I’ll admit that I have not been posting too much lately. I’m getting my new website ready to go. Actually, Andrew is getting the site ready to go while I’ve been building scrapbooking layouts, papercrafts and making a video or two.
Here is a sample of what the new website will bring.
Enjoy!
Dinosaur layout
Rosette
I could have declared yesterday official rosett making day. Yesterday at crop, I made a ton, ok, only 8, rossetts. Michaels offers a fun paper education class called Paper Party. I’m doing my samples for a new baby themed party. I lucked into finding a K&Company paper pad at Target for $2.94. That doesn’t happen very often so I picked up 2 to use for the project. I’ll have more pictures soon. For those that want to see how you make these incredible rossetts, here are Michaels instructions
Enjoy
The calendar says spring is almost here however, Mother Nature isn’t so sure. While the rest of the country is having record high temperatures, here in the Pacific Northwest we are not so lucky. Snow is on the ground and blowing all around. When the snow melts tonight, the rain/cold move in. Call it what you want, global warming, climate change, I think Mother Nature is just enjoying a glass of wine.
I love the dollar section of most stores, especially Michaels. I picked up about 10 of these mini chipboard albums when they were 70% off. I knew how cute they could be. These are 4×6 chipboard albums with jump rings to bind them. I love this paper but I don’t know exactly where it came from. It was all packaged up for 50% off when our LSS went out of business. I love the ducks, reminds me of spring. The inside pages are just abou the cutest farm animals I’ve seen. Don’t you agree?
Chipboard Album
Inside page with cute cards
It’s not so much that it’s snowing here in Snoqualmie, but it’s the fact that it’s sticking which is so suprising. Possibly, because the power outage and major snow is still fresh in my mind, it just seems a little crazy that it is still SO cold here. I have the heat cranked up to 68, and I’m still walking around with fuzzy socks, jeans and a sweater. Up until about 3 years ago the cold never really bothered me-as long as I could stay holed up inside. It’s not that I don’t like the snow, it is pretty to look at. Having the green belt with the 70′ trees behind the house is a beautiful site to behold especially, when their branches are laden with snow. Lately though, looking at snow makes me cold. Bone cold. I actually drank a cup of tea this morning. My coffee pot sits empty. Anyway, talking about last months major cold made me think of scrapping those snow pictures. Then I realized, I did some of them a couple weeks ago.
Using EchoPark Papers Element Sticker sheet called Winter Park, I put this layout together. My goal here was to use as many photos as possible-more of a collage layout. I just had to get all that snow documented.
Fun in the Snow
I like the status quo! I like being a scrapbooker. I know many people who scrapbook, make cards, paper crafts, altered art and more. Not me. Sure I do it, I love to make cute little photo albums, especially fun ones for my nieces. But, I’ve stayed clear of posting my projects. Not so much anymore, I’m stepping outside the box. Yesterday, a gal asked me why I named my site all paper crafts. Coupled with all the new paper ed classes that we now offer at Michaels, I thought it’s just about time to play and post.
The kids went back to school today after a week long mid-winter break. I had the house all to myself! I unplugged and started to clear out my scrapbooking area. Now that I’m doing more digital, I need less. I found a calendar I bought for $2.99 after the holidays, a cute butterfly chipboard book from the dollar bin and some hand rolled flowers that took me forever to make. I decided to do a project that combines my paper ed class and the cutest project from the new scrapbooking magazine scrap365. You can find them here. I put a little mellow country the zune on and got to work. Here’s is my finished project. I could have kept going and added more bling. I do love bling. However, my house doesn’t lend itself to bling (it’s pretty traditional) so I left it as is.
The frame is a basic 12×12 canvas frame that I turned over to give the piece depth. That’s the part I found in the magazine, so totally clever! I then did a quick paper mache with strips torn from an old dictionary. Then I lightly inked over it using Tim’s distressing ink and a bit of inexpensive studio g brown ink. I tore a piece from my calendar and cut it down to size. I painted the butterfly white then added matching paper from another calendar piece. I then added my flowers to a stem, cut out and inked some leaves. I found a piece of gold ribbon that I gathered and rolled into a flower added a little rick rac (from the same calendar kit), and added the sentiment at the bottom. All in all, I think it turned out quite nice. At least nice enough to post. ENJOY!
Altered Canvas Art
Gradma with her grandbabby
Yesterday was not a good day around my house. It’s the pitfall of having 1 tv and the only xbox hooked up to it. It seems all 3 children are hooked on Skyrim. Of course, my youngest has a habit of taking the most itme on the xbox. After a round of fighting (literally), I broke down and bought it for my older 2 sons, the pc version. Unfortunately, one of their computers wont run it due to it’s video card. Can’t fix that until tomorrow.
All the fighting made me think back in time when my youngest was the darn near cutest baby you’ve ever seen. As I was cleaning up my photos I came across some of him with his grandmother right after his birth. One of the pictures I scrapbooked traditionally. This one I did with a digital kit. A FREE digital kit from www.twopeasinabucket.com I sincerely thank them for all the free papers and kits on their site. I did this as an 8×11 so Scott could print it out of his desktop printer. Otherwise, we have to use a huge sheet of his expensive paper and use his expensive ink printer.
I was cleaning up my pictures and found some older Halloween pictures and decided to do a quick layout. I say quick because I am getting much better at using the design center. It helps dramatically if you find all your elements first. Knowing that this is a Halloween layout I choose to find my elements first by category. MiDesign has 3 Halloween collections. I mixed and matched between the 3.
Halloween Costumes
Enjoy
It’s been a crazy time here with my practicing photoshop so I can do more digital layouts. I have my tutorials going as well as photoshop open. I have to remember which folder my pictures are in, way too much for me. But, I am getting the hang of things.
In my last post I needed Scott to help me add new elements into my work. I knew it would be easy if I could just figure out how to do it. Once again Scott helped me. Instead of opening various embellishments and such, I had to place them. LIke I said, easy, right?
I mentioned how much fun I’ve been having with the various digital kits and fonts that I have downloaded for free, they have been a huge help with my digital layouts. I’ve downloaded most of them from Two Peas in a Bucket.
In this layout I used digital embellishments from Connie Prince Digital Scrapbooking at ScrapInfusions. Her blog can be found here. While Valentines Day was yesterday, it’s never too late to scrap those that mean the most to you.
Enjoy,
My Guys
As I use Michaels Design (MiDesigns), their online digital studio, the more I like it. Being new to the digital world of scrapbooking, my online designs are in their infancy. To me, it’s a learning process and I am definately learning.
A couple days ago, I hit a road block with my photoshop design. While I waited for Scott to get home I played around with MiDesign. I still think it has a few kinks to work out before I use it more, I consider this practice.
Here is a digital scrapbook layout that I did. I wanted to compile a bunch of snow pictures. I ‘m ok happy with it but it could be better. I’ll try it in photoshop as well and see what I come up with.
Enjoy
Fun in the snow
Using the processed picture
Just when I think I have it figured out, I realize, I don’t. My prior post had a digi kit scrapbook layout that I did.used the wrong picture. Scott had a picture that he had corrected with his photoshop wizardry (hmm, is that a word) and I needed/wanted to replace the picture. After a quick swap a decided that I needed to do some changes as the yellow clashes with the blues. I thought it would be as easy as the first time but I’ve run into a few glitches. Everything I open opens as a background. In short, I cannot do anything to it. When I go to change sizes on the picture it changes everything. In a few hours Scott will be home and I’m sure I’m doing something simply stupid (although he would never say it that way). Here’s a picture of the change in picture and you’ll see why I have to change and add some new elements.
Enjoy