Little Red Wagon # 230 - Bling it Up!

It's Wednesday and time for another challenge over at Little Red Wagon!

This week Joanne is all about the sparkle and she wants us to BLING it Up! Jewels, gems, pearls, whatever you have that sparkles and shines will work for this challenge.

When it comes to bling I am a very low maintenance kinda girl. Just one look at my "jewellery" collection will tell you that. I know my hubby is not too upset about that either.  The same tends to apply to my cards and layouts. I am usually pretty subtle and minimal with my bling when I can.

This week I created a birthday card using a Tiddly Inks digital image called Anna Belle Birthday Wishes. For my touch of bling, I added tiny Recollection gems around the outside of my scalloped circle. The paper is from American Crafts Hip Hip Hooray 6x6 paper pad.

For a bit of added (yet subtle) bling I used my Zig two-way glue pen and applied glue to the cake, the party hat and the trim of the dress. I then sprinkled Glitter Ritz micro fine white glitter. This is my favourite glitter and the white is transparent, so it works on so many projects. If I use coloured paper or Copics behind, the colour comes through with the added sparkle from the glitter.

Inside the card I added a pop up element to hold a gift card (instructions here). Next time I think I will need to make the inside where the card slides into a little bit deeper.

So dig into your stash and find what sparkles and shines, then head over to Little Red Wagon to join this weeks "Bling it Up" challenge. While you are there be sure to check out the great projects from the other Girlfriends.

Thanks for stopping by and please come back soon. Happy creating everyone!

Tracy

Nature Walk With Dad (Layout)

Today I am enjoying a long weekend and a much needed day off from work. I know I just was off over March break, however today is different because it is a me day. A day where I still get up early, but just so I can drop the kids off at their before school program and give myself more time to enjoy the quiet!

I can now enjoy a coffee, checking out what happening on my favourite blogs and updating my own blog at a leisurely pace.

Here is a layout I created a couple of weeks ago using the Fancy Pants "Happy Go Lucky" line. I love Fancy Pants lines. I have a number that I am drawn too when they come out, but then when I get them home and ready to use, I get stumped. I'm not sure why. When I came across these photos however, I knew this line would work well.

The picture is of my husband and youngest daughter enjoying a daddy/daughter day out on one of our local nature trails.

I added wood veneer pieces which I believe are from Studio Calico (school icons). The letters are American Crafts patchwork. They had a great woodsy nature feel.

More wood and a few stickers from the Happy Go Lucky set. I love the idea of the stickers, however I still struggle with the best places to fit them into my layouts. I love the corrugated sheets that come with this collection pack and was happy to find a way to work it into my layout.

I added a pocket and a few tags where I will add a bit of journaling. I don't do a lot of journaling on my layouts and if I do I will aim to hide it most of the time. I love the idea of the page being a bit more interactive, so if anyone wants to really immerse themselves in my thoughts, then they can pull out the tags.

I was happy to finally start working through my stash of Fancy Pants papers.

Are there any paper companies or collections that you've jumped into buying, but then struggled to create with?

Happy crafting my fellow paper geeks!

Tracy

Little Red Wagon # 229 - A Rainbow of Colours

Happy Wednesday everyone, it's time for another fun challenge over at Little Red Wagon.

This week Jodi is hosting and she is all about colours, specifically a RAINBOW of colours.

I would like to believe that winter is over and spring is around the corner, however I am not placing any bets just yet. Making a card with a variety of colours is just the fun and cheerful thing to really make me forget (even if it is just momentarily) about the large amount of snow that is still outside of the house. The snowbanks are shrinking, but a bit too slowly for my liking.

When I was thinking about what to create for this challenge, I wanted to challenge myself not to use an stamped image on my card. I wanted to have my colours all come from my paper. Going through my die sets I decided the Lawn Fawn die set called "Spring Showers" would work well for this challenge.

I was able to use all scrap paper to cut out my die shapes and I think that I have the rainbow of colour covered off well enough here. I used foam adhesive to raise a few of the clouds, sun and a few raindrops.

I covered each of the raindrops in Glossy Accents for a bit of shine.

I partially had this sentiment in my head when I created the card. I knew it was a quote, but I looked up to see what the entire quote was and who said it. The sentiment was printed on the computer and I added additional dies cuts to make the inside more colourful.

Stop over to Little Red Wagon for this weeks fun rainbow challenge. While you are there check out the colourful creations by the other Girlfriends.

Have a wonderful Wednesday.

Tracy

Have a Beautiful Birthday

It has been quite the adjustment heading back to work after being off for March Break. I am not sure if I can still blame the time change or if it was too many late nights crafting finally catching up with me. Either way getting up for work on Monday was such a struggle for me and the kids. Is it bad that I am already counting down till my next vacation?

For today’s card I had the chance to use a recent stamp I purchased from Your Next Stamp called Catherine. This image is so pretty and thought it would work really well for the current photo challenge at the YNS challenge blog. 

I used spring colours for the image and put that together with the stunning Lilybee Design Pinwheel collection of paper (which I have been hoarding). I had every intention of using this patterned paper on a layout,  however I still haven’t found the right photos to use. So I figured the right image for a card is just as good of a reason to cut into the paper. I have a few more cards that I am hoping to use this paper. It has a nice spring feel to it.

To add a bit of texture and sparkle to the card I applied liquid glue (Zig two-way glue) to the candle flames and centres of the flowers and sprinkled my favourite Glitter Ritz micro fine glitter. My glitter has been a bit neglected on my cards lately.

Of course the inside was made pretty too with a bit of pattern paper. The larger sentiment is from YNS Heartfelt sentiments and the happy birthday is from a Bo Bunny stamp set.

Challenges:
Your Next Stamp: Inspirational Photo March 2014
Cute Card Thursday: 312 Girls, Girls, Girls
Through the Craft Room Door: Anything goes

Thanks for dropping by my blog and have a wonderful day.

Happy crafting.

Tracy

Echo Park Mini Collections - Layouts

I was so excited to be asked by Carolyn and Joanne from Two Scrapbook Friends to make a few layouts using three great mini themed collections by Echo Park. I don't think that they were aware that Echo Park is one of my absolute favourites, so I was super excited to play with these papers.

I prefer to work on single page layouts and when possible I try to scrap multiple photos. The single page acts as my title to highlight a few key pictures and then I will often pair the single page with a pocketed page for the rest of my photos and a bit of journaling.

The 3 Echo Park mini collections that I recently worked with are:

Summer Adventure

Day at the Zoo

My Life

For the Summer Adventure line, I used photos from a boat trip on our last vacation to Newfoundland. I love the colours in this collection.

To create a bit of texture, I used modelling paste and a Crafters Workshop stencil (Layered Beads) to add circles in various sizes. 

I created my own tags with some of the journal cards that are in this collection and added a few wood veneer boats.

I used a few of the sticker from the collection sheet and on the corners of the layout I added "Glitter Studs" from Queen and Co.

For the Day at the Zoo collection, I wanted to showcase a lot of the fabulous zoo animals without creating multiple layouts. In addition to the paper from this collection, my background wood grain paper is also from Echo Park (So Happy Together).

I created a lot of distressed edges on my card stock and pattern paper. Adding a few rips in the paper for texture and dimension.

I used a few of the collection sticker around the page and added some Maya Road large Kraft tags.

On most of my layouts I use 4"x6" pictures. Since we had so many great photos from this trip, I decided to try printing them at home so I could resize them. I had a pack of 8.5 x 11 glossy photo paper, so I printed some of my favourite animal pictures approximately 2"x3" in size.

For the My Life collection I created a layout of a family trip to the park while on vacation in Newfoundland. This was a super fun day and I think the grown ups had just as much fun as the kids. The picture of all of us is one that we try and take each time we visit my husband's family. I look forward to creating a page comparing the pictures over the last few years.

On this page I layered the great EP pattern paper onto the white card stock, which I stitched around the outside with red floss. Again the edges of all the paper were distressed a bit.

The calendar page was great to cut a part to add as a highlight of the date. For the title I used American Craft Thicker "Kitten".

All of the pictures were matted with card stock so they didn't get lost in the pattern paper.

More stitching was added along the bottom and I embellished with a few of the collection stickers and the wood veneer camera.

Thanks for stopping by and seeing my recent layouts. You can find these fabulous collections and a lot more at Two Scrapbook Friends.

Happy crafting.

Tracy

Thinking of You

I am so sad to have my vacation come to an end. It's been fun spending the March break week with my girls. We had a week of shopping, movies, crafting, baking, more shopping and even hit the salon for hair feathers. The feathers were for the kids of course. Not sure the look would work for me.

During my break I did have a few moments to get a few cards and layouts finished.

Sympathy cards are never fun to make but of late needed more that I would like to say. I didn't want to card to be too bleak so I pulled out my distress ink to play around. I wanted to create a scene with water (salty ocean/broken china), skyline (setting sun) (scattered straw/wild honey) and grass (antique linen/peeled paint).

I used a post-it note to create the straight skyline blending the darker ink closed to where the sky and water meet. For the water/grass line I left it as a gradual blend.

Once the background was created I used the Your Next Stamp Big Tall Grass stamped with Versa Fine Onyx Black ink for the silhouette image.

I wanted to used an embossing folder for the background paper behind the image, unfortunately none of my folders were big enough to cover the area that I need (that was frustrating). I didn't want to use a pattern paper and plain white just didn't do it. So I instead created my own embossed background.

I used my Crafters Workshop Kaleidoscope stencil and applied Versa Mark ink onto my white card stock. I carefully pulled up the stencil and applied the white embossing powder and heat set. I think the subtle background really works.

Image close up.

Inside the card I used a sentiment and stamp from a Stampendous set called Encouraging Words.

The layout for this card was inspired by the current sketch challenge over at Your Next Stamp (March challenge).

Have a wonderful day and please stop back again soon.

Tracy

First Hair Cut (Layout)

It's been a busy March break with the kids. Today we have decided to stay home and make today a relaxing lazy day. While the girls are playing Lego, I am enjoying a bit of time to catching up on blogging for a few layouts that I finished a while ago and haven't yet posted.

In this layout my youngest is experiencing her first hair cut. I adore these pictures and how they show her progression through this emotional first. It was quiet the experience and I only have my journaling to added to the bottom corner.

This was the third layout that I was able to complete with the wonderful Elle's Studio Penelope collection pack that I purchased last year.

I still have a number of the papers and tags left, so I expect I should get another layout or two from the remaining supplies.

Since I was at a crop working on these layouts, I had a limited supply for title stickers. I stuck with white as something that should work well. I was able to use them on two of my layouts that day.

The scissors are wood veneer painted silver.

I really love the tags in this collection.

The layout was inspired by an older sketch from Got Sketch (here).

Here are the other two layout (previously posted) that I created with this collection.

Thanks for taking a peek.

Have a great day and come back soon.

Tracy

Little Red Wagon # 228 - Truly Dimensional

Are you ready for another challenge over at Little Red Wagon?

It's once again my turn to set the challenge over at Little Red Wagon and this week I have selected "Truly Dimensional". What does that mean?

Well it means that your card or some element of the card (image, embellishments) needs to have some dimension. Whether you choose a fancy fold, use dimensional adhesive or layers on the paper and embellishment, the options are endless.  Just remember no flat allowed for this challenge!

For my card I decided to work dimension into the card shape creating a centre step card. This was my first time making this style of card, however it came together pretty quick after I figured out my cuts and folds to make an A2 size card (4 1/4 x 5 1/2).

I used a digital image from Sassy Cheryl called Bubble Gum Fun. I love this image and knew I had to find just the right card to really showcase this super cute and fun image. The paper is Simple Stories Homespun. I think I should have bought 2 of the 6x6 pads because I am loving all of the great colours and patterns.

To create dimension with the image, I printed her 3 times. The first layer I used my circle die to cut the image out. I coloured the background and just the outside edges of the image.

The second layer was coloured completely and fussy cut. Using dimensional adhesive I layered this image over top of the circle cut image.

The final layer was just the bubble gum. I coloured the gum and added Glossy Accents. This was also  adhered with dimensional adhesive.

A closer view of the image. I added a bit of Wink of Stella glitter to the aqua colours on her dress, which you can't see well from this picture.

Are you ready to rise up to this weeks challenge? Head over to the Little Red Wagon blog and link up your card. While you are there check out the wonderful creations by the other Girlfriends.

Happy Crafting!

Challenges:
Sassy Cheryl # 204 - Anything Goes

Tracy

Little Red Wagon # 227 - Punch It Up!

Hello everyone it's Wednesday and that means another challenge over at Little Red Wagon.

This week Jayne is feeling feisty and wants us to Punch It Up! That means digging into your stash of tools and using some of your punches on your project this week.

I have a growing collection of punches and was rather happy to find an opportunity to pull out a few that haven't been used in a while. In addition to my punches, I also used a few dies to create some of the funky super hero shapes.

For my card I used an digital image from Tiddly inks called "My Batty Hero". Batman is my husband's favourite super hero, so this was a must have when I saw it. The fun paper I pulled from my stash is Echo Park's "A Boy's Life".

I used my EK Success "Edger" border punch and my Cricut Die cut machine with the "Accent Essentials" cartridge to create the star and sun burst shape behind the image. I also die cut the image with a My Favorite Things standards circle (small) die.

The image was coloured with my Copic markers. I have been working on creating more depth in my colouring and played around with creating shadows in the folds of the cape.

Inside the card I repeated the patterned paper, used the border punch (EK Success), added a couple of small punched Kraft stars (Recollections) and the star border (MFT). The sentiment is from Stampendous "Birthday Wish".

Are you ready to "Punch It Up?" Join us for this week's challenge over at Little Red Wagon. If you need a bit of inspiration check out the creations from the other Girlfriends. I am sure they will all knock your socks off! Don't forget to link up your creations over at the Little Red Wagon blog. Enjoy!

Have a super day!

Tracy