I had a gift exchange with some friends and since I started this little thing earlier this year, I decided that I should kind of continue it for everyone. I made them soapflakes and a little picture with instructions to set next to it on a sink in their home.
Here is what I put in each package for everyone, a bowl of soapflakes and a picture frame with the instruction poem.
I made this from a photo I saw of a card Joy Kennedy posted on her twitter account. I LOVED it and decided to kind of try and duplicate it for my instruction poem. I call it an instuction poem, because people don't know that the snowflakes are coated in soap and can be used to wash their hands.
To make this card, I embossed a 4x6 piece of Kraft Core Cardstock with the snowflake texture fade folder and then sanded the snowflakes. I stamped some white cardstock with the blueprint snowman stamp in black archival ink. Then using some Distress Markers and water markers, I colored the snowman, inked the edges with frayed burlap distress ink, and then you cant see it, but I covered the snowman with rock candy distress stickles for a little shine. I printed the poem on white cardstock and backed it with more Kraft Core. To make a couple of the words stand out, I drew around them with my Distress Pens.
I bought a package of fabric rose petals from the dollar tree to make the snowflakes.
Then I cut snowflakes out of the petals using Tim Holtz movers and shapers dies.
After dipping them in glycerin soap, I had soapflakes.
For a detailed tutorial on how to do this, I posted a step by step tutorial on Instructagram
Then I packaged them all up in a large lunch bag, topped it with a large doily, Tim Holtz rosette snowflake, and made some tags out of the old Making Memories metal tag maker and stamped one of the mini blueprint snowflakes on it.
I made this for the Graphic 45 Renaissance Faire contest. You were to make a project using that line of paper. I thought it went perfectly with the pictures we took last November at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. We walked into a room and suddenly I saw it -- Degas' Little Dancer! It was stunning!
The pictures just don't do it justice. If you ever get a chance, you must go see this amazing bronze sculpture in person. He actually used a green ribbon and bronze dipped fabric for her outfit.
Along with showcasing this piece of art, I wanted to add some of my own artwork to the page. I found this rose tutorial online and wanted to make some to put on this page. Here is how you make them.
First, punch out 8 flowers or scallops. I made them in two different sizes. I used the EK Success punches.
Then spritz with water. I spritzed with water and some bronze perfect pearls for a tiny bit of shimmer. Then crinkle each one into a little ball. They should look like this when you are done. The flatten them back out and stack them into a stack of 8. If you have double sided paper, you might want to flip them over every other one so that you can see the other side. I didn't do that because I didn't want it to be too busy for this layout. Then using an awl or paper punch (as usual I couldn't find my Tim Holtz paper punch, which is my favorite!) Stick a long brad through the hole and open the back to fasten all the papers together. Then starting with the top petal, pull it up and squeeze it tight in the center. Then do the same with the second petal. And once you have squeezed all the petals around the center, it will look like a rose bud. Then very gently, take it and spread the petals out and down to form the rose blossom. Here is one of the smaller ones. And the larger red one. I added some Prima swirls to fit with the feel of the metal sculpture and the grace of the dancer.
As I said in my last post, my LSS is having a contest to make a layout using only the My Mind's Eye Abbey Road paper. For this layout I decided to go with the blues and pinks in the line. I thought it went perfectly with our picture of Princess Aurora.
For the layout, I decided to turn my friend Susan's 8 1/2 x 11 sketch into a 12x12 layout. You can see all of her sketches on her blog Sketch Savvy.
In addition to the sketch, I wanted to used a technique she featured on the Serendipity Scrapbooks challenge forum, which is to make a border using the folded flower technique. There is a little problem on the site right now so I can't link you to her tutorial, so my sorry directions will have to do.
First, punch at least a dozen 1 1/4" circles out of double-sided paper. Fold the flowers in half with the pattern on the outside that you want to show the most. Line these up as seen and sew onto your page or card.
Once you have the half circles sewn onto your paper, then open the circle up, and fold it in on itself along the fold as shown.
Do this to all the half circles on both sides and you will end up with a fun, dimensional border like this:
The blue and pink flowers and green leaves were made using seam binding ribbon that I colored with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and Ranger Distress Ink Reinkers (I mixed colors to get just the right shade.) Then once the seam binding was dry, I followed this flower tutorial.
The sketch called for a leafy vine to run across the bottom of the page, but I decided I wanted a lace trim instead. Because one of my favorite scenes from Sleeping Beauty is when Flora, Fauna and Merriweather fight over what color Aurora's dress should be, I thought it would be fun to color the lace blue and pink. I broke out the cream lace trim and some glimmer mist and got to work. After I colored both ends of the trim, and dried it, it looked pretty good, but was a little strong for the page. It was okay, but I just didn't want it to stand out that much. While I was thinking about what to do to lighten it a little, I accidentally brushed it aside and noticed the back. WOW! I loved how the Glimmer Mist didn't soak in to the embroidery and allowed the cream lace detail to show through! One of those happy accidents!
For the title and the dark blue circle, I just sprayed a bit of Glimmer Mist on some of the polka-dot paper and cut it out with my QuicKutz.
I thought this layout was going to be an easy one, but it ended up taking me quite a long time with all the dying, drying and sewing. I'm really happy with the end result though!
Now here's a little fairy magic to put a smile on your face:
I like to make CD's to play in the car when we are driving, and sometimes make one for a friend or family member. I found these CD holders on sale recently and thought it would be a fun thing to make and use some of my new Quickutz Travel dies.
First, I covered the CD cases with Crate Paper "Static" collection, which I also got on sale.
Then I stamped on the luggage tag die, then hung it from some ribbon with a mini safety pin. I couldn't find any affordable ribbon to go with the Static paper, so I made my own using Adirondack Color Wash and some cream gingham ribbon from Bazzill (yep, another sale item!) The Denim was a little too blue for the paper, as you can see from the sample on the far right, so I filled a mini mister 2/3 full with denim color wash and then spritzed in about 5 shots of the butterscotch colorwash to make it just the right green/blue for the paper.
Then decorated each license plate a little differently. The sign shape in the center of the license plate was made by cutting out the shape with the QK sign die from a piece of Tim Holtz Mask, and then centering it over the license plate and inking it with distress ink.
I can't help it, I had to do some sewing on each one of them, even if it was just a little bit. This was a really fun little project and I'm looking forward to making a few more!
Did I ever have fun with the techniques on this one! My friend Susan has a fantastic scrapbooking blog and she often posts tutorials based on the techniques she uses. That is how this page got it's start. I read her "Make Your Chipboard Shine" tutorial found here. (you have to scroll down a few entries to find it) Then I purchased some Cosmo Cricket Sweet Mix chipboard letters and got to work. The paper is Melissa Francis, and I used Inque Boutique stamps instead of the Basic Grey stamps shown in Susan 's tutorial.
Then it was on to the second page. I think embellishing page two is often more difficult because you don't have a title to take up space. But I think the Prima Say it in Pearls embellishments really did the job! I wanted to document when I took these pictures of the castle, so I figured a stamp border and some Quickutz letters would be just the thing, but the stamped border needed some shine. That is when Tim Holtz came to the rescue with his current blog technique. He stamped with distress ink and then just wiped perfect pearls over the stamp and brushed off the excess. It gave the stamped image a pearly look that was perfect. You can see Tim demonstrate his technique here.
You can barely see the shimmer of the border, then I backed it with Bazzill bling and cut the letters out in Bazzill Bling.
I regularly check many of the websites I have linked to this blog and on the Cosmo Cricket website last week I noticed that Julie had posted a you tube video demo by Natasja, one of their DT members. In it she showed how she made some paper flowers for embellishments. I thought they were so great and I wanted to use them on the very next layout I made. It just so happened that I was working on another Basic Grey Challenge layout using the Black Tie line and I thought they might just be a fun element to add to the page. So, here is my attempt at Natasja's flowers. I also lifted the torn corrugated paper corner idea from designer Susan Stringfellow.
A little about this layout, we were visiting Disneyland in October of 2008 and while pressing a quarter of the Nightmare Before Christmas 15 year Anniversay, we noticed Jack and Sally hanging out in a back, hidden atrium in New Orlean's Square. We followed them out and got this picture with them. I believe it was a very rare occurrence as we never saw them out again.
I bought a package of fabric rose petals from the dollar tree to make the snowflakes.
