Here’s a layout I did in April for Christmas 2008. I die cut the decorative frame on the bottom left page and spread glue on it with my 2-way glue applicator and then sprinkled glitter on it. The glue applicator has little “teeth” that spread the glue (as opposed to a foam or pen applicator) so it makes the frame look a bit like wood, I really like the look of it although I didn’t intend for it to look that way. When I saw what happened after it dried, I just kind of went with it, but I do like it. I trimmed the tree and presents on the left side from a decorative paper and applied it to my red cardstock. For the other side I used the decorative paper as my background because I liked the way it framed my photo strip and the title. I tore up a piece of flocked snowflake vellum for the top corner and added a couple of buttons as accents (I think I’m on a button kick – I’ve bought tons of them lately). I also used a white pigment ink to ink up the ornaments and the Christmas morning stamps on the left side and clear heat embossed them. I hand wrote the journaling even though I HATE my handwriting. I think it’s important to see my handwriting on some of my layouts for my kids to look at – I didn’t know until I met my father that my handwriting is almost identical to his, even though I did not grow up looking at his handwriting! Must be genetic ;D
I decided to take up the challenge over at Hero Arts and do a handmade mini album for my friend Lynn for Nyla’s 4th birthday. I plan on doing a similar one for Kyle to store some pictures, maybe some of his drawings, and anything else that relates to Kyle right now at 4. I was so happy with the way this album turned out and I think Lynn really appreciated the gesture. I hope it becomes a treasured memory of Nyla as she gets older and they can look back on it and see how much she’s changed.
I think I went WAY out of my box with this one for sure. I’ve never done anything even remotely similar and I tried several new techniques for me – bookbinding, handmade flower made of ribbon, using stamps to create my own background, and embossing chipboard. The bookbinding is obvious, and you’ll love the Japanese-style ribbon bookbinding technique Hero Arts has shown. The handmade flower was fun, and I actually broke out my hot glue gun which hasn’t seen the light of day since 2003 when I was making wedding favors for our wedding ;D (I based my flower creation on this video tutorial by Elizabeth Kartchner.) I created my own background of flower stamps from the Green At Heart set (on the same page as the handmade flower in the photos below). And I silver embossed a chipboard piece – the number 4 on the cover. It took two coats to cover it smoothly because it was a textured piece of chipboard (and brown, I might add…), but I’m super happy with it.
Anyway, here’s the mini album (click on a photo to make it larger):
Be back soon with some more layouts that I haven’t posted yet. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon for a two-week trip to the states to visit family and Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. I’ll have a few posts scheduled so you won’t miss me much ;D
I thought I would show you my zoo layout next. This is from the same trip as our July 2007 trip to Iowa and Minnesota I spoke about in an earlier post. We went to the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo and I was amazed at some of the animals there. We didn’t get to see the whole zoo, only a few parts of it, but we got some really good shots. I wanted to do something a bit different for this layout. I knew I wanted to use the map I found on the zoo’s website, so I saved the picture (right click, save as). (I also saved the picture of the zoo’s logo and had it printed with my photos.) I opened the map in Photoshop and made it the size I wanted it to be. Then I printed it off on my home printer. It was almost a full letter sized map by the time I was done with it, but there was a lot of blank space around the edges of the shape of the zoo so I tore the edges and inked them with my new Distress Ink, Rusty Hinge. The color of the map happened to match exactly the paper set I wanted to use (Three Bugs In A Rug, Animal Stackers).
I used Rusty Hinge around the edges of my background paper as well. I wanted to highlight my photos with some hand drawn outlines and used some arrows from a Cuttlebug die that I put through with my Sizzix Big Shot and then inked them with Rusty Hinge and Faded Jeans. I circled the areas of the zoo that the photos represented and used the arrows to point from the map to the photo that matched it. I used my EK Success edge punch for the bracket shapes on the bottom right underneath the die cut “at the zoo” which I cut with my Silhouette. I used Faded Jeans around the edges of the blue paper and used one of my copic markers to highlight the embossed portion of the punch shape. I thought the title was getting a bit lost so I used some Stickles to highlight the letters and across the bottom of the title (which you can’t really see in the scan). Then I also used an SEI rub-on to put the month of our trip, and I hand wrote the year with my Slickwriter which is a nice fat marker and I tried to match the style of the month rub-on.
I also thought my map and the photos on the right side of the page were floating a little so I placed the map on the circle patterned paper and on the right side I used a strip at the bottom of each row to ground them a bit. I used the circle pattern under the bottom blue strip on the right to tie in with the left page, and to give the bracket shapes a bit of contrast.
I don’t usually use a lot of the techniques I used in this layout; the edge distressing, the hand drawn outlines, and the slightly tilted photos. I find that I block photos a lot in very straight groupings, so I wanted to be a bit more whimsical with this layout. I think I achieved that look (although they are still in parallel groupings ;D)
Okay, I decided to show you my newest favorite photo before I show you my Christmas and zoo layouts. This photo was taken on Whidbey Island at the Deception Pass State Park. We had been walking along the beach and Rob picked Matthew up and they were between me and the setting sun and I knew I had to take the picture. I’m so happy with it. I saturated it a tiny bit but really not much, it was so beautiful out! I got a whole bunch of beautiful pictures of the setting sun and the sun through the moss in the trees too. I also got a whole bunch of beach, rock, sand, wood, and cement pictures to use as textures and brushes for my digital scrapbooking design stuff. People must have thought I was loony taking pictures of weird stuff!! Haa. Oh well. Anyway, on to the photo:
I am constantly amazed at how big Matthew is getting! He’s learning so quickly and is starting to communicate, but not yet with words. I love that both of them are in silhouette and the slight angle of the horizon. I love that I didn’t directly center the two of them and that I got lots of the sky in the shot. What do you think?
I love this line. Seriously ;D Not only because it has purple in it (which is my favorite color), but just the overall yummy-ness of the colour palette – light and dark green, orange, purple, hot and light pink, mixed with a beautiful creamy tan colour. You can find it here. I decided that since I was doing a layout that wasn’t just about my boys or a baseball park or a birthday, I could use something with colors that I love and is a bit more girly. While browsing at my LSS I decided to go with Green At Heart because I love the purple in it. And there are so many choices in this line, it’s lovely. I purchased some of the ribbon tape and some of the journaling tags, stamps, bits, and 6×6 paper pad. Well, I guess I bought a lot of it!
The layout is from a trip to Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota in 2007. We went to a Twins game with my two brothers and my father and step-mother, and took pictures at their place in Iowa where my father is a pastor, so we also got pictures of the church. We were there just after Kyle’s first birthday so we had a small birthday party for him too. I really need to force myself to limit the number of pictures on my layouts because I don’t have room for much else on this page! I could have probably done a few layouts for this trip but for some reason I didn’t. I might get a few other photos from the trip printed out in 4×6 sizes and use two or three on a couple of layouts highlighting family, my father’s church, etc. I am really happy with the way the layout looks all finished, but it’s definitely busy ;D
You can find the supplies here on my Flickr account. You’ll notice that it looks like the journaling on the tag on the lower left is covered up and you can’t read all the journaling. One of the cool things about these tags is that they come with an acetate overlay. I adhered the overlay only to the left side and that way you can lift the overlay and read what’s underneath it. I love the little buttons I put on the overlay too – a generic button from a “bag of buttons” at Michael’s. I used the Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly punch to punch out a few butterflies to highlight my son sleeping through the Twins game, the sign outside of my father’s church, and the Minnesota tag which I cut out (of course!) with my Silhouette (as with the Iowa tag). Love that machine!
Coming soon: a Christmas and a zoo layout; and my new favorite photo! I’ve been working hard on my new digi kit as well and that should be ready by the end of August (but hopefully before then ;D). July is our crazy month – every year it’s the busiest month of the year for us. Between camping on Canada Day, Kyle’s birthday, swimming lessons, a ball tournament in Kamloops, more swimming, another tournament, T-ball lessons, a series in Victoria with the Seals, and then a two-week camping trip at the end of the month, I don’t know how we manage to get it all DONE in one month! August is just about as crazy, but only Daddy is traveling after our trip ends, thankfully…
I attended a class at Photo Express about a month ago that was an all-occasion Copic card class. We made three different cards, and I absolutely loved the dinosaur stamp they used and I am so happy with the way my coloring turned out. Check this out:
I colored most of the dinosaur in my lightest green, leaving the nails and teeth white. I then colored highlights with my darkest green (I only have two greens and they aren’t even in the same color family but they look good together so I go with it ;D). Then I went back with my lightest green and blended the highlights in. Then I went back and added dark green to the spots. Then I decided I didn’t like his belly just being the light green so I used my colorless blender and removed some of the color and then colored over it with my buttercup yellow (Y21). I love the way this turned out. I did pretty much the same thing with the teeth/nails. I colored them in with my yellow and then used my colorless blender to remove some of the yellow near the tips. The card was for a boy who was turning 1 so I used blue for the present and since I don’t have an orange Copic I used dark purple to contrast with the blue in the party hat. After I cut him out I used one of my black markers to color around the image to hide the white paper which is a major pet peeve of mine.
I have no idea who makes the stamp since we didn’t get to use the actual stamps. PE stamped the image multiple times and then copied them on their copier for the class members. It worked out well since I have enough materials to make several cards, but they didn’t provide us with a materials list.
I have a couple other cards to make from the class, and I’ll share them soon. I haven’t scanned in any of the layouts I have been doing recently yet, and we’re in Kamloops visiting for the weekend now so I’ll have to share those next week. I’m very excited about some of the layouts I have done in the last week too ;D I’m totally in a crafty zone right now and I hope it doesn’t go away anytime soon ;D
I had to do some quick teacher thank you cards last week after we came back from camping for Kyle’s last day (a fun day) of preschool. He goes back to the same preschool in September three days a week and I’m glad I’ve been able to keep him at the same school instead of having to move him because they don’t do infant care. I have been able to stay at home and not return to a “job” (although I am working from home for a new company) and that meant I didn’t have to move him so that both kids were at the same facility. He’s enjoyed this year tremendously and his learning exploded throughout this last year. I have a set of stamps from Basic Grey that I love (Tree Hugger), it has the cutest owl and a hand drawn speech bubble, and a couple of little smiley faces, along with a bunch of other stamps in the set. I decided to use the owl, since really, owls are notoriously linked to teachers ;D I paired the stamps with some Basic Grey paper from the Green at Heart 6×6 paper pad and a kraft cardstock base. Check it out:
I stamped the owl once using Memento ink in brown and then stamped on white cardstock with Green Memento ink and coloured it in with my Copics the cut it out and adhered it without popping it. Isn’t the owl just adorable? I love the funky googly eyes! On the inside I used the large Thank You from the Basic Grey set. I finished it off with a double bow with some of my floss from my cross-stitching days many moons ago. Finally I have a use for it!!
Just a quick post today to show off a card I made for a friend who hosts an infamous Canada Day warm-up party every year. They are great neighbors and I thought I would thank them by making a card for them. I have no idea who makes the stamps I used, I can’t tell from the wooden base, but I bought them from Michaels and I knew I would get some good use out of them, especially this year with Olympic themed layouts and all. The paper I bought from a dollar store nearby, the leaves were cut with my QuicKutz Squeeze and the maple leaf die, and the button is from a bag of buttons at Michaels. The floss is from my stash of DMC floss. It was a quick and easy card to put together and I love it! I colored in the heart and the EH! with my R59 Copic and used the blender pen to give some highlights to the heart. Top it off with a kraft cardstock base stamped with the Hero Arts background flourish with VersaMark and we’re good. I put one of the stamps from the Hero Arts Essential Sayings set on the inside as well.
We are actually going camping in the states this weekend (go figure – for the Canada Day weekend ;D) I’ll be back next week with some layouts I did recently.
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