Round two

Between the hustle and bustle of the 4th and then getting back into the swing of things at both Archivers and my big girl job after being gone for almost a week, this last week has just flown by!  I'm currently waiting to head out to Archivers to teach a class this afternoon, it is that annoying time before you head to work, it is too early to actually leave for work, but to late to really do much without being stopped at the half way point to leave for work-so I thought I'd share with you (finally) the next round of pages from my completed memorial album for hubby's coworker, Laurie.  Her daughter passed away of an unexpected asthma attack just a few days after her 14th birthday.

 Thanks for taking a peek and I'll be back with the last group of pages, hopefully tomorrow.  Stay cool everyone!

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Done!

So my dear ladies and gents I have finally finished the memorial album I was working on for my hubby's coworker and she got it on Friday.  While I was very happy with how it turned out I was still quite nervous that she wouldn't like it.  But there were plenty of tears, smiles, hugs and lots of showing off to other employees, couldn't be more thrilled that she loved it!

I thought I'd break it down into a few different posts to help keep everyone's sanity in tact!

I used the new Indie Chic lines from My Mind's Eye. I found the colors and designs were perfect for the photos and what I was told about Abby.  I started with a BoBunny 9x9 Canvas album and spent several days going through photos and sketching out ideas for pages before diving in.  It took about a month and the sacrifice of a clean house to get it done, but our vacuum was broken anyway so whatever is a girl to do?

But here is the first part of the finished product!

The inside cover is a poem that Laurie posted on her FB page shortly after Abby passed away, it reads "God saw you getting tired, and a cure was not to be

So he put his arms around you and whispered 'come to me'

with tearful eyes we watched and saw you pass away

Although we love you dearly we couldn't make you stay

A golden heart stopped beating, hardworking hands at rest

God broke our hearts to prove to us He only takes the best"

Look for the next batch of pages tomorrow, thanks for stopping by!

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Let me introduce...

Good afternoon scrappy friends!  I've hit a rut the last couple of weeks, and have found myself having more luck with Draw Something (my Ewok was Louvre worthy!) than completing any of the unfinished projects cluttering my desk.  So to fill the silence I have decided that now that we've been together for a while I would introduce myself a bit more as well as my wonderful support staff!

So for starters a bit about me...

-My husband says I have albino grover arms-sweet huh?

-I have a slight obsession with Harry Potter, I hosted a Harry Potter party prior to the release of the last movie, complete with butterbeer and my own Hedwig

-I always have a wide variety of projects on my desk in various stages of completion (at the moment 4 pages and 5 mini albums)

-When it comes to titles and journaling, I draw a lot of inspiration from movies and songs

-When walking with someone I always have to be on their left side

And a bit about those I have assisting in my scrappy endevors...

CFO and head Cheerleader

My darling hubby, Coby, he not only keeps me in my budget but is the first one to encourage and compliment my work-even if I want to kick him sometimes he is still the first person I turn to at the completion of every project.

Official door stop and Bouncer

My Jewel, 60 pounds of unmoving fur that just lolls around in the doorway of my room-her constant pressance is always a reassurance when those creepy noises start up during those late nights scrapping.  Or when that pesky mailman climbs the porch stairs to drop off the latest kit from SOD.

Court Jester and Chewer of all things paper

There is no other way to say it, she is definitely a momma's girl, always underfoot and her little tail could power a small country with how fast it wiggles.  She takes after me, always running into walls and tripping over her own four feet.  She sniffs every new shopping bag that comes through my door and assists in my distressing by nibbling the corners of any paper carelessly left in puppy reach.  She seems to prefer My Minds Eye over the rest.  She is also most excellent at 'building' with couch cushions.

In other very fun news Archivers got in a few new fun items today-both new Graphic 45 lines and the Tim Holtz summer seasonal distress inks!  Made for an amazing night at work!

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A productive weekend!

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!  I certainly did-it was my weekend off at Archivers, not only that but I had today off as well!  Since I work 4x10s at my 'big girl' job I always have Monday's to myself, but since I started at A's I've worked every Monday-not that I mind I have gotten to know a lot of regulars that way.  But this was the first weekend that I had no obligations for 3 days in a row.  I had forgotten how amazing time to yourself can be!

Not only did I feel no pressure to hurry with pages the mojo just seemed to flow!  I have a few mini albums on my desk but I opted to work on whatever struck my fancy and I finished 4 pages from start to finish and have two that would have been finished if it weren't for running out of cardstock.  Not to shabby for someone who generally takes 4-5 days on one page!

So I thought I'd share with  you the completed pages from this weekend!  Nothing super fancy with these pages, just the usual distressing and fussy cutting-which seems to have become a staple on my pages lately.

The first was created for the Fashion challenge over at sb.com, my darling little niece-although not even three yet has definitely developed her own ideas about fashion.  She was out shopping with mommy and daddy wearing her favorite polka dot leggings, a matching striped dress and sweater and carrying her favorite pink poodle purse! 

 I'm not a  huge fan of negative space so this page was definitely difficult-but I'm somewhat satisfied with the results of it!

This page wasn't created for anything in specific, I just adore this photo of my niece and her dampa, my dad.  The photo was taken in my parents' picturesque backyard.  I used the new Little Miss line from BoBunny, I just love the colors of this line even though the eyeless girls kind of creep me out.  That didn't stop me from buying two of every sheet!

I created this page for the Darker Side challenge over at sb.com using mostly papers from the Scraps of Darkness april kit.  The ostrich feathers were also from that kit.  The theme this month for the challenge is musicals-which you would think would be so easy for me-but I had such a hard time narrowing it down, and when I did finally  pick a song I didn't have a photo that worked with my idea-so I opted to use this image from Van Helsing and the title 'Masquerade' from The Phantom of the Opera.  

Back in 2002 the Mall of America featured memorabilia and a reproduction of the set from 'I Love Lucy'.  One of my all time favorite TV shows-it was such a fantastic experience being there and seeing some of actual costumes and set pieces.  I've been wanting to scrap this photo for ages and it just worked so perfectly with the Bo Bunny Welcome Home collection, and the design actually came to me in a dream which resulted in me up scrapping at 3:30am.  

And that was my weekend...sadly back to the real world tomorrow!  

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Better late than never

This past Christmas my husband gave me a kindle Fire to help support my reading habit-which is only outshone by my scrapping habit!  We were leaving on vacation a few weeks after Christmas and during that time I searched high and low for a cover that I loved, something that was functional yet still aesthetically pleasing.  Amazon had very few choices, the ones I could afford being very dull and lacking anything interesting, and the ones I loved were just way too many pennies for my liking. 

So I opted for the DIY route.  It took me a bit of planning to figure it out, but I absolutely love the outcome!  It held up during all our travels and still looks in excellent shape!  And all for under $5.00!

I purchased my book in the clearance section of Half Price books for a whole dollar I looked for one that was roughly a quarter inch taller and half an inch wider than my kindle.  When I got home I cut the innards out of my book using my craft knife and tucked them away to use on scrappy pages in the future.

Once my book cover was naked I covered the entire thing in the foam sheets, both inside and outside.  I also covered the inner and outer spine.  To allow for easy closing I cut my foam into different sections, one each for the spine and back and front covers.  So I ended up with 6 pieces for the inside and outside.  I adhered these down with fabri-tac and let sit.

The outer cover was made using a fat quarter from my fabric stash, when the glue was dry I laid my book open flat on my fabric square and trimmed that down so it was roughly 2 inches larger than my book on all sides.  I used my mad book covering skills from high school to create a cover for the outside of my book which I then glued down to prevent it from slipping around. 

Prior to lining the cover with felt I added ribbons for a closure, two on each side.  The end of each ribbon was sealed with a match to prevent unraveling.  I measured roughly and inch and a half in from the top and bottom. 

On the right side of my cover I laid my kindle out to check sizing and where the elastic loops would go.  I marked the foam approximately where the elastic would go.  I cut for pieces of elastic and wrapped them around the corner of my kindle.  This gave me the rough size of the loop.  Since I was using elastic, and to give myself a snug hold I cut the elastic the exact size of the kindle and sewed the two ends together.  I then adhered a loop of elastic to each corner using fabri-tac.

I measured the inside of my cover to get the dimension of the felt and cut it into one large piece.  I cut slits in the felt where the loops would come through and pulled them through before adhering the felt down. And voila!  A lovely padded kindle cover! 

The outside was decorated with a peacock feather from Michaels-the largest investment of the project.  I used the same ribbon from my closure but this time I glued a piece of brown ribbon to the back of it to give it a bit more structure.  The charms were from a tag destroyed by my puppy which I added to a Tim Holtz memo pin and stuck into my foam padding.

Lobster taking a break on deck with the kindle

Supplies needed:

Hard cover book-roughly the size of your e-reader

Foam sheets

A fat quarter of fabric

Felt

1/4" elastic

Fabri-tac

Ribbons

Scissors

craft knife

Thread and needle



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Modeling Paste and Mist

A word of warning, this got to be kind of longish-so feel free to skip ahead and just look at the pretty pictures if you'd like!

Although I missed most of NSBD I couldn't resist the week long challenge, you all know how much I love my minis!  This year's theme was to do a time capsule, a list of 10 things you wanted to tell yourself in 10 years.  This really was a challenge for me, I had a hard time sticking to an idea, I would begin working on something only to spiral off in a new direction after spending an hour on the first.  

I decided I wanted to remind myself of things that are important to me and that really make me happy right now.  The song that comes on the radio that I can't help sing along too, my own happy corner of the world etc...

The cover of my album, I don't know that the title fits the feel of the album, but I loved it from the beginning and decided that was my title.  I started with a blank chipboard album from 7Gypsies.  I used modeling paste to cover the chicken wire mask from Crafter's workshop to get the negative image of the mask in the corners.  I had excess on the mask when I pulled it off so I flipped it over and stamped the mask.  Once dry misted the whole thing with Mister Huey's in Gold, Leaf Green and Water Cooler, also Lindy's Stamp Gang's Moonshadow Mist.  The gears were also misted with the same colors.

 Page one shows my absolute favorite musical at the moment, I've seen Wicked 5 times and I cannot wait to see it again, the image on the page is of my favorite moment in the show.  The show has a lot of steampunk elements to it so I pulled in more gears and the Tim Holtz clock mask-also using modeling paste, this time mixed with acrylic paints. Nothing special about page two, which shows the books I can read/listen to over and over-Harry Potter.  Yes I am a major Potterhead!  

This two page spread shows how some of my favorites morphed over the last year, I am curious to see if in 10 years they are still the same.  My favorite color was bright pink and has since morphed into turquoise, and my favorite animal, the flamingo suddenly shifted into a peacock-don't get me wrong I still love my flamingos-they are kind of gawky and awkward (which I can relate too!)  The frame of the peacock was done using alcohol inks

Page 5, my absolute favorite vacation spot I have been to so far (Barbados) and page 6, the destinations of my dream vacation, Carcassonne France, Delphi Greece, Rome Italy.  The red twine was inspired by the maps shown in the Indiana Jones movies-how the draw the red lines from location to location as he travels.  

Page 7 shows my happy place, which is anywhere with my husband and our girls-a reminder to me that those three are all I need to be happy anywhere.  Page 8 was going to be much more than this, but I just couldn't decide where to take it from here, because I really loved how it was looking-so I opted to leave it as is, adding the date in the corner since I didn't have it on the cover.

Page 9 shows my niece Avalee this year, how absolutely gorgeous, and hilarious, she is!  Page 10 is definitely not my favorite-I love the quote, and seeing (most) of my family always makes me smile, but it just looks blank.  So it will most likely be revisited again soon!

Pages 11 & 12 are for my husband-just a few of the reasons why I love him so much-it was very hard to limit myself to just 10!

Pages 13 & 14:  After having a page about why I love my husband, I really wanted to include a page about why I love myself.  This page was the most insightful to me-I couldn't find anything that I love about myself.  I don't even know who I am really.  I just know that whoever I am I have to be that person-hopefully in 10 years I will know more!

Page 15 & 16: A list of my favorites this year including books, movies, songs, shows, crushworthy actor, color , animal, store, flower, hobby and scrappy brand!

All pages in this album, excluding the front and back were adhered to the chipboard with mod podge before sanding the edges down and inking with black soot.

Thanks for putting up with the long post!  Have a happy weekend everyone!

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Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades...and blog give aways!

I hope everyone enjoyed their National Scrapbook Day yesterday!  Sadly not a lot of scrapping was done by me yesterday, my husband's Grandfather was admitted to the Mayo clinic on Friday with fluid around his liver.  I couldn't get off work so my husband went to be with his family and left me alone.  I needed a distraction and had little desire to be alone, so when Archiver's called and asked if I could help out I gladly volunteered.  It definitely took my mind off of things and made the waiting a little easier.  The outlook doesn't seem very bright, but we will just continue to hope that he lasts a while longer.

Now I was hoping to make it to 35 followers, and unfortunately that didn't happen-but I decided to move forward with the give away anyway!  So with the help of random.org please join me in congratulating the winner of the Spring Seasonal Distress inks..

Andrea Slee!!

Andrea, I will be in contact with you shortly to get your address for new inks-congrats lady!

Now onto what I was able to get done this weekend!  Saturday evening my hubby wanted to be left alone so I worked on a page for the Round Robin challenge over at sb.com.  I had to choose a page from NMscrapper's gallery to lift and I opted for her page 'My Dad'.  There was just something about it that seemed to work with the photos I wanted to scrap.  

This was also done for the 'Getting Messy D.I.Y. Style' challenge over at Stay True to God, and for the first week of the Spring Splurge challenge at sb.com.  This week's challenge was bling.  It was made using papers from the April Scraps of Darkness kit and is the first in a two pager for my sister's wedding album-I'm hoping to have it done in time for their 10th anniversary next year!

I just think my sister looks so beautiful in these photos, just classically elegant.  And her wedding colors worked so well with the papers in the kit.  

The damask papers and Zva flourish are from the April kit.  And the flowers were made using this tutorial.Because the paper was already mulberry I didn't emboss it to avoid tearing flowers as much as possible.    

The getting messy challenge on STTG required you to use either a homemade textured background using something like modeling paste or a handmade flower.  Creating the entire background was a little intimidating for my first time out using modeling paste, and since I had the handmade flowers already, I opted to just play a bit with my paste and created the two black flourishes using black acrylic paint, modeling paste and a Prima mask, and I just love how it turned out!

The paste gives so much texture, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the mask kept its shape after slopping paste all over it with my palette knife!

Thank you everyone for playing along with me on my give away-I truly appreciate the support-happy scrapping!

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A new layout and contest!

Good morning friends, before I show you my latest creation, I'm super excited about national scrapbooking day which is coming up on Saturday May 5th!  It has always been one of my favorite days in the scrappy world, next to ScrapFest and CHA previews.  And to celebrate I'm having my first ever give away!

If I can make it to 35 followers by Saturday I'm giving away a new Tim Holtz Spring Seasonal Distress ink collection!

I got my collection yesterday and I have to say I'm in love with the colors already!  Now how do you win this fabulous prize?  Leave a comment on this post and let me know that you're following! You must be a follower and comment to be eligible. Winner will be chosen at random from those who comment and are followers the evening of Saturday May 5th!

Now onto the my latest little project.  This past fall my mom and I went to Cavalia in Minneapolis, a fabulous cirque du soleil inspired equestrian show, and it was just amazing.  The end of the first act culminated in the most amazing display of Roman riding I've seen in quite a long time.

Photography wasn't allowed during the performance, so I must thank google image search for this photo.  The page was created using the March Scraps of Darkness kit, which was full of the wonderful Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe papers and a beautiful sketch by suepup.

I did a lot of fussy cutting on both the butterflies and the bg paper. The diamond paper is actually the second side of the outer background paper, but because I loved both sides so much I had a hard time deciding how to use it.  So I cut the bg paper to form a frame and gave it a slight mat using CS allowing me to flip over the center portion of the paper to complete the background.  The whole made from fussy cutting out the roller skate is hidden behind all the layers.

Then I just added in a bunch of the various boarders and tags from the collection.  The title was from the Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe's alpha sticker sheet and it was mounted to cardstock.  The peacock feather was a gift from Brooklyn Scrapper-thanks lady!

So I hope to see you all entering my contest and happy scrapping!

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Mother Earth

In honor of Earth day I wanted to post this page created for the Darker Side challenge over at  Scrapbook.com.  The theme this month was 'earthy' and the first image that popped into my head was a greek goddess type figure.  This image was found at my favorite artwork website The Sum of all Crafts.

To create the background I first distressed the edges with water, black soot distress ink and a scissors for the deep tears.  Once dried I stamped the paper with bubble wrap and a mixture of brown and gold acrylic paint.  I than masked with the negative image of the Tim Holtz Branch Tree bigz die. 

 After the background was complete I printed the image on tissue paper and adhered it to the background with matte gel medium.  To prevent the image from smearing I reversed it prior to printing so the ink was on the backside but my image still faced the direction I wanted.  

Once everything was dry I added the leaves and metal butterfly from Graphic 45 and spritzed the entire page with heirloom gold Perfect Pearls.  The title used the same paint as the background and was done using Tim Holtz grungeboard letters.  'Earth' was made using a BoBunny alpha sticker sheet from the Et Cetera line.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look!

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Nouveau

I love the French art nouveau prints, the colors and images are so rich and beautiful-and I'm just drawn to this advertisement for Taittinger champagne featuring the image of Grace Kelly, it is just so classic. And when I saw the colors for this month's challenge over at Stay True to God (check it out here!) I thought the colors of this image would match perfectly.

This month I opted to do the level three challenge again which entailed using the 5 challenge colors (sunflower, butterscotch, auburn, rosy red and rosebud pink) with black. Four embellishments (Roses, Velvet, Chipboard, Canvas or Metal). Four textures (embossed, wrinkled, torn, crackled, puffy paint) and one technique out of the tutorials listed on the challenge page.

I painted the chipboard frame black before embossing it with vintage photo embossing powder. I rubbed off any excess powder after heating it and inked over it with black soot. I then painted over the entire frame with matte mod podge.

The red paper was stamped using tissue paper and black soot ink using Wendy's stamping tutorial. I really like how it turned out and plan on using it again in the future. The dress form was a chipboard shape that was stained with black soot distress stain and covered in glossy accents. I added a metal bead in the center of the large flower and used a velvet ribbon under the title.

The images in the frame are some of my favorites from the art nouveau period scaled down to fit the frame.

This is also for the Feeling French challenge over at sb.com using three French elements from a given list, Eiffel tower, french food (or in this case French champagne) and a fler de lis. Overall I am extremely happy with how this turned out!

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