Bloom

 It's been a long time since I have used my embossing powders.Years, in fact. So when Club CK had an embossing challenge for its summer camp, I pulled out my old heat gun. I ended up using a free paper piecing pattern from Club CK. I stamped the bird with colorbox blue lagoon and then heat embossed some blue powder over the top. Instead of using the branches that came with the pattern, I fussy cut some branches from a DCWV green stack paper. The nest is also from the green stack. I wanted the nest to "pop" so I tried another recommendation from Club CK. I used my crop-o-dile to emboss the dots on the paper. I don't have a cuttlebug yet, so this was a nice easy alternative.You can see a sample of the nest partially embossed here:

 A little tip...if it's a thick glossy paper, don't press too hard or you'll "crack" the finish. I decided to use a Maya road acrylic paisley which I had inked with Stream alcohol ink. I decorated with some diamond stickles, a staple in my supplies...and voila! A lovely bird in nest. I now have the Club Ck nature badge. I'll have to go back to earn the heat embossing badge...but it does help me use up some stash.
   The background paper is DCWV greenstack. I loved the rest of the stack, but until today had no idea what I would use this particular sheet for. The edges are inked in prussian colorbox ink, while the yellow CS is inked in apple green. The inked edges just help define things a little more...at least in my eyes. the title was cut with the AMORE att font on my cricut. This was completed using the sketchy Thursday 7-8 sketch challenge. http://sketchythursdays.blogspot.com/2010/07/78-sketch-challenge.html

For anyone completeing the club CK heat embossing challenge, don't forget to submit your Lo to Practical Scrappers. They are having an embossing challenge this week: http://www.practicalscrappers.com/2010/07/this-weeks-challenge-is-embossing.html

I honestly do not know what the name of the berry is in the photos. Guess I need to do some research...

Diary of a Tadpole

While I did not make it to round two of the last Scrapper Standing contest at Memorable Seasons, I decided to keep participating for a chance to win a gift certificate. Challenge two asked for us to use a black cardstock base and to make at least two handmade flowers. I immediately thought of water lilies. My son and I had found some tadpole eggs...which we promptly brought home in an empty water bottle. Currently, the little guys have hatched and are growing at a wonderfully steady rate. I have been taking photos along the way with the intent to document their stay in our home. This will be the title page for those layouts. I liked the idea of a black background. The photos seem striking against it.

I made the lily pads by cutting circles of various sizes. I cut out a little wedge, giving them the appearance of pac man. I then used my bone folder to crease them. I felt this gave the appearance of leaf veins. I folded the edges of the circle and inked them with colorbox olive ink. I then used various green chalks to add a little variable color to the leaf and to accent the veins. For the tadpole eggs, I used glossy accents and black pony beads. To make the flowers, I cut them on my cricut. They come in two pieces. I rolled up the edges of the top layer and inked them with colorbox ruby satin and royal silk ink. These were the closest colors to the actual flowers we saws and added more depth to the paper flowers. I rolled crate paper sweet branch trim for the centers.
  The title was cut on my cricut. I used CK's sloppy and beantree fonts. The tadpole egg "o" was made from a chipboard alpha. I flipped it over to the white back, added the button and used glossy accents. I am looking forward to making little tadpoles and frogs for the rest of the pages. Stay tuned for those.

I have also decided to post my first project for Last Scrapper standing round one here. The theme was "An American Child." We were asked to use star and stripes. I cut the stars on my cricut...some of which I creased and glued down to add dimension. To help the star hold it's crease, I glued cotton ball pieces inside. The striped ribbon was purchased from the dollar section of target. I chose to keep this LO very simple. I journaled inside a star on my word processor and added it to the border. I added a few small star brads and  buttons.

Fun with Flowers

  WOW...today I have posted more than I ever have before. Who would have thought that someone like me would go from no blog to posting almost daily. Part of the reason this has happened is due to all of the great on-line challenges I have found. This current challenge is all about flowers and it's over at Practical scrappers. http://www.practicalscrappers.com/2010/06/this-weeks-challenge-is-flowers.html So I thought I would post a couple of recent flower favorites from my lay outs.

  Flowers are really a tough challenge for me. Having a boy means finding ways to get creative when using flowers. One would think I wouldn't have a lot of flowers in my stash...but well, let's just say those lovely little paper flowers sing a siren song when I am at my LSS. And when my friend offered me some scrap pieces of felt flower strips, how could I say no?Needless to say, it's not all rocket ships and robots in my stash. SO...just what does one do when they have a boy and flowers in their stash? Well, you can look for another subject to scrap about as I did here in Lil' Visitor.

This little bird flew into our utility room. I am sure he doesn't mind that I scrapped him with the purple and green of the The Color room's palette. Purple is also a color challenge for me as it's not always a boy's color.

For club CK's Challenge 16, I chose a flower as an accent for my favorite May moments. It worked well with scrapbook challenges sketch 202 and fit the theme of "May'.

When in doubt, add girls to the photo. "Seriously!" as my son likes to say. Two of DS' best friends are girls. So when they appear in the photos, I try to sneak in some girly color or flowers. Our female cat, Sweetpea, is also the subject of many an LO and the perfect excuse to use pink.

I hope you can find creative ways to use up the supplies that challenge you the most, be it a color or a type of item, like flowers.                                                                                                                         

Crawling with Bugs!

  I recently challenged myself to put my camera in Macro and to find as many bugs as I could. I actually found quite a few interesting critters. I did my best to identify them with some on-line field guides...and then of course, decided to make a page all about them. BUT....what kind of page do you make about a bunch of bugs?
  I decided that I wanted some grass on the pages. I know masking is not new to a lot of you. I have done a little masking and I wanted to try it here. I cut scraps of white cardstock into blades of grass and laid them on a sheet of solid white, textured CS.

 I used meadow green glimmer mist and was quite satisfied with the results. I created the paper with the writing on it. I used a scrap piece of vellum and wrote "bugs....creepy crawlies" over and over again. I think it's an expensive way to customize the page for your theme. I used to do this a long time ago and am challengin myself to try things like this again.

I chose  to use shades of green for the trim. The photos had plenty of color and I wanted those to be what caught the eye. On a tip from Scrap Our Stash blog spot, I painted my chipboard alphas a light green. ( for more idea on using paint to change your chipboard, see here: http://scrapourstash.blogspot.com/2010/06/frugal-friday-tip_10.html )To hide the paint stokes, I added Diamond Stickles. All of the bugs used on the pages are from a swap I did on Club CK. The flower buttons are Making memories. The page sketch is from Sketches for you:
http://sketchesforyou.ning.com/

For the second page, I used the blades from the mask and a sketch from studio calico:
http://studiocalico.blogspot.com/2010/06/sunday-sketch_13.html

I find that sitting down and writing a list of photos I want to try to take can be really inspiring. A lot of great LO's come from this. So, challenge yourself...try something different with your camera or list those must have photos for your album!