Author: Misty Murphy

National Scrapbook Day

Yesterday was National (or International, if you prefer) Scrapbook Day. Each year I want to participate fully and each year there is always something else going on. This time our family went to a Medieval Festival and also Free Comic Book Day at our local comic shop. So my scrapping came in late in the day. Never the less, I got a ton of work done trying to catch up on the last 4 months of scrapping. I’m hoping to plow through pages this week! With the help of NSD and some challenges at a few of my favorite sites, I am making things happen.

Here is my first layout.

The challenge both from Big Picture Classes and from Shimelle.com (#21), was to use divided pages to add extra photos to a layout. I’ve never done this before and I do like the results. My only worry is that none of my other pages have to be removed from their albums to be fully experienced. I’m wondering if this style will work for me long term. I have some ideas to tweak the process to work for me. So maybe I can incorporate it next time a way that I didn’t use here.

Valentine’s Day

I’m not a huge Valentine’s Day celebrator. Why do we have only one day to tell the people in our lives that we love them? I think it should be an everyday event! Flowers, and dinner and movies are all nice, but wouldn’t it be nicer to randomly surprise someone with something heartfelt and meaningful? That is one of the reasons I love cards. They are made by me, for that someone special, with love. Now that is something to celebrate!

Recipe:

cardstock, dye inks, corner rounder punch: Stampin’ Up
watercolor paper: Strathmore
punch: EK Success
alphabet: American Crafts
other: twine, straws

Lay blobs of ink color on a palette. Use a spray bottle to really wet your watercolor paper. The wetter it is, the more the colors will move. Dip the end of a straw into a puddle of ink and blow the droplet onto the watercolor paper. Start with light colors and work your way through to the darker colors. Finish with accents that pop off the colorful background.

DCWV challenge

I’ve been meaning to enter one of the DCWV stack-a-holic challenges since I first found out about them a couple of months ago. I just haven’t felt like photographing and uploading and writing to my blog. Well, I found the energy tonight for this one. Here is the sketch

And here is my entry…

Recipe
pattern paper: DCWV (Day to Day Photoreal Stack)
stamp:
punches: EK sucess
alpha stickers: Cosmo Cricket, American Crafts, Sasafrass
marker: Copic
embellishments: Jolee’s Boutique
ink: Ranger

New baby gift

So May. I haven’t posted anything since May. I promise you I have been crafting. I have not felt any inclination to blog though. Such is life. I’m here now and offering some crafty goodness.

A friend had a baby not too long ago and I had fun making this layout for a gift when we get to visit for the first time. I placed it in a 12×12 frame so that they can hang it on their wall with the other lovely family photos. I hope they appreciates this little piece of art to add to their collection.

For this project I actually went to the craft store and specifically shopped for product. I never (okay, ALMOST never) go shopping for a specific project. I try to keep a bunch of interesting supplies on hand and just create with what I have in stock. But this time I wanted to shop. And how fun it was.

Recipe

Baby themed kit (6×6 paper pad, die cuts, tiny text, words): Authentique (on sale for $5! What a score)
pattern paper: Studio Calico, My Mind’s Eye
inks: Studio Calico (Mr. Huey), Ranger (distress for inking edges)
washi tape: My Mind’s Eye
wood die cuts: Studio Calico
die cut machine: Provo Craft (Nursery Rhyme cartridge for title lettering, Heritage for banner, Gypsy for resizing elements)
date stamp: K&Co. (Smash stamp)
punches: Stampin’ Up
journaling pocket: Simple Stories
journaling cards: Project Life elements

This qualifies for 2 challenge blogs, both of which I have never entered anything in before:

I look forward to more challenges with these sites and a few other new ones as well as an old time favorite. I may even get blog posts done about them and actually enter them! He he.

Star Shine

I was very inspired by the Tuesday Trigger over at Moxie Fab World recently. I took this photo…

Tuesday Trigger at Moxie Fab World

and turned it into this card…

What I found most interesting about the trigger was the gold dots on the fabric. I turned that idea into sparkles in the sky for this shiny star card.

Recipe
cardstock: Stampin’ Up (blue), Staples (white)
ink: Ranger
stamp: Stampin’ Up
gems: Imaginisce
pearl paint: Ranger

I arranged the gems in straight lines to represent a meteor shower and made the one big star the focal. I used the tip of the paint bottle to create lots of swirly texture. And here is a tip for you. When I stamped my sentiment it was crooked, so I fixed it by mounting my layer slightly crooked on the card base. That made the sentiment straight and added a bit of visual change to the card. So fun!

Matching card and envelope

Today’s post is brought to you by the matching card and envelope challenge over at The Paper Variety. The inspiration for the focal on this card I CASEd from a Moxie Fab World post. I also used pieces of technique for the background base on Tim Holtz’s Creative Chemistry 101 class.

Celebration Cake Art by Carey Hanes

So, with those three things in my brain I came up with this card and envelope set.

Recipe
carstock: Stampin’ Up (green, black), Staples (white)
stamps, embossing powder: Stampin’ Up
die cuts: Cricut
inks: Ranger
bakers twine: Boxer Scrapbooks
markers: Copic
gems: Want2Scrap
modeling paste: Grumbacher

First I cut the cake + stand image on my Cricut. I then emossed the stand with copper embossing powder to give it a metal quality. I dabbed a scoop of modeling past on my craft sheet and colored it with a drop of brown dye ink. Using my Cricut spatula, I spread the modeling paste across the cake to give it a frosted texture. While it was drying I inked my background, created my candles and built up the card. Even then the cake was not dry. In the process of working with the modeling medium I learned a few things about it.

  1. Don’t heat it with a heat gun. It will bubble. Allow it to dry overnight for this kind of application.
  2. If it is applied to a single layer of cardstock, it will warp and roll up as it drys. Then it will crack when you unroll the paper. Try adhering it to something more solid to allow a good flat drying.
  3. It was fairly solid once dry. I thought I might have to mail the card in a padded envelope to prevent it from crushing and flaking. But once I felt the texture I decided to send it straight in the matching envelope (external embellishment removed for the sake of the Postal workers!).
  4. I think I would add a second layer to the cake but I didn’t have time to wait another day for drying.
  5. Most of all, it was fun to add this kind of texture to a project. I am going to experiment with different textural backgrounds.

Use it, don’t lose it

In this Moxie Fab World challenge we are encouraged to take pieces (non-paper) that we might otherwise throw in the garbage. Off my craft table I grabbed a few pieces of satin ribbon that were trimmed off the ends after wrapping a package. I also have a few small lengths of bakers twine and floss. When I fist grabbed the ribbon ends I thought I would turn them into little banners and stitch them down with the floss. However, after trimming the ends into points I thought it looked like butterfly wings. From there I trimmed both ends of the ribbon and used the twine and floss to tie the middle for the butterfly body and antennae.

Recipe
cardstock, ink: Stampin’ Up
stamp set: Close to my Heart
other: ribbon and twine scraps

Handmade embellishments

Another Moxie Fab World challenge this week is to use a handmade embellishment as a focal point. I decided to go big and bold with this one. I needed an anniversary card for some friends and was stumped as to what I wanted to do for the focal. A heart makes a lot of since so I cut a large heart from my Cricut and gave it some real oomph. I painted it with Distress Crackle paint, added another layer of paint to create a sentiment backdrop and covered the whole thing with embossing powder for thick depth and shine. Plus when I stamped my sentiment into the warm embossing powder, it gives a bit of a debossed impression.

Recipe
cardstock: Stampin’ Up, other
paints: Ranger
inks: Ranger, Tsukineko (Staz On)
embossing ink: Versa Mark
embossing powder, punch: Stampin’ Up
fibers: We R Memory Keepers

Using scraps

The next Moxie Fab World challenge is to use your paper scraps to create a project. I had a pile of paper scraps leftover from cutting out my computer printed cards from the last challenge. Since I printed a card that is 5.5 x 8.5 on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper there were plenty of leftover pieces.

I decided to use the scraps as a mask and create a pattern to ink over them. Once done I decided to use the positive mask pieces on a project as well as the negative masked and inked piece. I got two simple yet pretty cards out of one pile of scrap pieces.

Recipe
cardstock: Staples (white), Stampin’ Up
inks: Ranger
stamps: Stampin’ Up
punch: Fiskars