The 5 Minute Layout!

Any of you who read my blog know how I am obsessed by trying to scrapbook or card craft faster!  I talk a big talk about how I love the process and every minute of the 8 hours it usually takes me to complete a layout but I am always really pleased when something works out and gets done quickly!
You may have seen this photo before....It was taken just a few days after Taylor's birth.  We used this shot on her birth announcement (with some other photos I also took).  My daughter loved the photo so much she had one printed on wrap around canvas and has it on display in Taylor's room.  I decided to also print it out as an 8x12...you know how I have a love for large prints in my scrapbooking.
Well, here it is:

I was in Hobby Lobby yesterday and found this lovely pearl and gem border with a touch of lace by Prima.  It was on clearance for $2.49 and I thought would be the perfect embellishments for this photo.  It turned out so pretty and really looks better in real life than it does here in the photo.

I am going to use this as the back page for her birth scrapbook....I decided against any journaling....I think the picture speaks volumes...what is it they say?  "A picture speaks a thousand words."

Here is a  closeup of the pretty lace, gems and pearls border.  Look at the cute little resin rose....so lovely!

Happy Crafting!!!

And Yet Another Embossed Card!

I made another card with the same stamp and embossing folder I used  for yesterday's post.

I just embossed on black paper with various Adirondack embossing powders (Lettuce, Red Pepper and Buttescotch) to get the multicolor look.  The paper I used was a Bazzill paper...I did use the smooth side and my Embossing Buddy (antistatic thingy) but still some of the powders stuck where they weren't supposed to.  I need to most likely use a different type paper...still it turned out nice and I like the look.  I wrapped a little tulle around it and attached a tiny vellum tag I cut out and stamped with Tiny Tags die and Tiny Tags II from Paper Trey Ink.  (That is an awesome little tag set to have on hand...so cute!).

And an aside....I swore I would not get into buying Copic markers.  I have a few colors but they are just so darned expensive!  I generally color with watercolors or with pencils with Gamsol...but the other day when I was in the NEW Hobby Lobby I couldn't resist buying a pack of 6 markers (Skin Tones 1).  They were $40 but I got 40% off so paid $24 or $4 a pen.  Not too bad, I guess....  anyway, now I need to Youtube search some videos on skin coloring! :)

Happy Crafting!!!

Heat and Dry Embossing

Hero Arts and Sizzix have joined to come out with stamps that also have an embossing folder.  I purchased one of these sets at Archiver's yesterday and made this card:

I embossed on Kraft cardstock with white Zing embossing powder and then ran it through my Cuttlebug with the folder. 

You can see how it embosses the image here.  Very cool, huh?
I used My Mind's Eye Stella Rose papers which I love and added a little white seam binding in a bow.  Simple but elegant...don't you think?

Oh...we got a brand new Hobby Lobby which opened on Monday.  It is 66,000 square feet of space is is reportedly the largest Hobby Lobby in the southeast.  No big grand opening specials yet but I'm hoping....
Nice store though....

Happy Crafting!

Embossed Butterfly Card

I seem to be into butterflies these days.  LOL!!!  Every time I turn around I'm using butterflies on another scrapbook page or card!  Oh well...butterflies are great.  I've been seeing a few more this year at the park so I think that is a good thing.

I got the inspiration for this card from a video I saw on Pinterest from Darlene Designs.  I love her videos...she speeds them up and does audio over them.  Anyway, her technique which I wanted to try was embossing with different colors on black cardstock.  I've done different colors on white cardstock but thought it looked so striking on black.

Here is my card:

I used Bazzil Cardstock (the black), a piece of Pink Paislee Bayberry Cottage printed paper, some white cardstock, Crushed Olive Distress Ink, Adirondack Lettuce and Zig White embossing powders.  I used a deckle edge frame from a Spellbinders set and then traced around and cut it out on white cardstock to give a little mat to it.  I also used the "Hey There" sentiment from Paper Trey Inks Fillable Frames #6.  The butterfly stamp is from the Hero Arts Antique Engravings set.  I tied some seam binding around it for a nice little bow.  And that's about it.  Pretty fast (for me!)

Happy Crafting!

Little Baby Layout

I completed another 2 page layout for Taylor's baby book yesterday.   These photos are her getting on the first scale of her life and weighing in at 6lbs 8.8 ozs which is much smaller than her own mother weighed when she was born which was 9lbs 7.5 ozs!  LOL!!!  I am about a foot shorter than my daughter....yet I had the big baby and she had the nice teensy one.  Anyway, here they are... Left side first:

I did some stitching with the Beast on K & Company Sparkly Sweet papers.  I cut out a couple of butterflies for a little embellishement.  They are glittered papers so add a nice bit of sparkle! 
"Little Baby" was cut on my Cricut Expression with the Nursery Rhymes cartridge.  I was so hoping this would fit into my personal challenge of using all of my cartridges but unfortunately for me, I've already completed projects with it!  Oh well....
Here is a close up of the cut:

And I added a little bling because baby girls can always start off with a little bling, right?
Here is the right side...of her feet getting stamped and then just a cute photo of her teensy foot with her identification band on it.

 

The little feet die cuts were done on the Silhouette Cameo (which was a KI Design I purchased from the Silhouette store) as was the journaling spot.  I was able to cut the teensy printed frame on the inside of the purple frame with no difficulty at all. 

Isn't that a cute little teensy foot?

Happy Crafting!

Easter Card

I was scrapbooking and playing around with my computer last night (both things are not exclusive, you know!) looking at ideas and tips when I got an email from SheryK Designs which included the link for a cute Easter basket cut file.  Shery does a wonderful job with her designs.  I've only started "collecting" them and this may be the first project I've actually done but it's a cutie!
What is it you ask?
A cute little shaped Easter basket card.  See?

Shery K includes various cut file formats in her dowloads including SVG and the Silhouette Studio file which makes it easy peasy for us Silhouette users.
This all cut out beautifully and was really fun to assemble. I used some K and Company papers I had that actually are printed on the reverse side...I used the solid sides because they were nice pastels.  I must not be much of a pastel person, though, because I certainly don't have much in the way of pastel in my stash! LOL!
I used Kraft cardstock as the base.  I also added a Tiny Tag cut with the corresponding die and sentiment from Paper Trey Ink. Added a couple of buttons and a little white cotton crochet thread and that was it!
I'd like to show a little closeup just because it's fun to check things out under a microscope!  LOL!

And that's it for today...it's a beautiful day here...I'll get outside and take a walk...other then that I hear my scrapbook stuff calling me!

Happy Crafting!

Uncle Jeremy

Here is a layout I did as a companion page to THIS layout I did the other day of newborn Taylor with her other grandparents. 

(Little bit of a glare there...oh well...such it is!)

This is Taylor being held by her Uncle Jeremy who also happens to be my 25 year old baby boy.  EEEK!  It wasn't so long ago I was holding him like this!
I used Coral Couture papers from DCWV, the same EK success butterfly punch I used on the other layout (so glad I got that punch...I've already used it several times!  It is the coolest because it punches 3 layers of butterflies for stacking.  Love it!  I also used a Gelly roll pen for a little glitzy accenting and that was about it.

I also used my Silhouette Cameo and the true type font Segoe Script to weld and cut out "Uncle".  Here is a close up....I'm always amazed how smoothly the Cameo cuts:

The capital "u" is less than an inch in height.  ....what a great cut!

And that's it for today!

Happy Crafting!

You Are My Sunshine

I decided to make a card with that cute kit I purchased HERE from Shanna Vineyard.  I used this kit to make a two page layout of Taylor coming home from the hospital a few days ago and just loved it.

This time I pulled my images into Silhouette Studio, resized them and then cut them out without any border.
Here is what I came up with:

This is a window card with the circle cut out in the middle (well, here it is off center!)....you can see it better here:

I added some long legs to the little birds....I thought that made them even cuter on this card!  I doubled up the pink one for some dimension...used some Glossy Accents here and there...a little bit of twine, a border punched with a Recollection punch and that was about it.  Oh, except...if you look closely I did use the BEAST for some zig zag stitching.  Papers were from Jillibean and Echo Park.

Here are a couple of closeups:

Happy Crafting!

Shaped Card

I don't make very many shaped cards.  For some reason I am drawn more to rectangles and squares!  But I recently saw a couple of video by Lily Pad Cards where she had made shaped cards out of Spellbinders Dies. Christina of Creations with Christina also posted a video of one she did the other day.  Well, I thought...I need Spellbinders Labels 8.  The card Lily Pad Cards made was so cute and I just loved the shape.  So I decided to head out to see if I could find it.  I went to Joann's...well, as luck would have it although they had a "card" posted they did not have one in stock.  I went to Micheal's.  Same deal...the card was hanging but after the manager spent 20 minutes looking though each Spellbinder die set he had PLUS rearranged them so they could more easily be located next time he said they did not have one.  I went home and find it on Joann.com.  But of course, I needed to find another $23 worth of things to buy so I could get free shipping! LOL!

Then I thought to myself, "Susan, you'd better check your dies to make sure you don't have it.".  And as is often the case...I already had it! LOL! 

So, I made this shaped card with My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline papers, a Hero Arts dotted background stamp that I heat embossed with white embossing powder, Spellbinders Label 8, and stamps from the Blossom Soup Jillibean Soup collection by Unity.  I added a little gelly roll pen work to the butterfly and the sentiment to give it a little more sheen and did a little inking with inks by Paper Trey Ink and Jenni Bowlin.  I added a bit of Paper Trey Ink twine and was done! FINISHED.

Here are some closeups:

I do like this shape and will definitely use it for a card again!.  And I'm glad I didn't buy it again! 

Happy Crafting!

Gadgets and Tools

As I've mentioned before I am a gadget queen.  I just love a good gadget...it can be something tto help in the kitchen like the Ulu knife my friend, Cyndi, brought me back from Alaska once that I use regularly for chopping herbs or nuts or anything that I want chopped fine.  Or my Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender which is great for chopping, smoothie making, sauce making, etc.  Or my iPhone or iPad or Silhouette Cameo, Cricut Expression or iRock, or a really good pair of scissors.... I just love things that work for you and make a job a little simpler.

I think most paper crafters love bows on things and lets face it...sometimes tying those bows can be sort of tedious and you feel like either you need an extra set of hands or a few less thumbs!  I actually do an ok job of tying a bow but if there is a way to do it more simply...well, I'm all for that!

I came across something on Pinterest yesterday that made me pause and say to myself "What the heck is that?"  It was a bow maker from MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.  Alyssa, the blog owner had created a cut file for a bow maker which can be found on her blog.  You can find the cut file here and  a video on how to use it HERE.

I thought that was so smart....a little bow maker that would be easy to take with you for crops...doesn't take up much space...and works.  Alyssa created it out of basic shapes in one of the cutting programs and was kind enough to share it with everyone who is interested.

Here is my version:

 My version is not as cute as Alyssa's but I wanted to see how it would cut first before I used my really good stuff!  She cut hers out with cardstock...I actually used a couple of pieces of thinner chipboard (a little heavier than a cereal box, though) and a couple of pieces of cardstock and then covered them with a couple of pieces of  Basic Grey Periphery papers that were leftovers.  All of this cut out easily on my Silhouette Cameo.

The pair of "legs" on the bowmaker above create a different sized bow...from about an inch up to about 2+ inches.  You bow will basically be about the width of the pair of legs.  Follow that?  Great.... 

Here are a couple of samples of bows done with my handy dandy bow maker:

The first was done with some little organza ribbon ....you can see how small this bow compared to the penny (and let's face it...tiny bows are the toughest to make!):

A perfect little bow.

The second one was made with some Paper Trey Ink satin ribbon:

Now anyone who ties a bow with one side shiny and the other side not so shiny knows that tying a bow the conventional way (like your mom taught you when you were learning to tie your shoes) makes it difficult to get the bow to turn out with both loops the right way.    This method of bow tying takes that problem away!

And here is one done with some really wide ribbon (about an inch wide):

My ends aren't cut so perfectly but the bow part looks fabulous...don't you think?  And this was pretty simple to tie.

Anyway, thanks to Alyssa at My Thoughts Exactly for a really inexpensive alternative to the fancy schmancy bow makers out there!

Happy Crafting!

Layout in an Hour!

I don't know why I'm obsessed with how long it takes me to complete a layout.  I keep telling myself I love every single second (for the most part) of creating a layout or card and if it takes me hours (read: DAYS) well, than so be it!  That is mostly true except that I wish I could love the process a little more quickly! LOL!!!  Sometimes I wish I could create something decent in under an hour....

Well, this layout was really done in under an hour.  I used DCWV Coral Couture Stack (and the coordinating cardstock) so that took some time away trying to match papers up.  I do LOVE DCWV stacks... I had an idea in mind...I had 4 pictures to use but decided on these three.  These are photos of Taylor just after she was born with her other grandparents, my son in law's parents, Jim and Andrea.   So, I just sort of cut and snipped and attached and adhered and was DONE!  The only "special" I put on were the cute little dimensional butterflies made with the EK Success punch that does the layers. 
You can see the butterflies a little more closely here:

I used a little Gelly Roll glitter pen work on the butterflies which is there, trust me, but difficult to see in the photo.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the title using a free font called Segoe Script I got HERE.  This is a great script font, I think, and was so easily welded and cut on my Cameo.  Look at the detail....even the little insides to the e's and a's cut well.

I cut it in green and then also did a shadow in the coral color. 

We went to a St. Patrick's Day celebration at a local vineyard yesterday (who could imagine grapes would grow in Georgia?!).  We drank Guiness stout, ate Guiness beef stew and listened to a few Irish jigs.  Fun time!
Here is Taylor enjoying herself...ok, I admit this picture I chose this mainly to show those eyelashes (untouched photo...I promise!)!

Here is another photo of her (very seriously checking me out!...probably thinking "move out of the way, Omie so I can see the musicians and dancing!"). 

 And here is my little guy with his new big boy hair cut surveying his vineyard and kingdom...

And yes...we all wore green!

Happy Crafting!

Another "Simple" Layout

Well, you know..."Simple" for me means less than 4 hours! LOL!
Here's another one I did recently using the individual pockets page protector thingies that We R Memory Keepers manufacture. 

I used My Mind's Eye Dandy papers and chipboard accents.  CUTE and perfect for my little guy's first day of school.  I didn't get great pictures at the house prior to leaving for school (and boy, at this point he had no idea what was coming!) but at least we documented the day! :)
I love the way this turned out...I love the little embellishments that spruce up the page.
Here are some closeups:

 "1st Day of School" was cut out with a True Type Font on my Silhouette Cameo.  I think it's just plain old Arial Bold but not totally sure about that now.

Hope everyone has a wonderful St. Patrick's Day.  I'm fondly remembering my recent trip to Ireland especially Dublin where I sat in an Irish pub singing pub songs with Niki and Elena and drinking Guiness (which is NOT a beer, I'm told...it's a STOUT!)!  What fun that was...I bet the Dubliners are having a great day today....well and everyone in the Republic of Ireland!

We are heading to a festival later...hoping the weather holds out for us!

More Thailand Treats!

As I mentioned my husband is in Thailand.  He is so well trained to be on the lookout for scrapbooking and paper crafting things.  Love that man! :)

He sent these photos recently.  The quality of each picture is not great...he usually takes good photos so I don't know what is going on with this particular camera but maybe you can make it out well enough.  The first says Sakura (Thailand).  I'm familiar with Sakura products that you can get at Joann's for example.  The Sakura Micron pens are wonderful and I have several.  I looked at the Sakura website but it doesn't say where the pens are manufactured.  Below the pens there are little packs which look like buttons or other types of embellishments.

The second photo he said were figures made of fluted or pleated strips of paper....kind of like quilling but the strips of paper are wider.  maybe you can see the strips near the bottom.  Kind of different and kind of cute.  Don't think they'd fit in a scrapbook well, though.

My tennis season started again today....I've been playing league tennis 20 years this year and I NEVER start off the season with a loss.  But today we played bigger, stronger, and younger...and they kicked our you-know-whats!  It was fun, the day was beautiful but the girls we played were just better so all we could do was go to the net at the end and say "Good match, congratulations!"  LOL!!!  Oh well...there is always another match just around the corner...Sunday for me as a matter of fact!

Hope everyone is getting some crafting in.  I think I'm going to take a break tonight.  It always seems like it takes me more energy to lose than when I win! LOL!!

A Quick Card!

I am off to visit some family out of town today.  I'm meeting up with my daughter and we will pick up my son and head to a small mill town about 2 hours from Atlanta.  Of course, the grandkids will be there, too, which always makes for a great day for me!
Here is the card I made yesterday after I finished the layout with the print and cut images (which if you have not seen...then scroll on down! :)).

I used Pure Poppy cardstock from Paper Trey Ink as the base, a piece of white embossed with the Cuttlebug Diamond in the Rough embossing folder.  The white was trimmed into a pinking shears looks with a Paper Trey Ink die.  The flowers are an old set I have from Rhona Farrer.  I stamped them with Versamark on vellum and then sprinkled 3 colors of Adirondack embossing powders on and then heated the heck out of them with my weapon...er, I mean heat gun.  I stamped the "Thanks!" sentiment with a Hero Arts stamp and embossed it, as well.  Added a little Hero Arts Gems and Pearls to the flowers and was done.  I did like the translucency of the vellum with the embossing powders but they do flake off easily so you have to exercise a bit of care when cutting.

Well, time to get going!

Happy Crafting!

Blogaversary

I decided to give my blog a little facelift since I've just "celebrated" the one year anniversary of my blogging efforts.

I was looking at some different backgrounds and decided on this one for the time being.  It's bright and cheerful and something different!

:)

Drum Roll, Please...I Finished Page 2!

Here is the second page to the layout I shared the other day of Taylor's homecoming:

Again, I used Shanna Vineyard's kit which is available HERE.  Here is a preview of this adorable kit...it's perfect for digital or paper crafting...Shanna has done very high resolution images which print out beautifully!

I used the clouds as journaling spots:

I thought you might like to see the steps I went through to create this.

First I used the Silhouette Software to roughly design out my layout.  The colored rectangles represent the pictures I ended up using although the sizing is wrong because when I went to crop the smaller photos I couldn't crop them quite like that.  But it did give me a good starting point.

This was for designing only.  Then I just slid all the elements off the page over to the left and one by one pulled each image back in to prepare it to cut.  So then it ended up like this (I only have a printer that will do 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages...not 12x12).

I did another file with the rainbow image on it.
Then I printed this out with my regular household printer and it looked like this:

(See that black square at the bottom left and the bracket on the bottom left and top left?  Those are registration marks that the Silhouette reads to know where to cut.)
Then I ran this sheet through my Silhouette and ended up with these cut images:

I added a little Glossy Accents to some of the images....and once everything was dry I just pulled up my design again on my computer and slapped everything on a sheet of Jillibean dotted paper. 

It was so much fun to do and I'm happy to have this different 2 page layout!

 

What Fun and So Easy!

I bet I grabbed your attention with the words fun and easy, right?  LOL!  Well, I'm probably fibbing a bit on the "easy" but once I got my "issues" figured out this whole layout was very easy to complete!  This layout is the left side of a yet to be completed 2 page layout of Taylor coming home from the hospital after her birth.  The left side shown below is the decorated mailbox and a photo of Mommy and Baby. No journaling on this side...I'll do that on the other side which I hope to work on today.

What was so exciting to me was that I bought a these adorable digital hand drawn images from Shanna Vineyard HERE.  The name of the kit is Home Is Where the Heart Is.  I was really excited because I thought they were oh-so-cute and I loved her samples on her blog where she had done a digital layout as well as one where she had printed out the images on cardstock and then fussy cut them out.  I decided to see if I could simplify the process a bit with my SILHOUETTE!  Yep...all of these were printed on my home printer and then I was able to cut them out with my lovely Cameo.  and it really was not difficult at all.  I am a big fan of stamps and coordinating dies and I got this same look but in a much less labor intensive way.  I simple pulled the png file into my Silhouette software, traced it, and then created a white edging around the image for the cut line.  It was sooooo easy.  And actually I did a layout on a yellow background and just didn't like it (wish I'd taken a picture for comparison) and redid it on this Jillibean black dotted paper.  As I was redoing it I resized my images.  That was the other great thing...I can use all of these images again and again and again at any size I'd like!  

This layout only took me about 8 hours to complete...you know how fast I am (!)...the next one should be faster now that I know what I'm doing!  LOL!

Look how cute these images are.  Shanna did them so they look textured and then I printed on Colorbok textured cardstock which cut like BUTTAH on my Silhouette.  Look how wonderful those cut edges look...very smooth...perfect cuts!

It looks like I drew them and colored them myself!  

I added some Glossy Accents to some or parts of the images:

I really had a great time figuring out how to do this and it really opens up some possibilities for me....that is being able to pull in .png, jpeg, etc files to print and cut.  The Silhouette is just so smart!

Happy Crafting...I'm hoping to get an hour of tennis in before it rains!