Flower Cards

I really like flowers...on cards, scrapbook pages...but I don't like having a flower garden. Haha!


Green Galore and Groovy Guava mixed...I've never done that before. Bubble wrap was stamped in Chocolate Chip on background.

Using patterned paper on my cards is still a "new" thing for me.

My grandmother's favorite color is "peach", so I made her this birthday card.

Being a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, I take my job seriously by finding ideas that will meet my customers "needs" (Haha! Is stamping a need?). When I come up with a final project idea, there are usually hours of experimenting, testing, and trial behind each card that actually shows up in a demonstration. So it's nice every once in awhile to kick back and make cards without thinking about it being a project. Sometimes those "kick back" cards turn into project cards for a workshop.

There are more cards I would like to share...but one has turned into a project I will use at an upcoming workshop (and I don't want to spoil the surprise), and one is a card I made for someone who visits this blog. I will post that one after they have received it.

Traditional page

I thought it was time to post one of the traditional scrapbook pages I have recently made. The background paper is so beautiful! There are these little round, glittery dots all over the page. Ha!


These pictures were some I took on my own, just making different expressions.

I painted those two flowers last week with acrylic paints. The were originally white. I put the flowers on wax paper and then painted them with the handy-dandy foam brushes until the were fully colored. They didn't take too long to dry.

I've been tagged!

I thought this was so neat! I don't know how she found me, but she did. Ro from Scrap Girls tagged me. This is what I am to do:

1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 facts about myself:

1. When my lips are relaxed, it looks like I'm snarling. It's really annoying!

Ummm...(this is hard)

2. My dream state to live in is Montana, but there are many other places I would love to live.
3. In my Bible I have written all of the names we would like to name our future children, and all of their names start with "J".
4. I collect giraffes.
5. Inside our house we almost every basic color painted (red, orange, yellow, green, purple, brown, white...).
6. I love eating cottage cheese mixed with maple syrup.
7. I graduated in the year 2000.

I don't know if I know of 7 people with blogs that I want to tag, but I'll try:

1. Rebekah's blog. Rebekah and I have been friends for 11 years. I love her and I can't wait to see her in a couple of weeks!

2. Lana's blog. I found her site last year and I check it almost every day to see if it's updated. I love her style...and she's from my home-state, Michigan.

3. Elsie's blog. She's one of my favorite designers for scrapbooking. Her style is unique and a lot of fun! She helps me get out of my box!

4. Veronica's blog. I found her on twopeas and I love her work! Seeing the scrapbook pages she has done motivated me to keep trying to learn the ropes in Photoshop. She's an AMAZING photographer and such a beautiful person inside and out!

5. Mel's blog. I think I came upon this blog while looking on Splitcoast Stampers to find card ideas. She has amazing work and is super creative!

6. Bethany's blog. I enjoy looking at the cards she has made. She really helped me look at card-making in a whole new way.

7. Christina's blog. Her cards inspire me. I love the colors she uses. Her blog inspires me to get out the patterned paper and use it for something besides scrapbook pages.

Only two of these people know I have visted their blog...I'm on to tagging them.

Kitty

A digital page:

Friends

WARNING: Bright page!

Guess where I found myself again today? On Photoshop. *gasp* Yeah, digital is just my thing right now. I do have some traditional pages that I've created, but I'm either not going to post them or I will wait until later to post them.

THIS page was a LOT of fun! I think it was the bright colors, which I cannot seem to get away from right now (maybe it's the rain?). I thought this page was adorable.


The background paper was something I made with brushes. Rhonna Farrer's Roughed Up brushes are one of my favorite brushes. There are textures, inks, roughed edges, etc.

I bought two new items with this page in mind from Scrap Girls. One was a Scrap Girls Tool of glitter. This was something I had to copy/paste to Photoshop Styles, which I had never done before. Let's just say it's opened a whole NEW avenue of digital for me! The more glitter the better!!! There are so many cool digital elements out there.

The other newbie is stitching. This isn't just any ordinary stitching. This is a brush that is smart. SMART!! Yeah, who would have thought!? When I went around the corners of the picture, the brush turned too. All I had to do was keep the mouse clicked down and just dragged (Bek, I'm glad I'm not saying that outloud...hmph!) it and the stitches just kept on coming. It was great! Like a digital sewing machine.

I'm having way too much fun!

Step-by-step Hybrid

My dilemna: I like BOTH digital & traditional scrapbooking. I like the idea of combining both to create what is called Hybrid scrapbooking. I was searching online today for information on ideas and this is what I found. C.D.'s page is super cool, too, so I may have to scraplift! I'm SO bad! Ha! I really want to learn more about hybrid scrapbooking because now I have all of these paints to play with. I love paper, and all of the embellishments that traditional scrapbooking has to offer. I'm off to create...

Glitterphobia

{Conversation between me and my husband Quent}

Christina: And guess what one of the paints has?

Quent: Oh no! Not glitter!!!!?!!

Christina: [squeal] YES!!!!

Yes, I believe he has what is called Glitterphobia.

Do you have Glitterphobia?

Hee! Hee!

Katie

Today I bought new paints...I won't say how many (*blush*). If you live in Wrangell, the Snap-N-Scrap has new paints!

In my mind I saw the pictures on a teal-colored paper. After I bought the paints, I envisioned a purple flourish. The flourish was painted purple first, then stamped with pink flowers (pink paint), and then a pearl glaze paint over it (of course drying in between paint layers). Then I attached the green rhinestones.


"Katie" is a new font (CK Chocolate Sundae) which I printed on a transparency. "Laughter", the "so cute" doodle, and the heart were also printed on a transparency.

I think something else needs to be added to this page...I have some ideas.

Explore

Yesterday I attempted to scrapbook some more of our vacation pictures. I really wanted to do some traditional scrapbooking, but I was having a hard time. I did create a couple of layouts. I ended up doing some digital pages too. Right now the versatility of digital is appealing to me. I like being able to make a picture any size I want it and using any color I want. Don't worry...I'll continue with both. And maybe even do more hybrid (combination of traditional and digital) if I can figure it out more.

The background paper was perfect for this page! I looked up some keywords in Bridge and this was one of the first papers that came up. Bingo!!

The digital bubble wrap is a favorite!

The font is called CK Weathered Stamp.

More Cards

Some cards I have recently made:


This is a Father's Day card...which I probably won't actually be using for Father's Day. Ha! This card was made with a technique called Crackled Glass.

This is one of my favorite cards! The dahlia flowers are one of my favorites!

Another dahlia flower card. This is the card we made today at my stamping workshop. I think it's one of my most favorite cards I have ever made. I first saw this idea when my friend Carrie sent me a card using this technique and I fell in love with it!

And yet another dahlia flower card.

Happy Mother's Day!

These were the cards I sent for our mother's this Mother's Day.


I really like this card I made for my mom. The stems are twisted ribbon, with some stamped and cut out leaves attached.

A bright and cheerful one for my step-mom, Kelly.

This one is for my mother-in-law. This is one I made at my Stampin' Up! workshop last month. Inside the card is a printed a transparency that says, "Happy Mother's Day!"

What I just bought...

Elsie Flannigan (Love, Elsie) is one of my favorite scrapbook designers. She has a new product that came out this week. I've been waiting in anticipation for this to come out so I could get my hands on it.

From what it looks like, this recipe box has a lot of ideas in it! I really like her style, so I'm excited to get out some ingredients and make something!

The picture is from Elsie's site: http://www.abeautifulmess.typepad.com/.

Play Time

Look familiar?

I have to credit this page and the one below (forget to do that) to page 28 in the May/June 2008 issue of Scrapbooks Etc, by Kim Crothers.



These are closer to the colors Kim used. I really liked the colors she picked, so I had to try another page. The photos on this page were edited with an overlay on Photoshop to tone down the colors.

Real Fast

This page was a lot of fun!

The biggest picture was distorted with motion blur on Photoshop. This was the first time I had done it and I really like the way it turned out! The "painted" font is called Painterly by Ali Edwards (Creating Keepsakes). I bought it from Scrap-N-Fonts, which is having their $1.00 sale until May 16th. www.scrapnfonts.com It was especially for this page.

Treasure

I'm really into digital right now...there's just something about it. Ha!

I credit American Eagle for the pocket I scanned. I saw an idea with the pocket in the May 2008 Creating Keepsakes magazine (page 97).


I did a new thing for this page that I don't think I have ever done before. The swirl/flourish is a brush. I put a white stroke around the brush. I think it turned our really neat. Now it looks like a sticker.

Hmmm...maybe that pocket needs some rhinestones? Ha!

Scrap Girl Inspiration

I have a subscription to Scrap Girls daily newsletter. It's filled with ideas and there's always a free digital product download. One of the pages in the newsletter was this: http://208.96.34.132/store_images/Thao_Cosgrove/TCS_SSTransOverlay_Naturescape_1LO600.jpg. I went to work on "scrap-lifting".

Washington DC

A friend of mine (you know who you are--ha!) asked if I had any ideas for a scrapbook that she wants to make for her son. He recently went to Washington DC and New York for a class trip. I told her that I would be thinking about some ideas. One idea I thought of was to create a scrapbook with the same type of template throughout the scrapbook.

This is my idea:



This is two 12x12 pages, put together as on for demonstrative purposes. This is what it would look like in your album. The left page has the title and journaling of the particular event. I chose Arlington National Cemetery as my topic for these two pages. The left page also includes the photos that were more of a summary of what happened at this event, or they could be pictures that you like the most or whatever.

The right page is a "collage" of pictures which I have numbered and then have journaling to talk about what is in each picture. There doesn't have to be any journaling on this page, but only pictures. And it could be as many pictures as you wanted. I chose 6 and made them long vertically, but you can also do squares. **Creating Keepsakes magazines have a lot of great sketches of templates by Becky Higgins. That's where I got the idea for the right page.

This could be done all throughout the scrapbook. I think it's a really great way to portray the pictures, along with what happened on the trip. This is sort of what I am doing for my 2007 vacation pictures.

As far as supplies for scrapbooking a trip such as Washington DC, I would first look at my pictures and think about what I want to portray. I look at the colors that are in my pictures and decide what colored paper I want. I'm not very good at doing themed pages, but that's my personal preference...and it all depends on the page. Like for a 4th of July page I may not use any embellishments that have anything to do with the 4th, but I would use red, white, and blue colored paper and things...that's just me. I want to encourage you to use your scrapbooking style and create what YOU like! That's the most important thing! Sometimes I search online to see what kind of scrapbooking supplies they have for a particular theme. I get a lot of ideas from researching. I would also check out some scrapbooking galleries and see ideas of what others have done for that theme. And you can always ask me for more help or specifics! *smile*

P.S. It was super fun looking back through my personal photos of when I went to Washington DC when I was in 8th grade. I should scan the rest of them in and "play". My photography skills weren't the greatest back then, which made me laugh. As I was looking through the album I kept thinking, "Why did I take a picture of *that*??" Haha!

Purrfect!

Here's my Tigger baby! This was from November of 2007. (Ha! I should put the date on the page somewhere) I have a picture of him yawning that I was thinking about including with this page, but decided to save it for another page...another day.

This is all digital. I guess I'm in a digital scrapbooking mood right now. One thing I really like about digital scrapbooking is that the options are unlimited!! You can do so many things with what you have...and you can use the digital supplies over and over again. Sure, I get tired of some of the supplies after awhile, but I save them anyway for that day when I will probably use them again.


Tigger is licking out of a Brown Cow yogurt container (don't worry...he only got the "crumbs"). It's my favorite yogurt! {just some added info there}

My Color Rut

Before & After

I saw a page in the May 2008 Creating Keepsakes magazine that inspired me.

This was my first attempt. I found the digital glitter letters on Jen Wilson Designs for 75 cents and couldn't wait to put them to use, but they didn't quite work for me.



So because the top page wasn't working out the way I wanted it to and I really wanted to use this template, I went back to my original design and color (I love hiding layers on Photoshop).

I like this one much better!