Sunday, January 29, 2012

Lazy Sunday

Well it's one of those drizzly, cloudy days that you really don't even want to get out of bed for, lol. My MS has really been acting up this past week and the fatigue is quite bad.I didn't even get out of bed yesterday until about 10 am and then I had to go lay down at noon and fell asleep for a good 2 hours. By the time a did a few things and got dinner made and eaten I was back in bed at 7:30pm last night and didn't get up this morning until 9am. Now it's only about 2:15 pm and I could really head back to bed - I hate it when this fatigue takes over and it usually means that something bigger is going to happen with the MS. I've already been having  stupid vertigo if I move to fast and really don't need anything else happening. Oh well, can't do much about it I guess. :-(

I did manage to get another layout done of my friends cute little great niece that I took when I was down in Portland visiting this past November. She is just such a cutie I couldn't resist doing another layout of her.  She was just so cute playing in this upside down wicker table and some plastic containers - who needs fancy toys when you have all that, lol! I used some of my left overs from the March 2011 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook featuring Websters "Spring Market" collection. I did some layering and distressing and took a duplicate piece of the paper and did some fussy cutting of the signs etc in the bottom left corner and of the vellum in the top right corner. The banner I made using some of the cross grain ribbon from the kit and the Websters Storyteller Alpha stickers - these alpha stickers are great, they come in so many colors and fonts that you can use them with any layouts your doing! The little bouquet of flowers and the fabric pink and white one are from Prima and were included in this kit. I hope you like the layout and thanks for stopping by!
 

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Websters New Paper Pads

Have you been over to Websters blog and seen their new "Paper Pads"? PETITE PAPER PADS are back in all of their new lines! That's right, they've got the same gorgeous designs you see in 12x12 form all sized down to 6x6... The 6x6 papers give you a  great assortment so you get more than one collection per pad. Take a look at this one, SUNDAY PICNIC and EVERYDAY POETRY:

And the other one has three lines in it, GAME ON, PALM BEACH and IN LOVE:

Gorgeous, right? 

But that's not all. Because these scaled down versions of their papers are so popular, they've decided to create a brand new product this year, PERFECT MOTIFS
This 18 page paperpad is LOADED with motifs from ALL FIVE COLLECTIONS! a NEW Product from Websters. If you'd like to read more about it you can check out the Websters Pages blog today! Websters Blog. I don't know about all of you but I'm thinking I need to win the lottery so I can buy all of the awesome new paper lines the manufacturer's are releasing for CHA! Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!


Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Trying to use my stash...

I'm trying really hard not to buy any new papers until I use up more of my stash. I figure if I want to buy some of the new lines that are coming out at CHA next month I better get rid of some of the stuff I have already - you know how us scrappers love to hoard papers, lol. So far I'm not doing to badly at using stuff up. Pam at My Creative Scrapbooks just packs her kits with so many goodies you can get so many layouts done with each kit and still have leftovers, which, if your joining a kit club is a good thing to know!

This first one I've done her is a photo of a friend of mine and myself that was taken at another friend's place on New Years Eve. She is such a great person and we always laugh when we get together, one of our things we always tell our other friends is that "For a couple of old broads, we don't look to bad!", lol. These papers are from the January 2011 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. When I pulled out my piece of green background paper that I wanted to use for this layout I realized that my paper was short about and inch and a half so I thought I was pretty sneaky and got three other sheets of left over paper from the kit and punched them and laid them down on top of each other at the top of the layout to cover up the shortage - sometimes my brain actually works, lol. I did some fussy cutting of the flowers from one of the other sheets of paper from the kit  for the bottom two corners and popped them up with foam. Included in this kit was this great package from Pink Paislee called "Artisan Elements" - they look like white chipboard but they have more of a plastic/rubber type feel to them and you can distress them, mist them, paint them and pretty much anything else you'd like to do with them. There are four corner pieces and then about 8 other circle shapes going from large to small - they are very cool looking. I decided I just want to leave mine white and I use that one to frame my photo. I did a bit of layering with the other papers from the kit and then used these pretty brown and red Prima flowers. Remember if you click on the photo you can see a larger view of the photo.
This next layout I've used a photo of myself and My friend's cute little great niece, Lucy, that I finally got to meet when I was down visiting in Portland. She was so cute when she was leaving to go home she was waving to us and saying "Bye Gramma's". I think because her real Gramma (my friends sister) and my friend and I are all blonde she figures anyone older with blonde hair is a Gramma, so funny. I used the Feb 2011 LE kit for this layout - I've still got some left over even after doing this one, lol. I just love this collection "Once Upon a Springtime" from Graphic45! I just love all the cute little fairies in this collection so I did a lot of fussy cutting of the fairies from the paper plus the flowers. I did some layering and distressing and added Prima flowers that came in the kit as well as some I had in my stash. The white flowers I made but for the centers I used some tiny Prima rose buds that I had in my stash. I also added a little bit of white picket fencing that I had in my stash. It really took me about two days of playing around with this layout before I was finally happy enough with it to start gluing and taping things down. So here is how it turned out, hope you like it and remember I love to hear your comments! TFL!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Pion Design's Giveaway!

Fridday, Jan 21st was Pion Designs 1 year blog anniversary and they would like to celebrate with some wonderful blog candy! Here is what you need to do to have the chance to win the entire collection of From My Heart ll and From My Heart ll 6×6 is…

•become a subscriber to there blog (under “Follow Us” in the sidebar)
•write about their blog candy on your blog with their logo and link back to Pion Design
•last but not least, write a comment to on their blog post and tell them your favorite collection from Pion Design.

The winner will be announced 14th of February, on Valentines Day.


Good luck!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

On a roll!

I was in a bit of a scrapbooking slump for a few days. I kept looking at the photos I wanted to scrap and it seemed nothing was coming to me in the way of layouts. Finally after going to my LSS and finding these pretty Bo Bunny Christmas papers my brain actually got back into the swing of things, lol. This first layout I used the Bo Bunny Christmas papers mixed with some things I had left over from the Dec 2010 LE kit from My Creative Scrapbook. We have been having a yearly Christmas Eve gathering at our friends place since our kids were all babies. The kids are now 19 - 22 years of age but everyone still gets together even though some of us have moved and have other things going on. So it was great to be able to get together with everyone when I was down for Christmas - even some of the kids still come as they say they look forward to it every year.

This next layout I used a mix of different Websters winter papers. I did a lot of layering, distressing and popping things up with foam dots on this one, I was quite pleased at how it turned out. This is my daughter's silly dog looking up at the mantel because he wanted some more doggie treats out of his stocking, lol.
On this next layout I used vellum and papers from Websters "Wonderfall" collection. They really went perfect with the photo since I was down visiting my girlfriend in Portland for Thanksgiving this past November. I did some fussy cutting and popping things up with foam dots on this layout. I made the white flowers with the peach centers myself, not that you can really tell very well in this photo the the centers are peach colored. My girlfriend and I have been friends since we were in grade three. I had started out putting the number 40 on this page until my ex-husband reminded me that it's been 50 years - how the heck I got so old I don't know, lol.


This next layout of my grandson and the one after were done following the January sketch over at My Creative Scrapbook Sketch Blog. I made the organza flower myself, it doesn't look perfect but I figured it wasn't to bad for my first attempt at one, lol. My grandson got  Nerf dart gun for Christmas so of course the first thing he did was stick the darts all over his face, lol - he does love to make people laugh!

This next layout is of a photo of my girlfriend and I and her sisters going out to celebrate my birthday and one of her sisters birthdays while I was down visiting. I used some papers and goodies I had left over from my April 2010 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. This just goes to show you how many layouts you can get done with these awesome kits that Pam puts together! I used some Rangers Ink, Stream, to dye the paper doily and since I had all this ink still on my non-stick craft mat I decided to dye some plain card stock with it to cut out my title with my Cricut.  I made the pink flowers with the brown centers myself.


Well thanks so much for stopping by and I would love to hear your comments on my layouts. Have a great weekend!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Big Sketch Contest

My Creative Scrapbook hosted a 3 month long sketch contest at their sketch blog (you can find it here: My Creative Sketches) in which they supplied a sketch and everyone was to create a layout based on that sketch.The contest was October through December...and as usual Pam has given away the most awesome prizes! The sketches and the layouts I did based on these sketches are below.
Sketch #3:



My layout:


Sketch #2:

For my layout I turned the sketch on it's side:

Sketch #1:

My layout for this sketch is being published in "Scrapbook News and Review's" January issue so I am unable to show it here until Feb 15th, so I will post it then but I needed to get these all up 
on my blog here so I could enter the final phase of this big sketch contest.
Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment,  I love to read them all - good or bad!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

I've fallen in Love!

No, not with another man - one is enough, lol. It's Bo Bunny's beautiful "Snowfall" collection....I love, love, love this line - even more than last years "Snowy Serenade" line. With all it's pretty  glitter and snowflakes and shades of blues and browns, it's just so yummy! And of course I'm dying to get some pretty snowfall photos to scrap with it, but so far we haven't had any snow yet this winter - what the heck is that!? I know we don't get as much snow here on the West Coast of Canada as they do back east  but we usually get at least one or two days by now. Even in Alberta they are having unusually warmer weather than normal. The good thing about Bo Bunny papers, I find, is that you can pretty much use any of their lines for any type of photo. So I sat looking at a photo of my daughter and I taken in front of her Christmas tree and the photo just didn't go with the usual red & green colors of Christmas paper. Then I noticed the blue walls behind the tree and it hit me - I can use this beautiful Bo Bunny Snowfall papers! Yay!

Since there were browns in the photo I wanted to make sure I used the papers with browns in them also. I wanted to use, for the main background paper, the "Snowfall-Chill" paper but I decided to cut the sides of the paper that surrounded the pretty glitter framed section and then use the "Wintertime" piece behind the cut out "Chill" paper. Now sometimes it takes me awhile to catch on to things but I finally decided that I should do what other scrappers do and cut out the center of the "Wintertime" paper that would not be seen behind the "Chill" piece. What a great idea, why waste all this pretty paper that isn't going to be seen by anyone! I was then able to use the blue & white side of this cut out piece as one of my layers behind the photo.

So I used a piece of the Wintertime cut out and a piece of the "Snowdrift-Stripe" paper to layer behind the photo. I distressed the edges using my distress tool and then inked the edges with some blue ink that I had. I had a really pretty piece of blue with white polka dot ribbon that my granddaughter had given me for Christmas, so I took that and folded it and gave it a tail at either end and placed the edge of it just under the stripped paper. I then used this very pretty white sheer flower from Prima along with the pretty blue handmade flowers I made using my friend Paulien Van Den Bosch's tutorial to put in the left hand corner of the photo. I added a couple of white satin leaves and white satin rosebuds to the cluster. Added a blue glitter snowflake to the layout and added my title and there it was - my first layout with this beautiful paper line and no snow in the photo at all! 

I decided I would scrap another Christmas photo with this same pretty Bo Bunny paper using this cute photo of my granddaughter with her new hat on that she had got for Christmas. Looking at the photo I thought she looked like she was all ready to hit the ski slopes - hence my title "Snow Ready". For this layout I took a piece of the brown "Cabin" paper which had this really pretty blue glitter snowflake in one corner and I cut around the snowflake and then cut the snowflake in half. I used that piece along with the two sides of the "Wintertime" paper and the "stripe" paper to layer under the photo and I matted the photo with a piece of the blue side of the "Drift" paper. 

I decided I would make some water distressed flowers to embellish my layout using my friend Gabi's tutorial that you can find here: Water Distress Tutorial  These flowers are so simple to make and really look awesome when they are finished. I wanted to use both blue and brown for the flowers but I wanted each flower to have the two colors in it. So I made some blue ones with brown centers and brown ones with blue centers. After the flowers were dry I took some glossy accents and with a small paint brush just randomly wiped some of the glossy accents on the petals and then dipped the roses in some "Diamond Dust". I was quite pleased at how they turned out. I've added a closeup of the flowers so you can see them a bit better. I added a bit of white picket fence to the layout, a small piece of Queen & Company's felt fusion, a small white 3D butterfly and a blue glitter snowflake that I had in my stash. The title I cut out with my Cricut and overlapped them a bit to fit into the glitter frame on the paper.  You'll have to bare with the photo on the layout, my flash seems to make the photo look all grainy. Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear any comments you have on my layouts!

 




 

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year. We went to a couple of house parties and even managed to make it past midnight, lol. It's always great to ring in the New Year with good friends!

So I even  managed to get one of the Christmas photo's scrapped today. This is s photo of my grandchildren looking very serious for some reason. lol. I used a mix of Bo Bunny's "A gift of love" papers and Websters papers on this layout. I finally got smart after listening to other scrappers on how they save some of their papers when layering and only cut the holly paper so it fit around the paper in front instead of having all this wasted paper behind the other paper. It takes me awhile but eventually I catch on, lol.

For my poinsettia I took some of my white flowers and dyed them with some Rangers ink, in cranberry, and them layered them, used a white brad for the center and outlined the petals with stickles glitter. I also used some red stickles for the holly on the right corner of the photo. I cut out the Santa in the air balloon from the Websters papers and then popped it up with foam for the 3D look. I think it turned out not to badly, I just wish the photo was a bit better quality. Well thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone is enjoying the first few days of 2012!