UmWowStudio Layered Chipboard!

Hey all,

We're focusing on Layered Chipboard over at UmWowStudios today! You can choose to layer or not layer the raw chipboard, so many possibilities!

And to celebrate this Layered Chipboard Monday, UmWowStudios is having a giveaway! Click here to find out the details and have a chance to win.

I made this page with Layered Clouds. What do you think?

Lots of metallic acrylic paint and glitter to shine those adorable clouds up!

So visit UmWowStudio for your chance to win a big bunch of Layered goodies!!

Post Vacation Blog Business :)

Hi everyone!

I've been away on holiday and am doing a little catch up here on my blog! We took a trip to Australia to visit family and attend a wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and we had a great time celebrating new family, and of course the bride and groom looked dashing!

So, up first I've got my page for The Crafter's Workshop new 2014 summer release!

There are SO many new, awesome stencils to pick from! I used the Folk Art Flower by Kasia aka Czekoczyna (in both large and mini sizes) and Sea Creatures and Nautilus both my Carmen Medlin to make this page.

If you head over to The Crafter's Workshop blog here I have a step by step post on how I made this page. In the meanwhile here are some close ups:

Here's a link to my video on how I make faux sandy paste....

And on to my next page....this is for UmWowStudio using a bunch of their fabulous chipboards and flair!

I've been trying to do better with putting myself as (at least) one of the subjects in my layouts and I had this photo of me and the hubs from our trip to Cambodia/Vietnam that I liked. I wanted to make a romantic themed page without being obviously so. My husband and I have this question and answer we've been asking each other for years about the general state of our lives together :) and it fit the bill for being the focus.

I used a bunch of Twinkle Speech Bubbles as the base to my Alpha ONE letters. 

This Day Hashtag Banners also helped balance out the page. 

And I thought this cluster of flairs and Love Confetti added just the right touch :)

I hope you enjoyed the pages, both very different but full of things I love to use!

UWS - Nature's Artistry (and a Little Page Anatomy)

Hi everyone,

And still more catching up......! On July 4 I was up on UmWowStudio with a layout.

On our recent trip to St. Maarten, we visited a butterfly farm and my daughter took one look at this butterfly and declared "an Owl Butterfly"! She was spot on and I was proud :) That's more than I knew!

I wanted to try and get a more organic feel on this page with lots of irregular lines and movement so I thought I'd do a little breakdown of how I tried to achieve that.

Yes, I am very aware that I misspelled ARTISTRY....doh!!

I started with the beautiful UWS Damask Mask all over the left side of my paper. I sprayed it, stamped with it, used molding paste over it. The mask is composed of lots of curves, little leaf like detail, really perfect for breaking up all the white on my page.

I dripped several different green mists across the paper to give the page movement. Then I used this very cool VLVS Tree Stamp to add even more movement. With all that movement, I needed balance ;) so I added a UWS Layered Circle in pink on the far right of the page to tie in with all the pink on the left, and of course a few butterflies as well. The May Arts Butterfly ribbon did just the trick.

The UWS Layered Butterfly was the perfect themed embellishment to go with this page. I covered it with Snow Tex and dabbed different Lumiere acrylic paint over it. 

I hope you found my page "dissection" helpful! Have a great day!

UmWowStudio, May Arts, and Avery Elle swap!

Hi everyone!

This week UmWowStudio is swapping and blog hopping with Avery Elle stamps and May Arts! There's lots of prizes to be had, not to mention lots of inspiration so come join in! There will be new projects everyday at all three of the blogs.....

Here's my page for the hop. Ok, what was I going for here? Well, when I snapped that photo, I thought it was hysterical and it immediately reminded me of Alice in Wonderful so that's where the title came from. I was trying to make an organic, dreamy, slightly psychedelic feel to the page....did I achieve it? I hope so :)

I knew I wanted to use the UWS Ray Background on this page. Again, in trying to get a more organic feel, I painted the chippie with gesso then with Kroma crackle medium. I painted them with Color Shine and tapped PearlEx powder to fill in the grooves. 

I stamped the background with the cool Avery Elle sun stamps from the Bright Days collection and used the May Arts Webbed Weave Ribbon as a stencil with high gloss gel medium.

Next, I painted with watercolors. I made pink enamel dots by stamping with the small circle stamp from the Bright Days set then covering the circles with Glossy Accents (beware, drying time is quite long!). 

The final details and touches included fun flair from UWS, little chevron arrows stamped out from Avery Elle and the pink cord loops from May Arts around my enamel circles. 

Thank you so much for visiting my blog! I hope you had fun....!

Supplies:

UWS Ray Background

UWS Wild Flowers Set Flair

Avery Elle Bright Days

May Arts Webbed Weave Ribbon

May Arts Waxed Cord

UmWowStudio - Being Silly

Hi everyone!

Spring is almost here! We are having some fantastic weather in California and we've even got a pair of Mallard ducks that have been hanging out a bit in our backyard :) Totally random stuff but it makes me feel happy!

Something else that makes me happy is this page I've got a page up at UmWowStudio:

My little duckies (I'm on a roll here) are being goofy in a photo booth. I'm enjoying the contrast of the darker color to the lighter subject too...

My UWS Layered Triangles came in very handy too in adding that extra something I needed to make this page feel complete!

That's all from me. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Catching Up With UmWowStudio

Hi everyone!

My vacation already seems AGES ago.... *sigh*
Now is that anyway to start a post? No, so I'll steer us towards something other than my whinging.

I'm sharing two pages today, both which I made for UmWowStudio and both of which I am late posting (!)

The first is my page with UWS and 7Dots Studio. I always have fun working with my UWS products and of course getting to use the Messy Head and Love is in the Air papers was awesome!

One of the most amazing and beautiful places we visited during our trip to Iceland was Jokulsarlon,
a glacial lagoon. Walking down the beach among the pieces of glacial ice will always be a striking memory.

I love to use big arrows. Great embellies to use for bringing focus to your photos.

My next page is for this month's Throwback Thursday hop with UWS and Authentique. We're using the oldies but definitely goodies to make our pages. I worked with the Joyous collection from Authentique which is one of their Christmas lines. The papers are beautiful but I didn't feel exactly ready to scrap the holidays yet so I decided to use it for a completely, non-holiday themed page.

One of the highlights of our trip to Vietnam was eating! We enjoyed roaming around,
 seeing where the crowdwere and sitting down on little stools (right on the sidewalk) to eat "street food".

OK, hope everyone has a great day! Thanks for stopping by!

"This Moment" for UmWowStudio

Hi everyone!

September is a busy month in my household because 3 out of the 4 of us share September birthdays. But not this little one, she gets a month all to herself! I snapped this photo back in May, one day before my baby girl turned two. Busy busy little thing she is and I love capturing the random moments.

This is my latest page up at UmWowStudio. I really wanted to put their new masks to use. On this page I used the Star Confetti Mask to create my background.

I colored the mask with Faber Castell Big Brush pens, spritzed the mask with water, and randomly pressed down on paper (like a stamp really). 

Here's flair from the Black and Blue set dressed up with Heart Confetti...

And of course some chipboard! I've used Star Confetti here.

Thanks as always for the visit!!

Magical Bubbles

Hi everyone!

Oh wow, this is the last official week of summer for us as my big girl returns to school next week! It went fast......

In the page that I'm sharing with you this week, I wanted to capture some of that summer magic. I love to watch my little ones play with bubbles...it's something so simple yet so endlessly entertaining. Actually, I think it's a little magical for them...colorful yet clear, everywhere at once and then gone, and if you are lucky you can "catch" one!

The UmWowStudio chippies were just perfect for this page. I covered the circles in colored tissue paper and metallic acrylic paint.

The butterfly got covered in Snow Tex medium and watercolors.

I hope this page gave you a little happy summer feel :)

And as always, thanks so much for stopping by!

Some Shine and Pizzazz!

Hi everyone!

My turn up at UmWowStudio! You can see more details of the reveal here. 

The page I made was totally inspired by the fun photo of my eldest...I so love this pic! She was at dress rehearsal for an upcoming performance and I thought I'd better a photo "now or never" in costume. So glad I did! 

I used the UWS chipboard to add some pizzazz to my page by loading them up with glitter..they really sparkle under the light!

For the background I painted with an acrylic metallic blue and stamped with paint too. The red is watercolor paint on watercolor paper (imagine that) (insert self sarcasm) and stamped with Stazon ink. 

I used my Silhouette all over this too....the star page, the anchor, and the helm. Got the nautical shapes free from here. It says they will only work in Photoshop but I just converted them to a PNG file on my PSE so that I could open it up in Silhouette. 

Hope mid week is treating everyone well and thanks so much for stopping by! Oh and you're probably going to be sick of me repeating this but you can follow me on Bloglovin' by clicking on this imagine in the sidebar:

UmWowStudio and Gauche Alchemy

Hi everyone!

Today is the last day of the UmWowStudio/Gauche Alchemy swap so if you haven't done so already, go check out the all the different, inspirational projects by the DT members here and here!

My page was up on UmWowStudio yesterday and I wanted to share it with you all:

I don't know about you but I find with little ones around, it's tough it a get photo that has everyone in it AND everyone looking. Oh and it's recent too, yay! So this one is precious to me. And I just loved using the UmWowStudio Potty People to represent us!

Most of the title bits come from the Gauche Alchemy blue mixed media color kit...lot's of cool bits and pieces to make your page look unique!

One more close up...used some heart punchinella as a stencil with some molding paste.

All right people, that's all for now! It's Friday (!) hope you all have a great weekend!

Textured Layers for Let's Get Trendy Now! 3

Hi everyone!

I'm up at the Let's Get Trendy Now! 3 workshop! Come and see all the different projects and be inspired to create! The focus for today is Textured Layers and I love me some texture and some layers!

I thought I'd do a quick run down of how I usually approach my layouts. I typically start by layering different mediums to create the background. There are so many out there: gesso, textured pastes, paints, mists and crayons just to name a few.

And just think of all the different ways to apply those mediums: brushes, stamps, stencils, punchinella, heck.... fingers! Again, just to name a few.

After I'm satisfied with the background, I layer with my papers and embellishments.

For my final step, I'll doodle here and there to emphasize certain features or to create interest. I also flick on extra bits of paint or mists at this point. And that's it, my formula for a textured, layered page!

Now for the supplies....

AC Cardstock (not shown), Strathmore watercolor paper (not shown), Stazon ink, Golden gesso, Lumiere's paints, Dr Martin Bombay india ink, Faber Castell Gelatos, Big Brush Pen, and Pitt pen, Zig Writer and Photo Signature pen, Heidi Swapp Color Shine, TA Glimmer Mist, Shimmerz Colorings, TA Glimmer Glam, Studio g glitter, Angora water color paints, washi tape,  7 Gypsies stamp, Studio g stamps, UmWowStudio Chipboard (arrow), Heidi Swapp chipboard, Colorbok hearts, Glitz alphas, Heidi Swapp alphas, Prima alphas
***also not shown are the bits of punchinella used to apply gesso***

For even more textured layered ideas go and visit Let's Get Trendy Now! 3 !