Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!

Well I hope all the ghosts & goblins had a good time tonight collecting all their treats and hopefully didn't get to wet in the rain, well at least here in Campbell River it was raining, lol. We actually got more kids tonight than we've got in all 7 years living here. The little ones were just so cute when you open the door and see them in their costumes. We even had some older kids coming to the door, which was great since they were still in costume. I never mind the older kids coming if they have a costume on, it just gets annoying when they come to the door with no costumes and expect to get a treat. What was really great was every single kid who came to the door said "Thank you" and "Have a great Halloween". That really restores your faith in mankind when you meet young kids who actually have good manners and a smile on their face!

So I heard back from Heartfelt Creations and unfortunately I didn't make the final cut for their design team. I was a little disappointed but I still felt good over the fact that out of all of the applications I did make it to the semi-finalist group which I think was a pretty good deal! That gave me the confidence to apply for other design teams and I'm so happy to have made the DT for Meg's Garden! I got my papers and goodies from Meg's Garden in the mail the other day and OMG can you say "Beautiful", these papers are to die for, so, so pretty!  I can't wait to start playing with them!

I thought I'd share with you tonight the two layouts I did for the semi-finalists group using Heartfelt Creations papers, stamps and dies. The stamps and dies they sent are called the "Open Vintage Floret" set - they're so pretty, along with the matching papers. The first layout is another photo of my daughter that her friend took a couple of years ago - I love these photos...oh have I said that before, lol! The large flowers are made with the Heartfelt stamps & dies and the tiny rosebuds I made, which the tutorial I posted the other day.
The next layout I did to celebrate my 14th anniversary of the day I had surgery for breast cancer. Besides the pretty flowers made with the stamps & dies, I did some fussy cutting of the flowers from some of the matching papers, I was really quite pleased at how this layout turned out.
Well Happy Halloween everyone - I hope it was a good one!


Thursday, October 25, 2012

Rosebud Tutorial

I've had a number of people comment on my rosebuds that I use in many of my layouts, so I thought I would do a tutorial on how I make mine. This tutorial was inspired by Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial which you can find here: Water Distressed Flowers. This is basically the same as what Gabrielle does for the center of her flowers but I do not do any water distressing. I do not claim this as my original tutorial, it is just my way of making the rosebuds. Here is what the rosebud will look like:
 To make this rosebud you will require a small 5 petal flower punch as shown below. I bought this one at my local Walmart which I think cost me about $3.99. The flower it punches is just a little over a ½" in size. For each bud you will need to punch out 4 flowers.
Using a stylus and a push pad take three of the small flowers and push down into the center of each flower to push the petals up as shown in the photos below. For the forth flower take it and fold the flower in half and keep doing this until you have something similar to the photo.
Now you can glue your flowers on top of one another, off setting the petals slightly on each layer as shown.
You should end up with your rosebud looking something like mine below.
I find these little rosebuds are great to pop into small areas of your flower clusters, or any other area you just need something small. If you're anything like me I hate throwing smaller pieces of cardstock away and these are perfect way to use them up!

I'd like to thank Gabi for the inspiration for this tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it.  Have a great week!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Lots of glitter

I've had this photo of  my daughter and my grand children printed out for quite awhile to scrap but just hadn't found the right papers for it until last night. I was digging through my goodies that I had got when Websters had a big warehouse sale back in the beginning of the summer. I came across this die cut piece from the "Ladies & Gents" collection and I just knew it would be perfect for this photo. I took this back in August of 2009 when my daughter brought the kids up for their yearly summer vacation with us. My grand kids love their Auntie Caitlynn and I just thought this photo of the three of them just showed all that love. Usually when I start doing a layout it takes forever for me to decide on my design but this one just seemed to fall into place so easily.
I really wanted to play up the blacks in this paper and I knew I had this big gray Prima flower in my stash so I used that and then went about making all the other flowers using black cardstock and a kind of pinky/peach color cardstock. I make my large flowers following Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial that you can find on her blog here: Water Distressed Flowers After I made the large flowers I decided to paint some glossy accents on the petals and then dipped them in some diamond dust. I love the way they turned out, just so much sparkle to them! Here's a closeup of the flowers.
I made quite a few of my little tiny rosebuds to place in between the big flowers and also used them for the bottom of the black flourish. Don't you just love this black flourish, it's from Recollections and I just thought it made this layout! I used some foam pop dots to pop up the title which I cut from another piece of Websters paper. Here's a closeup of the small rosebuds.
 Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great week!

Graphic 45

I am so in love with the "A Ladies Diary" collection of papers from Graphic 45 I had to make a card with them. I didn't put a sentiment on this card as I thought I could use this for a number of different occasions. So I'll wait until I use it to decided what the sentiment should be. I did some layering of the different papers from this collection and distressed all the paper edges with my distress tool as well as with some distress inks. I also did some fussy cutting of the pretty flowers from one of the papers which I popped up with foam dots in the top left and bottom right corners. The pretty flourish is from Zva Creations. Here's the finished project.
 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Beautiful Dreamer.....

That's the title for my newest layout of another one of my daughters photo's that her friend (the budding photographer) took - I so love these photos! The background paper and the striped paper are FabScraps "Victoria's Fantasy" paper line and the other papers are from my stash. I distressed all of my layers, but this time I only used my distress tool, I did not use my ink as I usually do on my distressed edges. I took a duplicate piece of the background paper and fussy cut the unicorn, the diamonds on the playing card, the face and the clown down the right side of the paper and then popped them up with foam on the background paper. I matted the photo but before sticking it onto the layout I took some tulle and gathered it up on one side and then stuck it down on the back of the matting in the top left corner, to mimic the tulle  that my daughter is holding in the photo. The butterfly is from Prima as are the mauve flowers with the feathers and the mauve roses. I handmade the small purple rosebuds and the large purple flowers with puffy paint. The pink flourishes that I had in my stash are from Recollections. 
 If you click on the photo you can see a larger version of the photo. I  hope everyone is having a great week. TFL

Monday, October 15, 2012

More Good News!

I have some great news to share today. I have been chosen as one of the Design Team members for "Megs Garden". If you've seen Meg's gorgeous papers you can understand how excited I am to be able to work with these papers! To celebrate the new Design Team members Meg is have a give away on her blog, so pop on over and check it out here: Megs Garden Blog

I've been busy making out some more layouts for the DT position at Heartfelt Creations. They sent me some of their papers and stamps and coordinating dies and we had to do two more layouts with their products and mail them in to their office. We won't know anything until October 31st when they make their announcement but I am keeping my fingers crossed. Of course I can't post the photos of these layouts until after they make the announcement but I loved working with these products!

I do have a couple of other projects I did that I will be posting here today. This first one is a quick card I made using some of the Websters "Hollywood Vogue" collection. The flourish is one I had in my stash and the flower is from Prima.
This next layout "You Make Me Smile" is a photo of my daughter when she and her cousin went to London and Europe this past summer, they were in one of the stores trying on hats. This was made using the "Mon Doux" kit from Swirlydoos. I did a lot of distressing of the layers here and on the background paper I added some bits of lace to peek out from some of the distressing. I made the bigger peach colored flower as well as the tiny peach and blue rose buds. The pretty flourish is from Zva Creative. The pretty butterflies are graphics from Lisa over at Swirlydoos, thank you Lisa! I printed and cut them out and added glossy accents to them. I was quite pleased at how the whole layout turned out. I liked the background paper I used for this layout as on the bottom right side of the paper there was a faint colored "Eiffel Tower" and Paris is one of the stops on my daughters trip so it seemed perfect! Anyway I hope you like it and don't forget I love to hear all of your comments. Have a great week everyone!