Youtube Birthday Card

Hello lovelies...

I just used my FUSE tool for the very first time and it was so much fun!

When I asked my sister for theme ideas for my niece's birthday card, instant reply was Youtube.  Hmmm, what could I do with that? The app symbol is simple and boring color wise, but I wanted to stay true to the look.  So I decided to dress it up by making the center a shaker!

Thanks to my bff google images and my crafty sidekick Cami (Silhouette Cameo), I cut the Youtube icon out of textured red cardstock, and typed up my sentiment to resemble a video link. BEFORE YOU ASK, unfortunately no that's not a real url address. Even if I'd uploaded a video, YT assigns random letters and numbers to the videos and there is no way to customize it.  I tried other websites to make custom links, but they only work to embed them on other websites, not for someone to type them in.  *sad sigh*  I will have to investigate this further when I have time.


I use an old page protector from my PSB binders (that I'm trying to switch all my old products out of).  At first I made a pocket that was triangular shaped, just an inch or two bigger than the opening, but the stars didn't really shake much.  So I switched to a rectangular pocket that was about 75% the size of the Youtube icon.  That did the trick.  And the FUSE was SO easy to use!  This plastic is thick, and the tool had no problem fusing it shut. I can see myself making more shaker projects with it.

Those cuuuuute acrylic stars are from Color Cast Designs.  After feeling like I miss out on acrylic exclusives from all the kit clubs, I finally shopped around for acrylic pieces and placed a healthy order back in the spring.  Let's just say, acrylic pieces have become the new obsession.  Not that I've given up my obsession with wood veneers just yet. *ahem*

This was a quick project because my niece's birthday is tomorrow and I was rushed, so I do feel it's not as polished as I'd like it to be.  But, I'm sure she'll get a kick out of it.

~ whimsy

Never lose your sense of Wonder

This is such a happy layout and was so much fun. Inspired by the paper strip background on this Cathy Martin process video, I actually enjoyed cutting into my paper!  There's something about strips that makes me giddy!  I used a mix of 6x6 and 12x12 from the Amy Tangerine Plus One collection, the B side of an October Afternoon cut-apart sheet *gasp*, and a few much older papers. Only winced a little (and carefully chose which cut-aparts I wanted to save) on the October Afternoon. My favorite Martha Stewart Butterfly punch, acrylic paint from Studio Calico, and some of my newly purchased Sulky 12 wt thread spools (equivalent to 2 ply of the regular embroidery thread) round out most of the supplies.


I'm a bit smitten with those thread bundles, made to mimic the butterfly wing shape a bit, and everything meant to show movement and lightness, like the wispy threads flying from my DD1's fingers.


The title is cut using the Willona Brush script font I downloaded (for free!) at Creative Market.  Sign up for their emails, they have 6 new freebies every Monday.  I did have to tweek the "W" slightly in the Silhouette design software because it felt too out of proportion for me. 


Am loving the result of the white-on-white title, popped up with some thin dimensional adhesive. The hubby proclaimed this one of his favorite layouts ever.  I'm a pattern paper girl at heart, but I might just embrace the white cardstock background trend after all...

Let's get lost...

Papers: Pink Paislee - Atlas; Shimelle - True Stories
Wood Veneer: Prima - hearts; Shimelle - clouds, camera button; Studio Calico - you + me 
Bow clip - Illustrated Faith
On our trip last summer, the hubby and I went on a hot-air balloon ride for the first time.  We normally do something "adventurous" on our vacations - ocean kayaking in Mendocino, California; helicopter ride to a glacier in Alaska; repelling off a cliff at Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas... All thanks to the hubby insisting on "adventure".  For someone who doesn't like heights, or deep water, or you know, being in situations that increase the likelihood of serious harm or death, I have enjoyed almost every single one of our adventures.  (Blocking out the repelling incident. *shudders*) I can honestly say, this balloon ride was my most favorite! Added bonus, the flight was from Trim, Ireland.  Trim has a castle.  Trim is green.  I live in California.  We just don't have castles.  Or green. *cries*

This "once in a lifetime" event (though if I have my way, this won't be the last time) deserved a special layout.  Hot air balloon and cloud motifs, obvs.  And there certainly is no shortage of either in my stash! But mostly, I wanted it to capture the airy, carefree, almost magical feeling of our ride. 

By chance I came across in my stash this Shimelle vellum from her True Stories line and knew it was "the one".  It fits right in with the deep greens and orangy-reds (plus a bit of navy) that I'm using throughout my Ireland layouts and the transparent nature of vellum carries that airy feel.  At first I was stuck as to how to showcase it.  Just plopping it on cardstock makes it look like the print is simply on regular paper.  I even requested help on the Scrapbook like a Superhero FB group. A couple people suggested using the vellum with a cardstock border, keeping the middle transparent, but I don't like the idea of the following layout showing through.  Pattern paper with clouds was also suggested, but again there was no distinction in the vellum.  In the end I found this word print which echos the idea of exploring and adventure that I wanted for my title, and I cut the vellum to only fill the top half.  This way the background peeks through the clouds, but it's clear that it's a vellum layer.


Originally I die-cut the balloon and title, but I really hated how it covered so much up.  I turned to the stitching that's become so popular.  I'm a quilter.  And a cross-stitcher/embroiderer.  I LOVE hand stitching.  So how is it that I'd never done it on paper before?  It's so much harder than on fabric, that's for sure.  But the results are divine! 


Last year I'd eyed the Pinkfresh Studio half-colored wood shapes, but they'd been sold out. They came to mind here, so I added some embossing in green to some whitewashed hearts I have from Prima.  I kid you not, right after I finished this layout I came across a package of the Pinkfresh I'd bought at another time and forgot! *facepalm*  But I love the way mine turned out anyway.  The embossing adds more texture, and I have two shades of green instead of one!

This is possibly my most favorite layout ever.  It might never make it into the album and might just stay hanging up on my wall!

Our Great London Adventure

Made this 2 pager for the Mercy Tiara 27 Day challenge for May - scrapbook with at least 3 photos, 1 being 4"x6".  
This was inspired by this single page made by Mandy Reedyk from Mandy Reedyk Happy Scrappin.  I fell in love with the cityscape silhouettes she cut from grey cardstock and vellum using a Mama Elephant die and wanted to replicate that look with my most favorite skyline of all, the London skyline.  In comes the helpful hubby, who is so much better at Photoshop and spacial things than I am.  He spent a couple hours on the weekend laying out different London iconic architecture in a pattern of layered silhouettes which I then traced and cut on my Silhouette Cameo.  Total LOVE.



I also used an Ali Edwards digital brush, Follow Your Heart, to trace and cut the word adventure and Studio AE journal card which I rounded corners. Other supplies include Stylist Thickers (which I colored darker with Stazon in Stone Grey) London Memories Air Mail Arrows paper by Scrapbook Customs, enamel heart from Amy Tangerine, and Colección London stamps by lora bailora.


Those intricate silhouettes cut so well and I love them so much, I'm doing a similar layout with them cut in various vellums for some night pictures from our trip.  Stay tuned!

Rain Gear

Over at Shimelle.com this week's challenge is to use this sketch.  My only experience with sketches was owning the Becky Higgins sketch books, and frankly I never could figure out how to use them.  I didn't find it a good starting point at all.  So I've never really used a sketch for making a layout.  But I decided to play along and here is my entry:
Papers: Saffron Yellow Pepper Soup 6x6 pad jillibean soup; Embossed cardstock Recollections; Cloud transparency Bella Blvd
Embellishments: Mistables (clouds) Studio Calico; raindrop brads (unknown); Ombre tag Pinkfresh Studios
I'd never really built up individual embellishments before. I quite liked working on this.  I think I will give sketches another go.

Liquid Bliss

This month's challenge on MercyTiara's Youtube channel is called 27-Day Challenge for March: Hoard-Not Your Pretties! As the name suggests, the challenge is to use pretty things we've been harding or haven't yet figured out how to use. Here is my entry:
When I watched the challenge video, my first thought is how much I really covet this month's prize.  Lots of goodies, and unlike last month's where I could take it or leave it, I loved everything Tracy Banks was offering.  She is so generous!  My second thought was wood veneer.  I have a whole drawer full of it, and I do use it, but usually only 2 or 3 on a layout.  I've been looking for an excuse to use a bunch at once.  And coffee themed ones had yet to be touched because I hadn't had a good layout idea.


This layout initially was going to be messier (I'd had visions of coffee rings and splatters on a mixed media background) but evolved into a clean white background. I was rather proud of my restraint considering I like splatters and don't like plain white backgrounds. But then the idea of a crisp menu at a high-end cafe sprung to mind. I spent all day working on it: meticulously lining things up, glueing the 15 pieces of veneers, getting the journaling written neatly after 4 practices, erasing the practice journaling and lines, blowing every speck of eraser lint off... I was so happy with the results.

And then, at 2 am just as I was stamping the date, the unthinkable happened. I didn't notice as I accidentally laid it on the black stamp pad.  The ink bled through to the front on the top left corner.  I wanted to cry. :'(


Instead, I posted on The Scrap Gal's FB page, having only recently become a member, and received a ton of sympathy and ideas on how to fix it.   I ended up brushing white gesso over the stain and am very pleased with the results.  At a casual glance, it's perfect.  Hubby and Foxlets could only tell there had been an issue at all after I held it up at an angle and pointed out the spot.  It really is only apparent if the light bounces off just so.  
I'm going to call this a win.  Now I just hope my luck holds and I win the challenge!


Live Life in Color

Here's the page I created for challenge 1 of the Online Scrapbooking Weekend at Shimelle.com  This challenge was to use one or more of the ideas from previous challenges (that I'd missed out on): selfies; hearts; mixing old with new; monochromatic; maps or globes.  I managed to tick off the boxes for ALL of those! :D



Monochromatic was the hardest thing for me, not something I've ever done before and at first I had no idea what I could do with that.  But I remembered that I had selfies of different hair colors and thought how perfect would it be to do the opposite effect of a black/white photo matching any color scheme - instead have color in the photo be THE focus.  Of course I couldn't resist making the word "Color" in the title in color!  I'd never die-cut watercolor paper on my Silhouette Cameo before, and forgot to double cut, so it was a bit of a pain to detach and I had to go over it with more color... but in the end I made it work.  The "Journey" metal tag is the old (like so old I don't even know who made it or what year, maybe around 2007 ish?) while everything else is actually really new.  Just my luck to have a map print in grey!  And this layout is about a journey, both metaphorical and real, so I didn't just throw that in to round out the challenge.  I didn't have white heart-shaped enamel dots (on my list!) so I used Tim Holtz enamel accents on some wood veneers.  The die-cut hexagon mat came from Ashely Horton's Old Favorites with a New Twist class at Big Picture Classes.

This is a layout that is so outside the box for me (literally, since I went with hexis!), something I would never have come up with on my own if it weren't for the challenge and the BPC class.  And I'm totally smitten by it. 


February 2016 Challenge: Use old collection kit

In response to Mercy Tiara's challenge to use an old collection kit, I dug through my stash a bit because I didn't used to buy whole collections or kits until more recently.  Usually pick and choose papers and embellishments as they catch my attention.  I found the Country Boutique by Fancy Pants collection kit from 2012 that is a paper pack with two die cut sheets and an alpha.  It's nothing like the style I usually use, Shabby Chic and washed out whereas I like bright colors, but I was drawn to it because of the peeling paint/wood papers.  I couldn't figure out at first what pictures to go with it, most of the layouts using it I could find are wedding photos and all mine are already taken care of.

This is the first one I landed upon, of my older daughter when she was 9 months old.  I didn't have a story at first, I just love this photo of her.  Finally the Van Morrison song "Brown Eyed Girl" popped in my head while I looked at the photo and I found a poem that fit perfectly how I felt.  I managed to use several papers and made a dent in the die cuts that came with it.  The alphas were black and didn't fit the look, so I found some dark brown ones.  The embellishments weren't from the kit, but everything on this page (except for the wooden circle at the bottom) is at least 3-4 years old.
my brown eyed girl
Dec 18 2003 (scrapped Feb 2016)

Country Boutique collection kit by Fancy Pants 2012 - papers, die cut banners & heart ticket
My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart embellishments - smaller banner die cuts, buttons
Alphas - Jillibean Soup; wood circle - Dear Lizzy; flowers - Prima; metal clip - Basic Grey
I have 2 more pictures I'm going to try to scrap with this kit. 

Can't believe this is still around...

Dusting off this site so I can post scrapbook pages I make for challenges.  Because I feel the need to connect with Scrapbookers and I think the challenges may help me use up my gazillion papers and embellishment collection.  *crossing fingers*