Relaxing on Our Travels and Other Projects

It's a long post today guys. Mostly cause I was too lazy to make multiple posts but also because I uploaded all these photos at the same time.

So it is time for the Recipe Challenge over at Punky Scraps and it is all about shapes!! Come and see what the other fabulous DT members came up with.
This month's recipe:

Michelle - hexagons

Cheryl C – white paint

Kim - make a grid

Sara - use small photos

Nat - NO PINK

Mandy - use three circles

Elin -use three squares

maxell - use something transparent

Here is what I came up with:

 These are pictures from our boat tour of St.Augustine. I used the January Scraps of Darkness kit to make this layout. This page came together really quickly for me. I also credit my boyfriend for it as he made me drop the embellishments and spend time with him. So I didn't end up over-embellishing like I know I was going to. Looking at this page really makes me want to go to the beach, which actually I might be able to soon. Yay Florida!!

Before the paint dried I sprinkled embossing powder and heated it to add sparkle and texture. I am loving embossing powder lately.

Here are some closeups of my beachy embellishments:

Now here is a look at what my boyfriend gave me for Valentine's Day. It is the greatest Vday gift I have ever received and I love him so so so much more for it:

He made it all by himself!!! Isn't it amazing for a first page ever? He started it a week before and did it secretly during the time when he gets home from work and before I do. He stole pieces from my stash little by little as well so as not to tip me off. Though I was definitely looking for some of it during that time and thought I was going crazy. I might be insanely possessive with my crafty items. ;-) He was so scared that I would think it was dumb but I love it more than any page I have ever made if that makes sense. I have it displayed proudly in my cubicle at work. I love him <3<3<3

Lastly here are most of the Valentine's Day Card Designs that I sold this last week. I took the pictures last minute which is why the quality isn't great.

Card #1

Card #2 in two different color schemes

Card #3

Card #4

Card #5 (my favorite)

Sadly I didn't get a picture of my most popular card design because I am a slacker. I might make another though to have as a sample design.

Well I hope you guys enjoyed this monster post!!

Explore

I am really back into scrapping and it feels great!! I am just all anxious to receive my next kit from Scraps of Darkness (though I am pretty sure it is because there is a lot of black in it and I might be going through a pink and red overload at the moment due to my Valentine's Day cards).

I am actually participating in a challenge this month too!! Woo! It is the January Sketch Challenge over at SOD and Charlotte created another fantastic sketch for us to be inspired by. Here is what I came up with called 'Explore'

I really loved that trip that we took. I took this picture from Hemingway's house actually. I did lots of misting and stuff with this page.

I used one of my favorite techniques of painting with gesso and then misting over it. I also mist the tulle and then used a heat tool to distress it in places.

Here is a closeup of Mandy's awesome pin that was included in the romance add-on

For the title I painted the chipboard with soft gel and then I covered it with embossing powder which I then heated. I really love how it turned out.

I hope you guys like it! I am going to be really sad when I finish these photos ... I guess I will just have to take another vacation! Now I am off to go make 8 cards and then I will be able to take a little break for a while!!

Boo! and It's A Beautiful Day

It's time for the sketch challenge over at Punky Scraps!! I used my January Scraps of Darkness kit for this sketch and the pic is of my boyfriend and me being silly before we went on the St. Augustine Lighthouse ghost tour. To play along with this fantastically fun sketch and be inspired by the amazing talent on the DT head on over to Punky Scraps!

I titled this 'Boo!' as a playful way to document the start of our Ghost Tour (Which was incredibly disappointing and we had the bad luck to be in a group with 12 tweeny girls ... lots of screeching. However we did find out that apparently my boyfriend is afraid of heights so that's something I guess)

This is an envelope tag which I took apart so I could use the whole design. Also I have never really been able to use envelopes on pages well ... I think it's cause I don't journal a lot.

The background is a result of a lot of trial and error. I first put the page together without any paints or mists and it looked very nice, but of course I must always have some paint or mist on a page because I am obsessed with them. So I tried to do a certain effect but I messed it up and it became a huge mess. At that point I thought it could hurt to just keep adding until it looked decent or the paper disintegrated. Seriously I am pretty sure that paper was close to falling apart when I finally achieved a look I liked.

I love these flowers :-)




This is a page I did a few weeks ago using my December Scraps of Darkness kit that I realized I never posted. I really love certain elements of this page, I am just not sure that they all work together. Ah well. I've titled it 'It's A Beautiful Day'.

 

On a side note I have finally started selling handmade cards! It is so cool to get paid for crafting ... however it might have burnt me out just slightly because I decided to sell Valentine's Day cards and I got a bigger response than I anticipated and it is just around the corner. So its been pink and hearts non-stop for a few days. I really think I should put them on Etsy and see what I could do there. I've heard mixed things about Etsy, let me ask is it worth it?

You Adore Me!

After my brief spurt of creativity in late December I lost my mojo yet AGAIN. I basically did nothing creative in January which was really sad. I think I was in a cycle where I was depressed about not creating and then not being able to create because I was so depressed. Ugh. Thankfully I had to kick myself in the rear to create my DT pages this month for Punky Scraps.

I loved Challenge 40 so much!! Go on over to Punky Scraps and join in!! Here is the page I created:

I doodled the entire background. Yes it was incredibly time-consuming. So I decided to do it at work! Thankfully my manager never comes around my cubicle. I did use up two pens though creating this. I think it was worth it.

When I finished it I brought it home to show it to my BF and he thought I had bought the page like that, which I took as a compliment. I misted it with a million (or 8) different colors. Basically until I got a look I loved. I really dig the 80s look to it.

Hope you like it and I hope to see you at Punky Scraps! Enter any of our 3 challenges this month and you could win a fabulous prize! The more challenges you complete the better your chances!!!

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.