O Christmas Tree

In a few days I'll be heading out to Australia for the month! We're going to see the "rellies" as my husband would say..my mum-in-law, sis-in-law, etc to celebrate Christmas and introduce little baby girl to everyone too:)  I'm very excited and a bit anxious at the same time as this is a very long flight and now we have two kiddies instead of one..BUT I keeping reminding myself that no matter how difficult (or not) the flight might be, it will end and 16 hrs is but a quick blink in time.....well at least I'm going to keep telling myself that!!

It's been hectic and busy around here getting ready for the trip but I've managed to get a little creative time in and I made this little canvas to leave up at the house in place of the real tree we will not be putting up here this year:

I saw this totally awesome video here by Christy Tomlinson (whose work I love!) and I then saw the color palette over at TCR and came up with the idea of my Christmas tree!  Here's a few close ups:

I picked up the frame from the $1 store (a buck can you believe it!!) and sprayed it white..it was originally grey. Next I cut and painted the background canvas. Then I used all manner of scrap paper and fabric to make my tree, cut the star from my roll of ducting tape (not to be confused to duct tape) and voila! my tree was born! Super easy, festive project if you want to give it a try! If you do end up making this, please send me a link in the comments, I'd love to see them all!

OK, in case I don't get a chance to get back onto my blog before the year's end I would just like to wish everyone a HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Cheers!

I Spy

I made this layout for the challenge over at Punky Scraps called Get Picky where you have to use at least 3 items out of a list on your page. This time they were Stars, No Patterned Paper, Masking, Staples, Exposed cardboard, Book page, Bottle cap and Washi tape. I managed to use 5 items (if you count homemade washi tape).

I started with white CS, masked and misted the background, added gesso and misted some more.  The heart and chevron masks I cut out with my Silhouette. I would recommend using a heavier paper so that there won't be as much warping and/or cover the paper with mod podge to waterproof! 

I don’t have any washi tape so I made my own using masking tape, paint and stamps. There's an endless amount of combinations!

After the layers I stamped around, drew some doodles, and added india ink and liquid acrylic here and there.

 Hope everyone has a wonderful week! Thanks for stopping by!

J'adore

Hi everyone! This week I'm playing along with the Bird is the Word challenge blog using TCR palette #85. The word I needed to use was "adore" and the idea that came to mind was to use the French phrase "J'adore" (I think I'm on a French kick lately...hmmm must be that need to go to Paris I was talking about earlier..). Well I have these 'oh so cute' pics of my baby girl wearing this sun hat that is much too big for her head and because we flip up the brim, every time I see her wearing it I feel like calling her "ma cherie"!

I kept it simple, more shabby chic and let me tell you it was tough to do! I wanted to splatter and fling paint here and there but this page wasn't calling for that so I reigned it in;)  I used thread a little differently..completely inspired by Naomi Capps who does amazing things with thread!! The photo frame was a fabulous find in the $1 bins at Michaels..oh I wish I'd bought more!

Here's the color palette I used:

Thank you so much for your visits and comments! They are like little bits of sunshine in my day:) Cheers!

I {heart} Mud

Actually I'm not a huge fan of mud but my daughter is :) so my layout could aptly be considered an ode to my oldest! We'd gone on an impromptu visit to the beach  (meaning: not dressed for the beach) and it was low tide (meaning: lots of muddy sand) which resulted in soaking jeanes covered in mud (meaning: oodles of fun!).

I made this page using color palette #84 over at TCR and borrowing this weeks sketch over at Punky Scraps.

The result:

My favorite part of this layout has to be the painted sand! I look craft sand and mixed it with gel medium...looked a bit like sugar cookie mix..then applied randomly with a palette knife..talk about texture!  Hope everyone has a great week..tfl!!

Noir

This layout is different from the ones I've been making lately. I was inspired by a challenge I saw over at True XOXO Scrapbooking. The word of the month is "black"..nothing more, nothing less and we were to take inspiration from the DT's work. Well I'd never done a "dark" layout before..most of mine are fairly bright and lighthearted since I'm usually scrapping my kids so I liked the push that this gave me. I was also inspired by Cheryl's LO which had different textures and mediums to make the different elements stand out.  Here's my take:

I pulled out my arsenal of black and dark grey anything that I had and went to work. My silhouette came in super handy..got my Eiffel Tower, cat, bicycle, title and lampost from it. Then I took each item and altered it with paints, embossing powders, crackle paints, mists, stickles..seriously so much fun!! I especially love how the lampost turned out looking so antique :D  This page represents a goal of mine...to someday visit Paris with my hubby...because although he and I have already been to Paris, we've somehow managed to never be there together! Tfl!!

PS if anyone is interested in how I altered any of my embellies, I'd be more than happy to explain:)

Cheeky Little Cherub

Hello! Hope everyone had a fun weekend:)  We were busy with Halloween festivities and my oldest daughter has amassed enough sugar to last the rest of the year!!  Time to subtly deplete the pile while she's not looking...shhhh...

In my world of scrap, I've just finished a layout that took me FOREVER! Some LOs come together easier and some LOs don't. Well this fell into that last category. This was for the new palette over at TCR and I loved the colors, especially the silver, but making it translate on paper into something I liked was tough!  Here's the palette:

Here's my page:

So my new favorite medium is ducting tape! It's metallic and very malleable:)  I hand drew the clouds on the tape and cut them out, then heat embossed the checkered pattern on..fun!  The hot air balloons, cherubs and fairies I got from the fabulous Graphics Fairy. I made the flower from some lovely ribbon I had. And of course the pics are of my baby girl with her kissable cheeks just before her fifth month <3  Tfl!

The Magic of the Sea

Here's a layout I just completed combining two challenges. I love the color palette over at TCR and Punky Scraps has a new challenge going on that I just couldn't resist so I put it all together and came up with this:

I really enjoy creating my own backgrounds! This one I made on canvas using watercolors, gesso, and acrylic paint. Over that I added some molding paste overlayed with saran wrap for texture. That metallic frame I made with ducting tape after watching this cool video on youtube by Belinda Akers! The title I hand wrote on shrinky dink plastic and shrunk. All the doodling I did, I covered with glitter, to soften the black. I really wanted to convey the feeling of how magical the ocean beach must feel for children..so much to see, feel, explore!  Here's the palette:

Thanks for looking!

The Birdie

I love this week's colors over at TCR and I love making my own embellies so when I saw the challenge over at Challenge Me Happy I decided to play along with both.  I have these oh-so-funny pictures of my baby at two days old unintentionally (or intentionally?!) giving us the birdie and just had to scrap them!

Because there is a birdie involved, I tried to give the page a grungy, urban feel softened up with a couple of real birdies...my play on words, get it?..."birdie"...hee-hee...OK, OK, enough of that!  So I pretty much used gesso and paint to make the background. I doodled all the borders..I find white-out pens make excellent doodle pens against black or dark cardstock. The birds were hand drawn and cut out of cardboard then painted.  Hope you enjoy it:

Here is this weeks color palette..

House Keeping

I've been making some changes to my blog design so forgive me if it gets confusing and let me know if you like it:)  There are just so many styles I love so it makes it difficult to stick with just one look for my blog but I'm trying, I'm trying!!  My header was totally inspired by Christy Tomlinson who own Scarlet Lime. It took some effort on my PSE but I followed a tutorial at The Graphics Fairy and I'm super proud to say I did it!

OK, still running around trying to catch up after the fabulous trip to Kauai so I'm off..............

One For the Road..

I'm leaving for the land of Aloha! in two days..so, so excited! My hubs and I will be celebrating our 8 year wedding anniversary there:)  Before heading out though, I got a page done that really makes me happy!  It's funny and I had a misting, painting, doodling, stamping good time! I based it on the color scheme over at
TCR and also got inspired to pull out my stamps from this great blog I discovered called Challenge Me Happy.

This "photo session" was impromptu and when I saw the faces that my girls had pulled (especially my youngest) I just cracked up! So I wanted to make a page that was lighthearted, cartoonish and fun. Lots of mists and painting with this cool stencil I got from plaid/folk art. Painted some gesso and molding paste randomly and sprayed some more. Most of the black on here is my doodling expect for the title and a few circle clusters. Added 2 transparencies behind the color photo.  Here's the color palette:

Thanks for stopping by and Aloha!!

TCR and Creative Scrappers!

So up until this point, I hadn't made a page of my new baby. You'd think a layout of her would have been one of the first pages I'd make once I had a chance to get back into scrapping..you'd think. Well I had a really difficult time, not because I didn't have photos or didn't want to but because I felt worried (!?)...I wanted every page to be so perfect, so beautiful (because that's how I see her) and I started to feel a sort of stage fright pressure! Weird I know!

Then I saw this color combo at TCR and this sketch at Creative Scrappers and a wee little idea began to form..that got the ball rolling and finally a page dedicated to my newest emerged...whew!!

I'm pretty happy with the results...did a bit of misting and molding paste-ing (is that a word??) in the background, piled on some flowers and trinkets and voila! it was done!

Thanks for looking and I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!!

Shout Out!

So my birthday was 2 days ago and let's just say I'm at an age where the prospect of getting older is not horribly exciting to me! BUT that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the festivities:) This is where the shout out comes in.. my sweet hubby put on a lovely BBQ party where I got a chance to hang out with friends and family, AND my awesome five year old made me this card (with a little spelling help from hubby):

How great is that?  Just warmed my heart to see this (and I think I see a budding scrapper in the making)!  Thank you to my wonderful family for making my birthday so special!!

Mixing Media

I just finished a page using pencillines sketch #251. Had a lot of fun with this one using some mixed media! The background is canvas that I covered with gift wrapping tissue paper, then painted, inked, and gessoed. Same for the yellow and blue papers except I used tissue paper over cardstock. I just love the texture that tissue creates!  Used molding paste with stencils to make the birds, grass, and sun..love molding paste! Decided to make the tree more dimensional by adding "leaves"...it's actually small prima flowers that I misted, crumpled, and glued. Got that idea from a recent Creating Keepsakes magazine. Pretty nifty look I think!

This is a picture of..you guessed it, us, family:) These pics are pretty rare because it's usually me or my husband taking the pics. So even though it's not a perfect pic, I still cherish it!



Nothing Like a Good Challenge..

I love the challenges over at scrapbook.com! I have many, many pictures I want to scrap but sometimes I have a tough time just getting the ball rolling..well in come the challenges! They might suggest a word or a color or an embellishment and ding!! the bells go off and I get going.  This time it was a subject challenge: falling leaves. I won't go into too much detail but I've had a bag of fabric leaves gathering dust and hooray!! I got to use them. Also got inspiration from this lovely pagemaps.com sketch:



Hope everyone has a great week!