Words on Wednesday

Hmm, it has already been a bloggily eventful week, so I'm not really sure I have anything new to show you. Items of note for the last week:

1. Camping was good. We used an absurd amount of sunscreen and bug spray but we all came home with sunburns and bug bites. The horses were cool. The beach was nice. the bugs in the bathrooms at night were not so cool.

2. I started running again today, AGAIN. I feel pretty great!

3. I am still rereading and re-re-reading the Kate Daniels series from Ilona Andrews. It's just THAT good. I normally don't re-read books, but Ive already listened to them all twice and am working on actually reading the last one again. After that, I don't know what I am going to move on to, because I have to wait another YEAR for the next one!

4. True Blood started again and this season looks very promising!

5. On the scrappy front, I am starting to feel frustrated again with my lack of progress on the publication front. I go through these cycles, feel optimistic, feel pessimistic, swear it all off for about a day, start over. This time the optimism lasted longer and I don't see myself swearing it off, so I guess that's an improvement. Right now Im focusing on getting exposure and improving my photos - both of my layouts and in general.

June 4x4: Sass Lass, Echo Park and Maya Road (Oh My!)

Welcome to the June edition of 4x4. I am the lucky hostess this month! So you get to see all the pages side by side here, but make sure to visit the other ladies' blogs and leave them some love too!

This month we changed the roster just a tad. This month Dawn took a pass and we added Rachel! And as before Jess and Chrissy played along as well as myself.

Here are “The Rules”:
- We must use the same four products: two papers and two embellishments.
- We can only use one of each sheet of paper.
- We can use unlimited basics (card stock, ribbon, alphas, mists, etc.) as long as the four main products are the focus.- We cannot share our finished pages with each other until we are all done so that we do not influence each others’ design choices.

Our four products this month are: Cameos from Maya Road, Vintage Linen paper from Echo Park, Time Flies paper from Sassafras Lass Ellie's Tale and Ellie's Tale Cardstock Stickers from Sassafras Lass

I just love looking at all the different takes on these products. These products proved to be very versatile and we ended up with several different but distinctive color schemes!

Here is the layout that I created. I used small bits of the paper and almost all the stickers! I have been really into paint splatter lately, so I splattered the background with black paint mixed with a little water, to give some interest to the white cardstock background. I love how the red of the Echo Park paper sets off the yellow and blue of the Ellie's Tale paper and created a primary color palette.

On my cameo, I used layered of ink, gesso, crackle accents, glossy accents and paint. I was trying for a subtle definition between the layers, and a color that coordinates with the blue from the Ellie's Tale paper.

Jess used the subtler back side of the Ellie's tale paper and paired it with other reds oranges and yellows for a more analogous color scheme. I also love the pops of black on the title and the fabulous stitching!

She covered her cameo in paper, and finished it off with some distressing and glossy accents.

Chrissy went for a complimentary color scheme with the green and reds (pinks). I love her punch work and the pops of black, especially the black thread around the sticker!

I also love how she used her cameo - adding a sort of vintage head wrap. It's so creative and gorgeous!

Rachel went with a primary color scheme like I did, but used her colors in different proportions to create a totally different feel. Rachel is the queen of those folded medallion flowers, and I love how she used it here under the blue star burst flower sticker. I also love how she created a vertical line with the black date stamp.

For her cameo she covered part of it in paper and then stamped and drew on the top piece. Perfect!


And now onto the part where you come in! There is a prize to be won! Check it out!

You get TWO entries into the drawing if you use *two or more* of the same products we used to make a layout.
OR
You get ONE entry if you don’t have the same products but you scraplift one of our pages.

Post a link to your completed layout in the comments section by July 17th for your chance to win! If you scraplift please let us know which layout you chose to lift.

The prize this month is a $10 gift certificate to A Cherry on Top.com

sassafras June sketch challenge

I love Sassafras Lass and have always named it one of my top 3 favorite scrapbook manufacturers. So of course I have to do the sketch every month! I almost ran out of time this month because June was just SO busy! but here it is! First, the fabulous sketch:And this is my page. These pictures just went so well with the blues from Ellie's tale, and some reds from various past lines.I covered the heart in glossy accents and popped it up on pop dots for a little bit more oomph!

Camping at Assateague

We just got back from camping and it was a blast! We have dubbed it 'Ellie-Wonderland' because between seeing horses, eating smores, and being on the beach all day, she was in heaven! The only crappy part was bugs in teh bathrooms in the middle of the night/early morning. We used a TON of sunscreen and bug spray and we still all got burned and bitten. I dont know if I would go back there without a camper, the mosquitos in the bathrooms were just too much.

here are some pictures

This is what happens when you dont put your trash in your car before you leave. (that's our neighbors site not ours)

Crate Paper sketch challenge

I made this page last week, but it took me a few days of working a little bit at a time, and I didnt have time to photograph it. I really like how it turned out. I am using paint splatter a lot lately, don't know what's up with that. This is for the crate paper sketch challenge.

Featured on the CARDS blog again!

woohoo! So excited to be chosen as one of the top 16 for the animal shaped cards challenge at the CARDS blog. This card is really out of the box for me. I don't normally do cutesy, and I really don't do shaped cards, but I wanted to give this challenge a go. I created the template for the bee in photoshop using basic shape elements. Then I printed it out and paper pieced it. It was easier than I thought! I daresay that all the effort that I have put into improving my cards may be paying off!

LOAD at Scrapdango!

Echo Park Fresh Faces

Who loves Echo Park? I do, I do! For the Record, Summer Days, Playground, Country Drive, Everybody Loves Christmas - I pretty much love them all! I know I am totally going to love the new pre-CHA line that was just introduced Victoria Gardens - check out the site or facebook page to see previews! It is amazing!

Since I love everything Echo Park, I thought I ought to throw my hat in the ring for the Fresh Faces call. Here is what I came up with.

1. This card was part of my Guest Design Team work for Scrapdango in April. I used the packaging from some Jillibean Soup cardboard flowers, to create a space in the card to put candy. This card is meant to be put into a lunch box or backpack for the first day of school. I took advantage of the red, yellow, green and blues in the For the Record line, to create a school inspired look.

Instructions:

• Make a 4.5x6 inch card from Kraft cardstock.
• Cut the black magic Coredinations cardstock to slightly smaller than the card and then create fold lines about a quarter inch in on all sides.
• Sand the fold lines lightly to reveal the red core, before adhering to front of the card.
• Cut another piece of the cardstock slightly smaller than the first and mat a piece of Fancy Flora paper slightly smaller than that, onto the red side of the cardstock.
• To create the candy pocket, remove the plastic 'bubble' from the packaging.
• Place the bubble face down on the Fancy Flora paper and trace around it with a pencil.
• Cut the circle out, by cutting just outside the pencil line. (The cut space needs to be just a hair larger than the bubble) Then push the bubble through the hole from the back.
• Cut a piece of the Lace strips paper slightly smaller than the red cardstock piece, making sure that it is slightly larger than the circle.
• Glued most of the bubble down with liquid glue and let the glue dry before adding the candy and gluing it closed.
• Adhere the whole bubble piece to the card and then embellish.

Supplies: Echo Park For the Record Fancy Flora, Lace Strips and Noteworthy papers, Coredinations and Bazzill Cardstock, Echo Park For the Record Alpha Stickers, Cosmo Cricket and My Little Shoebox alphas, Jillibean Soup and Graphic 45 flowers, Prima crystal center, Jillibean soup packaging, Yellow grosgrain ribbon and M&Ms

2. I couldn't resist the bright colors in the Playground line and they went perfectly with these summer pool photos. The pops of black really set off the bright colors and make the title stand out also. The title here is a little ambiguous unless you read all the journaling. She 'invented' a special jump into the pool called the 'mingo' because it was styled after a flamingo's stance, but she couldn't really pronounce the whole word 'flamingo'.

Instructions:

• Cut a strip from the Simon Says Border Strips paper and adhere to the bottom of the Splash paper.
• Machine sew two parallel lines of white stitching around the edge of the page.
• Cut an 8.5x8.5 inch square from the Jump Rope paper and then punch all the way around it with the Martha Stewart Scallop 3 dot punch around the page set before adhering it in the middle of the blue part of the page.
• Cut a square of yellow cardstock slightly smaller than the innermost ring of punched dots, and then round the corners using a corner rounder before adhering it in the middle of the striped square.
• Arrange the photos in a square on a piece of white cardstock and adhere it in the center of the yellow cardstock.
• Add the title in black on a white journaling die cut, popped up on foam tape.
• Add the 3 smaller die cuts on foam tape before journaling around the photo square.

Supplies: Echo Park Playground Jump Rope, Splash and Simon Says Border Strips papers, Bazzill Cardstock in yellow and white, American Crafts black foam alphas, Die cuts from Pretty Little Studio.

3. For this page, I wanted to keep things simple and focus on the photo. I love the face that she is making in this photo, so I wanted it to really shine. Also, I find that Christmas pages are so often busy, with colors and busy photos. The monochromatic color scheme here really helps to calm things down, and still pick up colors from the photo. I distressed the edges to pick on on the distressing in the background paper.

Instructions:

• Cut an 11x11inch square from the Ornaments paper, distress the edges and center it on top of the Bright Strip paper, with the red circles showing on both.
• Machine stitch around the edge of the smaller square.
• Punch 12 1.25inch squares from the candy cane paper and distress the edges.
• Mat the photo on red cardstock.
• Arrange the squares around the photo as shown, paying attention to the direction of the stripes so that they make a pattern that is pleasing to the eye.
• Using a minimal amount of adhesive, glue the squared down before machine stitching lines through each row and column.
• Adhere the photo in the center.
• Add the title and journaling die cuts as shown, placing the title die cut on foam tape for dimension.

Supplies: Echo Park Everybody Loves Christmas Bright Stripe, Candy Cane and Ornaments papers, Echo Park Everybody Loves Christmas Alpha Stickers, Basic Grey Alpha Stickers, Daisy D's and Pretty Little Studio die cuts, Bazzill Cardstock.

Words on Wednesday

I have realized (again) that despite loving to write, I don't actually write a lot on my blog. I think this is because when I finally get to sit and put together a blog post, I am out of time. It's past my bed time or there are still a million things that need to be done, and I end up just posting the necessities.

So, I am going to make a concerted effort to start posting at least one wordy post per week. Hopefully I will increase that slowly, but if there is one thing I have learned about making changes, it is baby steps!

Speaking of making changes, I am finally back to running.

For those of you who don't know, I have always hated running, but last year I decided that I need to fit some exercise into my busy schedule and with running, I can get a full workout in about 30 minutes. I started with the couch to 5k plan, and moved on to training for a 10 mile race. Over the course of that training I realized that while I still don't love the idea of getting out of bed to run (or getting out of bed at all for that matter). And while I still don't understand the whole 'runners high' or hitting that meditative state while running, I DO love how it makes me feel for the rest of the day. It helps my mood and stress level.

Well after that 10 mile race (yes I finished, but just barely) I hurt my ankle and couldn't run for about a month. Then I started up again, only to need some stitches on my back and become unable to run again. It's been almost a week since I got the stitches, (and a week until they come out) but I felt that it was healed enough for me to run, and I started slowly today with one mile.

and.... I feel GREAT!

eating right - that's another story. I want to, but man, I really love food! I ate my lean cuisine for lunch today, then proceeded to eat a little bit of all my co-workers' foods - a slice of enza's cheese, two of marisa's meatballs, one of donna's tortellinis. Yeah, not so good. (no, I didn't pick off their plates, it was more like they had dumped out of larger containers onto plates, and I did the same) but yeah, 600 calories later... argh.

and because I feel that everything needs a visual aide (and I dont really have one for the running and eating part) Here are some photos from our busy busy weekend last weekend. Yeah I'm a geek, I admit it. So is my husband, he admits it too. We went to the comic book convention this past weekend. We let Ellie pick who she wanted to dress up as, and she chose Katara from the last airbender (the cartoon and comic, not the new and terrible live action movie) Here is the inspiration, since I know most of you have no idea who katara is.

I made her costume and it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. The top was an old karate uniform which we dyed blue. We dyed some white fabric to match and I sewed the skirt out of that. Then I added the white trim, made the necklace and braided the hair of her wig. The ribbons on her hands were her idea - she wanted it to look like she could bend water.

Here she is in the garage right after we parked, bending water.

Here she is posing with darth vader because her Zayda loves Darth vader.

and here she is doing the Katara pose before the kids costume contest. You can see that the wig has seen better days by this point, it kept falling off.

The Paper Variety Summer challenge

This is the double page layout that I created for Scrapdango this month, using this month's kit. I used photos that I took of my daughter when we went to Savannah a few weeks ago. I love how bright and summery this page it. And that photo of her with her face right in the water just cracks me up! This is perfect for the paper variety summer challenge.

some wedding pages

Paper issues is looking for some wedding pages, so I thought I would share a couple that I have made. These first two are pretty similar. I got the idea for the second one from the first. I used hambly and MME Lush.

I spy webster's pages new collection

Webster's Pages is having a release party for their new line. Check it out.

Father's day cards

I made a few father's day cards this weekend also, despite being CRAZY busy! They are simple, but here they are. I used My Mind's Eye papers for all of them. This first one is for the monthly My Mind's Eye challenge. It is also for the 'if the shoe fits' men challenge, and the papertake weekly dads and lads challenge.

For this one I used the truly scrumptious sketch, but turned the twine and sentiment.

and for this one I used the priscillastyles sketch.

My Mind's Eye June layout sketch challenge

I didn't have a lot of time for this challenge this month, but I was really inspired by the sketch and challenge so I gave it a go anyway. I do like how this layout turned out anyway. It is simple but pretty. Sketch and papers from My Mind's Eye. Song Lyrics from Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Scrapdango June Reveal with Jillibean Soup

Here are the projects (well most of them anyway) that I created with my June Scrapdango Sugar kit. I love this kit! The bright fun colors make me think of summer and smile! This first page was created using the Jillibean Soup June sketch by Julie Bonner.