Welcome to Miami

OK I cheated, I was feeling uninspired by the rest of my pics from this winter, and with the latest summery SoCal kit by Studio Calico sitting on my table, it just wasn't working for me! So I skipped a few months of pics and printed out a few pics from our trip this past April to Miami Beach, Florida and made this quick and simple layout!

This day was so crazy, it was April and after a winter of hardly any snow, it started snowing/sleeting early that morning - which made us delayed getting to ATL, which made us even more delayed getting to Miami. We were about 6 hours later than expected, but luckily for us, Miami was our final destination, unlike some people who completely missed their cruises! Bet they aren't scrapping pics from this day!

For this layout, mainly I wanted to keep it simple and just get it done! I was really inspired by Stephanie Howell's blog post here about not worrying over a layout so much! So I just started building this page and at the end, normally I would've tried to add a lot more, but instead just decided it was finished and am loving how it didn't take me days of contemplating my layout!

The majority of the time for this layout was spent on this embellishment in the lower left corner of an outline of Florida. I used the state die cuts from Studio Calico to outline the state of Florida on that graphlike paper, then outlined that and sewed on it. Then I cut out the inside and backed it with a different piece of paper. The stamped sentiment was the final touch!

HOW-TO:

• I used the "SoCal" June kit from Studio Calico
• The background yellow dot paper is the back of "Chevron" by Studio Calico
• The card stock is Fountain color by American Crafts
• The graph-looking paper is from the Follow Your Heart "Be Amazing" Best the Best Paper by My Mind's Eye
• The paper for the state backing, the speech bubble and the pinking circles were all cut or punched from the Tim and Beck exclusive paper
• I used the Martha Stewart pinking circle punch to punch the circles and hand cut the speech bubble after tracing the Studio Calico die cut that came in the kit
• The "Welcome to" stickers are Life of the Party Charmed Alphabet from My Mind's Eye
• The Miami letters are fabric Doll thickers by American Crafts
• I used Vacation sentiment from the Adventure Stamp Set by Studio Calico, as well as the letters for the "Oh Yeah" title
• I used the date stamp from the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection by American Crafts

Another engagement card!

My friend Kiet proposed to his girl, Ariel this past weekend! We just happen to be going to the city this weekend and will see them tomorrow for lunch! So happy for them!!

I do not recommend re-creating this card - it took me the better part of the day to finally complete it!! I placed strips of washi tape on vellum paper and punched out hearts using the old Creative Memories Heart dust punch - and had all these tiny hearts and leftover "confetti"... def pulled out the tweezers for this one! The punching alone took a few hours because I was pulling out such small pieces - count 'em that's 108 hearts (actually added one to help with my misalignment), so that's 109 tiny freaking hearts to pick up!

Well my husband, who is good at spraying things - he has lots of experience with spray paint for his bikes and 4wheeler stuff, he showed me how to use my new Elmers Craft Bond, so I could spray down my card and just place the hearts. He did a sample on a scrap piece of paper and it seemed easy enough, then he left for a little bit on his 4-wheeler which left me to my own devices - aka helpless! I sprayed so much I had like a quarter inch of goo, but tried placing the hearts anyway - got goo everywhere! About 2 rows into it, Chris came inside and saw the mess and suggested I start over (HECK NO) so I sacrificed my hands and tweezered off 2 rows of hearts from the goo pool and put them on a new card. For the remaining 90 hearts, I tweezered each one and used my glue pen to glue and place them down!

Anyway, I hope Kiet and Ariel really enjoy my card as well as being engaged!

HOW-TO:

• I cut the bottom piece of paper from the 6x6 pad of paper from the Sketchbook by Amy Tangerine collection by American Crafts, and the cloud strip is the bottom piece of one of the 12x12 papers from the same line
• The washi tapes are from Freckled Fawn, Bella Blvd, and American Crafts
• The LOVE part of the title are Scene Thickers from Amy Tangerine for American Crafts
• The remaining title stickers are Grilled Gray Alphabeans from Jillibean Soup

Fathers Day Card - Part 2!

This card is for my stepdad! I knew I just wanted to make something masculine looking, without any particular "theme" such as tie, golf or something else that doesn't necessarily pertain to him. I am loving how this turned out though!

Anyway, one thing I want to note for next year - newsprint and woodgrain paper patterns fit pretty well for masculine cards! I decided it was time to try out one of my misting masks and without any ideas yet in my head, pulled out the Circle Graph mask... I decided to offset it once I saw the size compared to the card I had.

Originally thinking I'd use white spray mist, I used a white piece of test paper, so on my test I tried a teal color first, then the new gold that I haven't tried yet, wow perfect! The color against the teal in the woodgrain looks awesome and I like the opaque-y look of it! Def want to use this more often!

HOW-TO:

• The main piece of paper is "Teal Woodgrain" from the On the Bright Side collection by My Mind's Eye
• The Circle Graph mask is a Mister Huey's mask by Studio Calico, as is the mist in Gold
• I also misted the corrugated cardboard heart from Jillibean Soup
• The sparkly gold letter stickers are Recollections from Michael's

Fathers Day card!

Fathers' Day is almost here and I'm scrambling extra much since we won't be around for it, so need to get these in the mail ASAP! This one is for my father-in-law and the title on the card that I stamped is sort of joke he tells... so even if you all don't understand it, he will think it's funny!

Mainly, I wanted to stamp that sentiment as well as the Happy Fathers Day sentiment, so I just added some triangles in between to give it some color. But how awesome is that newsprint paper!

HOW-TO:

• The paper is Antique Newsprint by Bazzill Basics Paper and came in last month's 35mm kit by Studio Calico
• I cut the triangles from different papers in the 6x6 pad of paper from the Shine On collection by BasicGrey that I actually found at JoAnn's (thanks to my friend Kara for the tip!)
• To make the triangles, I measured that I wanted a triangle with approximately 1.5" width, so I cut squares at 1.125"x1.125" (that should equal 1 and 1/8th inches), then cut them in half along the diagonal
• Added some twine, some Life of the Party "Charmed" alphabet stickers from the Lime Twist collection by My Mind's Eye, and a random hand rub-on from the Farmhouse collection by October Afternoon
• Afterwards I pulled up the corners to add black photo corners to add to the old-fashioned look of the card

Pizza Party!

Chris and I took a Wednesday this past February off from work to go to a Syracuse basketball game (and this time not get stuck in rush hour traffic) and be able to leave early for it. But we still had time to kill before heading out so he suggested we head to the Pizza Stop over on State St. in downtown Rochester and since it was a normal workday for everyone else, we should be able to hit them at their peak of the day and get some hot, fresh pizza! It was so amazing, and made me feel like I was right back in NYC!

OK, onto the layout itself! Take a look at the "Water Wars" layout by Summer Fullerton seen here and you will see my main inspiration!

Originally I was going to use a journal box or tag of some sort in the upper left corner, but ended up cutting out some pizza from one of the photos! I stamped the "Love You" bubble onto the pre-cut diecut that came in the SoCal kit from Studio Calico, originally stamped in Wet Cement, but ended up feeling it was too light so stamped over the gray with my new Versafine in Onyx Black stamp pad! With the gray underneath it stamped really well so it was a "lucky" mistake!

The lower right corner was the same idea, stamped the "This was a great idea" sentiment. I also stamped the pinking circle onto letter paper around a "P" for pizza, and hand cut it out using my awesome Fiskars fingertip craft knife.

For the main space where the title is, I added some subtle lines of washi tape to close it in and some hand stitching on top of the letters. My husband came up with the "New York Style" subtitle after I had tried adding "It's a" before the "pizza party" portion of the title in small gray letters that ended up disappearing into the background. Def liked this better and loved how this layout came out!


HOW-TO:

• Almost everything I used was from the new June "SoCal" kit by Studio Calico! Def loving this kit so far!
• The background paper (top and bottom) is exclusive Tim and Beck for Studio Calico and the orange paper with circles is called "Nice to meet you" from the Konnichiwa collection by BasicGrey
• The pinking circles in the upper left and colorful tabbed box in the lower right are exclusive from Studio Calico, as well as the Love You bubble stamp, and the "This was a great idea" stamp being from the Adventure Stamp Set
• The "like" on the tab is a rub-on from the Vintage Instaframes from the Heidi Swapp collection by Pink Paislee, as were the New York Style subtitle letters called bitty blocks from the Prairie Hill collection
• The Pizza Party cardboard letter stickers are from Pebbles
• I pulled the buttons from the Follow Your Heart collection by My Mind's Eye, as well as the "no. 1" paper clip
• I used washi tape from American Crafts as well as Freckled Fawn

the last cut

My husband is one of very few people I know that LOVES to mow the lawn and make it perfect! The lawn lines in the summer and snow plow edges in the winter are all ruler straight. This was the last cut of the season last fall.

Originally I was planning to do a big title where the green chevron strips are, but wanted somehow to convey the directions of a mowed lawn. I cut out the strips from a piece of paper from a 6x6 paper pad by drawing 3 lines on the back, and drawing lines from the outside lines to a point 1" ahead on the middle line, then just cut along the lines with scissors. It was pretty easy! Then I filled in the spaces with sewing lines to create different widths and texture.

I mainly used the 35mm kit by Studio Calico but since it didn't have a lot of bright green, I grabbed those pieces from the Sketchbook line by American Crafts. Other than that I grabbed some pieces here and there from various other lines and kits to pull this whole thing together!

HOW-TO:

• The main background paper is "White Wood" paper from the On the Bright Side collection by My Mind's Eye
• The colorful Chevron is "Multi Chevron" from the same collection, as well as the banners along the top
• The green dotted paper is "Viridian Vignette" from the Sketchbook collection by American Crafts - I cut the bottom strip with regular scissors and pulled back to create a grass-like look
• The green strip along the top was cut from the bottom of another piece of paper from the same collection
• The happy badge is a Marcy Penner exclusive
• I cut out the clouds from "Genuine Sky" paper from the Fly a Kite collection by My Mind's Eye
• I cut the starburst shape by Studio Calico in the upper left corner in half and drew with pen to outline it a little and have it show up
• I used twine by Jillibean Soup and drew a line with my Zig glue pen where I wanted the twine to go, then placed it on top
• The "Real Life" stamp is by Studio Calico and the date stamp is from the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection by American Crafts - both inked with Wet Cement shadow ink by Hero Arts
• I used Orange and Creme sticky keys by October Afternoon for the word "the" in the title and Amy Tangerine Olive letter stickers by American Crafts for the rest of the title