Bubbe

So I'll say it again (yes, it's like Groundhogs Day -- have you ever seen the movie?) I have been creating but I haven't been blogging. We're attempting to finish our new house so we can finally move and I have huge work event and well there really is only so much time in the day. I guess I would rather make memories and capture them than detail my process.

Anyway, my husband's grandmother passed away two years ago yesterday. She really was a great woman -- smart, strong and opinionated, protective of her family and its traditions, but warm and welcoming. My husband saw this layout that I made of her and my daughter not too long before she died and kept asking to see it. So this one's for him.

The pink flowered and brown striped papers and the title stickers actually came from a kit, which I rarely buy. I believe it's Cloud 9 by Colorbok/Fiskars because that's what the stamps are. I looked at the flowered paper and thought, "That looks familiar!" and realized I had the coordinating stamps (Chocolate Chalet) so I used them to stamp the title block. I think it came out a little busy but it conveys the fun these two were having.

And here's another one also featuring my daughter and her great-grandma.

This one uses that brand of paper that Michaels sells, Reminisce I think (paisley), and a sheet from a new stack I just bought by My Minds Eye, Lime Twist. Yes I was supposed to be curtailing my craft purchases until after we move, but I just could not resist this stacks luscious colors and fun, versatile patterns! I was also happy to finally use the felt flower border that I've been hoarding in my stash for quite some time. I filled the flower centers in with tiny pearls and added larger pearls to the Prima flower centers.

"Beautiful" layout

Well the Ikea cabinet buying went better than expected although what I didn't expect was to not have time to post again until after they were already delivered! They haven't been put together by my contractor yet though so it's a ways away as to when I'll see my new kitchen completed.

Meanwhile, my parents came to town, which took away from my creating and blogging time, but I did finish more pages than I anticipated. Warning: pink, girly baby pages to come in the next few posts!

I finally was able to finish the page that I talked about awhile back, when I was making this starburst card for my co-worker as practice. The technique wasn't as time-consuming as I feared but I am glad I practiced it on a smaller scale first.

The journaling captures the first time I saw my daughter and I think this page does that moment justice. I got to use up a bunch of scraps that I really like. The title didn't work out as I originally planned but I love how glittery the letters are in person and how they curve around the photo. I love it!

Sweet Dreams

Well I have been working very hard at work, at my actual real job, so too much creating hasn't been happening. Here's a quick page that I made that is turning out to be one of my favorites.

I love the photo itself but also the way everything is arranged.The most time-consuming part was searching for the perfect embellishments that weren't too girly for this photo of my husband fast asleep with my daughter. I just happened to see these K & Co. Edamame layered stars on my craft table and I think they are perfect with the Sweet Dreams epoxy sentiment. Detail view of cluster:

Well now it's time for sweet dreams for myself! I'm off to IKEA at the crack of dawn to order cabinets for my new kitchen.

Thankful greetings from Boston

Well, it's been a little crazy in the Boston area lately. To say the least. My family and I are fine and don't really know anyone who was directly affected by the Marathon bombing. Thankfully we felt too lazy to go down to see the Marathon that day and even though my office is really close to the scene of the manhunt for the suspects, I was safe at home, three miles away.

My five year wedding anniversary and my birthday also happened the same week, and we are getting ready to move, so it was crazy on a personal level as well. 

I did get to do some crafting though -- yay! Made this cute card to thank my boss for bringing me back a beautiful pearl necklace from her trip to China:

My inspiration was this card I saw on Pinterest:

This was an awesome card to use up small scraps! As you can see, I used scalloped circles instead of plain ones, moved my sentiment and raised it up on pop dots, and embossed a piece of brown cardstock with my Texture Boutique instead of using a patterned graph paper for the background. I also rounded the bottom corners and added pearls in the center of each butterfly to reflect the pearls that I was thanking the recipient for.

I fee like I'm cheating when I base my work so closely on that of someone else, but sometimes I'm in a bit of a rush and Pinterest and other sites really help get the creative juices flowing.

I have a really special scrapbook page that I've been working on that documents the first moment I saw my daughter. I'm hoping I'll get to finish it tonight (or at least sometime this week!) so I can post it.

A traditional page, made without a sketch

Usually I mock up a sketch for my scrapbook pages. It's rare for me to just sit down with a bunch of photos and make a page without having some kind of blueprint to follow. I use Photoshop to color-correct and resize my photos anyway so I usually just plop the touched-up photos into an 8.5 by 11 inch canvas. Then I can play with placement and color, add digital papers and embellishments and write up some journaling.

Sometimes I'm happy with what I've come up with and print and use it as my final page, just adding real photographic prints and maybe some traditional embellishments to an otherwise digital page. But more often I use traditional cardstock and patterned papers to create my page, just printing out my sketch to use as a placement guide, and maybe printing out my journaling as well.


This page was one of the rare instances where I had no sketch or any preconceived notion of what I was going to do before I began. I had mocked up a rough sketch but when I looked at it, I really didn't like it. Unfortunately it appears that I dislike it so much that I deleted it from my computer, so I'm unable to show it to you. It must have been really bad! Anyway, I'm not really sure I know how this page came together, but it did:

I looked at the colors in my photo and remembered this cool die-cut piece of Making Memories paper that I had been wanting to use. It was 12 by 12 so I trimmed it down to make a large frame around my 3 by 4 inch photo. Then looked for a flowered pattern to use as a background that would coordinate and reflect my daughter's flowered shirt. I found this KI Memories kit, picked a flowered paper and then pulled out an aqua dotted piece to ground the photo so it didn't look like it was floating in space. I edged the strip with a piece of K & Co pink scalloped border sticker. 

The journaling tag just happened to be on my craft table. It is also Making Memories but from a different collection (Spring Fling). It had a wide rounded rectangular hole and at first I was going to slide ribbon through it, but this Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday strip of paper fit better. I layered everything on without planning out my title. I figured it could fit under the photo but really had no plan.

I looked for items that coordinated with the Making Memories paper and found this die cut label and the tiny alphabet stickers. The "7" is chipboard and the other letter stickers are from the KI Memories kit. I outlined all of the title stickers with the same brown pen I used for the journaling to tie them all together.

The embellishments are a random collection of flowers and an epoxy sentiment from the KI Memories kit plus a K & Co tag ("Wow"). The date sticker is from one of those journaling stacks. A random assortment of products but I think they came together pretty well and tell the story of the first time my daughter picked up a Cheerio with a proper pincer grip -- even without a plan!

6 Month Mom Layout

I am hesitant to post a scrapbook page because I never know the source of all of my materials. But I'll do my best to identify them and then if you want to know something more specific, let me know and I'll try to sleuth it out.

This photo on this page is from nearly two years ago but I just scrapped it recently. It was taken at a family party but I used it to record my feelings about being a mom and the first six months of my daughter's life. The journaling is short but captures what I think when I see this photo: "Still pretty new to the job and winging it most days, but the first six months of being Dalia's mom were some of the best of my life!"

I tried, with this layout, to break out of my usual line-it-up-perfectly mentality and create something a little grungier and more casual. I used a piece of  DCVW cardstock (the name of the stack is now escaping me) and cut around the flocked design so I could tuck the photo behind parts of the flower image. The patterned papers at the right were from my border scrap box, which mostly contains 12 by 1 inch pieces made from trimming down 12 by 12 papers to 11 inches for my 8.5 by 11 inch pages. I know the aqua and red flowered one is Basic Grey but I'm unsure about the others.

The title block was leftover from covering a chipboard frame with cardstock. I wanted to bring in a bit of pink to make it a little more feminine and coordinate with my daughter's dress so I used a pink "6" sticker that I outlined with a black pigment pen and then doodle around it. The "mom" sticker came from an old DCWV stack. The round letter stickers at one point were clear epoxy-type domes but yellowed while sitting in my sticker stash (that's how old they are!) so I never used them before, but the yellow tint seemed to work on this page. 

The date in the upper left corner is one of my favorite details of this layout. I combined a piece of a label and part of a border sticker with a flower sticker and a gem. I now see that I neglected to erase my pencil lines -- oops! That's what happens when you're trying to finish up before nap time is over.

Notecards for a 50th Birthday

I can't believe I have a friend who just turned 50 -- that makes me feel old! I know it is still a ways away for me, but it's a reminder that 40 is starting to loom very large. Anyway, my friend had a 50th birthday/Oscar viewing party and I wanted to give her a special present to mark such a big birthday. She is a creative type (although she'd probably tell you that she isn't( and she appreciates handmade things. She also always tells me how much she loves the cards I have made for her daughter's birthdays (which reminds me that at some point I should post the super-cute Angelina Ballerina card I recently made for her daughter's third birthday). Anyway, I figured she'd be getting lot of other presents so I decided to make her some monogrammed note cards that she could use for thank yous.

To keep things uniform and make it look like a set, I used one layout with three different color schemes and made two of each card, for a total of a half a dozen cards. The base cards are an 8.5 by 11 sheet of cardstock cut in half to make two cards that are 5.5 by 4.25 inches folded. I ran each card through my Texture Boutique using the Swiss Dots folder (love it!). Then I cut 5.5 by 3 inch pieces from three different patterned papers leftover from scrapbook pages I had made.

I then picked out coordinating cardstock from a mat stack my boss had given me for the holidays. I had never bought a small stack like this before, thinking I'd rather have larger sheets to cut down than be limited by their small size, but I found that I really liked the wide variety of colors and the ease of flipping through them to choose just the right one. They were also just the right size to make two border strips and punch two scalloped circles from with minimal waste. I used the EK Success Parisian border punch and a Marvy scalloped punch that is about 2 1/4 inches.

I had bought a large "D" stamp because my daughter's name also starts with D (I think it's Hampton Arts? The cheapo $1 ones they sell at Michaels/AC Moore). I stamped the D with Colorbox Fluid Chalk inks (my go-to inks) in Olive Pastel, Lime Pastel and Chestnut Roan on white cardstock and then punched each one out with my 2 inch Fiskars Circle squeeze punch.

I then ran all of the pieces through my trusty Xyron. I layered each D circle onto a coordinating scalloped circle. I wrapped a piece of white ribbon (from Target, leftover from my wedding four years ago) around each patterned paper panel, adhered a border strip and then placed the layered circles on the right side of each patterned panel, over the ribbon. I attached the patterned paper sections to the textured cards and then tied a piece of ribbon in a knot around the already attached ribbon. Finally I punched butterflies using my Martha Stewart punch. I attached them by cutting pop dot circles in half and putting on each wing. Then I topped each butterfly with a crystal gem.

I used one card to write a message to the birthday girl then packaged the other five up by wrapping with some baker's twine. I put them in a fabulous feathered bag (that I wish I had taken a photo of!) and gave them to the birthday girl.