Got this old Cosmo Cricket line on sale at my LSS.  It is just too cute and perfect for camping!  I sprayed a piece of a cereal box for the picture matte.  I cut out all the little pieces from a piece of glitter paper and bunched them together.

Some more camping layouts from the beginning of the summer.  This one is a two-pager.  The most exciting thing about this one is that I cut out some of the flowers using my Sook Wang tape and then used microbeads on top and it really stuck!

My first attempt at using my Marjolaine paper line from Basic Grey.  I don't love working with it as much as I had thought I would, but often find a whole full pack of papers and embellishments more challenging to work with than just the bits at the end since there are so many more choices to make!

More soon!  I just got back from a retreat and have a few LOs that turned out great!

Goodbye Summer, Hello School!

What a wonderful summer it has been!  OK, maybe not the weather so much, but as a family we have had the most wonderful times... mostly!  But it has been busy, vacations, parks, pools, playdates, movies, camping and boating!  But I am starting to carve out some time for some serious scrapbooking.  I cannot believe how many photos I have of the summer just waiting to be cropped!

I found my good camera!  Thank the lord.  Just as I finally figured out what was wrong with the other one... but I am glad to have it back as I am just not a good photographer and I need all the help I can get.  So much for getting a new Fuji for my birthday...

My dear dad and grandma at our family reunion.  I used Curio by Basic Grey and added some Tim Holtz ribbon that I sprayed with Tattered Angels chalkboard spray (that stuff is the best), a dollar store doily, and a beautiful Kaiser Craft wooden bird that I covered with the new "sparly fluff" which is really so cool.  Then I stickled the letters in GRANDMA (but you can't really see that part).

My son's birthday at Chuck E Cheese with the Fancy Pants rocket/boy line.  As usual, the picture is bad.  I just glossy accented all the cardstock embellishments and then added some ribbon at the top and pop dotted the odd one.  I love the orange in this line though.

My son at the spray park with the Basic Grey Lauderdale line.  I sewed the side of the red piece in two different colours using the Sew Easy Blanket stitch.  I really like the look of the Sew Easy, but it definitely takes a bit of time to add to any page.  I think it is easier to add a bit here and there to the odd embellishmet, and use a sewing machine for the big jobs.  Sew not that easy, basically.  I always put flowers and sparkles on my poor boy's pages, but he loves it so far.  His dad?  Not so much.

What A Weekend!

Happy Canada Day! We had a pretty good weekend over here, and I actually got some scrapbooking done! 
This weekend I tackled a LO for my four-year-old son using ancient Bo Bunny papers (Extreme Teen, anyone?) and since I had no embellishments I made some of my own with the black glimmer glaze and an old cardboard box.  And of course, my Cuttlebug.



I am becoming obsessed about using up old stuff, but sometimes you simply must break into the new...  I bought a TON (if I had known how much I would not have probably bought it) of the MME little dancer line figuring that I have two little girls, both of whom dance (though only one in lessons)  and would use it up.  Firstly it is turning out to be a little "cutesy" for me (to quote my friend, Michelle), but the great thing is with so much stuff, the LOs take easily 10 minutes or less.  Sometimes, you just have to "bang" them out!!!  They are not great, but they are quick and look how much stuff I used!

More flowers...

To create these cool and cheap paper flowers, first start with two or three matching spray inks and a mini mister or other water sprayer.

Then randomly spray onto your Inksentials Crafters Mat ($19.99 at Scrapbooking Fanatics, WOW!) with blots of colour.  Spray the whole thing well with the water.

Blot up with your average paper towel and dry to crispiness with your heat tool.

Cut out using your die cutting machine or another template.

Cool, hey?

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!

My kids and I made these flowers on Friday together.  Most are the roly roses by Imaginisce that I then painted/dripped Glimmer Glaze on top of.  Man, that stuff is great for anything!  The light blue top middle one is the Tim Holtz accordion flower.  They look so nice when they are done, but if I don't use the right weight of paper the perforations go right through!  It is always a gamble with that die in my little Cuttlebug!  The other two on the far left are using the new Glubers.  I used ribbon for the bottom one and fabric for the top.  Ribbon is definitely the harder of the two to use and the fabric makes the look a little more weathered and vintage.  I guess it depends on what look you are going for.

I then stuck all of our flowers and a few buttons on my previously ugly jar of buttons to fancy it up.  It turned out nice, but is still a pain to get buttons in and out of!

Finally, I finished my bird layout of my #1 crafter.  I am obviously all about the flowers this weekend.  I am working on another one of my husband with a couple of cool flower techniques on it and will post later!  The most exciting technique on this one was taking the brown corrugated coffee cup holders (from Starbucks or, my fave, 7-11) and using them for die cutting swirls and flowers.  Then I paint them with glimmer glaze and voila!  Cheap as borsche!  Scrapbooking doesn't always have to cost a fortune!  The paper is old, old MME but is still so cute and current with their colour scheme and bird motif!  I love when I can use up some of my old stash, although by the time I get through it all, all my new stuff will be old too!

June!

June is here! The end of school, the start of summer!  My garden is planted, the camping trips are booked, I am ready to go!  I bought a bunch of new dies in hopes that I will be able to use up all of my older papers and supplies with a new outlook.  The new Tim Holtz dies are AWESOME!  I am a little obsessed with the bird in the cage (movers and shapers) and although have not yet used him on a LO, am making cards to beat the band!  I also recently acquired Spellbinders Blossom Three and Fleur de Lis.  Love them!

Here is one of my cards featuring my (second) fave little guy!

My fave little guy is my son, who is as thrilled about the new dies we have acquired as I am!  He is a tireless crafter of all sorts... He is four and a real go-getter!

My Dad took my eldest daughter to Riverdance when they were here and I did up this quick LO to commemorate the event.  She had the BEST time.  My favourite part of this LO are all the different kinds of flowers, including the Roly Roses from Imaginisce!  They are so beautiful, but soooo small!  If only they could come out with bigger ones!  The other flowers are from a Sizzix die that I cut canvas and glassine paper out of.  The other ones are white bulk ones that I stamped, embossed, and then sprayed with the Ranger spray inks.  The brightly coloured background under the green picture mat is a paper towel that I sprayed with the inks, dried with my heat gun, and then cut out with the kids' crafting scissors!  I knew those horrible things would come in handy some day!



Glassine paper is the best paper of the year!

I went to a card class this weekend and it was wonderful! I learned a few new things that I will probably use... like how to make a cool ruffle out of paper towel!

But two of the coolest things I was introduced to this weekend are the new Roly Roses by Imaginisce where you roll your own flowers out of their punch out templates (not shown...yet) and I finally bought the new glassine paper by Tim Holtz.  This is like the old school wax paper where when you crinkle it it fades on the crinkle and it has the coolest texture.  Above I inked with alcohol ink to match my paper and then sprayed with the neatest new spray, Perfect Pearls Mist in copper.  Apparently it is resin-based so it sticks to everything and doesn't wrinkle up your paper like the water-based ones.  They are both good for different things I guess.

This is my LO called "See how they grow". My favourite part of this one are the metal flowers by Graphic 45 that I saw used on another layout and coveted until I finally bought them on sale.  Now they are all gone (almost $20 for 6!), but they were so great while they lasted.  I used the Tim Holtz resist paper, his paper collection and matching stickers, I sprayed the resist paper red and then used a paper towel to wipe of the ink over the resist and it worked really well. Then sprayed some white flowers, tacked on my metal ones (sniff) and voila!

I am excited tonight to get into to some of my new stuff that I have been saving until I used up some of the older stuff!  Yipee!

I finally found my Tim Holtz tape and used a ton of it in this layout.  It is a two-pager, but nothing really matches in it, kinda quirky.  I used the Cosmo Cricket line, Circa 1934.

I am usually a two-page layout girl, but have found them becoming a bit boring lately so had to really think about how to tie this one together!  I also found the new coffee filter shapes from Fancy Pants and tried them behind the red and white flowers on the left-hand side.  They are really neat to work with, but at $6 for 9 small shapes, I am wondering if I wouldn't do better with actual coffee filters and some of those old school edge scissors?  Something to think about... My spray inks looked so cool and even mixed well on the coffee filter paper.  Love it!

Now, off for a weekend of camping!  Not a paper cutter or stickle in sight!  Cry!

The Creative Winds are a Blowin'!

Two very different layouts!

The top one is with the Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 line. I love red. I love scrapbooking with red. As Oprah would tell you, people look best in red on film. But it is hard to scrapbook two little girls with red, since they are always in pinks and purples.  Luckily, my youngest was wearing her favourite sweatshirt on this day. I used a bit of tape on this page.  Deserres (the craft store) sells this cool new Japanese masking tape in all sorts of different colours. A better choice may be the Tim Holtz tissue tape, as you can ink it whatever colour you want, but I COULD NOT FIND MINE! Argh!

The second one is my final attempt at using the Dilly Dally line. I got some mirror butterflies from the dollar store that really look cool, as they match the crystal and pearl swirl. I also sprayed two of the flowers. The lettering is foil (American Crafts thickers in green foil). I honestly think I own every type of font sticker out there, but these are always my favourite. Not enough stores stock them though, at least my local store doesn`t.  Online is great though, http://www.scrapbookingfanatics.com/ is a great place to go to get them.  Inexpensive too!  And if you live in St. Albert, Sandy can sometimes arrange delivery! You can`t beat that!

Happy Mother's Day!

Although I absolutely love to scrapbook, I know I am a horrible, or at least very bad, photographer.  I do not know whether it is my camera (not likely) or my lack of talent, but either way, I do not take very many great photos.  Including of this beautiful new paper by Making Memories called Dilly Dally.  Birds and butterflies, two sure signs of spring!  Mother's Day is the other sign of spring for me, but never have I been so spoiled as I was this year!  A dinner out, a lunch brought to me, a great day at the lake with family, I feel so lucky to be a member of this privileged group! 

Before I had kids I never brought a camera anywhere (although now people wish I didn't still) and never scrapbooked a day in my life.  Through wanting to document my kids' lives I have discovered the best hobby and made some amazing friends!

Here are two more layouts from the Simple Stories Me Documented line.  As I said before, I just love it! And doing layouts of those pictures that you never scrapbook because they are just part of the day-to-day... I love it!
I love these flowers from Prima with the tulle. So girly, yet so...rugged!

I used the Webster's Pages Sweet Season for this Layout.  It is hard to find a Christmas/Winter line with pink in it, but this one had a bonus... teal and purple too! Well it is more like seafoam...

I do have a boy too, and another girl, I swear!

The new Echo Park girls line again! I love it! I love the bright colours! I am so tired of scrapbooking winter and am ready for spring, but all my photos are at the WalMart, waiting for me to come for them...

Can't wait for some spring LOs!  I have big, big plans for Basic Grey's Marjolaine line. I am thinking it will go with everything spring and/or camping this year, and I love the boldness of it too.  I love everything by Basic Grey. I am always a bit skeptical when I am first starting to work with it (like a 70s Ukranian couch or really bad sweater my friend Michelle once said of Pyrus and I agree) but it just comes off so beautifully. Usually... Some layouts no amount of brads, trinkets, or flowers sprayed artfully with glimmer mist can save.

My new scrapbooking blog!

I have been scrapbooking for a number of years and really have evolved from using only Creative Memories page kits to doing more of my own thing.  It helps that I have a couple of friends that are really into scrapbooking... well buying scrapbooking stuff at least!

For this layout I took the only picture of me from this whole year (one of my kids took it) and scrapbooked it with the wonderful Simple Stories line. I wasn't really all that crazy about this line initially, but once I got it home I found it went with absolutely everything and was really easy to work with. I cannot believe I used two whole pristine papers to do this layout!  Usually I am a pretty frugal scrapbooker, but I loved the dimension that the two papers gave the page.

This is the new little girl line from Echo Park which I should have bought more of since I love it and it goes so well with everything my girls wear! And this is the first time I used the Tim Holz tissue tape to cover chipboard! It doesn't really absorb the ink that well, which is actually a good thing, since otherwise the colour would turn out too intense.
I also used the Sook Wang tape sheets to make the die cuts and glitter them with Okotoks' own Craft & Glitz glitter (buy Canadian, eh!) I met Liz, the owner, recently when she came to my LSS (local scrapbooking store) and opened my eyes to the amazing world of fine glitter. Did you know you should rub it in again after you have rubbed it and shaken off the excess the first time? It really brings out the glitter's dimensional properties! Go figure!