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!