October!

It's the end of July, and yet today I'm thinking about...October!  I just scrapbooked a couple photos that I took last October, and I used some newly-purchased October Afternoon products to make my page.  It's a match made in heaven.  :)
 

Supplies: textured papers from Carta Bella; stickers, enamel shapes, die cuts, & all other papers from October Afternoon; ink from Autumn Leaves/Stampology; pen from Foray.

This page is called "The Bluest Water."  The photos are from Lake Minnetonka, which is in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.  On the day that I visited the lake, I could not believe how blue the water looked.  The only camera I had with me was my phone, and it's not an iPhone or anything fancy like that, so I worried that my photos would not capture the deep, deep blue hue of the water.  But the phone photos turned out great--I didn't even need to edit them before having them printed!  It really is the bluest water I've ever seen.

If you're a regular follower of my blog, you've already seen another photo from the same day.  It was in this post.  I've posted it again here (above), in case you missed the original post.

Earlier this summer I was visiting some relatives in the Brainerd area, where I found a new (to me) scrapbooking store.  I was able to buy some October Afternoon goodies that I'd been wanting for awhile.  These are my first puffy stickers and enamel shapes.  It's fun to try some new products.

Hope that you've been having fun lately, too.  Take care!

Summer of Color Wrap Up

When it comes to the Summer of Color, I think of three things, all starting with the letter C--Color, Creativity, and Community.  My son and I have had lots of fun creating colorful art with this community for the last six weeks.

One Summer of Color project that I created, back in June, was DIY "tie-dyed" patterned paper.  I have since used that paper.  Would you like to see what I made?  Here it is, a scrapbook page entitled "Saturday Pancakes."

Supplies: watercolor paint from Angora & Crayola; journaling paper from Crate; cardstock & all other paper from American Crafts; blue alphabet stickers from October Afternoon; all other stickers from Bo Bunny; ink from Hero Arts; pen from Zig; tape from 3M/Scotch; rhinestones from Dee's Place; photo filter from PhotoFunia.

The photos may look a bit strange, but the journaling explains them: "This is a pancake, cooking on the griddle.  Every Saturday morning, S. [my husband] makes pancakes for A [our son].  Most of them are round, as pancakes usually are.  But there's always one Starship Enterprise pancake, too." 

If you think that an Enterprise-shaped pancake is hard to flip, you are right!  Sometimes the Enterprise undergoes Emergency Saucer Section Separation.  But it still tastes good.  :)

I used a lot of paper scraps on this layout, including one star chart piece that I trimmed into a banner shape.

Other paper scraps added layers of interest behind the photos.  The bow tie sticker is more of a Doctor Who motif than a Star Trek one, but who cares, it's all fannish, right?

The pancake photo on the left is the same as the pancake photo on the right; the only difference is that I applied a FotoFunia filter (called "Space Romance") to the left hand photo.  FotoFunia is a site that I learned about from my blogging friend Elizabeth, and it's a free, fun resource for anyone who wants to add interest to photos.

Hope you liked seeing how I used my tie-dyed paper.  Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Live long and prosper!  :)

Summer of Color--Week 6

The final Summer of Color challenge for 2014 has a palette of raspberry and tangerine, with lemon yellow as an accent color.  A luscious palette, to be sure.  Since it's the final color combination for the summer, I carefully considered how I wanted to use it.

The theme for this year's SOC is "Smudge, Splash, and Pop," which refers to our options for using the accent color in each palette.  So far this summer, I have made DIY patterned paper with watercolor splashes, and I've made some scrapbook pages with pops of color, but I had yet to do any smudging.  So, I decided to do some smudgy bubble wrap stamping with pearlescent yellow paint on my scrapbook page this week.

I also had a personal goal to use some beads in at least one SOC project this summer.  I hadn't done that yet, so this week was the week!  I "encrusted" some areas of my scrapbook page with beads and rhinestones.  It's quite a shiny page.  :)
 

Supplies: patterned paper from Carta Bella; stickers from October Afternoon; ink from ClearSnap; corner punch from Creative Memories; black pen from Foray; pink pen from Zig; ribbons from ReStyle; rhinestones from Dee's Place; assorted beads; paint from Ranger; bubble wrap used as stamp; heart charm upcycled from old jewelry.

 
After all that babbling, I had better show you the page itself.  Here it is (above), and it's another page for my cat album.  The journaling says: "Perched atop a big pile of freshly folded laundry, yet still looking dissatisfied, Maggie reminds me of The Princess and the Pea.

My son has not gotten around to playing with this week's SOC palette yet, but the photo collage above shows what he did with last week's color combo.  He wove a bookmark on his Rainbow Loom!

Thanks for stopping by to see my scrapbook page and my son's bookmark!  I look forward to checking out the blogs of the other SOC participants, to see what everyone has made.

CPC Mid-Month Challenge: Cootie!

Supplies: background cardstock from Bazzill; all other cardstock from Wausau Paper; alphabet stickers, die cuts, enamel shape stickers, & grid paper from October Afternoon; all other patterned paper from Carta Bella; purple decorative tape from 3M/Scotch; gifted butterfly tape; metal butterfly charm from Olla Podrida; chipboard frame from Scrapmatts; glitter paint from Ranger; ink from Clearsnap; corner punch from Creative Memories.

Cootie--that funny old insect-building game--is our inspiration toy for the latest CPC challenge.  Running with the idea of insects/bugs, I made a page about a visit to a local butterfly garden.
 

~detail shot 1~

Butterflies, in all their different forms, are some of my favorite "bugs."  :)  Everyone on the design team had a slightly different interpretation of the Cootie challenge, so be sure to check out the CPC blog to see the rest of the team's layouts.

~detail shot 2~

If you feel motivated to create a scrapbook page inspired in some way by the game of Cootie, be sure to link up to Child's Play Challenges by the end of the month.  Happy craftings!
 

Happy T-iversary!

Elizabeth & Bleubeard are celebrating the one-year anniversary of their weekly linkup tea party, "T Stands for Tuesday"--hooray!  As part of the festivities, Elizabeth has invited us all to link up with our favorite T-Day post from the past year.  My favorite post is from August of 2013, and it's actually the very first T-Day post I ever wrote.  At that time I was on the design team for a scrapbook challenge blog called Scrap for Help, and our challenge for the month was for participants to use tea bags in their art.  For my DT sample, I showed how I went from this...

...to this...

 

~blogged here~

After my post went live, I was looking through my blog reader and came across Elizabeth's weekly call for tea/beverage-related posts.  Serendipity!  

After that first week I was hooked.  Now I enjoy the weekly society of other tea and coffee lovers.  I have to miss a week here and there, due to real life commitments, but I do link up most weeks, and I always enjoy hearing all the news from the group.  I'm happy to be celebrating the one-year anniversary with everyone.  Here's to another great year!

Russian Words, American Holiday (SOC Week 5)

Journaling: "I was amused by the 'Russian Word of the Day,' пляж (beach), because we really did go to the beach the very next day."

I worked hard to learn Russian in high school and college, and I use all sorts of little tricks to keep my language skills from going stale.  One of my latest tricks is "Russian Word of the Day" e-mails, which are free from Transparent Language.  I had to smile at the word I got on July 3, which was пляж, meaning "beach."  The example sentence for the word was "She and I will go to the beach tomorrow."  It fit my life perfectly, since my family and I really did go to the beach the next day...as did millions of other people, I'm sure.  :)
 

Supplies: cardstock from Pulp; patterned paper from American Crafts; alphabet & label stickers from October Afternoon; all other stickers from Bella Blvd; stamp from Inkadinkado; pens from Zig; upcycled bubble wrap & punch card.

 
In fact, my family goes to the beach almost every Fourth of July.  That means that I end up with lots of Independence Day beach photos every year.  Sometimes it's hard to think of a new and different way to scrapbook all those photos.  But this year, I was inspired by the пляж e-mail.  I printed the message and based my layout around the printout.

This week's Summer of Color palette is red and royal blue, with a pop of light blue--perfect for this scrapbook page.  My pop of light blue comes in the form of the page title--"July."  Anchoring the title is an American flag sticker.  Regular printer paper is translucent, so I placed the flag sticker under the paper for a subtle, barely-there effect.

Beach layouts usually seem to lend themselves to the smudgy, carefree look of mixed media, so I did some stamping and stenciling along the top and bottom borders of my layout.  In addition to a regular rubber stamp, I also stamped with upcycled bubble wrap from a padded mailing envelope.  My stencil, also upcycled, is actually a frequent-buyer punch card.  I'm ending up using the card much more for paper crafting (see here and here) than for shopping.  :)

My son usually plays along with the Summer of Color, but so far this week he has not gotten around to it, even though he likes the color scheme.  If he does end up making a project before the deadline, I'll be sure to add a photo of it to this post.

A Clean & Simple Summer Page

Hello!  I just recently had a "staycation."  It's like a vacation, in that my husband took time off work, and in that our family spent the days relaxing together.  But we did not actually leave home, aside from day trips.  During this staycation, I of course did not devote much time to scrapbooking.  But I did create one quick page.  Here it is...
 

 Supplies: green cardstock from Bazzill; pink cardstock from Wausau Paper; patterned paper from Graphic 45; journaling card from Jillibean Soup; alphabet stickers from  October Afternoon; ribbon from ReStyle; button from Vadim-Galina for Peace Fleece; corner punch from Creative Memories; pen from Zig.

With its clean & simple design, the page come together very quickly, which was perfect for a page created during "vacation."  I used the color combo for Summer of Color Week 4.  The color pairing this time around was pink + apple green, with dark green thrown in as a highlight color.

Did you catch the pops of dark green?  There is dark green on the button that I used.

And the rim of the journaling box is also dark green.

Finally, some of the alphabet stickers that I used are dark green.  

As usual, my son wanted to play along with the Summer of Color.  Since we were on "vacation," he also chose a quick project.  Whereas he has made Rainbow Loom bracelets for the other SOC color combos, this time he opted to make a ring.  Here are a few photos of the ring.  It fits me just right.  :)

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Due to the time I spent on "staycation" this month, there will be no "Ten on the Tenth" post for July.  I'll resume that series in August.  However, I'll be blogging again soon, to show you what I've made for SOC Week 5.  See you then!

CPC July Reveal: Colorforms!

Supplies: red cardstock from Wausau Paper; yellow cardstock from Echo Park; all other cardstock from Bazzill; fussy-cut hexagon paper from American Crafts; blue alphabet stickers from Bella Blvd; red alphabet stickers & accompanying yellow dot from Lily Bee; all other stickers from October Afternoon; tape from 3M/Scotch; pen from Zig; rhinestones from Dee's Place; household paper clips.

Listen up, scrap-saving ladies.  This month's prompt at Child's Play Challenges is PERFECT for using up some of those scraps that you've saved [hoarded].  :) We are making layouts inspired by Colorforms, those repositionable cling-plastic shapes.  A variety of Coloforms sets, featuring all sorts of popular cartoon characters, have been issued over the years.  But we are using the original set, which consists of geometric shapes in a rainbow of colors.

Inspired by the black background and the colorful shapes of Colorforms, I created this layout.  Entitled "No Hard Feelings, Friend," it shows my son demonstrating self defense moves in order to earn a new belt in kung fu class.  For more inspiration, please check out what the rest if the design team has done at Child's Play Challenges.