Tidbits of a Favourite Layout.

I fell in love with a picture I'd taken of my daughter and two of her friends while we were downtown for the local Santa Claus Parade. The pose the girls struck was sweet and fun, while the colours from the cement stones, pavement, the girls' clothing and overcast day gave an edginess to the photo....so very downtown.
Well, the photo just happened to work perfectly with some paper I'd bought for an anniversary layout that never happened. The greys, blacks and reds along with the patterns and distressing was just a beautiful match.
To avoid getting permission from the other girls' parents, I am only going to show elements of the layout, not the layout as a whole. Little tidbits that I love almost as much as the photo itself...the pieces that bring everything together....the sweet with the edgy.
First shot shows two hearts I made with my new Cricut cartridge, Ashlyn's Alphabet, emphasized with 3 embossed brads (the embossing has started to rub off, but the effect is nice...I think I'll try sealing it though to avoid further damage). Below the hearts is the top right corner of the photo, along with a freehand border done with marker and a paper piercer (used to scratch the inner line into the Coredinations cardstock).

This second shot shows a chipboard circle and fancy brad securing a transparency tag that was actually from a sweater I received for Christmas. Oh how I love to be able to re-purpose for my craft!

Lastly, there's this shot of the left side of the layout. This swirl was also made from my Ashlyn's Alphabet cartridge, accented by 3 more embossed brads that are "self-distressing."

Please note, the red above the swirl is actually my table cloth, not part of the layout though oddly, it does look like it belongs!

This is the first layout I've done in the new year, and after a scrappy hiatus over the holidays it felt so good to release some creative energy. Thanks for allowing me to share it with you!

From one good thing to another.

I love having candies in my studio. Stuff like cinnamon hearts, skittles, jujubes and sour keys....you know, candies that are supposed to last a long time, but never really do? Yeah, them!

Well, recently, a tub of jujubes went empty on me and instead of bringing the tub down two flights of stairs to the garbage, I decided to make it useful again.

I've got a bunch of flowers that just sit around in their original packaging, meaning I've got to dump them out and stuff them back in each time I want to use any of them. Well, these bulk candy tubs are the perfect size to drop all my large flowers into and still be able to root around for what I want. Only problem....flowers this pretty deserve a pretty container too!

Ah, that's where getting involved in swaps comes in handy. I participated in a summer circle swap earlier this year, and these pretty, circular creations from my MMMB friends just happened to be the perfect dimension to attach to the lid of my candy bin!


It was really, really hard to decide on one circle for this project, but I went with Paula's pretty creation for a number of reasons....it's flowery, it's purple, it's got flourishes and butterflies and while it has a summery feel, it didn't say summer on it. After all.....flowers are for all seasons when you're a scrapbooker!
As a final touch, I added a fuzzy, self adhesive border ribbon cut into butterflies and flowers which helped spruce up the side of the container without obscuring the flowers inside.

And there you have it, a cute, cheap and useful container for my ever-growing flower collection.

Hope you like it!

because it was my birthday

Here's a "me" layout I did about my birthday. I just love the papers, they're all Dreamstreet that I picked up in a super yummy package at the Scrapping Turtle yard sale. That's also where I picked up the stamp set used in the title. "Because" was done on the Cricut with my Alphalicious cartridge. The flourish and point markers for the journaling are all stamped and embossed.

As happy as I am with the esthetics of this layout, the journaling is my favourite part. That's where the whole idea started; bits and pieces just came to me as the day of my birthday progressed. Here's a closeup:














Thanks for looking!

Fall Fun

It was a lovely October Sunday, and we made the best of it by heading out with friends to a local country market to pick up some pumpkins and let all of our kids play in the corn maze and on the haybales while us scrapbooking moms snapped off picture after picture.

As promised, I used just what I had on hand to make this page. I started by masking off a frame, then with a brayer rolled on a slightly darker yellow ink. Once that dried, I added on some punched leaves that I received in a punchie swap and sprayed a nice deep red Glimmer Mist angled from that corner up. I had a little uh-oh moment while peeling off the frame mask, as some of the edges were not coming up so cleanly. I probably could have cleaned them up a little more but quickly took a liking to the effect it gave as you can see in this second picture.

The leaves above the picture frame were stamped and embossed. The title tag was coloured with inks and brayer, the title stamped and the whole thing clear embossed. Similarily, the square between Kelsey and Cole's pictures was distress inked and then clear embossed for a tile effect.

Oh, and those leaf punchies I saved for another layout about this day. Here's a little peek at that.

This may be crazy.....

....but I'm just loving my new fridge and stove. In fact, my daughter caught me hugging the fridge this morning. It's larger than our old one, large enough that it looks like we need to do groceries again.
Kelsey wants to name them; she says dad named his coolers (Big Boy and Hugh....short for huge) so why not the fridge so I said, okay, the fridge is Ernie (first name I thought of after figuring it would be fitting to call it enormous). Then she asked about the stove and of course, being a Sesame Street junkie in my younger years, I said Bert. So little Miss Smartypants asked if that means the microwave is Elmo. Well that's just ridiculous....a microwave would obviously be called Reba.....after reheat. Hmmm....I hope that doesn't mean Bert is code for burnt. Never thought of that.

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! Here's our trio of Jack 'O Lanterns, designed by Cole, me and Kelsey (in that order). The kids had a wonderful time trick or treating and I had a blast handing out candy. Kelsey talked me into dressing up, so I sat perched on the porch, a regal medieval queen, with a blanket over my knees, a bowl of candies and a scrapbooking magazine for the slow moments. I stayed out most of the night....until my fingers went numb and all the little ones had retired to their beds.

There were some amazing costumes out this year. Amongst the usual pretty princesses, there were a few young girls dressed as superheroes, a boy in a homemade Lego costume, 3 teenaged boys dressed as 70's detectives playfully roughing up a 4th dressed as a robber (made me think of a Beastie Boys video!), an adorable little elephant, groovy hippies and gypsies and a throng of zombies, monsters and ghouls.

When I woke this morning, I already had some ideas for layouts. Instead of going out and buying Halloween themed papers and embellies, I'll be making my own with stamps, inks and some embossing. I'll post the pics once they're done....providing they turn out the way I want!

Finally, a new post!

Hello! It's been so long. I missed blogging so much, but have been so busy, with little time to spend in my studio.

But now kids are back to school and Scott's back to work and I've been busy working on some crash your stash challenges on the Scrapping Turtle forum. It's been a lot of fun and because we get bonus points for making cards from our scraps, I've been able to catch up with the card a month swap on the Memory Makers forum as well! Yay me!

So anyways, this is the last challenge I completed. We needed to use a sketch from the forum, Basic Grey pp, My Mind's Eye pp, bling, stamping and a chipboard shape.

My favourite parts of this layout are the stamped and embossed scalloped edge and the layered chipboard flower I made using my Cricut and Life is a Beach cart.

And here is the card I made using the scraps. I loved the embossed edging so much, I did it here as well. It's a late card going out to Belinda for the month of September.

So there it is....a little teaser of what I've been up to lately! More to come very soon; I promise!