Nothing Short of Amazing

Quilling is an art form that has been around for a long time. But it has recently gained renewed interest in the scrapping world. My friend Melissa has been quilling on her layouts for a couple years and she never ceases to amaze me with what she comes up with.

I wish I had this talent and I promise I'm going to try this technique soon. But I just had to post here this GORGEOUS butterfly that she quilled on a layout about Believing in Miracles. Can you stand the details in this??

Here is only half of the layout. I believe she's using the Marrakah line from Basic Grey and the colors are just gorgeous. She currently has the whole layout for sale right now, here.

Way to keep blowing me away with each new layout you produce, Mel!!

A New Hobby

I think I may have found a new hobby and fortunately it only lasts a couple weeks out of every year. I carved another pumpkin tonight because it is just too much fun. So here is my ode to all the Team Jacob fans out there in honor of New Moon being released next month.

This pattern also came from the Pumpkin Wizard. I highly recommend them. They have a lot of free patterns in all different categories. They even have...blech...a Team Edward pattern. If you have carved pumpkins this season, I'd LOVE to see them. Just post your link to your blog in my comments section.

Same Song...Different Dance

As promised, I finished a layout using the subdued flip sides of the Fancy Pants Trick or Treat line. I love double sided paper. The whimisical sides can be seen below in my Heebie Jeebies layout. The paper was featured in the Fancy Pants Halloween Deluxe Scrapbook Kit from Lil' Lambs Boutique.

I decided this year to be smart and take pictures this past week, on a sunny, warmer day of my two daughters in their Halloween costumes. My oldest is avidly searching high and low for her Prince Charming and insisted on being a "wedding girl." My youngest wanted to be a Dragon and for lack of finding a cute Dragon costume, she opted for the Mermaid. And boy is she working that Mermaid Costume. The wigs were completely my choice and I love them...my oldest not so much, my youngest, well, she's like her Momma.

This kit was chock full of goodies but my favorite was the Rock Candy Crackle Paint and the Basic Grey Bling It pack. I decided to use the Crackle Paint (Rock Candy is clear) on my photo mats and the folded flowers. The Bling It jewels made perfect bases for my flowers.

I also had some fun with the extra bling I didn't use on the flowers and made this little butterfly.

I added some Liquid Pearl (Ranger) dots to accent the flourishes and photo mats. I think they give a nice softening effect.

Since, we're quite North of the Equator, it's a pretty good possibility that I'll have to winterize these costumes (booo!) and my oldest refuses to wear the wig for Trick or Treating, so I'm really glad I got these pictures.

Happy Trick or Treating this Saturday!!!

A Cut Above

So, we as family, ventured outside of our comfort zone this year and decided to carve pumpkins. Not being a huge fan of typical jack-o-lantern faces, we always painted faces on, in the past. I have to say, it may have been 20 years since I've carved a pumpkin. What got into me this year, who knows. But we had a delightful time last night with the girls making "special" pumpkins.

Each of our girls got to pick what they wanted on their pumpkin. My oldest picked a bat, which was nice, because it was easier for me to draw the picture onto the pumpkin. We had patterns but didn't think of that when buying our pumpkins which were too small for the pattern. The youngest picked the witch, which she really liked....on paper. As soon as Daddy finished carving them both and lighting them up, she no longer liked her witch. Now it was a scary witch. Ha ha. That's okay, we like her witch and think Daddy did a tremendous job carving them out. Now he's hooked on patterns and I think if I let him, he'd go out and buy 3 or 4 more pumpkins.

I wanted to try the layered carving. It seemed like a nice creative challenge. So I searched the web for pumpkin patterns and found The Pumpkin Wizard. It's a great site with lots of free patterns. The family voted and since we are big Madagascar fans here, chose the Penguins for Mommy's pumpkin. 4 hours later....and here is the result. I don't think it was to bad for my first foray into decorative pumpkin carving.

What do you do to your pumpkins for Halloween? Any unusual decorations? Leave a comment and let me know.

Anything But a Holiday

Anything but a Holiday....that's our new challenge going on over at Lil' Lambs Boutique. The challenge is to create a layout or altered item that is non-Holiday yet using Holiday themed paper. I had a lot of fun creating mine even though it gave me the "willies" while thinking about the journaling.

This paper is from the Fancy Pants Trick or Treat line. Very whimsical on one side and more subdued on the flip side. Watch in the next week or two when I pick up this line again and use the flip sides to capture my daughter's Halloween costume pics. I grabbed several of the Tim Holtz Idea-Ology masks to add to the creep factor of my layout. And doodled borders around the journaling cards to fill out some of the empty space.

This layout is for my Book of Me and here is a short list of some things that tend to lead me to panic. Please tell me someone else thought they would fall through the open back part of the stairs. Big fear of mine ever since I was a kid. Of course, we just got back from vacation and look what I had to climb up and down 3 or 4 times a day. I got very good at climbing the stairs looking at the sky.

Ferris Wheels - hoo boy, there's one fear I thought I was over. This past August I managed to not be able to escape riding on one with my youngest daughter. There's a reason they put a sign at the bottom that says "do not force someone to ride this ride." As I was sure our seat was going to drop all it's bolts and go plummeting down to earth, I had a death grip on my daughter and wouldn't let her move one inch. Poor thing. I think dear Husband will have to stand in line twice now to take one daughter at a time. It's just not in me.

And really, the GRAND CANYON is not the place to take someone who is afraid of cliff edges. Swoooon!! My husband even wanted to ride the donkeys down to the bottom. No Freaking Way!!! You think I'm going to trust my life to a jackass....ha ha ha...not referring to my husband by the way. ;) Albeit, I must conclude that the Grand Canyon was incredibly breathtaking and beautiful....10 feet back from the edge.

Someday, I may conquer these fears but fortunately the served me well in the Anything but a Holdiay challenge. Be sure and enter your layout or altered item for a chance to win a $20 Gift Certificate to Lil' Lambs Boutique. And just for fun, leave a comment and let me know if you have any unusual fears.

Wedding Gift for my Friend

I'm pretty sure this is safe to post here, since my friend is the Groom and I seriously doubt he is here checking out my scrapping blog. So here we go. This wedding is unique to me, in that, the Bride & Groom sent out their gift request in their invitation. Attendees are requested to give their favorite bottle of wine to the couple. Tags for the gift givers name were included. How neat is that?

The Mini Album, I made and posted here earlier. It is based on the "Love" Chapter in the Bible - I Corinthians 13. Close ups can be seen here. I used one of the wine carriers we received as a gift, at our wedding, and recovered it to match the mini album. Finally, I made a coordinating card to go with the gift theme. I used the Basic Grey Wisteria Paper Kit.

I marbled purple cardstock for the top of the wine carrier. This is pretty easy to do. I used 3 colors of Distress Ink (Milled Lavender, Dusty Concord, Walnut Stain) and 1 colored Prisma Pencil. I started with the lightest color Distress Ink and swirled it on the paper with a makeup sponge. Next I dabbed on the other two colors sporadically with a makeup sponge and then used a clear part of the sponge to blend them slightly. Next, I took a pale purple colored Prisma pencil and drew in my marbeling lines. A blending stick can soften the harsh edges. I love this effect and just wish my dear husband would let me do our house walls!!

Below is a close up of the coordinating card. In keeping with the wedding theme, I paper pieced a wine barrel, wine glass, wine bottle and red grapes, of course.

It's a bit hard to see here in the picture, but I added Glossy Accents to the wine bottle, glass and grapes for an epoxied effect.

Here's toasting a glass to my friend and his lovely bride. May you have an abundance of God's blessings and a long, happy life together!