Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge #61

Things have finally started slowing down a little here (no injuries in the last 24 hours at least!). My daughter seems to have come into her clumsy stage - this week we've had two (that's right 2!) goose eggs on our forehead, one trip to emerg, and several minor cuts and scrapes. I guess this what happens when walking is no longer fast enough but running is still too co-ordinated for little legs. Anyhow, after the family daredevil went to sleep last night, I got the mojo working and actually finished a card for a challenge!!! Here is my version for Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge #61. Most DP is CTMH as is CS and ribbon. I used a Basic Grey rub-on for the "Fresh" label and a button from See D's to go with the camel coloured felt flower that I cut using my Spellbinders flower dies. Thanks for looking and please be sure to check out the other entries this week.

Fun In the Sand

It's been too long since I actually sat in my scrapbook room (read Connor's bedroom here!) and actually worked on a piece. I've purchased some fantastic new stamps from Pink Cat Studio and the Greeting Farm and I just can't seem to get enough time to play with them. I've also become a diehard fan of Younique Country Retreat. Heather, the most accomodating of all scrapbook store owners:-), is fantastic! Heather offers weekend scrapbooking retreats at her home located between Guelph and Fergus, Ontario. Her studio is HUGE! And she has lots of fantastic deals on everything from copics to DP to Petaloo! Fortunately, for those of you who can't drop in on her, she has an online store. I urge everyone to go and check this website out or better yet, book yourself and a few friends in for a weekend of scrapping and relaxing. For a direct link to Heather's store, please click on the logo located in the right hand column!

Okay now onto the scrapbook page, this is the first page of a two page layout that I created for the trip our family took to Sauble Beach last summer. It was the first time my daughter really started to crawl and the first time my stepson got to make sandcastles. All in all, a truly successful day. On this page, I used CTMH Classic Caps for the title and then used CTMH Ticket Tags to create the "Fun Passes" that are peeking out of the bucket. I actually tore up strips of sand paper to create the "sand along the bottom of the page just to add a little texture to the scene. The DP is by Basic Grey.





The second page, also DP from Basic Grey, was a fun extension of the first. I used some textured CS to create the "waves" and created my Post card using SU's Winter Post and CTMH's Daydreams. The layout came together fairly quickly and I was pleased with the results! Here's a quick peek of the layout as it will look in the album. Thanks for taking the time to stop and look!

Pink Cat Studio Design Team Contest #2

This was my card for the Pink Cat Studio Design Team Contest #2 over at Paper Craft Planet. In order to participate, you had to use a PCS image on a one layer card. That's right, one layer! I agonized over this layout for a week (and then my photo looks flat - grrr!). What I finally decided to do is emboss a long rectangle from Spellbinders on the front of the card and then place my image from Q.T. Hooty in the middle. I then masked off the area and stamped a tree image from Magnolia stamps in the background. The images were coloured with SU and CTMH stamps. The ladies hats were paper pieced with some CTMH scraps and then I added some embellishments from CTMH. For my final touches, I sponged SU Baby Blue ink around the edge of my card and then used my SU spiral note punch to break up the harsh bottom line. This task was such a challenge - thanks to the great ladies over at PCS for working my mojo to the max! Sory for the quality of this photo, I'll see if I can work on brightening the image up. It does look better in real life - I swear - lol!

CPS104: Papertrey Ink Sponsored Sketch

I was so excited to see that the sketch this week over on Card Positioning Systems is being sponsored by Papertrey Ink. I know the sketch is supposed to be applied to cards but when I saw this week's challenge, I knew that it would fit perfectly with an idea that I've been throwing around for awhile. The photo on this page was taken Christmas Day and features my mother reading a story to my daughter. It really captured how close their relationship is and how much my mother adores Isabelle. I used paper from Cosmo Cricket to piece together the "quilt" behind the photo. I stamped the 1.5" quilting block from PTI's Quilter's Sampler Additions with Versamark and then heat embossed with chocolate powder. I then cut out each piece and placed it on a shimmery, champagne coloured cardstock that I had scored at 1.75" intervals to emphasize each block individually. This was then mounted on a second piece of cardstock that I stamped with an image from CTMH's Simple Stitches. The large sheet of DP is from Pink Paislee and it was also stamped with CTMH Simple Stitches. The sentiment in the lower right corner is from PTI's Quilter's Sampler Sentiments and says: "Granddaughter you may outgrow my lap but you can never outgrow my heart".

I stamped the verse in Brown StazOn on cream coloured felt. I used a label image from SU's Lovely Labels and then tossed in some accessories from the SU's Pretties Kit. Surprisingly, this page actually turned out pretty close to the way I imagined it except for a few bloopers along the way . . . like my daughter putting dirty hands all over the picture! Oh well, at least one day, I she can say that she helped:-) Thanks for stopping to look and thanks so much to the great people over at CPS for hosting these sketches! Also thanks to PTI for generously sponsoring this week's sketch!

Pink Cat Studio Challenge

Pink Cat Studio has been busy with sneak peeks for their new release on Monday (if you love Lily, you'll want to make sure you tune into their blog). (Okay so the link button is not working so check them out here: http://pinkcatstudio.blogspot.com/ )
They also have a great group of girls over on Paper Craft Planet which is where I found their latest challenge. The task this week was to use a Pink Cat Studio set and use it to imitate an image from a different Pink Cat set. Now this might seem crazy but I read the challenge this morning and I thought about it all day! I couldn't wait to try my hand at this. I used my Q.T. Hooty set to imitate one of the images from the Tweet set (where Tweet is sitting atop her birdhouse). First I cut my card so it's dimensions were 4.5" square. I then used the second largest of my Spellbinders circle dies to cut out the centre of the card and to create the embossing around the edge of the opening. I used some leftover DP (sorry I don't remember which company it came from) to create the background for my image. By building up the inside of my card, I was able to set this back from the front of the card by 1/4". I made the birdhouse out of a scrap of DP that I cut free hand and then used a combination of SU punches (word window and photo corners) to make the roof. Q.T. was coloured with copics and then mounted on the DP with a series of dimensionals. I placed small pearls in the corner of her glasses for extra ooomph! The second part of the challenge was to include a ribbon and two embellishments. The ribbon I added came from my LSS last year so I'm a little short on memory for the company. The buttons were also from my stash but the dew drops in their centres are from Robin's Nest. The outside edge of my card looked a little stark in contrast to all the colour so I sponged some CTMH creme brulee ink around the edges!! I have to say, at the end of this all, I had more fun doing this up than I have had in a long time with my scrapbook supplies! Way to go guys for putting together such a great challenge.

Backwards Calendar

I can't believe I have so many pages to catch up on!!! I've decided to start working backwards from my daughter's current photos so I can trick myself into thinking I am up to date on her scrapbook. Guess the joke's on me! I'm so proud of this page . . . It's a shame that the tiny beads don't look nearly as nice in the photo as they do in person. I sprinkled the beads along the curved line present in this gorgeous Cosmo Cricket paper and the used sticky tape to create the folds in the Martha Stewart ribbon just above. I love these photos . . . this was Isabelle's Christmas dress this year and it was also the first time she had barrettes in her hair (I should also note it was the last as well!) This next photo is a recently completed page celebrating Isabelle's first Halloween. Isabelle wore the cutest little outfit and went as Piglet from Winnie the Pooh.
I used this great paper from Imaginesce coupled with the Cuttlebug spider's web folder and some images from Crafty Secrets. The calendar page is an SU stamp superimposed on the SU crackled backgrounder stamp. The ribbons came from my LCS as did the "Trick or Treat" cutout. This one came together nice and easy. I wish that all of my pages were so quick to materialize. I find myself spending far more time sketching my page layouts than I ever did before. To be honest, I'm a hundred times happier with the results. It's fun to look how far I've come from two years ago when I first started scrapping. I have a long way to go but with such a richness in paper "artists" blogging out there, I find inspiration everywhere:-) Thanks for looking and thanks for inspiring me in turn.

Happy Valentine's Day

Just a quick Magnolialiscious post to wish everyone a happy valentine's day and a wonderful long weekend. This is a card I whipped up for my husband . . . I used some left over pieces of CTMH paper for the background and my trusty Fiskars 1" heart punch for the embellishments. Tilda's apron was paper pieced and she was coloured with copics and SU markers. The label is from SU (I think the set is called Lovely Labels). Had a great time with this card and hope to try some Saturday sketches today. Don't forget to tune in tonight to Papertrey Ink's release party:-)