My House & My Room

    Hi again! This past weekend was filled with so much crafty goodness, but none of it involved papercrafts. I think I may have worn myself out with these pages, but Christmas cards need to be made so I'll be back into it this week while my few remaining Christmas crafts will fill in the gaps in the time remaining until Christmas. Luckily, I think I am ahead of schedule and will hopefully be able to share some of those gifts here soon too. There was paper involved in both projects, just not the finished result. That still counts, right?

    Anyway, on to pages 4 and 5, My House and My Room! There isn't much but the obvious on these pages. I did select colors for each page based on my niece's house and bedroom so that the photos would match. Plus, it gave me a good starting place for paper and embellishment selection. I also found a card that had 'Places I've Lived' written at the top to add since my niece has lived in a few places so far due to their house being built and finished around the time she was born. I also wanted to add some matting that could be used for small pictures like one of their porch swing, the mail box, the house number or the front door. Those pictures could also line the pavement stones die at the bottom of the page and the matted areas could be used for journaling. Just some ideas!
 

    These two pages also started the ever-obsessive doily presence throughout the book. I am still picking doily bits out of my carpet. I also found out that you can use Distress Paint in the metallic colors to make letter stickers look almost gilded. Just leave them to dry for a while on their own stuck to a craft sheet. They are so lovely! I also did myself a favor and went through my dies, mostly Tim Holtz, and cut out a plethora of ones I thought went with the book's style to use on future pages, which I will be adding to the blog soon! See you then!

Rachel

My Story Begins

    Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and made some memories. I kept very busy with family and friends who were visiting for the weekend and decorating my house but now I have switched back to a more normal schedule of watching hockey, making Christmas crafts and blogging pictures of THE book! 

    Today, I have the first full 2 page 12 x 12 spread to share! 

  

   

    My idea for this page came from the idea that every person has a story and it starts even before they are born. It involves many people and those people's lives are forever changed because of that person. So, I included some matting for photos, but mostly journaling prompts like, About My Birthday, About My Name, and so on. I also included a card with the words 'Some Memories' to serve as a catch all for other things that the other prompts didn't cover. 

    I don't have much to include in this post regarding the papers that I used or the specific product lines I pulled the elements from because of my technique in making the book, so I'll share that instead. (If you do want to know where an element or item came from, just hit the comments and I'll try to go on a treasure hunt for you!) My idea in making the book was to make an entire cohesive unit that blended well and had similar tones and motifs. So, to make it easier on myself, I made a list of page titles and then went through my entire stash of papers and pulled together anything that 'belonged' in the style I wanted. Then, I yanked out sheets of paper that went with the topic of the page, like the typewriter paper I used here for the 'My Story' page and worked to find a mate for that page. I also pulled out sheets that had ephemera or lettering or journal cards that matched the overall motif and made stacks, and stacks...and stacks.  It kind of made a huge mess but with a few post-its it was manageable and having my entire stash whittled down to a theme and a subset made it so much easier to choose what would go on those chosen 12 x 12 pages! I'm very fond of collage and grouping a ton of items on a page to fill up the area and this works well with this style of scrapbooking since I wasn't working from pictures or specific stories. My goal was to make very cohesive, pretty, blank pages and was able to do that by just sifting through my stacks! There are lots of items and collections that are repeated throughout the book, but I think that just helps give it more of a special project feel. 

    In putting the pages together I stayed very consistent on the use of a few products, the first being Distress Ink. There were many papers that I pulled together for each page that had unmatching undertones (shudder) and using Antique Linen, Old Paper, Frayed Burlap, and many other inks gave the pages a similar undertone and made me happy! There is very little in the book that does not have Distress Ink on it somewhere. I also consistently used ribbon, twine, or some type of trim to each page. I also made sure to add some type of ephemera and small metal items to each page. For instance, on this page I used a metal word band and paper clip and some butterflies an the clock. Little touches like these are my favorite :) 

    Anyway, I hope you like these pages and some of the ideas I shared here. If you have any questions or just want to say HI, just send me a comment below. I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks!

THE Scrapbook

   Roughly four years ago, I was out shopping for a very special gift; a baby book for my soon to be born, first ever, niece. I flipped through stacks of pages of books with family trees, registers of gifts, lists of people who visited and places to list all of her 'firsts'. But then the pages stopped and it seemed like there was just so much missing from those pages. I never found a book that gave audience to the stories: how my name was chosen, what my parents said when they first met me, what my favorite foods, toys, and stories were growing up, what was on my Christmas wish list. They missed what made a baby a unique person. 

   So, being a paper hoarder and very inexperienced paper-crafter at the time, I thought, why not make my own baby book. It won't be hard! I'll come up with a few scrapbook pages and buy an album and give that as my gift. I'll leave spaces for journaling those stories and matted areas for adding pictures and trinkets and ephemera from her day one on, well past the first days and first steps and exhausting lists of shower gifts. Then my imagination took over and my brainstorming got out of hand, and I found myself frantically gluing and cutting and vowing to not rise from my chair for hours at a time so I could finish 36 perfect and unique 12 x 12 pages that I couldn't live without having in the book that must be in a shabby chic style before she was born...and then I gave it to her a month after she was born...and then I realized that if she were to have a sister, I was in big trouble. 

   Her sister was born January 13th...I finished her book on November 24th...

...did I mention I am also a procrastinator? 

    If you're anything like me, you probably can't wait to show what you've made to everyone around you and since it's just you and your husband, he's plenty tired of seeing all the things you made that started out as, "Just plain white paper, honey! Honest!". He smiles and nods and mumbles a few things but he's just being nice and that's OK. You may be flabbergasted that you were able to make a vintage looking viewfinder out of glossy card stock and the packaging from your thickers but he really has no idea what alcohol ink is or a steel rule die, so it's a futile effort...and that's where you all come in! I've photographed all 36 pages of my second niece's book which I will, 'God willing and the creek don't rise', give to my niece tomorrow at Thanksgiving and over the next who knows how long, share here on my blog! 

   So, without further rambling here's page one! 

   

   I wanted to start the book at the beginning. Shocker, right?! I love vintage looking anythings so I picked this paper because of the style of the announcement section. It also already had a completed area for a newborn picture. Of course, we can't just leave well enough alone, so I added butterflies covered in glossy accents and clear rock candy distress glitter, some ribbon, buttons, pearls, and two small paper word bands. This page should have taken ten minutes...it did not. But, I'm happy with it and its simplicity. This was probably where the simplicity stopped, however, which you'll see on the next pages that I will begin sharing later this week because tomorrow is Turkey Day and deliver the book day!!! (of which I am so very thankful!)
Rachel

Gigantic Project Coming Soon!

  For roughly the last year, I've been hacking, pecking, inking, cutting, stamping, procrastinating, and slowly finishing a gigantic project...emphasis on slowly. I finally finished it last night! {does happy dance}
Today's goal is to photograph the entire monstrosity and then start sharing it on the blog after I upload the pictures which will more than likely happen while watching the hockey game tonight because let's be honest - I cannot do just one thing at a time.
  So, basically, I just wanted everyone to know that I have not been a lazy blogger because I haven't made anything in eons. I've been a lazy blogger because I have been spending time on just one gigantic project that I can now share with all of you! So excited!
  Hope to see you all tomorrow (if you're still out there!)

Lawnscaping Embossing Challenge

Hi!

I wanted to make some cards for this week's lawnscaping challenge because the theme is embossing and I have a jar of embossing paste that I wanted to play with...and I love embossing!

    So, I decided to play the embossing paste + ? game. I used the same scribbly stars stencil from TCW and used Wendi Vecchi's white embossing paste and then I sprinkled embossing paste, distress glitter, sticky embossing powder, and glitter over the paste and let it dry. I took the results of the two I liked best and made these cards. The first card uses paste + sticky embossing powder + gold leafing to create the background. Then I pounced Victorian Velvet and Spun Sugar Distress Stain over the panel to create the background. I also embossed the 'make a wish' sentiment and the small stars with embossing powder. 

On the second card, I used distress ink on white paper first and created the blue tones. Then I added the embossing paste + glow in the dark glitter powder and let it set to dry. I also used the same process on the crescent moon. The card also uses embossing powder on vellum to create the sentiment.

 I hope you like the cards! Thanks for stopping by :)
Rachel

A Shore Match

Hi!

Today I'm posting a card I made last night for my friend's wedding tomorrow which is also in the theme of Distress which is the Lawnscaping Challenge this week. I haven't played along with them in forever and this one just fit perfectly.

I'm not drawn to 'cute' things so much, but when it comes to Lawn Fawn's Critters sets, I want one of each! This card uses the Critters by the Sea set and individual letters from the phrases on various other critter sets.

I started the card by stamping the little crab and then mirroring his friend next to him with Memento Tuxedo Black Dye ink. I tried the technique many times with many different inks and found that Memento stayed wet the longest to ink the stamp, then stamp it on a solid stamp and then onto the card. I had to use and XS Pitt Artist Pen to fill in the lighter areas of the little guy but it works pretty well.

Then came the distress! I die cut a cloud and it's negative and varied the placement of both along the skyline to make the puffy rolling clouds with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. Then i cut a half circle and used Antique Linen ink to make the sand. Then I grabbed my Copics and colored the two crabs and used the brush point to make lots of dots to add texture to the sandy beach.

Finally, I die cut a little heart, painted it, and added glossy accents and cut the banner and used a Distress Marker in Black Soot to ink up each letter to stamp out the message.

I hope you like it!!

Rachel

CCC3 - Distress Glitter

    I've been patiently waiting for my new copy of Tim's Compendium of Curiousities Vol. III and Linda Ledbetter's Challenge since I read about the Volume II challenge a few years ago. I missed out on last week's challenge but didn't want to miss this one! This week she's chosen page 56 and the winner of this challenge gets a gift card to the Funkie Junkie Boutique. What a great company name?! I haven't checked them out but am very curious :)

   So, onto my lack of blogging and what I've created. Since discovering the wonderful Dina Wakley and her art journaling, I've really spent some time away from card making and delving into paint, doodling, and drawing. A lot of the early stuff has just been practice and technique building so there wasn't much to blog about but lots of messes to clean up. But, since CCC3 has started, I wanted to pull things together and make a blog-worthy page (or some semblance of it)

    I started with white gesso and used a paper towel to put down my first few layers of paint I mixed from just red, blue and white in different combinations. Who needs a brush anyway? Then I added some tissue tape with multi-medium which gave me the idea for music and a songbird. I cut the bird from grunge paper and Tim Holtz's Caged Bird Die. I removed his branch (which I promptly lost...it's probably glued to a shoe by now), gave him some feet, and covered him with gesso. After he was dry I painted him with varying mixes of my big tubes of basic acrylic paint in red, blue, yellow, black and white. (It's all you really need, right? :) Then to make him just fancy, I added faded jeans Distress Glitter to his back and wing. While I was in the glitter, I cut the stars from grunge paper and Tim's Crescent Moon and Stars die and used the technique with Pumice Stone Distress Glitter on page 56 of the book. 

    I wanted to add a few more layers, so I used Picket Fence Distress Paint and yellow paint and added some stenciling with The Crafter's Workshop's 6x6 stencils in Ledger and Star Fall.  Then I added the bird stamps and the flower stamps with some Archival Ink and added my message to finish my journal page. 

    I've never been one to follow the popular and my little bird doesn't either. 

    I wanted to play  a bit more with die cuts and my colors of Distress Glitter so I cut the Eiffel Tower and Fleur de Lis from Tim's Bigz Die from grunge paper as well and covered them with Black Soot and Antique Linen Distress Glitter. The background of the tag has some stamping in Picket Fence Distress Paint and some stenciling in ink using the Harlequin stencil. I wanted to ground the tower, since you know, it's on the ground, so I used some matching tissue tape from Tim. 

    I'm so happy to have been able to play with my new glitters and can't wait to see what the next challenge will be. Now, I'm off to visit some more blogs and leave some comments.
   Thanks for stopping by!

Rachel