Grandma's Handwriting Remembered

My Grandmother had the most beautiful handwriting and taught me the art and joy of the handwritten note. Just seeing her letters just makes me smile. I wanted to find a way to preserve that memory. I decided to create these pages with some recipe cards and a letter that were in my keepsake box.

Since I found this great paper in pink and black dessert script, I decided to use that as my color palette.

Tear both patterned papers diagonally creating random tear lines to drop below the letter. Use a Tim Holtz Distress Ink to the edges to avoid sharp white edges.

Crop some light and dark pink cardstock to frame the photos and the recipe cards. I used both around Grandma’s photo to give it more weight and not have it get lost in the page. Be sure the pinks slip into the black area for better coordination. The recipe card on the black seemed to beg for a little pink bow.

On the black pink cardstock, I again placed the diagonal paper in the opposite direction so the pages appear as a set. Distress the edges like the pink page. The letter was not as yellowed as I wanted so I sponged a bit of Distress Ink on it to soften the white. For some reason, I had a sheet of office supply stickers (you know how that goes) which gave me the clip for the top of the letter. Placing the letter and the picture of my grandparents in a manner that filled the page in, I had one spot that was a bit empty. Digging into my supplies, I found a sprig of tiny maroon flowers to complete the page.

I used black photo corners that I’ve had for years to add to the aged look of both pages. There is always a great variety of paper and cardstock for inspiration at Scraphappy for any project.

 Supplies:

12x12 black Bazzill
12x12 pink glimmer Bazzill
12x12 sheet of sweet patterned paper
12x12 sheet of pink dotted paper
Black photo corners
A bulldog clip sticker
A sprig of little maroon silk flowers
Pink grosgrain ribbon

Spring Fun

Easter is right around the corner. Hop in to Scraphappy to pick up your paper supplies for card making, paper quilting, scrapbooking, your art journal - collage page whatever it may be your having fun creating. This would be a great time to make a mini  as shown in "HALLOWEEN" Popcorn Mini Pouch From October 2012 or " BE SPOOTACULAR August 2012" &. Leave a page or two for a picture of the child, and then stamp Easter images on each additional page. Put it in the Easter Basket or just an activity to keep them busy. May be great for the card ride to grandmas, family & friends.

I made these two cards with the Spring and Easter paper. On the Easter card I placed a Polaroid with Easter paper where a stamp or photo could be placed as well. I glued the sides and bottom, leaving the top open, where I placed carrots I cut from the Cricut expression.( If you do not have one you can stop by scraphappy to trace the carrot.) You can write little notes on each carrot. You can purchase the Polaroid ready made at Scraphappy.

This is the journal page completed with a pocket and then glued into the Cereal Box Journal. I placed two file cards in the pocket that you can place photos, stamp, journal, I can only imagine what all you creative peeps can come up with. I also used one of the Polaroids on one of the files with Washi tape.

Stop by Scraphappy to check out the Cards and Art Journal and as always Christy and Stephanie are happy to help you. Happy Easter & Happy Spring!!

Scrapper's Block

How many of you have experienced 'Scrapper's Block?' It's frustrating; it's annoying; and it takes up valuable time that could otherwise be spent creating. I've been experiencing a serious block recently. I stare at my stash and my photos. I think about my stash and my photos. I sit down with my stash and my photos. And yet, I cannot come up with an idea or plan for what I want to do.

So what to do when you hit a creative wall? Look for inspiration. Inspiration is all around us: on-line, magazines, nature, God's creation, the smiles and laughter of our children, our own scrapbooks and history. Typically, when I am having trouble creating, I can take a walk with my camera, capture some of our beautiful world, and come back home inspired. Sadly, that did not work for me this time. So what did I do? I went shopping.

I found this adorable, trendy stamp set from Lawn Fawn at ScrapHappy, and I thought that it would be perfect for helping me get through this block. It is fun and is a chevron pattern that I frequently use when I choose patterned papers. Slowly but surely, I am working through my block. I have made a few layouts with this stamp set this week, and although they aren't my favorites, they are still documented memories that I can add to my albums, and I know that I will be able to enjoy this toy for many years to come. So without further ado, this month's layouts:

This month's challenge is to pull out your stamps and use them to scraplift yourself. Look through your scrapbooks. Enjoy your memories. Use them to generate new projects. To be eligible for this month's prize ($5 store credit!), upload your project to facebook and tag Scraphappy on your project. A winner will be randomly drawn and announced in my April post.

And finally, last month's Challenge Winner: Jessica Gabe! Thank you to all who entered and played along.  Jessica, next time you are in ScrapHappy, you have $5 credit to spend however you desire in the store!

Supplies:
- patterned paper - Echo Park, Studio Calico, Lily Bee
- thickers
- enamel dots - My Mind's Eye
- chipboard stars - Pink Paislee
- stamps - Lawn Fawn, Kelly Purkey, and Studio Calico
- wood veneers - Studio Calico
- puffy stickers - Amy Tangerine
- stamping ink and embossing powder
- washi tape

Girlfriends + Pink = Fun Cards

So it’s after Valentine’s Day and I’m strolling through Scraphappy. There is still so much pretty pink paper, ribbon and cardstock, an amazing variety in shades of pink. I am intrigued…

I picked out several 12 x 12” sheets of pink cardstock, some pink and black ribbons, a breast cancer awareness punch, variety of pink buttons, rhinestones and flower embellishments. I cut some of the paper for horizontal cards and some for tall cards. My flower punch gave me lots of petals from the patterned papers. They were fun to assemble into flowers that can be added to any card.

There are many great color combinations for pink but the light chocolate jumped out at me. But once the creative side of my brain was engaged, the possibilities grew. What about pink and black, definitely!

Then I knew the pink needed flamingoes and a cupcake card… and then my favorite little penguin could show up in her little pink bathrobe. The cupcake card has a nice pink on pink textured card stock, pink Stickles for a glittery frosting and a fringe of layered brown and pink paper flowers with little silver brads to hold the little stacks together. The brads get a topping of pink Stickles too!

The pink and brown seemed soothing so my reflective lady with several shades of pink patterned paper was a must. Buttons made a nice complement to the pinks and browns. I stamped her in brown, layered the image with pink and more brown and let the subtleties of the color palette do the rest of the work.

 

Then a flurry of stamping without limits on theme; I have several sweet friends battling breast cancer so using the Flourishes Think Pink - Fight like a Girl kit was a must. (I think Scraphappy still has a couple of these great kits). The ribbon skirt is colored with Copic markers and accented with tiny pink rhinestones.

 

The black rickrack sectioned the pink and black card and created the perfect placement for the little penguin. I layered the stamped image onto black card stock to accent the color combo. By stamping and layering the words in the same manner as the image, the card develops a cohesive color combo.

And I wind up with 10 new pink cards with various themes and sayings. Some sweet friends are about to be reminded of how much they mean to me! Drop by and ask Christy and Stephanie to show you the great pink options they have and let the inspiration begin.

 



 

   

Making Sweet Memories

To me, the We R Memory Keepers, Winter Frost papers has a Spa feel.  Using the other side, I used this paper to create two pockets and two cards. I placed the two pockets on the first page of the Cereal Box Journal. These two cards can also be used to record your Sweet Memories while having fun with your journal.

                                 

  This is a picture of the pocket before it was glued together.

 I glued a piece of paper on the inside of the pocket to cover the snow flurries.

            Bazzill, Tim Holtz- Distress and We R Memory Keepers were used to create these two cards.  Washi tape was used on the first card to add the "You Are Special" tag, so a message can be added behind.

 This page was created on white card stock and then glued into the album with glossy accents. When playing around in your art journal, don't think about, plan, or worry about what you are going to do. Instead, just play and have fun. I like to use material left from one of my previous project, along with some new items.

Definitely stop by Scraphappy to pick up your supplies in order to journal your sweet memories, and see the finished journal pages. Christy and Stephanie are always happy to answer any questions you may have.

Supplies:

We R Memory Keepers - Winter Frost, Snow Flurries & Cards Card Stock

Bazzill - Card Stock

Tim Holtz - Card Stock, Distress Markers, Distress Ink, Distress Stain

Lawn Fawn - Chevron clear stamp

American Crafts - Paper trimmer, Precision pens, Tape

Ranger - Archival Ink -  jet black, Inkssentials - opaque pen

Stickers - from previous projects

Washi tape

Sakura - Gelly Roll - clear star

miscellaneous clear stamps

Bling

Glossy accents

Color mist

 Ribbon

Not-So-Seasonal Seasonal Minibooks - And a Challenge

How many of you readers live here on the Gulf Coast vs. The Frozen North? If you do live here, then you know that we don't have winter (and if you don't live here, well, now you know, too), and most of us like it that way. We like snow as a diversion, not a way of life. We like snow as decoration, not as something to be scraped and plowed. We like snowflakes to be in our scrapbooks and on our walls, not in our hair. And since so many scrapbook companies make gorgeous wintery, filled-with-snowflakes products, we have to find our own, unique, Southern way to use them. "How?" you ask? Well, let me tell you.

First of all, you can use them the obvious way: for a wintery layout or card. Say your family goes skiing every year in Utah - that'll be easy to use these papers and embellishments for a snowy project. Or your family gets stuck in the Atlanta airport for a day because of a threat of ice - again, easy. Just use the snowy, wintery themes on a snowy, wintery layout as they were designed to be used.

But say you never get to see snow...or you spend your winters at the beach or on a cruise ship...What do you do then? There's still this pretty new stuff you want to use, but you just can't figure out how to do it. And that is what we are going to work on and discuss today.

ScrapHappy has recently gotten in a large order from WeRMemoryKeepers, including cute, excellent quality albums (both 12x12 and 6x6), and some of their new paper lines. I was asked to make a minibook using wintery papers for a non-wintery project. After many hours of thought, I realized this morning that there's a minibook I have been wanting to do for several years: Our Year in Sports. Our family is active year round. We joke that you can tell what season it is by what sport the Girls are playing, so when it came time to make a minibook for the store, this seemed to be the perfect fit.

The WeRMemoryKeepers Winter Frost line is a lovely collection of pale blues, greens, and greys. A few of the sheets have small snowflakes in the background, but most of the papers have simple patterns, such as stripes or polka dots. I pulled out enough papers to fill each included page protector, then I sliced the other papers into 2x6 inch strips, inked the edges, and glued the strips to the edges of my 6x6 papers - no rhyme or reason - I just grabbed what was on top of the strip pile and glued it to what was on top of the 6x6 pile. .

The next step was to adhere my photos to my prepped pages - 1 photo per page. I typically print my photos 3.5x5, because my printer lets me get 4 of this-sized photos on 1 piece of letter-sized photo paper (I'm cheap, and I want my photo paper to last as long as it can, so I try to maximize the number of pictures I can print at once). When choosing which photos to adhere to which backgrounds, I, again, just chose the top photo and attached it to the top page - no stress, no decision-making, easy. The colors in this line are muted and neutral enough that all the bright colors from my Girls' various uniforms all blend. The Winter Frost line provides a consistent base for the album and helps the project feel cohesive. To create a title page, I used an additional paper from the 6x6 pad, added some Basic Grey chipboard letters and some Perfect Pearls, and called it done. Journalling for the entire album was done on 1 lined page from the collection (TIP: These lined papers that many companies are putting out now are PERFECT for backgrounds and journalling. I buy them in bulk and use them A LOT).

 If I wanted to, I could have stopped there and called my book complete. But I've been in Big Time Inky Mode lately, so I decided to add some messy, inky play to my book. First, I pulled out a stack of my handy-dandy, plain, manila tags. Next, I stamped and embossed some old sports stamps that I have had in my stash for years (seriously, every year I use these same stamps for any and all sports-related layouts I make. You would think I would get tired of them, but I don't). After embossing my sports icons and the name of the seasons, I pulled out my Tim Holtz Distress Stains and 'colored' my tags. I used 3-4 colors/tag, layering them and misting them to get the colors to blend. I finished off the tags by adding some black and white gingham ribbon to the top (TIP: Black and white gingham ribbon goes with EVERYTHING. Buy a whole roll. You won't regret it).

Again, I could have stopped here, but I decided to keep playing- this time with a Hambly transparency that I've been hoarding. I cut it into 4 6x6 squares and used my Crop-o-dile to punch holes to fit the new pages in my book. I stamped a WeRMemoryKeepers journalling stamp on one of my leftover grey papers from the paper pad, cut them out, and adhered them on the front and back of 2 of my transparency squares (TIP: When you work with transparencies, adhere similar-sized and shaped elements to the front and back of the page. This both hides your adhesive and keeps one side from having unattractive, unmatchy spots). I glue-dotted (Is that a word? If not, it should be) some Heidi Swapp Disco Stars to another transparency (again, front and back to avoid ugliness). On the last transparency I also added stars, but these were white chipboard stars that I recolored with spray ink to match the rest of the album. I then adhered more inked stars throughout my album to provide a bit more continuity, added a wood veneer title to the spine of my album, and declared myself done.

 OK. Here is where today's post gets extra fun. ScrapHappy and I would like to issue you a challenge. We are giving you 'ingredients' for your layout or card (or anything else you want to make - minibook, mixed media project, paper doll clothes...whatever makes you happy). Choose at least 3 of the ingredients, in addition to the starred (***) item, and have fun! When you're done, upload your project to your blog or favorite online gallery. Leave a comment on this blog post with a link to your project. When I write my March post, I will randomly choose a winner from all entries to receive a $5 credit at ScrapHappy to use on anything in the store your heart desires. Questions? Anyone? Anyone? If y'all enjoy this kind of challenge, and if enough of you participate, Christy has agreed to let challenges occur monthly. So...are you ready? On your mark. Get set. Go!

This month's ingredients:
1. ***Make a project using themed paper for something completely unrelated to that theme.
2. Stamp and emboss somewhere on your project.
3. Use ink in a color or form that is not typical for you (ex. I inked all my paper edges with grey. I never use grey. This was a challenge for me. Other ideas? Experiment with spray inks or Distress Stains. Anything that is NEW to you).
4. Use chipboard.
5. Use ribbon.
6. Embellish with stars
7. Use a nontraditional page in a minibook - chipboard pages, transparencies, tags, etc.

Supplies Used in This Month's Project:
- album, patterned paper, page protectors, acrylic stamp - WeRMemoryKeepers
- ink - grey and black ink pad, Distress Stains, and Heidi Swapp Color Shine
- stars - chipboard (cut with an old Sizzix die), Heidi Swapp (Disco Stars), Studio Calico (wood veneers)
- chipboard letters - Basic Grey
- transparency - Hambly
- Perfect Pearls
- my stash - black and white ribbon, black ink and embossing powder, sports and seasons stamps

A Valentines Art Journal Page

Here it is, the first two pages in the Cereal Box Journal. The Valentines paper is so cute, I had fun stamping and cutting the paper to create these two pages. 

Close up of the clouds and mini paper rosette.  A white pen was used to add the dots around the clouds and rosette.

                        

Supplies:

Lawn Fawn - Happy Haunting & Sweet Christmas
BoBunny - Crazy Love
BoBunny - Valentines Card Stock
Valentine Card Stock
Glossy Accents
American Crafts - Tape - Paper Trimmer - Precision Pen
KaiserCraft - Sky Blue Flowers
Brad
Bling
Sakura- Gelly Roll Pen - Clear Star
Button
Twine
Ranger - Archival Ink - Black
Tim Holtz - Distress Inks - Distress  Markers - Alterations: Mini Paper Rosettes Die

Make sure to head to Scraphappy for all your Scrapping needs, while you're there, check out the Art Journal.
Christy and Stephanie are always happy to answer any questions you may have.