Accordion Flower Tree

My craft space is shared with our upstairs bedroom.  On the way up the stairs, I have this landing that has been sadly neglected.  It has good 'bones' in that there is a thick glass shelf and pretty mirrors my parents gave us when we moved in.  Only at Christmas though does this area get much attention.  Finally, I made something for the space between the mirrors - a spring flower tree.

The video below shows all the types of accordion flowers or rosettes done from chevron and other prints.  I love making these flowers.  I've used a few plainer papers where I did the traditional method shown in the last video which also includes the pinwheel center of one on the bottom of the tree.

Mostly though I cut up my chevron papers.  By cutting along the line of the pattern and adjusting the folds you can do several varieties of the flower or rosette with the same paper.


For the tree, I started with an 18" high Styrofoam cone.  Some primer, paint, ribbon and flowers and voila - a very inexpensive, cheerful decoration for the shelf.  I was happy to use up some of my larger buttons that like the flowers can be a bit thick for pages and cards.

I also used some wire edged ribbon tucked in among the flowers.

So here are the videos:

This is the one on the tree to watch here or at YouTube:


And this is the one on the Accordion flowers to watch here or at YouTube:


This is my older video on Accordion flower basics.

I like passing my cheery tree and a couple of my layouts hanging on the wall on the way to my craft space.  Thanks for stopping by today!

Crime Stoppers

Every summer we get volunteer cantaloupes back from the first ones we ever planted.  They are delicious.  Last year, I had lost faith they were going to come up so I bought some plants and Lenny set them out. Well, of course, the volunteers returned and soon we were overrun with cantalopes.  The new ones were pretty but tasted awful so I was happy to have the old plants producing melons.

Apparently I wasn't the only one.  One particularly pretty melon had been growing and I was just waiting for it to get perfectly ripe checking it every day.  On the day I went to pick it, I discovered 'the evidence' in the photo. We had cantaloupe vandalism!

My husband thought it was rabbits but I hadn't seen a rabbit in our yard in ages.  (We have a cat.)  I suspected the crows and soon enough caught them in the act. So I constructed a scarecrow I named Sally.  I think I even posted her on my blog at the time.  However, Sally fell down on the job literally about a week into her duty after a nice rain.  The crows also didn't like the new variety.  They only ate the volunteer ones.

I never got anymore cantaloupe and even in winter we still have crows hanging around.  We are going to have to cover the melon patch next year, I guess.  Anyway, I had fun with the layout.

This is for Glitter Girl's challenge to use fabric.  My kind of challenge!  I have tons of discontinued fabric sample books.  I cut a few swatches and did the banner - my version of crime scene tape.

For the "Wanted" sign, I used Power Point and some of the built-in clip art.  The Thickers are Rockabye Mistables I painted green.

Thanks for stopping by.  If you know of a good way to discourage crows without firearms, let me know.  I'm anxious for tasty cantaloupes again.

Two Pages and 15 Photos

 

For Project Life/Project 365, I saved up two weeks worth of every day events and put them on these two pages.  This was scraplifted from this page done in 2010.

The pages of the 2 page layout are sort of mirror images if one of the mirrors was upside down :-) I used the warm colors in the upper left corner of the title page and the lower right corner of the page with the journaling.  The stamped houses are from Hero Arts Whimsical Houses set.  I tried coloring them but that was just too busy with all those photos.

This ledger paper is stamped using a Technique Tuesday set and filled an empty corner.  The wood veneer and Washi tape update the look somewhat from the 2010 layout.

The details of the process are on my video on YouTube.


The sketch shown below is also in this PDF:  2 Week 2 Page Sketch

Feel free to use the sketch for your personal use.  A link back to this post would be appreciated.  

For the next couple of weeks, I'm focusing my photo taking on a typical day in our lives - capturing our routines in winter.  I thought I'd do the same in the summer and see what is different.  

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Tweet, Tweet, here I come!

I'm tweeting!

Now there is something I never expected to say.  But yes, I've finally given Twitter a try and to my surprise I like it.

Why did I wait so long and why am I surprised?  Well, I don't have a smart phone and I never really thought it worked all that well if you couldn't participate on the go.  Since I'm home most of the time, I can tweet using my computer and I'm still keeping up with all the crafty people I'm following so far just fine.

I'm surprised because what can someone long winded like me really say in 140 characters?  That's nothing - an introduction, a conversational detour but not really meaningful.  Well, again I'm surprised because you can get a meaningful thought out in a few words.  Maybe this Twitter stuff will teach me something and I'll get those videos under 10 minutes after all :-)

Most tweets have an attachment so you really don't need a lot of words, just a link to something else pretty, entertaining or useful.

In my first couple of days on Twitter, I learned that postage was going up so I bought more stamps, my favorite show General Hospital will likely continue past Sept of this year (Yippee!), and saw lots of cool projects linked in scrapbooking tweets.

Are you on Twitter?  If so, would you follow me?  I'll follow you.  I can see that this works best if you follow lots of people with common interests.

Most of my Tweets will be crafty in nature. I'll probably Tweet a couple of times a day with things I find on-line - interesting projects, sales, new product available.

Here's the link to my Twitter account - LisaEDesignNC

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

Picking Ink

Happy Tuesday!

Most of us don't have the space for every ink and paper color out there.  When deciding between two shades of the same color ink, go darker.  You can always stamp off and get a lighter shade.  For this card, I really needed Stampin' Up!'s Pretty in Pink.  I had Pink Pirouette which is very light and Regal Rose a darker shade.  I stamped off the Regal Rose and got an almost perfect match to my pink paper.

The stamped image and paper on the right is Regal Rose. On the left is the stamped off Regal Rose image along with a Pretty in Pink paper.  You can't tell it isn't Pretty in Pink ink.

On the other hand when choosing paper, I will usually go with the lighter of two shades.  I can always add color to paper with a background stamp or distressing.  Also, I prefer to use lighter colors for my card bases.  These are just my rules of thumb when I can't buy every pretty color.

Thanks for stopping by today!  I'll have a Project Life 2 page layout for you later in the week.

Always young at heart

Seldom do I do a page without journaling.  This photo was pretty self-explanatory and I just wanted to capture the moment using some of my husband's favorite colors and convey the sentiment of the title.   I was inspired by the great pages of Ashli Oliver over at the Purple Mail Box blog.

I photographed my process so I could share and so I could remember what I did and probably because that is what Ashli does for her artistic pages.  Starting with some mistable paper from Stampin' Up! that has a built in design, I added a layer of mists.  I've used Mister Huey, one Heidi Swapp and several homemade mists:

The handwriting shows through on the paper after misting.  This paper has been discontinued but I've seen similar products at Archiver's.  Next I added hearts cut with the Cricut as masks.

Another layer of mist:

Finally, I added some diecut hearts from a DCWV designer paper in the space left by some of my heart masks.

The white masks got a nice coating of mist and I've used them on this card:

It was a fun page to do and a bit of a change for my album.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Collage stamp and Distress Inks

This Valentine stamp puzzled me.  It has a rose and some wording all together.  I couldn't color the individual components but one color seemed blah.  It was too detailed to emboss.  So now what?

You might wonder why I bought this if it was going to be a challenge. Well, it was at the dollar store and I don't have many Valentine stamps.  It seemed like an opportunity until I got it home and then went to use it.

So I got out my distress inks which work great with busy stamps and played.  This is what I came up with:

Watch at YouTube


I've used three colors all on the same stamp but alternating the placement of the colors each time.  It is very easy to do.  You do have to clean between stampings.  While I used distress inks, you could also use Stampin' Up! classic inks which are also a dye ink.

This was the favorite at this month's card class.  In the video I keep saying "Victorian Violet."  It is actually Victorian Velvet and a very pretty color from Ranger.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Hope you are staying warm.

Working your Pattern Paper designs

I love pattern paper.  (No kidding, right?) Despite all my stamps and the new masks I've been buying to do my own designs, I just can't resist pretty paper.  One of my favorite things to do with pattern paper is to cut along the design either in a border or to cut out elements for embellishment.

I also love to have the elements of my page support the story.  Designer paper can help with that. In this layout, we visited a coffee/wine bar and shops in 1920's era building.  I selected papers and those great Cosmo Cricket buttons that reminded me of the era.

The business card is from one of the places we visited.  It includes the name of the area and the colors match perfectly - just luck on that one.

Here is the journaling.  The font is Harlow which reminds me of this 20's era.

So today's video uses this sketch and focuses on how to use the designs of your paper and reinforce your page's theme:

This PDF contains the sketch and some other tips --  Scrapbooking Page - Making the Most of Pattern Paper

Watch the video at YouTube or here



Note about Project Life:  I'm saving up my photos to do a two week page and post the page and video next week.  So keep snapping away and stay tuned...

During CHA last week, I watched a lot of the product videos.  My favorite new collections of paper - not that I need it but you can tell I won't be able to resist - is My Mind's Eye Collectible series.  Do you have a favorite pattern paper company?

Thanks for visiting this week!