Brat

Today to share with you guys I have Sketch 94 for Little Shop of Sketches. This sketch was designed by me and is my third ever sketch (but I think its my favorite :)).

When making a layout for this sketch I realized that it would work perfectly for a page I had in mind for the Scraps of Darkness Skeletons in the Closet Challenge. This month's topic was to scrap a self portrait of who you are when no one is looking. Well I am not afraid to admit that I am a huge brat when no one (but my boyfriend) is looking. I really feel like I should get my way all the time and when things don't go as planned I throw tantrums. Thankfully this occurs mostly in my head. Sometimes it does come out but I try to keep a lid on it most times ;) Feel free to join this challenge. The deadline is until November 15th. You do not have to be a kit subscriber to join. All are welcome! Skeletons in the Closet Challenge

The twists of the challenge was to use a photo that had been edited in some way, and to use some unconventional journaling. My journaling is the thesaurus entry for the word brat. Here is a close up:

I used the September Passages kit at SOD to create this page. I made the frame using black paint mixed with heavy gel medium. I cut out a stencil using my cricut and then gooped on the paint mixture. It created this really cool texture and it's really shiny in real life

The mat for the photo was a black and white page that I distressed, misted, and covered with spark mod podge. I also misted the background page A LOT.

The thin strips of paper and the flowers and the brads are partly gessoed and then I spritzed them with mist. This is one of my favorite techniques. I love the texture it creates and how it makes the colors pop.

I hope you guys enjoyed this page. Remember to play along with Little Shop of Sketches at our ning site!!

Love is Friendship set to Music

So here is my page for Challenge 29 over at Punky Scraps. This challenge was a recipe challenge. We had to use canvas, chipboard, 3 staples, a b&w photo, made is monochromatic, and use this to be inspired by

I used the September Passages kit from Scraps of Darkness. My page is titled 'Love is Friendship set to Music' which is a quote by E. Joseph Cossman.

I had an idea of how I want the page to look and I needed a specific circle punch that I did not have. I figured it wouldn't hurt to check out Hobby Lobby and Joanns. Unfortunately I could not find it and even though I had seen it at Michaels  I did not feel like driving 20 minutes to get there ( I can be crazy lazy sometimes). So I turned to my cricut and gypsy which I seriously don't use as much as I should. I found a design that wasn't actually similar but would work. However I screwed up by not letter the page dry enough before I put it in cutter. I had used Distress stains and inks on the paper to slightly change the color and because of that (and also the blade itself had gotten pretty dull) the design didn't cut right. When I tried to take the paper off the mat it started to break apart. I was pretty dismayed until I realized that putting the pieces together looked pretty darn cool. So I went with it and I seriously love how it turned out. Sometimes the best things happen through mistakes!

Here are the 3 staples

The chipboard, canvas (well I think these flowers are made out of canvas, it seemed like it. Honestly this was the closest thing I had to canvas)

Here is a closeup of the pin that Mandy (aka Craftysprinkles) made

This last picture is of the prima packaging that is oh so cool and fit so well with this kit. I really think I am going to end up using all the packaging. I inked it with Distress stains and mists. I also used some Vintage Photo ink around the edges of the photo to add interest.

I used a brown monochromatic color scheme. The butterflies and music notes are the inspiration I received from the image.

I hope you guys will play along at Punky Scraps! Remember to link up in order to win a super fabulous prize from Little Yellow House Kits!!!

Golden Gate Bridge

So here is yet another page for my parent's scrapbook. Recently I have made myself consider those pictures first so that I can finish this book soon. Hopefully before Christmas. I am so slow ::shakes head in shame:: I created this using the Scraps of Darkness Passages Kit (which is all about travel so how perfect is that?) and this is also for the Round Robin over there, I am week one, group 4. I titled this 'Golden Gate Bridge' because it is about ... The Golden Gate Bridge!! (I amuse myself ;))

So I was definitely inspired by Nancy (aka Nancola) with the stitching and the full cut design in the bg. In fact I think I used the same cartridge and design that she did in her layout. I also was playing with layers which isn't something that I do very well. When all was finished I felt like it was missing something and that's when I brought out the gesso and mists I swore I wasn't going to touch this time. LOL whatever it makes me happy right? Here are some closeups:

The stitching is all hand stitched which is why it's not perfect ;) This page gave me such a hard time. I literally just finished it. I usually never leave a page so last minute. The crazy part is that I finished 3 other pages that weren't even due until a few weeks from now! Sometimes I know I make no sense ;D

Sean

EEEEE!! I am so excited to be sharing with you my first ever design team page for Punky Scraps!! I am so honored to have been chosen to be part of their unbelievably talented team. I strongly urge all of you to run, not walk, over to their site to check them out. Every month there are three challenges, one is an inspiration challenge, then there is a sketch challenge, and lastly a recipe challenge. So there is something for everyone and if you play you could win a fabulous prize from one of our amazing monthly sponsors!! So without further ado here is Challenge 28 which is the sketch challenge. This is the sketch this month:

So cool right? Here is my take, it is titled 'Sean'

This is of my nephew Sean and I made it for my parent's scrapbook. I used the September Scraps of Darkness Passages Kit which is absolutely fantastic. I am forseeing lots of grungy pages in my future and I couldn't be happier!! I used molding paste and various mists to create those circles. To get the circle shape I used a used up tape roll. Waste not want not and all that. Here are some closeups:

To get the shadowy big circles I just pressed the Mix'd Media Ink (that come in a circle ink pad) down on the page. I added buttons and brads because I love lots of embellishments. =D

I hope you guys like it and I hope that you all stop by Punky Scraps to play along!!

Harry Potter Land & Innertube Fun

So today I have two pages to share with you. The first is my layout for this weeks Little Shop of Sketches reveal. I got to design the sketch again this week. I'm really excited about it. This is just my second sketch ever. Here it is.

I was in the mood to do something playful, fun, and kinda clean since it had been a while since I had done something like that. However as soon as I was finished I thought that the page was lacking somewhat. I think it's cause I am much more attracted to the distressed, multi-media, technique filled pages. My boyfriend said that he liked it much more than my usual style so I guess to each their own right?

This was taken on my birthday last year when we went to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure to visit Harry Potter Land. I had a great time even though I thought the ride was a little overrated and the line to get a wand was absolutely ridiculous. My favorite thing about this page is the masking. I used an old birth control pack to get the design. My boyfriend thought it was ingenious but gross. LOL I think that pretty much anything can be used for scrapping in one way or another. =)

Remember if you want to play along just upload your layout to the Little Shop of Sketches Ning site!!

The other page I have for you guys is my entry in September's Round Robin over at Scrapbook.com. I am in week two and I was to lift from Krista's (aka Puppet) page 'Every Party Needs Hats!' The twist this month was rainbow. Now I have to say that I love rainbows, I just hate using those colors together (despite the fact that I actually have used this color scheme on two other layouts, I know I am kinda a hypocrite ;) ) . However I wanted to see if I could use those colors and not have it look super bright, fun, and looking like it belonged at a kids party. I am pretty happy with the results.

So I grunged up the design by adding inking, misting, distressing, and black. This layout made me realize that I hate scrapping with the color red. I don't know why but I always avoid red colored paper and I pretty much have to be forced to use it. Weird. However all 6 colors are here. Yellow is around the page, the mat is blue, the edges of the mat are orange, the flowers are purple and green, and the first part of the title is in red. These picture are of my friend and I tubing down this river in North Florida. It was always a fantastic time doing that but you had to be sure to get out before sundown cause then the gators came out.

Here are some close ups of the flowers. The small flowers were white and I misted them with purple and green mist and then dotted them with black stickles. The big flowers are dotted with black mist.

That's it for me, I hope you guys are having a great week!!

Woo Hoo!!!!

Guess what!! I am one of the new Punky Scraps Design Team members!!! I am so freaking happy about this. This challenge blog was definitely one of the reasons (if not the only reason) that I finally created my blog. I just wanted to play along with all the challenges, and now I am so happy to be able to inspire others to do the same. So come check out the site and the challenges and meet the whole team. There are 6 new Punky Rebels and the talent on the teams just blow me away. I am on Team A so I will be able to jump into the challenges next week so stay tuned for that. The challenge that is up now is Challenge 27- Tartan anyone? You have to make a layout based on this image:

I am so sad that I missed making a page for this but I am thinking I still might just for fun and because it is seriously a cool pic. If you play this month you could win a kit from Little Yellow House Kits. Be sure to check out Punky Scraps!!

Our Granddaughter

This page that I have to share today is really special for me. I made it for my parent's scrapbook, hence the title of 'Our Granddaughter'. The page is of my parents and my niece Shea. I'm really proud of it because I drew everything on it except for the pic (of course) and the alphas (my handwriting is ATROCIOUS). I made this for the doodle challenge on scrapbook.com where the twist this month was to have a completely doodled page (except for the title). Let me tell you that I practiced the design before I put it down on the page and even then I had a huge eraser by me at all times. It took a while but I really love how it came out. And yes I know that I keep putting black on baby pages. I just don't know why and I can't help it. I hope she turns out to be a punk princess because otherwise I might have some explaining to do.

I did this using black and purple pens, faber castell's pastel pencil in yellow, their pitt artist pen in green, and stickles. Here are some close ups of the flowers:

Thanks for looking!!

Contemplation

So this is my take on Sketchy Thursdays 9.1 Sketch. I used the Scraps of Darkness Envy kit. I titled it 'Contemplation'.

This is a pretty simple page for me. My boyfriend LOVES my simpler pages so when I do a page of him I try to take that into account. Though I realized it is almost impossible for me to not put stickles on a page. I might have a problem =)

I thought this might be the last page I did with the kit but I think I can squeeze out at least one more. I am so sad to see this kit end. It was definitely my favorite so far.

Us

So here is yet another page using the Scraps of Darkness Envy kit. To be honest when I started this page I didn't really like the direction it was going and kinda left it alone for a while. Then the other night I was bored and restless and started playing with paints and voila! This page happened. It's titled 'Us.'

I fussy cut the edges and put them on a light green paper that had leaves on it. Not that you can tell after all the paints and mists. I punched a design on some paper and used that as a stencil. I color it I used black acrylic paint and molding paste. I then went over it slightly with some purple acrylic paint, sprayed various mists over it, and added some crackle accent. Here's a close up

I didn't like the flowers all white so I added drops of green and purple mist on them.

These cool frames came in the kit but they were white, I painted them black. I also framed the picture with lavender liquid pearls and mystic green stickles.

I added the butterfly and flourish, but to have the flourish fit with the page I went over the rhinestones with ink and stickles.

I was mainly inspired by the colors of my blog for this page. I just had so much fun creating this!

Hoping & Wishing

The page I have to share with you today is my entry for the Scraps of Darkness August Round Robin. I am week three and had to lift Cheryl's amazing layout which can be found here. My page is titled 'Hoping & Wishing' and I used the fabulous August Envy Kit from Scraps of Darkness.

So I have been wanting to do the rolled paper in the shape of a circle for ages now and this was a great opportunity. I really like how it came out. Double sided patterned paper is a MUST for this effect. I gesso'd the edges, then went over them with some magical micas, mists, and ink.

The twist this month was to have a handmade flower on the page. This is the flower I made for my 'Fan Flowers with a Twist' tutorial and I haven't gotten around to putting on a page yet. Good thing too because I was very last minute in completing this page and while making flowers are fun they are very time consuming.

I am just in love with the effect I got on my pink paislee mistable embellishment. I think it's my favorite thing about the page! I just randomly brushed some magical micas and then dotted it with some Tattered Angels.

This picture was taken of me on my boyfriend's and I vacation. We were driving down to the keys. I think it speaks to how I have been feeling lately. I have definitely done a lot of hoping and wishing in recent times. Thanks for looking!