Snow Babies

The challenge over at Mix It Up! this week was to use aluminum foil and masking tape on a layout. Here's my take:They provided us with this sketch:
I had some metallic contractor's tape in my stash from, oh, about 7 years ago when metal accents were all the rage. Everything old is new again! I ran it through the Sizzix with the snowflake Cuttlebug embossing folder to make a cool accent strip. The great thing about using this metal tape (I don't really know what the real purpose of it is--maybe to tape together heating ducts? Anyone?). Anyway, the great thing about it is that it's already sticky backed. Simply peel off the liner and stick it down. I used this same tape to die cut the snowflakes (SU! Sparkle die). A touch more tape to emboss and punch a snowflake "o" in the title, and to punch two small snowflakes for the corners. For the masking tape, I cut strips in half to use as journaling lines, and stuck some to a scrap of CS and punched with SU!'s corner punch.
The title is also cut from masking tape. Here's how:

1. Type words using Word Art tool in Word.
2. Flip horizontal to create a mirror image and print.
3. Use a light box or window and place the masking tape on the back side over the top of your printed text (the text will be reading correctly from this side through the light).
4. Cut out your letters and tape them to your layout. Easy peasy!

Try your hand at some handmade metal embellishments using aluminum foil/metal tape. Run it through a die cutter, emboss it, or how about a few drops of alcohol ink. Fun, fun!

DP Kit Giveaway

Donna Downey is giving away one October kit from Dixie Pieces. Head on over and leave a comment for your chance to win this fab kit. Click here to enter to win.

A Monster and the Zoo

I picked up some of the My Little Monster papers from Daisy Bucket Designs at my LSS a few months back. I just fell in love with those monsters in their bright fun colors, and all those motherly words of wisdom yelling from the paper. Flash forward to Monday: me digging through more old pictures from my film days. Found these of my youngest's first experience with a cookie (I think he liked it, don't you?!). And light bulb!! These pics would be perfect with that cutie paper. Originally, I was thinking the title would be Cookie Monster, but that conjured up images of the big furry blue guy. So instead I cut some of the words from the paper, along with some cutie monsters. And another page is born!



This LO is for this month's Quick and Simple page challenge at Dixie Pieces. The challenge was to use 1-3 photos (I cheated a bit here), two rectangles of paper, letters for the title, and 3 small embellishments. Now that I think about it, I guess I didn't follow the directions very well. Anywho, this page was super quick and easy, aven with the doodled vine with handcut leaves. And those cardboard letters, easy peasy. Just free cut, no stencil, no sketching. The papers are from SEI's Dill Blossom.

Thanks for looking!

Sweet Cheeks

A quick page using a sketch from The Scrappiest. You gotta love sweet baby cheeks!

Washer Pendant How To

Thank you Pinterest for making this one of my most viewed posts!  If you like crafty tutorials, be sure to check out my other fun projects linked above.

Wow, where does a week go? I finally had a chance yesterday to make a few more washer pendants and snap some photos along the way. So roll up your sleeves, here goes.

You will need:
The washers I used were 1 3/4" and 1 3/8" zinc-plated.

Step One:
Clean the washer with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol to remove any dirt and oils.

Step Two:
Place drops of alcohol ink randomly over the surface of the washer.

Step Three:
Use an applicator (Ranger makes one specifically for this, but I don't have it--yet, so I just used a basic cosmetic sponge I had in my stash) with a bit of Blending Solution and dab at the washer to lighten and mix the inks. Add more droplets as needed to create a design that you love. There is no right or wrong here, and what I loved most was how forgiving the inks and blending solution are. If it's too dark lighten with solution; too light, add more ink.

Step Four:
Wrap a piece of wire (mine was 24 gauge) around your washer. Start the wire in the back, and be sure to cover over the end as you wrap around. With each pass through the center, thread 1-3 beads onto the wire. Keep wrapping and threading until you like. Snip off the end and thread it beneath the wires in the back. On the smaller washer, I skipped the wire wrapping and glued on some tiny rhinestones. Forgot to snap a photo of it.
Step Five:
Add a hanger and you are done. I used a premade leather cording that already had the fasteners, but you could use ribbon, string, jute, yarn, chain, and add your own closure, or simply tie it large enough to slip over your head.

I couldn't believe how quickly these came together. You could lay out a bunch at once and work simultaneously on them. I think they would make great gifts, too! I turned one into a keychain by hanging a shorter piece of cording and attaching it to a split ring. Enjoy!

{Note: these images are the result of my own work, and are copyrighted by me under content of my blog.  If you would like to share this project on your site, please use only one photo and include a link back to this page.  Thank you!}

Thank you Marks Paper, Co!

Remember this little project? Well, it won for the contest Marks Paper Co. had. The goodies they sent me arrived yesterday. Oh, so happy! I had just been ogling the paper with the children climbing the tree on their website. And what do you know, it was in my pack of goodies!

I can't wait to create something with these luscious papers.

Washer Pendant Necklace

I am so excited about this little diddy I put together tonight. I hope to make more of these over the next few days complete with step-by-step directions. Stay tuned!

ETA:  You can find the step by step tutorial {here}

Materials: Tim Holtz alcohol inks, alcohol blending solution, wire, beads, zinc plated washer (from the home improvement store)

Beauty

This layout is for the YMBD Saturday Scraplift Challenge. The photo is of glass marbles in a shop in Portland, ME (sorry for the bit of glare on the photo from photographing the layout).

Journaling around the circle reads: Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams ~Ashley Smith

black CS: SU!; orange and blue paper: MME; PP: Cosmo Cricket; flourish rubons: SU! (I cut these into small pieces and created my own layout to better fit the placement); chipboard flower: KI Memories; title stamped in acrylic paint with Autumn Leaves stamps, pom-pom fringe

Celebrate

My Mom's birthday card:

Glittered flourish handcut from MAMBI patterned paper; Butterfly die cut from SU! sizzix, textured with Cuttlebug, and sanded; SU! sentiment from Warm Words; Circles punched from MAMBI and layered with pop dots.

Bubbles

This page was for a sketch at Jillibean. I don't have any Jillibean Soup products (yet!), but I thought it would be a good one for a page of bubble blowing fun using SU!'s Sunshine Garden Simply Scrappin' kit. This will be another one for my scrapclubbers this month.


That is a real-life bubble blowing stick, and I carefully cut some jumbo bubble wrap to create the look of bubbles on the page. For the title I used some stickers that did not exactly match my color scheme, and traced them. To make them pop a bit more, I traced over the existing DSP inside of the letters. I doodled around the border of the page and a bit near the photos to add a bit of interest. Now, to figure out how to put this page into an album without popping the bubbles. . .

The Journey

Right now, I am feeling so influenced and empowered by many people's work. I've been reading through this book, looking at this woman's work, being challenged by this new blog, and working towards this goal. This piece is a sort of culmination of all these influences with a bit of me thrown in. I listened to this song while I worked--love this song (I know I'm dating myself here!)

Anyway, here's how I did it. I started with a piece of duck cloth and applied gesso to the front and back. Apparently when you do this, the cloth shrinks (I think the fibers condense making the piece harder). I had originally cut my pieces to 8x8 to make an album when I found this out. So if you have a certain finished size in mind, be sure to cut extra to allow for shrinkage. You can trim when it's dry.

So, next, I painted the entire piece with some watercolor paints. I used plain old Crayola's for this (my own pack that I don't allow the kiddos to use--I know, mean mommy!). I used lots of water to mute the tones. I didn't even wait for this to dry before proceeding to the next part--I have no patience for that stuff. I took out my Hot Marks tool; had to dust it off quite a bit. Now comes the fun part. I dug out a hot shade of pink from the boys' crayon box (they won't miss it, it's pink!) and melted it onto the canvas. The drips made lots of cool splatters, and I found that if you shake the tool at the canvas you can get a mist of smaller splatters. Be sure to protect your work surface (but if you didn't like me, the wax does cool and peel right off the laminate, thank goodness!) Truth be told, I got a little carried away with this part, and when I stood back to look at my piece, it looked like a wad of bubble gum had just exploded. Well, it was straight to the laundry room with paper towels and the iron (which also needed dusting off). I simply lay a PT over the wax spots and swiped the iron over it. The wax melted and was absorbed into the PT leaving behind a soft bit of color. Oooh, me likey!

For the next part I tried out a little technique from Claudine's book noted above: packing tape transfer. I wasn't sure that this would work (I tried the heat transfer technique first and it flopped). But, ooh-la-la! it worked amazingly! Here's what you do: Find the image you want to transfer; for me it's the JOURNEY clip art that I downloaded from Rhonna's blog above. Print it with a laser printer, or make a copy at a print shop (inkjet won't work here--the inks will run). Burnish a piece of packing tape over the top of the image, then flip it over, mist with a water bottle--give it a good soak--and then rub the paper off. This was like magic to me. You will be left with the image on your piece of packing tape--so cool!

A bit of typing in word to create the journal strips, a die cut butterfly (SU! Sizzix) that I had already made for a prior project, and a stamped flourish blinged with sticky rhinetsones and Stickles. The dangle on the butterfly is an old earring that I was missing the match to (knew I was saving that for something!).

My challenge to you: pull out your paints, crayons, and old jewelry and create something beautiful. Add a photo of you, and some words of meaning and hang it where you can see it everyday.

Enjoy!!

Doing the Do

Here's my layout using this week's sketch from Capture These Sketches. This is a fun sketch, and the DT has some fantastic pages over there. I kept mine simple.

I used a Heidi Swapp mask to paint the green bracket. The rest of the paper is from DCWV. The chipboard is SU!, painted white and stamped. I'm glad to have captured this piece of my son's 4 year-old behavior: how he does his hair everynight before bed.

Scrapbook Club Layout #3

Here is the third scrapbook club layout for the Sunny Day kit:

I used Dixie Pieces' September sketch challenge for this page. I turned the sketch on its side to accommodate my vertical 4x6 photo. The journaling strips are computer generated, the title is hand written and includes a chipboard heart that is not part of the kit. The page is accented with a hand-doodled frame.

Scrapbook Club Layouts

Here are two of the layouts for August's Scrapbook Club using the Sunny Day kit:

This DPS uses 2 4x6 photos, and then creates a collage using a combination of 2x2 and 2x4 photos in the center. You can be really flexible here depending on the number of photos you would like to use and the way you can crop them.

This page is a simple layout using 2 4x6 pictures and 1 smaller 2x3 (approx) one.

I have one more page to put together still, but it will be using this Dixie Pieces sketch which involves just one 4x6 photo:

Splish Splash

This is the final week over at Dixie Pieces: the sound of summer. There are so many sounds associated with summer, but my favorite since childhood has to be the sounds of the ocean.

I came up with a neat technique of cutting angled strips of paper and sewing them together to create a background (requirement one: sewing-check). Then I cut a cute little sun from a sheet of Cosmo Snorkel paper (requirement two: handcutting-check). Then I created a stencil by cutting a Sizzix cloud from a piece of chipboard--voila a fluffy white cloud (requirement three: paint-check). The space in the sky next to the cloud looked a bit blah, so in comes some doodled wind whisps for journaling. Oh, and how about a little doodled frame to mat the whole page? (requirement four: doodling-check) And maybe a sprinkling of seashells in the sand. Yup, it's done.

Something about seeing the photo up on my computer screen helped me realize that this page was just a tad bit off. So on to take two:

This page was not an easy one for me. It took a great deal of time, and I can't say I'm thrilled with the end result. Some pages are just like that--you'll put in so much thought and energy, try out a new complicated technique, over think and over-embellish and end up with a mediocre page. And other times, you'll do a bare bones layout, with minimal effort, hardly any embellishing, and in just 20 minutes, and you'll love the results and mark it as one of your favorites.

Thank You Cards

A couple of thank you cards from earlier this summer.

Kraft cardstock SU!, My Minds Eye paper, Martha Stewart butterfly punch, Stickles

Painted on backside of a transparency sheet with acrylic paint. Applied a SU! rub-on to the front. Lined the inside with cardstock to write note.