Love and Best Friends

I have two pages to share with you before I go and celebrate Christmas at my parent's house. I am so excited to see everyone but I am very sad that I won't be able to do any scrapping this weekend whatsoever. Especially since I will be working 10 hour days for the next two weeks. Anyways here are two pages that I have created with the Scraps of Darkness Winter's Eve kit.

The first is titled 'Love' (I SO blanked on a title) and is my take on the December's sketch challenge for SOD.

I absolutely love this picture and I am the one who actually took it which is surprising because I usually hate my own shots. I think my boyfriend is the one who takes amazing pics.

Close up of Dusty Attic chipboard circle and flowers. I painted the circle with gesso and then a pearly white acrylic paint.

I distressed the paper behind the photo using Mandy's technique which I saw in one of her videos. So much easier than what I was doing so thanks for that Mandy!! I also framed the paper with stickles and liquid pearls because I love my glam.

Close up of the big flowers.

Close up of title and gem border.

Here's the second page I have to share titled 'Best Friends'

My boyfriend truly is my best friend. He is the one person that I tell EVERYTHING to and that when anything (and I mean anything) happens in my life I want to immediately tell him. He can irritate and hurt me like no one else while he also makes me happier than anyone else. <3

I used a blue aquarelle pencil from Faber Castell to add color to the flourish design thingy.

My distressed layers.

So yeah this page is pretty simple compared to others however it was a bit time consuming because I thought it would look cool if I dotted every point with either stickles or liquid pearls. I actually love the finished product.

So there are my pages .. I hope you guys like them. Merry Christmas to you all!! I hope you all have a fun and family filled weekend!

Enchanted

Either I am either finally getting used to my work schedule or the fact that there was nothing to watch on TV led me to actually scrapping last night. I know I was shocked that first I was able to squeeze out enough glue for an entire page (please Santa I really want adhesive this year!!) and second I actually had the energy and creativity to see the page through. Also I totally love it. I truly believe it might be my favorite page ever. Of course this is always changing, but at this moment this page is my favorite. So now I give you 'Enchanted' (yes I was so creative with the title ... it didn't already come on the paper at all ;-) ):

This is my absolute favorite picture of my anniversary vacation with my boyfriend. I am really sad these pics are dwindling down. I think that means we need to go on another vacation :-D. I used the amazingly gorgeous Winter's Eve kit from Scraps of Darkness which features the amazingly gorgeous Enchanted line from Bo Bunny. Bo Bunny is also the inspiration of this page. I created it for their Layout Challenge Friday which was to be inspired by circles. Besides the photo and the photo mat everything is basically circles or circle-ish.

This is a chippie from Dusty Attic (I have finally used a chandelier!!) I spritzed it with Mister Huey's and then used glossy accents.

Embellishment cluster. The Doily flower used to be white.

Embellishment cluster #2. I tried to use mostly Bo Bunny products. Luckily this kit was full of them and so is my stash. The red gems by the title are also Bo Bunny, I forgot I had them and I thought something was missing I look over to my left and I swear they popped out at me. LOL

This might sound weird but I swear this quote is my favorite thing, not only about this page but about the whole kit in general. I love it. I also feel like it encompasses what I was feeling when this picture was taken.

I hope you enjoyed it! I also hope that this trend continues and I will start creating a lot more. I know nothing will get done this weekend because of Christmas but that's fine because I will be with my family this Christmas and I cannot wait. Merry Christmas!!

My Christmas Trees!!

This year my boyfriend and I unfortunately could not get a Christmas tree. Mainly because during the time that we should have bought it to make the cost worthwile and to guarantee we get the most use out of the tree overall, we decided that groceries were more important than trees. Apparently food turned out to be more important than Christmas ... who knew? ;-) As we are going to be spending Christmas with my family at their house this year anyways a tree wasn't really necessary, however I was still despondent over this and I decided to make my own tree. I scoured the internet for tutorials so I wouldn't unnecessarily waste my supplies on trial and error (around this time I also realized that I was dangerously low on glue, and I was told that crafting supplies are not more important than gas that would get us to work). I liked the trees I found so much that I decided to do more than one. There were other trees I wanted to make as well but alas I did not have all the supplies for those. So all in all I ended up making 6 paper Christmas trees. Here they are:

The first one I made was the Tissue Paper Tree using this tutorial from AliLily:

I also glued sequins for ornaments and I topped it with two circle stickers. This is also where I realized that not having a glue gun is stupid and wastes a lot of time. After that a glue gun became the number one item I wanted most for Christmas.

Next came the Paper Cone Trees. I used the template found on Paper View.

The first tree was made with Webster's Pages materials. The other two with Bo Bunny. I found the gold bead topper in my stash and I thought it was an awesome find. I love how it made the little tree come together. I redid the stacked tree like twenty times because it wasn't turning out right. I finally figured out that I need to wrap each layer tighter that the one below it. I felt ridiculously slow that it took me a few tries to figure that one out. This is also where a glue gun would have come in handy because I had to tape the edges together. Oh well this is why there is a front and back right?

Then we have my Button Tree. I did not use a tutorial for this one because really ... incredibly self explanatory right?

I used a green paper cone because I knew there would be uncovered spots. The big spots I covered with brads. I actually ended up running out of glue on this tree so I used glue dots. I also ran out of green buttons towards the top so I used blue buttons ... it kinda matches right?

The last tree took me the longest. I mean I was working on this one for a couple of hours for three days. At the end my fingers hated me. I was inspired by a tutorial from Taylor Designs though as you can see I definitely tweaked it

I ended up rolling the paper strips completely together so it looks like little logs. Yes this added to the headache and no I have no idea why I did it like that. Though I do have to say that I love love love how it turned out. I think it looks better than the other way so I am so glad that I did it this way. This is also the tree that completely depleted my supplies of glues dots which is probably the main reason that I did not continue.

After making all these trees I ended up not even putting them up at my house! No they are decorating my cubicle at work where I spend most of my waking hours at anyways so I am able to enjoy them more. The best part is that people are coming over just to look at them. Since I have started this job I have become known as the crafty girl and people stop by to see my creations every once in a while. Which is really flattering.

I hope you guys enjoyed these trees and are inspired to make your own!

Giggle

Well I have finally made a page that I totally love. Recently I've been really down on my pages and I think it started that cycle where I just kept hating everything I was creating and therefore I kept creating pages that I hated. Thankfully though I think I am getting out of it because I really really adore this page. Though maybe because I just love this picture of my niece. I created this page for the Scraps of Darkness Round Robin. I am week 3 and I followed this project. I was kinda stumped on this at first and then a couple of days ago something just clicked. This is what I came up with, titled 'Giggles':

I used the November Scraps of Darkness kit. I used paper strips to reference the different boxes on Rabbit51's projects. I randomly painted spots with crackle paint and of course I misted everywhere. I love mists ;) Here are some closeups:

Right now I am really involved with making paper Christmas trees that I am planning on decorating my cubicle with. Since my boyfriend and I aren't getting a Christmas tree this year I think I wanted to surround myself with them at work, regardless of the fact that they are made of paper. I will post pictures of them once I complete them. I am also making my own calendar. I think I will post that as well. I have 8 months left to go and I am trying to keep it a cleaner style than my normal preference. It's going pretty easy actually. I hope I will be able to work on some pages as well. I want to finally finish my parent's scrapbook and my sister's. Actually with this page I think I am almost done with my sisters book.

Wrapped Around Her Little Finger

So I have been struggling lately with my creativity mojo. I actually really dislike the last page I made for the Punky Scraps challenge 35 which is sad because it was a really great challenge, so if you are a super fast scrapper definitely go check it out because it's fab and you could win a great prize of Nikki Sivvils products. However I did force myself to create a page for the Dusty Attic November 2011 Sketch Challenge. The leaves are from Dusty Attic which I covered with liquid pearls. I figure if I throw myself into various challenges I will rediscover my creativity. I am hoping it will work. It should also help me finish some of the various albums I have going on for my family. So here it is 'Wrapped Around Her Little Finger':

This is my niece Shea gripping the finger of my father. I am making an album of Shea for my sister. I made this page with the November Scraps of Darkness kits which just made me think of my niece so don't be surprised if the rest of the pages I make from this kit all feature her.

Killer Clown

I have been so absolutely terrible lately about posting and scrapping. It's just that I feel like I haven't gotten any sleep for 3 weeks now. Every night my boyfriend and I keep waking up every two hours and when I do get some shut eye I am just plagued by the weirdest, most intense, and involved dreams (nightmares) so I definitely don't feel rested afterwards. I kinda just checked out emotionally lately. Today I tried so hard to just sleep and sleep and sleep. I gave up around 3. It's sad that I am comforted by the fact that my boyfriend is experiencing this as well, I think that makes me a bad person. Oh well.

With all of this going on it's crazy that I actually found inspiration to scrap. I think it's because of the amazing sketch that is Challenge 34 at Punky Scraps. Here is my page:

Here is the sketch that inspired it:

Isn't it awesome? So you should definitely head over to Punky Scraps and play. You could win some goodies from Nikki Sivils.

I created this with the October kit from Scraps of Darkness. Unfortunately I had to postpone my November kit till later in the month but it's kinda a good thing because at least now I am fully utilizing this awesome kit. I still have so much left it's crazy. Here are some close ups:

This page actually came together fairly quickly. I don't think I am super fond of it though. =/


The picture was taken at last years Halloween Horror Nights. We couldn't go this year because of finances :( However I will still have Halloween pictures to scrap from this year because we were able to go out with some friends. For the first time in 5 years my boyfriend and I had matching costumes. We were gangsters:

I do have a lot more pictures from Halloween last year that I need to scrap before I can move on to these so you'll probably see these pictures next year. I swear I am a year behind and I get further and further behind each day.

Pieces

So today is the Challenge 33 Punky Scraps reveal and it is a fabulous one. So run over there and play along this month, you could win a fantastic prize!! Here is my page which I titled 'Pieces':

We were to be inspired by this picture:


and this quote:

I edited the picture in Photoshop and added the quote. Here is a close up:

The background was created with clear tar gel, coarse pumice gel, and different colors of mist. I first added the gels using the empty sheet that held some round pop up dots, so I used it as a stencil. I then poured so mist onto the page and randomly move it around to get the streaks. I also splattered so more colors afterward.

I changed the colors of the alphas with mist and used my heat gun on them so the mist bubbled up and created a cool texture. I sprayed some black mist over the flowers to darken up the page.

Afterwards I felt it was too dark so I added the red gemstones. I made this page mostly using the October Scraps of Darkness kit. I hope you enjoyed it!!