All The Trimmings!

I stopped at Joann's for one thing yesterday and I don't even remember what it was. What I left with was a bag of fabulous trim that was on sale for 50% off! I had wandered by looking for ruffled lace which I wanted to us in a mixed media album and noticed those spools were on sale. I turned around and all that fabulous fancy pom pom, sequined, crocheted, lacy, fluffy, trim by the yard was on sale too. So I filled my basket and bought a yard of each, a huge savings off what can be considerably more if you buy it on a trim card for a scrapbook line.

My first project was to take the white crocheted lace and alter it. I set it and sprayed it with Walnut Ink by Tsukineko in Eucalyptus and then used my heat gun to dry and distress it. I saw this on a Tim Holtz tutorial and loved it for distressing ribbon and trim.

Perfect Pearls and Alternatives

I love lots of bling on my pages and the swirly pearls and rhinestones are my favorite. Of course if you put these on a lot of pages it can start to get expensive.
I had purchased a bottle of perfect pearls and couldn't get rid of the chocolate kiss look it ended up with because of the sharp tip on the end of the "beads." So I was searching the T-Shirt aisle at Joann's and found these Beads In a Bottle by Tulip. I love experimenting so I bought a package, which comes with four tubes, took them home and found they worked great on paper and left a round little bead, no kiss! Soon after I heard Perfect Pearls altered their formula and the do indeed work great now, but finding a wide selection of colors can sometimes be difficult if you don't have a scrapbook store close by.

So I have been purchasing these Beads in a Bottle and love how they work on my pages!

An Alternative To Chocolate

I love advent calendars and usually have multiple ones. This year the kids received a Trader Joe's calendar with chocolate. Hannah opened Day 1, and a few minutes later, Jack opened the rest and ate all the chocolate. So on to plan B!
I made this paper advent calendar using the kit off SVGCuts.com: http://svgcuts.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=227
The first one was a little off and Betsy told me she had adjusted the length of some pieces to correct it. So I found this fabulous two sided Christmas paper by K&Co and created the final one, with adjustments, and love how it turned out.
Since the chocolate finds a hard time sticking around, I filled each day with a coupon for the kids. (Thanks for another great idea Betsy!) Day one was for staying up and extra half hour, day two for hot cocoa at Starbucks. So fun and great to spend a little time doing something fun with the kiddos each day!

Christmas Cookie Recipe Album

So Christmas in July usually means crafters get started with their Christmas projects so they have plenty of time to complete them in time for holiday gift giving. My first Christmas in July project is a cute little apron shaped mini album for holding cookie recipes!

Each cover is made from a file folder cut into the apron shape and then covered in green cardstock on each side.
The inside pages are cut in the same shape from red, bright green, and green cardstock.
Each pocket is made from a 4X6 piece of patterned paper which is then scored and folded 1/2 inch on both short sides and along one long side. These are then adhered to the bottom of the inside pages with the opening up.
Everything was then stacked together and punched with the Zutter Bind-It-All. If you don't have access to one of these, you could just as easily hole punch and bind with binder rings or ribbon.
I then embellished kraft circles that are pop dotted onto scallop circles.
The front cover features a pocket and little kitchen utensils sticking out.

This would make a great gift to family or at a cookie exchange!

Eggcellent Adventures

Have you printed your Easter photos yet?
This is the perfect layout for those fun Easter shots! This layout is from the Seasonal Scrapbook Solutions class at Craft City and the kits will be available for a limited time. The following are instructions for assembling the layout:

Adhere the pink swirl and blue rick rack borders to the bottom of the blue cardstock page.

Cut and add the white matte, 5X7, above the pink swirls. "Fluff" the green grass for dimension and adhere one on the left side of the page matching the edge with the border edge and overlapping the white matte, and the second next to the matte on the right side of the page.

Lie the blue swirl border across the page and snip with scissors so that there are three pieces as shown.

Adhere the swirl so that the edges go underneath the white matte. Add the middle piece of the swirl piece just below the grass on the right hand of the page.

Tie a bow a the end of the ribbon. Snip off remaining edge and adhere over the egg from top to bottom.

Adhere the egg to the left of the matte, then add the bow to the top of the egg.

Assemble the purple spotted egg, and the banded egg as shown. Adhere to the left side of the page, slightly tilted.

Take the strip of bunnies and snip between the center ones.

Tie baking twine around each bunny.

Using foam dots, adhere the two bunnies with twine to the other two plain bunnies to create a dimensional embellishment.

Adhere to the page next to the eggs.

Using a white gel pen, draw faux stitching around the edge of the flowers. Glue a rhinestone to the center. These will be adhered in the grass.

Adhere the butterflies to the page and draw faux stitched swirls to create the butterfly's flight path.

Adhere the yellow letters for the page title.

The final page.

Mums Layout

For those of you who missed the Mums layout from the May Seasonal Solutions Class at Craft City, some kits will be available at Craft City. The following are instruction to create this pretty page complete with paper mums you create!

Trim the label off the green cardstock to make it 12X12.

  

We used Core'dinations paper which once you sand the edges, you can see the paler green core. Sand all the edges of both sheets of green cardstock. Use a nail file or sanding block.

Ink the edges of all the yellow mattes.

Take the 12x4 dotted cardstock and trim off a 4X4 piece on the top, then take the longer piece to trim into a 1X8 piece and 3X8 piece as shown.

Distress and ink these edges as well.

Place all the square as shown. Start with the 4X4 piece on the left hand side of the layout, lining it up with the right edges and two inches down from the top. You can then align all pieces in the blocks as shown.

Separate all the mum pieces. Each mum consists of three dark pink, three light pink, and one yellow piece, all of varying heights.

Lightly ink all the flower petals.

Stack the petals from largest to smallest. Punch through the center.

Using your scissors, trim toward the center the yellow pieces to make narrow.

Add a gold brad through the center. Push the petals toward the center.

Using a skewer, paint brush end, or other narrow item, curl the edges of the pink petals upward.

Put the brad and yellow piece through the center of the flower and fluff it.

Add the flowers as shown in the layout.

Using an embossing stylus, draw the veins of the leaves and ink the edges. Ink the edges of the swirls.

Using glue dots or tacky glue, adhere the leaves and swirls under the flowers.

Tool Review: We R Memory Keepers Seweasy

I love a new tool and I'm especially a big fan of those from We R Memory Keepers! One of the newest and hottest ones is the Seweasy, a paper piercer that you roll across you page to create holes in which you can then stitch embroidery floss through. I'm a huge fan of stitching on pages but don't have the patience to use a needle or haul out my sewing machine just for a few lines. This tool has solved that problem!

We used this tool recently in the Seasonal Scrapbook Solutions class at Craft City where we created raindrops on our pages. (See the April Showers page for details.)

The tool comes with removable heads that allow you to change to different stitch patterns. On of my favorite things, is the handy needle storage in the base of the tool handle. The tool come with a basic stitch head as well as the large paper stitching needle.

What does not come with it and I would recommend is the big foam mat. If you don't have this, your best bet is to put a piece of felt or foam sheet underneath, otherwise the piercer doesn't have the chance to sink through the paper.

On my page, I used two plys of embroidery floss and stitched through to create rain. I did notice if you press too hard it leaves dents on the sides of the stitches and if you don't press hard enough it won't pierce. I recommend practicing on scraps of paper before actually doing this on a project.

There are so many option and the website has great ideas as well as a few YouTube tutorials.


This tool is hard to find in stores and is on backorder on many websites so if you find it, get it!

April Showers Layout

This layout was part of the Seasonal Solutions Scrapbooking Layout Class for April that I taught at Craft City. There are a few kits available for purchase at the store for a limited time.

The first page shows how photos fit on the mattes. The instructions that follow included a black matte behind the April Showers title, but in the end I preferred the layout without it.

1. In our class we used the Sizzix and a dot embossing folder to texturize the green paper. This is optional and if you have embossing folders or embossing plates you can add this feature.

2. Using a round template (such as a plate or bowl edge) trace the slope of the hill on the two pieces of green paper. You should create hills that slope in opposite direction. The key is to start the slope high on one end, and end low on the other.

3. Take a sheet of blue cardstock. If it has an edge for the branding & pricing, use a paper trimmer to trim the sheet to 12X12.

4. Adhere the hill with the high slope on the left, to the left edge of the paper.

5. Using a paper trimmer, cut two 4-1/2 X 6-1/2 inch mattes for photos. This will create a matte with 1/4 inch on each side of your photos. Adhere to the page as shown.

6. Take the three pieces of the boot and glue the yellow on top of the black, and the black notch, lining everything up at the top of the boot. In class we used scrapbooking chalk to create shadows and add dimension to our paper piecings.

7. Using tacky glue or glue dots, adhere one boot on the top of the hill, and the second boot on top, kicking out slightly.

8. We chalked the edges of the large cloud and then adhere to the top of the page. In class we used the SewEasy to pierce the paper and stitch raindrops with white embroidery thread. You could also do this with a needle to pierce the paper, or as shown here, use a white gel pen to draw the stitiched raindrops.

9. Glue together the paper pieced sun and in class we chalked the edges in orange. Adhere to the page on top of the large cloud.

10. Trim out the teardrop shaped rhinestone and add to the end of the "stitched" rain.

11. Chalk and adhere the smaller cloud slightly overlapping the sun. You could also use a pop dot if you want extra dimension to your cloud.

12.  Now take your second blue cardstock to create the second page of the layout. Adhere the opposing slope to the right hand edge of the paper.

13. Cut and glue the same style and size black mattes from the first page. You could either do two mattes, or one and the title will go directly on the blue cardstock. Adhere to the page so they mirror the location of the first page of the layout.

14. Take the black umbrella cut out and adhere the yellow umbrella piece on top lining up the edges. Add the pink and blue to the top layer. Chalk the edges if desired. Adhere to the right side of the page.

15. Take the flower punches and using a pen end, press into the center to give some dimension to the flowers. Adhere to the page using glue dots or tacky glue.

16. Add rhinestones to the center of each flower. Cut out the remaining raindrop rhinestone and add dropping off the right edge of the umbrella. Add the green rhinestone "leaves" to the edges of two of the flowers.

17. Chalk and adhere the large cloud and then the smaller cloud overlapping it.

18. Adhere the title to the page or on top of the black matte.

19. Using a white gel pen, add stitching to the letters.