A Demo Night

It's been awhile since I had a Demo Night, so I've scheduled one for this Thursday, February 3 from 7 - 9 pm if you are interested and able to attend.

I really enjoy doing Demo Nights. It's always fun to have people around and have that energy pulsing. It's also really good for me since it gives me a push to play and find something cool to demonstrate.

With that in mind, today was the day. My sister is over scrapbooking and I pulled out all my Technique Junkies newsletters. I love those things!! Normally, when I'm looking for a technique, I will work backwards through them, but this time, I grabbed an issue from a couple of years ago and flipped through it. There was a technique which called for Shimmer Paints, but did not give a name brand or anything, so I remember skipping it since I didn't know what product they wanted. Today, however, I had a lightbulb moment and thought I'd try Lumiere Paints. When I first started selling stuff, I ordered several jars of Lumieres because I knew I had heard of a technique with them somewhere, but to this day, I haven't found out what that was. It's OK, though, because, today, I learned something I can do with them.

I'm not going to detail the technique until after the Demo Night so that those who come can oooh and aaaah, but I will share it sometime afterwards.

So, here is a little sneak peak.


I hope to see you Thursday. If you can come, just let me know so I can prepare!

An oldie

I haven't been stamping a lot lately; life is just too busy, but I'm hoping to get back to it this week. The kids are off school tomorrow and I have a few things to do, but I'm hoping to get back into my craft room and get going again!

In the meantime, here is an old card I did for a class last year. It's so simple, but I still really like it.

I flicked wet Twinkling H2Os to create the background. When you look at the card close up, the spots sparkle which I loved. Then I just over stamped the Script and the Eiffel Tower (both by Art Impressions - that Eiffel Tower is one of my favorite stamps). The half scallop is just a scallop circle (Spellbinders) that I folded in half to create an accent.

It's CHA Time

Well, almost anyway. I see posts on my Facebook feed about Ranger setting up their booth. I'm sure there will be a ton of new and cool things.

I know I have been absent, but I'm going to try to fix that now. I've been sick this week and haven't felt like doing much.

I was checking out some of the new releases from Tim Holtz. It seems that he has some new smaller dies which look kind of cool. They will be $16 each and so I assume that they are just a bit smaller than his current ones. Here are a few of the new ones:
Mini FlourishMini Branch & Leaf Set

Mini Butterfly Set
Mini Heart Set
Mini Lock & Key Set

I am hoping that these are the perfect size for cards as some would be very cool as an embellishment to a card, especially cut out of grungepaper and distressed.

I'm Back

I got back super late Sunday night (really early Monday morning) and have been feeling rather overwhelmed as I try to get caught up. Needless to say, there hasn't been any crafting going on. I am quite excited to start working on my Vegas scrapbook. I just need to wait for a bunch of my friends to send me the photos and then I'm going to see what I can do with it all. I have a bunch of ideas in my head, so hopefully I don't lose them before I start.

In the meantime, however, here is an older layout of mine. My sister was over one day and we wanted to scrapbook, but weren't feeling creative. So, I flipped through a magazine and stopped on the first simple layout I saw and made us both create based on that. Sometimes doing those quick, simple, copied layouts really gets me excited and motivated again. The heart is Grungeboard which I inked using Distress Inks. Very quick and simple embellishment.


I also want to say a huge Congratulations to my friend, Jackie, who was one of the top 5 winners on the Flourishes Blog Contest. You can see her card here. You can visit her awesome blog here.

So Simple

I love the simple clean look, which is good for me since I don't seem to have a lot of time to create really detailed and in depth pages.

Here is a page that really is a 5 minute layout. Just mat the photo and add an embellishment (this is a cut out from my Cricut - Pagoda) and then either stamp a title, use a sticker as I did or print the title as I did.

Collage

I love when people do these layouts with a ton of the same sized pictures on them. It looks so cool. Unfortunately, I can seldom get my photos to work. I can't seem to cut them down enough and get them lined up evenly!

Then one day I had an epiphany. I created the collage page digitally and then just had it printed. And I did the other page traditionally. I like to see different layers and mats and the depth of traditional scrapbooking, but like the versatility of digital. This way I can have both.

I opened up the 16 photos and cropped each of them to 2.75"x2.75" which meant I could keep much of the photo (as opposed to getting it printed as a 4x6" photo and then trying to crop it down). I then created a new file in Photoshop (but you can use any photo editing program; I've heard good things about Picasa by Google which is free). I then just started adding photos and lining them up until they were all there. It was very quick and simple. Costco will print 12x12" photos so, I just uploaded it to them and picked it up the next day.

I really like the other page too. It's basically just paper layered on top of each other and then glitter letters. The letters were plain chipboard and I used heat and stick powder and then added glitter when it was hot and sticky. It worked great. Some of the glitter has come off part of the one letter as Kayla kept touching it, but the rest is still going strong.

Brown Eyed Girl

I did a photoshoot when Kayla was maybe about 3. I caught this picture and what really stood out to me is her big brown eyes. They're gorgeous. One of my favorite songs is "Brown Eyed Girl" so I chose a simple layout and the song title as my title.

I made some vellum tags with my Tag Maker and then just embellished them with buttons. It's a simple layout, but one of my favorites.