Oh, it was a fun evening!

21 Friday Mar 2014

Tags

Amy Tangerine, Dina Wakley Media, Dylusions, October Afternoon, Ranger, The Paperie

I know I promised the last of my Card Kit projects today but I went shopping last night and I’m going to share my spoils, along with some entertaining pictures showing why I needed to shop!

So this:

is my brand new bag. Isn’t it pretty? I had to have the new bag because something (aka my cats) happened to my old one and it looks like this:

See the scratches and cat hair? It also looks like this:

See, there’s one of the guilty parties in the background. Evil.

But wait. It gets better. I can also now do this:

Yup. Entertaining for you; hard for me and my plans to actually keep my supplies inside!

So I took my birthday money and off I went. But since it seemed all big and lonely, I needed to fill it! Truly, the bag was asking… 🙂

So I got some alpha stickers:

and flair:

and more flair:

and shiny washi:

Excuse the dry hands – I hate winter… 😡

I also picked up lovely new stamps:

and gorgeous new Ink Sprays:

Sigh. Big happy sigh. It was fun. And the best part? All of it came from The Paperie, my local scrapbook store! Love shopping small and local and I’m lucky we have such a great shop here.

Now, I need to go play…. because I also picked up new product for my Yearlong Album Class and I’m itching to scrap!

And to really close off this post, here’s a sneak of a picture I’m working on now!

Cutest boy ever. Don’t even try to argue with me. 🙂

You Make me Happy…

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Sara in Family, ScrapBook

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amy Tangerine, Scrapbook Layout

Another LO from the Paperie retreat last month. With this one I wanted to use the Capture stitching templates from Amy Tangerine and my sparkly floss. It was a perfect combo for the sun and cloud design!

I had these pics of Molly and Gabe coming home from my neighbour’s house that I knew had to make it on a LO at some point and they seemed to work well with the patterned paper I had and the stitching I wanted to do.

I love how the glitter thread turned out!

And the wording on the patterned paper was perfect, it was exactly right for these photos – I popped up the main one to help it stand out:

A simple but fun one, the stitching and thread added a bit of something special to keep it from being too dull and flat while the patterned paper helped to ground the photos. And of course, I had to add a little stamping to the top left and bottom right corners – I tried to leave those corners empty but I think it’s beyond me, that’s definitely my calling card these days!

Sketchbook!

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Ali Edwards, American Crafts, Amy Tangerine, Designer Digitals, The Paperie

I spent last night at The Paperie taking Cathie’s Starburst and Pinwheel Class with some scrappy friends. We had a blast and the LO’s were awesome! Equally awesome? The stuff I came home with!

How do you all feel about classes? Are you happy to simply do them and come home with your projects or do you like to get extra stuff too?

Me? I’m all about the add-ons! Love getting a little something to carry away, especially if I learn something new and get a product so I can recreate the projects in my own way. Last night, we all got a pack of Thickers (I already had the green so I exchanged them for the black) and a 6×6 Amy Tangerine Sketchbook paper pad – pretty sweet, my friends!

The starburst LO we completed was this one:

oh dear… (design credit: Cathie Reed)

Of course, I had to make things difficult and use different papers so that slowed me down a little, but I love the end result. Cathie also showed us how to make a stencil from our starburst and how to tone down the bright papers we were using.

I had to come home to finish this one since the picture I brought just didn’t work. I’m glad to get this photo on a LO though, because it was a pretty funny day – M & P chose to colour each other, but with non-washable red marker. They had streaks on their faces for days! 🙂

The second LO featured a pie chart and again, Cathie suggested a couple of ways of doing it and some other project ideas too.

for you, mama! (design credit: Cathie Reed)

Again, I made things hard on myself and used different papers which meant time sorting out what to put where but at least I got these photos scrapped, since they probably wouldn’t have been otherwise!

M & G love to pick me flowers and on this day, shortly after the dandelions came out in bloom, they insisted on keeping them in a “vase” of water. As you can tell, I’m also in love with the Ali Edwards photo overlays from Designer Digitals. I have to force myself not to drop them onto every picture – a battle I lost for this LO!

Hope you liked them – go over and tell Cathie what you think – maybe we can get her to teach some more classes! 🙂

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Sara in Tuesday Techniques, Tuesday Tutorials

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Amy Tangerine, Project Life, techniques, Tuesday Techniques, Tutorials, Twinkling H2O's

So, I’m back with the Tuesday Techniques after a summer hiatus but I’ve decided to change it up a little and have tutorials sometimes as well! Today is going to be a mini tutorial on my Project Life Album cover. Let’s hope it turns out because it’s the only one I have! 🙂

When I went to buy an album for Project Life, I had planned to get a really colourful leather one, but when I got to The Paperie, they had one more of these Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Camera Albums left:

To me, it looked like the perfect album for Project Life!

One small problem, I wanted some more colour – black and white is not normally my go to colour combination!

A little while ago I saw this post and video by Ronda Palazzari and I thought it was the perfect solution to my album cover! I didn’t use stencils, but I did decide to paint the cameras, some of them anyway.

I started by painting a few cameras with Titanium White Golden acrylic paint.

I wanted the colour to really pop so I needed a light layer beneath to cover the black, kind of like using primer on your walls.

It was a very thin coat and, as you can see…

…I wasn’t very particular about covering the whole area neatly. I only did three camera on each of the front and back covers and I liked the look so much that I was very tempted to leave it just like this!

However, I had it in my head that I wanted red cameras so once the white paint was dry, I broke out my favourite Twinkling H2O’s and used the Poppy colour to paint them in.

Again, you can see that I wasn’t fussy about the neatness.

I like how the pops of red turned out, but I may add some more colour later. I’m still debating whether one colour is enough or not!

I’m planning to do a tutorial on how to make my one sheet, washi tape mini album next week. If there are any tutorials in particular you’d like to see, let me know!

Index Card A Day – #3

04 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Sara in ICAD2

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Ali Edwards, American Crafts, Amy Tangerine, Dylusions, Dylusions Ink Spray, ICAD, ICAD2, Ranger, Technique Tuesday

I decided to try a new product in my stash for this one – Microglaze. It’s almost like a firm type of Vaseline, or a less firm wax. Somewhere in between those…

Anyway, I spread a very thin layer over a Dylusions stencil, then firmly rolled paper towel over to pick up any excess (I didn’t want it to smear when
I added additional layers).

Next, I misted some Dylusions Ink Spray on my non-stick craft sheet and dragged my card through, then carefully wiped the excess from the Microglaze – awesome resist!

I then stamped a bunch of sentiments from Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday, pulling out all the ones with the word “life” in them. A fuchsia sharpie, some doodling, and an Amy Tangerine Fabric sticker finished it off!

Life

Final thoughts – I had no idea where I was going with this but I really like how it turned out. Love how the Microglaze worked and there’s no greasy or waxy residue left over. And the small pops of pink make me happy! 🙂

Stuff…

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Ali Edwards, Amy Tangerine, Happy Little Moments, Lawn Fawn, My Mind's Eye, Paperie, Studio Calico

I was shocked to scroll through my reader feeds this morning and discover this on the Lawn Fawn blog (check out the 4th one down!). M was also very excited to see her picture suddenly pop up! Thanks for the love, Lawn Fawn, you made our day!

Today I thought I’d post a couple of things that I’ve only given you sneak peeks of before!

This is a LO I showed just a corner of a short time ago. I couldn’t post the whole thing since it had some of The Paperie’s March kit in it. Now that the kit has been released, here’s the full view!

My Whole Heart

This pic of M and I was taken during one of our monthly family photo shoots last year.

They were torture. Really.

So this year, we took one in January, we’ll probably do a fall one, and we’ll take another in December. That’s it – 3 meltdown photoshoots rather than 12!

I love the My Mind’s Eye stamp set that’s included in the kit this month – fun, detailed, and a little something for everyone. Plus, the stamps look awesome when they’re heat embossed!

And now, finally, a couple of pics of my Happy Little Moments album that I’m doing through Studio Calico. I haven’t had much time to work on it, and there’s no pictures in it yet, but I like how it’s coming along. I think I’m going to add some of my favourite pictures rather than pictures of a certain event or time. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do one for M and one for G – still going back and forth on that one!

I’m still debating the cover – it needs something more but I can’t figure out what.

I snagged an idea from Ali Edwards here – the “S” for Strickland and the “4” for the four of us.

The thing I’ve really enjoyed with this is the stitching – my mom is going to have to pry the sewing machine away from me and I’m afraid that’s going to happen sooner than later since she needs to make curtains!

I made the little glassine pocket myself from wax paper and love how the wide zig zag stitch is looking on the pages. And I really love the messy look when the strings are not trimmed.

I stitched through the butterfly here – used Grungepaper so it wouldn’t tear so easily – and used the strings for antenna. The sunshine flash card is an old one I got in an alphabet pack on clearance – perfect for this book.

Tonight, I’m hitting crop night at The Paperie and I. Can’t. Wait. Think I’m going to do a Dr. Suess LO – both Studio Calico and October Afternoon have posted that as a challenge this week and I think it will be a fun one to take part in. Hopefully it goes well and I’ll have another LO to show you on Monday!

Have great weekend, whatever it is you’re doing!

Tuesday Techniques – Finishing Touches: Scored Lines

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Sara in Cards, Techniques, Tuesday Techniques

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

American Crafts, Amy Tangerine, Distress Ink, LilyBee, Papertrey Ink, Ranger, Scor Bug, Scor Pal, techniques

I thought I would do something a little simpler the next few weeks for Tuesday Techniques – Finishing Touches. Sometimes it’s that last little thing that holds us up but is the perfect thing to finish off a project when we do figure it out. Over the next few Tuesdays, I’ll show you a couple of quick, easy things that work for me!

Today, one of my Mom’s favourites when she sees it – Scored and/or Perforated Lines.

You need:

Supplies

A scoring board, a bone folder, a perforating tool, and cardstock. If you don’t have these items, you can use the ridge in your paper trimmer, your finger nail, and a thumbtack – I just like collecting supplies!

Put your cardstock in the upper left corner, making sure everything is straight, then press the bone folder firmly on the cardstock, letting it run down in one of the grooves; I went 1/2″ in for this step…

Scoring...

…and 1/4″ in for the perforating.

Perforating...

Then I did some masking, inking to pick up the perforations, and I was finished!

And a closeup of the details:

I like how the scoring and perforating, with a little inking, makes it looks like a stitched luggage tag – perfect for this one!

To give you some more ideas of how this technique would finish off a card, here are a Sympathy and Birthday card I made using the same Papertrey Ink set and the ScorBug:

Sympathy

Birthday

And finally, a card with scored lines and another Papertrey set:

Chickadee

I scored over the drawn lines to give them a little something more. It’s hard to see here, but adds a lot IRL – just a little oomph!

As always, I’d love to see what you do with this, or any technique I’ve shared. Leave me a link in the comments where I can view your project and I’ll take a look!

I’ll be back tomorrow with my 12 on 12 pictures!

Layouts, Sneaks, and Randomness…

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Amy Tangerine, Balzer Designs, Jenni Bowlin Studio, Kiddies, October Afternoon, Paperie, Salmon Cove, Studio Calico, The Crafter's Workshop

We have a snow ~~day~~ morning here – about 25cm down overnight and it’s still blowing around a bit. Messy, messy, messy.

While waiting for their friends to show up for the rest of the day, my kiddies are sitting at the table doing stickers, which may be their favourite thing to do. Seriously, I could go broke just buying stickers – and I get them at the dollar store!

M & G

And since they’re otherwise occupied, I can take a couple of pics and get this post done!

Saturday was a fun, daylong crop at the Paperie, and it was a productive one for me! I’ve noticed that I’m doing more LO’s for me, but they’re becoming much simpler.

And while I’m ok with that, I feel that they’re lacking something. That means I need to find a happy medium between this super simple style and the “take 10 hours” style that I was doing.

That being said, I did add a little more to the two LO’s I did on Saturday – some misting, embossing, detail cutting, etc.

I can show you this one, made mainly using one of the Paperie kits, with a few Jenni Bowlin Studio plastic flowers from a Studio Calico kit and a Balzer Designs for The Crafter’s Workshop stencil thrown in:

trust your heart

And some detail of the October Afternoon mist, Ranger Clear Rock Candy Distress Stickles, and Kaisercraft wooden flowers:

I still feels like this needs a little something so I’ll leave it out and see what happens. This was one of the pictures from our wedding day, on the deck of our family cabin in Salmon Cove. Love the spot, loved the day, love the pic!

The second LO I did has a touch of product from the new March Paperie kit on it so I can only show you a corner. I get the kit early because I photograph it for their blog.

My Whole Heart sneak peek

Have I mentioned I love Amy Tangerine? The stitched paper and camera stamp are the best! And Studio Calico Shine over the camera? Awesome!

I also did the cover for my Happy Little Moments Class but again, it needs something more so I’ll share that later. I was hoping to be further along in that journey but a seized up and very old Singer sewing machine put the kibosh to that idea. Stealing mom’s tonight so I’m hoping more progress will be made soon!

And finally, an update! All the kitting for the Canvas Class on Sunday is done – whew! That was a major one! I think there may be two spots left if you’re interested, call The Paperie and they can hook you up. This is definitely a great class – it’s based on the Inspiration Showcase Canvas Chris and I did in Houston with Jennifer McGuire and Shari Carroll from Hero Arts. If you’re looking to take your scrapbooking up a notch, or want to learn some new techniques, or just want to be inspired again, this is the class to do!

Hearts

Stars

I know the stars look unfinished – I have another plan for them! 😉

Enjoy your snow day, if you have one!

Things on Thursday

01 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook, Things on Thursday...

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Amy Tangerine, Kiddies, kids, Studio Calico, Washi Tape

1. Signed up at the last minute yesterday for this – after my ~~enabler~~ partner-in-crime agreed to do it with me. We’re having “dates” to keep us on the ball! It looks amazing so far – enough that I want to dig out my very dusty sewing machine! And I saw on Twitter that another friend is playing along too – our 3 styles are so different it will be fun to see the finished products.

2. G is “super wicked” today. And to make it worse, he’s giving me those “I know I’m being bad and I don’t care” smiles. Anyone want a 2 year old?

3. Played with my Studio Calico Country Fair kit last night – the pics are from a time before G turned “super wicked” and was still just cute…

Swing

Told you I’d be making more of those stitched tags!

4. I’ve been off a day all week so I think today is Friday. And that kind of sucks. Especially since I have high hopes for a great weekend!

5. Going on a shopping trip this evening – a second hand store for a cheap hardcover book. Wish me luck!

Have a good Thursday, hopefully it’s less “wicked” than mine!

Hug Life

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

American Crafts, Amy Tan, Amy Tangerine, Bowring Park, Daybook, Paperie, ScrapBook, Thickers, Year Long Album

(EDIT: Today seems to be the day to showcase crop night LO’s! Check out this and this.)

Friday night I went to a crop night at my LSS, The Paperie. It’s always the third Friday night of the month and it’s always fun and yummy – great combination!

This time we talked and talked and talked and laughed and laughed and laughed – and actually got some scrapbooking done too!

One of the projects I was picking away at was the Hug Life Daybook from Amy Tangerine for American Crafts (a larger version of the one I tore apart for this LO).

These are the best mini albums – surprisingly big, as in tons of pages, and very eclectic.

There are pockets and grid papers and tickets and rounded papers and scalloped papers….. So different, so very fun.

I am using the November kit from the Paperie and I *love* it. The papers, the stamp, the thickers, the mixtape – awesome!

Just before the kit was released, we spent a day in Bowring Park with the kiddies taking pictures of them in the leaves. Then we headed to Lester’s Farm for pumpkin pics and baked goodies, along with yummy fresh veggies.

The pictures from that day perfectly matched the colours of the the kit papers and so instead of a LO, I decided to do a mini album.

It’s still not finished, but I’m loving what I have done. The pictures are most definitely the focus, not the papers or embellishments, and there’s plenty of room to do journaling as I go along.

So…. so far, so good. It will be a fun one to flip through when I’m done. And because the different papers make it so easy, it’s a good one to poke at when midnight rolls around and the brain has gone to mush!

My plans for naptime today and this evening revolve around writing instructions for the 2012 Yearlong album – the first class is Sunday. Hate the writing instructions part – love the teaching it part!

Enjoy the cold today if that’s your cup of tea. Me? I’m freezing!