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!

My Daily Dose of Sunshine

I've missed participating in challenges so I decided to change that and Punky Scraps had just what I needed with their current Get Picky challenge :) I used everything on their list except for the 5 lines of journaling. 

For "Anything Brown" I used kraft paper as my background. Next was "5 different patterned papers" so I got some papers from an old K& Co pack I have and got to slicing. For "splashes of paint" I mixed yellow acrylic paint with yellow Pearl Ex and splattered paint about.  As for the "Tulle/Mesh/Burlap" part I covered my clouds in tulle for dimension and fluff...I'm liking the way that turned out! "Butterflies" you can see flitting about the flower and finally for "Denim" (thank you husband for your new "old" pants I accidently cut...oops!) I made the banner. 

Big THANK YOUs by the way to Krista aka {Puppet} for the butterflies and to Yvonne at "Do More With Less" for the pink clothespin, mini tag, and blue doily chipboard! Getting goodies in the mail is the BEST!

But I digress....

Here's some closeups:

Look Yvonne! I loved your "chest of drawers" and  yes, they were packed with goodies!

Fluffy white clouds :D

Thank you, as always, for stopping by and leaving your comments! Hope everyone finds their little dose of sunshine for the day!!

Art Journal Relief

Hi everyone! Oh I always feel a bit anxious if I haven't posted anything in a while because it probably means I haven't made ANYTHING and that drives me bonkers. Well life continues to be hectic so I haven't had too much time but I have managed to do a little bit of art journaling and so I wanted to share that with you.

I'm more of a technique journaler. I'm either practicing or trying out something and it just goes from there. I don't do it nearly as much as I'd like too and frankly I'm still about 50/50 on whether or not I like how the page turns out.

This first page is clearly not a finished page and it's something that's been building haphazardly...I started with masking tape, gesso and stencils, thought "eh" not exciting, added some stamps and left it. Then I was making a layout with my water soluble crayons and wanted to try something so I tested the blue here before using it on my layout. The pink circles came from left over paint I didn't want to waste. I like this look but not sure where to take it from here...oh and I'm all for suggestions:)

This is one I've picked up and left off several times..we'll call it a work in progess..

This page is one I made for the Second Floor Challenge hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and Nathalie Kalbach.

Their 2nd challenge was to use something in your crafting space that you had never used before. I pulled out my new Kuretake paint pens in green, white and black, goofed around and came up with this. I'm an RN in my other life and I wear green scrubs, which often leads my husband to say "It's not easy being green"! I pretty much cannot stand this page (well maybe except for the wings) but I'm putting it out there anyway as that is part of the challenge.

My last page is probably the most "journally" of the 3. I got myself a brand new brayer and just wanted to play around with it. After creating the background I cut up some journaling into circles and but them randomly about. This one I'm happy with.

Well that's all for today! Thank you for your visit and comments!

Basically Bare and the Fearless Flier

Hi there! OK, this is my first official layout as a Basically Bare DT member :) Hope you all like it!

I really enjoyed working with the BB products and I also loved the challenge of working with the patterned paper by The Paper Loft. Dunno if you'd noticed before but I tend to not use a lot of patterned papers....shock!.. (a scrapbooker not using pps?!?) preferring instead to make my own backgrounds. So this was a change for me in a different direction (but hey, change is good!). In the end, I was pretty pleased with the hexagons.

So this page is about my mom, who at the youthful age of 61 (doesn't she look amazing!..oh please, oh please, let me inherit her skin!!) went zip lining for the FIRST time in Thailand!! Let's just say I fear heights about as much as possible so you'd NEVER catch me doing this! Needless to say, I really admired her for doing this :)

I started with papers from The Paper Loft’s HuckIeberry Pond collection. They were great to work with!…so many cute patterns in these beautiful neutral earth tones (think: swinging through trees in Thailand!). I applied gesso to the background cardstock followed by droplets of blue india ink and liquid acrylic which I sprayed with water to move around. Next I used my Silhouette to die cut patterned paper hexagons then distressed the edges.

Now it was time to play with Basically Bare goodies! I wanted to give those oh so cute trees a lot of texture so I painted the chipboard trunks brown, then embossed them with my Tim Holtz Alterations folder. I also did a bit of sanding to the raised area..loved the look! For the tree tops I chose canvas. I painted them one shade of green and then mixed paint (in a different green) and molding paste then applied the mixture over a Crafter's Workshop flower stencil on that canvas. More texture, yay!

My journaling is written on the scroll that the chipboard birdie is holding. I wanted to make her stand out against the neutrals so I gessoed then india inked her too. Her little acrylic wing got the embossing treatment for a little extra something! Lastly I took a Kuretake millennium pen and did some doodling around the bird, the photo, drew some hexagons and wrote my journaling. 

That's it for today! Thank you all so much for your visit and comments!!

Oh and Happy Easter!!

Nope, I Haven't Fallen off the Planet...

Wow! I've been absent for so long..I'm so sorry!! Home life has been hectic for the past few between my husband's health (which is on the mend by the way....THUMBS UP!) and entertaining children (no thank you spring break!). I did manage to make a DT page for True XOXO Scrapbooking. Our challenge this month was to scraplift one of our own DT members. I chose to lift the fabulous Michelle H! Love your style girlie :) Here's my page with some close ups and a link to the actual page here. Now don't forget to come on by and play!!

Thanks for visiting and leaving your comments! Much appreciated!

Art House Co-op Coolness

Hi everyone! This is my project for the Art House Co-op 4x6 Exchange. Thank you Misty for the heads up on this awesome concept: a worldwide community art swap! How cool is that? It needs to be mailed and therefore has to lay flat but I couldn't let it go without putting some sort of texture on it L:)

I took a 4X6 piece of canvas paper, covered it in book and tissue paper, put down random strips of masking tape and then gessoed over everything. Next I covered the whole page in glimmer mist, stamps and then dripped some liquid acrylic around. Lastly I heat embossed the quote stamp on vellum used gel medium to adhere the vellum. Just a bit of bubble wrap, ink stamping, and gesso and I was done.

Cheers! and I hope everyone is having great week......! Thanks for visiting and leaving your comments!

Ode to Masking Tape

In a recent post I made a reference to how much I loved masking tape. It's so versatile and it's cheap!! I end up using it quite a bit in my pages and I wanted to share with you the different ways I use it.

Oh and before I forget, the masking tape I use is from the dollar store. Can't beat that for price and I actually prefer it because it's thinner than any heavy duty stuff..

I use it in lieu of washi tape. (Love washi tape but I just don't own any right now!). I lay down strips of plain tape and then I paint it with acrylic paint or mist and then use my stamps on it.

My favorite use of it is to add texture! I prefer to crumple and fold it as I lay it down. Then I gesso over it and add my paints, mists, crayons.

On my most recent layout I used it to make an embellishment. I wanted to make a striped hot air balloon so I prepared my masking tape with pink paint and checkered stamps. Next I laid down the painted masking tape with stickers in a stripe pattern onto cardstock, cut out a semi circle, and I had my "balloon".

Here's the left overs after I'd cut the semi circle (sorry about the poor picture..took it at night!).

Hope that was helpful! Leave a link if you make something, I'd love to see it:)