Love This Place

Another layout from our road/day trip to Canandaigua and Naples, NY - this time we headed to Naples and found this awesome place, the Arbor Hill Grapery & Winery! We ended up hauling home a bunch of wine jellies (amazing!), sparkling grape juice (the best!), sauces, and even some concord grape gummy bears and licorice!

This layout came together quickly again! I got my inspiration this time from this great layout by Amy Tan! I had some random ephemera from Arbor Hill to include, so it was easy to see how that layout could work for what I had too.

The hardest part for me was cutting up that gray chevron type paper backing the stitched "Love" word... I cut into a whole new 12x12 piece of paper just to get that! OK, breathe...

I used the newest kit, Marks & Co. by Studio Calico, except the washi tape was from last month's kit. The main portion I am proud of is the little reddish-orange asterisk at the top! The pack of asterisks only came in blue, gray, and yellow... so I stripped the front off one of the asterisks, then first painted it with white watercolor paint (like a primer, as Chris so nicely pointed out)! Thinking in those terms I could've used some gesso, but the watercolor worked fine. Waited for it to dry, then added that reddish-orange watercolor on top, waited for it to dry. Then I wanted it to look shiny like the others, so I added some glossy accents and let dry! Now it looks like it came just like that!

Scenic Route

UPDATE: This layout made it onto the Studio Calico staff picks video for the month: Click Here to see :)

This was a fun layout to put together, and another fast one for me! This was the next layout on our little road trip to Canandaigua and Naples, NY. After we finished lunch and walking around Canandaigua, we headed to Naples to hit up the Grapery at Arbor Hill and Monica's Pies... a couple more layouts to come!

Yesterday I wanted to scratch out one more layout with last month's Studio Calico kit, Valley High, before my new kit Marks & Co. arrived! I had been "saving" the circles from Pink Paislee, thinking it would go best with some photos of me and Chris, but decided I should just use it... which is what made the layout come together quickly! I cut it into two pieces so the photos could go where I wanted them, and to make it more interesting to the eye.

I gave myself permission again to use items from my supply outside the kit, which worked great - especially those travel wood veneer from Studio Calico! I am really starting to appreciate diecut and sticker labels. I dug that one label from February's Front Row kit!

I didn't want the title too big, since it wasn't all that important, so kept it smaller with those BasicGrey letter stickers. Just love how this layout turned out!

German Lunch

Yesterday, I didn't do anything productive all day long except catch up on some napping, so when I went to scrapbook after 4pm, I wasn't expecting to actually complete a layout, but that's what I ended up doing!! This was one of my faster layouts (about 2hrs total) and can I tell you how much more I love when the layouts are super fast!? I was able to get this done by using this free video of Noell Hyman's flexible templates (from Paperclipping.com) after Shimelle Laine posted this challenge to use Noell's template, after she was a guest on the Paperclipping podcast, the Paperclipping Roundtable! Catch all that!?

Chris and I took a mid-pregnancy (I was about 29 weeks along) road trip to Canandaigua and Naples, NY! Of course Chris did his homework beforehand and found us this awesome little German restaurant where we could stop for lunch in Canandaigua! The food was sooo good! I had a Schnitzel sandwich and Chris had the Double Brats! The decor in there was so cute and the waitresses were all dressed in German outfits. So random, but so fun!

Anyway, I was scared of not having "enough" supplies to choose from if I used this last month's Studio Calico kit again (Valley High) because I only bought one add-on kit this time... but it worked out perfectly - I decided not to have qualms about grabbing anything extra from other kits/supplies, so it came together really quickly and I didn't lack for supplies!

After I chose the papers and cut them, I wanted to add another paper border strip under the photos, but ended up making a border from those October Afternoon label stickers! Love how that turned out, and I also grabbed some much older letter Thickers for the main part of the title. Quick and easy and finished by the time Chris got home from the gym, woohoo!

Graduation card!

I made this card for our cousins' graduation! It was a fun and simple one to make once I had the idea...

The main part of the card is the window - I just love the transparency paper I bought from the Studio Calico shop! You can buy transparency paper at an office supply store, but I've found it to be super expensive and you have to buy a lot of it, whereas SC sells it in just this pack of 10 sheets!

To start the card though, I added strips of, believe it or not, 3M Scotch brand washi tape that I picked up at Office Max the other day! They had some really cools color combinations, and I've determined I need more washi tape that has multiple colors in it, rather than just one color! This washi still feels and tears like normal washi tape, but the colors are very vibrant - I am loving that Scotch makes these now!

Anyway, after laying down strips of washi across the whole card, I cut out the frame from my Silhouette, then cut the inner rectangle out of the front of the card. I cut a rectangle slightly larger from the transparency and adhered to the back of the frame before adhering the full frame down. Added some thickers and stamped a personal congrats to our cousin Ray across the bottom and done! The only thing I'm thinking of adding is possibly backing the window with the cash we are going to give him :)

Two Become One - Wedding Scrapbook Layout

We didn't have very good pics from the wedding ceremony of our friends' wedding, so I printed out the same photo twice, with one of them zoomed in a little closer and printed them small. This layout though sat on my table for longer than usual because 1. I was stumped on the papers to use (the pictures gave off a mostly purple color, which seems to be a rare color these days for scrapbooking supplies), and 2. I've been so tired this last trimester, that even just the thought of sitting at my scrap table makes me feel like taking a nap! I guess I will blame it on the 3rd trimester while I can!

A scrapbook gift came to me before I had any papers picked out - in the form of Studio Calico's latest kit, Valley High! Wow, they actually had some of the deep magenta colors, that came about as close to the colors in my photo as I could get! The papers also had some pink, so now I could use pink, tied together with the colors from the other paper at the top! So I sewed a big chunk at the top, along with the colored card stock underneath!

After I finished sewing the papers, that's when this layout sat on my table for quite awhile. I sort of got stuck how to get the pictures to not feel like they were floating around in the rest of the space. I added some layers and after that, tried to make them not float by adding sequins in an off-center diagonal from top to bottom, cutting through the pictures to keep your eye focused...

Anyway, the final touch was cutting out the 1 from my Silhouette - and then I remembered the small stash of POW Glitter paper I have and found that "Blush" color went perfectly! I added a couple more pieces to balance it out and decided it was finished!

Best Wishes Card

I made this card for a friend who is moving away... so I wanted it to emanate a nice going away feeling instead of sad or like a "see ya!" type of card. I almost went the route of Bon Voyage, but I feel like that is too "see ya"-like if that makes sense. Luckily I found a small "Best Wishes" sentiment stamp from the Dear Lizzy stamp set by American Crafts to convey the perfect sentiment.

I started with that Adventure Stamp from Studio Calico and stamped it on different sections of the same piece of BasicGrey paper that had different types of tickets in different colors on it. I embossed in black embossing powder and cut them out by hand. I wasn't sure how I wanted to arrange them, but finally settled on this arrangement to leave some space for a sentiment.

I added some washi tape and airmail twine to the side, then after a few botched attempts at stamping my friend Monica's name, and wasn't thrilled with the results, I used the diecut label, also from Studio Calico and added letter stickers by BasicGrey. I cut two little metallic dots from a string of them by Hero Arts and that was it! I was going to add a bunch of other embellishments on top of the squares, but decided it was already busy enough looking and didn't want to bog down the card too much! Have a nice weekend, bon voyage!!

Baby Baptism Card

Let me start by saying I accidentally misspelled our cousin's name who was getting baptized - after I photographed the card, I went back and pulled up the banner with "Avery" and re-did it with "Averie" after I saw the correct spelling on the invitation again.

This card took me a few hours! Oh well, I just started by stamping with Martha Stewart doily stamps on watercolor paper and embossing them in white. Then I added some watercolors over/around them, knowing they would resist the water!

Finally I found the Jesus loves you stamp and embossed in gold, and added the gold triangle sequins around it that came in the Roundabout kit from Studio Calico. I wasn't sure how to add her name, so just stamped it and embossed in the same gold and added it as a banner! Quick idea, but the stamping/embossing and water-coloring took a bit!

A couple of scrapbook pages!

It's been awhile since I've gotten some scrapbook pages done - maybe I've been too tired in the evenings? Who knows, but I finally finished the few pics from our gender reveal get together! This first layout I mostly used the Planetarium kit from Studio Calico, but when I got stuck I dug a little back into the Neverland kit...

For the frames, I stamped each frame from the stamp in the class kit for the Inked class going on right now at Studio Calico! I stamped onto watercolor paper and colored with my new Koi watercolor set that came with one of those watercolor brushes that holds water in it and just squeeze it to get it wet (awesome btw)! Then I cut each frame out with my Fiskars fingertip knife and mounted the frames onto a strip of gray polkadot paper by Simple Stories.

For the bottom title, I cut out the word Happiness from my Silhouette (it was part of the Awesome Script Words digital template by Ali Edwards). The embellishment on the lower right I actually cut out from the back of some packaging for some brads, including the butterfly brad I added on top!

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This second layout took me FOREVER to complete. Once I had it started I really didn't know what to do with it...

Eventually I just added some random embellishments from the Planetarium kit and went with it.

Today I have off for Independence Day, so finally did some catching up! Happy Independence Day America!!

Some birthday cards!

I had a couple birthday cards to make, so for this first one I played with some Tim Holtz inks mixed with water over an embossed map image:

I stamped the sentiment with stamps by Studio Calico and cut it out, then popped it up and added some neon sequins... simple, quick, and easy!

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This one was a fun ONE for my nephew's first birthday! I lined up a number 1 on my Silhouette to cut in the middle of one half of a 10"x7" piece of card stock that I could later fold into a 5"x7" card.

Once I had the card folded, I outlined the "1" lightly in pencil onto the inside of the card and just began pulling out all my brads, buttons, enamel dots etc. in blues, teals, and grays!

Basically I just filled it all in and attached all of them, then used separate "Happy" and "Birthday" stamps and bent them onto my acrylic block to fit neatly around the one!

I liked the clean look of the card, so called it done and wrote on the inside front of it!

Simple Washi Tape Fathers Day Card!

So last night I made a simple Fathers Day card - and knowing ahead of time the stamps I wanted to use with it, made me choose the smaller A2 (4.25x5.5) size of the card to work with!

Pretty simple here, I just picked some washi tapes and placed them diagonally across the card. Originally I had only chosen 4 tapes, but then I realized after I placed them, that if I wanted to put the main stamped piece up higher on the card, it looked off-center, so I added the chevron tape above the gray to even it out more.

I embossed the anchor and frame with Zing opaque white and cut it out by hand, then stamped out the sentiment with letter stamps from Studio Calico in Hero Arts Soft Granite ink!