04 Monday Apr 2016
Posted in This & That
I’m teaching an awesome LO class tomorrow night at The Paperie! We’ll do three LO’s in class but I made four this month so you’ll get full colour instructions for all of them! If you’re in the area, come and join in the fun we always have!
12 Friday Feb 2016
Posted in Classes, Mixed Media, ScrapBook, Simple Scrapper
Tags
As promised, I’m back with the February work I did for Simple Scrapper!
I had a blast with my Story Starter LO – I was playing around with Prima Water Soluble Oil Pastels while working on my Favourite Things class and the colours seemed perfect for these pics:
The title is made up of two different puffy Thickers in awesome  colours:
And there’s a ton of texture with the rolled edges of the paper, the washi tape, the Thickers, the oil pastels, and doodling on the embellishments:
My template LO this month is also one of the LO’s I’m teaching at The Paperie for the February Kit Class. It’s a great class if you want to make some LO’s and it uses some of the supplies from their February page kit. Of course, there will be tons of product left over to play with later too!
Lots of fabulous words and phrases on this one:
And my fave, lots of shimmer and shine from the metallic words, embellishments, and washi tape!
Don’t forget to check out what the rest of the team did this month and remember, there’s always lots of inspiration on our Pinterest board!
Cheers!
S.
The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.
10 Wednesday Feb 2016
Posted in 12 on Twelve
Tags
The 12 on Twelve project is one I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. I really love these little snippets of what’s going on once a month. Sometimes it’s exciting, like when I was in Vancouver to visit my brother last November, and other times it’s just a regular old day. They’re still the best fun to do and look over every month!
1. Breakfast of my favourite cereal – Cheerios!
2. Typical and standard monthly porch selfie.
3. Green shoes today – giving my red ones a break.
4. Melting snowman!
5. snack time for the kiddies – goldfish, raisins, and Cheerios.
6. Rosie, in her favourite spot, getting a good scratch going.
7. Gabe did a lot today; first was adding pieces to his DIY Trebuchet from Uncle Graham,
8. then we played Scrabble,
9. after that was building a car with snap circuits,
10. and picking up blocks with the front end loader,
11. ending with running away from me and my camera!
12. Gym time with my girls on a night when I was so thankful they were around – they are the best!
Cheers!
S.
09 Tuesday Feb 2016
Posted in ScrapBook, Simple Scrapper
Tags
So….. I’m alive! Is anyone still out there?
Sorry for the unannounced two month hiatus but I’m back and have some fun things to catch you up on and share, starting with Simple Scrapper news. January marked my 3 year anniversary with them and I love the company, the Team, and Jennifer, the owner, more now than ever! They really are fabulous and the Membership materials and value just keep increasing exponentially! Plus, we have added some amazing talent to the Team including my good friend Cathy Caines! I was thrilled to learn she made it – her work is just incredible, as is the work of the other designers so make sure you check my side bar to scope them all out.
You may have noticed I didn’t post any LO’s for Simple Scrapper during December and that’s because we did a huge issue of the monthly Member’s magazine, Spark, and filled it with past LO’s, information about all the designers, our signature styles, favourite products and tools, and so much more! It was fabulous. My favourite so far.
But I’m back now with the January LO’s so enjoy!
The Story Starter LO was all about my mom (and me!):
I used my favourite paper and Thickers, both from Amy Tangerine, as well as some awesome gold alphas:
And I had fun with lots of layers and bits to embellish:
My template LO for January features a picture of one of my besties and I just as we got off the plane in Mexico last summer. Best trip ever!
I used some little phrase stickers and most awesome cork stars to finish this one off:
And that was January! I’ll be back soon with the February LO’s, plus my 12onTwelve pics and details on the two main classes I’ll be teaching at The Paperie this year! Lots of good stuff to come and the share soon!
Cheers!
S.
The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.
15 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in 12 on Twelve
Tags
Not sure how I completely missed posting my 12on12 last month, especially since I was in BC visiting my brother for those, but rather than make you sit through two posts I’ll just do them at once!
November
1. Mom made us Partridgeberry Orange muffins – my favourites!
2. First Eggnog Latte of the season, yay! Decaf, for those who know me, lol!
3. Harbour in Vancouver – it was beautiful.
4. Selfie with my bro!
5. Graham photobombing my drink pic.
6. Very cool, and very old, photo processing technique that Graham’s friend did.
7. Graham setting up to take my picture for Mom (he has a fine arts degree from Emily Carr in photography).
8. fancy mocha on Granville Island (decaf again, of course!)
9. Macarons!
10. Â Mom demoing a costume I bought for a friend (hi Cathy!)
11. Absolut Vodka gay pride bottles. They have an amazing message on them but I don’t think I got the photo, unfortunately.
12. New shoes, handmade John Fluevogs – I’m in love.
December
2. Gabe as a cartoon John Travolta – Darrell was entertaining him while we waited!
3. having a chat with the big guy.
4. Molly pretending to be Santa, deep voice and all!
5. Santa Claus is here!
6. rehearsing for the Christmas Pageant/White Gift service
7. wearing my new favourite shoes.
8. Lego Advent calendars – Gabe got presents….
9. …Molly got a little bunny.
10. Great sign and idea at the grocery store this afternoon.
11. watching a movie.
12. Reading by the tree.
Cheers!
S.
14 Monday Dec 2015
Posted in Classes, Mixed Media, My Favourite Things
This past Thursday was the last class of the year at The Paperie and it was the second last class of My Favourite Things for 2015 (we’ll finish up the album in January).
I knew I wanted to use watercolours, specifically my favourite Twinkling H2O’s, but was unsure how to incorporate them until I saw Kristina Werner do a simple masking technique to make some trees. I simply extrapolated to a larger size and made what might be my favourite pages for this class ever! The colours are amazing!
As a head’s up, if you want to try this, it works just as well with regular (and super cheap) watercolours. You won’t get quite the intensity of colour, or the shimmer, but they still work perfectly – I demoed with regular watercolours for class just to see!
This was the simpler, but still impressive, first LO. We used black gesso for the center and the Twinks around the border.
For the title we used Heidi Swapp watercolour paper words and coloured them with the same paints. I also added some Dear Lizzy gold foam Thickers.
The second LO used a ton of masking but it was worth it!
How much fun are all those colours?!? Looks just like stained glass, especially with the shimmer!
This time, we used black gesso on the watercolour words, plus some more of those Thickers:
And just look at the sparkle from those paints!
Seriously, these shine and shimmer like crazy!
Do you love them? We all did – it was a fun class and worth the masking work – please tag me if you try it out because I’d love to see!
Cheers!
S.
10 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in Classes, Mixed Media, ScrapBook
It’s December and there’s snow falling on my blog! I love that feature of WordPress – so awesome!
I’m teaching the last Fave Things class of the year tonight (we have one more class in January to clue up 2015) and it occurred to me that I hadn’t shared last month’s metallic goodness with you all!
The base layer and texture layers for both of these LO’s were made using Dina Wakley Media metallic paint. In class, someone used red for the base instead and layered the metallic over and it looked incredible!
We also punched circles from Tim Holtz Metallic Kraft Core and sprinkled on some Stampendous embossing enamel.
My most favourite thing are these Dear Lizzy Thickers – they’re gold foil over foam and all kinds of awesomeness.
The second LO uses the Gilt paint which is an orange-y gold:
You can see we dripped paint for texture in this one, but we still used those awesome Thickers – with a twist!
I showed everyone how to make their own silver ones! The best part? It looks like they were made this way!
I’m hoping to be back tomorrow with the LO’s we do tonight – they just may be my most favourite ever!
Cheers!
S.
28 Saturday Nov 2015
Posted in Mixed Media, ScrapBook
Tags
Balzer Designs, Mixed Media Layout, Prima ColorBloom, Stampendous Embossing Enamel, The Crafter's Workshop, Wink of Stella
Molly asked for almost a year to be Pippi Longstocking for Halloween and Gabe, as usual, just wore what I brought home for him and loved it!
While I was at the Paperie Retreat I just wanted to play a bit with some pastes, powders, and sprays – This was the outcome. It’s not exactly what I wanted but it was still fun to play! I do love the texture of the bubbled paste and embossing enamel, especially when mixed with Prima ColorBloom Sprays and Freckled Fawn silver puffy hearts:
And these gold Thickers are my new faves!
Plus, look at the sparkle on the wood veneer from the Wink of Stella pens – I’m a big fan of the white one, it’s so cool!
Have you had fun just playing lately? What products are you using these days – I’m always on the lookout for new ones!
Cheers!
S.
25 Wednesday Nov 2015
Posted in ScrapBook, Techniques
Just before I headed off to Vancouver to see my brother I went to a four-day scrapbooking retreat at The Wilds. The Paperie hosts these twice a year and they are a must-do! I admit, I planned my trip around it!
I was actually super productive this time around, something that usually doesn’t happen for me and to be honest, I don’t really care. For me, it’s more about the break and having an awesome girls weekend while doing something we all love! To get lots done this time was a huge bonus!
Two of my favourite LO’s came about due to a challenge I took part in. I used a couple of Halloween pics so I’m going to share these now before we get too far past that time and into full-blown Christmas!
I bought some foam Thicker words at the Retreat and they were perfect for these LO’s:
To make both LO’s, I picked three different colours of Distress Ink and blended them to get an ombre look, starting with the lightest and working my way up. I used the small round ink blending tool from Ranger, I like it better than the large one, and went over the colours a lot to get a seamless and smooth colour blend. I find that if you start light and keep adding colour, you are less likely to get lines from both the tool and between colours. If you look carefully, it seems that I have more than three colours on the page but that’s because of the overlap while blending.
To get the shimmery, bleached out dots I simply sprayed Biscotti Perfect Pearls Mist in my hand, flicked it onto the background and after a few seconds, rolled my paper towels over the top to pick up the excess mist.
I used the exact same technique for Gabe’s picture, with cool  colours instead of warm.
For the stars on both pages I used either diecut cardstock stars or wood veneer. I covered them with VersaMark and then sprinkled on Aged Silver Embossing Enamel from Stampendous. It’s the best antique silvery colour and is my fave lately, along with the Aged Gold.
Distress Ink techniques are by far my favourite – these inks can seriously do almost anything, I think they have magic powers! Let me know if you try this out and have another fun technique to share with me, I’m always looking for new ones!
Cheers!
S.
24 Tuesday Nov 2015
Posted in This & That
Sorry I went MIA but I was visiting my brother on the other side of the country and the time change did me in! Seriously, 4.5 hours messes with your system! Anyway, I’m back and have something fun to share with!
In case you haven’t seen it yet, this month Jennifer McGuire has been having a Share Handmade Kindness challenge over on her blog and lots of great people in the industry have been joining in, sharing their talents, and donating prizes. This is the last week and the theme is Kindness & Giving Back.
To join in with the fun, Kristina Proffitt of One Happy Mama has designed two awesome printables and is sharing them for free on her blog!
I love putting little notes in my kids lunch boxes so these were awesome for me!
I printed them in vanilla cardstock, cut them out with my paper trimmer and then used my Zig Gelly Roller Stardust pens and some Zig Wink of Stella pens to bling them up a bit.
Had to point out the “amazing” with arrows on the pink one!
Love that smiley face!
I had fun with the orange one – clear glitter on the rainbow and fun patterns on the “big” word.
I had a great time blinging up the scallops!
Some subtle sparkle for the green.
And the blue was my fave! I coloured the heart and blinged it all up!
You’ll notice I also doodled lines around the edge of each card – that just my jam, peeps, I can’t help myself!
The second printable Kristina shared is an 8×10 print that would be perfect in a classroom, bedroom, pretty much anywhere! I have to get a frame a put it up in our hallway – it says, It’s Cool to be Kind.
Head over to One Happy Mama and leave her some love in the comments – such a fabulous gift for her to give! And of course, download the printables, they rock!
Cheers,
S.
sarathings 