A Fancy Crate Tutorial

Today I have a tutorial on the Sizzix blog featuring a few dies from their new French  Farmhouse collection.  Hope you visit me there!

Have a great weekend!


Jan

3

Vintaj and a Layout

Today I'm sharing a layout featuring new embossing folders and dies from Sizzix's Vintaj collection. My photo is of my grandparents, the year they immigrated from Scotland to Canada in l922.

The Vintaj 6 x 6 embossing folders are beautiful and perfect for those 6 x 6 cards!  I cut out a 6 x 6 piece of this patterned paper and embossed it using this Vintaj Leaf Rosette folder.  Doesn't this one remind you of those antique ceiling tiles? Then, with Tim Holtz Distress paint and a Ranger Ink Blending tool, I lightly brushed Antique Linen, Rusty Hinge, and Wild Honey across the raised areas and edge of my paper.  The little bit of image was already on the edge of my paper.

I also used Vintaj's Henna Butterfly Thinlit & embossing set and  Majestic Flourish Embosslit.  The embosslit die cuts and embosses at the same time, one easy step.  For my embellishments, I used a combination of Vintaj Altered Blanks, cardstock, and Ranger's Vintaj Arte Foil.  To colour my copper metal pieces, I used Vintaj Patina opaque paints that adhere to metal.  After the paint dried, I sanded the raised areas to expose the metal.

My patterned paper and die-cuts are from Kaisercraft's, The Looking Glass collection.  My flowers were die-cut using Sizzix's Tim Holtz Tattered flower and Jumbo Tattered Flower dies.  The Majestic Flourish die-cut was red Distress Core-dinations cardstock with copper Arte Foil on top.  After die-cutting, I pulled off some of the foil on one side, then inked and sanded.  There are a few leaves and flowers hand cut from patterned paper also. The centres of my flowers are Vintaj metal flowers and brads.  

For those of you that always thought that Vintaj was just for jewelry(I know I did!), this shows you what these beautiful folders and die-cuts can look like on your cards and scrapbook pages.  I love that the new folders are 6 x 6, as a lot of my cards that I make are that size. 

Hope you enjoyed my layout and it has inspired you to try some of the new Vintaj products.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jan

6

A Valentine's Day Card

Hi everyone, today I'm sharing a project on the Sizzix blog, a Valentine's Day Card:

Sizzix has some great framelit and stamp sets, I used pieces from three different ones on my card.  For a short tutorial, visit me on the Sizzix blog!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jan

4

A Valentine's Day Slipper

I think I'm addicted to making slippers or shoes with Brenda Walton's Ballroom Slipper die.  They are so easy and fast to make, one of those stress relieving projects.  This time, I made a hanging Valentine's ornament.

The papers were from the My Mind's Eye Lost and Found collection, Heirloom.  Love the vintage look of this collection.

For this slipper, I decided not to attach the heel, so it would hang flat.  I glued in a bit of ribbon before attaching the back of the slipper.  I layered different sizes of hearts and trimmed the edge with crepe paper.  The arrow was from the coordinating die-cut embellishments.  

I decided to fill my slipper, so I cut off a piece of foam from one of the foam pieces that I save from Sizzix Embossing folder packaging.  These are a nice dense piece of foam and are easy to cut up, great for altered projects when you need more dimension.  I snipped a piece of wooden skewer and stuck it in an altered Maya Road mini spool, and stuck that in the foam.  I also attached different embellishments into a Tim Holtz pin and stuck that into the foam also.  I glued it into the toe of my shoe and covered the bottom with shredded book paper.

After taking these photos, I realized that my arrow kept bending, so I cut out thin chipboard and glued it to the back to make it a bit sturdier.

That's it for my newest shoe, I'm sure I will have more in the future!

Thanks so much for stopping by and thank you everyone for the wonderful comments yesterday! They are much appreciated!

Jan

4

My CHA Tim Holtz Projects

Hi everyone! Today I'm sharing the rest of my CHA projects that were in the Tim Holtz booth.

Love the new Sizzix Tim Holtz texture fades and dies!  The circle die-cut is the Prize Ribbon die, the texture fade is the Chevron & Lattice set, Chevron Frameworks Die and the Mini Shield  die has his new Industrious Chiseled Alphabet stickers on top.  I also used papers from his new Wallflower collection, along with the Expedition Ephemera pack, Framed plastic Alpha Parts (adventure & arrow), monocle, Chipboard Alpha Chips, and file tabs.   I think Sizzix's Garden Greens and Spring Greenery dies by Tim Holtz are going to be my most used dies.  I want to use these on everything I create, and for "guy" layouts or cards, they are perfect instead of flowers.

One thing I love about Tim Holtz products, they are made for altering, which I just can't resist!  The plastic parts, after a light sanding, take his paint beautifully.  The background type dies and embossing folders are perfect for adding different textures that add dimension to any project.  I just keep adding different products until I'm happy with the end result.  There's a bit of everything on these pieces, paint, stain, ink, rock candy crackle paint,  and embossing powder.

I guess I should mention, 'cause I know someone will ask; the photo is of my great-uncle who is in the middle.  He was a marine engineer and travelled from Scotland to Nigeria many times. I'm not sure when this photo was taken, I'm guessing in the l930's. My sister recently found a small album of photos at our parents that we had never seen before, and this was one of the photos inside.  I knew I wanted to use it with this collection, it was perfect!

On to my next layout, which is my favourite.  As soon as I saw the seahorses,  I could hardly wait to use them!

The Bigz Sand and Sea die includes the seahorse, sand dollar and the starfish can be the center of the sand dollar also.  There's a mini Sand & Sea also and can't forget the Confetti Decorative Strip which is what my dots are from.  The papers are also from the Wallflower collection, the stencil used was Tim's Bubble stencil, Framed Alpha Parts, file tab, Industrious Frame Sticker (love these stickers!) and his new Remnant Rub-ons, Life Quotes.

Here's a close up of my altered chipboard die-cuts; a combination of chipboard, patterned paper, rock candy crackle paint, ink, and stain.  

And my last project, is my altered clock.

Again, all the papers used are from Wallflower.  The flowers are die-cut from Sizzix's Tim Holtz  Tattered Flower Garden Decorative Strip and I told you I will be using these a lot; Spring Greenery and  Garden Greens Sizzix dies.  Inside I have a Tim Holtz Letterpress wooden block, heart charm and arrow adornment from his new Idea-oloy release.

There's a few butterflies from Sizzix's Tim Holtz die, Butterfly Frenzy,  distress stained ribbon, Eclectic Ephemera, and Industrious Border stickers.

It's hard to tell in my photos, but the clock itself was covered in Tim Holtz tissue, then crackled, and inked. The edge of the bell and clock face are the Industrious border stickers, altered of course! You probably can tell by now, I have a hard time not altering everything!

I love everything in this new release, and wish I had been able to create more for the show, but unfortunately ran out of time!  Tim has been posting highlights from CHA and the other designer's projects on his blog, make sure you check them out!  I feel so honoured to be a part of this talented group.  A big thank you to Tim Holtz for asking me!!

Hope you have enjoyed my projects and are inspired!

Until next time,

Jan

12

A CHA Project

It was a short and very busy trip to CHA this past week. The weather was fantastic, it was so good to get away from all the snow.

Here's a photo of outside the Convention Centre.  We were waiting for CHA to open;  coffee and sitting in the sun to start the day off! 

 Every time I go, I say to myself, "I'm going to talk lots of photos this time".  But when I load them on the computer, there's hardly any and half of them are blurry!  I'm too busy looking at everything and forget, helping with the store ordering, or the lighting is terrible.  I didn't even get any good ones of my projects in the Tim Holtz booth! I did take some before I sent them off, so I will share those.  This new collection, called Wallflower, is my favourite collection this year.  Love every paper!  I decided to make a scroll with an antique piano roll.  I've made a few of these before, and thought this paper was perfect for one.  Here's my finished project:

I used all Sizzix Tim Holtz dies for my flowers, his new Garden Green, Spring Greenery dies and his new butterfly die.

Love the new Sizzix Frameworks dies, this one is called, "Courtyard".  I also used pieces from the Ephemera pack, Thrift Shop, Industrious frames & Trims, Number Brads and a Mini Cabinet Card. I can hardly wait for all the new Ideaology embellishments to arrive!

Always love chatting with Paula in the Tim Holtz booth.  Paula Cheney and Richele Christensen work for Tim and do an amazing job.  With all their and the rest of the team's hard work, the booth looked fantastic!

Well, that's all for today, I'll share the rest another time.

For those of you that shop at Urban Scrapbook; one of the other designers is working on a piano scroll class, so watch for that one!

Have a great weekend,

Jan

4

January Monthly Challenge

It's time again for Urban Scrapbook's Monthly Challenge kit.  January's kit is filled with papers from BoBunny's collection, Woodland Winter, some great embellishments, and even a stencil.  Here's my layout:

I used my snowflake stencil and embossing dauber to emboss my blue snowflakes with Lindy's embossing powder.  My corrugated snowflakes and letters were die-cut with Sizzix's Snowflake #2 , Snowflake #3, Snowflake Border, and WordPlay Alphabet.  My snowflakes and letters were sprayed with Lindy's Starburst sprays and Mister Huey's Opaque White.
For more inspiration, make sure you check out the rest of the Urban Design Team's layouts!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jan

0

Happy New Year!

It's the beginning of a new year, and you know what that means!  CHA is just around the corner. Actually it's earlier this year, so lots of new product will be arriving soon.  I feel very lucky and honoured to be asked again in creating samples for the Tim Holtz booth again this year.  I have been busy working on some secret projects and can't wait to share them with you.  But sorry, not until after the show!  Tim has started to show sneak peeks of his new products on his blog today and I know you will love all his new stuff.  My favourite is his new paper collection!

Valentine's Day will be here before we know it too and one of my favourite lines that we have received at Urban Scrapbook is the Jillibean Soup "Heart Healthy" collection. I really like the combination of kraft with red and pink, and the coordinating die-cuts.  Here's a card I created:

I also used This Sizzix "I love you & Happy Anniversary" framelit and stamp set, along with the "Dots, Zigzags & Flowers" embossing folder set from designer, Stephanie Barnard.  I started off embossing a plain piece of kraft cardstock with the flower folder, larger enough to use the large circle framelit.  Next, I stamped with black ink, the heart circle on the "Red Sherry" Jillibean paper and embossed it with Ranger's Sticky Embossing Powder.  When heated this powder turns sticky, and I was able to apply Tim Holtz Fired Brick Distress Glitter to my stamped image. With using black ink, my glittered image looks darker, which I wanted.   I also stamped the mini hearts onto plain kraft cardstock.

Using my Sizzix Magnetic platform and the coordinating framelits, I cut out my embossed and stamped images.  For the dry embossed circle, I used an embossing pen around the edge and red embossing powder. I adhered these to my card base, along with the Jillibean die-cuts, using adhesive and pop-dots.  I coiled a very thin piece of gold wire and adhered my small hearts on top to look like they were attached to the wire.

I'm sure I'll be using this stamp and framelit set quite a bit as there is also an anniversary and I love you round stamp included too.

I wish all of you a great 2014, and thanks for stopping by!

Jan

0