Faves of 2009

Now that 2009 is drawing to a close I wanted to share some of my favorite projects that I have done this year.  Some have been on my blog before and others haven't.  Here they are in no particular order.

This is a LO of me with my fur baby.  I made a mini album on the lo and I just loved how the blocking turned out.

 

This was the first layout I did for my Grandma's gift album.  I love how it turned out and it really set the tone for the rest of the album.

 

This is possibly my favorite wedding page I have done.  I love the grungeboard flourish with the fabric covering it.

 

I am pretty sure this is my favorite layout ever (of mine at least).  Something clicked when I was making it and it just turned out right.

 

My first altered box and I love it.

 

This is my favorite card I have ever made.

 

My best friend playing piano at my wedding.  I really think this layout does him justice.  I wanted to make it special because the gift he gave us by playing so beautifully was just so special to us. 

I hope you all have a safe and happy new year.

Blog Giveaway at Wild West Scrap Divas Blog

Go check out the awesome Wild West Scrap Divas Blog to enter for a chance to win some awesome Tim Holtz blog candy!  Usually I don't post other blog giveaways on mine, but it is Tim Holtz stuff!  Gotta spread the word of Holtz.

The end of the Hanukkah Album

My grandmother's Hanukkah album is finally finished and in her hands.  I gave it to about a week ago and she loved it.  Her eyes got misty when she saw it.  It was completely worth all the effort it took to make it.  I told her that since I didn't have many photos that she could give me as many more as she wanted and I would be happy to scrap them for her and add them to her album.  I even left some space in the album for more layouts.  Anyway here are the final 2 layouts that I did.

This one is a photo of my great grand parents at one of their anniversaries.  It must have been a special one since there was the beautiful cake.  My granmother, all her siblings, and their spouses are in the photo as well.  I used the Basic Grey Porcelain line for this layout.  I have been saving this paper for something special for awhile now.  It is so soft and pretty I thought it would be perfect for an anniversary layout. 

This second layout is a photo of my grandmother's family when she was about 2 or 3 years old.  I used the September Scarlet Lime kit for this page.  I had been saving the beautiful rose, stamped tag, and different lace and ribbons for this layout.  I really wanted to create a very layered effect.  I am not sure I pulled it off 100% though.  I still feel something is missing from it. 

Holiday Projects

I was really excited to come up with some projects this week at Frosted Designs.  Our challenge this week is to come up with a Holiday project for the December Holidays.  Since we have been in dire need of holiday decorations at our house this year I decided to make a Happy Holidays banner  for my first project.  I decided on Happy Holidays because we are a blended family and we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas along with the New Years holiday.  Keeping with that I kept the colors more wintery than holiday specific. 

My Bosskut Gazelle was integral to this project.  I used it to cut out the snowflake, alphas, bows, smaller snowflakes, and ornaments.  Once I got everything cut out I set to work assembling each letter block.  Each letter is mounted on a 4x4 piece of cardstock.  Then the large snowflake sits on top of that and finally comes the letter.   On the large snowflakes I used a decorative flourish stamp to create swirls all over the snowflake.  After I used this technique on the altered box I made for the Hanukkah swap I was in I just can't stop.  It looks so good! Each snowflake I tried to stamp in a little different pattern so that each one was individual like real snowflakes. Then I inked the edges of the letters lightly with black soot Distress ink and on the tops of the letters I used icicle Stickles to create an icicle effect on the letters (I got the idea from Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas).Finally I added some little die cuts that I cut using my Bosskut, some more Stickles, and some bling.  I attached the letters using two different white ribbon I had and some brads.  I am really happy with how it turned out and it looks great in our living room.  Here is a close up of some of the letters.

My second project this week is an altered canvas that I made.  Homemade is a theme for our Christmas gifts this year.  With the tough times and a recent budget that my husband and I put ourselves on we wanted to make every dollar we spent really count this year for the holidays.  SO we went to Hobbly Lobby and bought a few canvases with 40% off coupons and voila!  You have $5 gifts that are awesome!  This canvas is for my step grandmother-in law.  She loves vintage and handmade crafts. 

Fist I took the canvas and used Tim Holtz red pepper and gold alcohol inks for the backgrounds.  I used the December Swirlydoos kit for the papers, shaped template and the poinsettia design.  I distressed and inked the paper using vintage photo Distress ink.  Then I stamped and embossed the flourishes using a Tim Holtz stamp and a Zing embossing powders with a glitter and metallic finish.  Then I used the bracket doodling template that was included in the kit to make the half bracket and the little sun ray design.  I stenciled the words.  For the poinsettia chipboard I used the red pepper alcohol ink for the flower portion and the covered the leaves in green Stickles.  Finally I added some dimensional gift stickers and I mixed perfect pearls silver and gold powders with water and flicked them onto the canvas for a bit of a sparkly snow effect.  Here is another view of the project.

Scalloped project

I can't believe it, but it has taken me nearly a week to get this up!  This past week our challenge for the week over at Frosted Designs is to create a project with scallops on it. Here is my take.

These are photos of my husband and I playing at the park.  We went to an AWESOME new park for my niece's 6th birthday.  I used some Scenic Route papers and Bazzill shaped cardstock for the papers.  I also used a healthy dose of Black Soot Distress ink on this.  Would a layout be mine without inking on it?  Of course not.  I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the alphas.

Visit Frosted Designs tomorrow to see our new weekly challenge and check me out here to see my take on it.  I promise to get it posted and I am really excited about this one!

Trash the Dress (TTD)

On thing that I was so excited to do (and most people thought I was crazy for) was to trash my wedding dress.  It has become a new trend in for brides to trash their dresses after the wedding.  You go out with a photographer to a location and take interesting and fun photos of you in your dress.  They can be at the beach, in the woods, at a junk yard, in an urban setting.  Pretty much anywhere. 

This is where most people ask "Why in the world would you want to trash a dress you spent so much money on?"  Well I will help allay some fears by saying that most people get their dress wet or a little dirty, but there is no permanent damage.  It usually cleans up nicely.  My dress got wet, muddy, and grass stained, but once I sprayed it down with a hose almost all of it came off.  It still needs to be professionally cleaned but it looks pretty good still.  So why did I do trash the dress photos?  I think they are amazing photos.  They are so fun and edgy and different.  I am a sucker for cool photography.  Plus I am never going to wear the dress again so why not!

After months of sitting on my photos I have slowly started working on the layouts.  So far I have three done (one I already posted on here, but I will post it again) and I have about 14 more to go.  I am doing a 8x8 album of just my TTD photos.  I decided to keep a semi-cohesive look through the entire album (something I rarely do) and I am using the paper line Sultry by Basic Grey.  It is feminine and pretty and also slightly edgy and fun too.  Plus the name is PERFECT for TTD photos.

This is the first layout I did for the album.  I handmade the flowers using a folding technique.  I started with white circles inked one side orange and the other pink, then I embossed them in my cuttlebug and inked the raised areas with bronze metallic ink.  Then came all the folding!  These bugger take forever, but they are well worth it.  The squares along the top are just 1 inch cut from different patterned papers and the distressed and inked.  The final touch was stamping layered flourishes around the border of the photo.  I am standing in the middle of a stream in Colorado in MAY which means it is COLD!!!  Nothing like freezing your butt off for some great photos.

This was my second layout.  I already posted it because I did it as design team work for Frosted Designs.  It was our first challenge to have ink or chalk on every piece of paper on the layout.  The design of this is fairly simple.  I used multiple staggered mats and then added some cut out flowers from pattered paper on pop dots.  Finally I finished it all off with a Prima Say it in Crystals Bling flourish that I cut into three pieces and stamped the corners using a Tim Holtz stamp.  This is one of my favorite photos.  It is actually a candid shot.  I wasn't posing.  I was just trying to figure out how the heck to get my dress over the branch without ripping it.

My final layout that I have complete so far was for a Scrap your Avatar Challenge on scrapbook.com.  This photo happened to be my avatar so it gave me a good excuse to scrap it.  It is hard to see, but I started out with the background by using a glimmer screen and tattered leather and graphite glimmer mist.   It gave a nice graininess to the background.  Then I just started layering papers and playing around.  It is pretty typical of my scrapping style.  It has staggered mats, bling and things hand cut from printed paper.  After writing this I am starting to feel that maybe my style needs a little bit of a shakeup to get me out of my rut.  What do you think?

Crazy life

Life has been pretty crazy lately.  I have been super busy at work and home lately.  I have a few blog posts that I have been wanting to get up, but just haven't had the time.  I will get a new one up some time later this week.  Friday at the latest!

More from the gift album

I have been plugging away at my grandma's Hanukkah gift album.  I have a few more completed pages that I wanted to share.  I still have three more pages to go, but I am well on my way to finishing them.  The first is of a photo of my grandmother's family during a Seder dinner.  My grandfather is at the dinner as well.  This occurred while they were dating so when my grandma was 17 or 18 years old.  I used the September Scarlet Lime kit for this layout.  I used a lot of Tim Holtz Black Soot Distress ink for inking, stamping and distressing on this layout.

The second layout that I have to share is a photo of my grandma as a little girl with her siblings.  The photo was taken when she was probably 2 or 3 years old.  They are either at the beach or at a park on a summer day and they are posed with several puppies.  This layout I did for the ABC (UVW) challenge on scrapbook.com.  The letters were Uneven - you had to use an uneven number of photos, layers of paper, embellishments, etc.  I used 9 layers of paper, 1 photo, I embossed in 3 places and I used Stickles in 5 places  Vanilla - you had to use the color vanilla on the layout.  I used Zing Vanilla embossing powder on the layout.  Warm- the photo had to be of warm weather or sometime when it was warm.

Same Shape in Varying Sizes.

Phew it has been awhile since I blogged.  It has been kind of a crazy couple of weeks and I just didn't have the time or the motivation to do much crafting.  Things thankfully are starting to settle down and I am and getting back into the groove.

This week at Frosted Designs we had a really fun challenge.  You are supposed to use the same shape in varying sizes on a layout, card or other project.  I decided to use to make a layout and I used a scalloped circle in three sizes as the background of my layout.

I used my Bosskut Gazelle to cut the circles.  I just made a circle and then used the scissor edge tool in funtime to add the scallops.  I started with the largest circle first and after each cut I made it a little smaller.  For the papers I used a lot of Basic Grey.  The background paper, the orange circle and all the paper matting the photo are Basic Grey papers.  The brown paper is just cardstock that I inked with white and bronze inks and then added some bling .  For the title I used two different types of Thickers.  The word wedding was originally white.  I used turquoise and tattered leather Glimmer Mist to add some color to it.  Finally the butterflies are Tim Holtz Grungeboard from the Nature collection.  I inked them with broken china distress ink and then I embossed them with pewter Zing Metallic embossing powder and then added some bling. 

Paper Tearing

This week at Frosted Design the challenge is paper tearing.  This is one of my favorite techniques.  It is so versatile and can be used on so many different styles of projects.  Usually I use paper tearing on my more distressed projects, but there is plenty of room for it on brighter and cuter projects as well.  I made two projects this week.  The first is another layout for my grandmother's gift album for Halloween.  This is a photo of her with her sister.  I believe it was taken at my dad's cousin's wedding reception, but I am not 100% sure. 

This layout I wanted a more vintage look so I went pretty heavy on the distressing.  I also used a lot of rub-ons on this layout.  They are layered almost everywhere!  Most of the items on this layout were from the October Mosh Posh kit.  A technique that I tried on this layout and I am really happy with is instead of only inking the background I took black diamond Stickles and put it on the layout in various places and then I rubbed it in with a paper towel.  It gives it a gritty, but sparkly effect.

My second project was to make place cards for my nieces and nephews for Thanksgiving. My nieces and nephews absolutely love when I make things for them.  They get so excited to have things with their own names on them.

 

I got the papers and the chipboard pumpkins from the November Mosh Posh kit.  I stamped and hand cut out the leaves and acorns for the cluster at the top.   

Brown Orange and Teal

I am pretty behind with this post, but awhile back at Frosted Designs we were tasked with making a project in brown, orange and teal ONLY!  I love that color combination so I was really excited to work on this challenge.  Well at least I was until I realized that while I had tons of paper with those colors, I didn't have any with ONLY those colors.  That was when I had a mini panic attack for like a minute.  Once it was over I breathed deeply and realized "Hey I can make my own patterned paper out of cardstock!"  My first project was a layout. 

I found a few different sheets of card stock in my desired colors and got out my stamps and ink pads.  I used stamps on several of the papers and on a few I broke out my Cuttlebug and the embossing folders and embossed a few and then inked the raised portions of the paper.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed getting to play around and create my own design.  Once I was done I moved on to a card.

 

Once again I used plain cardstock for all of this and added stamping.  The blue and brown swirly paper actually started as white cardstock.  I saturated it in turquoise Glimmer Mist and then put down a glimmer screen and layered on tattered leather Glimmer Mist.  I really love the effect it gave. 

Sketchy fun!

Over at Frosted Design we try to give you a little bit of inspiration every month in the form of a sketch.  This month Meg, one of the site creators and moderators, came up with this awesome sketch.

She was going for a quilted look on the background which I totally love!  I was really excited about this sketch and I had a lot of fun creating a layout to go with it. 

As usual my layout tend to go in a slightly different direction then when I start them.  I was planning on the blocking of the background, but I wanted to use lacing on this without actually lacing all the blocks together (that would just have taken WAY too much time).  So I got the idea to make the background look like a quilt that was in need of a little repair and that had been haphazardly reconnected in places.  The rest of the layout took on a life of its own after that.  I used Basic Grey Marrakech and lots of Distress ink for this layout.  The alpha stickers are Thickers as is the jouranling spot. 

Altering madness

Recently I have had the chance to participate in a really fun and huge Hanukkah swap at scrapbook.com
(Hopefully my swap buddy doesn't read my blog)  It has been so fun and thinking of 8 gifts to make for my buddy has really pushed me outside of my comfort zone when it comes to scrapping.  Altering has always been something I have wanted to try, but hadn't gotten around to yet.  I had altered a few canvases before, but that was the extent of it.  Plus I had never gotten the chance to use Mod Podge and I was dying to try it out. 

My first use of it was on an altered canvas.  I started out painting the background with Star of David Masks.  Then I added a light layer of silver paint over that to give it a misty look.  Then I used my cuttlebug to make a ton of die cuts.  Archiver's has an awesome set of Hanukkah Quickutz dies.  They are exclusively sold by Archiver's so I felt REALLY lucky that I have one near me to get it  I adhered the die cuts using my ATG adhesive gun and then added several layers of Mod Podge.  I think it turned out really fun and festive.

My next project I was super excited to try, but so afraid to start!  I wanted to create an altered box, because my buddy said that she loves boxes and little storage containers.  I went to Hobby Lobby and found this really pretty wooden box for only $4!  Then I added a few pieces of glittery patterned paper that I found at Archiver's any yet again my Hanukkah die cuts.   First I painted the box white using some house paint we had.  Then I used silver Tim Holtz alcohol ink to add some silver stripes and I inked the metal hinges and hardware with silver to give them a bit of a distressed feel to them. 

My first thought was to use a grid or blocks for the top of the box.  For the stars I cut them out using silver cardstock.  Then I look a pretty swirly decorative stamp (any will do) and stamped over the die cut so it was covered in bits of swirls.  THEN I covered those in crystal and black diamond Stickles. I am really happy with the result.  After all of that I went with an alternating blue and black design on the sides and on the front I added a few bling circles. 

All in all I am very pleased with how this turned out.  My husband even asked me to make one for him. 

Gift Album

For Hanukkah I am making a gift album for my grandmother. I received the scanned images of quite a few photos from the first half of my grandmother's life when her sister passed away. I have been wanting to make her an album so I though now would be the perfect time.

My goal for this album is to have a piece of art. I want the album to be very intricate and very vintage. I don't know most of the dates or the stories behind many of the photos so I am going to give my grandmother journaling cards to write about the photos and then I will adhere those to the backs of the layouts. I don't want to lose the stories behind all these photos.

When I got the September Scarlet Lime kit I immediately got the inspiration to make the album. The kit is full of rich colors, vintage papers and wonderful accents. I ordered the photos and I have started my work. So far I only have two of the nine layouts that I plan to make done.

This first page started with a photo of my grandmother (left), her mother (center), and her sister. I found the photo so striking and stylish that I really wanted to create a layout to match it. I started with the black and red papers and built on it from there. I used a lot of layering with my papers, embellishments and stamps. Finally I pulled out the Stickles to cover the title alphas and the add accents to the layout. I am very happy with how my first layout turned out and I think my grandmother will really like it.

The second page I completed has a photo of my grandmother with her immediate family. This photo was taken when she was around 12 or 13. My original intention for the album was to use the same colors through out the album, but for some reason when doing this page I kept gravitating to the pinks, grays and browns or the Basic Grey infuse line. I hand cut the flowers from on of the patterned papers from that line. For the background I used Tim Holtz masks, Black soot distress inks, and I layered a ton of older rub-ons that I had. Then came the bling. I did this layout for the bling challenge over at Frosted Designs. I added tons of Prima Say It In Crystals bling and a lot of Stickling over the details on the layout. It is hard to see all the glitter in the photo, but in real life this layout really shines.

Scrap Pack

Whenever the challenge is held I like to join the Scrap Pack challenge on scrapbook.com. It is a really fun challenge that really pushes your creativity. You get a pack of items in the mail from the hostess and you have to use all of the items on a layout. The items in the pack are both traditional and non-traditional scrapbooking items. Once you get the pack you can use all the paper, ink, or paint that you want, but you can't add any additional embellishments that you don't make out of paper.

This layout was for the October 2009 Scrap Pack challenge. I am happy to say that this one actually one the challenge this month. I was very excited about that. In October our kit consisted of:

A square of brown felt.
A square of burlap.
A 12 inch piece of green ribbon.
A mini paper bag.
Twelve blue tickets.
A piece of twine.
Four wooden beads (two large and two small).
And three buttons in three sizes.

When I first got the kit I immediately knew that I would use the Periphery line from Basic Grey. They blues, browns and greens in the pack were perfect for that line. I had to put on my thinking cap for the rest.

Using Fabric

This layout was for another Frosted Design challenge. It is our week three challenge. We were supposed to use fabric somewhere on a layout, card or other project. Since I didn't have any spare fabric laying around the house I headed out to Hobby Lobby to scope out their fabric remnants. I found this fabric and I knew it was perfect to go with some patterned paper that I bought for my wedding album. I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to use it yet, but I knew that was the fabric.

I finally decided to try to attach the fabric to a Tim Holtz Grunge Board flourish. I had just bough some Mod Podge and figured I would give it a whirl. First I painted the flourish white since the fabric is a little sheer. I just laid the fabric over the flourish and applied a layer of Mod Podge. Next time I would probably adhere the fabric in some way before putting on a layer of Mod Podge, but it still turned out ok. After the first layer dried I trimmed off some of the excess fabric and then added another coat of Mod Podge. Once that was dry used my craft knife to cut all the excess fabric from the edges. It was kind of a time consuming process, but in the end I think it was very worth it. I am definitely going to be using the technique again.

First Frosted Design Project

Man has it been awhile since I blogged! Oops. I guess it is a good thing that I couldn't sleep this morning so now I have some time to catch up. Since I haven't posted anything new since starting my projects for Frosted Design I wanted to share some of the things I have made.

Our first week's challenge was to chalk or ink everything we did. I actually did two very different layouts for this challenge. I had a lot of fun with it. I normally don't have a problem inking. The first layout I did was one of Bruno
.

I inked most of the papers in black to really make them pop since the rest of the papers were so bright. I used Basic Grey Lemonade for this layout.

The second layout is for my trash the dress. I used Basic Grey Sultry for this layout. I am using that line for my whole Trash the Dress album that I am making.

Date Night

I have been scrapping away this September. I joined so many challenges this month that I have been busy. Thankfully I have also been pretty inspired this month as well so it has been a lot of fun and hasn't felt like an obligation at all. This layout has probably been my favorite that I have scrapped this month and possibly ever. The photos are from a very recent date night that my husband and I went on. We went to one of our favorite restaurants and then to a movie. On the way to the movie we saw a photo booth and I insisted we stop to get our photos taken to capture the evening.

This was for the ABC challenge on scrapbook.com. This round's letters were KLM. K was for know how- What is something that you know feel is your know how is scrapping? What do you do often? For my know how I chose cutting elements out of patterned paper by hand. I am always cutting out certain design elements from paterned paper. I hand cut the butterflies out of paper from the Basic Grey Ambrosia line.

L was leaf. There had to be at least one leaf in the LO. There is a leaf sticking out the bottom of the flower. This posed a bit of a problem as I could only find leaves that were didn't match my layout in my stash. After a hefty dose of black ink I felt my brown leaf was acceptable for my layout.

M was for masking. I love masking so this was an easy step for me. The whole design of the layout actually started with the Tim Holtz Flourish mask. I wanted it to be a main part of the design and I wanted to layout to follow it and mimic it with a sense of whimsy that I felt it provided. Once I was almost done with the layout I had the idea to mask the title as well. It is kinda hard to read, but that was my intention. I wanted it to kinda fade into the layout and not be too blatant or obvious.

The rest of the patterned paper and the large flourish are also from the Basic Grey Ambrosia line. I finished it off with a hint of bling and plenty of Tim Holtz Black Soot Distress Ink.

More exciting news

I subscribe to the Mosh Posh Monthly kit club and yesterday one of their wonderful design team members spotted my layout "Big DVD" in the scrapbook.com gallery and asked if they could post it on their blog. Of course I was very flattered and agreed. This has been a very exciting week for me. Check it out here.

Design Team

I am super excited to announce that this week I found out I will be designing for an awesome new blog called Frosted Designs. There will be all sorts of fun activities and great inspiration. Be sure to check it out! This is my first design team position and I am really excited about it. I can't wait get to work on some projects. Thanks to Jamie and Meg for their confidence in me!

For our wedding my best friend Tyler played the piano during the ceremony. It was so wonderful to have live music. He played so beautifully I wanted to create a LO that honored that. I used both Basic Grey June Bug and Basic Grey Marrakech for this layout. I cut out the border strip on the left side from some of the June Bug paper and then wrapped a piece of orange ribbon around the cutout. This gave it a little more dimension. I used more orange fiber around the photo and then as a bow on the top of the hidden journaling card.

I stamped under the matting for the photo to give a little more interest to the background cardstock. I triple matted the photo with each layer going in a different direction. I didn't want to hide to much of the papers so I felt this was a good way to show them off a little more

I added Basic Grey June Bug Glazed brads along the side of the middle matt for a little extra added dimension. Finally my favorite part of the lo is the title. I used Tim Holtz grunge board alphas from the nature pack. I inked them with a layer or Tim Holtz Broken China Distress Ink and then on the bottom half I inked another light layer of Tim Holtz Worn Lipstick Distress Ink. It gave the letters a very nice two tone look.

I had a lot of photos of Bruno that I wanted to scrap, but I didn't want to do a ton of layouts that were similar so I got the idea to make a mini album on a layout. I chose six of my favorite photos of the two of us for the layout. I used my absolute favorite for the cover and then I created a mini album with the rest. To make the mini album I cut card stock to mat all the photos. I left an extra half an inch on the side of the mat to bind the mini album. I used the Martha Stewart Bone Folder to score along the spine so the mini album would open easily. Then I covered the spine in ribbon and used 4 brads to hold the mini album together. All in all I am happy with the effect.

The scalloped border on this layout was stitched using a Bazzill Stitching border template. I did my best to make a square and line up the template so that it met end to end. Then I poked the holes and stitched using blue thread so the color would stand out. It took awhile but it was very worth it. The "stitching" between the squares of the quilt are actually drawn on with black pen. Next time I do that I will draw them on before I adhere everything else over the squares. It made it a little tricky.

I cut the large flourish using my Bosskut Gazelle. Then I added dots of stickles all over it to make is glimmer.

All the supplies for this layout (except the flourish, brads, and stickles) were from the July Mosh Posh kit.

This is a photo of my husband and during the first dance at our wedding. I got the title from the title of the song we danced to. We danced to "Rose of my Heart" by Johnny Cash. This has always been a special song for us so I wanted this page to be very special.

This layout was done for 2 different challenges on scrapbook.com . The first was a scraplift challenge. You have to scraplift a layout from the person who signs up in front of you. I drew the inspiration for this layout from 2 layouts by Just4myboys. The originals can be seen here and here. The originals were so beautiful that I really wanted to do them justice. I really though hard about what papers to use and what embellishments. I actually bought the roses just for this LO.

The second challenge was the weekly ABC challenge. This week's letters are NOP. N = Noun. There had to be a noun in the title. O = Opposite. The main colors had to be opposite colors on the color wheel. P = Punch. We had to use a punch somewhere on the layout. I had already planned to colors and the title of this when I saw the letters for this week. It just worked out that I was able to use the Fiskars effervesence border punch on one of the strips of paper.

Our wedding colors were bright blue, brown and bright orange. The colors of the Basic Grey Ambrosia line and the Marrakech line were the perfect shades to go with the colors of our wedding.

To cut out the flourishes and the title I used my Bosskut Gazelle. The chipboard flower in the corner are from the Basic Grey Marrakech line. The glazed brads are from the Basic Grey Ambrosia line. The roses are Prima. It is hard to tell in the photo,but I used Crystal Stickles on he tips of the flower petals and to accent the design of the orange and grey paper.

The Apartment

Here is one of my new pages that I did this week. This came together really quickly too. It is a page about a horrible apartment that we lived in when we were first married. It was so therapuetic to get all those angry feeling out in the journaling. I wanted the page to be very messy and distressed to reflect the state of the apartment. I used Basic Grey's Granola collection for the pp. I cut the leafy things and the ripped circles from pp in that line. Ialso used a lot of Tim Holtz's distress inks to to ink the papers. The journaling was on white cardstock and I used Vintage Photo ink to make it look old and worn. I also inked and tore the backgound papers and did some lacing.

This was a really fun layout to do and I am please with the result. I think it conveys my feeling about the apartment VERY clearly.

Card making.

So obviously my blog has gotten off to a slow start. It has been nearly 2 months since my first post. That being said I would like to get into something more substantive finally with my second post. On top of scrapbooking I love making cards. It seemed like a natural next step in paper crafting. I already had all the tools and supplies to start I just needed to take the time to do it.

I have been making cards now for about a year. Some of the first cards I made were for my dad and father in law last year for Father's day. Last night I was sitting and making their cards for this father's day and I was thinking about how much my card making style has evolved. I take less time thinking of a theme for a card then I used to and I focus more on the overall design. Also the designs of the cards have gotten (in my opinion) more complex and better. My cards are in no way works of art like many you see, but I am still pretty happy with how they look and my family enjoys getting these home made creations.

OK so after all that I finally am getting to why I posted. While I am very happy with how my designs are progressing I feel like the sentiments expressed in writing in my cards are lackluster and are even getting less original with time. Almost every birthday card has "Wishing you a very Happy Birthday" inside. Other occasions are equally as dull when it comes to writing inside the card. At the begining of my card making journey I always tried to find a cute saying or poem to write inside that fit the theme of my card, but as time went on I found this to be harder and harder to do without sounding like I copied it from inside another greeting card. So my question to you is ....What do you put in card and how do you come up with it? More and more lately I have tried to just write a more personal letter with personal sentiments, but sometimes it sounds a little contrived when I am just trying to wish someone a Happy Birthday.

First Blog Post!

I have decided to join the age of technology and start a blog!  This blog will be dedicated to my favorite hobby, scrapbooking.  It is one of my favorite past times.   I love all the things you can do with scrapbooks nowadays.  There are so many amazing tools, techniques, and products out there.  It is so much fun.  Thanks for reading.