Shimelle's online crop - part II

I made two more layouts inspired by Shimelle's challenges. The first layout is for challenge 10 that said - scrapbook 2 photos on a bold background. I used two pictures from Lila's birthday celebration at preschool back in 2001. I could also use them for the crappy photos challenges - the pictures are not perfect but they are the only ones I have so I treasure them in all their imperfection. I picked a busy background paper from S.E.I. birthday collection. In the larger photo Lila holds a piece of cake, the cupcake paper looked like a good fit. I did what I usually do when I have a bold background paper - I muted it down with vellum. I used 3 squares, each one smaller that the previous. To hold them in place I used an adhesive in the middle, behind the pictures and I stitched  in the corners with decorative stitches. The pink flower was once attached to a hair accessory.

Supplies: patterned paper and diecut shapes(SEI), vellum (Recollections), letter stickers (Bella Blvd.), embroidery floss (K&Co), pearl (Making Memories), chipboard (Heidi Grace)

I added letter stickers for the title and a chipboard number 3. I had another photo from the same day and I already scrapped it few years ago. You can see the layout in this post.

The next layout was made for challenge 11 - mix two contrasting patterns to create your background.

I started with baby blue glittery paper by My Mind's Eye and brown lined paper by Little Yellow Bicycle. I mixed both collections for the rest of the layout, pulling piece that work together.

Supplies: patterned paper (My Minds Eye, Little Yellow Bicycle), transparent shapes (Little Yellow Bicycle), layered embellishment  (My Mind's Eye), distress stickles (Ranger Ink), faux brads (Heidi Grace), journaling card (Jenni Bowlin), ticket tag (Little Yellow Bicycle), button (Jenni Bowlin), embroidery floss (K&Co), acrylic heart sticker (Cloud 9), twine, staples

I added distressed stickles to the transparent shape by Little Yellow Bicycle.  I like how it helps to draw attention to that part of the layout and to Eli's face (did you notice how long was his hair?) and how it works together with the glittery MME paper and the embellishment.

The little blue circles that looks like brads are stickers by Heidi Grace for Colorbok. I bought them at Jo-Ann. Aren't they cute?

I saved this piece of twine (or is it a rope?) from a gift packaging. It worked perfect with this layered banner.

 

I am not sure if I will be able to work on more challenges this weekend, but if not, I already made four layouts. Not too bad, if you ask me. 

Take Twelve - April layout

Supplies: cardstock (American Crafts, Recollections), patterned paper (Bella Blvd.), stickers (Bella Blvd.), camera and butterflies die-cuts (K&Co), alpha dies ad diecut machine (Lifestyle Crafts), circle punch(Marvy Uhida), stamps (Papertrey Ink)

  

How I love this project! I just hope I will be able to complete it. So far so good. I am missing March layout but I have the pictures and I hoped to make it the same time as April layout but I run out of the photo paper!  I am using similar format for all my Take 12 layouts - square pictures, approximately 3.25"x3.25" arranged on a page in a grid-like pattern. One strip of patterned paper, a title cut with Diesel Lifestyle Crafts alpha dies and few embellishments.

This month I wanted to include a lot of journaling. I took it directly from the blog post with the pictures. I glad I read it again because I had to fix few small things. We have Playstation 3, not PS2 like I wrote. Honestly, it is all the same for me :) I took the png file with the journaling tag from the Take 12 Guided Inspiration kit and  dropped it into a word document. I made it bigger and added a text box inside the tag for the journaling. I than printed it on a white cardstock and cut out inside the tag border.

I added stamped numbers to my pictures, few embellishments and viola, another month is done!

You can see my January layout here and February layout here.

I am off to buy more photo paper and to print those March pictures.

Shimelles's online crop - part I

This weekend I put my srapbooking to-do list aside and instead I decided to play with the challenges from Shimelle's online crop. Shimelle's crops are always fun and this one did not disappoint. It took me few days to finish two layouts but I love them. I hope to find a little more time and play more this week.

Challenge 01 was to find inspiration in amazing page by Jaime Warren. I basically scraplifted the whole page. I think it is my busiest page ever. The white background paper is by Creative Memories and all other papers are Bella Blvd.

Supplies: patterned paper (Creative Memories, Bella Blvd.), letter stickers (Bella Blvd), chipboard stickers (Bella Blvd), green pearl flowers (Making Memories), cream pearl flower (Jenni Bowlin), layered embellishment (Me and My Big Ideas), buttons (Recollections), floss (WRMK), ink (Colorbox), circle, scallop, cloud, bird and butterfly punches (Fiskars), border punch (Fiskars), ric rac circle  die (Lifestyle Crafts)

 

Challenge 02 was to create a layout mixing three or more paper collection. This layout looks more like my own layout :)  Ofir took this beautiful picture of Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006. This part of the museum is an addition designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I ever saw. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Supplies: patterned paper (Little Yelow Bicycle, My Mind;s Eye), vellum  (Recollections), border punch (Fiskars), journaling tag, clear cuts (Little Yellow Bicycle), chipboard letters (Basic Gray), brad (My Mund's Eye), border stickers (Bo Bunny), film strip ribbon (Tim Holtz), pearls (Kaiser Crafts), raindots (Cloud 9), tags

I really didn't want to add much to this layout. I picked  wood grain background from the Twig collection by Little Yellow Bicycle. To make the vellum photo mat I layered 3 sheets of vellum with punched edge and stitched around all 4 edges. The top cluster is built from the Tim Holtz film strip ribbon, a piece of transparency from the Little Yellow Bicycle Saturdays collection and a paper strip from My Mind's Eye Lost and Found.

The bottom cluster had two border stickers from Mama-razzi by Bo Bunny, Little Yellow Bicycle transparency, another piece of film strip ribbon and My Mind's eye brad holding two tiny tags with the date. 

 

All challenges are open till the end of the coming weekend. Are you playing along?

Take Twelve - April

One of the suggested Take 12 prompts for April was technology and I decided it will be fun to look at this page few years from now. Our personal and home electronics are by no means state of the art. Well, maybe except Lila's. But it works for us.

1. My 2009 Toyota Sienna. It was the first time we bought a new car and I still can't understand why we did that. But I do appreciate the convenience. After I finally was brave enough to drive it I was shocked how easy it is. Our second car is 2000 Mazda Protege. 

2. This is how I find Lila each morning - connected to her iPod or Nook or both. Her cellphone is probably under the pillow.

3. My 5 years old laptop - HP Pavilion. It is pretty much falling apart and I started to think if tablet will be good enough for me or I need a new laptop.

4. Lila's nook - she got the first Nook from grandma almost 2 years ago and last December she upgraded herself to Nook Color. She uses it to read books and to watch Law and Order on Netflix 

5. Eli playing with Ella's DSi. DSi's were huge few years ago and both girls have them. But now they are not getting much use. I had to ask Ella to bring her DSi for the photo shoot purposes.

6. My cellphone -last summer a tube of sunscreen leaked in my bag and ate the cellphone coating. Looking forward to the upgrade!

7. Ofir in our basement office corner. - working on his laptop and watching movie on the desktop.

8. Eli playing with Leapster - this Leapster is also 5 years old (like my laptop) and was a gift from my BFF Nina to Ella

9. Our second desktop in the living room. It is used for homework and Netflix - definitely need a replacement for this one. We are getting at least one blue screen a day.

10. PS23 with Ofir's favorite game - enough said.

11. Ofir's Nikon D70 and a little Fuji that I am using. Another item on my wish list - new DSLR!

12. Wii. Used mainly for Netflix buy Eli (Blue's Clues) and Ella (crazy Japanese animation movies) . Our fabulous TV set is also in the picture - the black circle and the lines are actually there, part of the screen.

Here it is - our technology list looks more like a shopping list. :)

Stating point - things that I love about autumn

I know, I probably should be making layouts about spring now but when I work on Shimelle's Starting Points challenges I like to use my scraps. I flipped through my basket with papers from the last year and saw that I have one full sheet of WRMK Autumn Splendor paper left and a big pile of scraps. The decision was made.

That's how my starting point looked like, very similar to Shimelle's. I did not have journaling cards to use so instead I just layered few small paper scraps under embossed tag. I splattered few drops of Burnt Red glimmer mist across the layout. After that I went to look for a picture to use.  

Supplies: cardstock (Bazzill Basics), patterned paper, tag, chipboard tag and photo corners (WRMK), glimmer mist (Tattered Angels), scallop border (unknown) 

I found one in my 2009 storage album - Eli holding an apple. One of the apple baskets on the farm had a sign - 1 free apple per child. We took several pictures of Eli reaching for the apple and holding it tight. Most of the pictures are still in the storage album but I picked this one for my autumn layout.

I doodled faux stitches around the 6"x7" piece to make it stand out more.

I am so in love with this picture. I can't believe my little baby is 3.5 already.

Spring

We are in the midst of spring break. No school, no ice skating, no gymnastics, no rehearsals, no driving, dropping off or picking up. It is great! We are having a lovely spring weather that helped me to get into a holiday mood. Our good friends joined us on Friday night for Passover dinner.We had a great time. I want to share few pictures that Ofir and I took before dinner. Can't wait to scrap them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scrap It Girl - Creative Memories challenge

 New month means new challenge at Scrap It Girl. The April challenge is hosted by Rina. She is a Creative Memories consultant from California and the challenge this month is to use Creative Memories products.  CM products is not my usual cup of tea but I did have a cute paper kit that I bought from my friend Michelle. I love the happy colors of the papers, they were perfect for the summer pictures of my kids that I took last August. 

Supplies: paper, stickers, butterflies (Creative Memories), mist (Clearsnap), acrylic paint

I misted the butterflies with gold Smooch Spritz and added them to the layout with pop-dots.

 I adhered the sun sticker to a piece of orange paper and cut carefully around. I finished the layout with painted frames around the pictures and pleated strips of paper.

Now is your time to dig out your CM products and submit your layout for the challenge. You will love the prize!

I also used the same papers for my last Tuesday Trio project. I decided to step down from Tuesday Trio design team. I felt like I needed a change and more time to re-evaluate my monthly commitments. I joined Tuesday Trio in July 2010 and since then made more than 80 cards or layouts or both based on the weekly sketches. It was time for me to move on something different.

Supplies: patterned paper, sticker (Creative Memories), cardstock (American Crafts), stamp (Fiskars), faux brads (Heidi Grace for Colorbok)

Starting point

I love going thought my old photo albums and finding gems like that one - a photo of my dad holding baby Ella. I used Shimelle's last starting point and Little Yellow Bicycle Saturdays collection. And once again I used my favorite Lifestyle Crafts flower die to cut lots of flowers in different colors and sizes and just layered them to create 5 big flowers. I then misted them with light blue glimmer mist. It helps to define the edges of the petals and it also makes the petals curl up naturally when the dry. 

Supplies: patterned paper, transparent die-cuts, tags (Little Yellow Bicycle), border punch (Martha Stewart), letter stickers (Creative Imaginations), jewels (Prima, Studio 18 for Michael's)