“Enjoy Time Together”

I’ve won a few "prizes” along the way, and the fun thing is they often have products in them I’ve never used before.  One particular thing was the Hambly transparency sheets.  They’re a little intimidating because any adhesive you use shows through them.  But I decided I’d be tough and try them! 

I found them to be quite fun to work with.  Different for sure, but fun!

   My little Cuttle kids (yeah, I’m so pathetic I don’t have a real die cutter, I’ve just stolen the one I bought for my kids…..LOL) has been getting quite the work out since I purchased a few of these Paper Trey Ink dies.  I am loving them!  And I think I need to buy a few more….LOL….Just waiting until a few more are released so the shipping isn’t so bad.

• Supplies:
• American Crafts (paper)
• Paper Trey Ink (dies)
• Misc (rhinestones & paper)
• Jenni Bowlin Studios (paper – ticket)
• Fancy Pants (alphas)
• Cosmo Cricket (alphas)

*BIG*

I’ve got a few things planned that I just wanted to let you all know about!!!

The week of August 8-12 I’ve got a week of giveaways coming.  Be sure to check it out!!

August 19 & 20 is the Sketch Blog Hop!  It all starts here, and it will be awesome.

September 1, I’m working on something BIG.  But I’m keeping it all a secret for the moment………BUT I *think* it will be worth the suspense.  Check back to find out more.

“My Boy”

I love scrapping silly photos.  They capture so much personality. 
Supplies:  Sassafras paper, Doodlebug alphas, WRMK paper

Blog Photo Decoration Tutorial

As many of you noticed, I changed my background yesterday.  

What you now see is a picture of a traditional paper scrapbook project I made.  I then photographed it, did some magic in Photoshop Elements and uploaded it. 

Here is how to do it:  (This is for Blogger blogs).

Step 1:  Create a paper page.  This is 12” and goes up the paper about 7”.  However, in order to make mine work, I had to do some additional PSE work.  If you have a wide format blog (like mine), I’d highly recommend you keep your decorations to about 2” off the side of the page.  If you have a narrow posting area, you can use this amount of space as seen here.

Step 2:  Photograph page.  I used Photoshop Elements to remove the lens distortion and get the picture very crisp & straight.

Step 3:  Crop image to 22” by 12.5” 72 dpi.  Save as jpeg image smaller than 300 kb.  (I had to save it as a 1 quality in order to get it saved small enough).

Step 4:  Log into your blogger blog.  Go to DASHBOARD.  Then Click on the DESIGN tab.  

Step 5:  Click on the TEMPLATE DESIGNER tab on the top left area (right below the Design tab)

Step 6:  When the Template Designer loads, it defaults to Template. 

Step 7:  Click on BACKGROUND (second listed). 

 

Step 8:  There is a picture that loads and says “Background Image”  Click “Delete Image”.  Then click the dropdown arrow to the right.  When the pop up loads, click “UPLOAD IMAGE” on top left.  Browse to find image.  Wait a few seconds as it will automatically upload.  Click DONE.

Step 9:  Click APPLY TO BLOG in top right corner (orange button).

HEADER

Step 1:  Again, create your image.  Crop to the width of your blog (you can find that in the Designer Template as above).  My blog is 970 pixels wide, so I cropped to 13” x 4” 72 dpi.

Step 2:  Sign into your blogger blog, DASHBOARD, then DESIGN.  When that loads, the very top will have HEADER (or your blog name if you’ve not set it up).  Click EDIT.

Step 3:  Under Image, click From Your Computer & browse for image.   Make sure you have INSTEAD of title & description clicked.  Click SAVE.

    

Step 4:  When it loads and you see it, Click SAVE. 

You’re Done :)

About Time, Right?

Well, summer still hasn't arrived here.  I mean, it's the end of July, and I'm wearing pants, a fleece sweatshirt and shoes.

Yes, extremely (I mean extremely) odd.  But it's not exactly winter either.  So I decided I should change the picture of my header.  And while I was at it, might as well update my background too, right?

I've been wanting to do some actual paper work and photograph it for my blog for a while now.  At least 7.45 weeks.  But, life keeps getting in the way.  For some silly reason, my family thinks that feeding them and keeping a house clean is more important.

Oh well, it's done now and I can check it off the "to do list".  No, not really, I still have some tweeking with the sizes to do.  Then I'll check it off the list.

Cards as Gifts

Cards to me are about simplicity.  I’m not one to spend hours on a card.  Just not me, I’m not that patient :$…..

I am loving my Paper Trey Ink dies that I’ve picked up.  So very fun and I love that you can cut felt and fabric (I’ve found you have to put a piece of paper under the fabric to get a good cut though). 

I try to send my grandparents a card regularly.  And every few months in addition to that, I send a little gift to my Grandma.  She writes a lot of notes to people and really she doesn’t need anything, so I figured this is a great way to say “I’m thinking of you, here is something practical.”  I just stacked up a few of the cards, added some envelopes and then tied a ribbon.  Makes a pretty little gift.

 

(Be sure to check out the contest I’m hosting to support Operation Write Home.  I’ve done almost 50 cards, and want to see what you’ve done!!!  Check it out here – we’re almost out of time!)

Card using SCAL

Want to know a little secret????  Promise you won’t tell anyone….

I’ve been making more cards lately, and I’ve been *kinda* liking it!  (but you can’t tell anyone!!!).

I made this card with the help of some technology.  I found these stamps from My Minds Eye with this really cool airplane.  I bought it thinking it would make a great masculine card.   But it felt kind like it was “missing” something to me just using the stamp.

Then I remembered I have this totally nifty program called SCAL.  I stamped the image, scanned it and then was able to trace it in SCAL, shadow it and cut it!!  I did the same thing with the scroll on the red, however that one took a fair amount of manipulation in PhotoShop Elements first to get it to trace well.

  Supplies:  My Minds Eye stamp, misc:  paper & ribbon, SCAL

(Oh, and if you haven’t be sure to check out my contest for cards for Operation Write Home, only a couple more days……)

“Love Your Smile”

I had a couple random pictures of my son and didn’t know what to do with them.  I’d tried several times to put them on a page to no success.

Finally just did it.

Supplies:  American Crafts, We R Memory Keepers, Jenny Bowlin Studio, Cosmo Cricket, Doodlebug, Kaiser Craft

“Creation”

I’m not usually a “list” kinda scrapper.  But I’ve had a few page ideas in the back of my mind I’ve been wanting to do for a while.  Mostly including some pages with Bible verses on them. 

I was browsing the site at Sketchy Thursday and found this sketch for 7.21.  I didn’t really have the pictures that worked aside from these nature pictures.  But then it clicked that they would work perfectly for the sketch.  I made a few modifications to the sketch to make it work with the photos I had. 

Supplies:  October Afternoon, Prima, American Crafts, Misc

“I Know For Sure”

One of my favorite online places to “hang out” is Club CK.  There are a lot of events there hosted by members.  It’s an awesome community, with some of the best friends I’ve never met! :)

Currently, there is a challenge to do pages about us personally.  Some people have a hard time scrapping about themselves.  I don’t really in terms of telling a story, my only problem is I have so few pictures of myself.  I’m always the one behind the camera.  So unless it’s a self-portrait (like this one here), I’m not in many photos.  But I really think it’s important to do pages about myself as well as my family.  So here I am today, with this page to share.

This particular challenge was to use “I Know For Sure” as the theme of your page.  So I did.  This is a hybrid page (partly digital, partly paper).  The photo collage was assembled in Photoshop Elements and then I added the white swirl brushes before printing.

Supplies:  MemoryWorks Simple Stories Life Documented (can I say I love these products???) & misc 

Technique Tuesday (on Friday)

I have a confession to make.  I have this disorder that sometimes disrupts life.  It’s called “Date Knowledge Deficiency”  (DKD for short).  It works like this, I wake up in the morning, day after day, never looking at the calendar (or as today, the calendar displayed is somehow Sept 2011????)……and days go buy without me ever knowing the date. 

That is why you are getting Technique Tuesday (for the 19th) on Friday the 22nd.  You see, I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized…it’s the 21st!!  Oops!!!

But to make up for it, I have a very photo heavy tutorial. 

Today, I’m going to show how to make these ribbon rosettes. 

I have a lot of this saddle stitched ribbon that I just never know how to use.  But today, here’s an idea of something you can do with it.   You’ll need:

18” saddle stitched ribbon (or 12” if you want a smaller flower)

needle & floss

button

First, grab the end of one side of the stitching and pull it constantly until you have a gathered piece.  When you get to about 6” from the other end, use the other end of the same string to pull.  

Gently move the gathers around until they look evenly gathered.

Begin to curl the ribbon to form a circle (leaving a small gap in the middle of the circle).

I like to wrap one end around my finger to keep it from pulling out while I form the flower.

When you have the flower wrapped a few times to form the complete circle, slide the ends of the top layer through the hole left in the middle of the circle.

Pull both ends of the pulled stitching and tie.

This forms the basic flower, but you’ll need to secure it still.

Tie floss in a knot.  Thread a button and use a glue dot (or your favorite liquid adhesive) to secure button in center.

“Mt Rainier”

A while back I ordered the MemoryWorks Simple Stories Destination papers.  They are fantastically yummy, and I love the colors of them.  I’ve had them in my stash, almost under the “too pretty to use” designation.

But, I know I can’t hoard everything forever.  I wanted to scrap these pictures of Mt. Rainier from the scenic train ride we rode and knew that I’d have to find the right papers to make them look good.  I laid them on many different papers and nothing worked.  Then I used this rusty brown and they popped much better. 

So out of the “too pretty” file it came.

Supplies:  MemoryWorks Simple Stories Destination paper & stickers; Misc buttons & floss

“i ♥ my dad”

I have some photos I scrap more than once.  This is one of those.  I accidentally ordered multiple prints of it.  I’d scrapped it once on a page that told the story.

But I found this die cut at my local scrapbook store and knew it was so perfect for my son.  He is a Daddy’s boy to the max.  Really. 

This page has no journaling, just the date of the photo.  Sometimes, that’s enough. 

Supplies:  American Crafts, My Minds Eye, We R Memory Keepers, Prima

Craft Warehouse Assignment – Part 3

The final part of my Craft Warehouse assignment!  Yup, I’m so mean, making you visit three times to see it all.  hee hee…..I’m a mean blogger.

Anyway, the last assignment was to create a page of some size.  I choose 12x12 because that’s just what I’m most comfortable with.  We also had to use Glimmer Mist (urghhh……really???? ) and some Resist Chipboard by Bazzill in addition to the Authentique products.

Well, the Glimmer Mist (still not a fan of) and I managed to survive the challenge, but I quite liked the Resist Chipboard.  It’s a chipboard with a pattern printed on it.  It’s a varnish or some sort of clear shiny substance that is non-porous so it won’t soak up the color applied to it.  It allows the color to cling to the chipboard, but resist (thus the name) the places where the varnish is. 

I decided to cut a banner with the chipboard because straight cuts are easier…LOL…yup, taking the lazy way out again….

Supplies:  Authentique paper, die cuts & alphas, American Crafts paper, We R Memory Keepers paper, Fiskars punch &  misc buttons & floss

Craft Warehouse Assignment – Part 2

Well, as I promised I’d tease you, here is part two of my assignment for Craft Warehouse.

This was to make a card.  And, well, you all know how much I love making cards, and how much I stamp!  Although I do have to admit, I’ve learned to lighten up about cards and they are coming much more naturally to me.  Just gotta chill out and do it. 

The funny thing also is I made the card first in this assignment!   Of course beautiful product is always helpful to make something pretty.

I stamped the image with this beautiful Unity stamp and then sketched the curved lines to replicate the flight pattern of a butterfly.  I pierced along the pencil lines and then handstitched it.  I also inked all the edges of the paper.

(this was the first card, I redid it with a horizontal orientation, but the inside was the same).

Supplies:  Authentique, Unity Stamp, VersaMark & misc floss