Monthly Archives: July 2013

Currently… | July 2013

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

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listening: to kiddies in the pool, the ocean, and the sandbox – just generally making a big racket

eating: kale salad with avocado, tomatoes, and poppy seed dressing

drinking: water, wine and Pina Colada Slush – yay for summer drinks!

wearing: shorts or jersey skirts, tank tops, and sandals

feeling: blessed to have two amazing beaches close by where I can spend my summer

summer

weather: warm but sometimes odd – record breaking heat one day then a 20 degree drop the next

watching: So You Think You Can Dance, Master Chef, and The Facts of Life (season 4)

reading: Dina Wakley’s Art Journal Freedom – she’ll be here soon! (click that pic – it will take you to a bonus .pdf and video!)

art journal freedom

wanting: a longer vacation – I’m not ready to leave the beach!

needing: to do more of nothing at all

thinking: about nothing, just enjoying vacation time

enjoying: weekends in Salmon Cove and vacation in Eastport – loving the beach (did you guess?)

sunshine

wondering: how Gabe & Molly can get so much sand in their bathing suits

wishing: that the fabulous vacation weather we’re having will continue

S.

 

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Paperie Card Kit | July: Part 2

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Sorry for the delay in posting the remainder of my card kit LO’s but we’ve been having warm and sunny weather – as I mentioned before, I’m taking full advantage of the few short weeks we get!

Today I’m showing you one of the two portrait orientation LO’s I made with the kit. I’ll be back later with the other (and a quick step by step on how it came together), and the mini album. On Tuesday I’m going to be posting my Simple Scrapper DT LO’s for August – one of those uses the scraps I had left in the kit. Between my work and Wendy’s, you’re getting a ton of inspiration for this month’s kit; I hope you were lucky enough to snag one!

I did a gel transfer technique to get a circle of arrows on the background (thanks Cathie!) and then messy stitched around it with red metallic thread:

smile - stitching

I used one of my very favourite punches to make tags across the top of the page:

smile - punches

For the title, I stamped a speech balloon, cut a strip from patterned paper, and used a Jillibean Soup label, all layered up on the photo:

smile - labels

I love the colours (the Simple Stories paper pad in the kit is fabulous!) and how this one turned out – it was so much fun to make!

smile

A little birdie told me there were one or two kits left at The Paperie so if you don’t have one yet, go get it – the stamp set alone makes this one a must-have!

I hope you’re all enjoying your summer as much as I am and getting some great pics – I have lots of beach and sand photos to scrap soon!

S.

Paperie Card Kit | July: Part 1

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Last month’s Card Kit at the Paperie was so popular that Wendy has decided to do them monthly! But they are going  super fast so make sure you call and get your reserved or better yet, pop by the new store and pick one up.

Wendy did some awesome cards this month and today I’m going to show you the two landscape LO’s I made with the supplies.

Dance Machine is super simple – I really wanted the focus to be on the photos of Gabe posing and dancing in the driveway. In order to really bring the pictures to the forefront, I painted gesso over the area they would be, making a focal point:

dance machine

I doodled around the edges with my Pitt Pens, of course, and brought more attention to the title of letter stickers by drawing sketchy lines around them as well:

dance machine - title

There is a fabulous pack of wooden and chipboard buttons in the kit and I think I used them all! The bright colours of these worked with the pics and the yellowy-orange one is one point of an embellishment triangle around the photos:

dance machine - buttons

The second LO features Gabe’s lions on washing day. He specifically requested they be hung by their hands so they could see what was happening in the yard while they dried!

say cheese

I used several of the stamps from the included set (it’s awesome!) on the Simple Stories patterned paper from the kit and cut them out to use as embellishments around the picture, along with some of the chipboard buttons:

say cheese - layersThe journaling is hidden under another stamped tag:

say cheese - journaling

and I cut pieces out of some patterned paper to make a cluster at the top corner:

say cheese - arrowsThe edges seemed boring to me so I dampened them and then rolled to get some extra dimension and interest on the page.

Hope you liked these, I’ll be back soon with the portrait LO’s I did with the kit! Also, check out The Paperie and/or their blog to see all my projects this month, plus Wendy’s cards (here’s a peek!), and to get your own kit – I’d love to see what you make with it!

S.

Gabe and his funny sayings…

13 Saturday Jul 2013

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The kiddies and I are spending the weekend at the cabin with friends. While eating supper, Gabe leaned in on the table and got all of our attention:

“Hey guys,  I got a secret to tell you.”

We all stopped talking, looked at him and he said, “Fart gun!”

image

Oh, the joys of a four year old boy!

S.

12 on Twelve | July 2013

13 Saturday Jul 2013

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The twelfth happened to be the day we had our first of two “Girls Weekend + Gabe” at Salmon Cove – great timing!

12on12july

1. playing with the trains

2. a visit from Jameson – Gabe was fascinated by his tiny hands

3. Molly was just totally enthralled by him altogether and wanted to hold him forever

4. my usual selfie

5. watergun fights thanks to a present from Isla

6. packing food for the cabin

7. filling the pool while having sprinkler fun

8. popsicles

9. coming home from Charlie’s – with a bag of wet clothes!

10. our traditional McDonald’s stop for supper on the way to the cabin

11. dancing to the car music

12. blowing bubbles and running around before a beach walk and bed

S.

Dina Wakley is coming to The Paperie!

12 Friday Jul 2013

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We’re all very excited to be doing a entire weekend of classes with Dina and, in anticipation, The Paperie has been doing a weekly countdown of sorts.

Each Friday a new blog post is going up focusing on inspiration via Dina’s work, or featuring some of her favourite products. Cathie has been doing some fabulous posts and I had one go live today.

Go check it out here!

S.

Life…

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

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…is just a bit busy right now!

It’s actually warm and sunny here in Newfoundland and when that happens we take full advantage – trust me, it won’t last very long! 🙂

I have a bunch of projects in the works and am trying to fit those into the times when we’re not enjoying the sun. I promise some eye candy and blog posts but they may be as guest posts on other blogs; I’m afraid my little spot here is going to be neglected until at least July is over.

The first guest blog post I did for this month went live this morning over at the Simple Scrapper site so check that out – it’s a very personal one for me and I’d love to hear your feedback.

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer (or winter, as the case may be!) and are having some great adventures – I know we are!

salmon cove - july7

Salmon Cove Sands

S.

I’d like to be….

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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….under the sea.

One of my favourite projects from the April Paperie Retreat – actually, one of my favourite projects ever – was a canvas I did just as we were gearing down to go home. I had the base done, had demoed on it for previous canvas classes, and it needed to be finished.

I painted the base texture with Silks and Primary Elements with no idea of where I was heading. Once the colour was on all I could see was the ocean.

So I stole a bit of moss from Tina, an old compass transparency from Cathie, stuck on a bit of cheesecloth (a personal texture making fave!) and played around with Dyan Reaveley’s Ruby Rainbow set to make myself a mermaid in the sea.

Ruby has crazy hair in the stamp set so I cut it off, moved it all around, then painted it, and some cheesecloth, with Orange Peel Twinks. And made her hair even a bit more crazy than before!

under the sea - hair

Her tail is a shimmery bit of awesomeness made possible by Primary Elements mixed into Old Silver Inka Gold. I then etched the scales with a pencil. It’s hard to photograph but the colour starts pink and fades into purple – it’s just gorgeous:

under the sea - scales

I printed the words on some Martha Stewart Avery labels (love those kraft self-adhesive labels for quotes like this!) and stuck them down:

under the sea - words

I wish you could all see this in person because the shimmer and dimension and texture and subtle colour variation is fab! Yes, I’m patting my own back! 🙂

I hope you like her as much as I do, she sits on the wall over my computer where I can enjoy her everyday:

under the sea

I’m offline for a few days now; I have a very special wedding to attend this weekend (the card and hopefully some pics to come next week) and then fingers are crossed for a day at the cabin on the Sands. I also have ICAD’s to catch up on, some special guest blog posts to write, and an exciting scrapbook project to dive into. I’ll be back when I can come up for air!

S.

I just love me some Primary Elements!

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

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I’ve mentioned here, just once or twice before, how much I love Luminarte products – Silks, Twinkling H2O’s, Modeling Creme. And I have something else to add to that list: Primary Elements.

Primary Elements are artist quality paint pigment, with the expected Luminarte shimmer. There are so many different ways to use them and I demonstrated several at the last Paperie Retreat, but I’m only going to highlight two here.

I made this first LO to promote the demo at the retreat:

colorful life

I went fairly basic, just one colour of Primary Elements mixed into Clear Medium, then painted on the cardstock to make a photo mat. The Clear Medium is acrylic paint base, with a built-in binder so you don’t lose any of that fabulous shine! It’s completely colourless until you add your pigment. You can mix your own colours and intensity of colours, and how much or how little you want, totally customizable!

I then blended a bunch of colours together and mixed that into some light molding paste which I smeared over the 6×6 Heart Confetti stencil:

colorful life - molding paste

It made a great purply/silvery colour which looks awesome.

During the demo I showed how to mix the Primary Elements into the Clear Medium or Molding Paste, how to dilute or intensify the colour, and how to mix your own shades. These next two LO were the scratch papers I used and then decided to finish off.

The first one has a photo base of mixed colours:

fablious fairy

and then one colour for the paste:

fablious fairy - molding paste

This final LO was actually the first demo page I made, showing how vibrant the base colours can be on their own:

buddies

I love the texture of the molding paste on this one!

buddies - molding paste

There are tons of colours in the Primary Elements line and they can all be mixed to make hundreds of other colours. The Paperie carries both the pigments and the Clear Medium plus they can order any colours you might like so go check out the website and then get some and go play!

If you want to see and touch these LO’s in person, I’ll be bringing them to the Paperie to display so pop by to check out their brand new location at 10 Pippy Place and take a look.

S.

Simple Scrapper | July 2013

02 Tuesday Jul 2013

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team_2013_revised

We’re doing things a little differently at Simple Scrapper these days – no more monthly blog hops but there are other great things planned – like a Team Gallery! I’ll post that link as soon as it goes live. (Here it is!)

In the meantime, I’ll still post my LO’s here so you can see them.

(NOTE: click any of the photos to see them larger at my Two Peas Gallery)

I’ve already posted the Premium Member Sketch LO from this month since I also used it for my Year Long Album class:

May - best friend

I won’t go into details, but if you want to see how it was done, look at some close-ups, and get a mini tutorial, check out this post!

The second one was again using a new template but also my Story Starter LO and it was completely different for me:

superpowers

That’s a very hybrid LO, my friends. And it’s all one photo, no paper at all, just a few wood veneer embellishments to which I added some Stickles for a bit of Superhero bling:

superpowers - sparkle

In general, I left it pretty simple – this was all about the story. The title itself and a bit of the journaling came from a previous post I did, if you want to check that out again.

superpowers - title

Finally, if you want to see some other LO’s from the Team this month – and I know you do! – click any of the names over there —-> to go to the other member’s blogs or Two Peas Galleries.

And be sure to check out Aimee’s blog – I know she’s posting her LO’s this morning too so go take a look at her amazing work!

I’m hoping to be back tomorrow with some more LO’s from the last Paperie retreat – I’m waaaay behind on posting those for you!

S.

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