Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Lucky Number 7

Today's page I completed with my March Counterfeit Kit from The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog. I also did a challenge from Lasting Memories Layout Challenge. The challenge was to use a Movie Quote in your layout.


This is a photo of my husband and I celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary at the Melting Pot. And I look like that because I'm 8 months pregnant and miserable! (So glad that's over!) It was a fun dinner.


The quote is from Pride & Prejudice. It's one of my favorite, most romantic literary moments, and I love how it was captured in the movie, as well. I'm a big Colin Firth fan ;)



This orange paper was one of my favorites, so I kept my layout simple to show it off. I had made a Cricut cut and wanted it cut from a page out of my dictionary. However, the page did NOT cut well and stuck terribly to my Cricut mat, soooo . . . why not incorporate some hand lettering??

Supplies:

Orange Paper - Basic Grey for K&Company
Green Paper - DCWV
Flowers - Michael's Recollections
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Cork 7 sticker and kraft label sticker - Studio Calico

Thanks for looking!

Monday, March 28, 2016

Remembering our Nana

My grandmother passed away the other day. I made this page to document the last, very important words she said to me.


She passed on St. Patrick's Day. I had taken a good shot of my boys earlier that morning before school, and it works perfectly for the page in memory of her.


I journaled the details around the photo.


I really wanted the quote to be remembered, so I decided to diecut it to fit the entire page.


Supplies:
Green Bazzil Cardstock
Pattern Papers and glitter clovers from The Paper Studio
Words cut with Cricut
Green Enamel by Studio Calico
Chipboard sticker by Me and My Big Ideas

Thanks for looking!

Friday, March 25, 2016

All Smiles & Ears - A Flashback Friday SBC

Today's layout is a fun, Flashback Friday sketch from Scrapbook Challenges.


I took a bunch of photos of my little dude to get the perfect headshot for a Buzz Lightyear 3rd birthday party a while back, and these outtakes were just too cute to not document! This sketch was just perfect for them! I used a couple of Studio Calico kits with bright colors that really worked. I especially LOVE the transparencies that came in the March kit!

Supplies:

Green Star Paper - Studio Calico Lollipop Guild
White with black stripes - Studio Calico Homespun
Black chalk cardstock - DCWV Rock Star
White with silver stars - Me and My Big Ideas pocket card
Pink Cardstock - DCWV Rock Star
Striped Transparencies - Studio Calico Homespun
Pink Star and Title paper dies - Studio Calico, Arendal
Star enamel stickers - Studio Calico and Heidi Swapp

Head on over to Scrapbook Challenges and get more inspiration for today's sketch!
Thanks for looking!

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Blog Hop - The Counterfeit Kit Challenge!

I'm participating in the member blog hop today for The Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog. I'm pretty excited about it! You may have arrived here from Sally's Challenge Chatter. After Dillightfully Crafty, you can hop right on over to Snaps and Snippets.

So today I've prepared some photos to document my process of creating a scrapbook page with my March kit, which I named Snappy Pack.

Here's the page I've created for the Challenge "May you Live in Pinteresting Times." The challenge was to find a pin to inspire your project, but it could not be another craft project or scrapbook page.


Here is the pin which I used as inspiration:


The image came from Sarah Hearts.

Now to get a little bit into my process... So I grabbed my Snappy Pack CFC kit and picked out the papers I loved that I wanted to use for this photo. I knew I had to use the chevron with the fall colors, as that is what I had in mind when I printed the photo, so I was working around that piece.


First I grabbed my favorite orange paper:


But it was a bit darker than I wanted, so I decided to save it for a future project.

I liked this neutral (with a little glitter), but it needed something more.


So I added the orange flower paper, which sort of mirrored the flowers in the photo - and I thought, "perfect!"


I had this sweet pocket card that I thought would work well for the kids' photo, but I had to figure out where to place it. The top of the photo did not work...


Boom! Moved to the bottom left corner & it just fit perfectly. I think the black in the top most square is different in this type of palette, so I decided to accent it and add a bit of the black camera paper from the CFC kit.


An extra layer is always a good idea. This orange paper softens the black & worked perfectly.


Then I spotted my new Studio Calico punch that I found on clearance recently, so I figured it needed to be used. This is literally the "process" of my creation - it's always in the process of evolving as I work!


After I punched some chevrons, I inked all my papers. I ink papers a good portion of the time. I just feel like it gives a good dimension, as well as it tends to hide imperfections, so if you have some tattered edges (unintended) or maybe a not-so-straight edge, it's much less noticeable when inked!


Now it's my favorite time! Embellishment time!

I had this cute little veneer circle that I felt needed a little something. (Confession: This stamp was not included in my CFC kit, as it just arrived in the mail the day I made the layout! But it was just too perfect with the Snappy Pack photo/camera/click inspired kit, that I just had to use it!)


These flowers were screaming to be included on my sunflower page!


I stuck everything down once I had visualized where everything was to be placed, then done!


Here are some detail shots:

You can see that I added a couple more punches once I had the paper placed exactly and felt there was still too much blank orange space.


Look at those sweet baby smiles! I love seeing my baby have fun with his friends!


Thanks for looking!

Don't forget your next hop at Snaps and Snippets with Susanne!

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Hi, North Shore: Sketch & Pattern Challenges

I'm competing in a fun, new-to-me challenge this month from Challenge YOUrself where you're supposed to include in your scrapbook page a photo of yourself! This month's pattern they wish you to use is Chevrons, so I've incoporated that into a page for (at least) the second time this month.

I'm also using a sketch from My Creative Sketches. I rotated their lovely March sketch for my landscape photo.

This is a photo of me, pregnant with my firstborn, at the North Shore on Oaha, Hawaii, where my husband was born & lived as a baby. It was unreal how beautiful this place was!


This is my adaptation of the sketch from My Creative Sketches:


Some details:


Apparently the Easter Bunny needs to replenish my alpha sticker selection! I wanted to say "hi north shore" (hi, a play on the acronym for Hawaii). I had to make the i from a j ... the n from an m, second o from a q and second r from a p! Gotta be resourceful with pretty glitter letters!

I actually used a ton of glitter on this page, which is appropriate since it's supposed to be about me over at the Challenge YOUrself blog. I love all things sparkly. I had recently been reviewing an old cruise album where I'd used all these bright DCWV papers & I have some left, so they needed to be brought up again!

Supplies:
Orange glitter cardstock - DCWV Coral Couture
Patterned papers - DCWV Citrus Stack
White chevrons leftover from my chevron challenge earlier in the month at Scrapbook Challenges
Chipboard Flowers from Me and My Big Ideas
White glitter stickers - American Crafts Thickers
Aqua glitter stickers - Heidi Swapp

Thanks for looking!

Monday, March 21, 2016

Toes in the water, Toes in the sand - a SBC sketch

Today we have another great sketch to start your week over at Scrapbook Challenges!


I love a good 4x6 photo layout, so this was right up my alley. I used my cricut to cut the title. I have had the plastic storage circles for forever & was excited to finally use one to hold some seashells we found on our trip. The little flower came from a cute scrapbook store in Maui (back when we did cool things like that before children...), and I used my trusty old dictionary to stamp the boat at the bottom.

Thanks for looking & go try out the sketch!

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Every Day Counts!

So when you are awoken an hour before your alarm on a Sunday morning, obviously you accept it, and go put a page together!

Today I used a sketch from Scrap Much?, and I really love how it turned out!


I never use stitching on my pages, but I really enjoyed it here, and it didn't take as long as I thought it would! This is my sweet, great-grandmother & my newborn on Thanksgiving. She is his great, great-grandmother!

Details:


Supplies:

Background Paper - Creative Imaginations by Marah Johnson
Maroon Cardstock - The Paper Studio
Brown dot paper - unidentified, stash bought at garage sale
Paper ephemera - Pink Paislee, Cedar Lane
Large Maroon flowers - Jo Ann's Craft Essentials
Small Maroon flowers and brown leaf - Recollections by Michaels

My grandmother passed away the other day, and today is her funeral. That's this sweet lady's little girl, so she could use some extra prayers today, please!

Thank you for looking!

Friday, March 18, 2016

Out of my zone - A double page spread - SBC sketch!

So today I completed a DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD layout for a Scrapbook Challenges sketch & it was intimidating at first, but has turned out to be one of my favorites!

I used to do double page spreads all the time about 7 years ago, but have gotten away from them. However, this Flashback Friday sketch was calling my name (and a few special Halloween party photos), so I gave it a try!


Seriously, how cute is that minion and that Snow White!? I just love those babies!

I used my FAVORITE Halloween paper from Carta Bella. The background paper was in a box of paper from a garage sale, but the other pages coordinated so well with it! The sweet black vellum letter stickers are from Studio Calico.


I had picked up this gorgeous orange glitter tape a while ago at Michael's, and the swirly background paper just coordinated perfectly with it! I layered a few black puffies on top & perfect - the sketch's "stand out" photo was done!


Thank you for looking! Go participate over at Scrapbook Challenges - even if it's outside your comfort zone - you may be surprised at yourself!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Geocaching Gemstone Swag - A Tutorial

Today I'm bringing another tutorial that combines two of my hobbies - geocaching & crafting!


If you're not familiar with geocaching, you can check it out here. It's a super fun way to get outside, have more adventures & cure your wanderlust!

For some caches that are large enough, it is customary to exchange little tokens. People leave little non-valuable items, and take other items left by other geocachers. There's an entire etiquette you can read at the website. It's especially appreciated by the younger geocachers like my son who will love to switch little toys and such.

I've seen these little gems as geocache swag around the internet, and I thought, "I need to make some of those, they're so cute." I also thought if we put our family's geocaching screen name on them, then we may make more geocaching friends! So if by some giant coincidence, someone reading this blog finds one of our gems, definitely leave me a comment and befriend us! That's so fun! It also just so happens to be this blog address, so maybe someone will put two and two together upon finding a swag...

So without further blabber, I'll let you know how I made our gems. I'm sure there are lots of different ways to do it out there, but here is mine.

I found these clear little gems at the $1 store.


They're about .6 inch in diameter, so that's the size circle I created in Cricut Design Studio.


I duplicated my circle so that I will have a picture to show on the magnified side, and a backside to show our geocaching name.


Next I wanted to make a circle with our Geocaching name. So I typed it with one word per line so it would fit and changed the types of fonts to choose from to "has a writing style".


The letters were really far spaced apart, so I changed the letter spacing so they would better fit in my circle.


Then, instead of messing with a font size, I just resized the entire block of text to .5 inches high so it would fit into my .6 inch circle.


There are plenty of tiny photos you could choose to fit on a small circle, but because it was so small, I decided to use wingding fonts to ensure the complexity of the icon would not be too difficult for a cricut pen to draw so small. Most computers come with wingdings and webdints. You can easily find these by selecting "system fonts" on your cricut font drop down menu.


If you do not have these fonts, or if you want to find a different ding font, there are plenty of free ones available online. I went to DaFont and downloaded a few new ones.


To install your new font, go to your downloads folder, and choose "Extract All" for the downloaded font.


Once the files are extracted, right click the actual font file and choose "install."


You will most likely need to close out of design studio and reopen the program to recognize the newly downloaded fonts. Make sure to save your swag work!

So I've typed a letter and I choose which ding font I want ...

Annnnd, it changes to a picture! I resize the width of the picture to fit the .6 inch circle.


Make sure that the circles each have a pair of scissors by them to ensure they will be cut. The photo icon and the words need to have a pen next to them to ensure they will be drawn by the Cricut.


To ensure that the Cricut will draw the icons and cut the circles around them, and not complete each action separately, you need to select all the items and choose "Attach".


Everything will then be one. If you feel you need to edit, you will have to "detach" before you can make changes on what you've already completed.


You're now ready to draw and cut. However, you have tons of gems to create! When you hit cut, it will show a preview. On the preview, you can change the amount of "project copies" to as many as you'd like to create. (Please Note: I was trying to create multiples on the actual program before I hit cut. This created a lot of problems and even froze my program a couple of times. It's much easier to duplicate the items this way than in the program!)


If you're using scrap paper, you can move the items around the 12x12 cutting mat to the location where you're planning to place your paper to cut.


Since the gems are so tiny, I recommend a very fine point pen. I was delighted to discover my American Crafts writing pens fit into the Cricut! I chose a .03 fine pen.


So I created a few different circles with different ding fonts I downloaded, and this was the result. I combined the icons with the words to create two sided circles.


Next I grabbed my self-leveling clear epoxy. It's super stinky & takes 24 hours to completely dry, but it does the trick magnificently!


I squirted the epoxy on the gems, spread it with a foam brush and stuck on my circle. Then I covered the circle with another layer of epoxy. I discovered that I should do only one at a time because it begins to harden rather quickly. Also, the self-leveling is important. It's pretty sticky and you feel like you're creating points and ridges when you move it around, but once it sits flat for a moment, it magically levels out very smoothly.


Next you must be patient and let them dry for the full 24 hours! They will stick together if you gather them too closely before they're fully dry!


Here's the final product! We have some Mickey heads for the Disney fans, some dinos and ice cream cones for kiddos, or some travel icons for adults to collect geocaching swag!


I cannot wait to start placing these in caches, and I hope to find others soon as well!


I hope this was helpful & maybe inspired some of you to pick up a new hobby!? I feel like you could also apply this tutorial to other projects, specifically this would work well with coasters or photo magnets!!

Leave me feedback if you use the tutorial to create something & let me know how it goes.

Thanks for looking!