Christmas in March? Getting Caught Up.

I am way behind in my blog postings and so the next few posts are my attempt to catch up. I had a pretty crazy December and despite my home life being in complete chaos due to a huge influx of rescue foster kitties, I still attempted to do some paper crafting when possible.  Most of what I did was to design make n takes and samples for my LSS. The owners of my LSS had over-ordered on the Distress Colors of the Month (over ordered?) well at any rate, they had a LOT of the new colors, so I challenged myself to try and make some Christmas cards with the colors I had at the end of November.  As you can see I was missing the red Candied Apple and the green Lucky Clover, but that would have been too easy.

So I used the Distress Markers to color in some of the Christmas Blue Prints in non-traditional colors.

I updated on my Instagram account as I went along. It kind of keeps me accountable to finish the projects that I start, especially when I don't have the time to upload photos and write a blog post. 

 Here is how they turned out!

 In the meantime I needed to come up with a simple, easy make n take for the December crop at the LSS. I decided to use an oldie but a goodie. Faux painted wood background using Distress Paint and Distress Stains.  Customers got a chance to make one of the background tags below and then they added a silver foil die cut Christmas Tree and added a little gold foil around the edges with the Ranger Collage glue stick and the Ranger foil sheets. Quick and simple but very popular! Customers loved it!

 I used some similar backgrounds to make card samples using the Distress Watercolor Blueprint stamps.

 Lastly, along the Christmas lines, at the November crop I was given an giftcard envelope and tag die and Christmas paper to design with.  So I made these little Christmas mini gift tags using some Tim Holtz dies and punches as well as Ranger Collage glue sticks and Ranger gold foil around the edges.

That pretty much does it for my own December creativity.  The rest of the month I only did craft kits and projects designed by others.

12 Tags of 2016 -January

I love both of the techniques Tim used for his January tag, so I thought it would be fun to make some using pinks and black so they would match my Valentine decor. It was such fun to dig into my Ranger and Ideaology stuff and just have some fun getting inky.

I do the paint technique a little different than Tim does but we get similar results.

I used a mixture of red chalk and white chalk for these tags.

Collect Moments Layout Kit

I bought this Fancy Pants paper kit last year at my LSS Black Friday event, but it took me a whole year to get anything made with it. Hey, in the course of my scrapping history, that is actually not bad. LOL!

This layout (not the best photo!) was based on Sketch Savvy Sketch #129.

This layout is based on Sketch Savvy Sketch #140.

Basic Grey October Page of the Month

 This month's kit was Christmas in October! It was another month with tons of embellishments. I just noticed in posting these pages that I forgot to take a photo of the single page from the kit.  I will have to add that at another time.
These papers were perfect for Disney Christmas pics, specifically my beloved Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree.  I LOVED the Jamboree and am so sad it is gone because of the impending construction of Star Wars Land.  I'm really, really, really despondent about the whole thing. Even this happy memory couldn't bring me out of my BTR mourning funk. :'-(

The layout above and below were made with leftover scraps from the kit.  There really was so much product that I still have enough to do a couple of cards, even after making two bonus pages. Both of these layouts were based on Sketch Savvy Sketches, but for the life of me I can't remember which ones. Suffice it to say that you NEED to visit Sketch Savvy for some seriously great inspiration!

Both of these layouts were taken while we were at Bass Lake for Thanksgiving the year it snowed at the lake. I hadn't scrapped these photos and thought they were perfect for this paper.
Again, I was stuck with using just the leftover embellishments and I had already had to substitute items on the kit layouts because my ephemera pack was missing pieces. So by the time we got to the bottom of the barrel it was getting kinda tough, but I'm happy with the extra layouts.

Basic Grey POTM September Kit

This was my first month facilitating the Basic Grey Page of the Month class at my LSS. The owner who usually teaches the class is unable to teach it for the next few months and so in order to help alleviate some of the burden on the remaining owners, I volunteered to facilitate the class. I say facilitate because the kit comes with a two-page and a one page layout designed and with instructions. I just have to FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS (a very difficult concept for me. Truly!)

Anyway, here are the two pages that were designed and in the kit.  I felt the bright colors called for Disney Photos, but as you can see, some of the embellishments don't quite fit my pictures, but that's ok. I think it's funny and makes me like the pages even more. LOL!

This last page was actually an extra page that I designed to use up as much of the left over paper as I could. I still had plenty of embellishments and paper left to make another layout or several cards. They usually don't skimp on the POTM kits.

Basic Grey November Page of the Month

This month found me facilitating the Basic Grey page of the month class again and I was pleasantly surprised with the bright, fun paper.  I'm still struggling with following the directions and not just doing my own thing, and I don't like drawing the sewing on. I much prefer actually sewing, therefore, on some of the pages I forego the drawn stitching and am waiting until I get the pages back to actually sew on them. Other than that, I've been enjoying my time doing the class layouts according to directions and then doing my own thing on extra pages or cards with the leftover papers and embellishments from the kit.  I have limited myself to using ONLY things in the kit, so on the extras, although I have wanted to add some of my own stash I have refrained and only used leftover scraps from the kits.
As usual, the kits come with one two-page layout (seen above) and one single page layout (seen below.)

 This is my extra page made from the scraps from the kit.  I used Sketch Savvy Sketch #155.

 And here are two cards I made this month from scraps.  I still had enough scraps to make another page or a couple more cards.

Playful Collection Class

These are the projects in the Playful Collection Class kit as well as the additional optional pages at the end. I have included not only the photos that are in your directions, but also pictures of the optional pages and videos with additional instructions for each layout and the additional layouts.
I tried to keep them all short and separate so that if you didn't need info on that particular layout you could skip it.

 

So in the video I comment that I needed to add something to this layout.  I got a little carried away, but I did add a few things.

 I cut the pumpkin and leaves from Tim Holtz and Sizzix dies.

 I made this strip by join three 4" 1/4" strips together so it went across the entire page.  I didn't have a 12" piece of this pattern. You can't tell it is pieced unless I tell you so it worked.

Lastly, I cut these leaves from a Tim Holtz die.  I think the fall colors go so well with these old Disney pictures from Halloween Time.