Witchy Woman Page for Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge

Some days I feel particularly random. I have eight things to post and this is the one that I want to post the most, so that is what I'm doing!


I have all sorts of cool goodies to show you, a double page layout by Marilyn, a pumpkin that Shirley made, a treat box for our crazy cat..and....a page I did of the kids....


But I can't hold back....this is my latest page. Maybe it's because I had to hide something on it.....


Feel free to click on this youtube video to listen to the song that inspired the title.


Raven hair and ruby lips,
Sparks fly from her fingertips
Echoed voices in the night,
She's a restless spirit on an endless flight

Ooh, ooh, witchy woman, see how high she flies
Ooh, ooh, witchy woman, she got the moon in her eye


Yes, lets take a quick break for the Eagles. 


Now, back to my page.


Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge has a new challenge up regarding costumes, use a bit of purple on your page, and also something hidden. Go check out her blog for more details. The best part? Super easy going challenge with a fun bunch of girls!

Giggle, wait 'til you see what I hid. Yup, more of me being random. 


Anne provided us with the lovely sketch below. Normally I don't have photos of myself being silly. I am occasionally, but normally I am pretty serious. But, Marilyn snapped this at my house over the weekend. I am wearing a witch hat I made for Lexi. Check out this post! She had left it out and I grabbed it as a joke and voila, the rest is history! Thanks for taking the photo Marilyn!








































Here is a closeup of my tattered black roses. They were some stash from Tink! Love them, took them apart, rolled them a bit and got some fun flowers for my witchy page. Added those cute little glass mushrooms too! Those all the way from Australia and a cool blogger at Eye Candy Magic. (ppssssT! She is running a sale)








































My next photo is of my moon! It was hard to take a photo of due to the glossy coat of Tim Holtz crackle glaze I added. Mr. Moon was originally black, but a bit of gesso, some yellow glimmermist, and glitter....and of course the little eye ball I drew in....


Thanks for my cool Halloween pieces Marilyn! See, I've used TWO already that you know about!
And, last but not least...my hidden journaling! See, I knew you spotted that wine cooler and wanted to know for SURE! I will tell you, there were 15 little kids running around. I needed that wine cooler! 


OH, I crack myself up. 


So, go check out the challenge!!! You can also use photos of a dressy occasion, those count too! What fun!

Pumpkin #2 Tissue paper and Modge Podge Technique

Linking this up with Passionately Artistic! What a fun blog! It's like Thanksgiving where you browse through taking a little bit of this out of a project and a little bit of that out of another...Or, in my case, a whole lotta banana pudding and turkey and just a little salad please....anyhow, go check her out!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love modge podge? It is really quite useful.


After our fun party on Sat. and clean up on Sunday, I HAD to get my hands on some craft time. So, instead of folding laundry, I made this pumpkin!

Some small person gave my son a present in a gift bag and it had some lovely orange tissue paper. Now, I am pretty fond of orange already and I thought maybe I could reuse this tissue paper on my pumpkin to give it a bit of a crinkle look. I modge podged chunks on, waited for it to dry, and then went over it with a bit of orange ink pad. A wee bit of glimmermist for a few freckles and some drying time....then I was ready for some flowers!













Marilyn passed along this AMAZING turquoise flower. It really didn't scream fall, but I loved it so....and it made a cool contrast to all that orange. So, a bit of hot glue later...You can see from the side that it is knitted and they basically had added a wire to allow the wrapping aspect. Haven't ever seen one like this before so I am super excited to enjoy my pumpkin on display and my awesome flower! Oh, I added the center portion with a bit of hot glue. Those flower stamens are glittery and produced by Wilton for cake decorating in a variety of colors. Mine are white and glittery, but I believe are mistable too, so that is why I opted for white!



















Also included in my montage of flowerness was a few white flowers from Prima, some gold glittery ferns I've been hording in my stash, and the same white Prima flowers that I've added some Tim Holtz NEW (oh happy dance) distress ink on (Gathered Twigs, Ripe Persimmon, and Seedless Preserves) that are new for the fall and will only be out this time of year.

Also, I ran the Tattered Leaves die through my Big Shot with a double layer of aluminum foil and got some fun leaves to play with! I made up some cardboard ones too for a bit of a contrast.

You can really see them better below. I added the Tim Holtz distress ink on them and got a nice mottled affect. Add in burlap for texture, a modge podged doily with more distress ink, added glitter in the fresh modge podge, and a flower from Helen and I'm so happy with my result!

I do have a challenge to play along with. I have been stalking I mean watching this blog forever, but haven't played along. This month they are having an Alcohol Ink Challenge and I thought that I'd play along with the Gingersnap Creations blog. They have a TON (and I am not kidding) of amazing ideas monthly so go check them out. Blue Moon just shipped me the limited addition Tim Holtz distress ink too so I was doubly inspired!!

Happy Crafting!

Breast Cancer Awareness Project and Love at First Sight Scrap Page

update 10/16/2011:  Got invited to a SECOND linking party at One Artsy Mama! Whoohooo! 

Go check all those cool projects out! And it's for a great cause.

All this pink really has me itching to hit The Body Shop and get a hot pink hair extension.

Should I? Do I dare? If you knew me, this would be stepping out of the box!!

Leave me a comment and tell me to DO IT and I just might put on my big girl panties and get one!

**************************************************************************

oh happy dance! New baby in our family and I got invited to a linking party!

Now, Bethany at Pitter and Glink did not know when she asked me to be a part of her linking party exactly how important this subject is to me. She is having a linking party for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Check out her party!

She asked us to create a project in pink and link it up!

Here is my project and here is all the scoop:

Let me tell you a quick little story.

The day I found out I was pregnant for my daughter, my husband's Aunt Denise lost her battle with breast cancer. I mean, we knew it was coming but it was still horrible and terrible and a shame. We drove out for the funeral and I let everyone know that I was preggers. In the midst of being sad, it was one really bright spot for our family. The first grandchild on both sides.

So, when I was asked to create a project, it only made sense to make something around that event.

I decided to create a scrapbook page because we just found out we have a new baby in our family! I was going to send a card, but thought a scrapbook page would be better and is celebrating new life! The baby's Mom scrapbooks, but I am figuring it might be a few days before she gets around to scrapbooking little Lillyan's first photos.


Here are some details about my page:
The roses are recycled, coming from a bouquet given to me by Marilyn. I took them apart (actually made two flowers from one) and sprayed them with my home made glimmermist.

My letters made me super happy too. They were colored chip board stickers I painted white and drew a pink line around their edges. Some crackle glaze from Tim Holtz made them PERFECT!


My little heart with a calendar is awesome too, I can't wait for Stephanie to write all the neat little details like the baby's height and weight on there in her own hand! That is why I stamped the two little hearts!

Most of the papers in this project are ones I've stashed for a while. Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays so I pulled out a huge packet I had that contained some Stampin' Up papers and also Close to my Heart. E-mail me if you want to know something that I used specifically, but most of the products used are just stash stuff!

So, if you want to party with us, please make something pink and link!

Shirley's Box and an invite! {maybe a sneak peek too}

So, just a quick post from me to show you Shirley's box! I'm so excited about this box. She really captured the vintage look she was going for! And the top is so rumply pretty! Here is a shot of the top too!

And, I thought I'd share my invite for our party this weekend. Since everyone in my immediate family has a birthday in Oct./Nov. we typically celebrate with a big fall bash! This card was a digi card that I printed out, handed to the kids and said, invite your friends. No clue how many little people will show up here tomorrow, but I have lots of food just in case. I can't wait! The cool little Monster on this card was a freebie from Lisa's son and was fun to play with! Check out his blog here! Lisa always has the coolest card ideas and Mr. B has awesome monsters! Stay tuned, as we have a joint project planned...I should give you little sneak just maybe since I'll be off playing host and flashlight tag this weekend.....

Oh, alright....

Since you read all the way down here....

Happy Monster Bash Weekend!

Point Rock page for Marilyn: warning, contains sea food

Sorry about my title. Some days I crack myself up when I make a joke that is yet only funny to me! These photos instantly amused me when I got them from Marilyn. There is something about playing around in a creek and add in the world's largest crayfish ever and I have to admit, I am jealous! Doesn't it look like fun!? The kids were hanging out with Marilyn & Joe for a few days this summer and it all looked like a blast!

Funny thing is I grew up down the road from this stream and never have been. I think I need to do some crawfish hunting this next summer. Five or so of those large ones would make a meal. Do you think they taste like chicken?

Alright, back to scrapping. No challenges were involved with this project at all. I know, can you believe it?

I opted to go with not matching my daughter's wild swim suit. She has a couple, but it always seems she wore this one when photos were taken, so I am opting to go with a less wild and softer page. I know, seriously? A crawfish with pearl eye balls?

Sorry! I couldn't help it!

They were so cute!

Ok, here is a bigger photo.

I got my page finished and though, boy, this needs some kind of little crawfish. So, jumped on-line and grabbed a lobster cutting file from Silhouette. And arranged some letters for cutting as well.

Which brings me around to die cutters. Some days I am seriously a sticker girl, others I love my punches, while other days I have to run scads of paper through my Big Shot, and then, there are Silhouette days. I guess that means I am a real good supporter of the scrap industry!

Well, at least I am of the pop dot industry! I used them all over on this page. Under my letters, under my wave! Just a little less flatness and I'm a happy crawfish I mean camper!


Another fun detail was the journaling. Marilyn and I are trading pages at some point (this weekend I think) and her only requirement was journaling by the kids. Lexi wrote a funny story about the crawfish taking it's revenge on Luke for playing with it. It was pretty large so I opted to create a pull out tag.

The last thing I wanted to tell you about is this lovely doily and twine I used. I got them from Eye Candy Magic and I somewhat designed my entire page around using one. I feel the best place for stuff you really like is on a page! Working on not being a hoarder! So, check it out! Also, Shirley found the cute little fabric tie dyed boarder that I used along the bottom. How pretty is that! I can't wait to use the second half soon! 

Luke: My Winner

 A page intensive with journaling takes a bit to get it all to fit. But there really was a story here to tell. 

I know when I first saw the challenge up at Once Upon A...Sketch, I was a bit flummoxed. Who really would want to know any note worthy events that happen to me in MY week? Seriously? I considered doing a little day to day scrap page but like Mary E. said, Life is so Just Daily! And to boot, they said TWO events. OK, so I went to zumba class..and got groceries...nah, that isn't fun to scrap!

So, I had to wait a week to scrap the event that happened to my son Luke that I knew would be note worthy. Every time I thought of it I alternated between being proud and wanting to have a quick cry. He is such a good boy! If you want to know the story, scroll all the way down the bottom and read Shirley's journaling.

Both kids did great when they ran the mile in gym. So, my second event I could add was about Lexi's run.

The sketch provided was adorable, but a bit girly, so I switched up the cool shape for a circle and made some manly flowers. I also flipped it so I could use my photo in portrait.

My second inspiration for this page was of course Bird is the Word. Typically these two challenge sites really enhance each other. Their word this time 'round is TOGETHER. And, it wasn't one bit of a stretch to incorporate that word into my page, although I did wish it could have been BIGGER but no dice due to space issues!





































I was VERY thankful that Shirley went to see Luke run. Typically working at home, I can pop up the road to the school for a few minutes, but this fell in the middle of an important meeting we have with our main customer. Not to mention, they sent the slip home the night before asking so planning to go was a bit out of the question. I was thankful as he admitted knowing as he ran the last lap again that if no one believed him, they would surely believe Shirley since she worked as a teacher at his school.

 My last bit of inspiration is from a new challenge blog I spotted on Helen's blog. Check out Scrap with V here and the challenge on their sidebar. They are asking us to either use their sketch that is provided or the colors.

I love these colors! LOVE them! I didn't get to use a lot of color due to all the journaling, but I really love the jumping off point it gave me. I never would have thought to make my own flowers and glam up some cardboard stars with that peacock blue green color! And to add orange in there too! And peacock feathers on a page about running?? Oh what fun! Thanks for the inspiration!

 

 Here is also a close up of Shirley's journaling so you can read the whole story!

And, one other note about my page, if you are still reading along. I have been trying much harder these days to use recycled objects on my page. If you look close, I used a piece of card board down the middle that I used gesso and that light orange on. The flowers have a black mesh that came from a toy and the large tag I used in the middle to talk about Lexi's run was previously a Levi Jean tag that I also used gesso and four different colors of ink on.Now, I only wish I had a Popsicle stick! LOL!

Have a good hump day!

Pretty Pumpkins

Shirley spotted this project while she was blogging around and suggested we give it a whirl. If you want to check out the original post, it's up on  Ideas for Scrapbookers. Cathy blogged about printing out digital paper to ensure you had enough. I grabbed a paper pack on-line at Design House Digital that was created by Angie Hinksman and is called Cool Britannia. I only bought the paper set and in fact, the piece I used was originally blue, but I changed it to black and white. We used about 2 and a half sheets of paper cut into inch pieces per pumpkin.



The pumpkin with the cool owl belongs to Shirley. While mine is the one with the spider web. I am still searching for a friendly little velvety (FAKE) spider to hang out on my flower.

This is for sure a project to do with a friend if you at all have difficulty focusing! Shirley and I hung out on my back porch while the hubby cheered us on! It does take a bit to get all the pieces to behave. I used thinner paper as well that I believe soaked up the modge podge better.

Give this project a whirl! I have plans for my second pumpkin, but I haven't figured out what exactly just yet. It might be glitter!

Witch Hat for Lexi

Boy, I have read a couple of blogs lately where people have written about some pretty serious stuff going on in their lives. I haven't commented on the blogs because I can't even imagine what I might say in one or two sentences that would make anyone feel better. I do keep those people in my thoughts and prayers. And having been there myself in one case, I really can say that tomorrow is better and each day after it gets a bit lighter and easier although the hurt never really ever goes away. Even though they are virtual scrapbooking friends, I really do care and hope things get better.

So, today, I thought I'd post something light and something small. It will make a small person smile when she gets home from her weekend at the Grandparents house. She had to have this hat a while back that we found at a local drug store that was going out of business.

I then found these huge blooms that you can pin onto something at another store and thought I'd bling up her hat just a bit. I added some cheese cloth that I inked with a lime green and sprayed with some homemade glimmermist to get the color to flow. Then I pinned on the three flowers and tied on my cheese cloth ribbon. It's so pretty! I am sure she will love it.

I'm not sure if they dress up in 5th Grade at this school or will even let them wear a hat but regardless I'll snap a few photo of her in it. I think the entire hat cost me less than $10 due to the flowers being on sale and the hat being discounted quite a bit due to the store closing.

And, do you see that pumpkin in the background that is orange! Not anymore! Shirley and I added a modge podge treatment! I will post that tomorrow!

Three is a Charm

I got a bunch of photos on CD the other day from Marilyn when they came to visit our family and also my SIL & her crew this summer at my house. They were awesome photos, full of that bright summer sun! I am supposed to be working on a joint project with Marilyn and some pages from when my kids visited HER house, but I thought I'd do these first, since they inspired me. Plus, I thought I'd make you all drool with that photo of yummy chocolate cake.

I had one partial sheet of the lovely one from I believe Fancy Pants with all the cool fonts & photos of berries and summer stuff on it that I really wanted to use. And since I was reproducing this page three times, it all had to be super simple or I'd lose interest! Hence, I went with a Picasa photo collage and cut my favorite paper into three. A few more strips of paper and some ribbon all placed on a very plain vanilla cardstock and I was pretty happy.

Now I could have cut the SAME titles out on my Silhouette but that might not have been as much fun.
I opted to make the one title let's eat out of a digital download I found in my on-line stash, changing up the colors just a bit. I printed that on photo paper, carefully trimmed, inserted in these huge over sized bottle caps I had gotten from Shirley, and added some Tim Holtz crackle accents to it. For the second part of my title, I raided my pile of letter stickers and used different ones for each page. It amused me to do them this way for some reason, I guess because I love the contrast in it all!

More orange flowers from Helen, some little yellow cheese cloth all glimmered up and orange velvet leaves completed my fun.

My last addition was my blue journaling that goes around my photo block. There is a cool challenge up on Scrap Fit is to Journal Around something, as in a photo or embellishment. Check it out here! I loved writing in blue around my photo collage. I left the other two pages blank as I figured my SIL and Marilyn might want to write their own thoughts! But, they have a good start for a page to put almost ready made into an album!

Off for some fun this weekend, so probably my last post for the week. I did want to leave you with one last thought.

You can always print your collage in Picasa smaller. I accidentally printed out my sheet on 4 by 6 photo paper and I love it! I almost used it that way! However, I think I'll share with my SIL and Marilyn. This would be pretty to hang on the fridge!

Mommy Heads by Lexi

My daughter is pretty amazing. She can paper craft with the best of them. Sometimes she is too amazing. One day (Ok, I may have been grouchy) she made me a special piece of art. On top of raiding my very precious hangers which I had never even used myself AND all my cute little baby clothes pins...(yes I have sharing issues) and making off with my very favorite sharpie markers for some of the finer details...I got this lovely piece of art I'm calling Mommy heads. Yes, they are all me. I was even consulted on my favorite head to go on my favorite body with my favorite purse. What makes me really nervous is how SHE thinks I look when I'm mad. Really, do I have FLAMES coming out of my head? And my nose....is very....pointy.

Anyhow, I thought I'd share.

Which one is your favorite?

I'm posting this because Anne at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge was asking for scrapbooking done by kids. AND, because, it was pretty darn cool. It has a special place in my scrap book album.

And, for the record, each head and piece of clothing are cut and pasted on here, not drawn. They are all little pieces put together in one place with adhesive...as in MY adhesive!!!

Love her, thanks Lexi!

You and Me Page for Bird is the Word Challenge

Lately I've been missing birthdays! Shirley told me the other day that she celebrated one! This was one of the photos she gave me when I had begged the last time for photos. I thought it worked perfectly for the new Bird is the Word challenge! I really tried to keep the title a bit soft, since I wasn't sure if she'd want to add journaling, another small photo or two....and maybe another title below? I just used Picasa to add that title to the photo.

I love my little flowers, vintage owl card, and butterfly! For the most part (I changed out a turquoise button and added the yellow velvet flowers & leaves) these came straight from a really cool blogger who runs a site called Eye Candy Magic AND who will be running a sale very soon. If you check her blog out, her latest eye candy involves a red mushroom! Love it!

(If you run a blog, she is also asking for people to link up her blog & sale plus she's having a give away. Who wouldn't want to win that prize package!) 

Another technique I used on this page was chalk. The flowers under the cute little owl card and doily flowers were originally white. This sheet of paper was one I got from Karen a while back and I bet she doesn't recognize it between the glimmer, the ink pads, and bling! I believe it's from Little Yellow Bicycle but I don't know much else than that!

Another thing I tried is inking up my lace edges and spraying them with glimmermist. I used a blue ink pad and some of that clear glimmermist I had made up in my last post. It makes the ink run just a bit and gives a cool mottled effect I believe.

This little butterfly came in the kit from Sam as well. It had a purple belly I removed for future use and added a flower. The twine was also included and is really nice too! The cheese cloth was originally white and I just added some yellow mist to it.

Anyhow, as always, e-mail me or drop me a comment if you have any questions!

Happy Belated Birthday Shirley and enjoy!

Christmas Cards

I've been meaning to start Christmas cards for a while now. This wet, cold, and dreary weekend was a good time to get everything cut and stamped. Assembly is MUCH quicker with a pile of stuff!

There is my stack of goodies below! I really wanted Victorian for some reason or other and have been inspired by all the vintage ads and goodies I've seen around blog land. I have also been looking for a while for pretty flowers to add to the fronts, but decided to make my own. We got a new coffee pot a while back that takes different coffee filters than our old one, so between having some filters to use up....and not finding what I wanted, I spent most of Friday night cutting. Now, I'm not a big one for cutting too much on my Silhouette. I love it, but I don't use it every day. It did do a great job with this dove!

I used the flower punch to make my flowers. You have to use a really good punch to go through several layers of filters to get a nice smooth flower. This one is by EK Success. I used another little punch for my leaves that is made by Stampin' Up and another punch from the same company to create the little shape I stamped Celebrate the Season on. Stampin' Up punches are great quality and work really well.

I also glimmered up some cheese cloth so I could use it in little bits behind my flower. I really liked it. I can't say I've seen anyone use little bits of it before, but I am sure they have!

And a little bit more about my flower. Basically I punched five or so flowers and layered them up with a brad. Then I twisted them up around the brad and inked the edges with a stamp pad. I was all out of clear glimmermist and since I only wanted a very light pink on the edges, so I decided to make my own. I used some shimmer paint from Close to My Heart and rubbing alcohol. Aside from having a rather strong smell that went away after and I really didn't measure, it worked great! Check out the shimmer below! The weird part about using paint was that my spray bottle didn't seem to clog AND it stuck to the brad!

The other flowers were sprayed with clear, had inked edges, and also got a treatment of Sugar Maple glimmermist and some gold glitter.

Anyhow, let me know if you have any more questions on what I did. It's a whole lot of fun to try making your own mist! Give it a whirl!

Also, I am linking up this project on Scrapbookers Anonymous. I haven't played there in ages! Their challenge this 'time round is using your dye cutters! I used FOUR on this card!

I am also linking this up to Get Creative which is a new blog I've never played along with. Card challenges all this month! Mine fits perfectly into their first challenge which is using more than three layers. Check it out here!