Oct. 5th Wednesday layout sneak peek

When I went in to the LSS a couple of days ago, the owner asked if I would do another layout for their Wednesday Make & Take. It's a Make & Take where the customers purchase the supplies, and they get the instructions and a free element. They can put together the layout in the crop room, which is why it's called a Make & Take. Since I was already planning to do a leaf jumping page for photos of these little cuties, I said yes and spent some time doing up this layout. One of the papers is a Karen Foster (left side, base page), the other patterned papers are new ones by Reminisce, from their Harvest line. The 3D stickers are Reminisce, too, and the paper leaves are by Bazzill. The free element is the little ticket shaped tag in the lower right corner. It's actually a "topper" from the Cricut Cupcake Wrappers Lite cartridge.

Back to doing Make & Take projects--here is September's

The gal who took over doing the monthly Make & Take projects during the summer won't be doing them anymore. So I'm back to doing them again. Above is the one I designed for September. The shaped card was made by folding the paper in half and die-cutting it with the fold just INSIDE the cutting line on one side. It's a Tim Holtz die, and the center is the matching Movers & Shapers die which was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder. The leaf is a Spellbinders die. I have no idea who made the stamp set that I used for the sentiment, and that is strange. Normally I keep the package header with the stamp set, but it wasn't there. I also have no idea who made the paper used to cut the card base. It's some kind of map style paper, but I liked the colors and the pattern gave it a textured look. Pumpkin Spice colored chalk in was used to chalk the leaf. Chestnut Roan was used to shade the edges of the center shape and stamp the sentiment.

I was asked to design a layout for the weekly Make & Take page that customers can come in and do at the LSS. The new layout is available each Wednesday, and this one is for tomorrow. I used the Kaiser Blae & Ivy collection. The die-cut flourish was a Sizzix die. The flowers are a mix of Kaiser and Bazzil, with Pebbles Pearl Candy Dots at the centers. Thickers were used to do the title.

I designed the layout using photos of my son and his girlfriend, which will be added after I get my layout back in a week.

2010 July 4th layout, tweaked and finished

I did some tweaking to the cluster (shown in the July 23rd post), as well as the rest of the left side of the layout. The title is my own creation, as is the label that backs it. However, the cut label is very similar to the printed label that I was originally going to use for journaling. I ended up doing hidden journaling again. The heart shape just above the top left photo of the right page is actually the top of the journal tag. The photo corners were punched twice: once with the corner pattern of stars, and once with the corner punch centered over the corner stars that had been punched. I hope that makes sense. The firework die cut added to the cluster is a Cricut design from the Stand & Salute cartridge. I used Stickles on it to glitz it up. I added some stars cut from my graphics design program, some buttons, and a little more journaling to finish it off. There are an additional two pages that are part of this four page layout, but I'm not sure if I'll post them or not.

Playing with Mudd Puddles

At least a couple of years ago at GASC, I discovered an interesting product called Mudd Puddles. Basically, it's a little jar with sand in it, with glue mixed in. There are different colors of sand you can buy, because beaches can vary considerably in color and makeup.

You spread Mudd Puddles on your chipboard/cardstock (or whatever you want) for texture. Now you can get it with tiny seashells, too. Above is a title I made today for a beach layout. The layout is still in progress, but I'm pretty happy with the title. Besides Mudd Puddles, I used Glossy Accents to give a shine on the upper part of the letters, to make one think of water, like waves lapping on the sand.

Layout: 4th of July 2010

Sorry about the fuzziness of the picture.

The above is what will be the left side of the

first two pages of a four page layout.

Below is a close up of the embellishment cluster.

This is the first time I've tried this trend.

It's also the first time I've used tickets on a layout. The tickets were stamped with an Inkadinkadoo clear stamp set. The inside designs on the tickets were stamped with Studio G stamps. The flourish behind the rosette is a Sizzix die cut. The rosette is the Tim Holtz rosette. I created the tiny pinwheel by hand, since it's so easy, and I wanted a little something more. I don't know who made the flag button. It came from my stash.

The papers are from Best Creation Inc: I Love/Heart America designs. I found them at the LSS a month or so ago, and they seemed perfect for my 4th of July 2010 pictures.

Yes, I'm behind. Big time.

The other 3 pages will coordinate with this one and will have

a mixture of family and fireworks photos.

I'll try to update with the full four page layout when done.

Layout: Cherry Blossoms

In the spring I found this lovely cherry blossom paper at the LSS. It's by Paper House. Since we usually go as a family to see the cherry blossoms in DC every year, I went ahead and bought it in the hopes that we would go again this year. Depending on how the paper is oriented, you get a different pattern of the blossoms. It has a stone background, so while it can be turned a quarter of a turn, it doesn't look quite as nice that way.

I don't usually do "fussy cutting" very often, but I did for this layout. I'd gotten all my photos adhered to the paper when I realized that I'd made a mistake in both the fussy cutting and picture placement. I didn't know if I could get any more of the paper, so I tried swapping the positions of the paper. The two layouts below were how all the pages were supposed to look, and the lack of variety across the 4 page layout had bothered me a little. With my mistake, I ended up swapping left and right pages, so the left ended up on the right, and vice versa. That's when I got the lovely spray of cherry blossoms going through the middle.

I don't know if you can see in the photo, but I cut out some of the individual cherry blossoms from an extra sheet of the paper, and I popped the blossoms on top of the cherry blossoms of the background paper, which gave it a little dimension. The bottom two pages don't have the popped blossoms added to them yet, but I've included them anyway so that you can see how a "mistake" turned out nicer than the layout had been originally planned. I'll add the flowers to the second pages the next time I go to crop with one of my scrapping friends, but I didn't want to wait to show the layout till then.

The stickers on the journal mats were given to me by a dear scrapping friend. I hadn't originally planned to use them, but they added a very nice touch, too. The stickers are by EK Success.

All in all, it's a simple layout using really old techniques, but I'm happy with it.