Fall is my favorite season!!

Tammy, from Lil' Lambs Boutique, sent me the Basic Grey Indian Summer Deluxe Kit of the month. What fun items she packed into this kit. All the rich colors of Fall, in the papers, got me to thinking about how much I love the Fall Season. Although there are a lot of leaves to contend with, what joy and pleasure I get out of seeing God painting the trees first. Reds, Oranges, Yellows...I love them all.

Every Fall, our family takes a vacation to the mountains. If we hit the week just right, we're in peak season of fall foliage. Although, even if we're off by a week, it's still great to see the trees start to change and turn more colorful as each day passes of our vacation. Below is a picture of the "fire trees" as we call them. These are 2 trees that we watch every year on our vacation. When the sun hits them just right, they look like they're on fire. They are so beautiful. I told my husband that if we ever moved to a place where we needed to plant some trees, we would have to wait until Fall to pick them, so we would know what colors they would be. :)

If you've been following my blog, you know I've been on a new technique kick for the last month or so. It's been great learning to make new and different things. I wish my brain could come up with all of these. Alas, it often can't so I'll just share with you where I found them.

Below I made a flower called a LeFleur Flower. The instructions on how they are made can be found here. Aren't they cool looking? Extra patterned paper can be used to make wonderful coordinating flowers for your layouts. For an extra boost to my 3 flowers, I added Rock Candy Crackle Paint to them. Not only do they have the shine, but now they have the crackled effect to boot.

I love Crackle Paint and my collection of colors is rapidly increasing. Tammy certainly helped me out by adding some Antique Bronze Crackle paint to the kit. So I decided to make some Antique Bronze leaves.

First, I printed out a picture of a leaf shape from clip art. I carefully cut around the edge lines, leaving the middle in place, so I could create a mask. Second, I lay the mask directly on my layout and then brushed on the Crackle Paint. I lifted the mask very slowly and then let it dry. Third, I used some makeup sponges and different shades of Distress Ink to fill in the inside. Finally, I added some Rock Candy Crackle Paint (clear) on top to finish it off.

Something else to notice in the photo below is my reverse distressed edges. Instead of tearing the outside paper of my layout, I created a distressed edge on scrap paper. I laid the paper onto my layout a bit from the edge and then used sponges to add the Distress Ink. Now I have a "torn edge" but I still have a square layout.

What season do you enjoy the most and why?

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.

Prima, Prima, Everywhere!!!

All you Prima loving people out there...this layout is for you!!! Outside of the brads and ribbon, everything on this layout is from Prima Marketing, Inc. I love that company! Lil' Lambs Boutique is carrying these wonderful Prima Stitched page kits and luscious flowers. Isn't it divine!

These are my two princesses at their very first Princess Tea Party. Oh my, you'd thought they went to heaven. The day came complete with a runway walk for each Princess, a brunch, a Princess Story Time and dessert afterwards. They are STILL talking about it.



I put in close ups of the two pages so you could see the Prima kits closer. This page is a Scraplift of ~Robbie~ from My Creative Scrapbook. It's lift a designer week. She has a wonderful bow tutorial here that I followed to make my double bow on the left. I used the masking technique to make my title this time. I printed the title on a piece of cardstock and then carefully cut out only the title portion, leaving the rest. I layed the mask directly on my paper and then sponged on several colors of Distress Ink by Ranger. It turned out pretty nice and is just another different way of doing your title work.



And then page 2, because there are just too many pictures from a Princess Tea Party. I decided to cut my Prima stitched page in half so I'd have coordinating paper on both pages. Thanks for looking and go get your Prima on!!

When the 50th isn't common anymore

So I just got home this weekend from my in-laws house, where we celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I love to hear of the big anniversaries like this, because they are so far and few between in our world of "irreconcilable differences." To celebrate, I gathered my favorite paper, Basic Grey and my favorite embellishments, Tim Holtz/Ranger products and got to work.




If you haven't gathered from this post, you will soon enough...I'm a distressing addict. I confess. Distressing is a wonderful tool to add dimension to your project. Don't be afraid to add a masked image over top of a busy patterned paper. If you choose a color ink to use on your mask that is already part of the patterned paper, you'll get a more natural look, as if it were already there (notice the clock image above).



These Idea-ology items from Ranger are so fun to play with. I grabbed some grunge board items here and used crackle paint to give an antiqued look finishing off with some Perfect Pearls for the edges.







Don't forget to pop up some of your embellishments with foam for more depth. Make your own die cuts by stamping an image and then cutting it out. If you have not learned to use a swivel exacto knife, I promise you, it will become one of your favorite tools. Give it a try.

Here I used the same mask as on the front, except did a reverse embossing. I used Versamark ink to cover the areas surrounding the mask and then embossed with clear embossing powder to give a reversed embossed effect.