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!

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!

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #5

This month's recipe is always a crowd pleaser, scrumptious Strawberry Shortcake! I just LOVE strawberries!

Here's my take on the recipe:

SOURCES:  Cardstock: Bo Bunny - Double Dot, Bazzil Basics Paper. Patterned Paper: American Crafts-Heatwave>Maverick Mango, My Little Shoebox-All A Flutter>Wings and Things. Lettering: Pink paislee – Expressions Wood Shop>Sawdust. Embellishments: American Crafts - Dear Lizzy>Neopolitan Mason Jar Clear Stamp, Paper Clips from local Dollar Store.

The main ingredient was red for strawberries so I incorporated this colour as the backdrop to my photo and bordered it with the polka dot and stripe contrasting paper patterns. 

I created a banner by cutting a piece of yellow cardstock into small triangles, then running each of them through a paper crimper. I attached them to a piece of twine using a few adorable star paper clips that I've had lying around from the local Dollar store.

I purchased an adorable stamp by Dear Lizzy of a mason jar, and it came with a cute little stamp that defines both summer and sun. I used this to stamp the bottom corner of my picture so it has almost a magazine article sort of feel.

For my journaling, I used a little yellow flag which tucks away perfectly behind my double matted photo. On it I journalled a short blip about Arabella's first trip to the Pinery Provincial Park. Every year since I was little, my family has gone camping at the Pinery. It is by far my favourite summer tradition and this photo captured one of Arabella's first trips to the beautiful sandy beaches! If you have never gone there, I highly recommend it!

I embellished the bottom of my page with a scrap of gorgeous pink ribbon that I've had lying around in my supplies for a while. On top of the ribbon I added my title "Beach Bum" using wooden letters from pink paislee's Expressions Wood Shop collection that I inked with brown along the edges and miniature scrabble letters.

I also added an adorable die cut sunshine to the corner of the page to capture that summer beach vibe.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Canada Day everyone!!!



A Royal Affair

Good morning!

I thought I'd post a layout that's been sitting around for a while. I keep meaning to "finish" it by adding a few handmade flowers but I never seem to get around to doing it so I thought I'd share it just as it is.

For this layout I used the following sketch from Scrapbook and Cards and flipped it horizontally:

I bought the White Out Collection by We R Memory Keepers a few years back with the intention of making a few cards out of it. Well it's been sitting collecting dust since I bought it so I decided to finally put it to use with this layout about our date for the Royal Wedding.  I loved the idea of taking something formal like the Royal Wedding and making it into something childish and fun! This is what I came up with:



SOURCES:  Patterned Paper: We R Memory Keepers – White Out Collection.  Font: Wanda’s Write, Teacher’s Pet, Pea Stacy’s Doodles. Embellishments: Miscellaneous Rhinestones, Green Mist, Green Ink.



Originally, I was planning on using Alphabets cereal for the title, but I didn't love how it looked, and a friend of mine mentioned that it might not keep well over time so I designed a title in photoshop instead. 

I embellished the layout with a few crowns that I had added a little bling to.

Lastly, I used some green paint mist to add a little something extra to the page. This was my first attempt using paint mist and I was VERY nervous that I was going to ruin the page (in the future, I will always spray the background page before I paste everything down!). I love how it turned out though! Another new technique under my belt!

Have a great day!



Sympathy Card

Hello again,

This past week, the father of a good client of mine passed away. I was a little short on time but came up with this quick card:

I could have kept it like this as I was happy with it's simple lines, but I felt inspired to add to the card with a garden of flowers blooming from beneath the folded corner of paper. 

SOURCES:  Patterned Paper: Sandylion-Rouge de Garance Inspiration>Cupid’s Arrow Font: Adobe Arabic, Afternoon Delight. Embellishments: Flowers, Rhinestones & Metal Brad all from the local dollar store.



The flowers on this card are simple ones I bought in a bulk package from the dollar store that I embellished with a little rhinestone.  I'm really happy with how it turned out but if I had more time I would have tweaked the flowers a bit and created a few handmade ones in a variety of sizes.

That's all for now, 

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #4

This month at the Paper Mixing Bowl, we are grilling up Shish Kebab's! Here is the delicious recipe:

And here's my take on it:

SOURCES:  Cardstock: Core’dinations-Tim Holtz Distress Paper, Bazzil Basics Paper, Vellum. Patterned Paper: BoBunny – Back to Backs> Xtreme Texting, Newspaper. Font: Punch Label, Stamp Act. Embellishments: Maya Road-Gear Coaster Album, Floral Wire, Black Raffia, Scotch Tape, Metal Brad.

This month's recipe is all about "a special man in your life." I had yet to do a layout about my amazing husband and partner in crime, Derrick, so I was excited to get the chance to devote this entire layout to him. I knew right off the bat that I wanted to incorporate gears into this page as my husband has always had a thing for them. I also knew that I wanted to scrapbook a picture of him from our wedding day. With those two things in mind I set off to my local scrapbook store in search of some inspiration.

The main ingredient for the recipe is charcoal briquettes so I found a background paper by BoBunny that's main colour is greyish-black with accent colours of red and lighter grey tones.   My most exciting find for this page was a chipboard album by Maya Road shaped like gears.  The first gear in this album was comprised of about 7 nested gears that could all be pulled apart and separated. It was perfect!

I started this layout by adding a grunge border in photoshop to a wedding photo of my handsome groom. Next I took one of the large chipboard gears, covered it in newspaper and inked the edges to give it a distressed look. I then broke apart the nested gears, covered each of them in coordinating papers, then distressed them in a variety of ways including black ink, black chalk, sand paper and a texturizer. These gears became the base of my design.

I really loved the idea of using song lyrics for my journalling so I began scouring the internet for the perfect verse.  I started by going through a few of the songs that had special memories for the two of us, then thought of using a song from our wedding, which lead me to the artist Steven Curtis Chapman. A friend of ours sang one of his songs "I Will Be Here" during the signing of our registry while his wife accompanied him on the piano. I decided to check out a few of his other songs and stumbled upon the perfect lyrics in the first few verses of his song "Echoes of Eden."

Once I found my journalling, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it hidden. This is where my brilliant husband came into play. This layout was supposed to be a surprise for Derrick but I have such a hard time keeping any secrets from him so within the first few days after starting I showed him my design. After telling him my dilemma regarding the hidden journalling, he suggested placing the lyrics on one of the large gears and placing another large gear over top to hide them.  Simply slide open the top gear and the journalling underneath is revealled! Didn't I tell you he was clever!

I loved the idea and used a brad embellished with the smallest chipboard gear to join the two large gears together. I printed the lyrics on vellum and attached them to the underside of the largest nested gear which created a frame for the journalling. Instead of printing the lyrics on paper, I used vellum because it was just sheer enough to allow sections of a few of the gears beneath to show through.

I used the title "So This Is Love" which I designed in photoshop using the font Punch Label. I printed it on white cardstock and then cut it out leaving a tiny border of white. After checking my recipe card again, I noticed that tape was one of the utensils. At first glance, I didn't think I would be using this as it's not really my cup of tea. But then I thought, "I have scotch tape right here, why not just experiment a little and see what I can come up with." I'm glad I tried it because I love the effect it gave to the title. I ended up just adding a thin border of scotch tape to the word "Love" and then used a bit of black ink to distress it. I have definately changed my mind about tape and look forward to experimenting some more with it in the future (thanks Paper Mixing Bowl!).

For the metal utensil, I orginally planned on using metal washers around the gears, but I didn't love how this looked. Instead I found some floral wire that I've had sitting around since my wedding, and bent it in half, creating a border on the page similar to the recipe.  I didn't have any twine, so I fibbed a bit on this utensil and instead wound black raffia around one of the floral wires.  All in all, I ended up using every utensil except the bracket which surprised me because I love brackets. I tried to incorporate them in a few places but found it took away from how much I loved the layout so I dumped them. Sorry brackets! Maybe next month ;)

I think that about covers all of the details. Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #3

This month's recipe was for Mom's Apple Pie. The recipe was as follows:

I was very excited about this month's challenge. I love the colour of Kraft paper and I immediately had an idea in mind. I have had two pictures sitting and just waiting to be scrapped for some time now. One is a favourite of mine, my mother holding me when I was little and I am looking up adoringly into her eyes, and the second is of me kissing Arabella when she was about 3 months old. Then I had the idea of adding a third picture (since the recipe had a frame with three pictures) of my Grandma holding my mom when she was a baby. My Grandma recently passed away so this had even more sentimental meaning to me. Once I decided to add the photo of my Grandma, I knew that my journaling element would be a poem that my mom had put on a photoboard at her funeral. It is a poem that was on a card my sister gave to my Mom years ago, that resurfaced at my Oma's funeral 5 years ago, and just recently at my Grandmother's funeral. It became the inspiration for the rest of the page with it's comparison of a mother's love to a garden. I loved the idea of using the muted Kraft for everything (the soil in the garden), but then adding a burst of life and colour with handmade flowers cascading down the page (the flowers in the garden). This is what I came up with...it is one my favourites that I plan on framing. The ingredients from the recipe that I used can be seen in CAPITALS throughout this post. I was able to incorporate every ingredient except for the paint/mist.

The Inspiration:

My Layout:
I loved the idea of incorporating different materials and shades of the colour KRAFT. For this layout, my background is actually a piece of brown parcel paper that I cut to a 12x12 size and then handstamped the edges with brown ink using a STAMP from the Pollen Dust collection by Fancy Pants. The title and poem are printed onto a scrap of Bazzil cardstock that I had leftover from a previous project. For the FRAME, I originally planned on using a scalloped edge frame that my sister-in-law had cut out for me using her Silhouette. However, before I picked it up from her I tried cutting out a simple frame using burlap since it matched the colour theme and loved how it turned out. It also incorporated the WEAVING utensil from the recipe. To add a little more depth to it, I handstamped it with brown ink and the same swirly stamp as my background. You can't really make out the shape of the stamp but I loved the texture it added.


SOURCES:  Cardstock: Bazzil Basics Paper, Bo Bunny – Kiwi Double Dot.  Paper:  Brown Parcel Paper, Burlap. Stamp: Fancy Pants – Pollen Dust. Ink: Memento – Rich Cocoa. Font: jailbIrD JenNA, Hawaii Killer. Flowers: Handmade Using Miscellaneous Paper & Embellishments

The Title:
The journalling part of the recipe suggested using the inspirational words Mother, Heritage or Family. Sticking to the theme of these words, I chose a phrase from the poem and entitled my page "The Legacy." I added a thin curly bracket border to the title which I designed in photoshop using the font Hawaii Killer. I love this font because it is a script font but it has a handstamped vibe to it. To add a pop of colour, I printed the title out in blue ink onto a scrap of Kraft cardstock and then cut it out using scissors. I also cut a larger frame for it and handstamped it as well for a backdrop to the title. A little ink around the edges and my title was complete!

The Flowers:
Each flower on this page was handmade using a large variety of tools including scalloped scissors, flower shaped punches, flower die cuts for the Cuttlebug and a plethora of embellishments such as BUTTONS, rhinestones, Stickles and sequins. To add some dimension, I curled many of the petals using a pencil or used two-sided foam tape for added height. The last step was to add some pops of colour or texture with handcut green or burlap leaves that I inked the edges with in brown.

Journalling:
As stated above, for the journalling portion of the recipe, I used a POEM which I printed in blue ink onto cardstock using the font jailbIrD JenNA with the words "heart" and "legacy" accentuated in the font Hawaii Killer.

Thanks for stopping by!