Life's a Beach

Mishal went to the beach during fall break with her friend, and these are the pictures I thought most represented the trip. The quote about doing something illegal in 55 states was something Sarah said, and Mishal found it so funny because there aren't that many states. You may be wondering what they did; they picked flowers, and that's what Mishal is wearing in her hair. This was a layout that I had to take one item at a time and be happy with before I could move on to the next section. I fell in love with this sketch, and used the collage feature in Picasa to create the pictures to go with this sketch. Then I chose the Lauderdale collection by Basic Grey because of the vibrant colors and the zebra print that would play off of the bikini Mishal wore. I was shocked how long it took me to chose which Martha Stewart edge punch to use at the bottom because once I realized which one I would, it was so perfect! I had to pry details out of Mishal for the journaling... plus a trip to her facebook page to see what she posted that week. Just do what you gotta do for the layout, right? Because I think that the journaling is the best part of scrapbooking, I wanted it to stand out on the page, so I framed it using a sticker from the collection and placing bling around it, and then I made it stand out a little bit more by using popdots underneath it. Then it was time to do the title. Mishal told me what it should be, but I didn't have an embellishment or stamp for it. I used the fonts on my computer to cut it out. My favorite tool to choose which font I want to cut out with my Silhouette is the AMP Font Viewer It's so quick to find exactly the font to convey the feeling you want. For the title I used the AR Hermann font, and used firefly stickles around the 'e's. It still didn't look complete, and then I remembered some Sizzlits that I have had for years. They were the perfect touch, and I am very pleased with the results. I used the echo park wave file from the Silhouette library for the wave, but it didn't stand out very well against the zebra print, so I created a shadow out of the same pink I had chosen for the title and for one of the vertical strips of pp; but instead of putting the blue exactly in the middle of the pink, I off-centered it for a more dramatic look. I printed the quote that Mishal laughs about the most and inked the edges with Tumbled Glass Distress ink. Finally, I took a heart from the collection's sticker sheet and matted that with white card stock and outlined that using a pink and then a green souffle pen.

Fall Spin card

Youtube is the BOMB for neat tricks and tutorials! I made this card with this tutorial: How to make a Swing Card . She posts her blog in the comment section, and you just have to go to the archives of her blog to find the post with the measurements. I made a couple of fall ones, and have the paper cut for a couple of others, and am working on those. I tried stamping leaves on the mustard color cardstock first, and just wasn't happy with the results, so I covered it up with some gorgeous pp from Basic Grey's Ambrosia collection (I used the 6x6 pad), and am pleased with the results.

Here's the other side:

Oh Happy day!

I love trying different techniques, I guess you could call me a technique junkie. :) I saw a youtube video of this ink resist technique and had to go buy a stamp to do it with...any excuse to buy a new stamp or tool, right? Right! I did this in different colors, and even tried doing it with colored distress ink as well as versamark.

Fall Birthday

 

I am in love with using a water pen and distress inks to color in stamped images! I even combined a red and a yellow to create the orange for the pumpkins on this image. It is just so much fun and it makes me feel like I'm an artist, lol. I absolutely love the shading I get with this technique, and it never comes out the same way twice! I used a coluzzle template to cut the wavy slits on each side of the image to slide the ribbon through, and secured it with the brads. I gave this to a lady at church and she loved it! I painted several of these images, now I need to get them onto cards and in the mail. If you leave me a comment I'll mail one to you.

Kidnapped?

This was a funny story that makes me smile even today, 16 years later... "One spring day when Mishal was about 9 months old, we decided to go to Lake Winnepesauka for a day of fun. Mama volunteered to go and keep an eye on Mishal while we rode the rides. Once when we went to check on them, Christopher saw Mama with her face buried in a book as was typical and decided to play a trick on her. He snuck up, took the stroller with Mishal in it, brought it over to where I hid behind a couple of things, and then went back over to Mama, and said, “Suegra! Where’s Mishal?” You can imagine the look of shock and then horror that crossed her face. He didn’t let it last long and laughed and told her what he had done. But it so easily could have happened for real…we laughed about that and brought it up for years." I'm going to have to give my friend Suzette the credit for this even getting scrapped. She hosted a challenge where we had to use Teal as the main color, and none of the pictures I had ready to scrap looked good on the teal, so I pulled out Mishal's baby photo album and found these. Then I had to find a sketch, and chose one from Pagemaps Feb 2011. I thought it was really appropriate with the flags, they are so perfect for a fair or an amusement park. But then I had trouble cutting out a banner that looked good, so I turned to my Silhouette and found the 3 banners file and picked out the one that scoops 3 times and cut strips of pp and attached those to the cutting mat at the same time and cut multiple copies of the file, then I deleted all but one of them, created a shadow and cut that out in white. I cut apart the different pp's of the banner and glued the different patterns together. Then I used some of the scraps to make the flags on the circle on the top right. I printed the journaling on vellum and used scrapper's spray to adhere it, and then punched the butterflies in vellum and pp. Another facet to Suzette's challenge was to put something upside down on the page, so I put an upside down question mark at the beginning of the title because in Spanish grammar, a question not only ends with a question mark, but begins with an upside down question mark...and Christopher was the one asking the question. I had left my big shot over at Donna's the other night, and didn't have it to cut the parenthesis shape, but I really wanted one, so I cut it out by hand. Definitely not as smooth and quick as doing it with the die. Thanks for looking!