Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Blue Jar Craze

Hand Stamped Sentiments is going crazy for blue jars this week!




Now if you are a Pinterest addict like myself, you know these are ultra-popular.  This week I made a (simple) card, but when it comes to my card style I'd say I'm a CAS kinda girl.

This photo stinks royally!  My photo editing software is not letting me save and you can tell I usually crop and help the image color.  (I may work on it again today, but as of last night I gave up!)

Anyways, I went with the Perfectly Preserved set and framelits.   I stamped with Staz On onto vellum and then colored the jar using a blender pen and Tempting Turquoise ink.  I stamped the stems directly on the white to make it look like they are in the jar.

Short post tonight.  Life has gotten crazy busy with the girl's activities and this week they are all switched around because it's homecoming. Hope you all have a great week and be sure to hop over and see what the rest of the team has created!

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Scrapping Backwards

Confession 1:  I have never used the technique that is this week's challenge at Hand Stamped Sentiments.  (I know...you're not shocked.




Confession 2:  I designed the layout-colors and all before having a picture....TOTALLY backwards for me, but I love how it all turned out.

After I read the tutorial, I headed to my craft room with the intention of taking out the Woodgrain embossing folder...but then the Chevron one was sitting by my Big Shot and I thought why not.  Since I didn't know what it was going to look like and I didn't know what I was going to scrap, I took out Real Red ink and thought this may be fun to do a Rainbow layout.  This has to be my favorite color combo--how can you go wrong with a rainbow?!?!

So I ended up with these six pieces and then headed to my photos---please if you are just starting scrapbooking, do not follow my lead.  I was getting a bit nervous until I ran across this photo from this year's MN State Fair.  The girls had already gotten their fair-do's and had on their (hideous) "cool dude" shoes and I thought with this much color in the photo, these pieces would work perfectly!

Little Farm Hands is an area where children can learn the workings of a farm and then sell their products at the market and get a little treat at the end.  It has been one of my favorite things to do every year...and I'm starting to think this may be my last year.  Linnea was one of the biggest kids there, and Kendall didn't want to ride on the little pedal tractors.  I have scrapped many of these pages and I thought I'd change it up with NO farm animals on it, so I went with a butterfly as I hadn't inked up this set yet.  I did so on the First Edition DSP as I had some sitting on my desk.

I'll leave you with a closer view.  I really enjoyed this technique and can't wait to play with it and some new folders.  Be sure to check out what the other designers have come up with!


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

ABC's

It's theme week at Hand Stamped Sentiments and I can't tell you how excited I was to see the theme after failing miserably on last week's colors.




The best thing with the theme is I'm back to scrapping!  I'm sure you can guess where I took this....back to school pictures.   I can happily report we all did fine.  Kendall is enjoying Kindergarten and wishing she went everyday, Linnea is getting the hang of third grade and all the new responsibilities of their planners, Erik is adjusting attitudes in regards to his students thinking he's going be just like the previous teacher, and I enjoyed my first week but yesterday I began filling out an application to sub.  I loved staying home with my girls, but I really do have that desire to get back into a classroom.  Anyways, here are my pageS!

I had an idea almost immediately!  Masking is so big right now and I'm loving Stampin' Up new spritzer spray bottles.  I took an old Stampin' Up alphabet chipboard piece and punched out the letters I hadn't used and used that for my mask.  Here's a photo of it:

I used some alligator clips to hold it down, but clearly not enough and the spray "fuzzed" a bit.  I loved the look, Linnea informed me that I messed up.  For her's I used Real Red and for Kendall's I used Tempting Turquoise.  After I removed the mask, I lightly spritzed the background--I laid them on my kitchen table and stood on a chair and sprayed from way up high.  I was going for a really light mist and that worked perfect.

Here are some closer ups of the cluster portion of their pages:

Linnea's shirt was shiny so I threw on a silver glitter banner.  I crimped the largest window frame to give it some texture, forgot we axed that too :(  Then I just started building.  I had a piece of Whisper White that had been embossed with the Chevron folder sitting on my desk (it was a dejected piece from last week) so I cut it down and carefully brayed Night of Navy ink on it.  The folded star is all over Pinterest and goes with her shirt.  Thought it needed a little button tied with some dyed Real Red bakers twine I had in my drawer.  The 3 is from the new dies, but I used retired ones for the rd, miss the size of those ones!  Then I used our new Silver pen to finish.

Kendall's is much the same.  I had to bring out the Concord Crush, I miss that purple, as it best matched her backpack.  I also ended up using some Baja Breeze seam binding as the Tempting Turquoise ribbon I had seemed too bright.

I can't wait to see what the others have come up with!  Go take and look, and see what you can create using our theme-I'd love to check it out!

Monday, September 3, 2012

More Circles

It's color challenge week at Hand Stamped Sentiments and most of the time these are my favorite, but for some reason I really struggled.  Take a look:




This has been a crazy week: school open houses and a quick end of summer trip to WI so I didn't get to a layout but I did come up with a birthday card I'll need soon....which happens to have more circles.  Here it is:

The images are from "A Fitting Occasion."  It's a really simple card, but again those are usually my style.

I added a phrase to the inside from "Bring on the Cake."

Today is a big day for our house! My husband starts his job teaching in a new school district after 10 years at his previous one.  L is now a third grader and my K is finally a kindergartener ...finally in her eyes, not in lonely mom's.  Happy school year to all of you.