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!!