Grandparents Layout

 Good morning fellow scrappers!  This page just rec'd a little makeover.  I wasn't 100% happy with the original take on this page.  When I'm not 100%--it nags me until I go back & 'fix' it.  I removed all the splatters of paint & color from this page--it just felt like a bit too much on the eyes.  Every time I looked at it I felt the urge to put on sunglasses!  :-)  So I toned it down a lot.  This simpler look focuses more on the photo which is what I originally wanted.

This page has one of my most recent favorite pictures which is my son with his grandparents (my parents).  My son is their very first grandchild and they're very much in love with him.  Personally, I have a very special place in my heart for grandparents.  I myself was raised alongside my grandmother.  She loved me unconditionally & taught me so many lessons about life in general.  She took care of me, always cooked my favorite meals & I could do no wrong in her eyes.  I still miss her daily even though she's been gone from my side going on 8 years now.  Like it is with all loved ones--you never stop missing them.

So it warms my heart to see history repeat itself with my son.  He loves his 'Ya-Ya' & 'Ya-Yo' which is what he calls them. He's already developed a special bond with them--one that I'm sure he'll cherish as much as I cherished the bond I had with my grandmother.

All papers used are from Authentique's 'Promise' collection.  The collection is geared towards Easter but I wanted to show how versatile these papers are & used them for a completely different theme.  All chipboard used is by Leaky Shed Studio.  I've used the 'Watch Parts' & 'Hot Air Balloon #2' chippies.

 All of the chipboard was treated the same way in order to give them a bit of texture.  I kept them in the raw & decided against painting them since their raw color when perfectly with the colors of my layout.  So I decided to give them a bit of shimmer.  They were all inked with embossing ink & heat embossed with Star Dust Transparent embossing powder by Stampendous.  In person all these chippies have a shimmery effect to them.

TIP: To be able to place your title anywhere on your page & give it a dimensional 'floating' effect.  Try taking the letter stickers & placing them on a piece of acrylic or a transparency.  That's how I created my title for this page.  I placed the letters onto a piece of transparency, cut it out & adhered it to my page over a few of the embellishments with clear dry adhesive.

My cluster is full of all kinds of different flowers.  I have flowers by Prima, Petaloo, Manor House Creation & from my own stash.  The bright green flowers with the white center pearl along with the small yellow & white ribbon flowers are from my own stash.  I have these & a few more in different colors available for sale in my Etsy shop here.  Feel free to visit my shop if interested.  These flowers make for great fillers.  Speaking of fillers--I've also incorporated a bit of Spanish moss into my cluster.  A first for me--but certainly not a last. 

Surfing along the Internet for quotes that would fit this page I ran into this one said by the former mayor of New York.  I felt that it fit my thoughts perfectly.  I printed it directly onto one of the left over scraps from the 'Promise' collection & cut it into the form of a tag--punch a hole, run some tulle through it & voila!  Instant makeshift journaling tag.

 Thanks to all of you who stop by for a visit.  Make sure to visit the Authentique blog where all week long we'll be sharing projects with both Authentique & Leaky Shed Studio products!

Take care & enjoy the rest of the week...

Easel Card With Two Drawers Tutorial

This tutorial is for creating an easel card with two drawers.  I've seen a variety of different takes for this type of card.  I've seen easel cards with just one drawer...other easel cards have even up to four drawers.  In the end, you'll create what best suits your needs.  If you go on You Tube or Pinterest you'll find all kinds of tutorials as well.  Here's my take on a two drawer easel card & my addition to the 1,001 tutorials out there for them!  :-)  The one tutorial I did find that I referred to is this one.  My tutorial is similar in nature--feel free to use either one for reference or both together!

Let's get started...

Patience Layout Berry71Bleu January Challenge

Hello once again!  I'm back to present my project for this month's challenge over at Berry71Bleu.  The challenge for the month of January hosted by fellow DT member Denise is: 'Your Little Word for 2014'.

I've picked the word 'Patience'. I feel that I lack patience in several aspects of my life.  At work, at home even with my crafting.  I seem to be in a rush and I've been in this rush for quite some time.  It's getting to the point that I feel like I'm missing out on important things simply because I'm under this self inflicted rush to get things done quickly.  I especially feel that I'm missing out on important aspects of my son's life.  He's currently 14 months old & I'm under this awe; wondering where the first year of his life went?  It seemed to have passed by so quickly & I question myself often.  Was I present in his first year as much as I should have been?  Did I take the time to enjoy the small things that with time--mean so much? 

So with this in mind I've decided to stop, take a deep breath and take my life one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time.  There's no need to rush through life.  Time passes fast enough without me having to rush it along!

This layout is a prime example of patience.  I have several mixed media items in my crafting stash--yet I rarely do a page consisting of any mixed media.  Why?  Simply because I don't have the patience for it!?  Sometimes with mixed media you have to allow the mediums to dry or set and oh my...tick tock, tick tock, tick tock--I just don't have the patience for it.  Yes, even with the use of my heat gun I still feel like I'm losing precious minutes & seconds blowing hot air onto my page.  Tsk, tsk, tsk...yes my impatience really is that bad!

So for this page I took the time to use a few mixed media.  I've used gesso, texture paste a variety of mists & lots of stamping.

My flower clusters are composed of a variety of different colors & flowers.  I've tucked a bit of web ribbon in between my clusters to dress it up a bit more.

Here you can see the texture paste.  I added mists and stamping right onto the texture paste once it dried.

The stamped clocks along my page represent the concept of time and how I hope to take my time with several aspects within my life.

My journaling was stored in a scroll which is my absolute favorite way of storing my thoughts & feelings.  There's a tutorial on how I create these journaling scrolls here.

This lovely tag was created by Marivic Clifton, the owner of the Berry71Bleu challenge blog.  I love Marivic's tags.  For someone as impatient as me these are such a time saver.  They're so well embellished that when I add them to my page--voila!  My page is already 1/2 complete!  :-)

So what's your little word for 2014?  Make sure you take the time to check out the other DT's take on this month's challenge & play along if you can!  There are some really great prizes up for grabs for a few lucky winners.  Thanks for stopping by & enjoy the rest of the week!

Live Simply. Love Much.

Hello again fellow crafters!  Greetings from a very snowed in Wednesday.  Here in the East Coast we just got about a foot of snow or so--it's a winter wonderland outside my window.  Beautiful to look at but not very pleasant to have to drive in. 

So with Christmas barely over--out come the projects for the next holiday on the way which is Valentine's Day.  :-)

Today I'm sharing a project I made for Authentique.  I've used their 'Smitten' collection for this one which is in shades of pink, reds & browns.  These papers are just right for any Love themed or Valentine's Day project.

I've once again created some sort of hybrid project.  This one is a cross between a card & a tag.  It has a sleeve with a diagonal pocket that holds the tag in place & the tag can be pulled out of the sleeve.

The stamped image is by Elisabeth Bell.  I cut the image out and voted against coloring it in.  I felt it would stand out more against the bright red heart if I left it as is.  I just highlighted all of the hearts in red and added a few details to the image with Star Dust Stickles.  The large heart in between the couple I colored in red and added Glossy Accents to it.  So in person it has a very shiny, almost epoxy look.

The organza pink flower seen here is an item from my own stash.  I have a few of these flowers in different colors up for sale in my Etsy shop.  If interested, feel free to see them here. 

These white organza flowers are also part of my stash & I have several of these in my Etsy shop as well in a variety of colors.  These flowers are great for filling in floral clusters.

All the paper embellishments seen on this tag are stickers from the 'Smitten' collection.

This is why this tag also serves as a card.  Behind the tag I created a pocket from one of the 'Smitten' elements.  Inside the pocket I tucked in a white blank piece of card stock.  Here one can write a sentiment for that special someone.

As always a big thank you for stopping by...to all those going through this cold weather--stay safe & warm.  Enjoy the rest of the week!

Christmas Orna-Mini

Good morning fellow scrappers!  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas & New Year.  I myself had a very relaxing one which is why I've been quiet in blogger land.  I took a few days off from work, I rested, read books, watched movies, spent quality time with my family & created at my leisure--now that's what I call a good vacation!

So before it gets even more later in the year, I'd like to share this Christmas project I made in December for Authentique.  For this project I combined products from both Authentique & Kiwi Lane Designs.

Kiwi Lane provided me with a sample of their 'Christmas Accessory' templates & with these templates I created this hybrid of a mini album & ornament.  Yes, I've made up my own word--an orna-mini!

This is because I couldn't decide in which direction to take this project--did I want a mini album?  Or did I want an ornament?  All I knew is that I only had one photo I wanted to use so it couldn't per say be a mini album but I also wanted more than one page to it which didn't really make it an ornament.  So I improvised & made my own little hybrid creation!  :-)

 There are a total of three ornaments within this project.  I have two small ones & one large one that I've used as my background.

In this photo you see a closeup of one of the small ornaments.  I've used a Kiwi template to trace & cut out this ornament from a piece of Clear Scraps acrylic.  I used the same template to cut out another ornament from one of the 'Joyous' papers & this I've adhered to the back of the acrylic.  Since this is acrylic--it's transparent--so the design of the paper shows through.

Next I took green & red alcohol inks & applied drops of the inks directly onto my acrylic (the bare side--not the side where the paper was adhered to).  Then to get all those splatter effects, I spritzed the drops of alcohol inks with a can of compressed air.  This always works like a charm for getting those streaky effects with alcohol inks.  You can find a tutorial for this technique here.

To finalize this ornament I applied clear dry adhesive along the border with a thin brush & applied a bit of Diamond Dust to the adhesive.

 All papers used are from Authentique's 'Joyous' collection.  I've used a bit of green Petaloo tinsel to highlight the border of my large background ornament.

 The two layers of this orna-mini are kept together with a 1" metal book ring.  I tied a bit of tulle & ribbon to the book ring to decorate it a bit more.  With my crop-a-dile I punched holes at the top of my ornaments & applied a white eyelet to it in order to run the 1" book ring through.

TIP: Ensure that whenever you use alcohol inks on acrylic that it's completely dry before you handle it.  As you can see in this photo you can see my big ol' thumb print in the upper corner of the ornament!  lol Got a bit too impatient which is silly since alcohol inks dry fairly fast on acrylic.  I guess those 30 seconds I had to wait were too long for me.  Tsk, tsk tsk...

The year was made with the use of a Dymo Label Maker. 

 Our family Christmas photo for 2013!  It was the best one out of many--it's the only one where Toby isn't sticking his tongue out.  lol  My pup is forever excited & is always panting.  My son is much more laid back & ended up 'posing' with his hand under his chin all on his own. 

The holly leaf was also made with the use of a Kiwi Lane template.  The edges were inked & dots of beige acrylic paint were applied.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit & I'm looking forward to what 2014 has in store!