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Sunday, May 31, 2009

Joey's Camping Adventure



I don't usually buy school pictures. I know, I know.. kids growing up and all that, but the packages don't have enough of what you want and too much of what you don't. So we skip it and do our own. However... I got sucked in. Last year Joey's school sent home proofs of this pic. Now, I know I can do all this in photoshop, but dang it was cute.

So we bought it. And now I have a LOT of these pics sitting around. Two fridge magnets, a billion odd sized little things and I just can't bring myself to throw 'em out. I've mailed some to everyone I thought would want 'em.. and still... they are there. Mocking me.

So I grabbed a 5x7 and headed to the dining room. AKA Disaster zone, craft space, Mom's area, Don't TOUCH that - she knows where everything is-room.

Again with the lack of Alpha stamps loomed it's head: I go to the computer. This time I printed directly on the yellow card stock. I like this font.. it looks like stamps, right? *hopeful look*

Anyway... it was at this point that I decided I didn't like my scrapbook with different facing pages. So I made another to go on the other side. Still need to add the photo.



That same year Joey went camping with the Boyscouts. (that's a four letter word in our house - so other than his uniform in the picture there will be NO reference to them in my book!) I'll post the pic of him with his giant backpack on later.

Let's see... the trees were die cut with a machine back when I was in Arizona. The clouds too. There was a store by our house that would let you use their system and dies anytime you liked. The clouds are vellum and were put on with vellum adhesive, but it's showing though. Grrr. The title is printed on Stampin Up Vellum Cardstock and it's much thicker and nicer. I like it a lot better. Also.. no adhesive showing through. Wooohooo.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

My Girl



My girl is the sweetest daughter anyone could ask for. She made me breakfast this morning!

The first picture was taken at Disney the day after Christmas. Joey was the camera man this time because Robert was in Nebraska.

The second pic was taken while we were scouting locations for her Survivor Birthday Party the following weekend. Can you just see her really thinking hard about whether or not the site would work?

The flowers are from my stash of embellishments. I don't know who make 'em or where I got them... but the Moon Fairy liked 'em.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Snow Trip


Flagstaff was a three hour drive from our house. Not too far to go have a snowball fight! Joey bundled up in his coat and a couple pairs of socks over his hands. (gloves were hard to find in Phoenix). He had a blast getting cold and wet. We didn't get to stay more than half an hour though. Tim called, he was sick and needed a ride home from work.

This page started with the "Joey" embellishment. I know it's backwards, but I was playing with a stencil that I found in my stuff. I used sponged daubers to put the letters on and then doodled around 'em. I liked it so I used the ticket corner punch and matted it then added the brads and wire. A little more doodling with the Sigmo gel pen and I couldn't stop. So I use the same papers again and made the page. Finally, I looked through Joey's photos to find a couple that worked with the page.

Before you ask... "Why on earth would you drive three hours to let the kids play for 30 minutes?" Let me explain.

Phoenix is hot. Everybody knows this, but if you have never experienced 114° (or higher on some days) in a desert then let me try to help you imagine it. "It's a Dry heat." everyone says. Which is supposed to mean that it's not so bad. Yeah, don't fall for it. It's true, to a point of about 105°. After that it just doesn't matter anymore. Every breath is hot air going in and it feels like you are in an oven, or a blast furnace as Robert puts it. Sweat is sucked away as soon as it emits from your pores. I saw it raining one summer. The clouds were there, the dark haze underneath it proved the rain was falling. It never reached the ground though. Not a drop of it fell on my head.

In Winter it cools down to about 70°. Some days it got down to around 50° to 60°, but it would warm up again by noon. You could tell the newbies who had not adjusted yet. They swam in the winter or went without coats. That was us when we arrived there in December 1999. We were swimming that very night and every day that winter. No jackets needed. It was awesome. The heat of summer blasted that from us though. By the winter of 2002 we needed something to wash away the heat of two blasting summers.

To answer that question of who would drive three hours to play in the snow... Phoenicians would.. even if it was cut short they'd tell you the trip was worth it. I know Joey would!

Till next time,

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Daisy Blue

I have been playing with watercoloring to develop a tutorial for an upcoming event. It’s a super fast way to create dimension and texture on a stamped image. This image is not a stamp. I don’t have an outline stamp like this so I did a fast sketch on scrap Whisper White card stock.

Water coloring is one of my favorite things to do. It's very versatile and can give you different looks depending on the paper that you use and the watercolor medium. Wait. Isn't all watercolor the same? I'm glad you asked that. It's not really. There are various ways to achieve a watercolor effect. Watercolor pencils and crayons are applied directly to the paper then the color is moved with water and a brush. The look achieved is different than when you apply wet pigments to paper.

Today I am showing you wet on dry. (wet pigment on dry paper). Stamp or sketch your image onto white card stock with permanent ink. Then set up a palette. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can use the Classic Stampin Up ink pads and squeeze the closed pad to put some ink on the lids. I use an acrylic block or recycle a plastic lid from a food container. (when we are finished it can go back to it’s original purpose with no waste) and drop some ink from the re-inkers. This gives me deep rich color.

Aqua brushes make this easy and fast because they are self cleaning. Get the bristles wet, but don’t add water to the palate. Pick up the color you are using and sweep it across the image. I used Bashful Blue, Summer Sun and Certainly Celery.

I tilted my image so the color would run to the bottom of the petals and settle there - making it darker. Then I did a second sweep on each petal to deepen the color more. The leaves and the center of the flower were done the same way. After I brushed on the Summer Sun (yellow), I swept the brush over the inside edges of the petals. I love it when colors blend and run together. The results are always a surprise.


I honestly intended to throw this away when I finished, but the colors called to me and I couldn't do it. So I cut it out and popped it up on a card. The base and second mat are Bashful Blue card stock. Don't you just love how the colors match so well? The tab is a punch (yummo) and is inked with Summer Sun on the edges. Ribbon and other papers used are scraps from the bin.

Tee's Tip
Everybody is always blending blending blending. Color in life is not always blended so well. We have harsh edges and softer ones. So try including some harsh edges in your watercolor pieces.




Jazz At the Beach



Jacksonville Beach Sea Walk Pavillion is home to the Summer Jazz Concert Series.  The music is awesome.  Our good firend is the stage manager and he does a wonderful job of it!

This layout repeats shapes.  The scalloped circles on the paper, the punched one behind the two step stamped motiff and the metal embellishment follow the rule of three.  

The title block was a bookmark prototype that I'd made a while ago.  I repeated it's matting on the photo and used the ribbon from a bow that was on a gift - because it used colors from the title block and some from the photo.  This tied the two together better.  The ribbon was wired, so I pulled out the sweetest little copper wire and used it to wrap both the title and the embellishment; bringing the color from the photo subtly into the rest of the page.

Till next time,

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Smile for the camera



Say hello to my niece Jessie.  You may not see many pics of her.  She's camera shy: she's georgous but you can't convince her of that.  She'd just gotten her new Sony camera and loved to show everyone how cool it was.  She can take pics with it that come out crisp and sharp --- even when the camera is shaking.  She literally twisted her wrist back and forth while clicking the shutter.  Perfect shot.  I jumped up and down and flung my hair around.  Perfect head banger type shot.  Amazing.  She convinced me and Bob got me one too!

This page goes opposite the one from yesterday (the blues match - as does the time and setting). The ribbon at the top is attached to a journalling tag.   I may or may not doodle on it. 

Till next time,

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sisters



This is my sister, Dianna, and I at our sister Jackie's house.  We were all sharing pictures and swapping stories for hours on end.  We'd not been together like that since my Mom's funeral.  It was a wonderful weekend to be in New Orleans.

I had something else scheduled to go up today... but I was so excited about my doodles on this page that it's all been rearranged to let this one go first.  A while back I said I was going to start turning my doodles into stamps.  I have only done a few of them and none seemed to fit the feeling on this page.  So I got out my Chocolate Chip Stampin Write marker and just started playing.  Doodles start as one shape and then just keep growing.  I colored these in with other Stampin Write markers and then used the Sigmo pen for white outlines and accents.

If you have not tried these markers, you owe it to yourself to do so.  They are juicy and rich in color --- and can be REFILLED!  I'll just say this... Morgan now has a huge set of Marvey markers to play with.

Till next time,

Monday, May 25, 2009

Be Happy



This is Tim. Tim has a way of making you smile, even when you really don't want to. He's just funny in a random kind of way. He's my oldest. Mine by marriage and by heart. For me, the last is all that matters.

The pic was taken in the court house in New Haven CT. We were exploring the campus and the green and ducked in there to check it out. That's Joey and Bumble Bee peeking out on the left and yours truly peeking out on the right. Tim looks oh so happy doesn't he? LOL He didn't know what we were doing behind him but he knew we were up to something cause we couldn't' stop giggling. So you see... that's his "you guys are doing something to make me look weird in this photo" face!

This layout makes use of punches. Gotta love punches! There's a tag, scalloped circle and two sizes of circles. OH oh and the ticket corner punch. Love this one. The ribbon just seemed to work for me. It's 8x8 like all that I've posted on the blog so far.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Honor Roll


This layout is so fun. It's got a lot going on for an 8 x 8 page. Did I mention that before? I was gifted with an 8 x 8 album and I really like the size.

The picture is from a couple of years ago, but Morgan just loved the hat and wanted to use this picture. We played with it in photoshop and both agreed that with so many elements and colors on the page, the picture should be black and white. She's not competing with everything else... she stands out this way.

Then we scanned and shrunk Morgan's report card and included the ribbon given at the Honors Assembly. (I have a LOT of these ribbons in my Mementos box!) The embellishments are cute little things that I've had for ages.

Did you notice the wood grain on the left. That was made by scoring the card stock then sweeping the stamp pads over to roughly transfer color. I used More Mustard, Close to Cocoa and Really Rust Classic ink. It's a super fast technique and you can get a lot of different looks with different colored card stock for a base and different inks. Give it a try!

Saturday, May 23, 2009

It happened in 1950



What happened you ask? Why - Bob did of course! LOL A couple years ago he found this sticker sheet with all the things that happened in the year of his birth. He didn't know what to do with it though, which means it became mine to scrapbook.

OHHH this is my first attempt at fonts with an artist tip on a fountain pen. What do you think?

The picture was snapped while we were out letterboxing and I'm just glad to still have it. He hates to be in front of a camera. So he told me that he'd sorted out all the pictures with him in it and deleted them. ***GASP***

I was prepared to not talk to him for days. Then he comes out with this one printed out for me. That stinker!


On this second page is more of the stickers and space for something else. I just don't know what to put there yet. More pics of the elusive camera man? Embellishments? Pics of him as a kid if I can get his Mom to send me some??? Maybe Pam (his sister) would have a few! *rubbing hands together*

Friday, May 22, 2009

Sheba Layout



My puppy. Isn't she just the cutest? Bob snapped this photo on our first hike with her. She's a natural letterboxer! Noxers came down the trail and she alerted us before we could hear them - much less be seen by them. What a good girl! She's a Border Collie - Newfie mix, if you are wondering, that we got from the Springfield Animal Rescue.

This too is sort of a hybrid project. The title was printed onto plastic and put onto the page like a rub-on. Can you say--- "Tee really needs alphabet stamps?" Very good! I knew you could!

The transfer was a little washed out, so I went around it with my white Sigmo gel pen. Then I stamped the little bones from a set of dollar bin stamps. I had to stamp off with the stamps to get them the same color as the transfer. Pretty close huh? They too got the gel pen treatment to make 'em stand out.

Color came in with the funky ribbon that was in my stash. OH.. that ribbon was a penny. I kid you not. It was in the clearance isle for 50 cents but rang up as a penny. The cashier said I was getting a bargain! LOL No kidding.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Joey's Quest for Better Hair



I have been scrapbooking a LOT lately. Probably because Bob keeps printing pics for me! heh. Joey was growing his hair out.. and had been since he came back from Texas last summer. We've trimmed it a couple of times, but he didn't want it cut "off" at all. He saw this picture of himself in April and decided it was time for the hair to go!


This is a hybrid project - The really cool text is Bleeding Cowboys. You can get it by clicking the picture above. I want THAT in a stamp set. Hmmm I did promise SHH that I'd try text again. Maybe one letter at a time would be easier.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Joey's Mini Book WIP


I was gifted with a rather large stack of 4" beer coasters the other day. Bob looked at me like I was silly. "The kids can't use that - it has BEER on it!" *giggle* Well look at my beer coasters now! Do YOU see any beer? Nope, I don't either!!

Joey is making this little mini book for his Dad. I helped him cover the coasters and bind in the pages last night.

He picked the papers from the huge batch that I got from Costco ages ago. It's about the same weight as the Stampin Up Designer Series Paper, so it's sturdy enough to be used for the interior pages as well.

You can use any DSP you have on hand. Our pages are scraps by the way, cut at 3.5 x 7.5. Score and fold in half for perfect fit.



Each page is sealed at the bottom with Sticky Tape so that it becomes a pocket for card stock "tags". He is going to put journaling and pictures on the tags and is still making different shaped tabs to pull them out with.

He got started on the this page with a picture from Arizona. The guy was his diver for six months. We moved out of district, so they hired a bonded courier service to transport Joey to and from school every day. He was the most patient and wonderful man!

<---- THIS was his standard pose at that age. Anytime a camera appeared.. he did this cocked head and pointing finger thing. heh.

So anyway - Joey will work on it a little here and some in Texas with his Dad this summer.

Cute huh?



Monday, May 18, 2009

iPhone Fun

Some of you know that I got an iPhone as a wedding present. It's been a blast. I love it love it love it. The little commercials they have where anything you want to do ... there's an app for that. Well it's just about true.

This image is from an app called Spawn Illuminati. It's a free app right now and a lot of fun. The points of light dance around the screen and respond to your touch.

You can capture the image and if you are quick you can get some interesting things. I used one image to put a border on "From the Desk of..." notes for the kids teachers.

Morgan, Joey and I just love to play with this little toy.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Chalkboard Technique


Ok boys and girls.  This one is fun and will work for hand carved or store bought stamps!  You are going to need a few supplies, but you probably have most of them on hand.

First you stamp the image in white pigment ink (or another color for a funky effect) and then while it's wet, you dab on chalks or artists pastels with a cotton ball or sponge daubbers.  The stamps I used are a two step process so you lay down the background and then stamp the outline on top of that.





Tee Tip

If you are doing this on something that is meant to last (like and LTC/ATC) then you need to seal the chalk before you stamp the outline or send off the project.  Artist fixative is a convenient way to do this.  Dick Blick has a wide range available, but you can find it at your local craft store as well.

So get out your chalks and pastels and play!

Here's the project I did for Easter.

Pop ups are the bomb!

I saw Dawn do what she called a "windshield wiper" card.  Ok, how can I put this... it was AWESOME!  I adore pop ups and this one is not to be missed!  So.... I made this one just to see how it works.  Nothing stampin up here.. but you can bet your boots that there's going to be an LTC like this soon!  heh

It's ok, right.. but kind of boring till you grasp the dotted side and it's hidden mate on the other side of the card and pull them apart.  Then THIS happens:

Whooowho~  I'm so easily amused!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Card Share


This card was one that I received from Lee. She generously gave some of her sample cards to the new demos in her downline. Thank you Lee!

While I'm throwing out the thanks you's. Notice the background of the photo? During our last meeting Sharon told us how to make a photo booth from foam board (among other great tips and info) and I demoed a new technique that I'll be showing you all very soon. Sharon and I traded samples and I went home the proud owner of a very cool tool! Thank you Sharon!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

We're Watching You


LTC/ATC made for the Skulls Swap. I only made enough for the swap. If I owe you a card, let me know and I'll make you a special version of this one.






I found the image online and did a sketch of it on paper then transferred with the pencil method. It's carved into white PZKut. This stamp will be planted as part of the Pirate Treasure series.


I couldn't think of what to make yesterday, but I really needed to make something.  It's therapy for me. So I made a few card blanks.  These are ready to be embellished further or just to mat and mount a focal image.

Oh and an update on stamp carving.  It's back on baby!  Whoooo!  The hands are steady and itching to dig into some rubber.  So I have a Hidden Pictures stamp to carve and then I'll probably slip back into a few ATC/LTC swaps.

I have several letterboxes ready to plant.. and one planted from Mama Wolf that needs to be posted online.  It's looking like a great summer in Jax!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A Blog Award


I was shocked when Sharon notifed me that she was awarding me the Lemonade Blog Award.  If you have not met Sharon then you are in for a treat.  She's one amazing lady.

Ok, now I get to pass it on to some of the folks that inspire and encourage me.  They are listed in no particular order!


Since this is my first award, it took me a bit to figure out what I needed to do and how to go about it.  To pick up our Lemonade Stand Award, you need to follow these steps:
  • Comment on this post, then save the award to your computer
  • Upload it to your blog and nominate 5 to 10 blogs that you feel show attitude and gratitude
  • Link to your nominees within your post
  • Comment on their blogs to let them know you've nominated them
  • Link back to the person who gave you the award to show your appreciation
Thank you Sharon!


This simple and sweet little card is for Morgan's teacher.  With those apples, who else could it be for?  Hope she likes it!


Monday, May 11, 2009

We were a little Batty this weekend

You ever had one of those days? You know, where things just are not going your way?

Morgan had one of those days this weekend. She couldn't have a playdate with her friend, so she made her an LTC instead. They are both into Transformers - so it's robot everything. You'll see what I mean!




Morgan carved the bat herself from my direct sketch onto the mysterious gray stuff. Isn't it just too cute???

So, since the card was a single, I helped her make a sleeve for it with some designer paper I had from Costco.



She decorated that with the new Oval All set and scalloped oval punch from Stampin Up. The faux postage stamp is her own sketch cut out with 'postage' decorative scissors. I sponged it for her with classic ink in Sunshine and Bashful Blue. Then she matted it on So Saffron and Bashful Blue card stock.

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