Practical Scrappers March Sketch

Today on the Practical Scrappers blog we have a sketch to share. It's by our very own Liz Chidester (VERY talented lady!!) and as you can see, we've taken it in very different directions. Here's the sketch and my interpretation of it.

These are photos of Greg and my two younger daughters as they played in the pool during Marley's recent 9th birthday party. I was too far away to get pictures of Marley and her friends playing but liked the idea of recording this story as a bit of an aside to the main party story. 

The blue and yellow colour scheme is a bit of a departure for me but the pictures just seemed to call for it. I fussy cut all those doily images from a sheet of Echo Park paper. The addition of hits of black and green keep the layout interesting by helping move your eye around the page.

My title is a long one (I'm really liking creating long titles right now - they're fun) and is made up of 4 different letter stickers. Partly because I didn't necessarily have all the letters I needed in one font, partly for space considerations but mostly because it is more interesting to break up a long title like this rather than have it all in the same lettering.

Another bonus of using long titles is that is act as a jump start to your journaling. Here, my journaling basically starts where my title leaves off.

Just a random close up of some of my embellishments. Layers of border stickers and washi in the corner with a grouping of a gem, enamel dot and coloured pearl. The large doily is popped up on foam adhesive to give more dimension to the page.

Thanks for stopping by today. At time of publication the corresponding post has not gone live yet on the Practical Scrappers site but keep checking back as there are some truly lovely layouts being shared by our designers. Meanwhile you can have fun seeing how our Technique Team finds new ways to show off their stamps.

On a personal note, I am in the middle of setting up a new on line home for my design work. It's still pretty messy right now but once the dust settles I'll post a link here and on Facebook. I hope all my followers will make the move with me and to help entice you across I will be giving away a free 12 week class. Hope to see you all there .... eventually!!! Thanks for your support over the years. It's because of you that I have the courage to make this leap from free Blog to hosted web site!! You rock!!

Looking for a Few Good Sketchers!

Thought I'd share this post with my followers. Brenshevia of Let's Get Sketchy is looking for new sketch artists. If this sounds like you I highly recommend joining the team. We are a fun loving, chatty, supportive group of  creative women!

Good luck to all!!

Design Team Call - Sketch Designers
I am looking for at least 2 new Sketch Designers to supplement our Design Team.

Requirements:

·                     create a minimum of 1-2 sketches per month

·                     create 2 layouts a month for Lets Get Sketchy

·                     you must have a blog

·                     promote Lets Get Sketchy through your blog

·                     must commit to a 3 month term

Compensation:

At this time I am unable to compensate you with product or any form of financial payment.  This will be for the fun and love of the hobby!

How to Apply:

Please send me an email to letsgetsketchy@gmail.com containing the following information:

·                     Your full name and email address

·                     A link to your blog

·                     A list of any design teams you may belong to.

·                     3 sketches that best displays your sketching style

·                     A little intro telling me why you would like to be a part of Lets Get Sketchy Sketch Team.

Please send your application to: letsgetsketchy@gmail.com

Please put: "Sketch DT" in the subject line.

Applications due: April 9, 2013

Playing Along With LGS Team B

Actually got my layout and post ready on time this week! Shocking, I know!! The girls are on Spring Break so I've taken full advantage of the extra free time to get slightly ahead with my DT commitments. We have another week to go so I hope to make a serious dent in April's assignments too!!

But back to today's challenge at Let's Get Sketchy. Here is the sketch Team B was given as well as their Colour Combo Twist.

If it looks familiar to this one, it is. Slight changes but ideal for more Christmas memories. As I did with the last colour combination twist we were given, I chose not to take it in a holiday direction and instead scrap some photos from our recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Here's my layout this week.

I have decided to keep Kraft as a common element on all my layouts for this trip. It's a great way to keep some continuity through an entire album or story within an album. You can vary the embellishments and other papers all you want, but ensuring that all of your layouts about a certain trip/event/story have some bit of Kraft on it (or whatever uniting element you choose) keeps the album cohesive. That way, even if you add a forgotten story many months or years after the original ones were completed, it will still flow nicely because it shares a common element with all the earlier layouts.

This particular layout is about Greg and my trip into Puerto Vallarta (sans children - thanks Grandma and Grandpa!) for a date at Pipi's. The sketch was great as it gave me a lot of room to journal (once I flipped it) and I was able to tell the back story to our pilgrimage to Pipi's. 

I also dug deep into my stash and found these glitter chipboard letters for my title. They are popped up with foam adhesive and layered over strips of washi tape. When I laid them down initially (without the washi tape) they seemed to float a bit. Adding the tape behind grounded them and gave me another opportunity to introduce the colours from the inspiration picture. The flowers were also found in my stash during a recent sort/reorganization and I'd pulled them out knowing they would be perfect for this colour scheme too. 

And finally my journaling. I know that as long as we continue to visit Puerto Vallarta (as often as we can afford to take the family - so every 5 years or so!! LOL!) we will seek out Pipi's. I hope it stays in business long enough for us to take the girls there one day!

Thanks for stopping by today. Make sure you head over to the Let's Get Sketchy blog to see the beautiful layouts Team B has created for your inspiration. This is the last sketch for March which means that if you are interested in the prize this month you've got until Sunday to get your submissions linked up. You are playing for a $10 Gift Certificate to The Paper Bakery so get those layouts in! Good luck to you all!!

New Sketch up at Let's Get Sketchy!

It's Monday again and the Let's Get Sketchy team has got a new sketch for you. What do you think?

I liked the distressed background and figured it was a perfect chance to play with my new Heidi Swapp products. Um, yeah, I said new. I may have fallen off the wagon a tiny bit. I got a bug in my head about her Color Shine products and so when I was in Michael's looking for yellow gems (didn't find any I liked) and saw an entire display of Heidi Swapp ... well ... I just wasn't strong enough to pass them by!

(Insert sheepish grin here.)

Have you ever tried Heidi's Color Shine products? They are white with black patterns printed on them and if you twist them in the light you can see areas of gloss as well as matte that create a pattern. When you applied the spray to it, the matte parts soak up the colour and you can use a cloth (I used a baby wipe) to remove the spray from the glossy parts. When you're done you have the original pattern plus a new pattern of colour and gloss. Pretty cool, eh?

I had chosen the photos long before I got the paper and just knew the Tropical Teal mist would be perfect. As my daughter Paige pointed out, the arched pattern in the paper mimics the arches in the picture. Huh. Totally unintentional but I guess somewhere in my brain I knew that too!

Okay, here are your detail shots. 

I am a tiny bit addicted to these little rose buds Michael's sells too. (Yes, this may have been a part of my falling off the wagon thing too!) If you find yourself with little flowers but you need to create more presence on your page, try layering them over larger flat flowers. Either punched flowers or the type you can buy intended for layers. These brown ones are of that latter type - old Making Memories ones from my stash.

Using up my letter stickers still (managed to win THAT temptation battle yesterday) - these glossy ones are fun and the perfect hot pink!

A journaling tag tucked into the pictures keeps the design cohesive.

The bottom of the larger photo needed a larger cluster so I mixed in one larger rose from my stash and some pearls. Using the same washi tape and word stickers keeps the two embellishment clusters cohesive.

I also purchased a package of Color Shine arrows and used 3 on this layout. Two I sprayed in the same blue as the background paper, the third I sprayed in pink. They have a very subtle grid pattern on them that becomes visible once you spray them. Not sure if you can totally see that in this picture though.

I was trying to show off the shine quality of the spray. Can you see it on this arrow? Again, not sure!

Well, that's all for this week's sketch. Can't wait to see what you do with it!

Have a great week everyone!

A New Challenge at S.W.A.T - Colour Combo!

There is a new challenge up at S.W.A.T today and it's put me in a Spring-like mood! Intrigued? I won't keep you in suspense. It's a colour combo ... check it out.

The yummy looking cupcakes aside, doesn't that just scream "Spring" to you? 

Unfortunately, it's not quite spring around here. Almost. But not quite. My crocuses are blooming and I have seen some cherry blossoms in the village but the rains continue and with it some stiff winds and cool temperatures. I know, I know, there are blizzards raging across the continent but it was 19 degrees in Osoyoos the other day! Maybe Aunt Moira would like a room mate for a bit? Just kidding!!

I used the colour combo plus a recent layout idea by Shimelle's alter ego Glitter Girl to create this.

Glitter Girl used papers  from 6x6 paper pads to make her patterned paper quadrants but I used my scraps. I found several in the colours from the inspiration picture that were large enough for my purposes and got to work. 

The top was feeling a little barren to me and I wasn't too sure how to fill it but then I got the idea of a banner and made one with lots of different shapes, papers and layers. It was a fair bit of work and took many times of moving things around but in the end I really like it! You may see more fun banners like this from me!!

Fun was the order of the day so I had fun with the title too. Wrapping it around the photo block and using two different letter stickers. 

Usually I plan where my journaling is going to go before I get too far into the process but this time I got sort of carried away and forgot. Whoops! I am not totally in love with how it looks but the more important thing is that it got on the page! This is one of those types of pages that I'll make a new one of each year - the annual measuring of the birthday girl - so I don't anticipate what I say will change too much over the years. "Oh, how you've grown!" can only be said so many ways before you start repeating yourself!!

Thought I'd leave you with another look at my banner. Love the little washi tape pennants!

Okay, now it's your turn. What will you come up with in response to this colour challenge? Can't wait to see your projects posted on the S.W.A.T. site! Have a great weekend everyone!

Playing Along With LGS ... Finally!

Do you ever find yourself so swamped with all the items on your "to do" list that things slip? This week has been a week of letting things slip for me! Starting with not getting a layout ready for Let's Get Sketchy's Monday reveal. It IS Team B's turn this week so playing along is really a bonus for me but it's something I told myself I would do as a way to have regular posts on my blog. But ... I dropped the ball this week. I also completely forgot to take my girls to their hair cut appointment on Monday. Not sure where my head was that day!! 

Without further ado, here is the sketch that we are working with this week.

And my interpretation.

I have a tiny confession to make. I looked at the sketch, saw that I needed two landscape photos (I went with 4x6 to keep things simple) and then totally forgot to look at the sketch again while building my layout. What?!?! I am not advocating this as a way of following along with a sketch challenge by any means! I count it as a lucky coincidence that my layout resembles the sketch at all - albeit mirrored. This is just how my week has gone!

Sigh.

Here are your detail shots.

My title is made up of 3 different components. A word tag, small letter tiles and more traditional letter stickers. Remember that you can have fun with any component on your pages. Don't get locked into one way of thinking. Like, "My titles must be made up of Thickers!" When you're using up your stash like I am you quickly realize that you've got to get creative with your resources or pretty soon you'll run the risk of thinking you can't make another layout because none of your Thicker sets have enough letters in them to spell "Thickers"! Mixing and matching styles, manufacturers and products keeps things feeling fresh and new - no matter how long the product has been sitting on your shelf!

From that same Teresa Collins set as the "family" word tag was a 12x12 sheet of month journaling cards. I cut out the February one to use on this layout. The clocks are also from a Teresa Collins collection pack (for whatever reason I have a TON of Teresa Collins packs - must have bought them on sale or something!) I liked the symbolism of time passing for a child's birthday layout.

The row of little clocks looked a bit bare so I dug out some mini brads to fill the centres. Now it looks finished and I love the pops of red and hints of shimmer with the gold.

In fact, I loved the gold so much I knew I needed to add it somewhere else - the centre of the large clock embellishment seemed like the perfect spot! Kind of wishing I had some of that Heidi Swapp gold lame colour shine spray too ...

Well, that's all for today. Thanks for stopping by. Are you playing along with Let's Get Sketchy this week? There's a $10 GC from The Paper Bakery up for grabs this month. All you need to do is enter 3 out of the 4 challenges by the end of March. Good luck - hope to see you on the blog.

Double Page Layouts

Do you make double page layouts? I admit to having made a ton in the past but lately I've focused on single pagers. Well today at Practical Scrappers we are sharing some of our recent double page layouts with you. Hopefully they'll inspire you to create more double page beauties! You can definitely tell a more in depth memory over those two pages (and, of course, include more pictures!)

I went back to our Disney trip for my inspiration and came up with this.

(click to make it larger)

One of the last pre-made pages I have from all the ones I started with was the base for this layout. I did add a couple more blocks of patterned paper - the one behind the title and the one the journaling is on. Actually opposite corners of the same piece of Teresa Collins paper. The journaling is worth a read. It tells the story of how we were literally steps away from meeting the Top Three princesses (Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty) but got Belle, Ariel and Tiana (who?!) instead. Sigh. An hour in line for the second stringers!! Hmmm, I think I'm still a little bitter about missing out on my  favourite Disney Princesses. The girls? Happy as clams!

Here is a close up of that journaling. 

I felt I could embellish with flowers since the subject matter is fairly girly.  I had one giant black one left from my Disney stash but it was too big and I really needed more than one. Digging through my flowers tin (see this post) I discovered a hole or two in my available colours. Yellow and black! I had one large yellow flower but that was it. What to do? Mists to the rescue! I took some old Stampin' Up paper daisies and sprayed a couple of the large ones black and three of the small ones yellow. 

You can see one of the large black flowers in the journaling close up above and the last detail shot below. In this close up of the title you can see the small yellow one as well as the other colours I used. 

Another thing that's quite fun to do - and will help with the ol' memory many years from now - is to use letter stickers to put the names of princesses we saw on their pictures. It adds detail without adding bulk or taking away from the pictures. In fact, that small bit of information enhances the layout as it adds to the memory/story being told.

Here's that close up of the black misted flower I was talking about as well as the one large yellow flower I managed to find in my stash. Oh, and the Mickey Mouse ears gem that I've been adding to all my Disney pages. It's little details like those that tie an album together. If you're wondering what spray I used to mist this black, it's Dyan Reavely's Dylusions in Black Marble.

Well thanks for coming by today. I value your visit. If you liked what you saw today please leave a comment, I certainly do appreciate them and would love your feedback. Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday. Have fun scrapping!

Past Time to Pick a Winner, Don't You Think?

Um ... oops? My apologies for forgetting to pick a Birthday Bash Blog Hop winner!! First off, a big thank you to all my commenters (is that even a word?) I really appreciate you taking the time to leave your thoughts on my little crafty efforts.

As per random.org, the winner is comment #16 ...

Buffy EsserMarch 1, 2013 at 9:58 AM

Oh My Goodness this is the cutest thing! I really love the colors you used for the feathers!

CONGRATULATIONS BUFFY!

Please email your mailing address to alisonday at eastlink dot ca and I'll get those goodies out to you.

Whoops - Family Friday Update on Saturday

Well I'm not doing to well with my Family FRIDAY Updates, am I? Oh well, since it's a day late you all get a bonus story!

Last Friday we were all gearing up for Marley's 9th birthday party. It went off without a hitch! Greg went in the pool with Paige and Christine while Marley and her friends played games with the play leader. I was on the other side of the glass from the water action so only got a few pictures of Greg and the younger girls but not Marley's group.

While they played in the water I got the party room set up.

Cupcake cake. When I saw these owl cupcake holders and owl toothpick decorations at Pier1 I snapped them up. Marley loved them! Score one for Mommy's staff discount!

When we were in Mexico the girls had each bought a pinata from the pinata craft person we visited on our Investour. Unfortunately we were unaware that Canada considers them dangerous goods so they were confiscated when we tried to carry them on board the plane home. Marley had been really looking forward to having a pinata and I briefly toyed with the idea of making one but it became too hard. So this 3-D owl I purchased at Michael's (when I was shopping for party favours and craft items) took it's place. Now it adorns her room I think. 

Once they were changed they descended upon me and made a paper plate owl while we were waiting for the pizza to show up.

Olivia and Marley Owls. New breeds!

I hadn't really planned any games/activities beyond the owl craft so the girls made up their own fun.

There was a dog pile on Marley ...

... some Simon Says, Go, go, go, Stop, and "Night at the Museum" (a game of their own making).

And then the cupcakes came out!

And presents were opened. Marley had asked that this be a toonie party - guests were asked to bring a toonie for Marley and one for O.W.L so of course they brought other things too! One of the favourites was this stuffed owl. Marley has quite the menagerie now! This one brings the total to 6!

After all that excitement we enjoyed a relaxing Sunday. We'd had a ton of rain leading up to the weekend so the grass fields had been closed which led to the cancellation of Paige's game. Marley's had been rescheduled to the turf field at Holly but the team they were supposed to play against couldn't make the early time slot (8:00am) so it was cancelled too. What a rare Sunday! No games, no work shifts for me, oh and the irony of it all? It was gorgeous and sunny ALL DAY!! Go figure!

So let's fast forward to today. (In case you didn't figure it out, this is the bonus part I was talking about.)

MARLEY AND PAIGE WERE ON NATIONAL TV!!!!

Their soccer club was given the opportunity to act as player escorts at tonight's Vancouver Whitecaps game.  I had to work so Greg had the honour of going with them to BC Place. Kickoff was at 4:30 but they had to be there at 1:30 to practice and what not. Here are some photos from the day.

Since Greg had to leave the girls at BC Place, he and Christine got to have a little Daddy/Daughter bonding time. This one is outside the Stadium.

Waiting for the Seabus over to Granville Island.

Then he hooked up with the girls again for the pregame festivities at Terry Fox Plaza. 

They were given these uniforms to wear for the game. Had to give them back though. Ah well.

Paige looks like she had fun.

They got to clock how fast their shots on goal were.

Christine got to have a little face painting - she's always excited to get her face painted!

And then the main event!

That's Marley holding Whitecaps Captain Kenny Miller's hand. Know it's a bit far away. Really need a zoom lens!!

Paige was holding the hand of one of the players on the opposing team. 

Lining up for the national anthems.

And running off the field so the game can get started.

And last but not least, they all got to sit and watch the game. Greg rolled in at 8:00PM with Happy Meals all around. Sigh. Tomorrow is going to be rough! Spring Forward and Soccer jamboree too!!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'll be back tomorrow with my winner from THIS POST - you've got a few more hours to get your comments in if you want to win my prize of a stamp set and ribbon/brad bundle.

Thanks everyone!