Of Babies and Passport Photos...

Hello, hello! I'm still here! 

Seriously I don't want to sound like a broken record but life's been so busy and time has been hiding from me...I swear!

Anyway, I wanted to share this page I made for Basically Bare back in May (what?! is it June already??). My baby girl needed a passport when she was about 2 months old and nothing but a homemade photo session was going to work! Well it wasn't easy and I had a LOT of adorable photos left over.

I made the background using free digi brushes from the internet, washi tape and doodles.

I thought the filmstrip chippies from the Basically Bare Parazzi set worked perfectly to show off some of those cute expressions :) I wanted the glossy filmstrip look so I painted both strips with black acrylic paint and then covered them with black UTEE. 

The camera got completely covered up with washi tape.

Now, I did eventually get just the shot I needed and I used the black chipboard arrows from Basically Bare to point to the winner :) They already were the color I was looking for so all I did was use some white, sparkly embossing powder on them. Fun, fun!

And I just have to share this...my baby girl just turned one and we held a Dol, or Korean first birthday for her (one of the things that was taking up so much of the elusive thing called TIME!!). Here's photos of her in her hanbok:

Yep, I'm straight up biased but she sure does look cute!!

OK, that all for today! Thank you for stopping by and visiting!

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!

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!!