They don't stay this way long....

Ah, where has the time gone. This was my sweet firstborn when she was 3 months old. Darling, she still is...angel, well...some days that's a bit questionable. ;) I took the only relatively girly looking paper in the Little Sprout paper kit by Fancy Pants and made this tonight. It was a lot of fun.

I mentioned earlier this week that I was going to attempt the art of quilling. I even featured my friend, Melissa and her beautiful quilling work here. Her work inspired me to try and see if quilling had any future in my world of scrapping. Well, it was a bit of work, but it wasn't too bad. Of course, my meager butterfly doesn't even come close to the beauty of Melissa's work, but I'll let it stay on my layout. I found the pattern online by Antonella DeFalco. She has quite a few patterns that you can find here, should you decide to try this yourself.

Now, the fringe flowers, I also read about on Antonella's website. These were a lot of fun to do and suggest every one try them at least once. In the next couple days, I'll put up pictures and instructions on how I made the little ones.

And of course, bling! Lot's of bling! You'll notice in the picture above and below that cut around part of the flourish to overlap my photo. This is a perfect way to use some of those big patterned papers and not really lose it by trying to work around it.

Let me know if you decide to try quilling or fringe flowers. You can do it!

Let's hear it for the boys!

I am certainly not the huge whimsical scrapper but these past few weeks, I've awoken my inner cutesy and scrapped away. This was made using the adorable Fancy Pants line, Little Sprout, from Lil' Lambs Boutique. Look at how cute the monkey and lion are in this paper. Certainly very fitting paper for my cousins' children....ALL BOYS! What's up with that? I'm the lone holdout with two girls.

The journaling on the page reads: My girls don't stand a chance with all boy cousins. But at least they will never want for someone to play Prince Charming!

It's not often I get to make boy layouts. I'm all about the pinks and purples and bling, with two girls. There were some really cute patterns in this paper kit, so I decided to cut the top half of one paper, on a diagonal, and use some of the patterned paper for the bottom half. Instead of cutting a straight line, I used an exacto knife to cut out the rough outline on the diagonal. This helped the two papers to blend better instead of creating a harsh line.

You'll notice that I still had fun distressing up the cutsey paper. With time in the title and oodles of boys every where, I thought this the perfect opportunity to grab the gears and clock mask from Tim Holtz Idea-Ology. I used Peeled Paint Distress Ink to rub over the mask on the bottom. I used Broken China and Peeled Paint on top to create the gears, under the title. You can see the effect in the main layout up top.

I don't know if I'll ever get some girl cousins for my daughters. But if not I still have fun grabbing my boy stuff to do a layout every once in a while.

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!!!

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.