Thursday, May 20, 2010

My Mind's Eye Challenge #11 Anything Goes


How I love these hues of pink and green! These MME papers and die cuts are from the Tres Jolie lines,...still among my favorites. I am realizing with these older photographs how fabulous it is to be able to lighten and alter the tones on a photograph now, before printing. But, on the other hand, with the MME Frames, I just love the way the photographs pop!

Anyhoo,...here is my "little man", Kurt. He never looked like a newborn. At five months of age, he is huge! Kurt also has gotten my fair complexion.

It was fun working on pictures from our pool area as we are approaching the Season! Can't wait! Hope you are having a marvelous Spring! Until next time,...cheers!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Dusted Off A Cropper Hopper Today....


...and found this Bo Bunny Tuscany line to make 3 cards for 4 different challenges or sketches. The first image will be entered into Paper Craft's Magazine's latest competition, Gallery Idol.


The card on the left was made with a sketch from Repeat Impressions.


The middle card was made with a sketch from Card Positioning Systems #167.


The card on the right was made with a sketch from the Bo Bunny blog.

These quick cards only needed some additional cardstock and a few brads to complete...fun!

Have a blessed day! xo

Monday, May 17, 2010

Making a Tulle Flower


I feel so incredibly blessed to have had such a extended time to get to know my amazing Great Grandparents, who were married for 60 years! My Great Grandfather was gentle and kind, and always lead our family in a Norwegian prayer at family mealtimes. He lived to be 90 years of age. My Great Grandmother lived to be 103, and I can remember her having scripture verses on cards lying about, (& often enclosed in birthday cards along with cash); and, the television was often turned to church shows. I know that their prayers and grace encouraged me through so many trials in life.

A very quick and easy tutorial is posted today on Scraptiv!ty's blog demonstrating how I made this tulle flower with supplies found in the May kit.:

Have a marvelous week! Please continue to check the Scraptiv!ty forum for flower ideas. I am up again tomorrow and still trying to decide what to make! :)

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

If Friends Were Flowers....


...Kurt would pick some Queen Anne's Lace or pretty Wild Daisies, some proliferating wild Aster's that seem to dominate a garden once started,....or maybe just a Wild Rose. He, always, is attracted to sassy, sweet and pretty girls, as friends, that have a dynamic personality that just takes over! Mikayla is a darling example. She was his best friend during his second year of preschool.

For a tutorial on how I made the tulle flower, please see Scraptiv!ty's Techniques Forum. Every weekday, we are posting tutorials, or links, to creating a flower in the blooming month of May! I used mostly The Paper Company Studio's Boho Blooms on this project as included in Scraptiv!ty's May 2010 kit.

Friday, May 7, 2010

A Couple Cards


There are not enough hours in a day! To make it seem even shorter this week, my body decided to catch up on some sleep,... so once you take away the time that I am parenting, maiding, cooking, accounts payable clerking, chaffeuring and wife'ng :),......I was left with very little time this week to do what I wanted to do. However, I managed to tweak in two cards with my Scraptiv!ty kit and a couple other new items.

The taller card was made using a color challenge. Please see the details from my post below.


For the horizontal card, I was playing with some new items from Our Daily Bread Designs. I love their Christian themed items and incredible inspiration from spectacular designers. I am hoping to start a card making ministry at my church to support the prayer and care team, who provide visits for the sick and bereaving. For now, I am just experimenting with some new stamps, dies and styles! I cannot ever seem to decide if I prefer the clean and graphic cards or the shabby chic, but I seem to lean towards the more dimensional cards once I get started. The blue papers, the ribbon and the heart pearl sticker came from May's kit and add-ons.

I hope that you have a marvelous weekend! I hope that all the Mom's get spoiled with a generous supply pampering and love! Be blessed!!

Color Throwdown #91 with Scraptiv!ty


Using my kit, I added some rosy red cardstock and misted flowers from my supplies to take on this fun challenge at the color throwdown. The blue cardstock, flower stamens, butterfly and "Hello" stamp and Tattered Angels mists were from the May Scraptiv!ty Kit. The flourish gems and ribbon were Boho Blooms add-ons.

Additional: Papertrey die and Fillable Frames #1, white cardstock, misc. flowers and gems, pp from SEI Bridgeport, CTMH Topiary Ink

Thursday, May 6, 2010

"Hello" Card


Please see the blog post from yesterday at Scraptiv!ty for the step-by-step instructions on how to create this card.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Asian Flowers - 10 Easy Steps



Here is the little tutorial that I was hoping to post today. The flourishes were cut from Paper Adventures patterned paper – Pink Scrolls which comes in Scraptivity's November 2007 kit. The flowers, as are most of the supplies, were created with the May 2010 kit. I hope that you enjoy. And, please check out Scraptiv!ty's forum each weekday this month for similar tutorials by the design team.

To help demonstrate the steps, I created a set of petals with double the size of my flowers because the photographs on the smaller petals were not coming out clear enough with my camera. The flowers on my "Reflections of China" layout were made with strips of paper 1/2"x1&1/2". For this demonstration, I used a 1"x3" strip, on most of the photographs.

1. Cut your strip
2. Fold it in half to make a narrow strip
3. Fold in half to shorten:


TIP: If you paper is thick, and hard to manipulate, (like mine was), soak your strip in water for 5 seconds and towel dry. This softens the paper nicely.

4. Now, if your paper were thinner than my Bazzill:textured cardstock – Pomegranate, you could cut a rounded edge on the open end of your folded papers, and steps four and five would be combined. But, since my double folded paper was too thick, I unfolded the second fold to cut a rounded edge from the top open corner, and cut from each outside edge. First one side,...
5. Then, the other side so that my strip looked like this:


6. Holding the strip folded lengthwise once, fold one of the halves down a second time like this:

7. Fold the other side down as well:


8. Fold it back as you did in step 3 to shorten. Pinch it tight in the center, because in the next step, you will unfold the outer edges to form the petals. But, for now, fold as such:


9. Unfold the outer edges. Each of my flowers needed steps 1 to 9 repeated twice for three sets. Since my flowers have 5 petals, I cut one of my sets in half to create a fifth petal:

10. Arrange your petals.

Thanks for checking out the tutorial! Blessings to you.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Happy National scrapbooking Day!



I'm excited to show you Scraptiv!ty's May 2010 kit. I changed to the alternate design team when my time in Georgia last month conflicted with a late shipment of the April kit. It makes me so very happy when I get to design, even when the short deadlines are stressful.

This month was all about making flowers. It happens to be my favorite embellishment to make. The flowers on the layout featured today were handmade from cardstock. I will get together a tutorial tomorrow to show you the steps. I created the centers with microbeads from Scraptiv!ty's September 2007 kit.


There is a challenge for the NSD crop here, to use a previous technique, on the forum. Hope you join in. Did I mention that there will be prizes?

Be blessed!