A Bit of News...

My term with Basically Bare has finished up and I wanted to share with you all my last project with them!

This time instead of a layout I altered a canvas! I had a great deal of fun making this because I got to pull out and work with a bunch of different mediums!

I started by tearing old patterned papers and mod podging them to the canvas. Over that, well, what didn't I apply? Gesso, paints, mists, india ink and stamps to desired effect :) 

Next I got tree branches and covered them with mod podge...they were very dry (from another project) and I wanted them to be less brittle. I colored the canvas leaves from Basically Bare and attached them to the branches. 

I used Basically Bare's Happy Little House set for the bird houses...aren't they cute? They're covered in woodgrain paper and accented with some Distress Embossing powder.

Now for the occupants of the houses...the blue birds are made of felt and the yellow bird, chipboard. I was trying to think of a way to color the felt without using fabric markers. That's when I remembered my Pearl Ex powders...I love the gorgeous colors and soft shimmer of the mica powder! One slight problem, they have no binder in them so if I just put them on the birds, eventually most of the powder would wipe away. So I mixed a small mist bottle with Gum Arabic (a binder) and water and sprayed the birdies with it. Next I applied the blue powder by "pouncing" with the brush....it worked! I will have blue birds for a long time to come:)  The yellow bird I painted with my Zig paint marker and before it could dry, covered it with yellow Pearl Ex. 

Well I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed making this canvas! Thank you for all your visits! 

Reminders...

Oh it's been a while again but summer is in full fledge and so my daughter and I went on a "big girls" trip to Boston to visit friends while my dearest hubby watched the baby (thank you.....mwah!). We had a wonderful time and it felt so good to hang out with good friends!

Well it's almost the end of the month and I thought I'd use this post to remind everyone to play along with 2 challenges that are quickly coming to an end!

The first is with True XOXO Scrapbooking. Challenge #30 is about what's inside your closet! Sounds kinda loaded but it not :) The challenge was to open your closet door and draw inspiration from whatever you saw in there. You've got 3 (!!) more days to make a page and link up!

I got zero inspiration from the colors in my closet (note to self: stop buying neutrals and buy some more colorful stuff girl!!) but I was inspired by my organizational system so I used my set up as a sketch to come up with this:

Sketch: Turned on it's side. The photo is where the clothes hang
and the strips of shapes would be the pull out drawers beneath the
hanging clothes....get it?!

My mom is such a wonderful grandmother and so present in her grand kids's lives, I'm so grateful for her! This photo was taken in Busselton, WA on a walk to a nearby beach. It's tough to see but my daughter is reaching her hand out to grandma and of course my mother is right there behind her.

The second reminder is for my Masking Tape Texture challenge going on at Yvonne Yam's blog Do More With Less. I want to see all the wonderful textured projects everyone and that challenge closes July 6!! So please link up your work!

OK, that's all for today! Thanks everyone for stopping by and leaving comments!

I'm Hosting A Challenge!

Hello everyone! 

When Yvonne Yam of Do More With Less asked me to be a guest on her blog, I said, "Heck yes!!" Yvonne is an incredibly prolific, talented artist with a fabulous free-style form of creating...I've seen her make castles (you read me right), cards, layouts and they are all brilliant!

Well, I'm currently hosting a challenge over at her blog here and I've thrown in a tutorial too! It's all about texture because of course I love the stuff! I do a little tutorial on how I made these clouds,

and I tell you what I used to make these stars....

The background is a mix of Tim Holtz Distress stains, TA glimmer mists,
and Shimmerz spray 

So head on over and join the challenge! I'm even offering a prize to one person for playing along :) The deadline (ooooohh that sounds so serious...but really it's not!!) is Friday July 6th. I would really love to see what you all create!

The buttons are from a cool RAK I received from Yvonne!

That's my page for today! Thank you for visiting and leaving your comments! 

A Smaller Page...

Hello everyone!

This is my first 8.5 x 11" page I did for our Basically Bare and Nikki Sivils swap. Though I still am more comfortable with 12 x 12s I liked how the smaller paper seemed help keep the focus on the photo. What do you think?

Fanciful Frames from Basically Bare painted in Distress Crackle Paint Picket Fence

I got to work with the Audrey colllection from Nikki Sivils and the designs were so girly and sweet I immediately thought of this picture! I kept the design simple, used the fabulous Fanciful Frames from Basically Bare and just filled in the top and bottom edges. Here's some close ups:

Well that's my page for today! Thanks for visiting and leaving your comments! I really appreciate them!!

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!