Guest Designer at SRM!

I am so excited to be a guest designer for SRM stickers today!

When Jenyfur contacted me to ask me to be a guest, I couldn't believe it! Now, I've been waiting patiently for weeks to be able to share this project with you.

I made a calendar and card set using SRM's Mini Calendar Months, 2012 year of memories, New Years Quick Card set and Life is Good stickers, along with my Bind It All and the August kit from My Scrapbook Nook, which features papers from My Mind's Eye's Lime Twist line.

I thought that a new year's card was perfect to go with a calendar for the new year. Of course this makes a great Christmas gift too. Here is the set:

And here are a couple of my favorite pages:

Check out the SRM blog today to see all of the pages.

Schools In

The Design Team is busy putting together some amazing challenges, and the prize is AWESOME! Check out more info HERE.

a card and some peach picking photos

Since I was in Niagara Falls last weekend, I didn't get a chance to scrap, but I thought I would share something that I made a couple of weeks ago, and never shared. This was for my American crafts DT application. Although, I ended up submitting a different one. The papers are American Crafts and the sticker is SRM stickers

And this morning Bubby took Ellie and Seth peach picking. Seth sent me a few photos.

The brief recap of our Niagara trip...

We had a great, busy, trip to Niagara Falls this weekend. I left work at 3pm on Thursday, drove home to get them, loaded the car and were off by about 4:30. We got to Rochester around 11pm and crashed. Ellie woke us up like clockwork - do kids actually have alarm clocks inside them somehow - at 6:30, and after a fast tim hortons breakfast we were off.

We stopped at walmart, target then walmart again to get a waterproof camera, and some pillows since we forgot ours. We ended up splurging on a reusable waterproof camera and said it was for Ellie for her birthday. (yep, that's how you know you are a die hard scrapbooker - you spend $70 on a waterproof camera for your 5 yr old, just so you can be sure to get close ups of the falls. Although to be fair, she loves taking photos and is thrilled to have her own camera. The 'kids' ones are just too baby for her, so a waterproof one seemed a good option - less moving parts to break)

We stopped at Duff's on the outskirts of Buffalo for some wings. Apparently there are two bars that fight over the claim of the first/best Buffalo wings, Duffs and I forget the name of the other right now. But it seemed that the other was maybe a little more authentic, but it was also all the way downtown and Duff's was right off the highway. Win!

Then we continued on to the Maid of the Mist. We parked in a falling down parking garage, got our discovery passes - which cover all the US side state park attractions, and went on the observation deck and the maid of the mist boat ride. Here are ellie and seth on the observation deck - notice the yellow camera? I have tons of photos of HER taking photos. but I didn't want to bore you with that.


My photo from the observation deck. (I havent really had a chance to go through all 600+ photos from my camera let alone the ones from Ellie's, so these photos are just what I grabbed really quickly this morning.)


on the deck of the maid of the mist



After the maid of the mist and some wandering around the park on the American side - where we saw a couple get married - just them, the priest and a photographer - so romantic! We went to the campground to check in, get set up, and have a quick swim.

Then on to Canada, where we had a great meal at the Paris Creperie restaurant. I have THE BEST kid! She had some french version of lemonade - which was like make your own, they brought fresh squeezed lemon juice in a glass with ice, some water, and some sugar. When she asked if they had lemonade he seemed sorry and sad when he told use about that option, like no kid would want THAT, but she LOVED it! Come on, make your own?! Then we had a baked Camembert cheese appetizer. Ellie tried it with an apple slice, liked it, then had more and decided she didnt like it. She still was willing to dip her bread into the sweet broth that came with it though. I thought for sure once she decided that she didnt like it, it was going to be all over. Seth had beef bourgingon and ellie and I split the mussels with french fries. She loves mussels. Then we had TWO dessert crepes.

Next we moved on to the free concert, falls illumination and fireworks show in Queen Victoria park. Ellie danced, and danced and danced.





On Saturday we slept in, then went to the cave of the winds trail where we got REALLY wet, and which ellie totally LOVED. Then we went to have lunch at the top of the falls resturant and another observation area.

We then rode the trolley to the aquarium and the gorge discovery center, which were both pretty unimpressive. We were all tired, so we went back to camp and took a nap, before the obligatory hotdog and marshamallow roasting.

In the middle of the night we were awakened by a CRAZY storm, with thunder, lightening and torrential rains. The rain was so bad that it managed to seep THROUGH the fabric of the tent and make a big puddle. We packed up in the rain and headed home.

Reminisce Card Sketch

I made this card for the Reminisce monthly sketch challenge. I kept it simple. Just some glitter paper, some christmas strip and a big red bow! The sentiment is SRM stickers.

Featured! (twice)

I am featured today on the CARDS magazine blog today for this Birthday card that I created with my July Nook kit, featuring October Afternoon's Five and Dime (which I only JUST got the chance to play with), and a sticker from SRM Stickers.

I also used some Coredinations cardstock, some May Arts ribbon, a spellbinders die, a websters pages flower and some Maya Road pins. Oh, and the accordion flower is from Sassafras Lass paper.

In other news, my Imaginisce/Momenta 'He Reads' layout from this post, was also featured in the club CK summer camp 2011 wrap up.

August Scrapdango Reveal

This month I worked with the Sugar kit, which included some gorgeous papers from Authentique along with some beautiful Primas and other embellishments. This kit was so much fun! The papers are a great quality - thick with a subtle almost watercolor paper texture, and of course double sided and gorgeous!

I started by thinking of what photos would work well with these papers. Since I tend to be pretty much up to date, I was looking at a lot of beach and pool pictures, that I didn't think would really work. So I started looking back and found that I had not scrapped easter and passover, and they are perfect for these colors!

Here are a couple of my creations:

I almost always start with the double page layout, that way I make sure that I have the duplicate papers from the kit available for use. Originally I was going to make the photos go in a straight line across the page. See how the tall photos are the same height as the two smaller ones put together? that was the plan put them all in a row. but then I couldnt figure out where to put my title... I like this arrangement more - it has more interest. You can't tell from this photo, but I used some glossy accents and a sprinkle of glitter on strategic spots of the floral circle, the tiny flower embellishments on the title and the 'leaves' of the prima flowers.

For this page I was just having fun. I wanted to try something different with the border. I ALWAYS have to have a border and it seems to usually be a solid quarter inch border and/or stitching. This one is different.

To see the rest of my creations check out the Scrapdango forums, and my reveal thread HERE.

Isnt she cute?!

I love this photo of my daughter playing on the beach, and thought I would share this page for the Paper Issues make a splash challenge! This page was created with my July Scrapdango kit.

moxie fab botanical challenge

I made this card for the Moxie Fab Botanical Challenge. I used my cricut to cut some flowers which I used as a mask, then I stamped some more flowers on top. I went with a monochromatic blue colors scheme. A double wrap of sheer blue ribbon and an SRM sticker sentiment adds the finishing touches.

Imaginisce pagemaps challenge and momenta alphas

I created this page for the imaginisce monthly challenge, which this month was to use a special sketch provided by Becky Fleck of pagemaps. I love working with her sketches! And this Happy Camper line from imaginisce is also so easy to work with! I love the colors - the oranges and the browns. I was lucky enough to try these new create your own sticker alphas from Momenta, and used them for this layout. They were so easy to use, and I was able to customize them to match my layout. I chose the option to download the pdf file and edit it myself in photoshop in order to add some wood grain with colors that match the papers.

Pebbles, Inc ACOT reveal

Pebbles, Inc has quickly become one of my favorites. I loved working with Floral Lane and Happy Go Lucky, and did you see the new releases - yum! So, yeah, you will be seeing more of Pebbles from me in the near future. Anyway, here are a few of the things I created for my ACOT reveal this month:

I have been stuck in a rut of always making white cards. I was inspired by some cards in paper crafts magazine to try a colored card and put the sentiment in the middle instead of off to the side. I played up the red and purple in this line and made the bouquet pop against a piece of white cardstock framed by the red card. For the leaves, I used a Unity stamp. Since I wanted some of the stems leaning left and some leaning right, I stamped on the front of the green paper with versamark ink, then stamped some others on the back of the paper with regular ink, so that when I cut them all out, you can't see the stamping. I used one of the really cool tear off edges above the sentiment, and glued the sentiment to some ribbon.

For this page, I had these sepia photos lying on my desk waiting for the perfect papers. The pretty soft peach paired with the floral browns of the Floral Lane Collection was perfect in an almost vintage way. These papers reminded me, in a good way, of grandmothers and sewn aprons and iced tea. Along those lines, I decided to add a bunch of sewing. I have all three kinds here - machine, hand and faux! I created a mini quilt using machine stitching. I cheated by using my scoring board to fold the edges where I wanted the stitching. Then I nipped the corners so they wouldnt cause problems when I tried to fold the edges down. I put a little adhesive in the center of each square (so my needle didn't run into the glue and get all gummed up) and glued them to a scrap paper. Then I stitched with a zig zag stitch along the inner seams and a straight stitch around the outer edges. For the scalloped edge, I punched circles and cut them in half before adhering them and finishing them with some faux stitching. The rest was easy! The photos are popped up on foam tape. I added some gesso underneath the top part of the title and a journaling spot under the bottom part. Finally, I finished it all off with some simple lollipop flowers with hand sewn stems. The lollipop flowers were so simple! I just hand cut circles of various size from white eyelet fabric and sewed them together with buttons.

Check out the rest of my creations in my article at a cherry on top.

my article is up at scrapbooking.com!

My article for the august issue of scrapbooking.com is up now! Check it out HERE.

June 4x4 Winner and some news

Since the newest 4x4 challenge went up yesterday, I chose the winner from last month. (it was a little more than a month since we switched from the end of the month to the beginning) Anyway, Random.org chose the winner, and the winner is....

Traci

Traci said...

Here's a link to my layout. I scraplifted Chrissy. All of the layouts were wonderful once again.

http://www.acherryontop.com/i/gallery2/217799-490.jpg

JULY 14, 2011 10:19 PM

Traci please email me with your contact information - I really just need your email address to send the GC to. you can find a link to my email on the left sidebar of my blog.

Thanks everyone for playing!

And in other news... Last night was a really good scrappy day for me. I won the CreaTV:Northridge Publishing summer facebook contest and a fabulous Fancy Pants prize. If you havent checked out their facebook page you really should because they have some great videos and fun contests.

Then, last but certainly not least, I had another layout picked up for publication- from Scrapbook and Cards Today magazine! That makes TWO for print publications! and both in the last month! I am so excited! Looks like all my hard work is finally paying off!

August 4x4

We have switched the 4x4 challenge to start at the beginning of each month. (I will choose a winner for last month in the next day or so) In the mean time, here is the August challenge!

The four products we used this month were Echo Park's "Dots and Stripes",October Afternoon's "Rocket Age: Docking Maneuver",October Afternoon's "Rocket Age: Labels", and Jenny Bowlin's chipboard stars.We are back again with this month's installment of 4x4.
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.

Chrissy is hosting this month and you can see everyone's pages in one place on her blog. Be sure to check it out!

And without further ado, here is my page. I went with a slightly nautical theme, which is unusual for a page about love, but I think it's kind of fun. The journaling is hidden under the photo, which flips up. I added a lot of paint and white spray and just a touch of ribbon and twine.