the Mint - Challenge 2

Challenge 2 at Shimelle's this weekend is to use 3 or more paper collections on one layout.  Using 3 or more paper collections as a challenge feels almost like cheating.  When do I not use 3 collections, even manufacturers? Once in a while I stick to one or two lines but mostly I'm pulling paper from all over the place especially as I just can't seem to throw anything away!  Picking and matching papers is one of my favorite parts of the process.

So to make this a tad more challenging, I chose this background paper I think is from Little Yellow Bicycle's Laundry Line collection.  I must have planned to use it at some point because I'd cut off the branding strip.  This paper has great colors but as a ledger it is downright busy and with the fashion theme, limiting.  However, the theme was perfect for our outing to the Mint Museum in Charlotte to see the Chanel collection in February.  My aunt had a doctor's appointment, I had a sore shoulder and it would have been challenge to push her around.  My husband offered to go and we went to the museum after her appointment.  I take her to this doctor's office 3 or 4 times a year but this is the first time my husband has accompanied us.  It was a lovely day out.  I've hidden quite a bit more journaling on the day.

With such a busy background, I kept the embellishment to a few flowers stamped and punched with the Boho Blossoms punch from Stampin' Up! A few flowers were also cut on the Cricut along with the very shiny gold letters.  I'd had that gold paper at least 10 years.  I keep weird papers in one of those clear storage envelopes.  You never know when you'll want something like that.  The Mint was originally a US Mint thus the name.  Now it is an art museum with an extensive permanent collection of paintings, NC pottery, clothing and all kinds of things.

I'm glad this paper finally found a home and the day with my aunt was captured.  Lenny may accompany us again. As much as she hates it, it is getting harder and harder for her to help herself in and out of the chair so more lifting is needed. She is a joy in my life and while I hate she has to go to the doctor, I look forward to our outings.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ingredients:  DSP:  Clothesline collection LYB; Peppermint Collection Crate Paper; For the Record by Echo Park; 6x6 paper pad from MME; Daily Grind by Fancy Pants
Glittery Ribbon:  Making Memories
Stickers:  October Afternoon
Stamps:  One of a Kind by Stampin' Up; Basic gray ink by SU!
Ticket:  Saturdays by LYB
Rhinestones:  Funday by MME

Favorite Treat for Challenge 01

It's Shimelle's on-line scrapbooking weekend!  For the first challenge, we were given this layout by Jaime Warren to use as inspiration.  I lifted the arrangement of elements.  What I loved most about Jaime's page was having anchors at the top bottom, left and right sides of the page.  I love pushing to the edge of the paper but usually I take all the elements right along.  This time, I had to leave some white space as almost a border within the layout.  Certainly, a new challenge.  Play along if you'd like or choose another challenge.  They are open until the end of next weekend.

For my layout, I captured an every day moment and by 'every day' I do mean almost every day.  I take an afternoon break and have a frozen treat.  This used to be ice cream until I did a week without dairy to see if it would break up some congestion in my ears I'd had for months.  It didn't help a bit and fortunately the problem has diminished.  However, what I got out of that week was a love of sorbet.  I don't think I'd ever tried it before.  It is very different from sherbert and oh, so good.  It's a bit of a pricey habit but I do eat less and save some calories :-)

Oh and on that afternoon break, I usually watch General Hospital which as been renewed for the next TV season!  Yippee!!! ABC finally saw the light and is canceling the Revolution and keeping GH.  I'm so happy.  Anyway, back to the layout...

The top and bottom is a die cut from Little Yellow Bicyle's Saturdays collection. I also trimmed up some pattern paper from the collection for embellishment.  For the right and left sides,  I wanted a lighter finish so I used a die cut as a mask on one side and a stamped image in the same ink as the background paper for the other.  I sprinkled some rhinestones over - also inspiration from the original layout.

Shimelle talks about washi tape in one of her posts this weekend and I put a little to use here.  I'm new to washi tape but I really like it so far.  I have learned one thing.  Don't buy directional tape unless you really love it or having it run the wrong way doesn't bother you.  One of my tapes has numbers that really should go vertically. I keep finding places to use it horizontally and that just doesn't work for me.

Thanks for visiting!  Now I'm off to try another challenge or should I have some sorbet first?


Ingredients:  Cardstock and Ink:  Sahara Sand by Stampin' Up!
DSP and canvas tag:  Saturdays by Little Yellow Bicycle
Tape:  Hambly and Bazzill
Rhinestones:  Funday by MME
Stamp:  Medallion by Stampin' Up!
Mist:  Clay Mister Huey by Studio Calico

One Up, One Down

We've never been to Blowing Rock (a beautiful little town in the NC Mountains) so early in the year before.  Well, actually, I used to work in that area so I was up there in the winter and very early spring but typically the weather didn't allow for any leisurely strolls around the lake. This year, spring came early to all of us so on April 1 we enjoyed a day in the mountains.

The April fools joke was on us when we tried to find somewhere downtown to eat.  Most of the restaurants hadn't opened for the season.  Anyway we did some shopping and walked around Bass Lake.

Typically we see ducks and geese at the lake.  For the first time, we spotted this pair of swans.  So beautiful, we just had to get a picture.  It was their lunch time, too and they weren't very interested in posing.  Just when one swan would bring his head out of the water, the other would dive in!  I took photo after photo of one up, one down.  My husband thought it was too funny.  He took the camera finally and got them bathing which doesn't exactly show their best sides.  I did get the one good one of the two swans upright.

Originally, I was going to do this layout for a Two Peas challenge to use a series of shots - scrapbooking the outtakes as well as the 'good' one.  I just didn't get it done in time for the challenge.

Speaking of challenges, stop by Shimelle.com for her scrapbooking weekend.  It has just gotten underway and will be all weekend with most things open for more than a week. If you are slow scrapper like me you need that. :-)

I've got lots of photos printed and many more queued up so I'm ready to go!  Let's have a fun, crafty weekend.

Ingredients:  Cardstock:  Crumb Cake from Stampin' Up!
DSP:  Campfire 8x8 pad from October Afternoon
Sticker:  Jillibean Soup
Thickers:  American Crafts
Font:  Blackjack
Stamp:  Dear Lizzy by American Crafts; ledger stamp from Office Accouterments by Stampin' Up!

Circles, circles!

Splitcoaststampers has a cool sketch this week with tons of circles! I haven't been doing many card challenges lately and it has been ages since I did both the sketch and color challenge at Splitcoast.  Mary selected Old Olive, Tangerine Tango and Daffodil Delight for our cheery color palette.  You can see her card here.

For my card, I used some new chevron designer paper combined with some Jillibean soup papers.  The stamps are from Stampin' Up!  Petal Pizzazz was one I took on my crafting weekend and had just put away. I knew it would be perfect for all these circles.  Some of the white circles looked a little plain so I added a cardstock circle edge.  All are cut with my Creative Memories circle cutters.

Speaking of challenges, this weekend Shimelle.com is hosting an on-line scrapbooking weekend with challenges that extend into the following week. I've got quite a few photos all ready for whatever Shimelle throws our way.

For now, I've got to go out and cover a bunch of plants.  After weeks without the temps dropping below 40, we are under a freeze warning tonight!

Thanks for stopping by!

Ingredients: Stamps:  Petal Pizzazz, Sanded, A little birdie told me (greeting) from Stampin' Up!
Cardstock and Inks:  Old Olive, Tangerine Tango and Daffodil Delight
Twine:  Doodlebug
Button: Old Olive from SU!  Brads:  Paper Studio
DSP:  Chevron from MME, Jillibean Soup

Travel Journal

Whenever we travel, I try to jot down some notes on what we have done and impressions.  For larger trips, I've taken a notebook sometimes with a pretty cover created before we leave.  For shorter excursions, I've just taken a few sheets of cardstock and stapled them together in a mini book.

With inspiration from the various notebooks on the market these days, I put a bit more effort into my last travel journal - though it was still a quick project.  It is still fairly small - 4 1/4" x 8 1/2" and contains a variety of pages using some older ledger papers from my stash.








Here's a look at the finished product:

Watch at YouTube


I have now made lots of notes from our weekend away that can accompany our photos when I get ready to scrap these fun days.  Having  a few prompts helps you to remember to capture more than just the what, where, when, and how.  I have one called "Laughter is the best medicine" which prompted me to record a few of the fun things we laughed about.  The little gas pump stamp prompted a note on the price of gas - definitely, not something to laugh about!  (I hope I don't look back on that price someday and wish we could return to it.)

This took a little over an hour to put together.  Having a colorful notebook was a lot nicer than those plain sheets of cardstock stapled together.

Thanks for watching!

Ingredients:  Designer Paper:  Cover - DCWV
Inside:  Stampin' Up! and October Afternoon
Stamps:  Away We Go by Fiskars and Petal Pizazz by SU!
Ink:  Chesnut Roan from Colorbox
Stickers:  Making Memories
Tag:  Saturdays by Little Yellow Bicycle

Crafting Weekend

Hi!  Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.  We did!  We went to visit our friends Karen and Jimmy 'down east' which in NC means in the eastern part of the state as opposed to those of us in the western part of the state.  We had a lovely visit filled with great food, wonderful company and of course, some crafting as she is a long time scrapbooker and is getting into card making, too.

Above is one of the cards we made. We each did an easel card using the Black Magic technique.  I so hate I didn't make a photo of her card.  It was gorgeous!  We just got so busy crafting that I didn't take any card photos until I got home.  She used different papers and stamps.

I did this one with one of her stamp sets from Stampin' Up!  I stamped the image with Versamark on Papertrey's Dark Chocolate cardstock and embossed with white embossing powder.  Then I went over the image with Prisma colored pencils.   I learned this from Splitcoaststampers and it is a wonderful way to use colored pencils if you have some.  Her husband has the same set that I have at home.  Karen suggested cutting around this image with a broad outlines and I really love it.  It lets a lot of the Basic Grey background paper show through.

This was my first easel card. We tried a lot of things that were new to each of us this weekend.

On my way to her house, we stopped at Archiver's in Raleigh.  I didn't overdo it too much, mostly getting some embellishments to go with things I had.  I really needed brads so these were my favorite purchase.

I'd never heard of Teresa Collins.  These really look a lot like My Mind's Eye products but I can't find any connection.  Anyway they are very pretty and super quality.

With all this travel and catching up at home, tomorrow's Tipsy Tuesday post may be a bit late.  I have a project and recorded a video before we left.  It just isn't edited and uploaded yet.

Thanks for visiting!

Photo Frame

The lovely subject of this photo is my stepdaughter, Jaime.  My husband asked me to get a frame for this.  It is an odd size photo and I thought I'd make one instead.  Almost everything is from the Artfuldelight January kit.

All the frames are cut with the Cricut.  For the yellow Bassill background, I misted over a Studio Calico mask with some yellow mist.  After cutting out the hexagons from a Studio Calico designer paper, I arranged misted butterflies and random gemstones from My Mind's Eye.

The large flower is a combo of one from the kit with an additional layer from fabric just to make it a bit larger.

This was a fun project and a nice change from cards and pages.

Thanks for stopping by!

Repeating stamp border

When I cleaned up my stamp baskets last week, I found this single stamp from Stampendous called True Elegance.  I've used it a few times but not very much.  It turned out to be a great border stamp.

To create the border for this page, I stamped this single stamp on Bravo Burgandy cardstock with Versamark and embossed with gold embossing powder.  Then I just cut out each one and glued to the back of the designer paper.

One stamp can have a powerful effect when used in repetition.

The layout was inspired by Nichol Magourik's weekly class last year at Two Peas in a Bucket.  She did a layout a week for several months and often used die cut titles where the words were welded together to form one piece.

I did my title using SCAL software and my Cricut.  It went a lot faster than I expected.  I just typed each word as an individual element and then changed sizes and fonts fitting things together.  A few letters aren't connected but they were easy to glue in place.  I cut 'always' a second time in gold paper to add emphasis.  Some sponged on distress ink gives some words a slightly different color than others.

Of course the page topic is my Mother's passion for the Cheesecake Factory in Charlotte.  It has a gorgeous interior and leads us right into one of her favorite malls - Southpark.  Southpark is getting so high end that we do a lot more looking and a lot less buying these days but it is still fun.

Thanks for visiting today!

Ingredients:  Designer Paper:  My Mind's Eye So Sophie
Stamps:  True Elegance by Stampendous; Baroque Motifs by Stampin' Up!
Metal Tag:  Very Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware by Stampin' Up!