Scrap Your Stash BLOG HOP *Practical Scrappers*

Welcome to the Practical Scrappers Scrap Your Stash Blog Hop!  You should have arrived here from Jennifer Haggerty's Blog! A whole bunch of us have gotten together to tackle our mounds and piles of scrap goodness that has been left to the wayside and is collecting dust as new products continually find their way to the front of our scrap desks!

I, personally, have been trying to scrap my stash more and trying NOT to buy as much (but is is SO hard!).  So I try to incorporate a little something from my stash here and there.

But for today, I did an entire page devoted to using my older stash.  It's not new news that I love working with Crate Paper products, so I used up some papers and embellishments from Acorn Ave, The Pier, and Close Knit.

I started by using a stencil and some gesso on the background.  It was a little too white, so I tried wiping it off, and it left a lighter cover, and I was happy with that!  Then I splattered some mists and water colors here and there.

For my page design, I was inspired by a sketch at Skissedilla, and used strips of paper, distressed them, and then stitched them down with a mix of straight and zig zag stitches. Then I used a few other patterns to mat my photos.

The rest was just clustering of embellishments: stickers, chipboard, brads, labels.....all tucked here and there around my photo.

I spent an HOUR looking for the wagon chipboard piece that I KNEW I had seen somewhere before.  And just FYI, if you ever need a wagon, there is one in the Crate Paper Close Knit die cuts (NOT the one on my page), and this chipboard one from Crate Paper Acorn Ave. (and that collection also has one printed on a card and a wood veneer one, too!).

If you would like to see the ENTIRE blog hop list, please go to the Practical Scrappers Blog!

Now you are headed over to Lee-Anne Thornton's Blog!

Stay scrappy my friends!

Scrappin' my stash...some old Crate Paper

Every Thursday on the My Scraps & More forums is a "Throwback Thursday" challenge where we challenge you to use your stash that is at LEAST a year old.

When I started to think about scrapping these photos of my kiddos with the lollipops that Grandma gave them, I remembered a chipboard lollipop in the Emma's Shoppe collection from a few years ago.   I REALLY loved that collection and decided to use some more of it up!

I started by using some Gelatto's and water, and then going over it with a stencil and modeling paste.

Behind my photos, I added a few frame shapes cut from papers and just a few simple strips.

I layered lots of chipboard pieces, flair, and die cuts.

My title I cut with my Cameo and outlined with a black pen.  And lastly I scattered about some fun small bits like brads, sequins, chipboard, and tiny die cuts!

I really should scrap my stash more often!  It is fun coming back to these old collections and making them NEW again!

Stay scrappy my friends!

December Daily 2013

Well, I am no where near done with it, but I am so proud of myself because my goal was to JOURNAL everyday for 25 days and I did it!!!  Now the fun part of just adding in the photos and decorating is all I have to do!  I am sharing some photos of my album that I took around day 6 of December (yes, that long ago and I am just posting).

My favorite part about this process is creating my journaling pages.  On my album I created last year (WHICH YOU CAN SEE HERE), I first started by creating journaling pages and I was able to stick to it.  The photos speak for themselves...they are memories captured in that instant.  But those thoughts and words that go with those specific moments are sometimes fleeting, and the details can get lost over time.  That is why I feel it is so important to focus on the journaling.  I want to remember those conversations and little bits of the day that really make this holiday.

OK, so to my pages:

I started by simply creating a Microsoft Word document with 2 columns and adding in some lines for journaling.  I fiddled with the margins so they would be equal once I cut down the middle.  I printed 13 pages, cut them each in half, which gave me 26 journaling pages.  On each page, I used a decorative border punch on the top edge.  I splattered some Citron (Heidi Swapp), Santa Claus Red (Ranger), and Tannenbaum (Studio Calico) mists on each page.

On the bottom edge of each journaling page, I used some Mod Podge and a dry brush and made streaks of glue with the brush and sprinkled some gold glitter on it and let it all dry.

Finally, I chose 5 colors/patterns of washi tape and added them to the right edge of the journaling pages. Then I used some vellum and paper die cuts from Pink Paislee and stitched them over the washi with some gold thread (and I left the edges of the gold thread hanging, and I love the interest it adds).  Finally, I punched three holes in each page to fit into my album.

For the album:

I used this Pink Paislee "Portfolio" album, which I actually purchased about 3 or 4 years ago because Ali Edwards used it for her DD album (or maybe it was for her Week In the Life, I can't remember).  But it has been sitting in my closet and I thought it was time to use it.  It has some really cool shapes and types of insert pages in it.

I started by covering the outside (which is canvas) with gesso.  I didn't completely cover it because I like some of the raw canvas peeking through.

Then I used a small christmas tree patterned stencil and some Citron mist and sprayed it on the bottom half of the album.  Then I splattered with the Tannenbaum mist, and stamped "Dec 2013" with a date stamp here and there.

It is hard to see, but I took some irridescent punchinella and cut circles out of it. I glued the circles to random parts on the album front using mod podge.

I created a small banner cluster on the top left with some lime green washi tape.

I covered some Studio Calico wood veneer stars with some glue and loose gold glitter and glued them to the album cover.  I also used some of the gold rub on stars of the same shape, but are a lot smaller, and scattered them around, too.

Finally, I added some red sequins, rhinestones from Glitz Designs, and the word "holiday" from a Basic Grey wood pack.  The gold "season" alphas are Studio Calico.


PHEW!  That was a lot of info!  :)

Here is a peek at the inside, not embellished or decorated yet, but you can get the idea of where I am going with this....

I hope you stop back and see my finished project...which should be sometime around NEXT Christmas!    HAHAHAHA!

Stay scrappy my friends!

Frosted Designs Guest Designer...seeing deeper into a kit...

Hello!  Here again for another guest post for Frosted Designs!  I am doing a giveaway of the November kit going on until Nov. 11th which you can read all about HERE.

Whenever I get a kit, I try to challenge myself to make my projects look completely different from the first impression you get by looking at the kit.  At first glance of the November kit, it looks very girly...flowers, doilies, pinks...so of course I thought to myself: "Let's make a boy page out of this!"  And so it began...

To try to make a more boy page, I pulled some papers that had the obvious blues and aquas in them.  The Pink Paislee color wash paper with the stars die cut out was where I started, and then I pulled in the navy paper from the American Crafts Dear Lizzy line.  How perfect is it that the text on the navy paper says "I Love you to the stars and back" and the Pink Paislee paper has stars on it?!  Awesome!

I backed the stars with the yellowish green paper from Glitz Designs. I used a large color wash tag that says "Love This" and toned it down a bit with a wash of a cream colored mist.  Then I used some bright orange and red gelattos and just painted them on a piece of white scrap paper and put it behind the "Love This" to give some nice, bright color to the page.

I layered a few of the other bits from the Crate Paper die cuts and the Pink Paislee sentiment stickers and voila!

So after I finished that page, I was looking at the pile of things I had left on my table, and I noticed there was a lot of green/blues tones.  Green happens to be my favorite color, and I thought to myself, can I DO a monochromatic layout?  I don't do them that often.  I thought about this fall photo I had and how bright and yellow the tree was and I thought that having a monochromatic page would really make the colors in the photo stand out.

I began my mixing some green mist with gesso and dabbing it through a stencil.  Then I took a grey mist and made circles with the wand.  I punched a few leaves from the piece of patterned paper that looks like a paint chip from the Crate Paper Maggie Holmes line, and I layered them from darkest on the bottom to lightest on the top of the page.

I layered some greenish papers and added some black and white neutral bits here and there with a few touches of gold. For my title, I really love the look of hand script, whether it be die cut, or hand drawn like I did with a sharpie.

I want to thank you again for having me as a guest designer!  I really enjoyed working with this kit and really stretched myself creatively!

Stay Scrappy my friends!

Scraplifting Myself for Scrapbook Circle-"I Love You Froggy"

I love lifting myself! If you have a certain page that you love, why not recreate it over and over again??

Every year I do a photo of my daughter right before her birthday and use the same page design/layout from year to year, but just change up the papers. You can see them HERE.

Anyways, when going back through my Scrapbook Circle layouts (of which I have a TON), I finally narrowed it down to one of my favorites, with a page design that I thought was a bit different. I created this page last August (2012) when I was a guest designer at SBC for the month! My page used a lot of American Crafts Shoreline collection:





I recreated this page by going with a bit larger strips and centering the design on the page. I just started by cutting papers in this months kit that had similar hues, and ironically, they are very similar to the colors on my original page!

On my first page, I used a stencil and some modeling paste to give some texture, so I did the same on the background here with the exclusive SBC stencil.





I distressed the edges of my strips and stitched in between them, added a few mist splatters, my photos, and then spent some time cross stitching this heart from the Amy Tan Cut & Paste collection.







I love how you can tell my page is a lift, yet it still has different look and feel than the first! Hope you are inspired to lift yourself!

Stay scrappy my friends!

Labor Day Weekend *Mini Album*

I am swamped with summer photos, and on Labor Day weekend we had a fantastic fun weekend, and of course I upped my photo count even more!  Then I saw that there was a "Labor Day" challenge on the My Mind's Eye blog, so I decided that I wanted to do a mini album, which I haven't done in a while.

I LOVE doing minis and I love looking at other ones out there, so I spent some time on Pinterest!  :)  But after all that time, I just ended  up doing my own thing anyways....

So I started by digging out my MME stash and picking out some blue, yellow, and coral/red papers. I used a ton of MME lines including Stella & Rose, Indie Chic, Collectable, even Alphabet Soup. As I mentioned in a previous post, blue and yellow have been my go-to summer colors this year!  I used my Cricut to cut some pages out of different sizes, and then for other pages I just cut out some rectangles and punched the edges with border punches or left them plain.

I have a few busy patterns on some of the papers, so I did a gesso white wash over all of the pages, front and back.  I just bought a new set of Gelattos, so I chose a bright yellow and did a few swipes of it on each page and watered it down.

Still a bit too bright, so a stencil and some white paint brought them all together.  Then I splattered some navy mist.  I outlined each page border with a black pen.

After spending what seemed like forever putting the pages in the right order, I took some more papers from my stash and did simple photo mats for each photo and added some other strips of papers here and there.  Then each photo got finished with some washi tape, and I completed the page with enamel dots, brads, sentiment stickers, and a few chipboard pieces here and there.

For the cover, I started with this awesome yellow chevron paper and cut a size that I liked.  Then I cut some chipboard covers and glued the paper to them.  It is hard to tell, but on the yellow part of the paper, I added some gold Gelattos, which gives it a bit of sheen.  I stitched around one of the chevron designs and the outside edge of the covers with blue thread.

I did the same treatment to the covers as I did the pages: stencil with white paint, navy and bright blue mists, enamel dots, chipboard and stickers.

On the outside, I bound the album with plain twine, which I love to use.  I used a group of 3 strands and where it ties, I braided the strands together.  Isn't it convenient that Paper Issues theme this week is twine?  :)  I'm linkin' up!

Here are my pages:

I journaled a bit on each page, but on the inside back cover, I told the story of the weekend.

I just love this little book and I got so many photos scrapped!!!  I feel like doing another mini, so you may see another one soon!

Thanks for stopping by and stay scrappy my friends!