The Girl's Got Personality {CS #171}

It's Sunday, which means we've got a new sketch up at Creative Scrappers this morning!

I love circles--they always add a bit of fun and interest to a page design. Here's the page I made. I made this for Emily's August Challenge over at Sassafras Lass.  Emily's challenge is to use a mix of at least 3 different letters.

That's my best friend's daughter, Monica. She's a trip, and I thought the Sassafras Lass products were perfect to show off her fun personality!

Here are a few details. How I love those little monsters from the Monstrosity collection. I will be so sad when I run out of this paper! The fuzzy brad is by Sassafrass Lass, as are all the papers on my page.

Here's my mix of letters. I love these little Sassafras Lass letter stickers--they're the perfect size for my 8 x 8 pages. I also dug out some old Heidi Swapp rub-on letters. The black dots are Enamel Accents by Ranger. I outlined the monsters with a fineline pen and added Glossy Accents to their eyes. I also outlined the photos, letters, banner, and papers in pen. That brad is also from Sassafras Lass.

Some more of the little monsters. I tucked them inside a frame I cut out of the same paper. I roughed up the edges of my papers with my Distrezz-It-All. Such a nifty gadget!

Go check out what the rest of the team made with this sketch--awesome work there! And if you haven't yet played with any of the August sketches, there's still time. You have until August 31 to play with any of them for a chance at a prize from our sponsor, Crop Chocolate.

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading about my page!

A Divine Palette {at CCG}

Challenge 205 is live at Color Combos Galore. Isn't this a beautiful Inspiration Board?

Here is the page I created. The picture was taken with my new webcam. I've been chatting with friends on Skype for the past week, and for some reason whenever I'm looking at a light computer screen, my face gets all whited out and my friends have this joke, which is what my hidden journaling is all about. (It's an inside joke, so I won't be sharing the journaling.)

I used an odd assortment of papers for this page. The colors were tricky to get an exact match, but I found several that were pretty close to the palette. The teal paper in the background is by Heidi Grace and it has some pretty embossed dandelions, most of which unfortunately got covered up as I started adding to my page.

Here are some details. That big pink flower came from a K&Co pad of paper (Handmade collection). And the lanterns are from Webster's Pages, of course. Love those!

The floruishy teal paper is by Foofala. An oldie but goodie. Speaking of oldies but goodies, I still love my old Heidi Swapp letters. So classic. I don't think they'll ever go out of style--which is a good thing since I have a million packages of them! The little words are cut out of a Cosmo Cricket Odds & Ends paper. There's some of my mesh under the title for the Designer's Challenge. The silvery dots are Liquid Pearls. They always turn out pointy for me. Gotta experiment with them to figure out how to make them more like pearls and less like microscopic Hershey's kisses.

Thanks to my friend Tracee who suggested adding the rhinestones to these flowers when I was saying my layout needed more bling. The flower branch was cut out of an old Prima paper. I glazed them with Stickles. I also added that photo corner at the last minute. The alphabet paper is also from an Odds & Ends paper, and the "Document" journaling spot and harlequin pattern paper are by Teresa Collins. They were just the right shade of red. I found that the red in Jenni Bowlin's papers are pretty close to the red in the palette.

I added Glossy Accents to the little circles in the centers of these pink flowers. I also outlined the flowers with a fine pen.

Come on over and check out the beautiful work from the rest of the team, and play along with us! You may just become our next featured member!

Thank you so much for visiting my blog and reading about my page!



3 Can Be a Lonely Number {CS Sketch 169}

This week's sketch at Creative Scrappers was so much fun to play with:

I used Studio Calico's Paper Moon kit, along with a few odds and ends from my stash to make my page.

This is a makeover of this layout I made about 5 years ago. Call me crazy, but I like to re-do pages that I hate. Here's the journaling that's on the back (I just took a screen shot of the journaling on the old page):

Here are some details. How cool is that paper that looks like old computer punch cards? It's by October Afternoon from their Rocket Age collection--the specific paper is called Docking Maneuver. The bit that says "Travel Nightmare" is from a Smash pad (the travel one, obviously).

The border stickers (the red triangle, the train, and the circle numbers at the top) are by Crate Paper, from their Toy Box collection. That bit that says "Seriously" is an old woven tab by Making Memories--remember those? I've been making a conscious effort lately to include some of my "oldies-but-goodies" on my pages.

Here's another bit of old stash--a brass concho. I was trying to highlight the number 3 on my page. As you can see, I framed the 3 on that border sticker with the concho, and I cut out the 3's on the Studio Calico number paper. If you look back, you can see that I adhered some of the 3's that I punched out of the October Afternoon to the photograph.



The rest of the DT made some gorgeous stuff, so you'll have to pop over and see what they did. And I hope you'll play along--you may just win a prize from our sponsor, Crop Chocolate. You can read details about the requirements on the Creative Scrappers blog.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog and reading about my page!

Take a Chill Pill

...'Cause it's Relaxation Day! True story. And we're celebrating Relaxation Day with our newest challenge at How Much Is Too Much. Anna-Karin came up with a clever challenge:

- About something that you find relaxing.
- Close your eyes and dig into your stash of scrap patterned papers and randomly pick out at 6 or more pieces of papers and use those on your layout. No peeking!
- Do the same thing and pick 10 or more random buttons, ribbons or pearls.
- Use 3 bits and pieces lying around on your desk (not patterned papers). If you have a clean desk, use 3 left-overs from your last project.
- 1 recycled item

I used this sketch from Creative Scrappers as a starting point (ever since I got on the Creative Scrappers design team, I set a scrappy goal to make a layout for each of their sketches):

Here's the page I came up with:

I have to confess that I do not really love my page, but I did have lots of fun making it.

I scratched my head when I read the second two requirements. I have all my scraps organized by manufacturer in files with the whole sheets, and my embellishments are also very organized, so trying to just reach in and grab wasn't going to be an option.

Here's what I decided I'd do: I run a challenge at 2Peas called The Stash Challenge, so I have lists of manufacturers and types of embellishments on my computer that I use to draw from when I post the challenges. I used Random.org to pick random numbers, and then I counted down the lists. Here's what I came up with for paper manufacturers: Luxe Designs, Sassafras Lass, SEI, Paper Salon, Scenic Route, and American Crafts. My embellishments were lace, baker's twine, weather accents, charms, bird, decorative brads, flowers, swirls, epoxy stickers, stamp.

Fi Kenward, Tracee Provis, and I were video-chatting on Skype as we were picking our embellishments, so we could check up on each other and make sure we wouldn't cheat! What I did, once I had my lists was go to my manufacturer folders and randomly pull scraps. Such an odd assortment of papers! Similarly, with the embellishments, I went to the particular drawer holding that type of embellishment, closed my eyes, and pulled. When I got to the "weather related" accent, I realized I didn't have those housed together, so I asked Tracee to pick a number between 1 and 130 (the number of little drawers of embellishments I have), and she said 75. My 75th drawer had metal rimmed tags.

Here are a few details. That button was in the same drawer with my epoxy stickers, and that's what I randomly drew out of that drawer. Here's a shot of some of the papers. The woodgrain is Luxe Designs; the yellow polka dot is Sassafras Lass; the turqouise is SEI; and pink and brown circles were punched out of a Paper Salon paper, and the black and white rings came from a Scenic Route Halloween paper. The red leaves were leftover from the last layout and counted for the 3 bits and pieces lying around on my desk (oops--I just read that those weren't supposed to be patterned papers--does it count as cheating if you didn't mean to cheat?).

The rub-ons are old BasicGrey ones. The pearls were on my desk from my last layout. I always wanted to get a picture of me in front of the computer because I do spend a lot of time there, and I just got a web cam last weekend, so that's where my picture came from. I was so frustrated because my printer was acting up and I couldn't get a proper print, but in the end, I decided it was okay, since it was for Relaxation Day.

The little heart is my item that came from my charm drawer--it's actually a button. And here you can see that I drew a pink metal-rimmed tag. And the punched birds came from my drawer of bird accents. The striped paper is the B side of the teal paper.

This picture shows my bit of lace that I drew out of my lace jar. My recycled item is also in this picture--the blac-and-white scalloped bit is from a package of Chatterbox stickers that was sitting on my desk. And the MOD brad was the one I drew from one of my decorative brad drawers.

So there you have my page for Relaxation Day. I assure you that even if this sounds stressful (as it did to me when I first realized I was going to give up control over what was going on my page), it turned out to be GREAT fun! I always love a good challenge--and this one was definitely a challenge! I hope you'll give it a whirl! Come see the awesome stuff my teammates made!

Thank you for stopping by my blog and reading about my page!

A Beachy-Keen Palette {at CCG}

Challenge 204 is live at Color Combos Galore!

For the Designer's Challenge we had to use a grid design. I had recently made a layout using a traditional grid, so I wanted to do something a little different, and I remembered a sketch I had seen at Studio Calico that reminded me a little of a grid:

Here is the page I made. I used square blocks of patterned paper, overlapping and staggering, for a sort of modified grid design. That's one of about a thousand pictures of my nephews posing with a toad they found in their back yard. I've written stories before about the toads, but really there was no special story for this page, just a cute picture. I used a bunch of older papers for this page, including Making Memories (the die-cut paper in the background and the blue polka dots), K&Co (the green), DCWV (the blue and white and the brown polka dots), and Chatterbox (plaid).

Here are a few details. The leaves were cut out of an old Scenic Route paper. I scored the center of the leaves and folded them up for a little dimension. The tabs tucked behind the photo are ancient--they're woven ribbony tabs by Scrapworks. I have a ton of them. Don't know why I thought of dusting them off for this page, but I'm glad I did.

There's another tab by scrapworks--has more of a canvas texture. That frog was cut from a birthday card and I put him on a punched circle. The border punch is by Martha Stewart, and the chipboard letters are by BasicGrey. I added the pom-pom trim at the last minute, just before I was going to photograph my page.

That arrow is an old Foofala rub-on, which I put on that same yellow paper (which was trimmed from the edge of a patterned paper, by the way--I thought it was the perfect shade of yellow). I outlined the arrow with bue pen and added the pearls. The word stickers are all by K&Co.

This little 3D flower sticker is by Chatterbox.

The reveal is just gorgeous this week, as always! Go take a peek. And I hope you'll play along with us--the challenges are so fun!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page.

A Serene, Harmonious Palette {at CCG}

Challenge 203 is up at Color Combos Galore, and what a lovely Inspiration Board we have this week:

And I just happened to have this picture of me looking for seaglass and Farzad patiently indulging me, so this page was born. It's going into my book called "Reasons," where I document all the little reasons I love my husband so much!

I got a little carried away adding stuff to my page. (And believe me, there's a pile of stuff on my scrap desk that I wanted to add but didn't fit). Most of the stuff on my page is pretty old. I was so happy to use some of the probably hundreds of sheets of vellum in my stash.

Here are some details. The vellum clocks came from a sheet of Rebecca Sowers Attic Collection patterned vellum (that shows you how old that is!). That little "Simple Stories" bit was cut form the tear strip of a patterned paper. That brown textured paper is also really old. I bought it at an art store years and years ago. My letter stickers are by BasicGrey and Webster's Pages. The colors matched the palette pretty closely. I did some scribbly pen work on the  BasicGrey letters.

I love those white stem-looking patterns from an old Making Memories paper. I'm going to be sad when I run out of that paper. The seahorse was trimmed from a Webster's Pages paper. The netting tucked in between the layers is from a Webster's Pages bloomers trim. I added that charm to the stamped frame at the last minute, as well as the real starfish and sand dollar. The frame stamp is by Glitz Designs.

Those shell images come from a Creative Imaginations paper. The border stamp is by Kaiser Craft.

The patterned papers I used are from a Die Cuts With a View pad. Here you can see I added some water droplets by using Glossy Accents. I think I might add some more. You can also see that the aqua vellum is patterned--it has a watery pattern on it that was perfect for this challenge.

HEre you can see the silver charm a little better. That "Seaside Avenue" bit is from a Making Memories patterned paper.

Go take a look at the gorgeous work the rest of the team made, and I do hope you'll play along with us! If you've never tried our challenge, you must give it a whirl! It's so fun!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page!

August Work in Progress

I can finally share the pages I made for Work in Progress kits. Here is the kit I got to play with (sorry--sold out. Gotta snag it early!):

Here is my first page I made. I love watching the sun rise whenever we go to the beach, and Farzad and I always get up early to see it. We took pictures one summer of us watching. The butterfly shadow is covering me up, but I'm in that picture I'm sitting in a chair watching it. I was trying to figure out a title for my page, and I decided "Rise" was the perfect title for it's double meaning.

I used Creative Scrappers Sketch 164 to make this page. Ever since I've been on the CS design team, I made it a secret goal to try to do all of their sketches. Might take me forever, but it's a fun goal. I love setting scrappy goals. Keeps my scrappy routine interesting!

And here are some details. The yellow paper in the background with the numbers is by Simple Stories. And the flowers and yellow and orange polka dot circles are from the opposite side of the same paper. That journaling spot is by Jillibean Soup. The BasicGrey fabric brad is from my stash.
 

I didn't originally have the gold dots on my title and around the circles, but when I looked upon my page with fresh eyes the next day, I realized I neded a little something-something on my page. I made the dots with Scribbles 3D paint, which you can pick up at Michael's for about a dollar. The colorful striped element is by Jillibean Soup.

 

The wave punched border is another "fresh eye" addition," along with the sticker and brads. It gave my page a visual triangle that I felt was missing. Plus I always love how word stickers can add to a story.

 

 
So that's my first page with this fun, summery kit. I'll share the others in the coming days. Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page today!