FD Sketch Along 5.31 & a Little Inspiration!

I am so happy I got to work on FD's sketch today!  It is such a fun sketch and I love how my lo turned out.  If you haven't visited their site, check them out here.  Today's challenge was also exciting, because two of my friends from Club CK are featured as the Guest Designers and both of them had amazing lo's!  I loved seeing their work and reading a more about them in their bio. 

I was also able to incorporate a second challenge into this lo.  One of my fellow Club CKers (adogslife13), Tina is hosting a challenge this week on her blog.  Her challenge was to use one of the lamps she has in her home as inspiration for your lo or project.  I absolutely loved the shapes on the lamp and believe it or not, I had this amazing Scenic Route paper in my stash, with a similar pattern.  It just all kind of fell into place from there.  I thought I had a font that had the same shape (and I probably do), but I couldn't find it.  So, I just designed the shape in my desktop publishing program, saved it as a jpeg, and used the trace feature in SCAL to add it to the program and cut it. 

And here is what I created:

Products Used:

Paper:  Scenic Route

Letter Stickers:  Stickabilities

Brads:  Recollections

Grungeboard:  Tim Holtz

Acrylic Paint:  Apple Barrel

Embossing:  Sizzix Big Shot

Marker:  Sharpie

Font:  Arial Black

Pen:  Sakura

Amazing What a Little More Time Can Do!

Last week, I just kind of threw my lo together for ST in a pretty big hurry, because of being out of town and coming home tired and having a lot to do!  I still liked the lo, but I knew it wasn't one of my best (they can't all be your favorite)!  But I think I have redeemed myself this week!  :)  I found this photo of me and my son on my mother-in-laws camera.  We went to the mall to get some new shoes for all of them and HAD to ride the carousel while we were there.  I also thought, "hey, I look pretty good in this picture!  I don't even need to do any editing out of wrinkles or dark cirlces under my eyes"!!  I will admit that even though this lo is for my son's book, it is bordering along the lines of girly...but I wanted to re-create the look and feel of the carousel and I thought the Emma's Shoppe papers from Crate Paper were a perfect match.  I altered the sketch from two photos to one, but other than that, I pretty much stuck to the feel of the sketch.

Products Used:

Paper:  Crate Paper & BoBunny

Brads:  The Paper Studio

Buttons:  Close to My Heart

Mini Market Alphas:  October Afternoon

Pen:  Zig

Thickers:  American Crafts

Other:  Baker's Twine; Digital Alphas



Some More Sketch Fun!

I just discovered Creative Scrappers a couple of weeks ago and I was able to get two lo's done for their May challenge.  Both of them were really fun, because I used paint for both lo's!

This one is based on #156 Sketch.  I liked the layering of the different pp strips behind the photo, but since my color scheme only consisted of 4 colors, I had to improvise a little.  But I still love the way it turned out.  This was a great picture of my son, when he woke up from his nap time.

I used #154 for this lo.  Echo Park's Sweet Summertime kit has perfect papers and embellies for those fun Summer lo's.  I added some white, splattered acrylic paint to this one, just to go along with the "splasin'" theme.  I also used some Stampendous glitter on Tim Holtz grungeboard, to make the splash embellies around my title.



The Never Ending Layout!

I love seeing the double page layouts at ST!!  Another reason I loved this sketch, was because of all of the portrait photo spaces.  I had these great photos of my oldest daughter, blowing bubbles one afternoon in our backyard.  I've been working on the lo over the past 2 1/2 days.  Normally, I like to finish a lo in one session...about an hour and a half.  One of my new favorite ways to add dimension to my lo's is by gluing my pp to the thin cardboard pieces that come in page protector packages.  I used this method on the half circles for my banner and sun and I think it makes such a big difference.  I also used some Smooch Spritz and masking to add the appearance of bubbles.  There were some casualties during the "spritzing"...such as my fingers, the concrete, my clothes, the door, and probably a few bugs here and there!  So here it is, in all of it's glory...finally finished!!

Products Used:

Paper:  Glitz Design & BoBunny

Brads:  The Paper Studio

Flowers:  Prima

Mini Round Gems:  Recollections

Thickers:  American Crafts

Smooch Spritz:  Clear Snap

Distress Ink:  Tim Holtz

Embroidery Floss:  Janlynn

Ribbon Trim:  AC Dear Lizzy

Fonts:  Impact & CK Curly

Tools:  WRMK Brad Setter, Expression



ST June GDT Challenge

Welcome back Blogger...oh how I missed you!!  Now that things are back to normal on Blogger...at least at the moment...I can get my lo posted for June's GDT Challenge at Sketchy Thursdays.  They offered a great sketch this month and I loved the added inspiration photo.  I had some BoBunny papers in my stash that really resembled the colors in the teacups.  I also loved the florals on the cups and fussy cut one of the large flowers from a page of Glitz Design paper.  The buttons were made using the button kit and fabric scaps...a link can be found to the turtorial at Counterfit Kit Challenge on one of my earlier posts.  I have to say that my favorite part of the lo, is that I FINALLY got some of that awesome Dear Lizzy rosette trim!!  I have been too cheap to spend $5 on it and I found it on sale at Hobby Lobby this week for $2.99!  YAY for sales!  So here is my entry for this month:

Products Used:

Paper:  BoBunny & Glitz Design
Rosette Trim:  AC Dear Lizzy
Trim:  Spare Parts (The Paper Studio)
Acrylic Stamp:  Glitz Design
Ink:  Tim Holtz
Tiny Type:  My Little Shoebox
Punch:  Martha Stewart

ST 5.5 - Furry Friend

I've been trying to figure out what photos I wanted to use for this week's sketch, and yesterday I got two cute shots of the girls meeting the newest, baby Possum at our local nature center.  Her name is Emmy Lou (they are naming all of their Possums after Country Music singers...the older one is named Loretta!!).  She has been at the center for three days and was orphaned.  The girls loved petting her and letting her wrap her tail around their fingers.

I used the yummy Crate Paper's Emma's Shoppe papers for this lo.  There were some great tutorials I saw this week and I used a couple of the techniques I saw.  The first, is the heart flower that I saw on October Afternoon's blog here.  And the second was a tutorial on making your own fabric covered buttons at Counterfit Kit Challenge.  This was a great revelation for me, because I love the big, fabric covered brads but can't always find colors or patterns that I'm looking for.  This is a great way to customize and really easy.  Of course I had to make a trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday and purchase some of the button kits.  The one I made for this lo, is the yellow button in the center of the heart flower.  There are several different tutorials, so head over and check them out here.

Products Used:

Paper:  Crate Paper, American Crafts

Thickers:  American Crafts

Buttons:  Crate Paper

Embroidery Floss:  Janlynn

Trim:  The Paper Studio

Butterflies & Doilies:  Cosmo Cricket

Pen:  Marvy

Other:  Baker's Twine



Right Outside Your Door - Using Circles FD

I got some great pictures of some of the flowers and blackberries (not quite black yet) growing in our backyard.  I love the photo of the rose with the little green bug.  I used circular elements and then backed them with a circle cut on my Expression from the wood-grain Crate Paper. 

Better Late, Than Never!

I've been itching to get this sketch done for ST, since they posted it last week.  But, we had a busy weekend and then I got sick on Sunday night with a cold and sore throat.  So I was determined to get it done today, no matter how I was feeling.  I wanted to try the Polaroid look on my pics for this lo.  I always love it when I see someone using it for their pics.  I used befunky.com to add a tint to my photos and then cropped them in my Desktop Publishing program and before printing them, I added a box around the picture to make it look like a Polaroid photo.  Then I printed them, cut them out, and added a little bit of black ink around the edges.

I CANNOT say enough how much I LOVE the Echo Park Hybrids!!  It's great having the paper kits, but I love, love having the digi kits at my disposal.  I think one of my favorite aspects of the digi kits, is being able to adjust the size of the alphas and embellies...the possibilities are endless.  This lo is using EP For the Record kit...which I would probably vote as my most favorite of all of the ones they have out right now.

So without further ado, here is the lo I created this week:

Products Used:

Paper:  Echo Park Hybrids, Bazzil

Brads:  Recollections
Trim:  Recollections

Tiny Type:  Cosmo Cricket

Mini Round Gems:  Recollections

Pen:  Sakura

Marker:  Marvy

Other:  Baker's Twine, Buttons,



Crop Therapy

I was on a roll, until this stupid cold hit!!  I finished 5 layouts from Friday to Monday...Yay!  But now I am on stand still til I feel better.  I have two meters for judging the severity of how bad I feel...(1) do I feel like scrapbooking, (2) do I feel like going to church.  If the answer to either of these questions is "No", then I know it's pretty serious!  Even though I don't feel like actually doing a page, I guess I'll have to settle for posting the ones I've already done. 

This first one is for Frosted Designs Fabulous Friday Challenge 4.29, using polka dots and stripes:

Using a PageMaps Sketch:

This one was fun.  I did it for one of the Issue Challenges on Club CK, which was to use a monogram on your lo.  I bought a pack of the Tim Holtz ideology papers at Michael's and had fun spray misting and distressing on this one.  I cut star shapes out of a 12x12 piece of paper and used it as a mask to spray mist the stars and then added the Jillibean Canvas stars to the center to add dimension.

Using a PageMaps Sketch:

I am still trying to finish out Christmas, so here is the other Christmas lo I got completed:

Using a PageMaps Sketch:

I did this lo based off of a Sketch Support sketch:

I did this last one for one of the NSD challenges at Club CK this week.  They are doing a week of activities to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day.  Yesterday's challenge was to use 3 or more cell phone photos on your lo.  This was a great challenge, because I love popping my cell phone out to take photos when I don't have my camera with me.

These last two were sent in for submission calls to Creating Keepsakes, but I never heard back, so now I can get them posted.