What Goes Up?

Last month I had to go out and buy a couple of birthday cards. It was really frustrating because obviously, as a scrapbooker and cardmaker, I can make cards with my scraps for a fraction of the price. So, I've spent the last few days making a few cards. And of course, in the process, I found three cards that I had made already (so I didn't really need to shell out the bucks for the cards I bought last month!).

Here's my favourite from today.

I'm using up my older Echo Park paper to make space for the new release. I don't know what it looks like yet, but based on past experience, it'll be awesome and I'll NEED it.

I really like the Inky Antics stamps as they're so cute and unique. LOVE the 3D honeycomb shapes. The only issue I have is that when I colour the stamped image in on the card inside with Copics, the colour bleeds through to the other side, so I always need to put another layer on the outside. A small sacrifice, but worth noting.

I'm thinking I should make a list of birthdays through the year with type (adult male, girl child turning 8, etc) so that I can make my cards accordingly. But for now, I'm just having fun with my scraps. After all, isn't what this hobby's all about?

Supplies:  Inky Antics stamps (elephant and tiger) and honeycomb paper, Copic markers, Papertrey Ink stamps (sentiment), Echo Park Little Boy patterned paper and stickers, Bazzill cardstock

When life gives you shrinky dinks...

So, I was working on a layout, having fun with shrink plastic, and got totally stuck! Luckily I came across the Sketchabilities site and found a great way to finish off my page.

Here's the sketch from the site:

And my layout:

I had the background of the page completed before I found the sketch... all of the horizontal strips of paper were on, the title, the fussy cut strips of flowers at the top and the bottom and the lemons. But it looked a little bare, so I'm glad the sketch fit well with my layout. I think the frame helps break up the horizontal lines and adds some interest to the layout.

The most fun part (my kids would say "the funnest") of making the layout was making the lemon and lemon slice.

I started off by finding a lemon image in my Silhouette Studio library and I traced it with a Copic marker onto the plastic sheet over my monitor. Again, washi tape to the rescue as a lightly sticky tape to hold the plastic to the monitor.

Then I cut out the shape

Used my cropadile to punch out a few holes

and coloured in the lemon with my Copic marker. I coloured both sides to add extra intensity to the lemon.

Then I used my heat gun to shrink it.  This part is soooo fun. :)

For perspective, here's the original size with the ending size. The orignal piece was about 4 1/2" wide, and ended up about 2" wide. I used lots of Beacon's glue to stick it to the layout. I freehand cut out some leaves and twigs from glitter cardstock.

Because I spent more than a week fussing over this layout, I added lots of little details. Such as dots with my Viva Gel. I managed to do this without making a giant explosion. (Yeah, last time I used it, I squeezed too hard as the end was clogged, and the whole lid came off and made a giant mess! Even worse, it was brown and colorfast. Looked nasty on my capris. :(  )

I used the Kraash font to make the STAND title. I used more of the lime green glitter cardstock and used my Cameo to cut it out. Each letter has an inside and an outside cut. I coloured the outer line of the letters with dark brown Copic and popped them back together. I like the font on this page... it's cartoony and matches the bright colours.

LEMONADE is made from Heidi Swapp Color Magic letters. I tried colouring them with Copics, but the white part didn't stand out because they're alcohol inks. I resorted to using my kids' Crayola markers. The white stood out perfectly.

I made a mistake in cutting the frame so I wanted to cover the mistake... washi to the rescue again. I ripped it into little bits and covered it in a decoupage manner.

Supplies:  Copic markers, shrink plastic, BoBunny "Ad Lib" patterned paper, Technique Tuesday chipboard frame, Heidi Swapp Color Magic Letter Box Alphas, orange Crayola marker, various washi tapes, Viva Gloss gel, Bazzill cardstock, Smash date stamp, glitter cardstock (manufacturer unknown)

Some New Fonts

Every now and then, I like to just surf for new fonts.  Oftentimes, they'll inspire me to start a new layout. I just downloaded three new ones, two of them I think will work great with my Cameo.

Hayseed is the equivalent of Quickutz Strawberry. I have a few Quickutz dies, and they always had the greatest fonts. This one looks nice and cute. I might thicken it up a bit before cutting it (use the offset feature).

This Kraash! font comes solid or in an outline. I can imagine doing a layout using this font incorporating some kind of accident involving my son done in perhaps a graphic novel format. This font would be great for that. 

This one is too detailed for cutting, but I think that Simply Glamorous will be a great journalling font. Will it give my favourite, Rockford, a run for its money? Time will tell. :)

Two Worlds Collide: Washi Tape meets my social life

Just a quick post to share yesterday's revelation:

That's right! Washi tape aint just for crafting!

Much faster to get on than those wine charms, and easy to remove. :)

Happy Father's Day!

I've been loving the origami t-shirt cards I've seen this year.  I was then inspired by Teally from Two Peas as she posted on her blog the two Father's Day cards she made with Echo Park's This and That paper.  Well, I thought I had that, but found my pack of Note to Self instead and got started.

I looked up the how-to for making the t-shirt, and used the directions here:  http://www.card-making-magic.com/foldedpapershirttutorial.html. I tried it first on a 8 1/2" x 11" sized paper, and found the shirt looking a little stubby for my liking, so I used a 12"x12" paper, and cut it down to 12"x7.5". This left a card that was (at it's widest points) 5 5/8"x 5 1/4". So plan accordingly if you're trying for a specific envelope size. :)

I added a tie made from washi tape and a "No 1" sticker from the EP paper pack.

And for the inside, I added some plain paper to line it and some more EP stickers.

Materials: Echo Park Note to Self paper & sticker sheets, washi tape, plain cardstock

Page Planning

If I'm going to a crop, I like to plan ahead so that I don't have to bring all of my scrapbooking supplies and the kitchen sink with me. My process has evolved over the years, and now I've expanded it so that I (generally - not always) buy my patterned paper with a specific layout in mind. This has definitely helped keep my pp stash down to a minimum.  (leaving more $ to spend on other stash items, such as stickles, ink, dies, etc, etc, etc :) )

The first thing I do is go to my photos. I have them stored on my computer (with a backup on an external drive, of course). I like to use the organizer built in to PhotoShop Elements. From there, I select the events that I want to scrapbook. Let's say I want to use the photos of my kids down at the stream. I highlight all of those photos and print a contact sheet of them.

In PSE, highlight all the photos, then (right click) Print.
Paper Size = letter
Select Type of Print = Contact Sheet
Show Print Options = turn on "Filename"

I change the number of columns so that the pictures fill most, but not all of the page. I keep the filenames showing so that I can find the photos more easily later on.

If I'm heading over to my LSS (Scrapbook Queens) for a little retail therapy, I'll take a few of these contact sheets with me, so when I buy my patterned paper, I have the photos to match up to. Usually 2 pieces of patterened paper, and a couple of sheets of cardstock for each layout.  Sometimes I'll buy matching embellishments, but often I'll shop my stash.

The next step is to plan my layout. Sometimes it'll just come to me, or sometimes I'll look at online galleries and/or sketch books for inpiration. I like to draw a sketch right on my contact sheet. In today's example, I have a piece of paper that's a frame shape that I want to incorporate, so I'll sketch that in, too. I draw a dotted grid at the 1/2 and 1/4 marks, knowing that those are 3" increments.  This is a step that is great for when you're travelling, as you only need a pencil and these contact sheets.

Now I look at the sketch to see what size photos I want (I need 1 4x6 and 4 smaller photos) and select the photos I want to print. I circle the photos and note what size I need. Sometimes, I'll use PSE to crop the photos a bit, or do a little photoprocessing to fix the white balance, remove weeds from my garden, etc. :)  Then I can go to PhotoSheet and resize as needed and upload the photos to my printing site (Costco, Blacks, etc).

My paper, this sketch, the photos, and any embellishments all go into a Cropper Hopper 12x12 folder. You could also use an XL Ziploc bag. If I have more time, sometimes I'll even cut a title on my Cameo, or print my journalling and stick it in there.

Here's what a finished kit might look like...



These can be packed away for the real crop time! I find that if I invest my time in the planning, then I'm so much more productive when I'm cropping. I'm a slow scrapper as it is, so every little bit helps.

Often, my layout ends up completely different than the sketch I draw on this paper, but I think that's just part of the process. And enjoying the process is the whole point of this hobby, right?

Some favourite bits:

And the end result:

I might go back and add a title one day, but right now, I like to just think that this one is "Joy."

Materials: patterned paper and embellishments - LYB, push pins, fabric buttons - Maya Road

Jumping Jills

So, I had been jonesing for a while about getting a new camera. I've never scrapbooked so much before, and I was actually running out of photos that I wanted to scrap. The logical conclusion was that I needed a new camera, right? So, one thing led to another... sale at Best Buy... blah blah blah... I have a new camera.

The first day I had it, I took it to my son's baseball game and took some photos of my daughter and her friend. I used the "vivid" mode, so the colours really pop.

Here's the layout after I had the "structure" built. I used the Jillibean Pasta Fagioli line. There's some paper that has a filmstrip all over it, so I cut out a couple of strips of it. I cut an extra strip of the brown border to go alongside the smaller photos. The larger filmstrip border is cut using the Tim Holtz filmstrip Sizzix die.

So, at this point I know that I need "more" on this page, but I'm not sure what. I gathered a bunch of flowers and my Candi. The white flowers and Candi are coloured with Copic markers to match the layout. Still needs something else...

Time to get out the washi. :) I accordion folded a long strip

Then slooooooowly pull it partially apart so that some of the fold remains, but some of it's flat, too. Hard to describe, but the washi tape just does this. You can see below how it just pulls nicely apart, but with little tabs.

Adhere it to a circle (or scalloped circle). I found it easier to do this by working on the back side, but if you put some glue on the back of the circle, it would look really cool adhering it to the opposite side, too.

I added some fabric buttons on top to cover up the finished edge. And after all that, I decided that it was too big for my layout, so I cut it and put half on two different spots.

I added more flowers, and a little bit of washi under a flower next to the title, in order to complete a visual triangle of the red colour. The title is made of Jillbean letter stickers on top of some dark brown cardstock, and then cut out. It was necessary to do this so that the title popped enough.  Some blue Studio Calico rubons added for good measure. NOW it's enough. Aaaaaaand....  done. :)

Materials:  Jillbean Pasta Fagioli patterned paper, Bazzil cardstock, Tim Holtz filmstrip die, Candi (Icing Sugar), Copic markers, Nelly Snellen flower punches, Cosmo Cricket washi tape, Maya Road Canvas Button Pieces

Long time, no post!

Sorry it's been so long.... I just started back to work 3 days/week. That plus baseball tournaments, physio for my son, and a little trip over to sunny Las Vegas, I haven't been able to squeeze in much time to scrap! But, today, I woke up this morning inspired! Hopped onto my computer to blog and.... no internet!!! Seems to be ok now, but who knows how long it will last!

So, quick, while the kids are out riding their bikes, I'll happily blog away...

I want to share a layout I made with the American Crafts Amy Tangerine paper and fabric tags. Love the bright colours in this release. It was so hard to pick the paper.... so many that I liked!

Just for the record, I purposefully spelled trampoline as "tramapoline" due to a Simpson's reference (and now that I've googled it to link it, I see that it should have been "tramampoline" ugh!). Still, it's my own scrapbook and it can be our little secret... shhhh!



One of the papers is a page full of frames, so that led me to my page inspiration of having it look like an art gallery. I used PhotoSheet to resize a bunch of photos and fussycut the frames out.

For the main photo, I didn't have a frame large enough, so I Frankensteined a piece of paper to fit.  First, I cut out two opposite corners, leaving lots of excess. I made sure that the pattern on each side was at least the length and width of my photo (6x8 in this case).

Here's how it looked roughly.

Then I used my trusty washi tape to secure the corners in place. I fiddled with it a bit to try to make the pattern as seamless as possible. The colour match was a bit off, but I find I worry less about this than I used to.

Once I had the corners matched up better, I adhered the frame together, and fussycut the remainder of the scallops.

The title is cut on the Cameo. I wrote the title out and offset it a bit with black cardstock to create a border around it. The actual pink letters were separated out and rotated so the the pattern would be random directions when it was completed.

That's it, that's all! Now onto the next project!

Materials:  American Crafts Amy Tangerine paper and fabric tags, Bazzill cardstock (what? that's it?)