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!

My First Date with Mason Jars

I've been wanting to post these for a while, but never got around to taking pictures. This was one of my first kitchen projects and also the beginning of my relationship with Mason jars. I had been searching for several weeks for food canisters to place on my kitchen counter. This is something I had always wanted but I didn't like the price of them and also didn't like that each canister in a set was a different size. One day as I was strolling through the kitchen aisle of Canadian Tire I saw a box of large Mason jars for a fraction of the cost of the canister sets. This got the gears rolling and set my plan into motion. I picked up a box of 6 large Mason jars, a box of 8 medium ones and also a package of plastic lids that fit on small Mason jars (who knew these existed?).

That afternoon, I set to work cleaning out my cupboards and replaced all of the miscellaneous bags and packages of dried food with Mason jars. The large Mason jars I filled with my most commonly used baking goods such as flour and sugar and lined them up in a row on the back of my counter. They fit perfectly and looked beautiful but they still needed a little something extra...like labels!

Initially I scoured through all 500 of the fonts I have on my computer (yes, I realize I have an addiction!) until I found one that fit. I printed these off and used a circle punch to cut them all out. I then grabbed a handful of paper clips and using my hot glue gun, adorned them each with a little red button.  Each paper clip was then threaded through a string of black raffia which I tied around the neck of the Mason jars.  Lastly, I slipped my label into the paper clip, and voila, it was done! They looked pretty cute, however after a couple of weeks using my jars I fell quickly out of love. I was constantly having to make new labels whenever I filled the jar with something different.  The process of printing and punching new labels was tedious and I soon found that my new jars were sitting there plain and labelless. That's when inspiration hit!

I recall my sister-in-law raving about chalkboard paper that you could buy at the dollar store. She sent me a sample of it to try and it was fabulous! It came in a roll and the one side was chalkboard and the other was covered in adhesive so you could stick it to anything you pleased! I decided to adhere it to some red cardstock and then using my circle punch I cut out a stack of chalkboard circles. Now I could change these labels with a simple wipe! My ingenius husband came up with the best part...rather than using chalk, he gave me a piece of soapstone from his work that they use for writing on metal. Turns out it writes perfectly on the chalkboard paper without the muss and fuss of chalk! Here is the final product!

 

P.S. Speaking of Mason jars, have you seen American Craft's new line of Dear Lizzy paper? This one is my favourite! I couldn't resist buying it although I have no clue what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm sure you will see a layout soon featuring one of these adorable Mason jars!