Shelter Cove Art Show

When we check in on Hilton Head Island, we stock up on all the local 'things to do' publications.  One advertised an art show going on that weekend (Memorial Day) at Shelter Cove Harbor only a mile from where we were staying.  We decided to bike up there the next morning and browse.

At first, I was a bit disappointed as there were only 5 or 6 booths by the harbor, then I turned around and saw a long line of tents back in the trees.  There are trees everywhere on Hilton Head so you really do have to look for stuff.  We were soon impressed by the range and intricacy of many of the crafts.  It had been awhile since we had been to this type of show and I'm either behind on what's trendy or these were some very high end artisans.  Metal works were common as well as etchings, unusual composition of paintings and even artwork made from humanely grown butterflies.  (I'm not sure what is humane about turning a butterfly into a piece of art, but they were pretty.  I think the butterflies have a normal lifespan and are not killed to make the art.)

We browsed for a long time and I did buy a necklace made of sea beans.  A sea bean is a large brown object that looks like a piece of wood.  It comes from pods off trees in rain forests that wash down through the streams into the ocean.  After a few years drifting about in salt water, these turn up on a beach somewhere.  Mine was found in Liberia.  The husband of the couple selling them travels extensively for business in the shipping industry and found them.  Here's my necklace using a 'hamburger' style bean with a contrasting shade around the middle.










For the page, I created a photo collage in Photoshop Elements.  A few tips on creating a photo collage:

- Select the photos you want to use and have them all open.
- Create a new document in the size you will print.  I used an 8"x10" even though I didn't plan to completely fill the space.  Set the size to 300 dpi.
- Choose your main photo and crop to the desired finished size at 300 dpi.
- Drag the main photo onto your blank new document and position.
- Then choose another photo to line up beside of it or below or above and crop that photo using the measurements from the first photo as a guide.  For example, if my main photo is the one in the upper left corner and it is 4" wide,  I'll choose the photo below it and make it 4" wide and whatever height I want.
- Then drag that photo in place on your larger document.
- Continue selecting and cropping photo building out from one point.
- Save your project as a .jpg file.

This is just one way to go about a photo collage.

I had more journaling than expected so I tucked it behind the collage.  The video goes over creating a pocket from a regular mailing envelope:

I'm most pleased with how these flowers came out using designer paper from a 6x6 pad, ink refills and some glazing medium:

So here's the video at YouTube:


We are thinking of going to Belle Chere in Asheville, NC which is a giant art festival each July.  Has anyone ever been?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Cricut Cut Background

And the last layout made especially for the 6x6 Paper Pad Scrapinar is...

this layout with a photo of my parents taken on my Mother's birthday this spring.

For the background, I cut a design from the Storybook cartridge on the Cricut.  I got a lot of questions about the size of this piece during the Scrapinar.  It is 10" square.

I used several papers from the Teresa Collins Fabrications 6x6 pad to fill in the back in different sections.  The video shows how.

The video shows also that was the easy part. The challenge for me on this page was figuring out what to do with the photo and the arrangement.  So, I never created a sketch for this one.

In the end, I kept it pretty simple. The great photo and the background were really the main focus.

Watch at YouTube


All of the layouts from the Scrapinar are shown on this Pinterest board.  You can also find the blog posts by clicking on the "6x6 Paper Pads" tag on the right side of my blog.  I'll continue to add pages to the board as I do pages using 6x6 paper pads.

Thanks for following along in this series!

A Living Room - Process video

We don't have a separate living room and den; we just have one room and so we use this room all the time.  We read, watch television either on the real TV or on my laptop, eat sometimes, pet the cat, talk, and visit.  It is a busy place for a house with only two people.  Oh and the cat, we mustn't for get His Majesty who reigns in every room.

I grew up in a house with a formal living room that was only used when I was dating.  My Mother keeps the room immaculate now and it is gorgeous but more of a museum than a living space.  My goal is to use every inch of my house.  I'm excelling in my craft space/guest bedroom where I have every drawer filled with product - ah, but that is another story.

For this page, I used several shots taken in the last few months of activities in our busy room.  There is one in the kitchen of Lenny and I cooking together but it is all open.  I used a 3x3 grid and 6x6 papers for each of the sections.  The small scale prints make these papers perfect for matting.  The coordinating 12x12 papers fill in the rest.  The page also has a few of those tiny journaling cards for embellishments.  Also for embellishments, I cut out some of the paper designs and added some butterflies colored and stamped.

The biggest challenge for this page was figuring out which Washi tape to use.  I must have rolled and unrolled a dozen tapes before settling on a the red and teal.  The striped one I tried so hard to use in the video finally found a home on another layout later on.

I shared this page in the Scrapinar but didn't show any of the video so here it is.  The video goes pretty fast.  It was so long; I may have gotten carried away with shortening it.  Let me know what you think - faster pace or should I have slowed it down a bit?

Watch at YouTube


And here is the sketch:

Thanks for stopping by today!

Process Video: Daddy's little girl is having a...

Girl!

At the time this page was created, the doctor wasn't saying and inquiring minds wanted to know.  Boy or girl?  My step daughter has a little boy so a girl was the wish for most of the family.  The wish was granted.  A baby girl is due in a couple of months.

This was one of my favorite pages made for the 6x6 paper pad Scrapinar.  For the page, I used two 12x12 papers from Little Yellow Bicycles Fern and Forrest (girl collection) and the corresponding 6x6 paper pad.  The smaller scale prints worked great for many of the embellishments including the little fairy turned into a tag.

Several 6x6 papers were cut or punched to create this flower garden.  The stick pins are from an older LYB set.

When I completed the page, I asked my husband if I should put a question mark after 'little' to emphasize that we didn't know whether the baby was a girl or boy.  He suggested using a 'blue' question mark and a 'pink' question mark.  What a wonderful idea!  He said "Why don't you use a pink sticker and a blue question mark sticker, if you have them?"  If I have them... Ha, ha, ha!

So here is the video that goes through the layout process on YouTube or here:


And here is the sketch:

Thanks for watching!

Scrapinar Layouts

Here are several of the layouts shown in the 6x6 Paper Pads on 12x12 Pages Scrapinar on June 12.  They are also found on this pinboard on Pinterest.

A link below each layout takes you to the past blog post about that page.  More pages using 6x6 papers from the Scrapinar and brand new videos are coming in the next few days...

Strip piecing and cutting into a chevron pattern (video included)

Many of the papers here were from October Afternoon 8x8 pads.  The same ideas for 6x6 work for 8x8 pads.

Strip piecing and cutting into triangles

Using 4 almost full 6x6 sheets of neutrals

Using squares from a Basic Grey pad

Using Hexagons from Basic Grey PB and J 6x6 Pad

Video and sketch included

Thanks for stopping by!

Using Mini Journaling Cards (Process Video)

After what seemed like months with only trips to the grocery store and other errands, we finally broke out of here in April!  I'm exaggerating a bit yet still it was really nice to have some day trips and other activities.  

For this page, first shown in the 6x6 paper pad Scrapinar, I used the tiny journaling cards in several 6x6 pads.  When they shrink down the size of the prints, cards that are normally 3x4 become 1 1/2" x 2" and are a great size for embellishments.

This cute little paper clip is a Two Peas in a Bucket exclusive item and comes in several colors.  The brads are some older Basic Grey product.

The title gave me a challenge and a few false starts before I settled on colors.  "G" and "O" are some of the last letters I had from an older raw chipboard set.  I painted them a very dark rust so they would stand out against this map print from Webster's pages Color and Composition 6x6 pad.

The process video for this page is at YouTube and also here:


Here is the sketch for the page.  You could have more or fewer photos in the photo strip.

Thanks for stopping by!  I'll have several pages from the Scrapinar in tomorrow's post and another video later in the week.

Fishing Experience (Scrapinar layout)

This first layout from last week's Scrapinar focused on using full sheets of 6x6 papers.  I used 4 for the background.  When I showed my husband this page and another one I'd made a few weeks ago with the same photos (and the colorful stamped punched images), I asked which one he liked better. We would keep one of the pages and give one to my step daughter for her album.  "Oh, this one of course!  It even has little canoes!"

Yes, it has canoes, and trees and a lake.  It will be the only page with those as those three papers appear only once in the Lakeside paper pad from Pebbles while there are 2 of each of most of the others.  That's my only complaint with this pad.  Those are great papers and I wish I had more of them.

When I completed this page, this was how it looked:

It looked sort of 'blah' to me.  The photos stood out but nothing else did. All the elements sort of ran together.  I'd gotten a bit too carried away in my blue/green/beige color scheme and there was no contrast.  So I took the photo because I was about to try something on that one-of-a-kind paper that just might not work.  I wanted to outline the letters with a black Sharpie.

The 'before' version is shown on the left.











The After version is here.   Then I added a black mat for the journaling.

Before:

After the mat:  

So just a touch of contrast really helped this layout.

This page was the first layout in our Scrapinar last week.  I'll be posting all the layouts over the next 2 weeks.  In the blog posts I'll focus on things we didn't talk about during the Scrapinar.  Four of the layouts also have a process video ...so stay tuned.

Be sure to check out the True Stamp classes.  Individual classes are available for $7 each through June.

Click here to view more details

Thanks for stopping by!