My Final Project

This layout is my final project for The Little Black Dress Kit club.  After a lot of thought, I decided to step down from the design team.  I loved working with these kits, but I think it's time to ease up on a few commitments.  After spending so much time at home last year with my illness, I want to enjoy what little summer we have!

It's time for Urban Scrapbook's July kit.  This month's challenge is all about dry embossing.  The kit is filled with Simple Stories new summer line,"100 Days of Summer" paper, sticker letters, a Tim Holtz embossing folder, and lots of fun embellishments.  I embossed the center of my paper by wrapping the sides around my machine's platform plate.  Your paper will crease where it was folded, but I just think it adds to the distressed look.  I also inked my embossing folder before I put in my paper, and then embossed it(the yellow paper beside the photo).  I love the different effect you get!

Check out Urban Scrapbook's website to see what the design team has come up with this month!  The layouts are all on display at the store too, along with the kits for sale.
Have a great Thursday!

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For those of you...

who scrapbook the boys or men in your life, Basic Grey's new Oxford line is perfect.  I love the rich colors and plaids in this line and it also has a school theme.  This week's palette for The Color Room matched perfectly with some of these papers, so I came up with this layout:

My youngest son is always wearing some kind of hat, but his university graduation cap is my favorite!  He graduated last year from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Design degree.  He's had a good start in his career, just recently he and his two friends designed an interactive children's room in our Provincial Art Gallery(called Drawn Outside).
I used the Color Room's sketch this time,  and just turned it around.  The sketch had a decorative edge or ribbon on the one side, but I decided to make a "guy" type of ribbon.  I used chain, which I glued to my page.  Then I put a layer of Crackle Accents (Ranger) along the edge of the chain.  Before the crackle dried, I placed mini puzzle pieces and lots of tiny watch parts on top.  I  then added more crackle accents on top to hold all the tiny pieces.  Both of these, the puzzles pieces and bags of miniature watch parts are from Urban Scrapbook.

The gears are cut out with chipboard, using the new Tim Holtz mini gears die.  I then painted them with a light blue paint dauber and while it was wet, placed tissue paper (7Gypsies) cut out with the gears die also.  The paint kind of seeped through the tissue in some places which gave it a cool look.  The metal pieces are from Tim Holtz and 7Gypsies, and I had some vintage bullion angel hair (the coiled wire) that I stretched and wrapped around the gear.  The sticker letters were from Simple Stories, and the stickers are also from the Oxford line.

Thanks for looking!  The sun is finally shining here, I'm going for a walk!

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I think I like....

this rainy weather, at least for a few days.  I''m not accomplishing much, but does it matter?!  I did finish this layout for palette #62 at The Color Room.  The whole palette was orange tones, which I thought might be hard to scrapbook, but turns out I had a quite a few things in my stash in the color orange.  I think that's my favorite thing about using palettes, you go through your stash and use old stuff!  Imagine that, actually using older product! Feels pretty good!  There's some old Basic Grey rub-ons, a circle diecut from Collage Press, stickers from BoBunny and this Prima background paper (which, as I was inking, realized that it is textured in the bottom corner-how come I didn't know this when I bought it?)  I embossed the lower corner with my Tim Holtz brick embossing folder.  Now, I don't think you can do this with any diecut machine (maybe you can, not sure) but with The Vagabond (Tim Holtz machine) it is possible.  For those of you who need a certain amount of reasons to buy something, here's another one to put on the list for purchasing this machine!  I just slipped my paper in between the bottom corner and wrapped the paper around my diecutting plate.  On the Vagabond, the edges where your die goes through have a hinged flap, and I think this helps your paper not get creased as much.  There is a slight crease, but it comes out after awhile.  Seems to me, that Tim Holtz talked about this on one of his tutorials.  The paper inside the circle is from one of Tim Holtz paper pads but I sprayed a texture spray on it called Goosebumps from Tsukineko which dries into an acrylic type resist.  I haven't tried it with masks yet, but it is very cool stuff.  The photo was from one of Urban Scrapbook's photowalks.  I think Sheri took this one for me, loved how it was taken on a slant.  We had a lot of fun doing these walks, maybe we should do another one this summer!
                  
Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Usually....

I hate gloomy, rainy days, but today I'm lovin' it!  I have the day off, I did all my running around, groceries, etc. on Tuesday, so I have my "cozy" clothes on and I'm not leaving the house!  My husband just got home from out of town this morning, and brought me my "Timmies" coffee, could it get any better?  I'm just scrapbooking (well, going to scrapbook, ... I better!) I've spent the morning looking for photos, playing with photos, checking out blogs, so now I should be inspired enough!  What to you do to get inspired?  If any of you have any great ideas or wonderful websites/blogs I'd love to hear about them.
For those of you that are searching for teacher gift ideas, check out Amy Heller's blog where she has made these cute apple shaped books:

Or, if you're really ambitious, check out what Roxanne has made for teacher gifts.  Seriously, Roxanne?  You must really love your kid's teachers!  These books are amazing!  I don't think I would want to give them up!  If you have checked out her blog, you will also notice the tag she has made for demo night at Urban Scrapbook.  If you have nothing to do tonight, drop by the store to make one!
Here's another layout for The Little Black Dress Kit Club June kit:

Yes, I know, I am obsessed with butterflies lately!  It was that "all over the page" Martha Stewart butterfly punch that got me started!  Then I saw the punch with two little butterflies and one larger one used by some of the gals at the store, so I had to get that one.  That filigree one started calling my name soon after, so I brought that one home too.  That's the problem with working at a scrapbook store, you end up bringing something home everytime you work!
Anyways, I'm just warning you, there will be more layouts with butterflies!
This photo is of my husband's grandparents, shortly after they were married.  I was contacted by a woman in Wales, from Ancestory.com (another obsession) asking if we were in some way researching the same family.  Turns out we were, and she invited me to look at her family tree and her photos.  She has researched my mother-in-laws' family back into the 1700's, and had lots of old photos.  One of them was this photo which my mother-in-law had never seen of her parents before(love how her mom is standing on the step to be taller, she was barely 5 ft. tall).  Unfortunately, her father died suddenly when he was around forty, she was only eight years old, so she doesn't have very many photos of him.  I gave her a copy of this one and a few of him when he was a boy, she was so excited!  After looking at old photos, there's one thing that I noticed.  I love the ones that are taken informally, they might not be the greatest photo but you can see more of the person's personality.  I like looking at their surroundings, it makes for a more interesting photo, I think.  I wonder what our families will think when they look at all our photos years from now?  I know mine will be laughing hysterically at some of my hairstyles, that's for sure!
That's it for today, I'm off to my scrapbook room.  Have a great day!

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I had a very good reason....

to buy some of BoBunny's new Barefoot line,(not that I need one!) with the Color Room's palette last week.  I had some photos of our visit to Melbourne's aquarium that I hadn't scrapbooked yet so these papers were pretty close to the palette colors, along with my green background sheet from Glitz.

This is such a great summer line with lots of embellishments for those summer photos.  And of course, I can't seem to do a layout without some "fussy" cutting!

Last week my layout, "Summer Days" was featured on a website called, Craft Gossip.  I hadn't heard of this site before, but I was pleasantly surprised when I went on it.  Lots of inspiration, tutorials, free downloads, a great site to check out!

I'm off to catch up on some projects, have a great week!

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It's been awhile....

since I have posted anything.  Seems like my days get busier everyday and I just don't have time or the energy to post here!  I should be doing all my laundry right now, but I'm avoiding that growing pile!  No kids at home any more, so why do I still have so much?
We had our visit to New York to visit our daughter.  Here's some photos I took from the plane.  It was a nice clear day, so we had a great view of the city.

 She's a pretty busy young woman (two jobs) but we managed to see her as much as possible.  We stayed in a hotel this time, our son and his girlfriend stayed with her in her teeny tiny apartment.  It was a great hotel - The Hampton Inn in Chelsea, two blocks from her apartment.  Plus, it was just down from an antique store and across the street was a flea market on the weekend.  The antique store had shelves of door knobs, door plates, all that stuff you could use for altered items!  But unfortunately New York prices!  We did come home with some gorgeous door handles.

Our first day, we went to meet our daughter for lunch near her work place, but on the way we stopped at my first "wish list destination" which wasn't too far from our hotel either, "Tinsel Trading".  I haven't been able to get there before, so I was determined this time.  A whole store of ribbons, trims, vintage ribbons, buttons, etc.  There are some incredible vintage ribbons in glass cases that are so beautiful but extremely expensive.  But this isn't the only notions store in the garment district.  There is store after store of trims, ribbons, buttons, in this area.  I could have stayed there all day, but my husband, for some reason, didn't share the same enthusiasm!

One of Urban's customers, Brenda, recommended we check out the "Frick Gallery" which was breathtaking.  It is an art gallery in the "Frick Family"home that is the most beautiful mansion I have ever seen.  Thank you, Brenda for recommending it!  If you haven't been to this gallery when in New York, I would definitely make the trip.
Other than eating, eating, and more eating (the food is so good) and shopping, we walked along the "High Line" park, which is made from an abandoned rail line above the street level.  I'm not sure how many blocks it goes for, but they were just opening the next section a week after we were there.  It is such a cool idea, instead of demolishing the rail line, to turn it into a walking trail park, with shrubs, flowers and grasses where the tracks are.

The weather wasn't great, we only had two nice sunny days, so our trip to Central Park was short and sweet.

And here's a view of Union Square from inside the biggest and busiest DSW shoe store I have ever seen.

So that's a little bit of my trip and a few photos.(I didn't take as many this time, it was raining quite a bit)  I think I'm still tired from all that walking!
Now, back to scrapbooking!  I do have a couple of projects to share.
First, from May's kit for The Little Black Dress Kit club, I made this little book using the Glitz chipboard book covers that were included.  I have lots of photos from Fort Edmonton and I put some of my favorites in here:

I used my Tim Holtz woodgrain embossing folder on the cover and cut out the center with a Tim Holtz die, then inked and distressed stained it.

This next layout is for Little Black Dresse's June kit.  It seems like I just get their monthly kit finished, and then the next one is here!

We have an old birdhouse in one of our trees that is practically falling apart, but every year there are birds nesting in it one after the other.  I love it when I can catch those little babies feeding!  A close-up of the flower that I made using a Martha Stewart "All over the Page" pinking circle punch, Graphic45 metal flower, and the little center spikes are exclamation marks from the American Crafts letters included in the kit.  That's all I have finished so far for their June kit, still working on the rest.

Next is my monthly layout for Urban's June page kit.  The kit included papers from  Pink Paislee's Hometown collection.  This paper line is designed by the owner/designer of Collage Press (was one of my favorite companies) who is now just designing for Pink Paislee.  It is all about borders in this kit:

Check out what the other Urban designers have come up with, they are all fantastic!

And if I didn't have enough to do, I joined up with a few of the other girls at work and Nicole in a tag exchange!  Actually, I think we are all enjoying making these tags, there's only five of us, so there's not many to do.  These are my May and June tags:

May's tag had to be monochromatic and include a quote.  June's tag had to be masculine and include a zipper.

And now I have left the best news for last!  I was asked to do a layout for Canadian Scrapbooker and it made the cover!  I was given this photo and had to come up with an 8 1/2 x 11 page.  I've never done a layout in this size, it was a bit of a challenge.  You know me, I put a lot on my pages.  It felt kind of weird scrapbooking a photo of people you have no idea who they are, but I was so inspired by their clothing in this beautiful photo.   There's still some magazines left at the store, but they sell out fast!

This ended up being a very long post, didn't it?!  A whole month's worth of news, I guess.  I had better start that laundry, though!  Take care and have a great week!

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