When I look at you, I see me.

Originally, I was planning on this to be a two page layout and the title to be "When I look at you, I see me." However, when I put them together the colors contrasted too much for me, so on to plan B. Well, THAT wasn't in my sketch. Could someone be trying to change me. So I spent the better part of the last 24 hours trying to come up with 2 separate titles, so these could become companion pages instead. I sincerely admire you journalers out there. You come up with such amazing titles with what appears little effort.

So this is my husband and oldest daughter and she definitely favors his side of the family, right down to the brown eyes. This layout is made using the Bo Bunny Deliah kit of the month from Lil' Lambs Boutique. I love chocolate and pink together as a color combo.

I made the center and outside flowers from the paper line. I like doing that to help coordinate my embellies to my page. However, it does NOT help me use up the ridiculous stash of Prima flowers that I have....and keep buying!!

This is my darling youngest and myself and you truly cannot get more two alike. She looks like me and has my personality (good and bad). I made this using Bo Bunny's Gypsy line. Here's a quick paper saver for you. When you are using these big die cut papers (which are all the rage at the moment), you can cut out the center of the square background paper to use as coordinating accents on your layout (see my small blue flowers below just happen to match the background paper). Now I know some of you out there would never be able to handle a big hole in the back of your layout. So go get some of that old, old paper that you just had to have and when you got it home, wondered what the heck you were thinking, and glue the patterned side to the back of your layout. Wha-la, you now have a white backing on your layout. It's cheating but who cares. Now you don't feel bad about throwing out your unused, unwanted paper.

Here's another handmade flower vine that I made. I've also used some of the new Distress Stickles by Ranger. At first I wasn't sure how these were different from regular Stickles, but after using them, I definitely see the difference. The Distress Stickles does not have the shimmer in it that the regular Stickles has and I really like it. You can see if you look carefully below. The blue flower centers are made with Broken China Distress Stickles. The orange centers are made with Regular Stickles and you can see they are a lot more shimmery.

Thanks for taking time to look.

Miracle of Life ~ Part II

I finally finished the Shadowbox Frame I was working on for the Baby Shower gift. I don't know if any of you are like me, out there, but I just never know for sure when something is "done." The longest part of scrapping for me is the "polishing;" adding just the one more thing because it may need it or may not but stopping now just doesn't seem right. It can drive a person mad. So I told myself to just stop and walk away.

I think I've mentioned before that I'm a strict sketch scrapper. I sketch 99% of what I scrap before I even pick up a pair of scissors. I even have the paper listed on the sketch for each part of the layout...it might be a sickness. However, when I start vearing from my sketches, I start to panic just a bit. While the overall look of this is very similar to the look of my sketch; I switched ALL the paper....panic...panic...panic. After making the card (see post below), I loved the look of the Basic Grey Phresh & Phunky line so much that I wanted to continue using it in the frame. I was glad I changed and I think it did me good to step outside of my comfort zone. Remember, I'm an accountant and 2 + 2 always equals 4. We don't change easily.

This must be my new technique month, because here I've tried yet again, something new for me. A wonderful fellow scrapper, named Virginia, posted this excellent tutorial on flower vines here. Below are closeups of the ones I made for the Shadowbox.

So now that the baby shower gift and card are out of the way...I can get back to my regularly scheduled scrapping. Stay tuned....

Miracle of Life

This week I'm working on a baby shower gift for an aquaintance that is expecting twins. Since it will be a boy and a girl, I got out my favorite Basic Grey line of all time (Phresh & Phunky) for the card. Why I love it so much, I don't know...but instead of hoarding it away and just bringing it out to look at; it's time to let it go to bless someone else. I've been seeing this tri-fold or tri-shutter card around for a bit and I thought it was time to try something new.

Front view:

Below is the inside view. The flourish is Grungeboard by Tim Holtz Idea-ology. I covered it in Distress Ink (Fired Brick) and then used two shades of Perfect Pearls (Gold and Blue from Aged Pantina set).

Here's a better look at the folded sections. The babies in the middle are from Crafty Secrets. I love their Vintage Ephemera.

And finally a look at the card once it's closed.

This actually turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would. These were the instructions I used and they were very easy to follow. So now, why don't you venture out and make something different. Keep an eye out in the next day or two for the gift that I'm working on.

Wrapping up Christmas

Get it! "Wrapping" up Christmas?? Okay, so I baked a little too much in the hot sun today. Here is my final project using the Bo Bunny Tis The Season line from Lil' Lambs Boutique. I still have plenty of paper left after these 3 projects to still make quite a few cards and tags.

I used the Mini Card Kit of the Month, to create this cute little card. I glued the ric rac down first on my patterned paper and then I snipped the patterned paper, with my Cutterbees, right under the ric rac. You can then glue the section down on any color card.

Here's another layout of my daughter at her first Christmas. She was only a month old and fit perfectly in our Christmas Stocking. She was the best Stocking Stuffer ever.

I'm pretty sure Christmas and Stickles go together like Peanut Butter & Jelly. So, I couldn't resist cutting out these ornaments, popping them up and Stickling all the edges.

If you haven't gotten into edge punches yet, you really should try some. I love all the different looks they give the papers on my layouts. Here I used the Zig Zag embossed punch by Martha Stewart, for my photo mat.

I love the Die Cut paper that comes with the Tis The Season line of paper. I decided I would get 2 uses out of it. So I carefully cut the outside brackets off the edge.

I matted the Brackets in green and used 2 of them on the layout below.

And I used the remaining middle part for the background of my photo in this layout.

Two for one deal. You can't beat that.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas....

I'm in the Christmasy kind of mood this week. Could it be the Triple H threat here (Hot, Hazy, Humid) that has me hankering for a bit of snow? Could it be that summer is about to end and already I have friends whose kids are back in school (thinking of Christmas break, I'm sure)? Could it be the classic Tis the Season Christmas line from Bo Bunny I'm playing with, this week? Who knows. But get out your Christmas Carols and break into song while you're perusing Christmas past.



Note here that the brackets on the sides are cut outs from the double print layers on the Chorus die cut paper. After cutting out the bracket design around the paper, I still have the middle left for another layout (look for it later this week).



The photo collage was so easy to make using photo collage templates from Scrapbooks Etc. They have many designs and they really work well when you need to incorporate a lot of photos from a specific event into one design.



Here's a close up of my woven ornament. I grabbed some scrap pieces from my earlier cutting and wove about 6 strips of each pattern together. I then glued the woven square onto scrap paper and cut out a circle. No gluing of all the strips needed if you do it this way. Stickles outlines the edge and a ribbon finished it off.



I just have to point out here, that my girls were sooooo excited to be leaving cookies for Santa this past year. They helped make them and decorate them and were quite pleased to see only cookie crumbs the next morning.

So if you can't stand the heat, get out those Christmas papers. Things will cool off faster than you know.

Card Challenge at Lil' Lambs Boutique

This month, we're having a Card Challenge over at Lil' Lambs Boutique. The challenge is to color, in some fashion, a stamped image on your card. I had a lot of fun with a couple methods, making some sample entries for the challenge.



On the card above, I used the new Bo Bunny Gypsy line, that I just got in the mail from Tammy. The image is colored in using Alcohol Inks (Lights - Lakeshore used here) by Ranger. Alcohol Inks are best used on non-porous material such as Glossy paper that I used above. I dabbed the ink on the flowers for a lighter color. It's okay to use multiple colors at one time. For the bird, I just dripped the ink on and then blew it around on the paper. The color is more intense when you do it this way.



For this card, I colored in my images using Prisma colored pencils. I've always liked the way they blend together, as you can see in the close up below on the flower. I decided to add a Glossy Accents coating on the top to make them shine.



Here's a quick tip for sentiment stamps. I've notice a few of my sentiment stamps have all the words on one line. Oftentimes, I find that I do not have enough room to stamp the whole line. Easy enough fix: just ink the portion of words that you want to stamp on the first line. Be sure to clean the stamp really well after the first line. Then ink the rest of the words for the second line and stamp.

If you're a card maker, I hope you decide to give our challenge a try.