Pencil Lines Birthday Celebrations-Weekend Online Crop Day 2!

Happy Birthday Pencil Lines!!  It was so much fun purusing the sketch archive to find an older sketch and bring it back to life!  I chose to go with a sketch from November 2008.  This is sketch #112 by Claire Wheatley.  I had extra photos for this layout so I decided to stretch it into a two pager.  Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog!  I hope I was able to lend a little inspiration to your day!  Happy Scrapping!!!

Pencil Lines Birthday Celebrations-Weekend Online Crop!!

Well, I hope everyone has had fun today celebrating with Pencil Lines and participating in their online weekend crop!!  I created a new sketch in honor of Pencil Lines turning 3 and I feel very priviledged to have the chance to share it with you here!

Thanks for looking and visiting my blog!! I'll see you back here tomorrow to share some more inspiration with you!  Happy Scrapping!!!

Pencil Lines Birthday Celebrations-Weekend Online Crop!!

Well, I'm the end of the line here for Pencil Lines Birthday hop celebration.  The fun doesn't stop here though, we will be celebrating their birthday with a FREE online weekend crop to thank all the wonderful  readers and fans which starts tomorrow!

Midday Saturday they will start the online crop with some of your favorite past guest designers; from new sketches, to archive sketches and step by steps. There is something for everyone! Whether you are a digi scrapper, conventional paper scrapper, love mini books or even cards, they'll have something for you all!

There will be prizes up for grabs too from My Little Shoebox, Pink Paislee, May Arts, 3ndypapir and My Minds Eye to name a few! So don't forget to leave  your comments and maybe answer a trivia question or two while you hop along the way for your chance to win one of these awesome RAKS!!  Here's a sneak at one of the layouts I'll have to share with you during this fabulous weekend crop!!  Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon!!

Back Porch Memories November Guest Designer!

I am so happy to announce that I will be the November Guest Designer for Back Porch Memories!!  This is a great company with fabulous kits and a super friendly message board!!  You can check them out here.  Here is my winning layout for their Guest Designer contest.

New Kik-Art Desgin Team Member!!

I am so proud to announce that I have been chosen to be a part of the new 2009/2010 design team for Kiki-Art!!!  This is my first manufacturer design team position and I am just head over heels excited about this!!  Kiki-Art is a brand new company that was just released at CHA.  Kiki Art's goal is to create awareness about Scrapbooking in places that have not been reached before and to generate communication among different cultures so we can get to know each other better. This is a multi-lingual company based in Montreal with French, Spanish, and English speaking designers. Their product lines are full of fun colors and some of their products include paper, funtape, chipboard shapes and albums, and bling.  I can't wait to get started playing with Kiki-Art and sharing my creations with you!!!

Urban Anthology's Got Talent Challenge #3

I wanted to share with everyone my submission for the third week of Urban Anthology's Got Talent Design Team Search.  For this challenge we were required to create an orginal 12x12 sketch to use as our own inspiration, as well as use one or more of the following words in our title:  Direction, Nurture, Strength, Time.  I chose to do a two page sketch and use nurture and time in my title "Nurture Time Together."

If you like what you see head on over to Urban Anthology's Blog and show me some love by voting for me!  Thanks!!

Scrap-Friendzy's Birthday Blog Hop Challenges #1 & #2

I don't know about anyone else, but I sure am having fun completing Scrap-Friendzy's Birthday Blog Hop challenges! Here is my take on Tammi's challenge #1 using three patterned papers, bling, and something old.

And Cheryl's challenge #2 was to use an advertising slogan for your title. I chose to use the slogan “Flaunt Your Style” by Lee Jeans. The pictures of my daughter helping to pack for a trip to her Nana and Papa’s was perfect for this title. She kept putting my underwear over her head and making quite the fashion statement…..and yes they were clean undies! LOL!! I hope you’re having fun with these challenges and don’t forget to share them in our Birthday Challenge gallery and earn your friendz points!

Scrap-Friendzy's Birthday Blog Hop!!

Welcome to the 4th stop on our Birthday Blog Hop!!  I'm so thrilled to have you here on my blog to share my challenge with you and give you another chance to earn yourself some awesome party favors!!   I hope you've had a chance to visit the previous three stops on our blog hop. 

October 10th will be the last day of the hop so keep visiting Scrap-Friendzy  each evening to find out which design team blog to visit next.

Also, make sure you leave me a comment and again at each stop to get your name in the drawing for an awesome prize. If you visit and comment on all 10 blogs for the 10 days of the birthday blog hop, your name will be entered 10 times.

At Scrap-Friendzy we have a point system called friendz points. For each challenge that you complete, you will earn FPZ which could earn you another great prize at the end of the month! Play along with my challenge and earn yourself 25 FPZ!

You have until October 31st to finish these blog hop challenges. All you have to do is upload your challenge creation to the scrap-friendzy gallery in the October 2009 album and to the October challenge forum 

Now, let's keep this party rolling!!  Every birthday deserves a card, so my challenge for you is to create a birthday card incorporating glitter and wax drips.  Here is my card......

I used my Sizzix machine to cut out this darling cupcake. I cut out two pieces for the cup so that I could fold one with accordian folds to pop it up a bit. Then I did some inking and later I applied some Crystal Effects to the cake area to make it look glossy.

To make your wax drippings all you have to do is simply hold a match or lighter to a piece of crayon.  Sorry Kiersten, I had to raid your crayon stash! You can either drip directly onto your project or if that makes you squemish you can drip your wax onto a piece of wax paper and then when cool, lift it off and glue to your project. I added wax to my cherry and also melted wax over a pin to look like a candle. Have fun playing with your fire, but please be careful, we don't want any singed fingers!!

Thanks for partying with me!!!  Don't forget to leave a comment and check back in at Scrap-Friendzy tomorrow to see where to go next!!  Party on!!!

Happy World Card Making Day!!

Urban Anthology's Got Talent Challenge # 2

Challenge #2 made it a lot of fun to dig through some old supplies. Creating my own embellishments was also a great part of the challenge! In this, “Got Mail?”, layout I used several different techniques which made it hard to decide which one to share my tutorial on. To start off, however, I’ll share with you how I stretched my supplies.

I had this sheet of die cut paper by Making Memories. I really wanted to make use of the stamp cut border as it went with my postal theme, but I didn’t want to lose the center of the paper by covering it up with what else I had planned for my layout. I cut out the center of my patterned paper so that I just had the die cut stamp border. I used the center piece I cut out to mat my photos, and I cut out the little flowery vines.

I placed a piece of vellum that I never thought I’d use in the center of the frame and I then used a plain piece of kraft colored cardstock which I tore the edges of. The torn edges of that cardstock were to become one of my handmade embellishments, although I didn’t know it at the time. As I played around with my scrap strips of paper I thought they sort of looked like rosebuds if I rolled them up and then squashed them. Add some ink, paint, and stickles and I’ve got pretty cool embellishments out of something I’d normally throw away!

Next I chose to use an envelope on my layout which was very much on the cheap since who doesn’t have one of those on hand! To make my own wax seal, I melted a piece of crayon with my embossing gun and then immediately pressed a metal embellishment into the wax. I don’t know why I had these metal embellishments. I don’t really like to use them since they can be rather heavy, but this was a great way to get some use out of them! After the wax had cooled, I put a bit of paint on my seal and then wiped it off and I was left with just paint in the crevices to add extra definition.

The last technique I’d like to share is one that’s lots of fun. If you have kids you might have some of this product lying around. Do you have a set of alphabet stamps that you love, but always find they are too big to use on your layouts? I sure do! So what do you do? You shrink ‘em!!! I had fun playing with some shrinky- dink paper. You must first make sure to sand your shrink paper in order to give it some tooth for your paint or ink to adhere. I took some foam stamps and dipped them in acrylic paint, let them dry, and then cut them out. Next you can either shrink them with your embossing gun (I tried this and had troubles with them blowing away on me) or use your oven. If you place them in the oven, here’s a tip: place a piece of parchment paper over the top while they shrink. This keeps them from curling up and sticking to themselves. As you can see in my photos, my letters shrank quite a bit and became the perfect size for my layout and they lent a cool 3D effect. While I was at it, I also cut out a frame with my Sizzix and shrank that to make a neat clear button to tie onto my envelope.