June DT Scrapping Turtle Layout - Kissing Cousins

I can't believe June is almost half over. I've finished 3 of my 4 layouts for the June DT projects. The first one features the product of the month - Quickutz border diecuts.

Kissing Cousins was done using BoBunny papers - Gabrielle line and BoBunny embellishments and chipboard accents.

I made the flower from a length of lace and a strip of screen material (yes...the screening in your window and sliding doors) that I ran a thread down one side and gathered it. I used one of the BoBunny embellies for the centre. I finished the layout with a couple of sheer butterflies and ZVA crystal flourishes.

Scrapping Day at Younique

My friend Sandy and I spent a fabulous day at Younique Country Retreat near Fergus yesterday. We arrived not long after 9a.m. and after 2 trips to the car we were unloaded for the day.  The day was Sandy's gift to me for my birthday this month...what a great gift! We scrapped all morning in the company of 8 women who were staying the weekend, had a lovely lunch prepared by Chef Jeff and our hostess Heather, then returned to the scraproom for more scrapping. Dinner was delicious, but then it was right back to scrapping for a few more hours. I gave up at 11p.m., but felt ok about it because I had completed 6 double-page l/o's. I'm working on an album of my DD's godson...he is such a cutie and so expressive.

My Buddha Impression- I love this pic...he looks like a little laughing Buddha LOL

Peek-a-Boo - Cayden seems lost in his oversized hoodie.

Share - I think he was sharing a pickle with his mom...and he looks quite put out that she took the last bite!

All Wrapped Up - Cayden looks so cute in his towel wraps after his bath.

Teething - We can all feel for a baby that is teething..and the joy of seeing those first teeth

Cool Shades - "Mom, Can I tell you a secret? We look cool in our shades". (I ran out of the letter "s" so have to pick one up this week to finish the word.

Born to Be a Storyteller - The expressions on his face look like he's telling some fantastic tales

May Scrapping projects

Well May has been a very busy month and I haven't had much time to add to my blog, so I'm playing catch-up now.

First, my Scrapping Turtle DT l/o for week 3 (technique-embossing) and week 4 (style-clustering). Both of these l/o feature papers by Best Creations "Let's Party", Bazill 1/2 borders, BoBunny chipboard and miscellaneous buttons and other embellishments.

This next l/o was for Scrapping Turtle's 5 rule challenge. Participants each suggest a rule and once 5 rules have been submitted you must design your l/o within the rules. The 5 Rules were:
1. Must contain the phrase "There is no greater gift than...." and you finish it with whatever word(s) you feel fit for you and your l/o.
2. Use 3 buttons on your l/o
3. Include a homemade paper flower
4. Must include journaling.
5. include one "blind" item - so an item that you just reach for in your supplies...it's ok if you know it's a piece of patterned paper etc (based on how you organize may be hard to be totally "blind") - but for one of the items just close your eyes and take the plunge and see where it takes you! (My blind item was the red flower stickers from Basic Grey. It dictated the dramatic black and red BoBunny paper which had a touch of green writing on it which I picked up with the flower and journaling background.)

My last l/o was a special request from my DD. She loves this pic of her godson and suggested the title and the use of playing cards on the l/o. I thought the black trim looked like a garter and fit the tux l/o.

I also used some flowers that I made to decorate a wrapped birthday present that I did for a colleague at work. I decorated the present using hand painted paper from India, gold tulle and tissue paper...and a few gold and pink butterflies.

Age Is Just A Number

I can't believe another month has gone by and the first week of May is almost over. This week, the DT for the Scrapping Turtle revealed its Product of the Month (POTM) l/o challenge. The POTM are filter papers from Fancy Pants. These are very versatile embellishments. For my first layout, I sprayed my filter paper with Smooch (last month's POTM) and then stamped a design on top. This layout features Best Creations "Let's Party" papers, Fancy Pants filter paper flowers, Bazzil Basics Paper Half the Edge cardstock strips and misc buttons and letters.

The photo is of me with my two best girlfriends celebrating one of our birthdays (I won't say which one, nor which age goes with which lady LOL).

Catching Up

I have been neglecting my posting for a few weeks, so am just playing catch up now. The first pic below is of the l/o I did for the Scrapping Turtle's inspiration challenge. It features Nikki Sivils "We Are Family" paper, Maya Road embellishments and Smooch Spritz.

Not Your Typical New Baby Layout

One of the guys at work has just welcomed a new baby - a first for him and his wife. I have started to do a layout to welcome the new arrival and frame it in a shadow box as a gift for them, instead of flowers from the company.

Because my co-worker is a software engineer, I thought it might be fun to tie in the computer aspect, so I picked up a few "computer bits" to use as embellishments and asked one of the other guys to write some software code for me that incorporated the details of the birth. I am still waiting on getting a copy of the pic for the layout, but thought I'd share the l/o as it is now anyway.

2nd Scrapping Turtle Reveal - DT Sketch Challenge

Using a sketch submitted by DT member Mim Harris we all used our kits to do our layouts this week. I used a pic of Cayden getting his 1st haircut at age 2. His hair was so curly it was deceptively long. He's such a cutie and the expression on his face seems to say "Mom, I think Dad has cut enough now."

In this layout I used Nikki Sivils "We Are Family" paper, Maya Road embellishments, Smooch Spritz and Prima flourishes and butterflies. Check out the rest of the DT sketch challenge layouts.

My 1st DT Reveal for The Scrapping Turtle

The Design Team at The Scrapping Turtle has been excitedly working away on their kits received just two weeks ago and today the first reveal was made. Our kits contained papers from Nikki Sivils and mine was the "We Are Family" line...such fun colours. As this line was new to me, I found myself thinking of a photo taken...well let's just say more than a few...years ago, and before I knew it "Seems Like Just Yesterday" came together.

Also included in the kit and used on the l/o were embellishments from Maya Road and Smooch Spritz.

The Smooch Spritz was a lot of fun to use...it has a very dense colour and I absolutely loved the shine. I used the Smooch on the base paper and then stamped over it with a flower stamp. I also used it on a piece of white card stock that had been embossed with a swiss dot pattern, using a piece of chipboard that had a flower popped out of it. Finally...because I was having so much fun with it...I spritzed the centres of some Prima bloooms from my stash. I handstitched around the scalloped edge of the blue and brown paper with blue embroidery thread and added the Maya Road leaf pins to the top right corner. I finished it off with some chipboard lettering from Bo Bunny.

The Smooch spritz was such a great compliment to the Nikki Sivils papers. The colours all worked so well together. I can hardly wait until the next reveal to show you what I did next. Check out the other awesome layouts of the other DT members!

Beautiful...Girls in Purple...

The photographer at my DDs friend's wedding last summer was the groom's younger brother. He took some amazing pics and this is one of my favourites...the bride and bridesmaids before they left for the church taken from the second floor of the house. I rarely start with a white background, but after doing this I may do it more often. The dresses were a deep purple, and as you know purple is one of those colours that can be hard to match. I had so purple corrugated cardboard that went well, but was quite overpowering as a mat, so I added a white die cut frame to soften it. Then I found a paper that had a muted purple and green mosaic pattern on it. I matted this and two strips of a lighter purple in the dark purple. Feeling that the white paper was a bit too stark, I spritzed some homemade purple and peridot green glimmer mists diagonally onto the paper. I added a Prima pearl flourish and then made a load of spiral flowers in white and light and dark purple in three different sizes. I added some little half pearls to the centres of some of the flowers. I also added a few sprigs of white flowers, some leaves and a few white feathers and finally the word "beautiful"!

I'm on The Scrapping Turtle Design Team!

I am so excited! I learned on Monday that I had been chosen for the Scrapping Turtle's Design Team. This is the first time I've applied to a design team and I'm looking forward to the experience and learning from the other talented ladies in the group. This great store in St. Jacobs is worth the visit!

I will be posting the links to the other DT members' blogs as soon as I have them all.

I'll be picking up my first kit tomorrow and can't wait to get started on my first DT project.

Monochromatic...Incognito Friends

Over the past few weeks I've seen a number of monochromatic layouts that I have loved. I thought I'd give it a try this weekend.

For many years, my DD and her friend (MOD - my other daughter)have had an obsession with sunglasses. It seems to be "their thing" to take pictures of themselves together wearing sunglasses...as if they were stars trying to go incognito. So I've named this layout Incognito Friends Forever.

I chose a soft green for my monochromatic scheme using a variety of papers and accenting them with some cream. I used spiral flowers and even made a bunch of "rosebuds" from 1" circles as well. I painted a Pink Paislee scalloped border embellishment in peridot and added a Prima flourish. I used a piece of embossed photo paper that I had painted in peridot also to tuck behind the doily.

In the end, I'm not sure I would consider this "monochromatic"...but I like it anyway LOL.

A Bloomin Addiction

I just can't help myself...I have become seriously addicted to making my own blooms. From my "ugly paper" spiral flowers to the tulle blooms and now ones made from paper bags/kraft paper... I just can't stop. I even emailed my SF Sandy and suggested she stage an intervention...but when she heard what I was doing she got hooked as well LOL.

I am in the process of doing several layouts and projects in preparation for applying to a Design Team for the first time. This past weekend I spent nearly 2 full days scrapping, one day on my own and the other with Sandy. I finished 3 layouts that I had either in progress or sketched out. I have just submitted these so will now share them with you as well.

I will post the paper bag flowers later today.

I loved this paper and chose it for this layout because of its simplicity. I didn’t want to detract from the photo at all which is absolutely priceless and beautiful. I used handmade spiral flowers to highlight some of the “blooms” on the pattern of the paper as well as using a few below the photo. The leaves were made from Kraft paper sprayed with Glimmer Mist and distressed with inks. A few gems and the title were added to finish it off.

MOD (My Other Daughter…aka my daughter’s friend) got married last summer. The theme for the wedding was Mardi Gras. The jeweled masks worn by the bride and bridesmaids were really quite beautiful and an inspiration for this layout. I chose a bold coloured paper for the background, folded back a cutout to reveal the photo on a contrasting green damask patterned paper. I used the same green damask paper to make the leaves. I made the gerber daisy/mums (my own hybrid flower I guess LOL) from white cardstock lightly sprayed with Glimmer Mist. I echoed the dark red flower in her bouquet in the flowers I made also. The centres of the flowers were gems circled with black Stickles. I strung some beads in golds and reds to hang from the flower above the “L” to echo the beads on the mask.

This picture of my daughter’s 2 year old godson, Cayden, was perfect for a layout with lots of blooms. I used a simple black cardstock base, cut out a frame and matted the photo with a mustard yellow and burgundy paper. The large blooms are all Prima flowers that started out white. I sprayed them with Glimmer Mist, layered them and added gems to the centres. The large lollipop flower is made from kraft paper, stamped with a design and sprayed with Glimmer Mist. The leaves were also made from Kraft paper, sprayed with green and gold Glimmer Mist, crinkled and inked.

Over 50 years ago my Dad wrote a poem to my Mom before they were married. Not long ago they were clearing out some things and Mom came across the poem. I photocopied it onto cream cardstock and distressed the edges to make this layout for them. I used a wedding photo framed with a frame cut from my Silhouette as well as a recent photo of them together. I used the Prima blooms and almost sepia toned old photo as my inspiration for picking the background papers of brown, tan and green. Some rub-ons and gem flourishes finished off this page.

I made 2 very similar cards. The first is feminine in green/blue and cream. I started by embossing some photo paper and then painting it with metallic acrylic paint in peridot and then distressing it slightly with blue ink. I chose a background plaid paper that picked up all the colours I wanted to use. I used a small piece of gold foil (after eating the chocolate it was wrapping) that I distressed below the Happy Birthday tag. The flower base is a Prima bloom sprayed with Glimmer Mist and lightly brushed with the peridot acrylic paint. The next bloom layer is a cardstock bloom cut on my Silhouette and painted with the peridot acrylic paint. The centre of the bloom is a handmade spiral flower. The bloom sits atop a white ribbon bow.

I love the colours of this more masculine version of my card as I am mostly drawn to earth colours, typically coppers and all shades of brown. The base paper is from a My Mind’s Eye stack and I picked a coordinating stripe paper from the same stack. I used the same embossed photo technique used on the card above, but this time using a metallic copper acrylic paint and distressing with dark brown and black inks. I added a piece of Kraft paper sprayed with Glimmer Mist and distressed with inks. I repeated the base paper in the Happy Birthday tag and added a Prima bloom stamped with black ink and the leaves to finish it off.

Tulle Blooms

There are so many beautiful flowers available from a number of manufacturers that you could quickly go broke buying all that you see and fall in love with. I'm a big fan of mixing purchased blooms with homemade ones. I picked up some rolls of tulle at the dollar store this weekend with the express purpose of trying to make some blooms.

I cut 3 sizes of circles and then used three layers of each size for the bloom, slightly off-setting each layer from the centre. I then used a brad to secure the layers (in one I glued the layers together). Finally, I held the bloom carefully over a tea light candle to "shrivel" the petals. A "gem" in the centre of the bloom completed the look I was going for. For the gold ones in the last pic, before assembling the layers I edged them with copper Stickles.

Hope you like them as much as I do.

Catch me ...if you can

Saturday afternoon, pouring with rain and I packed up my scrapping bag and headed over to SF Sandy's house for some chatting and scrapping. I had started a layout earlier in the week and wanted to finish it off. I had picked up a package of paper from the surplus store because I liked one sheet in it so decided that was my starting point. I felt it needed a punch of colour, so I found a striped paper that co-ordinated with the pale pinky-beige and the brown while introducing two shades of turquoise blue.

I had a sheet of matching corrugated turquoise that I smeared some gold stickles across. The border started off white but I felt it was too stark so I used gold metallic acrylic paint on it. I found another coordinating paper from a mat stack and adhered some small beads to two corners and to a chipboard "C". I used one of my newly made ugly paper flowers as an embellishment with two other paper flowers.

Catch me...if you can. I had bought one of those spiral leads that join a parent and child at the wrist, designed to prevent the child from wandering off. I had fastened one end around Rachel's wrist and was trying to figure out how to fasten the other end to my own wrist, I looked up to find that my daughter, Rachel, at age two, had already figured out how to undo her end. Thinking this was very funny, she took off into the yard giggling with the "leash" trailing behind her. This pic was snapped as she continued to laugh and had "catch me if you can" written all over her face.

Ugly Paper...Beautiful Flowers

Are you like me and have a stack of paper that you keep looking at and think "where will I ever use that ugly paper?".

Well the other night, I had dinner with two dear friends, one of whom is my SF (scrapping friend) Sandy and the other, our sometime scrapping friend, Judy. Sandy brought with her some flowers that she had made after watching a YouTube tutorial on spiral flowers. So of course, I had to try them as well. Because I didn't know how well mine would turn out, I looked through my "ugly" papers that I wouldn't be sorry to lose if I messed things up. Last night I sat in front of the TV and cut my circles and rolled my spirals and guess what...ugly paper really does make some beautfiul flowers!

I also spritzed them with some Glimmer Mist...and tonight I may even add some Stickles...or bling... It was really fun and easy...and I got to use paper that would otherwise still be relegated to my "ugly stack".

Love

Sunday afternoon and it snowed again last night.  I know I shouldn't moan about it as we actually get off lighter than a lot of other areas...but I've had enough and am ready to see some green grass and spring flowers.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a sheet of "Pixie Garden" from Prima's Fairy Flora Collection.  The minute I saw it I could picture several things I wanted to try.  I knew I wanted to use the distressed foil mentioned in my first post, as well as some of the flowers I made last weekend, on this page.  A few years ago a family friend took this picture of Rachel and I.  Every time I look at it I'm overwhelmed with the love that only a mother can have for her daughter.

I stripped off the covering layer of a piece of corrugated cardboard, sprayed it with Glimmer Mists, distressed it with brown and black inks (both across the body and around the edges) and finally smeared some gold and copper Stickles across the cardboard.  I found a complimentary pattern on a sheet from a K&Company Designer Mat Pad and tucked it behind the photo and the cardboard.  I placed a flourish cut on my Silhouette on the side and then added my flowers.   The black word "love" is from KI Memories Inc.  Lastly...I added the bling...an assortment of sizes of gold "gems".  The layout is posted below with a few closeups.