Something Fun for my Scrap Room

One of the projects I did last week allowed me to get my hands messy - more than usual that is! A long time ago I purchased a couple of simple wooded initials from Michael's with the intention of covering them with paper and hanging them in my scrap room. But they have languished in a plastic bag ... until last week!

I forgot to take a picture of what it looked like initially (pun intended!!) but just try to picture it as a plain wooden letter A with a white painted finish.

Got that image in your head?

Great, because NOW it looks like this ...

There are two layers of paper on this but you can only see the top layer. When I first started I was kind of just playing so really didn't know where things would end up. I figured a base of some First Edition Specialty  DSP would be a good base to build on. Then I ended up covering it all up with one of the patterns from Comfort Cafe DSP. The sides still show the First Edition paper - under the ribbon. 

As decoration I cut out lots of butterflies using my Beautiful Butterflies Die for the Bigshot. The antennae are made out of a small piece of black floss (from my stash) hot glued into place. A couple of rhinestones finish them off.

The sentiments are by Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday.

I used phrases that match my crafting philosophy.

A word about the ribbon. The dark orange colour in the paper is Cajun Craze - a wonderful deep brownish-orange (a close match to my wall colour - see below) but I did not have any ribbon in this colour. What's a perfectionist girl to do? Take some simple white grosgrain ribbon from her stash and rub it all over with Cajun Craze ink of course! Note to self: wait several hours before tying and gluing it down so the ink has sufficient time to dry!!

Here it is on my wall. A temporary position to be sure but I love how it compliments the paint colour. I have many ideas percolating on how I can change my Scrap room/Office around so once that happens I'll move it to a more prominent spot and show you pictures.

Here are your links for Stampin' Up! products used on today's project:

First Edition Specialty Designer Series Paper

Comfort Cafe Designer Series Paper

Beautiful Butterflies Stampin' Up! Bigz Die

Basic Rhinestones Jewel Accents

Just for the fun of it!

The title really says it all. I wanted to play with one of the new stamp sets from the 2012-13 IBC so I just started stamping and having fun. The stamp set I was playing with was Daydream Medallions. My upline Sandra had featured a card (and this one too) on her blog using this set and it got my creative juices flowing. I wanted to use it on a layout though and here it is.

Usually when I start a layout I know what pictures I'll use but this time I started with the oddest of things ... that scalloped tulle ribbon. I'd created a card using the ribbon to make a flower and had a large piece left over that I though would look cool layered onto a layout. It's Early Espresso in colour which led me to pick the First Edition Specialty DSP, the Crumb Cake card stock base and then the Comfort Cafe DSP pieces. With the basic building blocks in place it was time to hunt for a photo. This one is incredibly blurry as it was taken with someone's cell phone but as it's the only one I have from that night, it's a keeper. 

And then it was time to start stamping.

I started by stamping the largest image onto the blue floral patterned paper in approximately where the corners of the photo would end up. But since it is barely discernible, I took the next size down image and continued stamping up into the top left corner of the layout and down into the bottom right corner. The embellishments were made by stamping more images onto different coloured card stock and using the Floral Frames Framelit dies (which are designed to fit the stamped imaged perfectly) to cut them out.

I popped up some layers using Dimensionals and added rhinestones to the centres for added bling. I also scattered some smaller rhinestones around the embellishment clusters.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture (maybe click on it to make it bigger) but I sprayed the Early Espresso card stock title letters with Vanilla Shimmer Smooch Spritz to give them some added texture.

I had a lot of fun creating this layout and can see many uses for this stamp set - both for layouts and cards! Thanks for stopping by today. Here are your links for the products featured in this post.

Daydream Medallions stamp set
Floral Frames Framelits Dies
Vanilla Shimmer Smooch Spritz
First Edition Specialty DSP
Comfort Cafe DSP
Basic Rhinestones Jewel Accents
Early Espresson 3 1/2" Scalloped Tulle Ribbon - available August 1st!

Starting Point layout - Bookclub Retreat

Is bookclub one word or two? Hmmm ... perhaps two. Oh well.

This week's Starting Point layout with Shimelle Laine was a lot of fun to work with. Click on the link to be taken to her site and the inspiration for my layout.

Here is my finished layout.

And where I started from.

These papers are from Fan Fair. I loved the map print and the keys (the girls in my book club were Sorority Sisters and our symbol was the key). The bicycles are just for fun!

Oh, and the text paper isn't from Fan Fair but is a piece of First Edition Specialty DSP. I liked the little type writer image and felt the paper went with my story about a book club retreat. 

One of the most exciting papers in Fan Fair is a sheet of cut-a-parts. The back side is a gorgeous pink lace pattern which I will use on a different layout but for this one, there were two images that I wanted to cut out. The little journalling tag with the red type writer and the one you see above of the quote with a lovely scroll-y border. 

Here's a look at the journalling tag.

I don't usually position my titles vertically but as I was playing with my stamped title (seeing if I wanted to cut it all apart or leave it as is) I really liked how it looked placed vertically between the photos and the journalling embellishment cluster so ... what do you think? Does it work? I wanted to play on the theme of type writers so created the second word of my title to mimic type writer keys. 

To get the ink splashes I took my re-inkers, squeezed a little bit into an old yogurt container and then used a well saturated paint brush to get the ink splotches. You could also use your Aqua Painter.

As a pop of colour I picked up the More Mustard from the bicycles images and used my Quint-Essential Flower stamp to create these flower images. A More Mustard Designer button and some Jute finish it off. I am planning to enter this into the Creative Accents buttons and twine challenge.

Thanks for stopping by. Please be sure to leave a comment so I can come and visit your site to do the same.

Here are your links for this project.

Fan Fair DSP

First Edition Specialty DSP

Quint-Essential Flower stamp

Morning Post Alphabet stamp set

Simply Serif Mini Alphabet stamp set

Designer Buttons - Regals Collection

Happy Father's Day

This is what Christine and I came up with last night for Greg (Marley and Paige did their projects at school.)

I gave Christine a piece of Whisper White card stock and a couple images from the Best Dad Ever stamp set along with 3 colours of ink and let her go nuts. VERY hard to give up control like that!! I think the results are pretty good though. She is only 3 after all!!

I chose what I considered the best portion of the "masterpiece" and used my Top Note die to cut it out in a pleasing manner. Does the colour scheme look familiar? I totally stole it from the card in my last post - the papers too! The one substitution I made was Island Indigo instead of Pool Party I think this may be my new go-to colour scheme and papers for masculine cards!!

Here's the inside sentiment.

And this is what the entire set looks like.

Thanks for stopping by and I wish you and yours a very Happy Father's Day.