Sunday, May 31, 2015

Flipping a page gone wrong

Normally a page gone wrong - I will give it a awhirl and attempt to "save" it,
 however, on this one - in a "what was I thinking"
in using a honey comb stencil with modeling paste and
black enamel paint would enhance a page. 
Maybe less would've been better or maybe a different color
However much I really loved the black striped paper - 
there really wasn't any saving to be had.
So I flipped it over.
And wasn't I lucky it was double sided.
It was a bit wrinkled and didn't have much damage to the flip side.
I also decided that I liked the pattern.
So.....the watercolor and stamping commenced.
 The foundation was put together without a photo in mind.
 I was a bit concerned because I made the mat really big
and then of course all the layering that covered up the majority
of the stamping. 
I die cut those chili peppers awhile ago and felt compelled
to use them - along with the homemade "badge" I made - it fit perfectly.
I found this series of photos in the wayback box and
wasn't sure I had a digital copy so I took photos of them anyway
because there was soooo much dead space I felt
I could cut them down and still tell a story.

So its the new pp from Studio Calico along with that Basic Grey
that appears to be my "go to" for layering recently.
I even got a bit of journaling in at the top and the covered up
stamps are Shimelle's with ranger ink.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Handwritten Bible journaling

1 Corinthians 3:9
Labourers together with God.
In quoting or paraphrasing Oswald Chambers - God engineers everything:
wherever He puts you - your one great aim is to pour out a 
wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work -
no matter how menial the task or labor.
I have since changed my attitude about daily tasks - especially with housework
which I particularly do not like - and it does make
the tasks alot easier and the end result alot prettier.
So my very own handwriting - Gasp I know.
I decided to give it awhirl and I'm feeling
pretty good with it.
My handwriting really isn't that bad until I try
to do something on a page with it
and then like a clutch hitter-
I choke. 
In fact, the handwriting actually
 went better than the stamping did.
Sigh.
I used enamel paint and Panda Eight embellishment and a punched heart.


Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Background paper that's a photo

By Studio Calico of course, and its New York
which is perfect as I gotta a couple
of grands in Brooklyn.
 Worked that badge in - points for that.
 I layered and layered with a mix of Studio Calico and
Paper Issues and also dug out the Studio Calico stamp,
stamped with black ink on white cardstock and colored it in with my 
American Crafts pink pen.
Love the look and the sentiment works because
Lou loves hanging at the Root's cafe.
The photo is sooooo pretty and delicate
and I picked out the colors
from there.
Lou is manly enough to do pink.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Stencil frenzy

I have been in a frenzy lately and this time
it's my pal Holli's fault.
She gave me the stencil - Tim Holtz arrows.

 I wanted a little dimension and color
so I mixed blue paint with the molding past.
 And decided to smear it over each and every one of them.
 On the entire page - which is going to be 8.5x11.
 Since I got carried away with the mixing I used
the leftovers to make dots on this page - that was going to
be THE page but I liked the other better.
 See those little stars???
They came in this month's Studio Calico kit and
when I tore open the package - they went
everywhere.
And I liked where they landed to I glued them all down.
one.by.one.
 My homemade enamel dots.
 The title. Sigh.
I didn't think of bounce til I glued down hop - which
is a QK cookie cutter font- cosmopolitan.
 Again with the chaos and I love.
After all Lou is bouncing around in a cage so......
This time I did add a bunch more layers and kept
the embellishments down to a mild roar.
I also mounted this on kraft cardstock and matted the
photo the same - along with some navy c/s.

Looks like Lou was having a blast.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Have a blessed Memorial Day.....



God Bless America & Our Military.
And of course my Favorite Eldest Son who served proudly.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Stamping Frenzy

I believe I may have used them all. 
LOL.
Actually there are Studio Calico, Creative Cafe, Amy Tangerine,
Recollections and Dear Lizzy.



I actually love the chaos. 
Do you remember QK Stillettos alpha font??
I know it fits perfect in that space.
The hearts were stash from many kits ago and
they look great on the page.
Changed it up to 8.5x11 and mounted it on
black cardstock which makes it totally pop and I used
the reverse side of the paper to mat
the photo along with black cardstock - I thought
about layering more but I felt it
would detract from that lovely photo.
Of Sam.
And his blue eyes.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Pink and gold color combination

I love this color combination that came in my new
Studio Calico kit, and had the perfect
embellishments too from the Paper Issues Swag Bag.
Love the gold and black rubons from the swag bag
and rubbed them in strategic areas on the page.
I tried to use the entire package (a Wilna trick) on the page
but they didn't all work out.
 And the gold doilies are perfect.
I whacked them up in order to make them stretch across
the page and accent the photo of the beautiful flowers.
 But the best part is the note.
As a parent you always wonder if you did right by your kids
and its nice to have validation - especially
when life throws some curves about.
 Love how the page turned out and it is
actually the "journaling" or note that takes center stage.
I find it refreshing that I used this color combo
and it wasn't on a heritage page.
Thanks favorite eldest son - you made my day!

Sunday, May 17, 2015

A Sunday drive

which involved the RV ending up in Fort Desoto.
A county park that is near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
It is a gem of a park for campers and there are some
lovely spots on the water.
It's a wonderful getaway even if you live only an hour an half away.
We took some time after doing a driveby on the campsites to check out 
the beaches and piers.
There were a bunch of fishermen on the pier along with 
 this sly and crafty dolphin stalking their bait.
It was a tense situation.
However, both the fishermen and dolphin won.
 Then there is this poser.
He was on a rooftop of a pavilion on the pier.
 And seriously all he kept doing was nipping at this feathers,
and as a photographer it proved to be absolutely annoying.
He finally decided to man up and quit digging at the bugs and pose.
 And pose he did. 
If only the photographer got her settings right.
Not even photoshop could help. 
 But me and the blue heron were totally cool with it.

 And what's a pier without pelicans.
They were stalking the water, that had fisherman throwing
bait about - bringing forth fish.
Thus the patrol.
 Egmont Key and Lighthouse were directly across.
Sadly I totally sucked at the settings and the photos will be
languishing in my computer because they are seriously bad.
 We stopped to admire the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and drink some wonderful coffee
 - and I did take a few pictures because the light changed and it allowed
for the beautiful golden spans to be hightlighted.
As I said Fort Desoto is a gem for campers.
It has a pier for fishing and a couple of beaches with
pavillions and playgrounds for fun and frolic and food
and because its a county and/or state park - its totally affordable.
For a campsite on the water - depending on the time
of year it can be $50 a night or less.
If you want it spend the day at their lovely beaches with pavillions and piers
its only $5.00 per car. 
Where we were parked we had this lovely view of the bridge and
there were only 3 families on the beach.
A gem.
Gossip around the water cooler.
:)

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Cute little girly camera album - done!

From a previous post I teased about this adorable album that
I changed up the "instamatic" colors to make it girly.
 Picked out my favorite photos and found some 
lovely papers that I canNOT even begin to tell you who the
mfg is because there was nothing to tell me.
They look really familiar and its on the tip of my tongue
and if you know - please share.
 These two pages needed a buffer so I found this adorable
butterfly transparency from my stash
(and I used a bunch of stash here)
to keep them from getting caught on each other.
 The embellishments go between an Authentique sticker
sheet - really old - its a girl one
and Paper Issues Swag Bag stuff and Studio Calico
bits and pieces.
 I made two homemade "flair" badges below from
some PL cards in the Paper Issues Swag Bag - the palm tree and
camera - they turned out seriously adorable.
I have really enjoyed putting together this mini albums.
I have a couple more I plan to do - 


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

A title that doubles as journaling

As you know I have trouble with titles.
Not only thinking them up for a page but I really tend to like them
short, sweet to the point.
However, there are times when a longer one can't be helped.
 I did some mixing using 
 Studio Calico and Paper Issues Swag bag with Shimelle's line
to make this lovely page.
All of those elements work and play together nicely.
Two fun little clusters going on - and I can never get enough
of those film strips. 
Actually 3 clusters - a tiny one to the left.
 Mixed up the sizes in the alphas from Studio Calico
as the amount of popular letters are decreasing
dramatically however, if flows together nicely for my (what I consider)
long title.
 The cute little grey strips from the swag bag are perfect
and how about those homemade enamel dots.
I am running out of certain colors - believe it or not.
I don't know if I'll bake more or not.
I love the variety - but next time I think I'll do colors separately.
The title says it all - LOL!!! and seriously in Florida
we don't think about not having ice cream in the "winter" so its
a really big deal when up north the ice cream shops
finally open for the summer and just in time
for lil miss's birthday.
I used the title to double as the journaling because how
much can you say about eating ice cream 
dressed like nanook of the north in the "spring" in NH.
And its using up a lot of alphas in my stash.
win-win.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Poured out wine - Bible Journaling

and broken bread.......
Love this quote by Oswald Chambers and
he uses this phrase thoughout his devotional -
referring to Phillipians 2:17, 4:12,
2 Timothey 4:6 and Isaiah 40:26.
The common theme throughout these verses is that
by faith and through the Holy Spirit,
God is at work in our everyday lives and in the people around us
and that it is in the everyday things in life that we
realize the magnificent diety of the Jesus Christ.
In reading about the saints in days goneby, time after time they
lived their lives to the fullest in their faith and love for Jesus.
What a lovely example and guide for us to emulate.
(paraphrased quotes by O.C.)
I used mists and watercolors together
with some thickers and Studio Calico alphas.

I hope everyone had a lovely Mother's Day yesterday!
Mine was sweet and lovely, hearing from both my boys.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Chronicles of a driveby page - Day 7 - TA DA

Without further ado - 
Thanks so much for rolling with me here.

My pal Holli and I had a scrap date Tuesday,
so I gathered a few things to take over so we could play.
We did get a few things done and as a bonus
my lucky readers I shall share those with you.
Boo on me for no selfies though. :|
It was an after thought to take this page actually as nothing was adhered at that time.
Holli graciously offered up some cork thickers and
did a Tim Holtz on them by rubbing some of the new ink Peacock Feathers.
I love it.
Also after I made you wait so long one would think I could do a more
creative title - but no - it actually is an old 
fish house where fisherman lived and kept their
catch on ice until company boats picked them up to take to market.
It was a very remote life but oh look at that gorgeous shack.
It's right off the Starfish Company Market where delicious food 
is served on outside picnic tables with this scenic vista.
We went there with my brother&sister in law and wanted to scrap that beautiful day.
Rustic fine dining. Love it.
 One of the reasons, besides Holli and I having a great time together,
was for us both to make the 
adorable instamatic camera mini album.
I wanted it girly
for the granddaughter's upcoming birthday.
I need to fill in the guts of it
but doesn't a pink instagram camera make you swoon.
 Then we played with the new Tim Holtz inks
and she showed me how to swirl all that inky goodness around.
Holli has more stamps than Michael's so the variety was endless and it
was fun to "shop" and pick out various ones for these tags.
Are these not the bomb???
Now I will be building pages around the tags.
Won't that be fun?
Oh Holli made the palm tree one and since I adored it,
its now in my possession.
:)

I do not mind that my pages take awhile.
Life sometimes intervenes.
Mojo sometimes disappears - or that perfect embellishment
or papers sometimes isn't obvious.
For me that is part of the creative journey and I'm fortunate to have
my scrapbook area easily accessible in the living room
so I pass by it quite a bit which enables me
to constantly play.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Chronicles of a driveby page - Day 4, 5 & 6

In case you don't remember.
Day 1
Day 2
I also thought to spare you individual posts.
Even I couldn't take it. LOL.
Day 3
DAY 4


And here we are making some progress now that I liked the "base".
I keep a box of precut diecuts  and orphans laying around to pick through
at times like this.
Its also a great way to jumpstart the mojo by just randomly
picking out papers and diecut shapes and commencing to whacking.
IN that box 
I found a black circle, a 1" circle, a star and feather.
I quite like that little cluster but.......I'm not married to it.
I then decided that some red was necessary and added some washi
tape barely peeking through
under the photo bottom left and right under the notebook punch along
with a bit of burlap for texture.

DAY 5

Concentrating on the bottom half - I decided that I wasn't crazy
about the star and changed it to a heart and
found the stamped "hello" in the box from another
project where it didn't work out.
So that brought the white and black from the circle down.
The heart also brought the red down.
Of course the white and black needed to be repeated at the top
and I found a photo corner - another project reject and tucked it in
and then curled the thread around to make it more
threadier.
Broke out some red homemade enamel dots.
I used some vintage photo ink around all the edges to give
the different embellishments some cohesiveness.
And I let that sit as company came a-calling.

DAY 6

As I happened by my desk I found I wasn't buying the red heart thing.
It was then I remembered I had some 7 Gypsies
hardware - Why did that take so long you ask? Well....
its been awhile since those type of embellishments were called
for I actually forgot I had them.
I used to use the 7G's stuff on almost every page.
And then I moved on-more or less.
I dug into the bag and found some bronzey 
"cogs" and placed them around -
highlighting them with my homemade enamel dots
Nothing has been glued down as yet - but its getting closer.
Shocking I know.
And as you know - titles do not come easily - so........
I'll be pondering that - 
I appreciate you staying tuned.
:)