Take 12 - May layout

And here is the May layout. I didn't finish it before the May 18th deadline but it is done now. And it is still May! I kept is simple as my other Take 12 layouts. I used Lifestyle Crafts Diesel alphabet dies to cut the title, single strip of patterned paper and few embellishments. I really need to learn how to take better pictures of the double spreads. I really dislike how crocked it looks but you can get the idea.

Supplies: cardstock (American Crafts), patterned paper and flower embellishments (Amy Tangerine fr American Crafts), journaling stamp (Close To My Heart), chipboard ice skates (Little Yellow Bicycle), heart sticker (Cloud 9), silver pen (Sakura), Matte Accents (Ranger)

I knew I wanted a pair of ice skates for the journaling block. The only stamp I had was looking right and I wanted the skates to point left. I spent hours searching the web looking for digital stamps to buy, or real stamps or basically any scrapbooking products related to ice skating. After fruitless search I remembered that Winter Twig collection by Little Yellow Bicycle had some ice skates among  the embellishments. I found two ice skates in the chipboard package. They were blue and pointed right. I flipped them, painted the blades with silver pen and covered with Matte Accents, added dots for the hooks and one little red heart.

 

 

The rest of my Take 12 layouts: January , February, March (still in progress), April.

Scrap-A-Latte - May projects

Today I am going to share three layouts that I made for Scrap-A-Latte with the products they sent to me. I received papers and transparent embellishments from the Little Yellow Bicycle Saturdays collection, Studio Calico tissue ribbons, Jillibean Soup picks, an owl wood embellishment from Kaiser Crafts, a tag from Elle's Studio and some kraft envelopes with tags. I couldn't be more happy with their choice because I picked the same collection for my last DT projects for Scrapbook Express. I loved working with this collection and was happy to make few more layouts.

For my first layout I picked 3 pictures of Eli taken at the coffee shop inside Barnes & Noble store. I layered pieces of tissue ribbon under the pictures and also used the tissue packaging. The flower is made from the scallop tissue paper, a button and two stick pins. I added colorful dots with liquid pearls and stickles to the butterfly wings to bring some color and mimic the colorful M&Ms in the pictures.

Supplies: patterned paper, ClearCut shapes, tags (Little Yellow Bicycle), letter stickers (October Afternoon), tissue strips (Studio Calico), stick pins (Jillibean Soup), button (French General by Jolee's Boutique), liquid pearls, stickles (Ranger Ink)

For my second layout I decided to use 2 pictures of Ella and Eli with their bikes. I was glad to find two bikes in the package of the LYB Clear Cut shapes that matched perfectly the pictures. To make the title, I cut out the word Thankful and the journaling lines from the Elle's Studio tag, rounded the corners and layered them on top of each other. I added small Cosmo Cricket letter stickers to complete the title. 

 Supplies: patterned paper, ClearCut shapes (Little Yellow Bicycle), border punch (Martha Stewart), corner punch (Fiskars), tag (Elle's Studio), letter stickers (Cosmo Cricket), label sticker (Scenic Route), brads (unknown)

I added few brads from my stash and Scenic Route label sticker with the date.

My last layout is unusual for me. It tells a story of Ella's quest to get into the double accelerated math program for the next year. I journaled on two tags and slipped them inside the envelope. I used the notes that she wrote to me during the orientation meeting trying to convince me to sign her up.We were told that the kids will have to spend at least 30 minutes a day on math homework, so she wrote - 30 min, Yay.

I decided to use her own words for the title. The smart owl was a perfect embellishment for this page. 

Supplies: patterned paper, ClearCut shapes, tags (Little Yellow Bicycle), letter stickers (Doodlebug), owl (Kaiser Crafts), stickles (Ranger Ink)

 

I already received a new box from Scrap-A-Latte. I was super excited to find products that are new for me. Can't wait to get started on my next projects! 

P.S. Scrap-A-Latte has a new blog. Add it to your reader, they often post exclusive discount codes!

Take Twelve - May

May is a busy month, jammed full with the end-of-year activities. Among them is an annual ice skating show put together by Wisconsin Figure Skating Club. It is an amazing event, organized completely by volunteers, that devote endless hours to the show. 

I did not have any problems to take 12 pictures on May 12th. I took more than 400 pictures at two ice skating shows that happened to be on May 12th. During the whole weekend Lila had 4 shows and I ended up with more than 600 pictures to sort and go through. They are not the best but they are a good reminder of this special day.

Lila skated in 4 numbers and I decided to pick 3 pictures from each number. The first column is her synchronized skating program, the second is Party Rock Anthem (can you see the skirt, the sleeve and the heart necklace - yours truly made them for 6 girls in this number), the third is Retro Disco (the knitted legwarmers were made by me) and the last one is Aerosmith.

All of the above also explains why I didn't have time to scrap, or blog, or read blogs or do anything else in the last couple of weeks. I really miss my scrap desk!

I have few things in progress so I hope to be back soon with a new layout or two.

Twig cards

Supplies: patterned paper, chipboard, stickers (Little Yellow bicycle), letter stickers (Bazzill Basics), stickles (Tim Holtz), white pen(UniBall Signo)

One of the Little Yellow Bicycle NSD challenges was to create a project using old LYB collection . I had few scraps left from the Twig collection. I made three cards using the ScrapbookSteals Monday Card Madness sketches.I had to be creative because I had only few paper scraps, some leftover chipboard and some stickers. I used sketch #80 for the first card. I added faux stitching to the handmade flags and some stickles to the flower stickers. 

This card is based on Monday Card Madness sketch #78.  I added tiny pearls to the center of the flowers.

Supplies: patterned paper, chipboard, sticker (Little Yellow Bicycle), letter stickers (Cosmo Cricket), pearls (Bo Bunny)

The next card is my favorite. I used Monday Card Madness sketch #81. 

Supplies: patterned paper, stickers (Little Yellow Bicycle), letter stickers(Cosmo Cricket), white pen(Uni Ball Signo)

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Ah, flowers!

Last Friday I went to the Scrapbook Expo in Milwaukee. It was small but I still had a great time. I love taking classes so of course I looked through the list of classes that were offered. One class that looked interesting was a flower class tought by Melissa Forsyth. Melissa is the owner of The Rubber Cafe - company that I never heard about before the expo. When I went to sign up for the class I saw that I can sign up as a Teacher's Pet. Teacher's Per gets the class kit but does not get to make the project during the class, she is there to help the instructor with kits, assist class participants if needed and so on. It costs only $5 instead of a regular class price of $25 or so. I decided that it is a great deal and it was!

Melissa is a wonderful teacher. The class was packed with new techniques and money saving ideas. After the class I spent another hour in The Rubber Cafe booth, watching Melissa playing with glue, Faber-Castell gelatos and markers and glitter.

I decided to use the technique I learned from Melissa on my layout for the May challenge at Scrap It Girl. The challenge theme is flowers - perfect opportunity to showcase those beautiful tulle flowers. I made few changes to Melissa's instructions because I wanted my flowers to be a little less dimensional since I was using them on a layout.

Supplies: cardstock (Core'dinations), patterned paper (My Mind's Eye), stickers (Sassafras Lass), tulle (Mon Ami Gabby), letters (Tim Holtz), ink (Brilliance), glimmer mist (Tattered Angles), buttons (Foof-a-la, vintage), tag (unknown), brads (unknown)

I handcut few circles from the tulle and layered them under various pink buttons. Some of the buttons are my flea market find and some are from the endless Foof-a-la bag.

The grungeboard letters were inked first with Pearlescent Sky Blue Brilliance ink and than misted with Glacier Glimmer Mist.

I still had one flower left, the first one that I made. I decided to use it on a card. I used a Monday Card Madness sketch #82 from ScrapbookSteals blog. By the way, this blog is the newest addition to my Google Reader. Why I didn't know they have a blog??

Supplies: patterned paper (My Mind's Eye), tag (Anna Griffin), tulle (Mon Ami Gabby), letter stickers (Cosmo Cricket), brad (unknown), border punch (Fiskars), circle punch (Fiskars), distress ink (Tim Holtz), feathers (Zucker Feather)

Love those feathers! I got them from the craft section at Michael's. They look great with my big tulle flower.

Now it's your turn! Show us your flowers and enter to win a great prize at Scrap It Girl. The challenge runs till end of May - plenty of time to enter.

Checking in

Just checking in here, saying hi to my blog and my blog readers. I do have blog readers, right?
I am thinking about the National Scapbook Day coming this Saturday. So many fun online events!
I signed up for a free online event at Big Picture Classes called Creative Crop
Fiskateers will have an online crop, their crops are always fun.
Little Yellow Bicycle promised a super fun event on their blog. They already posted few challenges.

Sadly, I will spend my Saturdy away from my scrap desk, at the ice skating rink. This is the busy time before the annual ice skating show. Lila has one practice after another and I have costumes to sew, legwarmers to knit, accessories to shop for.

Did I mention that I also need to finish a yearbook for Ella's school till next Tuesday? I still hope to spend few hours at my craft desk on Saturday night and squeeze in one or two challenges.

What are your plans for NSD? Anything exciting? Please share!

I will be back tonight with a scrappy post. Stay tuned.

Shimelle's online crop - part II

I made two more layouts inspired by Shimelle's challenges. The first layout is for challenge 10 that said - scrapbook 2 photos on a bold background. I used two pictures from Lila's birthday celebration at preschool back in 2001. I could also use them for the crappy photos challenges - the pictures are not perfect but they are the only ones I have so I treasure them in all their imperfection. I picked a busy background paper from S.E.I. birthday collection. In the larger photo Lila holds a piece of cake, the cupcake paper looked like a good fit. I did what I usually do when I have a bold background paper - I muted it down with vellum. I used 3 squares, each one smaller that the previous. To hold them in place I used an adhesive in the middle, behind the pictures and I stitched  in the corners with decorative stitches. The pink flower was once attached to a hair accessory.

Supplies: patterned paper and diecut shapes(SEI), vellum (Recollections), letter stickers (Bella Blvd.), embroidery floss (K&Co), pearl (Making Memories), chipboard (Heidi Grace)

I added letter stickers for the title and a chipboard number 3. I had another photo from the same day and I already scrapped it few years ago. You can see the layout in this post.

The next layout was made for challenge 11 - mix two contrasting patterns to create your background.

I started with baby blue glittery paper by My Mind's Eye and brown lined paper by Little Yellow Bicycle. I mixed both collections for the rest of the layout, pulling piece that work together.

Supplies: patterned paper (My Minds Eye, Little Yellow Bicycle), transparent shapes (Little Yellow Bicycle), layered embellishment  (My Mind's Eye), distress stickles (Ranger Ink), faux brads (Heidi Grace), journaling card (Jenni Bowlin), ticket tag (Little Yellow Bicycle), button (Jenni Bowlin), embroidery floss (K&Co), acrylic heart sticker (Cloud 9), twine, staples

I added distressed stickles to the transparent shape by Little Yellow Bicycle.  I like how it helps to draw attention to that part of the layout and to Eli's face (did you notice how long was his hair?) and how it works together with the glittery MME paper and the embellishment.

The little blue circles that looks like brads are stickers by Heidi Grace for Colorbok. I bought them at Jo-Ann. Aren't they cute?

I saved this piece of twine (or is it a rope?) from a gift packaging. It worked perfect with this layered banner.

 

I am not sure if I will be able to work on more challenges this weekend, but if not, I already made four layouts. Not too bad, if you ask me. 

Take Twelve - April layout

Supplies: cardstock (American Crafts, Recollections), patterned paper (Bella Blvd.), stickers (Bella Blvd.), camera and butterflies die-cuts (K&Co), alpha dies ad diecut machine (Lifestyle Crafts), circle punch(Marvy Uhida), stamps (Papertrey Ink)

  

How I love this project! I just hope I will be able to complete it. So far so good. I am missing March layout but I have the pictures and I hoped to make it the same time as April layout but I run out of the photo paper!  I am using similar format for all my Take 12 layouts - square pictures, approximately 3.25"x3.25" arranged on a page in a grid-like pattern. One strip of patterned paper, a title cut with Diesel Lifestyle Crafts alpha dies and few embellishments.

This month I wanted to include a lot of journaling. I took it directly from the blog post with the pictures. I glad I read it again because I had to fix few small things. We have Playstation 3, not PS2 like I wrote. Honestly, it is all the same for me :) I took the png file with the journaling tag from the Take 12 Guided Inspiration kit and  dropped it into a word document. I made it bigger and added a text box inside the tag for the journaling. I than printed it on a white cardstock and cut out inside the tag border.

I added stamped numbers to my pictures, few embellishments and viola, another month is done!

You can see my January layout here and February layout here.

I am off to buy more photo paper and to print those March pictures.

Shimelles's online crop - part I

This weekend I put my srapbooking to-do list aside and instead I decided to play with the challenges from Shimelle's online crop. Shimelle's crops are always fun and this one did not disappoint. It took me few days to finish two layouts but I love them. I hope to find a little more time and play more this week.

Challenge 01 was to find inspiration in amazing page by Jaime Warren. I basically scraplifted the whole page. I think it is my busiest page ever. The white background paper is by Creative Memories and all other papers are Bella Blvd.

Supplies: patterned paper (Creative Memories, Bella Blvd.), letter stickers (Bella Blvd), chipboard stickers (Bella Blvd), green pearl flowers (Making Memories), cream pearl flower (Jenni Bowlin), layered embellishment (Me and My Big Ideas), buttons (Recollections), floss (WRMK), ink (Colorbox), circle, scallop, cloud, bird and butterfly punches (Fiskars), border punch (Fiskars), ric rac circle  die (Lifestyle Crafts)

 

Challenge 02 was to create a layout mixing three or more paper collection. This layout looks more like my own layout :)  Ofir took this beautiful picture of Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006. This part of the museum is an addition designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I ever saw. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Supplies: patterned paper (Little Yelow Bicycle, My Mind;s Eye), vellum  (Recollections), border punch (Fiskars), journaling tag, clear cuts (Little Yellow Bicycle), chipboard letters (Basic Gray), brad (My Mund's Eye), border stickers (Bo Bunny), film strip ribbon (Tim Holtz), pearls (Kaiser Crafts), raindots (Cloud 9), tags

I really didn't want to add much to this layout. I picked  wood grain background from the Twig collection by Little Yellow Bicycle. To make the vellum photo mat I layered 3 sheets of vellum with punched edge and stitched around all 4 edges. The top cluster is built from the Tim Holtz film strip ribbon, a piece of transparency from the Little Yellow Bicycle Saturdays collection and a paper strip from My Mind's Eye Lost and Found.

The bottom cluster had two border stickers from Mama-razzi by Bo Bunny, Little Yellow Bicycle transparency, another piece of film strip ribbon and My Mind's eye brad holding two tiny tags with the date. 

 

All challenges are open till the end of the coming weekend. Are you playing along?

Take Twelve - April

One of the suggested Take 12 prompts for April was technology and I decided it will be fun to look at this page few years from now. Our personal and home electronics are by no means state of the art. Well, maybe except Lila's. But it works for us.

1. My 2009 Toyota Sienna. It was the first time we bought a new car and I still can't understand why we did that. But I do appreciate the convenience. After I finally was brave enough to drive it I was shocked how easy it is. Our second car is 2000 Mazda Protege. 

2. This is how I find Lila each morning - connected to her iPod or Nook or both. Her cellphone is probably under the pillow.

3. My 5 years old laptop - HP Pavilion. It is pretty much falling apart and I started to think if tablet will be good enough for me or I need a new laptop.

4. Lila's nook - she got the first Nook from grandma almost 2 years ago and last December she upgraded herself to Nook Color. She uses it to read books and to watch Law and Order on Netflix 

5. Eli playing with Ella's DSi. DSi's were huge few years ago and both girls have them. But now they are not getting much use. I had to ask Ella to bring her DSi for the photo shoot purposes.

6. My cellphone -last summer a tube of sunscreen leaked in my bag and ate the cellphone coating. Looking forward to the upgrade!

7. Ofir in our basement office corner. - working on his laptop and watching movie on the desktop.

8. Eli playing with Leapster - this Leapster is also 5 years old (like my laptop) and was a gift from my BFF Nina to Ella

9. Our second desktop in the living room. It is used for homework and Netflix - definitely need a replacement for this one. We are getting at least one blue screen a day.

10. PS23 with Ofir's favorite game - enough said.

11. Ofir's Nikon D70 and a little Fuji that I am using. Another item on my wish list - new DSLR!

12. Wii. Used mainly for Netflix buy Eli (Blue's Clues) and Ella (crazy Japanese animation movies) . Our fabulous TV set is also in the picture - the black circle and the lines are actually there, part of the screen.

Here it is - our technology list looks more like a shopping list. :)