Canal Days

I hope my husband and I never miss the Spencerport Canal Days! We've gone two years in a row now and loved it each time! This past year we walked around the car show part (my husband's favorite part) before we took our bikes off the car rack and rode down the canal about 5 miles out! These pics are from our stop at Adam's Basin.

When we got back, we stowed our bikes against a fence and walked to the fair part of it. We tried fried butter for the first time (my favorite part) and it was amazing, even on a very hot July day! We cooled down with some frozen lemonade before heading home for a shower and a long nap - I think I just described the perfect day in my book!

This layout came about pretty quickly, knowing right away that I wanted to use those two papers from the County Fair kit from Studio Calico - sticking to one kit really makes the paper decision process very quick! Normally choosing the right paper takes me an agonizingly long time, so I can see now it might be easiest to choose in the future, based on a kit instead of thinking about ALL the paper I have in my stash (way too much)!

HOW-TO:

• The paper around the outside is called "Handpicked" from the Farmhouse collection by Crate Paper and even though I've only slowly been using thin strips of this fairly busy paper, I LOVE it! I wish I had about 5 more sheets of it!
• The main orange and white striped paper is called "Apple Cider" from the Apple Cheddar Soup collection by Jillibean Soup and surprisingly was the perfect color for my pictures!
• I used a long stamp across the top from the "Debate Team" add-on kit from September (main kit: Glee Club) by Studio Calico that sort of matched part of that picture with the wires across the top
• The bicycle stamp is from the Nantucket collection by pink paislee as are the wood veneer letters
• The paper piece behind the button is a piece from the flower sack from the Sasparilla collection by October Afternoon
• The wooden button is from BasicGrey and the twine is also from Jillibean Soup

Chevy Biscayne

This was a 20 minute layout I started right as my husband started cooking me some pasta and potatoes for dinner... And the only part that waited till after dinner was doing the stamping/embossing of the title. So this was a quick and simple one!

I had some alphabet stamps from Making Memories that I first laid each letter on the banner, then keeping the placement, pressed my acrylic block over to make the letters stick where they should go. Inked and stamped, then embossed with black powder. At that point I saw that some of the powder stuck to the banner stickers but since it just made it look a little more vintage I didn't bother wiping it off and it ended up being a "good mistake" :)

HOW-TO:

• Again I used the County Fair kit by Studio Calico and used the main paper "School Dress" by Jenni Bowlin Studios
• Then I remembered I had the matching Red/Black Flag Banner stickers also by JBS as well as the black doily flowers
• The black washi tape is from American Crafts
• The letter stickers are Red & Black Sticky Keys from October Afternoon

Blue Angels

Seeing the Blue Angels last summer was amazing! I hope this layout does the show justice!

When I started this layout, the main thing I wanted to do was use that Studio Calico banner stamp for the title, but didn't know how I'd get the full "Blue Angels" title in such a small space. Even my mini-est letter stickers seemed like it would be a tight fit. So I wrote it out in pencil, trying to use the same "font" as what they use for their logo. I pierced holes where I just penciled it in and started stitching!

I think it came out pretty well and accomplished what I wanted!


HOW-TO:

• I started out by using the "County Fair" January kit from Studio Calico and stitched around the dark blue cardstock except the upper left corner where I placed 4 punched planes using the Creative Memories mini punch
• The floral-like background paper is called "Milk" from the Apple Cheddar Soup collection by Jillibean Soup
• Since I knew I would be putting that paper on top of the cardstock, I cut out a big square out of the navy blue paper and then stamped the banner image on it and embossed it with Mustard Zing! embossing powder by American Crafts
• Like I said, I drew in pencil the Blue Angels and then pierced holes and stitched the title, then used my exacto knife to cut out around the banner and pop it up with Zots at the top of the page
• I stitched the arrow fabric swatch from Ormolu to a manila tag and also adhered more little plane punches
• The letter stickers are Gray & Cream Mini Market stickers from October Afternoon

Valentine

My husband is REALLY into speakers and his sound system lately... and I am really into stitching & sewing into my scrapbooks and cards lately... so this is the resulting Valentines' Day card he got on Friday night when we celebrated early by going to dinner at Tavern58 on Gibbs St. (side note: do not leave there without getting their blue cheese au gratin potatoes!)

Basically I knew I wanted to make a speaker, so after he went to bed one night, I took the cover off one of his stand up speakers and took a look - luckily I watched him enough I guess to get the cover back on ok haha. He is also crazy and has to run every single cord into the basement, but I was not as neat on the back of my card.

HOW-TO:

• Cut rectangle from Creative Memories shimmer paper, punched circles from black paper and just started piercing holes and stitching!
• For the hearts I stamped a heart on the back of the paper and pierced holes around it, then cut out the heart with my exacto knife
• The letter stickers are Mini ABC stickers from Pebbles

C-5 Tour

The inspiration for this layout came from Davinie's layout here. It was hard for me to call this layout finished without adding some journaling or something in that left area, but I think sometimes spaces are OK!

Chris thinks that was a C-5 we took a quick tour of, though we don't know for sure... after all, it was a million degrees that day!

I did lots of sewing on this page! I made some not-perfect circles and still like how they turned out! I used a bunch of embellishments too, which I don't normally do but they fit the page so well.

HOW-TO:

• Again, I stuck with the January kit "County Fair" from Studio Calico for this layout
• The map paper is called Caracas from Kesi'Art, the bottom strip is the back of the Stagecoach paper from the Sasparilla collection by October Afternoon, and that thin strip of dark floral I so wanted to add, so added in small amount is called Handpicked from the Farmhouse collection by Crate Paper!
• I used my circle patterns and tag maker from Creative Memories to cut the circles and little tag maker
• The fabric swatches are from Ormolu
• The tin pins are from the Boarding Pass and Sasparilla collections both by October Afternoon

Birthday Boy!

OK, the idea for this birthday card for our friend's son was simple... the implementation? Not so much! The star took me forever, because I wanted to try the Chevron pattern making tip from Jennifer McGuire on the SC blog here but with one added step to adhere the pattern to a star and cut it out... oh boy!

The star pattern came from the Cricut Cartridge Joys of the Season - with a shape that cut out 3 stars, but I used just one, and cut them at relative size 5.5" to get the shadow as well. The letters were cut from the Creative Memories Traveler Cartridge, cut at relative size 2.1" (or 2.2"). I did a simple stitch around the edge to finish it off!

Best Memories

Do I seem unusually productive lately? It's because I am getting lots of inspiration and ideas from this online class! Here's the layout I did from the 3rd lesson. The best part is that I didn't have to cut any of those paper strips - they were all leftovers from the previous 2 layouts!

I printed my journaling onto Kraft paper and cut them into little pennants to make a sort of Top 10 list! I love that number stamp from the County Fair kit from Studio Calico! Oh by the way, the strips are all crooked "on purpose" because I accidentally stamped crooked down the strip of paper and couldn't go back! So I altered my page from being straight pieces to crooked haha!

I did more stitching into this layout, and love the added touch it gives!

HOW-TO:

• The background paper is "Big Sky" from the Sasparilla collection by October Afternoon
• I used scrap strips of paper and embossed the number stamp down the lightest colored strip
• Print your journaling, cut them into separate pieces
• Add simple stitch around pictures
• I used doily flowers from Jenni Bowlin Studios
• The letter stickers are Black & Cream sticky keys from October Afternoon

P-51 Mustang

This is the 2nd layout I did for Amy Tan's "Stretch Your Kit" online class for Studio Calico! The best part about scrapping this picture as it's own page was I got a place to write down about my husband's grandfather who served in World War II as an airplane mechanic. Even if we don't have kids, I joked that it would be for our great nieces and nephews to look back on one day haha!

I finally added stitching to a scrapbook layout! I sewed something! I got some encouragement from Kinsey Wilson to try hand stitching and after reading her post here: http://kinseygirl.typepad.com/handstitch/2010/04/splitting-hairs-splitability.html,I bought some floss and split some threads! I stamped the little Amy Tangerine stamp and threaded lightly around the outlines with 1 thread.

I also used just 1 thread for the outline along the edges (very light and subtle) and 2 threads and a back-stitch (from her blog post here) to do the title! I love hand stitching, I'm hooked for sure! Thanks Kinsey!

I don't know if you can see it, but I created my own airplanes mask, cutting 2" airplanes with my Cricut and using the fill feature to cut out as many as would fit in a 12x12 page. I misted in clay first, then laid each cut out plane over the clay misted planes on the paper to use as a mask while I misted in Bonny Blue. It's very subtle, but I loved how it turned out and just added a little extra something to this page!

Lastly, I didn't have any particular matching embellishments but realized I had a standalone image of the plane itself, so I cut it out and turned it into a 3-d embellishment.


HOW-TO:

• I used the County Fair kit by Studio Calico, in particular, the map paper called "Wide Open Spaces" by October Afternoon that came in the Shooting Gallery add-on kit
• Created the mask with a plane shape from the Creative Memories Traveler Cricut cartridge cut at 2" and filled to page
• I used Mister Huey's spray mist in Clay and Bonny Blue
• Hand stitched around the outside and in pencil I drew the title, then punched and stitched!

Karate Kid

I made this card for my nephew who got his black belt promotion in karate today! He did great! The craziest thing was they had some guy lay across 2 chairs with a watermelon on his stomach while this woman took this huge sword, blindfolded (of course) and swung the sword from overhead and sliced the watermelon in half and didn't so much as graze the guy! I had to cover my eyes!

So I hate to admit that this is my first time adding sewing to a scrapbook anything because I was rushed for time and also don't have the right supplies yet, since I couldn't wait to buy any and instead just searched the house for that little sewing kit that is probably supposed to be for a one-time use...

Even though I learned some other types of stitches from this blog entry by Kinsey Wilson, I was short on time and just did a simple in-out sort of thing, I don't even know if that has a name. Anyway, she has some really great lessons for stitching into your scrapbooks, which I will refer to more later when I actually do something worthwhile and buy some supplies!

HOW-TO SEW WITHOUT ANY SUPPLIES EXCEPT THAT LITTLE ONE-TIME USE SEWING KIT THAT WAS MADE FOR MINI-ME:

• Learn to thread a needle... I had done this in 8th grade a long time ago, and at first I was thinking you thread the needle to the middle of the thread, but when I went to sew it didn't make any sense, start over.
• Thread the needle, tie a little knot in the end (I don't know if this is what you're supposed to do but it seemed to work, well double-knotted anyway)
• Oh wait, ok sorry, go back and poke some holes in the paper first, so you know where you're sewing - I did this by drawing a rectangle on the back of the (front of the) card then poked dots about 1/4" apart along all the sides with the same needle and luckily the kit came with this funny looking red plastic thimble because pushing down on the other end of the needle is almost as bad as pushing down on the tip of the needle, what the heck!
• Put the needle through the paper and tape down the end to the back once it's mostly through - this is the best part about sewing through paper for scrapbooks instead of "real life" since you can just tape your thread down instead of having to do special knots or something like I think you have to, or however they do it (they being, those people that sew clothes)
• I just sewed in one hole and out the other - not very hard! I tried the back-stitch and zigzag-stitch though and really love how those look, just didn't have time today.
• Hopefully next time I will be a little more advanced with some more advanced tools!

HOW-TO DO THE REST:

• I cut the guy out using the Sports Mania Cricut cartridge at 3.5"
• The stamp is a sentiments stamp by Recollections embossed with Stampendous! Winter Wonderland powder
• Easy card, but fun to do!

Calabria Truck Page Layout

I did this quick 12x12 scrapbook page layout for an online class, "Stretch Your Kit" for Studio Calico! Amy Tan (her American Crafts line is Amy Tangerine) provided the first lesson and she made it so fun and easy and encouraged us all to USE our favorite paper that we've all been (hoarding) saving! I definitely do that, and so I took the plunge and used that background piece of paper I had been saving!

The best part was that this layout came together in about 20 minutes? Maybe longer, but it was by far my fastest layout ever put together! The second best part are those artichokes - Sal makes artichokes french so amazing, I would follow that truck everywhere (if I had a car)...

HOW-TO:

• Be inspired, use up that piece of paper you've been hoarding! I used the October Afternoon Stagecoach paper from the Sasparilla collection and I'm so glad I did!
• It's very subtle but I misted the background paper with Mister Huey's pickle (green) mist
• I border punched cardstock and layered the borders to get a thicker border underneath
• The floral strip of paper is called Handpicked from the Farmhouse collection by Crate Paper
• The floral embellishment was from the Sasparilla flower sack also by October Afternoon, and everything except that little embellishment came in the County Fair (January) kit by Studio Calico, although I did buy the flower sack from the SC shop
• The chipboard piece is from the Picadilly collection by BasicGrey
• The little flower is from Jenni Bowlin Studios
• The letters are Wood Veneer Alphas from Studio Calico and the "Calabria" portion of the title is purposely crooked... but it looks so slight, it looks like it could be a mistake, haha oh well :)