DIY Faux Fireplace

Well, it's been a long time but I finally have a few things I wanted to blog about. The first is my diy faux fireplace. I have always wanted to have a fireplace in my home so that I can decorate the mantel each season. Since I don't have a fireplace, I decided to create a faux one after being inspired by all of the faux fireplace ideas on pinterest. I also loved the idea of harnessing my creative energy to create different displays for the firebox depending on the season. Since Christmas is almost upon us, I decided this season was the perfect time to start this project because who doesn't love a festive fireplace mantel at this time of year! First I scoured kijiji for a few weeks looking for fireplace mantels that I could give a makeover and found this one:

I already knew I wanted to paint it white and happened to have white furniture paint patiently waiting for me in the basement. I washed the fireplace off with a damp cloth and once it had dried I lightly sanded it so the paint would adhere better. The paint I had was from the Beauti tone collection at Home Hardware and had the primer built into it which made it much easier. It took me 3 coats and probably could have used another coat but I loved how it looked and was tired of painting! Here's a progression of the fireplace as I painted it:

Once it was all done, my hubby helped me move it into the perfect spot in our living room. It still isn't finished because I want to cut the trim so it sits flush against the wall and also build a firebox and paint it with chalkboard paint. But one step at a time! Here it is all decorated for Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl: March 2013 Challenge

Good morning everyone! Here's the latest recipe card from the Paper Mixing Bowl:

And here's my take:

I had no idea what I was going to scrap for this month's layout until I went scrapbooking with my crafty friends a few weeks ago. One of my friends gave me a few wee photos she had developed from our scrapbooking retreat back in November. The pictures were perfect! The main background is actually green although it's hard to tell in the photo of my layout.  For my irish lace I chose a lacy stamp by Fancy Pants and stamped over the bottom corner of my pictures.

My title was cut using my friend's Silhouette (love that machine!) which she helped me with by "welding" the letters so it was all one piece.  I also wrote a limerick to go along with the photos and added some gold brads for my pot of gold.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Wedding Layout

Just a quick post to show you the first in a succession of wedding layouts. I got married 6 years ago but still have all of the pictures and scrapbooking supplies lying around. This album may be a bit of a challenge because some of the scrapbook supplies are a little dated but I plan on trying to incorporate them with more modern layouts to update them. Here's my first attempt!

The Paper Mixing Bowl: November 2012 Challenge

As I was busy buying a house and selling mine, I never got around to finishing the November PMB challenge until recently. I loved the recipe for this month so much that I decided to make it a two page layout.

Here's the recipe:

And here's my take:

 

And a close up of each page:

My favourite part of this layout was the maple leaves.  They were extra special because they came from our tree that we planted in the backyard. This tree was a gift from my Uncle that he had dug up from his property and given to us on a Thanksgiving several years before.  It was our first tree at our first home and we would soon be moving away and leaving it behind. The colours were so spectacular this past fall and our little maple really put on a show. So I collected several leaves of varying sizes and glued them onto the layout, then used a special spray paint to "laminate" them so that the colour won't fade. That's it for now! Wow, two posts in one day ;)

Makeover #1: Arabella's Room

As promised, here is the first room transformation in our new home. Arabella's room just had to be the first room painted because she was SOOOO excited to have a "purple" room. Just ask her and she will tell you lol. A friend of mine made an offer I couldn't resist...he'd paint it for free if I bought the paint! Now how could I say no to that!!! So after a lot of prep work (the previous owner must have had a love for posters because there were a gazzillion thumb tac holes in the wall...EVERYWHERE!) here is Arabella's room makeover.

BEFORE: Pink and Black

AFTER: Purple and white

We still have to put up the curtains and I am waiting for her new bedding that I have ordered. There is a picture of it below. I tried to find something that had purple as well as green and aqua in it so that her old nursery decor fit in as well. Her bedroom set was a gift from her Aunt and used to belong to her cousin. I just love the sleigh bed! And do you remember that chandelier I mentioned so long ago that I was going to paint white? Well I thought it would look ADORABLE in her room. I was thinking of maybe finding some purple, green and aqua beads as well to string through it to add a bit of playfulness.

I will update this post with more pictures once I get the bedding and curtains. Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl February 2013 Recipe

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I scrapped anything....I think actually it was at the end of November when I went to Memories Manor with some of my scrappy friends. A lot has happened between then and now...we flew to Thompson, Manitoba for a week at Christmas, packed up our entire house, moved to a new house, started the unpacking process and also started a basement renovation. Needless to say life has been a little hectic! I was determined to fit in this month's challenge though since I missed January's and I just really miss scrapbooking! I'm positive I spent more time searching for boxes with my scrapbook supplies than I did actually creating this layout, but it was fun and I love how it turned out. Here's this month's recipe for Red Velvet Cake:

...here's my inspiration (how can you not love them!)...

...and here's what I came up with!

The background paper is from the Lost & Found collection by My Mind's Eye. For the utensils, I spilled something on some plain white paper and then layered it to mimic pages in a book. I put a positive spin on a bill I recently received by scrapping it into the page...I loved that the postage mark was red. I handcut the hearts for this page and would have loved to add little baby blue rhinestones to them but I didn't have any. So instead I adorned a few bobby pins with buttons and then skewered a few of the hearts with them. I think they turned out pretty cute!

I used two pairs of photos taken of my Hubby and daughter making silly faces together on one of the airplanes during our trip to Thompson. This also filled the multi-photo component. Although I chose not to do any journalling on this page I did incorporate the journalling prompt "two"  into my title. The baby blue that ended up on this page orginiated from the chipboard letters that I found in one of the boxes of scrapbooking supplies. I received a Costco scrapbook kit for my birthday over a year ago and haven't used a single thing from it. But I loved the size of these letters so I decided to make them work. I also loved the colour scheme this month because it meant I could use the red and brown sparkley Thickers I was regifted from a scrappy friend. She has had them for years and hated them so I took them off her hands because I thought they were FABULOUS! So thanks to Veronica for helping me out with this months challenge!

That's it for today! I'm hoping to blog the renovation projects at our new house as we complete them. I also want to take photos of all of the scrapbook layouts I did at my Memories Manor retreat. First I have to find them all! I'll see what I can get to over the next week and hopefully get back to posting a bit more regularly on my blog. Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl December 2012 Recipe and Some Exciting News!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long but it has been a very hectic month. I apologize for the late post and for the even later November Recipe post. I was a little overwhelmed this month with a big change for us...we are moving! In the matter of a few weeks we bought a home then listed and sold ours. It sounds simple but boy was it chaotic! We weren't quite ready to list our house, just had a few things to paint like the entire main floor and upper hallway, plus declutter the entire place. But we found a place we loved that had the potential for me to eventually run my business out of so we put in an offer and the next thing I knew I was up everynight till 1am painting and cleaning so we could list and sell our house as well. It is all still very surreal! I can't believe that in less than 2 months I will be packing up our family and all of our memories and moving into a whole new chapter of our life. Exciting but scary and overwhelming all at the same time! But enough about the big move, here's what you came here to see.

The Recipe:

And here's my take:

This picture is actually taken on my daughter's birthday which falls right before Christmas. My husband and I were out at his work Christmas party and my sister, brother-in-law and godparents were babysitting for the evening. This picture was taken of my godfather reading Arabella her bedtime story. This photo is quite special to me as it was taken shortly before we found out that he had cancer. Thankfully, after a rough few months, he is now cancer free, but this photo will always be one I cherish.

The background paper is by My Mind's Eye and I used several Cuttlebug dies to create the snowflakes.

I created the journalling card by cutting the shape of a tag, then punching a whole in the top. I stamped the bottom and distressed the edges, then added a few more snowflakes. The other tags I hand stamped with ornaments from the gel-a-tins collection. 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to add several more layouts including the November Paper Mixing bowl Recipe over the next few days as I have time to upload them. I hope you all have a happy Sunday!



Little Miracle

My sister asked me if I could make a baby layout as a gift for her friend who recently had a little baby girl. She wanted it to match the nursery which had a lot of nature elements especially birds and was painted in a soft lavender colour with brown accents. This is what I came up with:

I used a piece of cardboard (actually from a Pampers box...how fitting!) covered in burlap for the background. The branches I cut by hand from brown cardstock and the leaves are actually a flower die for the Cuttlebug that I trimmed up to make leaves. I originally had the title in a white cloud at the top right corner of the page but I just wasn't loving it. Then I thought it would be cute to hang a banner from the bottom tree branch. The word "little" I printed off from my laptop and then used a single hole punch to carefully punch out each letter, gluing them altogether to create a caterpillar body.  For the face I used a Cuttlebug die for a butterfly which I then trimmed the body and wings off of leaving the cute little head. All of the birds I cut freehand and then used a snowflake Cuttlebug die for the feet and the wings of a bumblebee die for their beaks.

My sister had given me the lyrics to Lee Ann Womack's "I hope you dance" which she wanted me to incorporate into the page. I printed them off on kraft cardstock, cut each into a strip, inked the edges and finished it off with a button at the end of each line. I love how the little thread bows turned out on the first and last button. Also, if you look closely in the leaves below you will notice that a "caterpillar" ate a few of the leaves. The paper moved when I was cutting this group of leaves with the flower die and it got cut up by an adjacent flower but I thought it looked like little nibble lines. This is the leaf that inspired me to add a few caterpillars to the page.

My sister loved it and ended up framing it with a white frame. Here's the final product before it was wrapped!



Thanks for stopping by!



Rustic Wedding Layout

I'm back and so soon! Here is the layout I made as a gift for my friend's wedding. She and her hubby live in Banff and LOVE the outdoors. Her wedding was an outdoor affair that took place in Golden B.C. on the riverbank of the Kicking Horse River (FYI the location was STUNNING! Most beautiful wedding I've ever been to AND they didn't even need a decorator ;)

For the background, I went to my local scrapbook store and knew that I wanted something with a woodgrain. I found this paper that was perfect by Echo Park and featured wood planks.  On top of the paper I added a square of burlap accented with a few lace doilies for a bit of romantic whimsy.

In the corner of the burlap, I added their names on a small banner of Kraft paper and then overlapped it with wooden letters of their first initials that I had inked the edges of with brown ink. The title I cut out with the help of my sister-in-law (thanks!) on her Silhouette. I loved the look of the negative so I incorporated this as well for both the title and the date. Originally, the bride Christy had wanted to walk down the aisle to the song "I think I wanna marry you" however this later changed to "Somewhere over the rainbow" (which didn't help me hold back the tears). But I thought it was very fitting of Christy and her hubby Pierre and a fun title.

I used earthy shades of browns accented with whites to create handmade flowers and a few die cut butterflies embellished with a little bit of bling (every wedding has to have a little bling!). The journalling at the bottom is a poem featured on Sex and the City (a favourite amongst my girlfriends) that the main character Carrie Bradshaw had written for a wedding.

I used two different tutorials that I found on pinterest to create a burlap flower with button detail (above) and a burlap rosette (below). The burlap flowers added so much more dimension to the page and accent the paper flowers beautifully!

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by! I hope to post some pictures from our trip to Banff when I get a chance. First I have to sift through them all and narrow it down (between my hubby and I we took well over 1000 photos....yikes!). I am thinking that due to the shear volume of pictures, scrapbooking them will be out of the question...I will have to investigate a few photo book options.

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #8

I am finally back with a layout for the Paper Mixing Bowl. My apologies for skipping over layouts 6 and 7...layout 6 is still waiting to be finished and layout 7 I have yet to get around to posting. I have been a bit busy with company, layouts for wedding gifts and trips to Banff!!! (More on this another post)

This month's recipe is a festive Pumpkin Pie:
 

Here's my take on the recipe:

 

SOURCES:  Patterned Paper:  BasicGrey – Motifica>Clay. Cardstock: Miscellaneous scrap pieces. Fonts:  Pea Katrina, Artistamp Medium Embellishments: Coffee Filter, Wood splinters.

Originally I bought a paper for the background from Echo Park that featured a wood grain background (you will see it in the layout I did for a friend's wedding which I will post soon). However, I came across a piece of paper by Basic Grey that I purchased years ago that was perfect for it. Not only does it feature the main ingredient pumpkin (orange) but it also has black lines that look just like cat scratches on it.

The cobweb I made out of a coffee filter from my cupboard which I cut up in the same way you would make a paper snowflake. I used this as the backdrop to a picture of Arabella dipping her hands into the belly of the pumpkin. So much fun!



My favourite thing about this layout is the wood accents I used. These are actual splinters of wood from an old picnic table from our cottage. A lot of history in that wood...we used to eat at it when we were kids! So I saved a few slivers of it with the hope that they would make it onto one of my scrapbook pages, and alas, they were perfect for this one! I used the thickest piece to carve my title into and also used a black marker to add some depth to the carvings so the letters stood out better. For the journalling, I did my version of a potion combined with the old VISA commercial from TV and described a list of all the things we used to carve our pumpkin.



The pumpkins I cut from an old scrap of metallic cardstock I had lying around. I then scored the pumpkin sections and used a metal distresser to scratch in some texture. This was followed up by distressing the edges and then adding some ink and black chalk to create dimension. I loved how they turned out!



The last feature I did were a few handcut bats which I glued on with foam dots to make them pop.
 

Thanks for stopping by! And stay tuned...I hope to post the rustic wedding layout I made for one of my Bestie's Christy.

Love is in the air

This past weekend I attended the wedding of a friend of mine. For her wedding gift, I decided to create her a wedding layout and frame it in a shadow box for one of her favourite wedding photos. I based the colour scheme on her wedding colours and her centerpiece which was a bouquet of hydrangea. I scoured her Pinterest page and picked several of her favourite quotes on love. I also knew that she was having a puzzle themed wedding, so I tried to incorporate this as well.

The patterned paper I used for the puzzle pieces I created by repeating a love quote in Microsoft Word and then printing it off. I then handcut (what a PAIN!) each puzzle piece. Thankfully there were only 5! 

The flowers were meant to be hydrangea like her wedding flower. I cut each flower out using the Cuttlebug Flowers die and then curled the tips of the petals under with a toothpick. I then glued a little rhinestone flower in the middle and hot glued the flowers down to the page. I used cardstock from Bazzil and Stardream Metallic collections as well as vellum. The butterflies were also cut from the Cuttlebug using the Nature and Texture Borders die. I loved the dimension of everything and I also loved how perfectly it matched her actual wedding!

 A picture of her bouquet:

Thanks for stopping by!

Our weekend in pictures

This past weekend was truely fantastic! I had a fabulous date night with my husband AND we celebrated Derrick's 35th birthday! For our date night, we attended the wedding of a friend of mine. I just love weddings! There's something about seeing the love between two people, listening to the promise they share with each other and reminscing about your own wedding day. I've always found them very romantic so what better way to celebrate a date afternoon/night!

The next morning, while Derrick slept in for his birthday, Arabella and I went to work creating a masterpiece. Most of it got thrown out, but I did save a red handprint and added a yellow beak, feet and some googley eyes to make a mini card for Dadda from Arabella. Happy Bird-day Dadda!!!

One of the many reasons I love this man...such an incredible father! I just love how Arabella lights up around him.

In the afternoon, we headed out to the park for a bit where Arabella enjoyed blowing the seeds on every single dandelion she could find.

Then it was off for a hike. Unfortunately it was dinner time for the mosquitoes so our excursion was very short-lived. The one family photo I quickly snapped ended up having one extra person...errrr...insect in it. Notice the little black dot on Arabella's nose. Yep, definately a mosquito and she got bit before I had a chance to notice it. Poor lil munchkin!

 On our drive home she was full of beans. Here's a few or my favourites!

Instead of birthday cake, Derrick requested cupcakes. Usually I just use a boxed cake mix for my cupcakes, but when I went to bake them I realized that I had  forgotten to pick up a box of this from the store. The only solution was to make them from scratch! I went online in search of an easy recipe that would work with the ingredients I had at home. I ended up using a recipe for vanilla cupcakes from Glorious Treats. I then added my own spin on them by adding cream cheese icing, crumbled golden grahams cereal, chocolate chips that I zapped in the magic bullet and a drizzle of caramel. I called them Rocky Road cupcakes and they were divine!!!

And here is what Derrick and Arabella thought of them! She could barely wait to dip her finger right in and sample them. I made a miniature one for her but she was way more interested in testing out the other cupcakes on the plate.

If I have a chance, I plan on posting pictures of the wedding gift I made so check back soon. Right now, it's off to clean the house before Arabella wakes up. Wish me luck!