Time Flies When Your Kids Keep Growing Up...

Oh it's been a busy month! I seem to catch myself saying that a LOT lately. My oldest daughter's school year is coming to an end and she is already talking about becoming a 1st grader(!), my youngest is about to have her FIRST birthday (can we slow down just a little!!)..

Anyway, I'm so ridiculously behind on all my blog visits too and for that I'm sorry! ::sheepishly grinning:; however, I did want to share a page I made about 2 weeks ago (see I didn't even have time to post to my own blog...ugh!). It's a page I made for Basically Bare using all sorts of their goodies. I felt it'd been too long since I'd dripped paint and made a mess on my background so I aimed for a grungy look and feel on this page. BB hearts and gears were perfect for this. I altered each item completely differently to get loads of different textures.

That background is a collage of Japanese handmade paper, masking tape and washi tape I got from Gauche Alchemy (I was quite excited to finally get my hands on some real washi tape and GA did not disappoint!). Over that I applied my new FAVORITE medium using a Crafter's Workshop brick template...

DecoArt Snow Writer!! I'm sure this stuff has been around for a long while but it's new to me and I think it's so cool! It has this slightly rough texture, dries quickly, and holds it's shape...would it be weird if I though it best described as liquid brick?! OK, maybe not that rough...anyway, I used it quite a bit on this layout.

The "bricks" in the background...

The rough texture on the gear....

To make the hot air balloon, I treated the large gear like a mini canvas. I covered it with sewing pattern paper for some texture then painted some gesso over it. Next I took 2 different metallic acrylic paints and applied them with a brayer. The chevron pattern is washi tape, then of course I used my Snow Writer to make the circles. The final touch was the pink hearts. 

Hey look! More Snow Writer! The basket texture, the circles...

Alright I'm headed outta here to do some catch up! Hopefully I'll get the chance to return sooner than later...until then, thank you for your visits and comments!

What's Happening Over at True XOXO Scrap?!

Hi everyone! We've had some changes going on over at True XOXO scrap so you should go check it out!
Old news is that we've changed our blog address to:
truexoxoscrapbooking.wordpress.com

Secondly we've got a new blog header! Congrats to Mary Chong who designed it! Great job :)

Finally, this month we've got a new challenge, the UNconventional color challenge...we were challenged to either use colors that didn't typically "go" together or colors that we didn't like to scrap with.

Here's my page:

I love neutrals on others' pages but find I have a tough time of using it myself. I'm more of a brights kinda girl so my challenge to myself was to make a page with primarily browns and creams. Of course I HAD to throw a touch of mauve in there;)

Most everything is homemade. The fabric flowers I made out of muslin and the paper flowers were a gift from Krista aka {Puppet}...thank you! The background is calligraphy paper that I painted, misted, and stamped. I then distressed some plain notebook paper with distress inks and tore some cardboard to tuck under the photo. Some masking tape, some washi tape, some twine and of course some gesso and I was done.

Plain muslin flower

Distress inked muslin flower

And you know what? I like it! This might encourage me to come out of my neutral shell..... So what colors are you "afraid" of? Try you hand at it and link it up over at True XOXO!!

Thank you so much for all your visits and comments.........cheers!

Fun and Happy with Basically Bare and Pink Paislee

Hi there! Basically Bare and Pink Paislee were having a swap and so lucky me had a chance to play with the awesome shapes from Basically Bare and the fun papers from the Pink Paislee Prairie Hill collection!! I piled on the goodies to make my kites and did a lot of doodling to emphasize all the different shapes....

That photo of my eldest (cough, choke, sputter...I CANNOT believe how fast she is growing!!) just screams happy stuff don't you think? So I tried to carry that sentiment across with bright, happy kite's free floating :D

My basic combo was kite + scallop + heart. I just varied the materials (love that about Basically Bare) and details!

Here's some close ups of some of my doodles...

Well that’s my page for today! Hope you enjoyed it!