Loves Tea & Paper

CS Sketchy Challenge - October

This month's sketch by Jill Sarginson for Canadian Scrapbooker is very versatile and what I really appreciate is that the conventional sized 4 x 6 photo works on it nicely.

I used this lovely Valentine line from Harmonie (yeah for Canadian scrapbook supplier!) to create this layout. I did have 2 - 4 x 6 photos selected for this layout, but the colours in them were really bright and not really working. So I selected this photo, and had my bff scan it for me and convert it to sepia. Then I printed it out as a 5 x 7. I love the effect! Oh, all that scanning business - this photo was taken way back in the dinosaur age when photos were taken with cameras that used film!

The scalloped circle shape was a punch out and I used not the circle punch but the remaining square and then layered in underneath a different pattern. I used lots of ink to play up the sepia vintagey feel.

I used 2 journalling spots - one for conventional story telling, and the other to set off the title. One of the challenges I have is that because I love to use patterned paper, and some of it with quite a bold or large pattern, my titles can get lost. I love how this journalling spot sets my title off from the patterned paper, and using double sided foam adhesive to raise it off, highlights it just a bit more yet.

The chipboard dress stand came plain brown and to dress it up, I experimented with a few things, finally settling on this pink flocking. I trimmed the centre from a chipboard rose and after applying some ink, layered it on top for a skirt on the dress form.

In this close up you can see the flocking - it makes that chipboard very texturized and touchable! You can also see that I used the outside of the rose chipboard (the one that I had cut the centre from for the dress skirt) by cutting it apart to make leaves. I didn't want to waste any of this neat laser cut stuff!

And isn't that pink gauzy ribbon so pretty?

I've submitted this on the Canadian Scrapbooker page and encourage you to play along, too!

Thanks for popping by. Be blessed,

Ann

 

Happy Birthday to someone who's sweeter than cupcakes!

Sarah recently celebrated her 12th birthday - well, we all celebrated with her! This is the card I made for her. I found this fun digital stamp, called Clara Cupcake, online at hopejacare.blogspot.com and purchased through stitchybearstamps.com

I selected these beautiful, bright, cheerful papers from the Echo Park Country Drive collection and chose my colours for shading in the image from them, focusing on the green, yellow and pink because they made me happy! I used watercolour pencils with mineral spirits and a stump for my colouring.

I made a marble cake for Sarah too, from scratch! FAINT! The icing too, was from scratch. I poured 1/2 the batter in a round pan and 1/2 in square pan and then cut and pasted them together to make a cupcake-shaped cake and iced the cupcake top in a similar shade of green. Fun, eh?

It was a great day!!! Happy Birthday to my beautiful (inside and out), intelligent, talented, creative, exuberant, thoughtful, funny and sometimes intense daughter. You make your dad and me so proud!

Thanks for popping by and be blessed! I know I am! - Ann

Practical Scrappers challenge: 5 stamps

Every Tuesday, Practical Scrappers posts a challenge. This week's Challenge Me Tuesday is to use 5 stamps. I made this Christmas card for this challenge:

This card actually uses 6 stamps - the script background, 3 stamps on the navy piece (canvas background on which I overstamped with a star stamp, and the Joy script stamp), and then the star word stamp, and the word peace stamped on the tag.

So that's my second Christmas card for this season, and it's not even December yet. Isn't that amazing?! It is if you know me. LOL! Have you made any Christmas cards, yet?

Will you play along with this challenge at Practical Scrappers - it does not have to be a card. You'll see other designers used their stamps on layouts, so check it out and play along!

Be blessed - Ann

After the Rain, the Sun Will Shine

The Happy Camper line by American Crafts was perfect for some more camping photos, I thought. We usually camp from 7 - 10 days, sometimes even longer, so a bit of rain is inevitable. I loved how the raindrops were sitting on the pine trees and tried to capture it with a few photos. Of course, Sarah's sunny face brightened the day more!

The blue background paper with its linked cricles made me think of drip drops, so that was the starting point. I thought I'd play around with some framing by using the orange strips and layering them over and under other elements of the layout to draw the eye into the photos. The title work is a combination of American Crafts Thickers and Kaisercraft letter stickers.

This little cluster is made up of AC Happy Camper stickers and dimensional stickers. I love the oversized eyelets (Stampin' Up!) anchoring the corners of the frame.

The other corner cluster features some stamping and stickers.

Thanks for popping by!

Be blessed - Ann

Inspired by an Ad

It was nice to scrapbook a few more photos for the Cuba album. When I won a few sheets of Bo Bunny Barefoot & Bliss at a crop at Two Scrapbook Friends, I was pretty sure they'd work for this album.

This layout was started while cropping with my friend Joyce and I finished later at home. Joyce and I had been browsing the summer issue of Scrapook and Cards Today and the ad by Bo Bunny (p. 13) for the Barefoot & Bliss line undoubtedly influenced the photo and patterned paper placement on my layout. Yep, I looked at the ad as a sketch and scraplifted it. I changed it up a bit, incorporating 2 photos rather than 1. I experimented with my new trimmer and it's wavy blade, to play up the water, but of course, there are wavy lines on the original, too.

I did do something a little different (this is the part I did at home). I added LOTS of Crystal Effects to my layout, covering the bottom third of the paper. Once it was dry, I bent it to create cracks and lines and then rubbed ink into the lines to make them show up. I love this watery weathered look!

You know how I love clusters, by now... Here's the one I made for this layout, using an assortment from my stash - some Bo Bunny trinkets and buttons created for this line, but also crocheted flowers the colours of which are just perfect for this paper. I also had these cool felt punchouts that I got in a RAK and I layered smaller elements in or on them. There are 3 types of tiny flowers, fabric, peper, and acrylic. I added bling to them all because I LOVE shiny things.

I hope the original artist knows how much she inspires others and takes it as a compliment when others love her work enough to want to copy it. I know her piece inspired my layout and it'll bring back great memories of our trip for years to come.

Be blessed,

Ann

Springtime Friends

For Sarah's 10th birthday, she could invite 10 friends and choose an activity. She chose horseback riding and was thrilled that her best friend was available that day! There will be more layouts of that day eventually, including horses, but I loved these shots of the 2 girls and started with there. The horse farm also has chickens running around and a few sheep, hence, that photo.

I feel challenged when it comes to kraft cardstock. When I look at kraft, I don't see a neutral, like black, white or ivory. I see a colour. A tone in the brown family. I rarely work on kraft because to my eye, it does not combine well with lots of colours. I feel like I'm the only one who sees it this way, especially when some manufacturers base entire lines on kraft. But some shades of red or blue on kraft really hit a reject button in my mind. That's just the way I am, I guess. Having said all that, I seem to have a few sheets of kraft in my cardstock collection, maybe from disassembled kits, and for some reason, I liked the kraft with these outdoorsy photos. And I like the way the purple tones in those doodley flowers in the Echo Park paper look against the craft. So I built this layout on a kraft foundation. All the patterned paper edges are inked with brown to add visual texture and play off the kraft. The chipboard title came out of my bff's stash - thanks Christa! The layers were already done and the colours worked perfectly - I just added some Crystal Effects for a bit of shine. The circle details over the top of the left photo are 3 circle stickers layered over the wheels from a bicycle sticker (all from a coordinating sticker sheet, part of the Springtime collection).

I ran a piece of kraft through the Cuttlebug for texture before creating this roly flower. I then clustered it with crocheted flowers (perfect with the sheep, don't you think?) and layered those over some old transparent elements from the Azalea line by LYB. Yeah, you'd think I'd be done with that by now... but I bought up so much of it at the time, that bits of it still persist in my stash. Playing on the butterfly on the journaling spot, I added some craft text and music paper butterflies to the cluster.

Similar things happening with the second cluster as with the first. A mixture of old and new that play up the colours and themes in the patterned paper and photos.

Despite my aversion to kraft cardstock, I really like how this layout turned out. What do you think? And how do you feel about kraft cardstock - easy, go-to neutral, or not?

Thanks for popping by! Be blessed

- Ann

 

 

Lots to Show You!

Canadian manufacturer Harmonie put out a challenge for Christmas cards on their Facebook page. I thought I'd give it a go, mostly because I want to support Canadian companies whenever it's possible. Well, Harmonie is a little hard to find, it seems... But I did track some down. I found some Harmonie peel off's, brads and ribbon and got to work creating this wintery scene. Working on glossy cardstock, I adhered the snowman to the paper and then coloured parts of him in with white, green and black gel pens. I tore some more glossy cardstock and embossed the edges with glittery embossing powder to create a snowy, icy landscape, by layering the strips. The snowman was looking a little lonely in his winter wonderland, so I added a tree to the landscape via the brad. Then I created the window that we peer through using a transparency. I used the peel offs to create window panes, and then adhered more peel offs to the other side of the transparency to create a bit of frost. The curtain valance was created by pulling on the stitching in the ribbon to ruffle it.

This layout began with a sketch found on the Canadian Scrapbooker website. The papers are from Imaginisce and although I have found Imaginisce to be cute but hard for me to work with in the past, this line was perfect for these photos about my dad, the sailor. And yes, one of the photos is so old that he's wearing a speedo... Those were the days! Canadian Scrapbooker issued an additional challenge to use Canadian product on the layout - doing so would mean your layout might be considered for publication in a future magazine. My Canadian elements are the chipboard anchor, which was made by a now defunct company called RiffRaff, and the acrylic stars, which were die cut by a store (I think) in London. I got them at a craft show a long time ago. I adhered them to the packaging that the Imaginisce canvas embellishments came on. It's too late for you to play along with this sketch, which was for September, but they have a sketch up for October that you can work with. Send them a photo of your finished layout and they'll post it on their website. And if you include Canadian product, you may be considered for future publication. I plan to play along again this month! Join me, won't you?

Whew! This post is getting long, so I think I'll save the next two layouts for tomorrow - come on back!

Be blessed- Ann

A Few Cards to Show You

Practical Scrappers just put up a post about Stampin' Up! Of course, being a retired Stampin' Up! rep, I have a bit of it still in my stash, so I said I'd contribute a few cards for the post.

Here's what I shared:

I made several of these at the same time so I can give them to my church. All materials are Stampin' Up! from the cardstock to the ink to the punch to the glitter to the stamps. To achieve the 2 colours on the stamp, I used markers and coloured right on the stamp, rather than pressing a stamp into a single inkpad.

I wanted to create a watercolour effect with this card. Again, I made a few of them, for church. I stamped the leaf on the vanilla cardstock (in retrospect, I should have used watercolour paper but I forgot I had some). I then wet a paintbrush and picked up some colour from the tip of the matching watercolour crayon and swished the colour onto the stamped image. Since I was going for a watercolour effect, I wasn't too concerned about being precise and staying in the lines. When the splotches were dry, I overstamped to give the splotches some definition.

I made this last card at my Stampin' Up! rep's open house, so the concept is hers. I just put my spin on it. Stamping onto glossy cardstock and then waiting for the image to dry. Then I used sponge daubers to apply the ink. I wanted the image to look as though the sun was setting somewhere beyond the tree, so I concentrated intense colours on the tree, and then graduated to lighter colours beyond the tree. The sponge dauber is a great way to apply ink to glossy cardstock as it slides right on and you can work it a little, rubbing in circles. I used a punch to create the leaves, then folded them up the middle to give them a vein and applied ink the vein and outside edges for some definition.

Thanks for popping by! I'll be back soon with more to show you. Blessings - Ann

My Sketch World Reveal - Her Dreams...

 
This is the sketch the layout team played with for the October reveal. Some neat details, isn't there, with the tear, and the flourishes, and the multi-sized photos.

 
I will tell you right off that the main photo, the focal point of the layout, leaves something to be desired. But sometimes that happens, doesn't it? You want to capture a moment through a scrapbook page, even though the photo is not quite ideal. That is the truth in this case. The journaling tells the story of how excited I was (and am) for my friend Christa and her first magazine publication. my subscription arrived before hers (or I checked my mailbox before she checked hers) and went straight to her place to show her. It was a fantastic moment, and I think it was a little bit dreamlike for her - she kept saying how it just didn't feel real. Recreating the moment later with a setup scenario and posed shot would, I think, remove some of the authenticity of the moment, so instead, I chose to work with a less than perfect photo. This is real life!

The sketch was great because it provided 3 photos. I chose another shot of her as she looked up after signing my magazine. She is clearly pleased and proud, as she should be, and has a grin from ear to ear. By using the same photo twice, I hope I captured the delight.

I love these papers by Fancy Pants. It's a line called About a Girl and came out last year sometime. I had it in my stash with the intent to use it for something else, but they just seemed appropriate for this - a little classy, a little dreamy, and great colours. Leftover Prima transparencies form the flourishes that cap and are the base for the focal photo. Some scalloped trim also accents the photo. I thought of trying flowers or gems to try to mask or cover her eye, but decided that would only accentuate them more. Instead I matted the smaller doubled up photos, and really played with my title. A mixture of colours and fonts form a long title that explains her expression, a little. The acrylic stars further play on the dream theme. I like how the black sets off all the colours and I'll have to remember to think of black more often as a base for my layouts. I love the peekaboo tear on  the blue paper, revealing the green underside and that vintagey looking pink flowered pattern, with just a bit of that transparency peeking through. Lots of ink and distressed edges continue the slightly vintagey feel. If you know Christa and I, you know that we are constantly bouncing ideas off each other, and seeking the opinions of each other as we create. Her achievement inspires me to keep trying. You don't have to be a rock star scrapbooker to get published - my day will come, too!

If you use this sketch, be sure to share it at the My Sketch World forum and gallery. If you share it at the forum, you'll find more challenges to try this month, proposed by some of our layout team and card team. You can find the gallery here.

I am also submitting this at Sue Syke's Kewl Beans blog where she hosts a Leave Your Legacy challenge each month. The nice thing about Sue's challenges are that they get you thinking a little, and you have all year to participate - she'll do a draw at the end of the year for the participants. The other thing I love about Sue is she is Canadian as well as a great photographer, designer and lovely person to meet!

 also want to take a moment to thank you for your support last week as I shared my design team application for Practical Scrappers. I'm pleased to say my submission was accepted so I will be sharing with you the work I do for that team, as well as My Sketch World, throughout the month.

Thanks for popping by. Be blessed - Ann

One sketch, two layouts

My friend Laura at Scrappin' Around the Clock,posts a sketch every Friday. A little while ago, I played with one of her terrific sketches and created 2 layouts with it!

 
Brian has been grooming Sarah to be a hockey lover and Leafs fan practically since birth! He found a set of very small road hockey goalie pads, a mini goalie stick and a sponge ball and after she was dressed in her gear, he'd take practice shots on her. One day, for kicks, they decided it would be fun and funny to strap on Brian's full size road hockey goalie pads and mask. They came up to her waist, and yielded these fun shots. I think the funny part is that underneath it all, she is still all girl, with a colourful corduroy skort and pig tails!

I turned Laura's sketch 90 degrees to accomodate the orientation of my photos, but kept the other decorative elements in their original positions on the sketch. I used up some old Stampin' Up! polka dot paper - the colour is definitely Maple Leaf blue! On that I layered hockey themed papers and embellishments. The red stitching and embellishments play off the mask and pads. Don't you love how the red velvet ribbon adds a girly touch to a page that would often a boy-theme?

 
Here you can see some of the blingy touches I added. The circle around her pretty face plays off the pun with the hockey term "Face off". She has taken the mask off. Maybe not rolling on the floor funny but I tried!

 
I like my title work. It starts with mounting a sticker phrase on some cardstock and inking and stitching it. I then cut the title apart and used part of a black blingy arrow as an insert symbol for the word "hockey" which comes from a hockey themed sticker card.

 
A shot of the cluster in the upper left shows a hand cut heart onto which I layered a photo of Brian and Sarah cut into a heart shape and stitched. This is clustered with more hockey themed stickers, along with a ticket, pennant and ribbon.

The second layout using the same sketch, uses the sketch in its original orientation, and also features Sarah. We were celebrating my brother's birthday, and something had her in a bit of a pout! It didn't spoil my brother's day one bit, though. He knows how dramatic she can be sometimes, and just thought it was funny.

 

I thought these old Kaisercraft papers were perfect for a birthday layout: they work well with her swimsuit and are bright and festive for the occasion.

 

The sketch featured a flag or pennant in the upper left. This time, I made it using some stitched grosgrain cut on a V. Hand made lollipop flowers trimmed with buttons and gems accent the page.

 
For a border along the right side, I used the same stitched grosgrain ribbon, and this time pulled the stitching to gather or rouche the ribbon. This technique adds a lot of visual and tactile texture.

 
For the title, I used rubons for the "UN' part of the title. The word happy is created with Thickers alphabet stickers to which I painted some Stickles glitter glue for extra sparkle and that celebratory touch. I also added a few black Stickles to some of the black dots on the background paper, for a bit of sparkle and to punch it up a little.

I'll be back tomorrow with the October reveal for My Sketch World. Have a terrific day!

Blessings, Ann