Masculine travel page

I’ve got photos of a vacation we took to California. I’m putting these pages in each of my kids albums. So I have similar photos that are being scrapped in differing styles. This one goes in my then-16 year old son’s album. While I don’t believe that guys automatically shun flowers and sparkle, it is true that my son tends to the simpler, less flashy elements. So for this I can stay with a traditional “masculine” style. Honestly scrapbooking really doesn’t hold any interest for him so I could sticker sneeze on it and he wouldn’t care. However, perhaps someday these albums will mean something to him, or perhaps to someone else he loves, and so I continue.

Elements for this page were inspired by

Shimelle’s repeating stamps challenge
and of course the SCT’s 3pm challenge of going masculine

For the repeat stamping, I did cut out stamped elements (the globe) but I went a little further. I used the text, which is a separate stamp, from each globe and repeat stamped that directly on each photo. I liked the texture it added to the photo.

All supplies are from the Shimelle True Stories collection.

Try stamping straight on your photos (as long as they aren’t one-and-onlys).

Bubble Bath

Ready to giggle? I couldn’t help laughing when I went to check on my daughter in the bath one night. And this is what I found she had been up to…

She’d gotten can of shaving cream lathered into a wild froth and created a lovely harido. A harido with a side of attitude.

I had two inspirations for this page.

Shimelle’s repeat a shape challenge
DCWV’s May stack challenge. Here is their sketch to draw from…

I took the circle elements of the sketch as inspiration as to add lots of circle layers to create bubbles. Heat embossed and watercolored bubbles, topped off with DCWV vellum circles and a couple of circles punched from pattern paper. (My DCWV paper stack this time around was the 8.5×11 Textiles stack.) Here is what all those repeated circle layers look like up close.

If you are afraid to add watercolor to your pages, this is a simple way to keep it easy and contained. Heat emboss a shape and watercolor inside the lines! I have to admit that I did have bleeding underneath the embossing my first try. But I tried again and blotted up the really wet watercolor paint right away and gave it a bit of heat from the heat gun and that controlled the leakage. Add in some spatter and any uncontrolled leak looks intentional!

Go try some layers and some watercoloring!

Meanwhile

When my middle kid came down with a nasty cold that left her sleeping for days on end, she missed the first (and only!) snow of the season. She was so bummed. I knew I had to capture that on a layout. So, that is the first page I worked on this NSD2016.

Two challenges fit the bill for this layout.

Shimelle’s weekly challenge of using arrows
SCT’s 2pm challenge of using “directional” elements

For this layout I used Shimelle papers, date stamp and Thicker letters. I threw in some DCWV glitzy paper, random vellum and small alpha stickers. I pulled out older wood veneer arrows and used them to add flow to the journaling.

National Scrapbook Day 2016

Whose favorite holiday happened this weekend? Mine! What? Yours too you say? Well awesome!

NSD is a time when I find lots of inspiration and I prioritize time to work on this craft that I love. I felt particularly productive this time around. I’m hoping I can still get more in, because even though the day is over, the inspiration is still rolling around in my head. Here is a sneak peek of all the projects I worked on yesterday.

I played along with Scrapbook and Cards Today magazine’s NSD challenges, challenges at Shimelle.com (starting here), and DCWV‘s May Stack-a-holic challenge. Some of these challenge themes even overlapped at times!

I will have individual posts for each page as I get them written up. I hope you all had a great time playing along with NSD (or will if you couldn’t be live for the event).

Two Birthday Cards

The DCWV stack-a-holic challenge for March is going on. I showed you my entry for the layout sketch challenge a few days ago. Today I have my entry for the card sketch.

I loved the rounded square grid layout on this one. I busted out my brand new DCWV watercolor stack. I won this stack as a favorite project winner from last months entry. It is so lovely. The bright summery colors and the pops of gold have me in a happy place.

For the first birthday card I die cut balloons from pattern paper squares.

The stack has sheets of title cards. I cut down this one that said “fabulous” in gold foiling. I added some letter stickers and a stamp to finish off my sentiment. The gold foiling on this stack is really hard to catch in photos. But I gave it a try.

With the leftover balloon shapes, I went ahead and made a second card

I used some gold thread to add strings to the balloons, embossed my sentiment and sprinkled on some sequins. Simple and a great use of shapes that would otherwise have been leftovers. I know two teens with birthdays this month who will love these cards.

And I leave you with a photo of more of the shine factor. I love that this stack included the black as a very high contrast to the bright bold colors. It was the perfect mix for these festive cards. I understand that this stack will be available soon from JoAnn. So put it on your wish list for your next trip to the store.

Color scheme challenge

Welcome to another day of the Shimelle scrap party. I looked over ALL the challenges this morning (benefit of her being GMT and me being PST) and decided to start with the color story challenges since it best fit the project I wanted to work on next.

Using the colors tan, red, aqua, navy and yellow I created this page about my kids playing Legos. I thought the colors were a perfect fit for a Lego page!

I grabbed my Shimelle supplies of course and went to work. The English Breakfast pattern paper from the True Stories line had the perfect combo of blocks of color on one side and tan on the other. When I saw the cork house in Shimelle’s cork stickers and knew that would fit my story. Add in more cork for my typical embellishment triangle and I was off an running. The cork pieces didn’t quite fit what I had in mind, so here is my tip for you today. Don’t be afraid to alter your cork stickers!

With the ampersand I used a die circle to cut it down to just the size & piece I wanted.

With the house sticker, it was just to big for what I wanted. Scissors solved that problem!

Hope you check out Shimelle’s challenges. And don’t forget to try altering some of your supplies if they aren’t working at first. Besides that leaves extra pieces that you can then use on other projects.

Last one (for today)

The 4th, and last for me, challenge that Shimelle offered up today for this weekend’s scrap party was to scrap an “older” photo. Right now all of my photos qualify as older, I suppose, as I am working through photos from last year. I would have preferred to work on something much older, but this will do. Since I didn’t have part 1 of the challenge to my satisfaction, I decided to go ahead with the optional part 2 of using monochromatic (a challenge posted previously that I missed, so all the better).

Now, I’m off to print more photos as I’ve scrapped myself almost out of prints. Goodnight. And I’ll be back tomorrow with more challenges I’m sure.

Shimelle Challenge #3

So Shimelle’s scrap party is moving right along. Her third challenge for the day is to use old fashioned color blocking. I’ve actually been thinking of a design layout that combines blocking and fish-tail banners. So this challenge was super easy for me to pull together.

Shimelle talked of bringing modern personal style to the old blocking look. I did this with the banner tails, embellishements (enamel dots & phrase stickers, both by Shimelle), stamping, and by outlining blocks & photos with pen. These are all current touches I add to my layouts.

When I was trying to think of a little something to put into the middle of the title, it popped into my head that I had this old Making Memories stamp set with a mantis on it! It was a good touch and a nice use of a stamp set I have hardly touched.

Because the quality of the stamp set isn’t what I am used to I wanted to use my Misti stamp tool to position the stamp. With this tool I can line up my paper on the grid and stamp my image. If the stamp isn’t clear enough then I can just make sure it is lined up right and stamp again. This gives perfect over-stamping for a nice crisp image. This tool is sized for greeting cards and I wasn’t sure the 12×12 layout would fit without without bending/squishing the paper. But it worked very nicely. In the end the imaged stamped just fine the first try. However, what did happen was that I dropped the ink pad on my project.

It smudged my title and parts of the other papers. I used a trick I learned from Jennifer McGuire. I used a craft knife to scrape away the stained paper, then an eraser to smooth out the scrape. Once done it looked alright.

So go check out both lovely crafters I mentioned and try the blocking challenge or even some stamping on your layout.

Two challenges in one

I don’t usually combine challenges. To me if feels a little like cheating. But today I am taking it not as cheating, but as a time saver (as I’m sure most people take it!). So using Shimelle’s challenge to scrap something that “has value” to me and DCWV’s March stack-a-holic challenge I came up with a lovely layout about my son. The thing I value about this layout is the photos of him. Most scappers would think photos are a given. But being where he is, I have a different feeling. He is (and has been for a little while) at an age where he doesn’t want me to take pictures of him. And it makes me sad. So, when the opportunity is there to capture him on “film” I take it. In fact one of the things that I have asked him for as a Mother’s Day gift is just to let me take his picture. And I mention Mother’s Day since these photos were taken last May.

So here is the sketch I worked with…

I used mainly DCWV product from the Stencil DIY project stack, along with some of their foiled and corrugated cardstock stacks. Adding in some Shimelle True Stories embellishments (stickers, enamel stars, wood buttons) and I came up with a page I am very happy with.

I don’t normally layer and layer papers. But with this sketch I felt like I could just take all these papers and run with it. And with so many paper layers I decided to simplify the column of strips from the sketch and I used the stripe stencil to add texture and movement to that side of the layout.

Go check out both of these challenges above and give them a go.

Shimelle Scrap Party!

Shimelle.com is hosting a weekend scrap party — Happening now!

There is fun happening on her blog and facebook page (and I’m sure her other social media outlets!). Come on over and check it out.

The first challenge is to use one of her (new this year) previous challenges. I went with the “something old + something new” as well as the “use hearts” challenges. I did the original use hearts challenge and was very happy with it. But when I did the something old + something new challenge I was not at all satisfied. See…

There was just a whole lot of things I didn’t find worked (for me!) about this layout. It is one that I felt like taking apart and re-doing, but I resisted that urge and put it up on my display wall anyway. So, getting a second chance at this challenge made me happy. And here it is…

I am very happy with this one! My “old” was a pre-made layout I completed at a scrapbook convention either last year or the year before. I tend to just tuck those layouts away and don’t hardly ever go back to them. But I’ve been on a binge of using them up, so this challenge was great. The pre-made layout base included the teal cardstock, the black & cream polkadots pattern paper, the text pattern paper, the red & cream doily pattern paper and the large paper-rolled flower + leaf stitching. I added in some layers old vellum from my stash and some bling cardstock to mat my photo. All this made a perfect pretty base to add in my new(er) products: Shimelle dies (the “lovely” in the title and the banner cuts in the embellishment clusters), thickers, True Stories 6×6 pattern paper pad (to cut those flowers for the clusters), enamel dots and wood buttons; DCWV foiled cardstock (to use with the dies) and corrugated cardstock.

So lovely!

Hope you can join the party too!