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!!

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!

Practical Scrappers - Valentine's Inspired by Pinterest

Happy Valentine's Day!

My girls have been looking forward to this day for awhile now - hope my little love offerings on the kitchen table will be met with joy, love and appreciation! Or at the very least, no sneers and tears!

My cards to them were inspired by Pinterest. Have you been sucked into the Pinterest world? I have. Somewhat. If you'd like to follow me I can be found here. Not sure what the heck I'm talking about? Pinterest is a web site that allows you to set up virtual pin boards for different interests. (For instance, I've recently created a Valentine's Day Ideas board.) As you're trolling the internet looking for inspiration, instead of printing off images to stick to your actual bulletin board above your desk, you can 'pin' the image to your Pinterest board and visit them whenever you want. Others can follow your boards and be inspired by you and vice versa.  

So now that you know the premise, let me tell you why I felt the need for the mini lesson! Today over at Practical Scrappers, we are featuring many different Valentine's projects all inspired by images found on Pinterest. Make sure you check them out! 

This was the image I chose as my inspiration. It originally came from a site called Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas. 

I love the recycling of paint swatches, the punched out hearts, the ombre colours (a really hot trend still) and the fact that they are book marks!

But I wanted to make cards to I used the ombre idea, the pinks and reds and the punched hearts as my ultimate inspiration and made these.

I went into my card stock scrap bag and pulled out all my Stampin' Up pinks and reds. After playing around with the various colours I came up with this gradation. But I felt each layer needed a little something so I used one of my border punches to create added texture. 

The stamps you see on the hearts are an old SU stamp set (it was in my "to be sold" pile but I may have to rethink that now!) I popped up one heart on pop dots and added a heart shaped gem for a bit of sparkle. Every little girl likes a bit of bling, right?

I am SO pleased with these! I know my girls are a bit young to appreciate them like I do but ... it makes me happy to make beautiful things. In the end, that's all that matters!

Hope you are having a fantastic Valentine's Day! Thanks for stopping by today, I hope I've managed to inspire you a little.

Practical Scrappers February Sketch

Today over at Practical Scrappers we had fun with this gorgeous sketch from our very own Liz Chidester!

This is what I did with it. 

Seeing as tomorrow is Valentine's Day I went with a love note to my family but using the most recent pictures of them and tropical colours instead of traditional pinks and reds!

Here are some detail shots.

Thanks for stopping by! How are you going to be celebrating your loved ones tomorrow?

Altered Candy Tins for Practical Scrappers

Today on the Practical Scrappers Blog we are sharing some of our altered items with you. Last April I made this to hold all my Stampin' Write markers.

I used an empty Poppy Cock tin and some of my Stampin' Up! supplies. I'm not sure why, but it never made it to my SU blog. Oh well, you are seeing it now! When the call came down for some altered items I was immediately reminded of this tin and I set out to make more.

Here they are in progress. As I was reorganizing my scrap supplies I recognized the need for better storage solutions for some of my supplies. Washi tape being one of them. I love that I can now take this tin to my desk or the dining room table or put the lid on it (the lids for all these containers are on the bottom in case I need them) and take it to a crop. One other thing that I find I collect a lot of but forget to use because they get buried, are extra shapes I've punched. The tin above labelled 'embellishments' is where the majority of these will go now.

Here's a look at my process.

I took the Almond Roca tin above  and covered it with a piece of scrap paper.

Then I punched some borders and attached them, layering some washi tape on top and a row of washi around the bottom too.

The addition of a pre-cut, pre-sticky fabric flower (found in my 'embellishments' tin!) and some alphabet stickers and I've now got a handy place to put all my extra flower embellishments. I seem to collect a lot of flowers!

Here they are all finished. I've now got handy places for my extra chipboard pieces, washi tape, embellishments, markers and flowers.

See? 

Thanks for stopping by today. How do you store your extra bits? I'd love to hear about them in the comments section.

A Mini Album for Practical Scrappers

Today on the Practical Scrappers site we are sharing some Mini Album ideas with you. I hope you have checked out the other GORGEOUS mini's over there! Also, we are running another card contest - check out all the details here. First entries are due by Wednesday January 30th - I hope to see some familiar names in the entries!! Oh, and yes, the page says 2012 but that's just a typo!!

Okay, back to today's post topic.

As I was searching for pictures to scrap the other week I came across some cute ones of Christine and I from her Parent and Tot Gymnastics class (see this post for the layout). They were still in those folded cardboard holders that you get for all your kids sports team pictures. I was about to throw out the holder when I was struck with the idea of turning it (and several of the other ones just like it that I found at the same time - I do have 3 kids after all!!) into a mini album. Since I am not purchasing supplies and actively stash diving right now, this seemed like a super idea. Very PRACTICAL even!! I do have stacks of left over cardboard that I could have used instead to create the album but I liked the idea of being able to slide journaling cards or extra photos into the sleeves of the album.

I think it's time for some visual explanations!!

These are the photo cards that I'm talking about. We have a LOT of these kicking about - gymnastics, soccer, field hockey and dance! I started by punching holes into the fold, lining them up so I'd have one long side and then one short side all the way through the album.

Like this.

Then I pulled out my scrap drawer. I have recently moved to a larger drawer - not to encourage me to keep more scraps but because I wanted to be able to keep anything that was not a full 12x12 sheet in here. My previous scrap drawer was only able to hold papers that were a maximum of 8" wide so my paper racks could get a little messy with odd sized papers getting crushed etc. Plus, the larger drawer allows me to dig through everything more easily.

I also have a bag of my plain card stock scraps. These are all Stampin' Up scraps and at this point I haven't decided if I want to amalgamate them with the patterned paper scraps or go through my big drawer, pull out other card stock scraps and create two scrap piles. One for patterned paper and one for card stock. 

But that is not important for this post, just a glimpse into my current organization dilemmas! If you have suggestions or opinions be sure to pop them in the comments!

After going through all my scraps, I pulled out several large pieces of card stock in colours that made me happy. No thought was given to colour matching at this point.

I did the same with my patterned papers. Once I had a good choice of both card stock and patterned paper, I started playing around to see which patterns could feasibly go together and which card stocks coordinated. 

Eventually I ended up with something that looks like this.

My front cover. 

I covered the photo cards with papers and then sewed everything together adding a little heart shaped charm onto the bottom. I haven't (obviously) figured out a purpose for this mini yet but was thinking that I may create a book of people I love ... or something like that. You'll just have to stay tuned!!

Rather than comment a ton on my thought process (why the heck did I pair cupcakes with a distressed frame image, and other random bits) I'm just going to give you the photos of each page as they stand right now.

I kind of consciously didn't make this flow from page to page but did try to connect each page to the one opposite it - especially if they were drastically different prints, colours or styles. All in all, I'm quite happy with this! I will mull over how to use it for a bit. For now it's sitting on my shelf in my scrap room, waiting!

Oh, this is what one of the larger inserts looks like. I can put pictures here or lots of journaling. Or both!

And one of the smaller inserts looks like this.

One last view of my mini - because it's my blog and I wanted to show it off again! LOL!

Thanks for "tuning in" today. I hope I've inspired you to look at something you might normally throw away in a different light. I realize it's not feasible to keep everything but every now and then it pays to keep some things!

If you haven't seen my big announcement yet today please go to layoutaday.com (after 8AM PST) to see what's got me so excited - hope to see you back here after you do!

A Practical Scrappers Frugal Finds Feature- Using Toothpicks

Today over at Practical Scrappers we are sharing ideas on how to use toothpicks on your projects. Please pop over there and check out all the other great ideas as we have a truly talented line up of designers and their ideas may surprise you.

This is what I came up with.

I am again using some really old photos but as I was searching for inspiration I realized I could use toothpicks to make my kite. I also used toothpicks to paint my "clouds" - a two-fer!

Here's a look at my process.

I started by laying out my main pieces - my paper and photos - and then roughly built a kite shape to see if it would work with the rest and to see where I wanted to apply my paint. 

This is my "paint brush". I grabbed a handful of toothpicks and then taped them together with a bit of washi tape - I can not believe how many uses that stuff has!!

I squirted out some white acrylic paint and got busy. It was a bit tricky figuring out the best way to apply it with the toothpicks. I wanted the texture of the toothpicks to come through but I also wanted enough coverage to get a sort of realistic cloud image. The added swirls were just for whimsy!

Here's a closer look at the swirly effect the toothpicks gave me.

While the paint was drying I got to work on figuring out how to make my kite. I started by gluing the toothpicks onto a piece of patterned paper in a kite shape. I didn't take pictures of the next steps but essentially I cut it out, used it as a template to cut out kite shapes from other patterns and then pieced those patterns onto the front of my kite. Once the glue was dry, I added bakers twine - both as a cute embellishment and also to hide the imperfections in my paper piecing!

This is my finished kite. It was more finicky than I first thought it would be (things seem simpler in my head, do you find that?) but I am really pleased with the final result!

I added a tail of more bakers twine and some washi tape flags.

 

Here's a closer look at the entire kite. To adhere it to the page I used two layers of pop dots (one wasn't enough to clear the toothpicks!)

Thanks for stopping by today. If you get inspired by my layout or any of the other projects you see on the Practical Scrappers site, be sure to leave a link in the comments either here or on the Frugal Finds post at Practical Scrappers so we can check it out.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!