Audrey's Reflection

A few oldies to share...

2012-01-30T01:13:00.005-06:00

I have a pile of almost finished layouts in my scrap space and I finally sat down the other night and got some of them done. Most of them only needed a bit of journaling. Why do I stall so much with the writing?????

Anyways, this first page I actually just created in the past week and we did it at my class the other day at Scrappn' Savvy. I am so in love with this Head Over Heels collection by Lily Bee.

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Charlotte finally started riding her tricycle by actually pushing the pedals and steering instead of using her feet! It takes FOREVER to just get around the block, but we do it! :)

I found a free bicycle svg file and cut it out using SCAL and my Cricut. I painted it with a little bit of silver paint to give it some sheen.

These next few pages were inspired by a crop at Cocoa Daisy back in November. I started them during the crop but just finished them the past few days.

This one was based on a sketch by Vicki Boutin.

When we were in Gatlinburg last fall. Keith and I got about a half an hour away from the kids as we went up on the skylift while my SIL and BIL watched the kids. It was the first 30 minutes that we had been without kids together!!!! :) We didn't know if we wanted to go back down, but we did! :)

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Anyways, lots of fun Studio Calico papers and American Crafts embellies on here. It's hard to tell, but I have some Studio Calico cloud rub ons under the title.

I also used some of the Studio Calico tissue tape trim to make this flower and used my iTop and some Amy Tan fabric paper to make the brad!

And this lat one I'l share today is also from the Cocoa Daisy crop. I think the challenge was to use holes on your page and a grid. On 11/11/11 I took 11 photos and just did a simple grid design for the page. Not many papers and embellies here since there are so many photos. Everything is Lily Bee, except the twine which is from The Twinery.

(yes that's my naked daughter with a bucket on her head right near the edge of the pool)

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OK, back tomorrow with another group of layouts! And please don't forget to vote for me for round 3 of the layout contest!! CHECK THE POST HERE.

Quilt Inspired for Practical Scrappers...

2012-01-28T02:14:00.001-06:00

I have a quick post to ask you to vote for me for the 3rd round of the layout contest at Practical Scrappers. The challenge this week was to create a page based on one of 3 quilts. You can see the details of the challenge here.

Here is my page based on an interlacing squares quilt:

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And here is the quilt that inspired this page.

I knew right away what I wanted to do when I saw this quilt! I have had these Studio Calico frames since the summer and I wanted to put them to use. I remember seeing a layout at the Studio Calico booth at CKC-Houston back in May, but I searched all over the web to see who made it and I can't find it anywhere!

Anyways, I laid out the frames how I wanted them and then carefully marked and cut them where I needed to.

I chose bright colors to work with because of the colors in the photo of the quilt. These Studio Calico papers were perfect (there's a bit of Jillibean in there, too).

I loved the little chipboard tag with the arrow, and I wanted it to point to the photo, so I decided to tuck it under the frame.

Kyler is getting so big. But he is SUCH a needy baby (I hear a lot of people say that about boys). He whines a LOT if I'm not carrying him, but when he has my attention, he is all laughs and giggles!!

THANKS FOR VOTING FOR ME!!!!

"Twinkle" and "Gump Gump" for Glitz

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

For my Glitz pages this month, I am going to share a double pager and my take on this months inspiration piece. This is the photo that we were to draw some inspiration from for a layout or project.

I loved the soft green color of the evergreens and the bright white stars, so I used them on my page. There is a tinge of silver on some of the evergreen branches in the photo, so I used some silver paint and splattered it on the background.

There is a bit of dark blue tulle under the photo and the circle shape in the inspiration piece inspired me to stitch a circle frame around my photo.

I found a cutting file online that I used to cut the evergreen branches. I misted the paper with a bit of green mist to give it a bit of contrast aginst the background.

I then cut a few stars and scattered the on the page, and hung my title on some twine much like how the word "snow" was hung in the inspiration photo.

For this next page, I really wanted to use a lot of pink to showcase the girly theme of my page! My little girl is really into putting on makeup like mommy does (and she calls it "gump gump"). I had so many photos of this particular makeup incident that I had to do a two pager.

I used two different papers for the background but connected them using the houndstooth print. The girly flowers, prints, and phrases all fit together so perfectly.

Thanks for joining me this month!

Supplies:
Twinkle
Dance in the Sunshine "Floral" paper
Dance in the Sunshine "Raindrops" paper
Vintage Blue "Motif" paper
Vintage Blue Trims
Vintage Blue Glitzers
Other: Paint, Ranger; Wood Alphas, Studio Calico; Software, Craft Edge and svgCuts.

Put Gump Gump On
Beautiful Dreamer "Damask" paper
Beautiful Dreamer "Polka" paper
Beautiful Dreamer "Houndstooth" paper
Beautiful Dreamer "Stripe" paper
Beautiful Dreamer Whatnots
Beautiful Dreamer Title Stickers
Beautiful Dreamer Epoxy Stickers
Beautiful Dreamer Peek A Boos
Teeny Alpha White Type

NEWS! I made the Birds of a Feather kit club! My first reveal...

2012-01-20T15:07:00.005-06:00

Well I just realized that I never announced the wonderful news that I made the Birds of a Feather Kit Club!

I am so very excited to get to be the first to post some creations I made with the upcoming February kit featuring lots of Basic Grey "Kissing Booth".

PLEASE VOTE FOR MY LAYOUT AT THE PRACTICAL SCRAPPERS LAYOUT CONTEST UNTIL WEDNESDAY JANUARY 25. Here is the link: LAYOUT CONTEST ROUND 2

On this first page, I was so eager to use the little triangle pennants from the Die Cut pack in the kit, and of course the houndstooth paper. I was surprised to see that in the die cut pack there are also some transparencies in there, too! Very cool...

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I splattered a bit of yellow paint for contrast and did some machine stitching with some neutral thread.

I got a new Ipad for Christmas and we have all been having a blast taking fun photos all the time as well as finding lots of new apps! :)

Next up, I wanted to create a project based on this image I found on Pinterest.

The original souce of this image in from an Etsy shop which you can find here.

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I loved the little hearts on the people, and instead of doing just two people, I did our whole family to create this decor piece!

Join me back on the blog on February 7 for a step by step on how to create this fun wall hanging for your home!

Red Sippy Cup...I Fill You Up...Let's have a party! and some machine stitching....

2012-01-19T01:48:00.002-06:00

There is just over a week left of sketches being posted for the Sketch-a-Thon at Memorable Seasons online store! I chose a sketch from the Srapbooks, Etc. website. I loved the little strips going down the side.

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Charlotte has this red sippy cut that she is "into" lately, and one morning I found myself singing "Red Sippy Cup, I fill you up. Let's have a party!" as I was pouring her some milk! Well it stuck and now we sing it all the time and she pretty much wants this cup all th time, too.

I used papers from Echo Park "Happy Days" and from October Afternoon "Sidewalks", which were both a part of the December kit at Scrapbook Circle! I just love those kits!!!

I painted a white frame around the photo area and then stitched with black thread. I also splattered a bit of black paint. I felt the bottom was missing something, so I added a really thin strip of patterned paper.

Today on the Practical Scrappers blog is a feature about machine sewing. Let me start by telling you what an incredibly hard time I had with these photos. I took them in very low light and they are a bit blurry. Despite all my editing and playing with colors, I could not get rid of the yellowish tint without it looking just awful. So I left it. I had to use these photos because they were part of a "moment". Every color paper I tried, especially warm colors, made them look even more yellow. So then I tried oppisite colors like green and blue, and they didn't help, either. So I just opted for lots of colors on white! I tried to pick a pallette that reminded me of spices.

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For my machine stitching, I used 5 (or 6?) different colored threads and just stitched some random circles. I like the messy look cause if you screw it up, no one notices! :0 I left the ends of the threads, too, cause I like the effect that is had, plus I didn't want to cut all the ends! :)

I raided my stash for some fun bits and used die cuts from Crate Paper, Jillibean Soup, Studio Calico, and American Crafts, plus some brads from Basic Grey and papers from American Crafts and Pebbles.

Charlotte took all the spices out of the cupboard and make a "birthday cake" on the table for froggie. For some reason, every one was upside down. They were supposed to be candles. Sometimes I just wonder....??????

Little Yellow Bicycle sketch challenge!

2012-01-17T11:47:00.001-06:00

I am so happy that I can continue using some of the Wonder & Wishes line from Little Yellow Bicycle for their sketch challenge this month.

This wonderful sketch was created by Liz Qualman. In addition to the LYB blog, check out her sketch blog, HERE.

I used some leftovers of the Wonder & Wishes line for this Christmas layout.

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This coat belonged to my sister in law and she wore it when she was a little girl. It is over 30 years old! Her daughters wore it (one of them wore it at my wedding), and now my daughter gets to wear it! She looked so adorable in it!

I picked up on the grey and plaid in the coat and used papers that completmented those colors and patterns. The plaid border is actually the canvas tape that I taped to some cardstock and then cut the scallop shapes out.

You can join in this sketch challenge at the LYB blog by creating a page using ANY LYB collection and linking it up to the blog!!

Lily Bee for my class...not just for girls!

2012-01-15T23:20:00.002-06:00

Since I had a little boy, I have really been drawn to boyish lines OR trying to find ways to make non-boyish lines look boyish! And that was the challenge I had with this Lily Bee Head Over Heels line.

I chose this line to use in my upcoming class at Scrappn' Savvy. When I hold a class, I try to do a mix of pages, and I know in the past I have leaned a bit more towards doing girly pages! But now I have have trying to balance it a bit more and create boy ones, too!

So here is my first page, which is indeed, girly. My mom came to visit in October and she and Charlotte were in the bathroom while my mom was getting ready, and they both came out with a whole bunch of "gump gump" on (that's what Charlotte calls Makeup! :) ).

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I put my circle punch to work on this one. I love all these papers together...the colors are just so bright and fun. Of course I spent like 30 mins moving the circles around to get the colors distributed like I wanted! :)

I fussy cut some of the doilies from the doily paper and tucked them in here and there and added some pearls to the center. For the journaling block, I used some lined paper from the Memorandum collection.

And now for my boy page! I've decided that you can add the color Navy to anything and it will make it boyish! :) I picked the orange, teal, and grey from the Head Over Heels line, added some accents of navy, and *poof*, I had a boyish page (well there was a bit of designing in there, too!). This page is based on a sketch by Liz at The Scrappiest and is one of the sketches we are using for the Sketch-A-Thon at Memorable Seasons this month!

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I did some light stamping in the background with a text stamp from Stampin' Up and splattered some paint. It was a bit plain after I added my papers and photos, so I added some buttons for a bit more fun.

My little guy is getting so big. He love to wrestle with his stuffed toys on his playmat! He is rolling over all the time and is starting to get his legs under himself and push....he's gonna be a mover!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Some BG Picadilly....

2012-01-13T22:39:00.002-06:00

I went to the Basic Grey blog to get some inspiration on how to use ths BG Picadilly line from my kit this month at Memorable Seasons. I found their current sketch challenge going on with this sketch...

So I used my kit to create this page:

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I didn't intend, at first, to make this a black and white plus one accent color page, but it turned out that way, which mad it a perfect fit for this weeks challenge at The Paper Variety.

I fussy cut some of the black and white flowers from the papers, and on the background I painted with aqua paint using an old credit card! I added some light distress ink around the edges and stitched a border!

I took these photos of Charlotte just the other day. While I was sitting outside with her, I was thinking about last spring when we were out here playing and how much she has grown up in the last year. I got a little choked up about it! And that's where this page came from.... :)

Farewell Sketchy Thursdays!! :(

2012-01-12T09:09:00.001-06:00

I am so sad to hear the announcement today that Sketchy Thursdays blog is closing down. ST has been one of my favorite sketch sites for a few years now. I am so so sad to see that they are closing down, but I totally get it. Maintaining such a great site requires a lot of hard work and time.

When I look back at some of my favorite pages, they have come from Sketchy Thursday sketches. And again, this weeks' is no exception...this is a fav of mine:

I did a little photo shoot in early december with the kids in a Santa hat. Thse photos of Kyler came out so adorable...my brother said he thought he looked like the Elf on the Shelf, and that's all I can think of now when I see this pic!

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I used the beautiful Peppermint collection from Crate Paper..I love these bright colors. I wanted to use a lot of green to contrast the red hat. The collection has little bits of navy in it, so I used some navy paint on the background...helps bring out his eyes. When I saw the Night Before Christmas phrases on the paper, these ones fit so perfectly!

The banner is actually from the sticker border sheet. I mounted it onto cardstock, added some twine, and popped it with pop dots.

Lastly, I wanted to share another page that I did for the Sketch-a-thon going on over at Memorable Seasons. I use a sketch from one of my favorite sketch artists, Jana Eubank.

I used my kit from this month featuring Basic Grey Picadilly (I needed a little break from Christmas stuff!).

These photos of Charlotte swinging on the big kid swing brought back so many memories from my childhood and that's what the journaling is all about!

A few things going on

2012-01-10T10:10:00.001-06:00

I'm finally starting to get back into the swing of things here at home. The decorations are now all put away, and the house is starting to come back together. I really haven't scrapped that much in the past 6 weeks and I am having serious withdraw!!

Over at Memorable Seasons this month we are having a Sketch-a-thon... 20 sketches throughout the month. Stop by and check it out!

One of my sketches that I posted is this weeks Sketchy Thursdays sketch.

And here is my take using my kt this month from Memorable Seasons featuring Basic Grey Picadilly collection.

I kept this page pretty simple because I wanted to focus on my photo. The colors in the papers complemented my pic really well.

I also have ome other pages to share that I did a while ago but haven't gotten around to posting. I made them back in November for a crop at Cocoa Daisy, but I am just getting around to posting them now! I still have a few more that I am working on, too.

Charlotte is really starting to like to play dress up, but she seems to only like bottoms and doesn't wear tops! She also just recently learned to ride her tricycle, too, so these are some things that she has been into lately...

I had to make this page really Girly since these are Girly things! I used some older papers from The Girls' Paperie.

I made a tulle flower to kinda match her skirt in the photo. What's more Girly that tulle?

I also did some subtle stitched circles in the background and splattered with some orange maya mist.

And lastly, a page that reflects what's been going on lately in this house! I finally feel like we are at some sort of "normal" rountine. Well, not toally normal, but at least somewaht predicatble. We have a loose schedule, and naps and feedings are starting to come at regular times. I love this page.

For my title, I actually hand wrote the word "normalcy" on some patterned paper and then cut it out with an exacto knife. I really loved this technique and I am going to do it again!

Since this was kind of a boyish page, I added in lots of little metal bits. I haven't used brads in forever. I hope they make a comeback because I have a ton! If you didn't notice, these papers are actually the Peppermint collection from Crate Paper! So versatile!

Thanks for stopping by!

Top Ten of 2011

2012-01-01T08:55:00.000-06:00

This year I completed approximately 200 layouts (almost 50 less than last year, but I DID have a baby this year! :) ). I did over 20 cards, and at least 5 mini albums, plus a ton of altered projects, too!! I had three layouts published in print (all in Scrapbook Trends) and had requests for four more to be published in 2012. I worked for a couple kit clubs, 3 manufacturers, and two online stores. I also started teaching at my local scrapbook store. I had a very productive scrappy year!!!

I am here to share my top ten layouts of the year. This process is so hard to do. Some I picked because I love the story, and others I picked because I love the design.

I want to thank all of my blog followers, old and new, for all the comments and support you leave throughout the year! It just makes my day to see a new comment on a project I have done.

So in no particular order, here are my top favorite layouts of 2011!

A Snowy Surprise and a Baby Album

2011-12-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

A Snowy Surprise and Baby’s First Day!

Welcome Winter! I am here to share a winter themed layout that I did using some Beautiful Dreamer and Dance In the Sunshine papers from Glitz Designs.

I have always loved light pinks and aquas on snow themed pages, and the colors that my daughter is wearing just fit perfectly! In October, we traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and there happened to be snow on some of the mountain tops one chilly, early morning. It was absolutely beautiful to see. My daughter hasn’t seen much snow before, so it was quite a surprise to her when she picked it up and felt how cold it was!

On my background, I stamped a whole bunch of snowflakes and then heat embossed them with some clear embossing powder. I then misted the page a bit with some white spray mist.

To make the large snowflakes, I used some of the elastic ribbon with the pom-pom ends and just drew a snowflake shape with some glue onto cream colored cardstock. I added bits of the ribbon and then hand cut out the design. And a little Stickles makes everything sparkle!

When my daughter was born in 2009, I made a mini album documenting her first day, so I had to do the same with my little guy that was born this past July. I used two different chipboard albums and combined the pages which were different shapes. On some of the pages I backed them with papers that better matched my color scheme.

On the cover I machine stitched around a transparency and then tightened some aqua tulle around the front tied with an aqua pom-pom trim.

I chose a few of my favorite photos from the day and a whole punch of my favorite phrase stickers and whatnots from the Glitz collections.

I also layered in some of the Peek A Boos transparncies in between the pages.

I added some journaling strips on each page, but told the entire story in the journaling box at the end of the album.

I am so glad that I got to document this wonderful day for us all to remember!

Supplies-Snow Surprised:

Glitz Designs “Beautiful Dreamer, Houndstooth” paper

Glitz Designs “Beautiful Dreamer, Toile” paper”

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine, Birds” paper

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue Trims”

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue Peek A Boos”

Glitz Designs “Teeny Alphas White Type Stickers”

Other:Punches-Martha Stewart, Fiskars, The Paper Studio; Alphas-American Crafts; Stamps-Close To My Heart; Embossing Powder-American Crafts; Spray Mist-Studio Calico.

Supplies-Kyler's First Day:

Glitz Designs “Dance in the Sunshine” Chipboard Album

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine-Damask” paper

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine-Floral” paper

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine-Polka” paper

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Title Stickers

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Epoxy Stickers

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Glitzers

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Trims

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Peek A Boos

Glitz Designs “Dance In the Sunshine” Whatnots

Glitz Designs “Beautiful Dreamer” Whatnots

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Chipboard Album

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Peek A Boos

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Giant Rhinestones

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Glitzers

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Epoxy Stickers

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Titles Stickers

Glitz Designs Teeny Alpha Pearl Stickers

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue” Journaling Stickers

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue- Stripe” paper

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue-Rose” paper

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue-Motif” paper

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue-Floral” paper

Other: Punches, EK Success, The Paper Studio, Martha Stewart; Paint-Ranger; letter stickers-Sassafrass Lass.

This little piggie....

2011-12-18T20:38:00.000-06:00

I can't believe that my baby is 5 months old already! I took this photo when he was about 6 weeks old and it seems like just yesterday!

I used some beautiful new papers from some Pink Paislee collections, Vintage Vogue and Nantucket.

I splattered some paint on the background and machine stitched a square aroun the photo area. I also machine stitched some of the words in the word search! Can you find them? :)

I fussy cut the circle patterned paper and some flowers, too. On the flower centers I added some beads for a bit of texture and bling.

I loved the little pop of black on this page, so I went with a black journaling spot for a change with some white pen lettering.

Well we are off for the holidays and I have a few scheduled posts here and there, but in the meantime, have a VERY Merry Christmas!

Sketchy Thursdays and lots of Echo Park

2011-12-15T15:58:00.003-06:00

My kit this month at Memorable Seasons contained the Echo Park Times & Seasons line which has so absolutely fantastic colors!!!! I thought the teal, moss, cranberry, and navy would be perfect for a Christmas page, and so was this weeks sketch at Sketchy Thursdays! Here is my page:

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And here is the sketch:

I splattered some navy Maya Mist on the white background and zigzag stitched on the teal and red background squares. Then I made a tree shape with some green paper squares with my photos.

I added some little pearls and some twine to decorate my tree!

I also created this page for this months Member of the Month scraplift challenge at Memorable Seasons. It was a lift of a page by Laura Cox (scrapaddict4).

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This is my dad when he was about 5 years old (1952ish), we think! He looks so much like my brothers when they were little1 I love the teal and green together with the cream and the black to old the "old time" feeling. "You're the Bees Knees" is something my dad would totally say! :)

And lastly I have a layout that I did a few weeks ago. I love the trend of using shapes like diamons, chevrons, hexagons, and zig zags on pages right now, so I posed this challenge at the MS message board for this month. Here is the page I created using chvrons made from triangles.

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I continued the chevron theme by using a zig zag punch on the top left and some zig zag stitching along the top right edge.

I realized after I photographed this page that I forgot to write my journaling...duh. :)

Thanks for stopping by today!!! Head over to Sketchy Thursdays to participate in this weeks sketch challenge, and head to the Memorable Seasons forum to see all of this months challenges!

Little Yellow Bicycle Cycling Team reveal! Wonder & Wishes...

2011-12-08T08:31:00.000-06:00

I am THRILLED to be sharing some projects with you from the Wonder & Wishes line! When I received all the wonderful goodies that go along with this collection, I kept asking myself, “OK, do I want to photo of the tree? Stockings? The kids with Santa? Our Christmas villiage?” Truth is, this line is so versatile that you can scrap any holiday tradition with it!

My dad just visited recently and brought along some old family photos (by request, of course), so I decided to use some of the old Christmas ones that he had.

This first page is a photo of my grandparents from 1942 with their first born, my Uncle (they ended up having 5). What struck me about this photo was all the tinsel on the tree! I haven’t seen tinsel on a Christmas tree in years! So I decided to go with the silver inspiration. I splattered some silver metallic paint on my page and made some silver flourishes with some silver fabric wire. For the rest of the page I wanted to stick with a pretty simple green and red color combo and this was the result! I love the diecut paper pieces…perfect for adding just the right shapes to your page.

Another old photo for my 2^nd page, too. Not quite sure about the date but probably around 1950. I splattered some white paint on the kraft paper and added some machine stitching here and there.

This card kind of happened by accident. I had laid the paper circle garland down on a piece of paper and it fell into a shape that reminded me of a tree, and voila! I love the sentiment stickers…they are great for doing quick and beautiful Christmas cards.

The bright green corrugated cardboard elements add such great contrast against the deep red. Here is a quick and simple card.

Lastly, I really wanted to use some of the canvas tapes and highlight them on a simple package. I used some fabric glue to glue the little pom-poms on the ends of the twine to create a cute bow.

I want to thank everyone at Little Yellow Bicycling for having me as part of the cycling team!

Wonder & Wishes Supplies:

Christmas Back Then

Patterned Papers: Christmas Text, Simple Stripe, Decorative Edge Cardstock

Chipboard Stickers-Words, Fresh Verse, Favorite Pieces

Journaling Cards

Clear Cuts Shapes

Stick Pins

Paper Flower Kit

Flower Button Dots

Jewel Stickers

The Stockings Were Hung
Cardstock: Bazzill
Patterned Papers: Home For Christmas, Little Red Hot Dot
Chipboard Shapes
Corrugated Alphas
Twine Spools
Cardstock Stickers

Merry Christmas Card
Confetti Garland
Clear Stickers
Cardstock: Bazzill

Joy Card
Patterned Paper-Red Flourish
Corrugated Shapes
Paper Flower Kit

Gift Box
Mini Pom-Poms & Twine
Canvas Tape

Memorable Seasons DESIGN TEAM CALL

2011-12-05T01:17:00.000-06:00

New Design Team members search

Memorable Seasons http://www.memorableseasons.com/
is holding a Design Team search until Dec 31. A decision will be made by Jan 5.

Memorable Seasons is an on-line scrapbook store, gallery and message board dedicated to documenting all the seasons in your life. We are searching for one more designer to complete our team.

To apply, please email the following to momawhite99@yahoo.com
1.links to your online gallery, blog and/or resume, if available
2. your full contact information: name, phone number, email address, and mailing address. Include your message board name if you sign up for the gallery under a name other than your given name.
3. a short paragraph or two about why you want to be one of our designers and what you would add to our team
4. a list of your current scrapbooking commitments – other DT work, etc
5. and then attach the following items

photos or scans of 3 total projects to include
• your favorite layout
• one card
• one altered item or an additional card
We prefer those who are not currently on a design team affiliated with a store. Manufacturer, sketch site or kit clubs with no stores attached are okay. Additional details can be found here.

Design team members will receive a monthly kit sometime after the 10^th of the month. You are required to create and share at least 4 projects using mostly the items in your kit on the 1^st of each month. One of those 4 projects must be a card. You will also be required to choose a layout of the week, issue a DT challenge and post to the blog on a rotating basis with the other DT members. Other requirements include active participation on the message board, on line crops, occasional happy hour duties, creating a layout based on a monthly sketch and any other promotions that may come up. Term is 6 months with an option to extend by 6 more months and a limit of 1 year. If selected to join our team your initial 6 month term will begin in Feb 2012.

Sketchy Thursdays 12.1..and some good news

2011-12-01T08:56:00.000-06:00

Seriously??? December??? Already???? I haven't even finished my advent calendar yet! *sigh* so much to do so little time!!!

I haven't been that active on my blog the past two weeks, but lemme tell ya, I've got about 10 layouts to photograph and upload!! :) They will all be appearing over the next couple of weeks.

I never mentioned the good news that I recieved a couple of weeks ago....I was selected to be a part of the Little Yellow Bicycle Cycling Team!!! I will be working with the Wonder & Wishes collection. I just got my box of goodies two days ago, and it is FILLED with gorgeous gorgeous things!! It was like an early Christmas.

Well here is this weeks sketch at Sketchy Thursdays:

I started subscribing to Scrapbook Circle kit club again! I really missed their kits!!! I used lots the November kit on this page.

Kyler wasn't really into fall that much. :) He was a bit too little. I tried to lay him in the leaves to get a few photos, but he hated the crunching sound and started crying. But he did enjoy just looking at one simply bright leaf!

I like the clusters of circles, so I decided to create a border with a whole bunch of them and a few accordian flowers. I love the light blue and orange and brown combo for fall pages!

OK, off to work on some pages! :) Happy December!

A Glitzy Tree

2011-11-29T11:58:00.001-06:00

A "Glitzy" Tree

Hope you are getting into the Holiday spirit! Today I'm gonna share a quick altered project that you can easily make to Glitz up your home for the holidays!

I simply took 2 sheets of the Vintage Blue Floral paper and misted a bit with some dark green spray mist. I then cut them into 1.25”x12” strips and punched with my Martha Stewart pine needle punch. I hot glued the strips around the tree and layered them as I went up. I added some of the Glitz Designs Giant Rhinestones as decorations, and now I have a beautiful Glitzy Tree to add to my table centerpiece!

Supplies:

Glitz Designs “Vintage Blue-Floral” paper

Glitz Designs Giant Rhinestones-“Vintage Blue, Beautiful Dreamer, and Dance in the Sunshine”

Other: Punch by Martha Stewart, spray mist by Studio Calico, floral foam cone, mica snow

3 Christmases mini album and some cards

2011-11-22T09:28:00.001-06:00

Today I am sharing my last post for The Quilted Fish featuring Bazzill papers and products.

I don't know about you, but I am already starting to get into the holiday spirit!! I never got around to doing much with last year's Christmas photos, so I decided to use the Holiday Style papers to make a little mini album!

This album is a mixed album which includes pages that are chipboard, cardboard, canvas, and acrylic. I took the pages apart and added some 4x6 cards from the Lickity Slips papers and punched them with my Bind It All to slip in between some of the pages.

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I plan to do my journaling on the front and cak covers and on some of the 4x6 cards.

On this cardboard page, I tore away some of the top layers of the cardboard to expose the corrugated lines and painted them red.

Back of the cardboard page, and front of the felt tag. I machine stitched around the large felt tag and created a pocket with patterned paper and ribbons. The pockets hold a lot of the larger photos that I didn't put onto the pages.

Back of the felt piece and another 4x6 card.

Back of a 4x6 card and front of a chipboard piece with 4 photos.

Chipboard page with a banner that I cut from patterned paper and the facing page is actually acrylic, but it is a bit hard to see from this view

Banner detail.

Acrylic detail. I stamped the acrylic with Stazon ink with some Christmas trees and stars. Then I painted the backsides so that you could still see the ink patterns. I splattered some blue paint as well.

Back of the acrylic page and another 4x6 card.

back of 4x6 card and front of canvas. I misted the front size of the canvas with green mist and a mask and stitched around the outside with black thread.

On the back of the canvas, I misted some red stars and handstiched around them with green thread.

Details on the misting and stitching.

This is the back cover where I will finish my journaling! :)

I just love this album and wish you could see it in real life!

And lastly, since I had a few scraps left over, I did a few quick cards!

I want to sincerely thank Amanda for having me as a guest designer and perhaps you will see more from me in the future!!!! THANKS!!!

Some old and new Glitz

2011-11-21T09:10:00.000-06:00

When I first saw the Laced with Grace collectionn from Glitz months ago, my first thought was how perfect the colors were for fall photos. I espeically love the piece with the plaid print on it. So this time of year is the perfect time for me to use up these beautiful papers!

I embossed some kraft cardstock that matched my background cardstock with a burlap plate to give my page a bit more texture.

The top layer of the flower I cut using a die and muslin and then misted it with a bit of yellow. The bottom part is a piece of the "Paper Layers" paper that I rolled and fringed.

I used some of the banner pieces from the cardstock stickers and mounted them on a thin piece of muslin as the string. I tied knots in between each pennant.

This next page I really wanted to make "fun". My little guy just loves to watch his mobile....he is mesmerized by it!

I wanted to pick up on the spinning motion, so I cut a circle frame from patterened paper and then stitched around it with back thread to show movemement.

On the background, I used a herringbone template as a mask and painted over it with a white paint dauber to added a bit more pattern. A little red heart on the left side of the page picks up on the red in the photo and draws your eyes across the page.

Thanks for joining me today!

Supplies:

My Fall Favorite
Glitz Designs "Laced With Grace" Patterned Papers
Glitz Designs "Laced With Grace" Cardstock Stickers
Glitz Designs "Laced With Grace" Paper Layers
Glitz Designs "Wood Grain" Alphas
Cardstock: Bazzill
Embossing Plate: Sizzix
Brad: Basic Grey
Punches: Martha Stewart and K Success

He Loves That Mobile
Glitz Designs "Vintage Blue Toile" paper
Glitz Designs "Dance in the Sunshine Floral" paper
Glitz Designs "Afternoon Muse" paper
Glitz Designs "Beautiful Dreamer Toile" paper
Glitz Designs"Dance in the Sunhine" Title Stickers
Glitz Designs "Beautiful Dreamer" Epoxy Stickers
Mask: The Crafter's Workshop
Paint: Ranger
Other: thread

Some Thanksgiving Decor and a layout...

2011-11-19T08:25:00.001-06:00

I used this month's store kit from Memorable Seasons to create some fun Thanksgiving decor for the house! My challenge this week was to use this ad below from an old Real Simple magazine to create a project or layout.

I really loved the simple line drawings arranged in these frames. It reminded me that I had these stamps that I have always loved but never used. They are some older ones from Imaginesce. I stamped each leaf and the title on some cream cardstock and then cut black frames with my cricut and some are dies. I arranged them on an orange piece of cardstock and added a ribbon below and its done! Very easy and very pretty hanging in the hallway as you enter our house!

I was working with the bracket shaped dies and punches and started punching some patterned papers, too. I decided that I was going to make some really simple place settings for Thanksgiving this year. We are having about 12 people total...I can't wait...I love to entertain!

I typed up each persons name, cut it into a banner strip, added a piece of ribbon and then stapled it to the card. I fussy cut some leaves for the front and made a simple tent for the back to make them stand up.

And lastly, a layout to share. I used a Sketchy Thursdays sketch from a few weeks ago.

I just love these photos of Charlotte picking up acorns when we were on our trip to the Smoky's a few weeks ago. But what I love most is the chipped nailpolish and the dirt under her fingernails.....just how a girl should be in my book! :) So that is what my journaling is about..

I used some Studio Calico papers and embellies.

It was a bit hard to find some papers that went on this page because of the colors in Charlotte's shirt...i really played around a lot until I found the ones I liked. I used some FabRips and tissue paper and stitched them under the photo.

Of course some fussy cutting of leaves and circles.

And I really love the look of journaling strips....I need to use them more.

Last weekend was the online crop at Cocoa Daisy...I have done EIGHT pages so far! :) I can't wait to share them all with you in one post! :)

Sketchy Thursdays..."Hello World"

2011-11-17T15:03:00.000-06:00

My little guy is getting SOOO big! We had his 4 month appointment today (shots=yuck :( ). He grew 2 inches and gained 3 pounds in 2 months! He is now in the 50%-tile! Woo Hoo!

He is getting so cute with his laughs and giggles and wants to sit up all the time to see what is going on around him. I used these cute photos and this week's Sketchy Thursday sketch!

I was also inspired by the wonderful products in the September Scrapbook Circle kit, which I used to make this page. Bright green, sky blue and orange are one of my favorite color combos right now.

I misted a bit with some OA Sprinkler's in "Brown Bag" and added some circles that I cut and punched from patterned paper. I stitched over the circles to add some movement to the page.

A few Amy Tan bits an stickers plus a little banner are all the embellies I used. I really like the simplicty of this page! :)

This weeks sketch will last 2 weeks because next week is Thanksgiving, so you have PLENTY of time to enter!!!! Have fun!

Tomorrow I am going to share some Thanksgiving projects I have been working on!

Christmas Organizing and some cards

2011-11-16T08:41:00.001-06:00

I am so excited for the holidays this year! I broke out my huge boxes of Christmas scrapping stuff and they were really a diaster. So I went through them and organized them. I wanted to start to get some things organized for my December Daily.

I happened to have an extra Clip It Up base unit, so I decided that I would use it for my Christmas things for the next couple months so I have have everything right at my fingertips while doing my Dec. Daily.

Going through my stash, I found the ginormous pile of Dear Lizzy Christmas stuff that I had won last year from the American Crafts blog. I really really love that collection, so I decided that THAT'S what I am going to use this year for my Dec. Daily. I really don't need any more Christmas lines.

Along the way, I found pile of scraps papers from this line, so I whipped up a few cards! I am happy to say that I have about 20 handmade Christmas cards from the past few months! Here they are!

Pinecone Ornament Tutorial-Practical Scrappers

2011-11-14T08:00:00.001-06:00

From now until Christmas, you can visit the Practical Scrappers blog everyday to get some great ideas for Christmas decor, pages, cards, and so much more. Today I want to share a quick tutorial on making a cute little pinecone ornament!

Here's what you'll need:
*~60 hearts cut out of brown cardstock (about 1.5" high). Use your die cutting machine to make this step a LOT faster. But a heart punch will work, too.
*styrofoam egg
*glue gun
*glitter.fake snow
*ribbons

First, take all of your hearts and pinch each lobe to make a crease in each to give the cone a bit of dimension.

Starting at the tip of the cone, tightly wrap a few hearts around each other and trim off the pointy ends. Glue to th small tip of the egg.

Working your way up the cone, start gluing and overlapping hearts. You want the lobes on one layer to be inbetween the lobes on the next layer.

When you reach the other end, you need to push the points down and hot glue them to the egg.

Add some glue to the lobes of each heart and sprinkle with loose glitter or fake snow, or you could use stickles.

Add some ribbons to the top with some pins. Hang on your tree and VOILA!

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Hope you enjoyed this tutorial today!

Sketchy Thursdays and a lift!

2011-11-10T12:34:00.001-06:00

Good Thursday morning!!!! Things are going great in this household since the baby finally started sleeping through the night about a week ago!!

I really really love the colors on my page for this weeks Sketchy Thursdays reveal! Here is the great sketch:

And here is my page. I am still working with some photos from last fall!

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I don't know what came over me when I started thinking about putting a pink strip on this page with the yellow background, but I actually really like how it came out! I think it picks up on some of the color in Charlottes jacket.

I cut the orange frame with my Cricut from an svg file and outlined it with black and white pens.

Of course I fussy cut out a lot of the flowers to add to the page. I machined stitched a frame around the photos, too, to group them together a bit more.

In a related note, we do a monthly scraplift of a member at Memorable Seasons, and I had another photo left over from the same shoot above, so I used it on my lift page to make this a double page spread!

On this page I decided to really showcase the pink and yellow and I think it works! :)

TFL today and be sure to check out the fabulous prize for this weeks sketch at Sketchy Thursdays!

Luggage Tag tutorial and more Bazzill projects...

2011-11-08T10:01:00.003-06:00

I have got some more exciting Bazzil projects to share with Amanda's paper from The Quilted Fish: A tutorial and a layout today!

Before I share, I just want to state that I am an amateur at sewing at best, so when all you seamstresses see my sewing skills (or lack thereof), please don’t cringe!

Amanda had visited my blog and made a comment about some luggage tags that I had made, so I decided to revisit these with her line of papers and fabric Divinely Sweet. So here is a quick tutorial!

I started by making some 4x6 cards that are going to be the actual tags. The front I decorated with flowers and such, and the back sides I used some lined prints to write my address and other info you might need on a luggage tag. I purposely didn’t use any bulky embellishments because although I want them to be pretty, they have to be somewhat practical, too.

Next, to protect the cards, I simply used a refill e protector from a 8x8” scrapbook. Fold the page protector in half vertically and crease. Machine stitch just to the left and right of the crease and then cut along the crease to create 2 pockets.

You may need to trim your cards a little bit to fit inside the pockets. Next, trim off some of the top of the pockets so they measure about 4” x 7”, leaving about an inch of page protector at the top.

On this excess edge of page protector, you are going to cut the back side off just to the top of the card. In this photo, you can see that the back of my card is showing on top, and I have trimmed the excess page protector at the top, but left the front piece on…this is so you can take the card in and out.

Next I cut about a 3” x 4” piece of fabric, folded it in half lengthwise, and freehand cut some scallops on the long edges. Open it back up and stitch this to the front of the page protector close to the card. See how the pocket still opens to take the card out?

Now fold the fabric and do a stitch along the top edge. Add a button hole so that you can hang it with ribbon.

On the bottom edges, take two, 7” pieced of fabric, baste and pull to make ruffles. REMOVE THE CARD and stitch each ruffle to the bottom edge on each side! Add some pretty ribbon and you’re done!

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Now for another project that is more my style! A scrapbook page!

I don’t do double pagers that often, but I really need to start doing more because I have a ton of photos!!

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When I saw the Holiday Style papers, I thought of these photos of my daughter with that hat on immediately, and did a page about our adventures in the snow that day!

The cardstock is glazed cardstock by Bazzill that has glazed snowflakes on it. This is a pretty simple design, but I try to keep it more simple where there are a lot of colors and patterns involved. The snowflake transparencies are from Maya Road.

Thanks for joining me this week and I will be back next week to share my last project using more of the Holiday Style collection!!

Attitude of Gratitude: Journal and first few days

2011-11-06T21:42:00.002-06:00

Last year I read about Tessa Buys' Attitude of Gratitude process towards the end of November and was so bummed that I didn't get to it earlier. So I was so excited to start it this year!

I decided that I wanted to keep a simple daily journal with some brief thoughts of what I was thankful for that day and include some of the days memories.

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For my format, I wanted to keep it simple. I love the Amy Tan journal that is available by American Crafts, so I built my album with that one in mind. I used scraps of paper from my two favorite paper lines recently: the Amy Tam line and the Random line by Crate Paper.

I took some leftover papers and cut them to a maximum of 7x10" (which would be 7"x5" when folded). I had a lot of scraps that were smaller, so I included them, too, but just made sure that the would fit into a 5x7" format. I collected all my scraps, scored the papers (and I scored some unevely to add some chracter), and then stitched down the middle.

For the covers, I cut two pieces of chipboard 5 1/2" x 7 1/2" and covered the insides with some Amy Tan fabric paper, and the outsides I used real wood paper by Creative Imaginations. Yes, it is real wood. I splatted a bit of orange paint and then bound the covers with some FabRips from Studio Calico. I left a bit of space between the two covers on the binding to accomodate the size of the journal. Some chipboard letters, fabric heart (which I cut by hand and machine stitched), and some stitching under the title. I then punched holes with my crop a dile in the binding and in the inside pages and tied it all together with a bit of baker's twine.

I took out a bumch of stickers, rubons, and journaling spots from my stash. I limited myself to stickers and rub ons because I don't want this one to be too bulky. But I may add a few ribbons here and there. I am also considering adding in a few photos, too, but we will see!

I am so excited to go through this process this month! I will be back at the month's end with a wrap up and to share my favorite pages! THANKS for stopping by!

So Happy....

2011-11-02T12:45:00.001-05:00

I made this page a few weeks ago and we did it in my class at Scrappn' Savvy. This is one of my favs!!! You can see a whole bunch fo stitching projects at Practical Scappers today!

I tried a new stitching technique on this page that I have never really done before. I did some large patches of zig zag stitches with my machine, back and forth. I initially wanted to do it just under my title to make the title stand off the page a but more, but then I added a few other areas, too becuase I loved how it looked! I used white thread because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, so I didn't want it to be too bold.

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Some more Quilted Fish/Bazzill projects...

2011-11-01T09:41:00.001-05:00

If you missed my first post on my collaboration with Amanda at The Quilted Fish, please go check it out here!
Using fabric on scrapbooking pages is a big trend, so it was so awesome that Amanda sent me some samples of fabric to work with as well!! Each of my projects today uses a bit of fabric here and there!

First up is my layout. I snapped this photo of me and my daughter one day after taking a shower. She wanted to put a towel on her head like mommy...she is such a girly girl! :) I just love pink and green combos for girls!

I did a bit of splattering with paint and stitched around the outside of my page with red thread. I specifically positioned the crown above Charlotte's head like that! Most of the time on my pages, you will see a visual triangle of three elements that help your eye flow across the page. In this case, there are three cut out flowers.

The flower near the title I made with some red fabric. I just cut some small strips and used a large glue dot. I started on the outside of the large glue dot and spiraled the fabric to the middle.

Again, I have a few cards to share, too!

Banners are another hot trend, and I just did a simple banner on this card by cutting out some triangles of fabric and stitching them to some blue background paper that I splattered with some white paint.

And this card I used a square of fabric that I stitched right to the front of my card. I fussy cut some flowers, punched a butterfly and added a sentiment to make a quick and pretty card!

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I just love the way that fabric adds such a rich element of texture to my scrappy projects! Thanks for joining me this week! I have a fun tutorial coming up next week with a few more projects, too!

Worth Remembering....Sketchy Thursdays reveal

2011-10-27T10:20:00.000-05:00

We had such a fantastic time on our trip and I have so many photos, but this is one of my favorites, and the first one I scrapped! Charlotte had so much fun playing in the leaves, and really started doing it all on her own...I didn't have to tell her to lay in them or throw them of crunch them...she just started going at it. She cried when I told her it was time to go.

I used this weeks sketch at Sketchy Thursdays:

I love the fall feel of the Crate Paper Farmhouse line, so I used it on this page. I stuck to the sketch quite literally.

I have been using premade diecut titles a lot on my pages recently....it takes the guesswork out of having to come up with a creative title!

I used a small oak leaf punch and drew in some lines with a black pen. The paint on the background I mixed to match the color of the leaves.

I wanted to pick up on the bright blue color of Charlotte's eyes, so I used the blue polka dot paper and a few other blue accents here and there. This page was a bit simple for me, but I love the way it highlights my photo.

Halloween Banner with Clip It Up

2011-10-26T08:09:00.001-05:00

I am very excited to share this project with you today using the tab dividers from the Clip It Up!

The Clip It Up comes with some nice tab dividers that you can use to separate your stash into certain categories and make it easier to find things. I decided to use mine for a different purpose! These tags make a fantastic base for a Halloween Banner. Here is a quick run through of how I made the banner.

First, did you know that you can emboss these tabs with embossing plates??? I tried the first one, hoping it would work, and it came out just beautifully! I used four different embossing plates on my tabs.

Next I use a die to cut out some scalloped circles from orange tulle and layered lots of circle together.

I used a punch to punch a bracket shape from this fantastic Echo Park Halloween line. I inked the edges of each piece and added a chipboard letter by American Crafts.

The using a hot glue gun, I added the tulle flower to the lower portion of the tab and some orange pom-pom trim to the bottom edge. Then I pop-dotted the punched bracket shape and letter on top.

To string up my tabs, I layered some orange and black buttons on some velvet ribbon and tied them around the ribbon.

I was originally going to stitch them to the ribbon, but I found that by tying them, I could slid them around to make them evenly spaced.

I added my tabs to the ribbons and Voila!! Here is my completed banner!

I hope that you can find some creative ways to use these tab dividers!

Guest Designer for The Quilted Fish (Bazzill)..

2011-10-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

It no secret that the fabric trend in scrapbooking is pretty hot. A lot of paper companies are having their designs turned into fabrics. But I know of someone who did it the other way around! Her name is Amanda Herring and she is a fabric designer. She was looking for a paper manufacturer that would turn her fabric prints into printed papers, and Bazzill came to the rescuse! :)

How we came to meet up is a bit of a long story...kind of a friend of a friend type of thing, but anyways, here we are and I couldn't be more excited!! Amanda has asked me to do some projects with her new paper lines and share them on our blogs! Her blog is The Quilted Fish, and you will find tons of great fabric and sewing ideas on there!
I will be posting some projects over the next four weeks which I hope inspire and encourage you to start playing with these beautiful papers.

OK, so now onto some goodies that I created with the wonderful wonderful products that Amanda sent to me! I got to play with the Divinely Sweet and Holiday Style lines.

This was the first page that I created. I wanted to show that the Divenly Sweet papers work just beautifully on a page about a boy! I love the turquoise and red color combo.

I misted a border with a cream color mist on the background paper and then added some faux stitching with a black pen.

I fussy cut some of the flowers from blue paper to match with the background of the cream colored paper.

I also wanted to add another color, so I added some splashes of yellow paint and I stitched with some yellow thread.

Part of the journaling is hidden under the tab that says "What Can I Say?" and pulls out from behind the photo. I loved that I was able to make these papers look so boyish for my little guy!

And lastly I will leave you with two fun cards. I'm not much of a card maker, but I go through some spurts here and there. My stash was getting low and since World Card Making Day was October 1, I really was inspired to get some done.

This first one I just splattered a bit of black ink, did some faux stitching and made some simple accordian flowers. I made a little gift tag to go with it, too!

And you can never have enough birthday cards, so I cut out a cake and pop-dotted it on som white lined paper and added some Stickles to make is sparkle. Stickles make everything prettier!!

Thank you so much for joining me this week and I will be back next week to share some more projects! Until then, you can check out my blog to see what other things I have going on!

I Love YELLOW and the new Glitz releases!!!

2011-10-24T09:08:00.001-05:00

Today I get to share some layouts using one of my favorite colors: YELLOW! I love using yellow to help brighten up my pages. The new Glitz Designs releases are just full of this beautiful color!

On this first page, my photos had a little bit of a yellow tint to them because of the lighting in the room we were in. The colors of my daughters dress seemed to contrast well with the yellows in the papers. I captured some of the first moments of my daughter meeting her little brother for the first time! :)

I mounted the large photo on a journaling spot to help it stand out. I LOVE the doilies on the Beautiful Dreamer stamp set, so I stamped on patterned paper and layered them. I added some Glitzer’s, Epoxy stickers, and some cardstock stickers on top.

I also stamped some of the silhouettes and added some crackle accents to give some texture.

I do a photoshoot every month with my kiddos and this photo was the result of last months. My little guy was wearing grey and yellow, so I went with the grey and yellow on my page.

For the title, I backed one of the Peek-a-Boos with some yellow dot paper. On the houndstooth circle What-Not, I was able to cut out a corner and make another circle and a heart to make a visual triangle.

I am just loving using all the new Glitz lines with photos of my little ones!!!

They Meet

Dance In the Sunshine 12x12 Stripe Paper

Vintage Blue 12 x 12 Rose Paper

Vintage Blue 12x12 Polka Paper
Beautiful Dreamer Glitzers
Dance In the Sunshine Title stickers
Dance In The Sunshine Whatnots
Beautiful Dreamer Stamps

I Wonder If You Wonder

Beautiful Dreamer 12x12 Polka Paper

Beautiful Dreamer 12x12 Houndstooth Paper

Beautiful Dreamer 12x12 Floral Paper

Vintage Blue Cardstock Journaling Stickers

Dance In the Sunshine Title Stickers

Dance in the Sunshine What-Nots

Other: Buttons and floss

Hay there!!!

2011-10-24T00:16:00.001-05:00

So in love with the colors of SEI's fall "Homestead" collection!! This page was inspired by the adorable coat Charlotte was wearing on our trip to the pumpkin patch! The pattern in her coat really looked like the plaid paper in this line. I went with the purples and golds for this page..

I frayed the edges of some burlap and then added some fabric stiffner and cut it for my page once it was dry. I made the flower from muslin which I misted with some yellow and brown mists.

I used some old metal pieces that I had from the Moravia linw and cut out an orange heart.

I machine stitched around the outside of the page with a thicker thread and also used another piece of muslin at the top that I scalloped and misted.

Only 1 more post of projects for SEI as my term ends this month! :(

A busy week coming up...

2011-10-23T00:16:00.000-05:00

Well we are just getting back from our vacation in Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, TN. The mountains are absolutely beautiful!! The drive up to Clingmans Dome was the most beautiful drive I have ever been on in my life! But to be honest, the commercialism of the cities and the traffic made me not want to go back. It took out 1 hour and 45 minutes to go 14 miles to our cabin!!!! And trying to get into Gatlinburg on Saturday was just crazy….it took us an hour to get back to the cabin which was only 9 miles away. But we had a great time with family, loved our cabin, and the colors were just phenomenal. Yes, there will be pages….

So I have got a lot of catching up to do this week! Let me start be sharing some things I have done the past few weeks that I haven’t shared yet.

First is this page that I did for my weekly challenge at Memorable Seasons. Challenges this month focus on cards, but we still do out layout challenges, too, so I decided to use a card sketch as inspiration for a layout. Here is the sketch!

On my page, I used the sketch just on a small area in the top left corner. Then I layered some square and rectangles of the same colors on the main area of the page.

When we got the bouncy seat out for the new baby, Charlotte took it right over! She would climb in, grab something to read, and turn on the vibrate button! J

I kept this page pretty simple (no sewing or misting!). We are going to do this page in my class at Scrappn’ Savvy on the 24^th!

Next is this double pager that I did as my Weekly Layout for Scrappn’ Savvy. The design is based off of a sketch at Page Maps.

I used the We R fall line (forgot the name). This is definetly one of my favorite fall lines this year! I can’t wait to do some more pages with it!

I fussy cut some of the shapes from the patterned papers like the leaves, trees, flowers and owls and pop dotted them on top of the same shape on the squares of paper.

Finally, here is a Halloween page that I did that I submitted for a pub, but it didn’t get picked up. HOWEVER, another one I submitted IS IN THE OCTOBER issues of Scrapbook Trends this month! Look for “My Baby Bumblebee” and you will see Charlotte in her bee costume from last year!

So on this page, I used a Basic Grey laser cut paper on top of black cardstock, and then some Pink Paislee Queen Bee papers, too. A few embellies from the Girls’ Papeier are in there here and there, too.

I will have a post everyday this week for some sort of DT reveal and a few special collaborations!! Can't wait to share!

Some fall wreaths...

2011-10-13T13:16:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share a few simple wreaths I made for this fall! Every month my MOMS group gets together for a ladies night out. This month I hosted a craft and we made this simple black burlap wreath!

I bought a 12" foam wreath and painted it black. Then I cut strips of burlap and just tied them in knots around the wreath.

I painted the wood letters and used a crackle finish with orange paint.

For the little bats, I actually used some Jillibean Soup corrugated banner pieces that I added wings to. The wings are holly leaves that I cut with my Cricut on black cardstock.
You can see a whole bunch of great Halloween altered projects on the Practical Scappers blog today!

This next wreath is featured on the SEI blog today! SEI has a die cut pack of all leaves that coordinate with their Homestead line. I simply inked the edges and crumpled the leaves a bit and then hot glued them to a grapevine wreath. I used a piece of burlap to hang it on my door!!!

Hexagons are IN, and so is my Fashionista....

2011-10-06T08:00:00.001-05:00

This is my last month on the SEI DT. :( Honestly honestly, the latest releases are SOOO much better in person. When I got the Homestead collection, I was in love with the color combos. The patterns on the paper are amazing, too!

So being the "trendy" person that I am (insert eye roll here), I decided to do a little work with some hexagons that I cut on my Cricut using SCAL, and this is the result:

I misted the page a little with some browns and whites, and then stamped with a NEW Stampn' Up stamp that I just got...love the woodgrain. I laid out my hexagons where I wanted them and glued 'em down. Then I puched holes with a paper piercer and hand stiched...no I don't measure and YES it took forever.

This line has a page of perforated strips with fall and autumn phrases on it, and this one just captured the moment perfectly, so I used it for my title.

The leaves come in the die cut pack and I inked them up and folded them up a bit for some dimension. This is one of my most favorite pages that I have done for SEI! LOVE LOVE LOVE! :)

And of course it's THURSDAY so that means a Sketchy Thursday reveal! This is a special week at ST because it is the first sketch for the new team! EVERYONE had created a page this week, so go check it out on the ST blog and be sure to create a project and upload for the weekly prize!

Here is this weeks sketch:

One of my other favorite lines right now is Random by Crate Paper. Love the denim print and since this page was about my sweet little one playing dress up, I had to use it!

Charlotte is getting a lot more brave with the items she is choosing from my closet to wear! It's not just flip flops and tank tops anymore (although that's all mommy wears these days while nursing a 3 month old!)

For some reason I didn't take any close up shots of this page, so it's gonna have to stand on it's own for now! :) I misted the background with white Studio Calico sprays and then focused on the yellow pink and blue colors.

I've got a lot going on this week! Have been super busy working on a ton of projects which I can't wait to share!

Jillibean Goodies from Memorable Seasons

2011-10-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

This month my DT kit at Memorable Seasons contained Jillibean Soups' Homemade 6 Bean Soup collection! I love the bright colors and of course all the die cuts and stickers that come with each Jillibean line.

This first page I used a photo of the "boys" so I stuck with the blues, browns, reds, and yellows of the patterned papers.

I framed the page with some twine with my stash. Basically, I just let it fall as I laid it around the edge of the page, and then I used some Fabric Tact glue to hold it down on the curves and the loops.

This next page I used a sketch from Stuck?! sketches from a few months ago. I wanted to showcase all the patterns and colors in these papers, so I chose a photo with very little detail and left a lot of white space on the page.

Charlotte is starting to learn to actually look at the camera and say cheese so i can take some good pictures. She likes looking at herself after I have taken a few! :)

This last layout i wan't too sure of at first, but I just love how it came out! These papers have a sewing theme to them, so I decide to so a page about my old faithful sewing machin that I have had since about 7th grade! :)

I actually created the page on a 12x12 piece of canvas (from Canvas Corp, which I found at Hobby Lobby!).

I used my new Crafter's Workshop template in a herring bone pattern and some Studio Calico mists to do the masking on the canvas.

I also used some bunches of thread and these tiny tiny spools which I got from the Jillibean Soup online store.

Finally, I did some cards, which i don't do that often, but since it was WCMD on Saturday and I need some Thank You cards, I got a few done!!!

TFL!!

Oh shoot! Apple Juice....Sketchy Thursdays reveal

2011-09-29T08:25:00.001-05:00

The story goes like this....on our way home from the grocery store one day, I realized I had forgotten apple juice. And outloud I said "Oh shoot, Apple Juice!". Oh course there were little ears in the back seat, and then she repeated "Oh shoot, apple juice". Since then everything is "oh shoot! Apple Juice". Charlotte loves to play grocery store and if you ask her what she is going to buy, she says "apple juice". If you asked her what she wants to drink: apple juice. And then while playing grocery store, she will spontanelously look up with a surprised expression and say "Oh Shoot! Apple Juice!"

I used this weeks sketch by Sketchy Thursdays.

I am so in love with all the new Crate Paper lines!!! I have been working with them like crazy for a class at my LSS. The farmhouse line was perfect for this page. I also added an apple from last years back to school line.

The brown background paper had a cross stitch pattern vibe to it, so I decided that I wanted to cross stitch on the page. I used a paper piercer to punch holes in the hearts on the bottom and then I crossed stitched it with a single ply of floss. I also hand stitched the circle around the apple and the zig zags on the top of the photo.

The first of the month is coming up which means lots of reveals, and I can't wait to share!

A winner, an announcement and some Authentique LO's to share...

2011-09-21T23:00:00.001-05:00

I owe you a winner for the Magpie Kit Club August Kit giveaway!!!! The random # generator chose #3....which is JOANNEK!!!! YAY JOANNE!!!!!!

And I am so excited to announce that I will be continuing on as a DT member at Sketchy Thursdays!! I just can't get enough of the ST sketches....they are my most fav!!! Go check out all the other wonderful designers, too!!

OK, and here are some pages that I just want to share, both using Authentique.

This first I did based on a sketch by Kristin at Memorable Seasons. I also combined it with a challege at Scrapdango to use hexagons, the color green, and woodgrain or florals on the page.

I create my background, I made a mask for misting using SCAL. There are some basic shapes in SCAL, and I used the hexagon pattern and arranged them on the 12x12 mat like I wanted them. I cut the shapes from a 12x12 piece of scrap cardstock and used it as a mask for my background. The color didn't show up as dark as I wanted, so I went back over some of the areas with a light brown ink.

Have you ever read "A Sense of Wonder", by Rachel Carson??? Love that book....

This next page I created because I am making a kit to sell at my LSS using Authentique paper. The two layouts shown here and THIS ONE will all be included in the kit.

At first this page felt a little simple to me, but then I popped up some of the diamond paper and added buttons, and I was really happy with it!

It is so strange how my perception of feeling of what "family" is has changed with each child that I have had.

OK, so that was just a quick share! I am working on a lot of things to share over the next couple of weeks....

NEW Glitz Designs Release!!!!

2011-09-19T12:33:00.001-05:00

Today I get to share some more layouts with some NEW and old Glitz goodness.

I loved the warm tones of this photo of my daughter, so I wanted to highlight that with the same color combo on my page, with a few hints of black and white. (The title of my page has to do with the fact that I can always tell that the wheels in her head are "spinning", and she is calculating and thinking how to get away with things! :) )

The golden yellow paper didn't have much pattern in it, so I stamped lightly with a notebook pattern stamp and a postage pattern stamp in black and brown.

To create the tears in my page, I laid out where I wanted my photo, and then just sliced a few lines around it with an exacto knife to start the tears. I then folded and rolled by the slits to expose another piece of patterned paper beneath.

I made the flowers using a paper rose tutorial much like THIS ONE, but with different punches. I added a bit of stickles to give them some sparkle.

On Wednesday of last week, I got an AWESOME package on my doorstep! A huge box of new Glitz Designs latest releases! They are all so absolutely beautiful!

I have been saving these photos specifically to use on a page with the Beautiful Dreamer line, but I used a lot of the blues and yellows from the Vintage Blue line, too. So many of the phrase and sayings in these lines are gonna be perfect for all my baby photos and photos of my little girl. On the journaling tag, the writing area was a bit darker, so instead I printed my journaling on vellum and cut it to fit inside the tag.

Thanks for joining me today! I can't wait to dig into some more of the new goodies!!!

Supplies:

Spinning
Glitz Designs Patterend Papers from "Love Games"
Glitz Designs Cardstock Title stickers "Laced with Grace"
Gllitz Designs Peek-A-Boos "Laced with Grace"
Glitz Designs Cardstock Journaling Stickers "Love Games"

Dream Every Single Day
Glitz Designs Papers: Vintage Blue "Motif", "Polka", "Rose", "Stripe"
Glitz Designs Papers: Beautiful Dream "Polka".
Glitz Designs Journaling Stickers "Vintage Blue"
Glitz Designs Epozy Stickers "Vintage Blue"
Glitz Designs Trims "Vintage Blue"
Glitz Designs Glitzers "Vintage Blue"
Glitz Designs Whatnots "Beautiful Dreamer"
Glitz Designs Peek-a-Boos "Vintage Blue"
Glitz Designs Epoxy Sticker "Beautiful Dreamer"
Other: Punch-Fiskars; Ink-Ranger; thread

Sketchy Thursdays and ScrapFit BLOG HOP!

2011-09-15T15:04:00.000-05:00

This week, Sketchy Thursdays and ScrapFit have teamed up to bring tons of inspriation and a lot of chances to win some prizes!

Here's how to win some prizes:

1. Comment on the Sketchy Thursdays post for the 9/15 challenge to win a $10 gift certificate to Diana's store!

2. Create a link up a project for the Sketchy Thursdays sketch, and someone will be randomly chosen to win a kit from Burlap and Buttercups (th normal way to win at ST..)

3. Comment on the post at Scrapfit.

4. Comment on the ScrapFit designers blogs!

OK, that's a lot of chances to WIN!

So Sketchy Thursdays has provided the sketch, but ScrapFit has provided the challenge: scrap about friends!

#52- F Is For Friendship: Friends are the family members we pick out by hand. Let's dedicate this week's layout to a special friend(s). Show us who you hang out with or call when you need to vent!

Because this theme was about friends, my good friend Heather (who is also on the Sketchy Thursdays team) and I decided to do something fun! A few weeks ago, our girls got together for some fun splashing and swimming at our community water park. So we decided that since we both had to use this sketch, that we'd scrap photos from the same event! We both chose photos that we loved from the day, and the separately created pages based on the sketch.

Here was my take on the sketch and theme....

I used some yellow cardstock and a transparency from Fancy Pants "baby mine" collection, which I won a few months ago from their blog.

I actually used a PROTRACTOR (first time since college physics) to measure and draw my "rays". I then cut them out of the transparency and glued it to the cardstock and stitched the rays with a zig-zag stitch.

The other elements are also from Fancy Pants..the Beach Babe collection.

This was so fun! Go see what Heather did for her page and be sure to check out the blog hop!!!

Chevrons and Hexagons, and Amy Tan for my LSS!!!

2011-09-14T00:00:00.002-05:00

This month for my classes at Scrappn' Savvy (my LSS), we are going to be using the Amy Tan line by American Crafts! Although we don't have the entire line in the store, I still love the bits and pieces that I got to work with!

At Practical Scrappers today, there is a feature post about the trend of using hexagons and chevron prints on layouts. I LOVE this chevron printed FABRIC paper in the Amy Tan collection!

The filmstrip element I printed off the internet, then cut the frames out and backed it with a transparency! I love the way it came out! I added this element in for a challenge at Scrapdango this month.

(don't know what's up with these wonky colors.....)

I also used some polka dot fabric paper, too! I die cut the title area with my Big Shot and then hand stitched around the outside in orange thread.

This next page is also for my class and based on a challenge at Scrapdango, too! The Amy Tan line has these adorable little leaves that I stitched onto my page with bright pink thread.

It's hard to tell, but I stamped a few more flourishes on the page to make it flow across the page.

I also love how I did the title on this one, too!

And last but not least, we are doing this page that I posted a few weeks ago!

My class in this Thursday, and even if you can make it to class, call and sign up for a kit!!! The store phone is 281-288-7289. There are only 5 left!!! THANKS!

A baby lives here...

2011-09-12T23:16:00.000-05:00

Over at Memorable Seasons, we chose one board member to be the Member of the Month. Each Design Team member goes to the MOTM gallery and chooses a layout to scraplift. The other members of the board can scraplift the MOTM, too, and earn draws for the monthly prizes!

This month's MOTH was Jenny, and this was the page that I created. A few months ago I won a drawing on the Fancy Pants blog, and they sent me their "Baby Mine" collection, and that is what I used for this page!

There is so much baby stuff around this house, it's not even funny. I swear that baby clothes and blankets and burp cloths miraculously appear in the dryer.

The chipboard alphas are some OLD Basic Grey ones that I misted with some navy Maya Mist.

I just LOVE the printed coffee filters in this collection. And I am not much of a "theme-y" scrapper, but i couldn't resist this baby bottle....too cute!

And here is Jenny's original layout...

If you aren't a member of Memorable Seasons, you should go sign up! It is a fantastic message board and store!

Magpie Club Sept REVEAL and KIT GIVEAWAY!!! (kit photos added)

2011-09-08T22:38:00.002-05:00

This post is coming to you a little late, but it is here nonetheless! I want to share with you the three pages I did with the Magpie Club September kit!

First of all, I LOVE bright and bold colors, and this kit is packed with them! Plus, some of my favorite manufacturers: Crate, Cosmo, and Pink Paislee (plus lots of others!!)

You can CLICK HERE to see the full contents of the kit.

So this was the first page I did and I have used this black and white striped paper before in tiny quantities on previous pages, but I thought I'd try it out as a background, and I love the way it turned out!

This is my mom and Charlotte and I. Charlotte wanted us to all paint our "neals" (that how she says it...:) so we all painted them the same color. She is so cute when you tell her to sit still and blow on them to dry. But no matter how many coats I put on, it always seems to come off the next day.

I fussy cut all the trees and flowers from the My Little Shoebox paper. Yes, it took a while! :)

The heart is cut from the Bella Blvd paper and I added some glossy accents, which I haven't used on a page in a while...gotta get back into that cause I love the stuff...

This page is a little bit more of a simple design for me, but it was the story I was focused on. My mom got Charlotte into the habit of closing her eyes in anticipation of a surprise, so when we are playing and she wants to give me something, she says "Close eyes mamma, close eyes". But lately she has been messing up "ah-pu" (open) eyes and close eyes, so she tells me to "ah-pu" them when she really wanted me to close them. Also, she has been closing her eyes when she has been naughty...as if we can't see her anymore! :)

OK, I totally messed up the stitching on this circle! I tried to cover it up by adding additional circles that were messy, but now they all just look messy. But I will embrace the imperfection...

Again, a lot more fussy cutting on this banner. I think I could cut my LO time in half if I didn't do fussy cutting....

And lastly, when I saw this "hopscotch" paper with all the number on the Echo Park paper, the first idea that popped into my head was a "10 things" list. So I wrote a list of 10 things I wanted to remember about my little guy right now....(like those little toes...aren't they adorable??!)

When I made my class kits for the last class I taught at my LSS, I punched out some squares from some patterned papers and saved the "negatives". So I used them as masks on some navy cardstock and sprayed with white ink. The word "You" are some Studio Calico wood veneer letters that I misted yellow.

Oh, and MORE fussy cutting of all the numbers out of the paper! :)

Well thanks for looking at my layouts, and now for a GIVEAWAY!!!

I'm gonna make you work just a bit for this one. I am giving away the entire August Magpie Club Kit!!!!!!!

Here's what happened: I waited and waited for my kit in July, and it never came. I had emailed Tara about it and she said she had sent it already. Well it finally got here...ON AUGUST 1!! It was postmarked sometime in early July....the box was ripped and crushed and it had obviuosly gotten wet because the writing was all smeared. The condition was just awful. But all the contents inside were in a plastic bag, and there wasn't a wrinkle in any of the papers!!! But by then I had just had the baby, and just wasn't going to get to it, PLUS, Septemebers kit (the one featured above) was due to arrive soon, anyways!!

SOOOOOO......I am going to give this kit away because I am just not going to get to kit. But what I would like you to do is this:

1). Visit the following ladies blogs. They are on the DT for Magpie Club. Leave them a comment. It can be on a post related to anything, but just leave them some love. And I GUARANTEE that you will be inspired somewhere on one (if not all!) of these blogs.

2). Come back here when you have done that and leave me a comment, too!

I will draw a random winner on September 19th to win the kit!!

Thanks so much!!

Sketchy Thursdays-You and Me, and Memorable Seasons reveal!

2011-09-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

Finally getting back on track with Sketchy Thursdays! Things are starting to smooth out around here! :)

I used my Sept. kit from Memorable Seasons which includes papers from Echo Park Victoria Gardens! As usual, I stuck to the sketch quite closely...

This is a photo of my Dad and Charlotte outside of a church where we go for a pancake breakfast on the first saturday of the month. I love the angle of this photo! I was not the photographer on this one...my mom took this photo...

Instead of fussy cutting these flowers out of the patterned paper, I used the stickers on the sticker sheet...saved me a ton of time! :) I pleated the music not paper and then stitched across the top.

The little bits in the top corner came from the journaling cards sheet of paper. I like to pair a graphic/geometric pattern with the more floral prints.

I did two other pages with my kit from Memorable Seasons.

On this page, I used the text print paper, but I cut it out into squares and distressed each square. Then I arranged the squares into a rectangle and placed my photo on top.

I cut out the doilies from the doily print paper nad layered them and added a button and some twine. The smaller one are stickers from the sticker sheet which I pop-dotted off the page.

I love some of the phrase stickers on the sticker sheet....perfect for my theme!! :)

Lastly, since the paper in this kit are very flowery, I wanted to try and create a page that wasn't. So I decided that less is more and went with a very simple design. I was actually inspired by an ad challenge on the Memorable Seasons MB for this design.

Whoever coined the phrase "sleeps like a baby" abviously never had an infant in their home! :) My little guy was up every few hours and was not taking long sleeps at all! I am happy to report that we are doing much better....he is actually going right back to sleep after his night time feedings now instead of staying awake wide-eyed and looking at all the fun shadows at night! :)

I used some of the new Bazzill "Two Scoops" cardstock which has a different colored core. I sanded the dots on the black CS to make them stand out a bit more, and I tore the top edge of the photo mat to reveal the core, too.

Speaking of Bazzill, I have an exciting exciting new venture brewing! I can't wait to share! :) Here's a hint...it has to do with quilts and fish.....:)

The Ice Cream Truck!

2011-08-30T15:35:00.000-05:00

At my parents cottage on the lake, there is an ice cream truck that goes up and down the road on the weekends. You can hear "Turkey in the Straw" playing about a mile away! It gets kind of annoying. The funny thing is, the driver stops next door at our neighbor, who he is friends with, and will stop and have a beer....then continue down the road.

Most of these papers and the new "Fair Day" papers from SEI, with a few other lines thrown in there, too!

I machine stitched around the journaling and title circles with some teal thread to make them stand out more.

I actually broke out the decorative edge scissors for this white oval outlining the "sweet" sticker.

Sometimes you just need the perfect embellishment, but just don't have it in yoru stash, so why not make it? I created this ice cream cone by copying the shape of the cone in the patterned paper. I added some stickles and a button for a cherry!

Which reminds me that I posted a Paper-Piecing challenge this week at Memorable Seasons! Go to the forum to check it out!

The first of the month is quickly approaching which means lots of reveals coming up! :)

My first Glitz Designs reveal!!!!

2011-08-22T08:00:00.007-05:00

Have I mentioned how excited I am to be designing for Glitz?? I raided my stash and gathered all my Glitz products together to mix and match some lines for these two pages that I created.

Little girls are so much fun. I love to pick out clothes for Charlotte and do her hair. Right now it is more for me than her! :)

On this first page, I really want to play off of the blues and greens in my photos, so I used blue and green in my design with some splashes of yellow and orange.

I created a bow by folding some strips of paper and layering them together. Then I added a tiny piece around the center.

This butterfly paper just begs to be fussy cut, so I had to do it!

I layered a lot of elements and did a little machine stitching here and there for some texture.

This next page I also wanted to focus on the bright colors from a bunch of different lines, so I printed my photos in black and white. I did a simple grid design, and outlined each column with black machine stitching.

I have to admit this page was more simple than a lot of my pages, but it still has some of my favorite elements like machine stitching, layering, distressing, and using a visual triangle of color.

Hope you liked my first Glitz reveals!!!! Can't wait to start playing with the new stuff!

She's A Doll
Glitz Design Paper from Afternoon Muse, Laced with Grace, and Love Games
Glitz Design Cardstock Stickers: Laced with Grace
Glitz Design Peek-A-Boo's: Laced with Grace
Other: Alphas from Cosmo Cricket and American Crafts.

Expressions
Glitz Design Paper from Afternoon Muse, Laced with Grace, and Love Games, and Hoopla
Glitz Design Cardstock Stickers: Laced with Grace
Glitz Design Paper Layers: Laced with Grace
Other: alphas from Basic Grey

A page with no paper! A CIU project...

2011-08-19T06:00:00.001-05:00

Well since I have arranged all of my favorite things on my Clip It Up, it’s time for me to start using them (cause let me tell ya, stuff is comin’ in faster than stuff is goin’ out!). So I decided to really challenge myself on this one. My challenge was to create a layout using ONLY things from my Clip It Up and a white piece of cardstock. Yup, that’s right…no papers. And since I wasn’t sure what I was going to be using, I decided on a photo that was black and white so that it would go with anything.

I started by going through my CIU and finding some things that I really liked, and some packages of things that were almost gone and that I wanted to get rid of. So this is what I pulled off: (Note: I scrap at night, so it was hard for me to get good lighting on these photos!)

I went through each package and pulled out things that I wanted to use. I started to notice that there were certain colors in the items I had chosen: blue, green, and purple…not a combo I usually use, but I liked it! One of the items I pulled off was this old ephemera pack from Making Memories. It has some small pieces of corrugated cardboard in there, so I decided to take those out and use them.

I wanted to add a bit more color to the page since I wasn’t using patterned papers, so I painted the cardboard pieces using some paint daubers from Ranger (which I LOVE). I also had pulled out some tiny chipboard pieces from Maya Road, so I painted a few of those as well.

Then came the arranging. I spent a little time just pushing the elements around the page until I was happy with the balance and the placement. And here is my finished layout!

I have to tell you that this honestly came much better than I thought it was going to!!! I was so please with the result; I might challenge myself to do this again!

Sketchy Thursdays-Grandma's Little Guy

2011-08-18T12:16:00.001-05:00

It may look as if I have been doing a ton of things on my blog, but in all reality, most of these lastest posts were done before the baby came!! Except for this one. I haven't done a sketch in a while cause I have been a little busy! As a matter of fact, this page took me about 2 weeks to do cause I can only get 10 minutes of time here and there! :)

But I really loved this sketch, so I had to get it done.

I just loved these photos of my mom holding Kyler. This was about a week after he was born. My mom has treated both of my kids like they were her own, and dives right in to help out with newborns. She was such a big help!

I was really drawn to the circles around the title and they reminded me of eyelets, so I decided to dive into my stash. I can't tell you the last time I used eyelets on a page, but I really want to use them more (amd brads, too).

This page is pretty simple for me, even though it took forever. But I did use some of my regular techniques like distressing and stitching.

I have another post tomorrow, again a project I did a while ago, but I really love th idea behind it, so be sure to check back tomorrow!

I'm the Guest Designer at American Crafts this week!!!!!

2011-08-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

Holy cow!!!! I can't believe that I was asked to be a guest designer for American Crafts this week! I am so so thrilled and honored to be able to work for such an amazing company!! You can read my post on the AC blog HERE. I would love for you to comment!

Expecting the baby late July or early August really limited our travel plans for the summer. We had to find some creative, yet cool things to do to beat the Houston heat!! So this page is about our summer “Staycation”. We go to The Little Gym and library weekly, and it helps that we have a pool in our backyard to help us stay cool!

This photo was taken on the dock of my parents cottage in central New York. The wood of the deck inspired me to use the woodgrain paper as my background. I wanted to mimic the feel of small drops of water splashing from the waves, so I used some bits of white paint on the background. There are also some tiny sequins scattered on the page from the “Delights” stickers. I hand cut out the waves and added a 2^nd layer that was popped up on top of the first.

Every summer we travel back “home” to central New York to enjoy the Finger Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. I always do a page about our summer trip (which we took very early this year). I printed a few small photos of some highlights of the trip and used them on this page. I wanted to keep the design a bit more simple since the photos were smaller and had a lot of detail. The Macaw Thickers were actually white, but I wanted a bit more colors, so I misted them with some spray mists.

When I think of the Margarita collection and the Campy Trails collection, I think of vacation! So I decided to make some simple, fun luggage tags that would be durable enough to withstand travel conditions. I started with an 8x8” page protector, folded it in half and creased it. Then I machine stitched on both sides of the crease, along the bottom, and up the side, leaving the top open as a pocket. I then cut the page protector down the crease to create two, 4”x8” pockets (which I ended up trimming down) to about 4”x5” pockets). I simply cut some patterned paper to fit inside the pocket and decorated one side with paper and phrases. I did not add anything bulky because I wanted it to be flat. On the back side of the paper I added a sticker where I can write my contact information. I punched some holes in the page protector and threaded some ribbon through to tie it to the bag! Wouldn’t this make a great, simple project to do with kids right before you go on vacation? Or maybe you could customize a tag and give it as a gift to surprise someone with a trip!

The Campy Trails Just Write cards have some great phrases on them! I used two of the same Just Write card and cut out the mountains on the 2^nd one and popped them on top of the first card to give it dimension. The chipboard tree border is also popped off a bit. I had cut the little stars and added some glitter glue here and there for some sparkle.

When I saw the Cha-Cha paper, it reminded me of umbrellas at the beach. I wanted to make them a bit 3-D, so I scored them and folded them to make them pleat and stand off the card a little. I misted the sand and sky with spray inks, and used some toothpicks for the umbrella poles! The beach towels are one of the barcode patterned paper strips.

I have been meaning to make a mini album of our trip from last fall for some time, and when I first saw the Campy Trails line, I knew it was perfect! I used an acrylic and chipboard calendar kit with a stand for this album. I painted the edges of the acrylic covers with a mossy green paint, and then inked with a brown Stazon ink. I really wanted the photo of the brightly colored tree over the water to stand out, so I used it behind the acrylic. The inside pages have a fairly simple format: each open set of pages is covered with patterned paper and I used a contrasting paper for a border on the left side, which I punched. On some of the pages I used a chipboard border instead. In between each set of pages I added a tag where I did my journaling on the back. The tabs on the bottom of each page were covered with some of the barcode patterned paper strips.

As always, I just love American Crafts stuff, and had a fantastic time creating these projects! Maybe NEXT YEAR I can make the team! :)

I knew...

2011-08-11T15:50:00.000-05:00

that it was going to be a boy! Thats what that's what this page is all about!

I am a bit behind in my postings lately, as you can imagine, but I am finding bits of time here and there! It's getting better!

This was LAST weeks Sketchy Thursdays sketch. I should be back on track for next week! :)

My take on this sketch features so of the gorgeous papers from Authentique from the Blissful and Journey lines that I got from Memorable Seasons Online Store. I LOVE the texture and thickness of this paper...it distresses well!

I did some misting with some spray ink and splattered a bit of yellow paint. And of course I had to add some machine stitching with some coordinating thread!

Love these tiny alphas!

This flower I made with some blue ribbons and raffia that came on some presents that Kyler got. They were sitting on my desk and I wanted to use them somehow! They match perfectly.

Well I hope to get to some more things that are laying on my desk. Next week I have a HUGE post going up on Wednesday about an AMAZING GDT spot I have, plus a "paperless" layout I did for Clip It Up! (These are things I did BEFORE I had the baby! :) )

WINNER of Practical Scrappers Blog Hop...

2011-08-08T21:33:00.000-05:00

First of all, THANK YOU everyone for the sweet comments on my layout and post. I am so thrilled about the response to this blog hop! So now onto the winner:

The random number generator gave me number 6, and that lucky winner is:

Carolina, please send me your address at audreykit at yahoo dot com! THANKS!

Practical Scrappers 2nd Anniversary BLOG HOP!

2011-08-05T00:02:00.003-05:00

Thanks for joining us for the Practical Scrappers Blog Hop. We're sharing projects that relate to the number two since it's our second anniversary!

If you've read any of my previous posts, you'll understand why the #2 is so special to me now!! We just had a new little guy enter our lives, and now we have TWO sweet sweet children! So I did this page "And then there were TWO..."

Recognize these papers?? They are the NEW Amy Tan line from American Crafts! The owner of the LSS where I work went to CHA and ordered this line for the store (so that I could use it in my classes!). She got some free samples and brought them home and gave them to me to use! Isn't that awesome???

This background paper comes machine stitched around the edge with one white doily in the corner. I added two other doilies by stamping and heat embossing with white powder.

The black chevron print is actually fabric paper, which you can tear off from the adhesive back and use as regular fabric pieces.

I had to whip this page up in a hurry because there isn't much free time around here these days!

Anyways, I hope you like my TWO project. And just because you've read this entire post, I am going to do a GIVEAWAY to one lucky person. Simply leave a comment on this post and I will pick a winner on Monday. If you like my stuff and want to become a follower, I would love that, too!

The lucky winner will recieve a Crate Paper "Emma's Shoppe" collection kit! YES, the entire kit (somehow I ended up with TWO...fitting for this theme! :) ).

Now, be sure to visit the rest of the team's blog for more giveaways and great projects!

Audrey-YOU ARE HERE

Jayma<----Go here next

Being Pregnant....Sketchy Thursdays sketch and Practical Scrappers Anniversary!

2011-08-03T06:00:00.003-05:00

It is so funny that I was just finishing this page when I had Kyler on the 19th! It was supposed to be for the Sketchy Thurdays reveal for that week using this sketch:

But I went in to deliver the day I was going to photograph and post! So since it didn't make it for reveal that week, I decided to use it for some special happening's this week at Practical Scrappers!

PS is celebrating their two year anniversary this week. Every day, there will be special features revolving around the number 2! And this weekend from Fri. til Sun. there is a blog hop where you can win lots of prizes and see TONS of inspiration! So check the PS blog each day for special projects, contests, and lots of fun!!!

So back to my page.....

When I first saw the sketch, I knew I wanted to use the tall photo blocks as journaling blocks instead. This is one of the few photo-less pages I have ever done and I just LOVE it!

I really love being pregnant, BUT towards the ends it gets so so tough!!!! So I made two "Top Ten" lists...one of things I LOVE abour being pregnant, and one about things I HATE about being pregnant!

It was quite the project though....I went through my entire stash of scraps looking for ledger prints and notebook paper prints. I have at LEAST 10 different manus just from the journaling blocks!

I raided more of my scraps and some background papers from my stash that I haven't used in forever! It felt so good to actually use things up!!!

A very simple design, and that was to make sure my journaling stood out! :)

I would LOVE to hear things you loved or hated about being pregnant! :) It is so strange, now, not being pregnant anymore, but I have to say that I was so ready to be done and I don't really miss it, especially since we have this beautiful baby boy at home with us now! :)

Memorable Seasons August reveal!

2011-08-01T13:38:00.000-05:00

Did I seriously just write the word 'August' in this blog post title???? Where has the time gone?

I KNEW I was going to go early with this baby, so I tried to get as much stuff done as possible early in the month. This month, Jill sent me the Jenni Bowlin 'Haven' collection to work with from the Memorable Seasons store.

I have to be honest and say this isn't a collection that I would have chosen for myself. But I have been on many DT and store teams where I have gotten supplies that I wouldn't neccesarily chose for myself and have been so happy with the results. I have to say, I am quite please with these projects, too!

This collection is filled with cameos and silhouettes. I also got some of the Maya Road chipboard cameo's to use, too, so I had to do some sort of 'beauty' page about Charlotte. Since I can never get a good shot of her face because she won't look at the camera, I decided to use these photos of her beautiful beautiful hair. I have NO idea where she gets these curls from! Her hair is just so silky and beautiful and I love to rub my fingers through it!

The flower on the bottom left with cut with the Tim Holtz tattered flowers die and I used a brad from my stash for the middle. I chose to use a yellow brad, and continued to pull out bits of yellow throughout my page.

I did another flower, this time a spiral flower, and also sprayed it yellow with mist. The cameo I painted with black paint and then used crackle paint on top. And I just LOVE LOVE this ribbon by May Arts!

Finally, to balance the yellow, I added a butterfly cut from some of the papers and also sprayed a bit with yellow ink.

One of the pieces of paper in this collection has an old photograph of a house on it. It really inspired me to do a page about a house. I wanted to do a page about the house I grew up in, but after hounding my parents to send me a photo for about 2 weeks, I got nothin'. Then it clicked that maybe I should do a page about MY first house...the first house I owned.

I did a simple layout design and added a textured stamp and some misting on the kraft cardstock.

I used a zig zag punch on the top and bottom edges and backed it with some scraps of black paper. I love the vintage-home feel of these papers.

Lastly, I whipped up a card with some of the journal block from a piece of the patterned paper. I turned them into tags and stuck each tag in its own pocket. I used some of the phrase stickers from Authentique to adorn each tag, made a little flower, and cut our a butterfly! Then I stitched around the edge with red thread. I think this little card is so cute! I need a lot of Thank You cards these days!

I was supposed to have one more page done, and it is "in progress" on my desk. But we had a little arrival on the 19th! He is doing FANTASTIC, by the way. We are still trying to figure out the night time sleeping thing...he is a night owl like his mommy! :) Maybe that's why he isn't sleeping great at night right now! But you can be sure that you will start to see a few pages of him popping up very soon!!!!

He's Here!!!

2011-07-24T13:48:00.000-05:00

Well we weren't expecting him so early, but Kyler Alan Yeager was born on Tuesday, July 19th at 4:18 pm. He is a tiny guy weighing in at 5 pounds 12 ounces and 18.5 inches long. He was 23 days early. My water broke at about 5 am, I went into my Dr.'s at about 10 am, started Petocin at 1:45, had an epidural at 3:30 and he was born at 4:18. Yes, it was super quick...3 pushes! The same thing happened with Charlotte, too.

We are all doing great. He is so small but is eating GREAT! Nursing is going very well. My mom is here to help out and hubby has 2 weeks off.

Charlotte loves him, but is a bit indifferent about him right now, which is good. She is very attentive when the baby cries and she loves to give him kisses! It has been so great having my mom here because Charlotte just loves her and they have been spending a lot of quality time together!

We are gonna be in adjustment mode for a while, but we are just so happy and our little family feels just perfect!

Single Layer Cards....

2011-07-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

Yup, this proves why I am NOT a card maker! :) Today's feature at Practical Scrappers is one layer cards. Basically, anything you do you have to do on the card itself...you can't add another "layer" (like paper or cardstock or ribbon).

Sounds easy, right, but it was hard for me because I LOVE adding layers to things! So I brainstormed and tried a few ideas out...

FYI, with baby #2 coming, my Mom's Group does a meal program after I have the baby, and someone bring meals on M, W, and F for 6 weeks! So I knew I was going to need a lot of Thank You cards!

My first idea was to use a background pattern stamp and then heat emboss an image on top. But I didn't want the background image to show through my embossing. So here is what I did:

1. I stamped the butterfly onto a piece of cardstock and cut it out. I did the same with the sentiment.
2. I place the cut outs on my card base (and used them as masks) and then stamped with my background woodgrain stamp.
3. I removed my "masks" and then stamped the images directly onto the card with versamark.
4. I then added embosing powder and heat embossed.

Here are some things I learned:

1. When you are stamping your masks to cut out, stamp on a thin piece of paper because I couldn't get a good "press" on my stamp, and the edges around the butterfly and sentiment aren't that crisp.

2. Use a good ink...my black is getting to it's last leg, and it shows.

So then I tried the same idea again, this time cutting my masks from thin computer paper, and it worked better. But again, my black is not as crisp as I wanted it to be, and I wish I chose different colors for the embossing, but over these are OK. Also, I just HAVE to add something to the center of each doily, so I am gonna add a gem!

My last cards are the most simple, but my most favorite. I stamped the feet with the black stamp, the heart with pink, added some stickles and a thin black pen line and VOILA!!!!! These little cards are so cute, and it just goes to show that sometimes less is more! I have to make a bunch more of these now to send out to the Mom's!

Go check out some of the AMAZING One Layer Cards on the Practical Scrappers blog today!

It's a Fair Day.....

2011-07-14T06:00:00.003-05:00

that's one of the recent releases from SEI! I love this fun collection! It is perfect for fairs and parks and has some great embellies to go along with it.

My favorite is a perforated sheet of different tickets, some of which I used on this page about the park:

I painted the background with some white paint, and then drew a square with a thin back pen to ground my photos.

Some of the other die cuts are from the Sunny Days and Corrinne collections. I also outlined the titles on the phrases to make them stand out more.

Of course I wanted to challenge myself to use these papers for a NON fair or park layout, and the colors went just perfectly with some photos I had of Charlotte for her 2nd birthday.

It's hard to tell in this photo, but the background paper is actually a like pink gingham print...LOVE it! I did a bunch of hand stitching and machine stitching as well.

This scallopped patterned paper I cut to create different "tiers" and layered them across the page. I outlined the edges with a black pen.

These balloon die cuts actually had "tails" on the, but I cut them off and tied some white twine around them to make real strings! :)

These last two pages I want to share were actually posted in June on the SEI blog, but I totally forgot to post them here! So here they are, without much description!

This page uses a whole bunch of different lines....I really like the design of this layout with the photos going off the edge.

And here is a quick one I whipped up using "I'm an Athlete". Since we don't really have any athletes in our family yet, I did a page about my hubby and his dad and brother and their trip to watch the Final Four tournament this year in Houston.

I have been doing a LOT of scrapping the past week, but nothing I can share, yet! Tons of stuff for DT and GDT spots that I can't wait to share!

7/7 Sketchy Thursday REVEAL!

2011-07-07T10:56:00.000-05:00

I really still like the banner craze and this week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays is just perfect! Be sure to link up your creation to be entered for the prize!

This layout is actually kind of simple for me, but I did a lot of techniques including misting, distressing, and stitching.

This page is about my "Kit Cat" clock that is actually a plastic replica of an antique clock that my great grandpa used to have in his house. I used to LOVE this clock when I was a little girl, and I can still remember sitting at the kitchen table of his house and watching the tail and eyes go back and forth.

I sized down my photos a bit, and hand stitched a frame around them in light blue thread to tie them together.

I have pretty much used up my October Afternoon 5&Dime collection....good thing cause I need to make some room for all the great CHA releases coming out!!!

So I am off to CKC Houston this weekend with my good friend Heather. It is only about 20 mins from my house, but we rented a hotel room so we could get a little "scrappy retreat" in for a couple of days!!! Daddy is gonna be home with Charlotte for about 48 hours by himself....yeah....I'll let you know how that goes!! :)

Happy Birthday to....(and a chance to win!)

2011-07-06T17:48:00.000-05:00

...Simply Renee Clip It Up!!! I got to work with a CIU Base Unit and some papers and embellies from Little Yellow Bicycle to create an AWESOME cupcake display stand that I used for Charlotte's 2nd birthday!!!

You have have FOUR chances to win by visiting both the CIU and LYB blogs and leaving comments, AND by posting on their FB pages! Here are some photos of the "masterpiece" and details are on the Clip It Up blog!

Memorable Seasons "Last Scrapper Standing" contest..

2011-07-05T07:59:00.003-05:00

We are in week 3 of the LSS (Last Scrapper Standing) at Memorable Seasons. Week 1 we had 30 participants that were narrowed down to 20 for week 2. Week 3 started 7/4 and is now down to 15. And this is MY week for the challenge, and also my very first challenge at Memorable Seasons since becoming a DT member!

So here it is:

Your challenge this week is to use the sketch below to create a layout that has 7 stars and 4 photos. (For 7/4, get it?) (NOTE: I know the sketch does not show 7 stars, but you must have 7 stars somewhere on your page). These stars can NOT be tiny stars in a patterned paper...they must be used as embellies in some way.

Your page must also have either red, white, or blue as it's main color. This does not necessarily mean that the background of your page has to be that color, just that that color must be the most prevalent.

The theme of this page is open to you. If you want to do July 4th photos, that's fine, but you don't have to. You could use "red" as your color, and do Christmas for that matter!

When using the sketch, feel free to rotate it, flip it, mirror it, whatever. But the overall design of the sketch must be recognizible in your layout.

Here is my sample. I used 7 stars: one large, blue misted chipboard one behind my photo, and then a stamped transparent star and a star cut out of grid paper at each "circle" on the page. While the background color is yellowish, the main color of my papers is blue and red.

Even though we are already into week 3 of the contest, there is still a weekly prize AND you can use your weekly layouts towards the regular monthly challenges prize as well! Hope to see some new faces on the MS boards!

SUPER HUGE EXCITING NEWS!!!

2011-07-03T09:01:00.000-05:00

I really don't know how this happened...well I DO know, but it is so strange.

One day a few weeks ago I got a message on my 2 Peas email, which I never use. It was from Lea Lawson, the DT coordinator from Glitz Designs, basically asking me if I would like to be on their design team. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????? Ummm....lemme think about it..........YES YES YES!!!!

Holy Cow I still can't belileve it. I was over the moon jumping up and down. I am in awe of some of the "names" I will be amongst on this new team!

THEN, a few days later, Glitz debued their CHA summer release....oh.my.gosh. It is all so beautiful! I can't WAIT to work with it all!

Which one is your favorite? I love the Vintage Blue, but I have a feeling I will be using a lot of Beautiful Dreamer since a little one is soon on it's way!

SOMEONE PLEASE PINCH ME.....no wait....don't.....

My first Memorable Seasons reveal! Echo Park SPLASH!

2011-07-01T12:33:00.001-05:00

I am so excited to be working for Memorable Seasons online store!!!! Jill always has THE BEST sales, and the community has always been one of my favorites!

She sent me these wonderful things to play with this month:

Of course with the SPLASH theme I had to do a page about our recent trip to the community pool. We have lived here for 4 years, and have NEVER BEEN! It's partially because we have our own pool, and we didn't have kids before Charlotte. The community pool is like a water splash park and Charlotte had a BLAST! I had so many photos, I had to do a two pager...

I cut up a bunch of the journaling cards paper and used them on my page. I also cut the wave pattern paper to move across the layout. These colors were perfect for these photos! There are little dots of blue Stickles here and there, too...

Next I did this page of one of the fun things we do during the summer in NY! Take boat rides on this little fishing boat, which we all love so much!

Th navy of the water in the photos went so well with the teals and greens of the Dots & Stripes papers!

I colored in the center of some of my alphas to make them stand out a bit more.

I fussy cut a whole bunch of fish and hand cut the seaweed out of the green paper. The red elements are in a visual triangle which moves your eye across the page

I added a lot of white stitching up and down the page to make it look like water, and I also scattered a whole bunch of buttons and little bits of blue Stickles here and there.

Next up I made this little card that I just LOVE, even though we aren't having a pool party anytime soon (that I know of anyways!).

The colors on the banner strips were so bright and such a great combo, I really wanted to use it. And it matched the colors in the crab, too!

The crab is on a journaling card which is mounted inside the card, and then I punched a circle in the front so you can see him. He holds a little umbrella that I cut from the patterned paper and folded to make 3D.

Lastly, I always try to challenge myself to use themed paper for a page that is totally unrelated to the theme. I was able to do so with these papers! I love that Charlotte calls herself "Sha Sha"...everyone has started calling her that, now!

I cut some strips of the green Dots & Strips paper and punched them with different punches for the grass. The orange card is from the Journaling cards in the Splash collection.

The sunshine I made by sprialing some pom pom trim and then I added some of the "umbrellas" paper in the center with a bit of bling. The clouds in the background I painted with my paint daubbers (my new favorite product!) and then machine stitched over them. The cloud in front is cut from one of the journaling card.

Lastly, I used some of the striped papers and the pink paper to make some accordian flowers. A few punched pieces and buttons are in the centers, and I pleated some ribbons for the stems and leaves.

Wasn't this kit so fun???? I really loved it! OK, well that is EIGHT projects posted in 2 days....I'm tired....more coming up on SUNDAY!!