!  :)  For this page, I started by using a stencil and a pink ink pad to make the splatters on the background, then some splattering of more mist.  Then I just layered some pf the patterned papers behind the photos and added a few bits here and there.

The kit comes with these sparkly gold star sequins and they picked up on the gold in the carousel perfectly!  I love using sequins on my pages!

I wanted to add a bit more sparkle, so I used the alphas from the July kit, and kept the title neutral because I wanted the photos to stand out and not the title.

And here is the August kit in it's entirety!   I think you will love it!

If you would like to see what else I created with the August Kit, you can click HERE!  I will be sharing these pages with information on my blog over the next couple weeks!

Stay Scrappy my Friends!

You Are Just TOO Cute!

Charlotte does this funny thing where she will come up right to your face, point her finger and say "You are just TOO cute" in a very serious voice.  She's a riot...

I used the Wonderful Day collection from Fancy Pants.  I spent a LONG TIME fussy cutting some of those flowers (and some are die cuts).  I actually started the design of this page by just simply cutting elements from the papers and scattering them on the page.  The rest just fell into place, really.

 Do you see those???  I actually busted out some BRADS from my stash!  And I am just loving the Fancy Pants cork elements....

I love the depth that flair adds to a page. Oh and those arrows are fussy cut, too!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been loving just using pre-made titles for my pages!  You can also see some stitching around the edge of the inside paper.

So this is another page I am entering for the Fancy Pants and Gossamer Blue guest designer challenge!  Wish me luck!  :)

Stay Scrappy my friends!