Mononchromatic Christmas

I have an anniversary party that I need to put together, make save-the-date magnets and invites for, etc. for this fall.  In other words, I have a lot to do and it's going to tangle with Christmas card making so I really need to get moving on my Christmas cards. Here's my start- simple and not overly adorned (ok, not really adorned at all) but sometimes, that's ok.

Challenges:
The Paper Players: Monochromatic clean & simple 
The Corrosive Challenge: Christmas in July
Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge: Layers
Winter Wonderland Challenge: Blue Christmas

First shaker card

This didn't turn out quite as fabulously as I'd hoped but since I really couldn't picture the complete end result in my mind, I'm not particularly disappointed. It still needs something but I'm not sure what and again, for a first try, I'm generally happy with it and what I learned in the process.

Ingredients:
Stamp: Unity
Sticker: SRM
Paper: CS & Vellum: Stampin' Up, Print: SEI
Sequins: Darice
Ink: Stampin' Up

Challenges:
SRM: Birthday
Unity: Friends with Flair
Shopping Our Stash: Birthday (I've had the vellum for YEARS and the SEI paper I've only cracked into once in the 2+ years I've had it.)

Maggie birthday card

This one was a bit tough for me to start.  I usually (read 99.99% of the time) make standard 4.25x5.5" cards.  Maggie is a skoash shy of 5.75" tall.  I thought about cropping here.  Eh.  I thought of not using here.  Duh.  I bought her, I need to use her.  Duh.  So gee, being the genius I am, I came up with the thought of making the card bigger.  Wow.  Genius.  Duh.  LOL!  Luckily I have an envelope for a 5x7 card so it'll actually work.

Ingredients:
Stamps: Unity (Maggie Girl)

Papers: Stampin' Up (Cardstock), Basic Grey (Printed paper)

Ink: Momento (Black), Tim Holtz (Brown), Copics

Challenges:
Unity: Friends with Flair

Baby Card

A woman who I take TaeKwanDo with is expecting her 2nd munchkin in the very near future.  We're having a small get-together for her on Friday so this is the card I made for her.

Ingredients: 
Paper: Stampin' Up
Stamps: Unity (Boat), Stampin' Up (Banner)
Colors: Black Momento, Watercolor Pencils, Brilliant Blue Stampin' Up (edges)

Challenges:
SEI: Colors
Unity: Friends with Flair (I'm entering this on the 16th because I TOTALLY missed it last week!)

Mother's Day cards

I usually try to make 2 completely different cards for my mother and MIL.  This wasn't one of those years.  While I did make one image a bit darker than the other and the background paper a bit of a deeper pink on one, that was it, those were the differences this year.

Ingredients:
Stamp: LaBlanche
Papers: Stampin' Up
Coloring: Copics
Embossing folder: Stampin' Up

Challenges:
Simon Says Stamp: Spring Flowers
Paper Players: Mother
SEI: Color Combo
 Just Us Girls: Sketch

Simple Sympathy card

Unfortunately we need a sympathy card so I used the great "...may hope sustain you" set from Unity for it.

Ingredients:
Papers/Ink: Stampin' Up (colored with SU inks from the lids with a blender pen)
Stamps: Unity
Misc: Clear rhinestone colored with black Copic

Challenges:
SEI: Color Challenge
Unity: Friends with Flair

Big Day layouts

Happy (Inter)National Scrapbooking Day!  Yeah.  It's almost 10pm here on the east coast but it's still today and it's the thought that counts.  Right?

I picked up a BG scrapbooking kit at my LSS quite a while back.  I'm generally not a kit person but I loved the colors and patterns in this one and it WAS on sale after all!  Had to have it.  So it's been hanging around with a lot of other stuff and I really needed to get it done so I made it my goal for today- use the kit.  I altered the included sketch slightly and then made a 2nd 2-pg layout out of the leftovers which worked well since it took 4pgs to get all of my pictures in.

I hope that you have a chance to do a bit of scrapping today and in the days to come.  I'll be posting this over at Big Picture Classes NSD10k and at Moxie Fab's Scrapbooking Rocks challenge.  Hope you'll join me!

Calm Before the Storm Layout

I generally don't do more than a 2 page spread for an event but it looks like I'll have 5 Imagination Movers pages by the time it's all said and done.  I definitely had to do a page about how calm our son was before the show and how he completely lost it during the show.  This one is tied to the Write, Click, Scrapbook Scrapolympics, Day 3.  The event was Freestyle- basically show something that's your normal style.  My style tends to be simple, not overly embellished, and lots of photos.  This one only has 4 photos which is a bit light but it's what I had.  I definitely broke out the Thickers which is a norm and did a decent amount of hand journalling.  I frequently layer papers - this time I used crayons to shade behind my photos.  In a lot of ways, other than multiple photos, my style is I don't have much of a style- it depends on the photos, how I trim them, how they fit, etc. 

Opening Act Layout

I'm VERY overdue in finishing layouts about our 2011 Imagination Movers concert experience.  Of course, in the process of digging out what I needed to finish one of these layouts, I found 3 other projects that I've either started and wanted to finish or never started but really would like to get moving.  Of course, that's in addition to the Disney album and 100's of photos I haven't scrapped yet from lots of events but one thing at a time.  Movers.

 

I designed this one along the challenge lines set up by Write, Click, Scrapbook's Scrapolympics, Day 1.  I actually used a color palette and sketch shown in one of the samples though the color was a fluke.  I went digging through their site looking for a color palette I liked for these photos, selected one and just now, when putting this post together, realized it's the same one that Marnie used for the her page, using the same sketch I used.  Cue creepy music.

Aug. 2013 sketch:

Oct. 2013 Color Palette: 

Hot air love

This is my last Valentine's Day card... for today. I still need to finish one for the pipsqueak.

This was another case of a card I saw and loved from Bosenberries.

All materials except the embossing folder (Darice) are from Stampin' Up.

Challenges:

Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart
The Stamping Boutique: CAS

Mosaic Madness Hearts

I've used the Mosaic Madness punch for Christmas and now for Valentine's.  I wonder if I could squeak off something for every holiday.

Everything is from Stampin' Up.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Shopping Our Stash: This embossing folder has been in my stash for about 2 years and never used that I can think of.
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart

Row of Hearts

This is a card that I cased from my friend LeAnne Pugliese.  I saw one of her Christmas cards and had to recreate it.

All ingredients are SU except for the sentiment which is Katie & Co.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart

Valentine's Day is upon us!

I'm going to make several quick posts with the Valentine's cards I've made.  First up, I think this is my fav and will likely go to the hubster.  Everything on it is a Stampin' Up product.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Shopping Our Stash: Love Me Tender (I've had the Lovely Little Labels stamps and punches for over a year... and hadn't even opened them I'm very embarrassed to say!)
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart
Stampotique: Heart in Your Art 
The Corrosive Challenge: Feel the Love

The final kickstart

Today's Smeared & Smudged Kickstart Your Art challenge is to create a blotted background.  I started a bit differently than usual in that instead of rubbing my distress inks on the background, I just tapped the ink pads on the paper.  Once I had a pretty good layer, I did rub a bit of Vintage Photo on it to fill in any open spots and to get a bit of a blend.  From there, I spattered water, blotted it, and then used a bottle cap to put circular water rings on and blotted those.  The stamped sentiment is from Close To Your Heart.

Again, many thanks to those of you who have stopped by and left comments.  I wasn't able to respond to most of you since your email addy's aren't associated with your IDs and unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to get around to all of your blogs.  Again, thank you!!  Wonderful work all!

Kickstart Your Art Day 6

Today Smeared & Smudged declared it to be Texture day.

There's a baby wipe I used to clean up ink and paint from day 1 glued and gessoed to the cardstock.  There's black acrylic on that, crackle gel on that (which can bubble up in a very satisfying way if you put it on really thick and heat it even more) white acrylic dabbed on that.  I didn't have a clue what to put on the page so I just started to doodle which for some reason turned into a large segmented box with strange tentacles.  I think we'll leave it at that.

Kickstarting Day #5

Today over at Smeared & Smudged, it's all about using scrap paper to make your background.  I have a file box next to my desk filled with folders of scraps, organized by color.  The final file is full of print papers.  I had no idea where I would go with this but I figured I'd see what I had and then what jumped at me.  Turned out to be easy.  It went something like this:

Open folder
2 great full-spectrum rainbow papers on top
Below, more striped papers with a range of colors
What goes with rainbows?
There's brown in here
Gesso will dull the brown
What goes with rainbows?
How do these papers look together on the base sheet?
What goes with rainbows?
Gold pots go with rainbows
Unicorns go with rainbows

Yeah.  You get the idea.

Kickstart Your Art Day 4

Today over at Smeared and Smudged, it's about growth.  Of course, growth can be positive... unless you're sitting in my twisted little mind.  In that case, not everything is about upward growth.

Ingredients:
Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum from Octopode Factory
TH Distress ink pads (Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Peacock)
Watercolor pencils
Sharpie
Uniball white gel pen (Yeah, I went back and added a bit of white to that 2nd G after this photo was taken.  yeah yeah yeah.)

Get it on paper

My 6yr old doesn't listen to me.  Not a word.  I have to repeat instructions over and over.  He came home early yesterday because of snow.  He was off today.  I just found out he's out again tomorrow.  We got 1" of snow by the way.  I miss NJ and how they can deal with winter weather.  This up there is something you look at, shrug at and ignore because it's only one frickin' inch!  Here, it shuts down cities.  It shuts me in with a 6yr old who is driving me mad.  Better to put it on paper than to take it out on anyone.  I think I just found a reason for art journaling.  Today's Smeared & Smudged theme is to use a lay-around item for the background. 

I:

1. gessoed
2. sprayed with Mr. Hueys (those buggers are a disaster if you haven't used them in a while!)
3. decided that the drips that occurred because the bottle was clogged looked like lightning
4. stamped circles on with 3 bottles (plastic seltzer, gesso, a glass water bottle that I got in the UK in 2004.  I still have the bloody thing!) and going grey/night of navy ink
5. drew/colored a cloud with copics/#2 pencil/micron pens
6. micron-outlined my lightning
7. wrote my frustration out
8. if it were later in the day and he was in bed, i'd add "went to have a large glass of some adult beverage"

Day 2 of Kickstart Your Art

So.  Day 2 of Smeared & Smudge's Kickstart Your Art. 

First, thank you those who commented on your kind words.  I really appreciate them.

Second, I realize that I was unintentionally not entirely honest.  I actually meant to mention this yesterday but was just so happy to post that I'd done something  artsy/craftsy again.  I did dabble in mixed media one other time, for one day.  While it wasn't much time, it was a rather... intense? significant? whatever event.  Donna Downey's studio is only about an hour from here so I went down there the other year and took a one day class from her.  In 6 hours or so, we made a 40 page mixed media "reference book."  Essentially, every page had a different technique on it- using print paper, paper towels, cardboard, etc. as a background; using pan pastels, acrylics, India ink, etc. as a medium; gessoing before and after inking, etc.  It was a one day crash course in mixed media techniques.  The class was about 2yrs ago and I don't think I've used a single technique again before this week.  It was interesting, informative, great reference, and just sort of showed me that it's not my type of thing to do on a regular basis.  I like many of the results of mixed media- the "play" is wonderful but my left brain/right brain war (every time I take one of those "which side of the brain type of person are you, I pretty much land dead center), means that most of the time I color in the lines while making darn sure I don't break my crayons- not traits particularly valued in mixed media.  I rarely share my art and craft supplies with my 6yr old- he'll mess them up.  Of course, when I was 6, I still wouldn't share my art supplies with my friends because they'd mess them up.  Had to have my art supplies but I didn't want them messed up.  Stupid ongoing brain war.  So.  There's the truth behind my mixed media past.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today is all about hearts.  I kinda want the edges of this darker but other than that, I think it's what I was going for.

Thanks to Tit for the visual reminder that book pages make great backgrounds.

Ingredients: gesso, TH distress ink pads, Copics, SU watercolor crayons

A slightly different direction for the day

Smeared & Smudged is having a week-long "kick-start your art" challenge to create themed art-journal pages.  I don't art journal.  I'm not even a big fan of the mixed media trend.  However, I like the idea of trying something different and forcing myself to do something a bit creative every day.  So.  Out of my little box I pop.

Today's theme is: 3 PRIMARY COLOR DRIPS

Again, I'm not a mixed media artist so I figure it's more of a week to play with trying out techniques I generally don't use.  So (please forgive the curl- I haven't flattened it yet)

I laid down swipes of 4 TH stains on white paper (I don't have a book for this but I might bind the papers together at a later date).
I used clear EP to lay the SU Medallion stamp on top.
I dripped red, blue and yellow heavily watered down acrylic paints down the page from the top edge.
After dry, I wiped the paint off the medallion with a baby wipe (glad I kept a pack of those around!)
"it's time to pull back the curtain" was written with a large silver paint Sharpie and to make it a bit more legible, I wrote it again on top of the silver with a thin black Sharpie.