Tim holtz Blog candy Giveaway!

WOW, My fellow Design team member,Stacy, from Sketches for you has some awesome blog candy she is giving away to celebrate her birthday. Pop on over to her blog to wish her a happy birthday and for a chance to win!

Hand Lettering

  My Writing is something I am not always fond of. In fact, it was something I struggled with in school. Over time, I have come to terms with my printing. I am comfortable enough to hand journal( I feel it's quite important to do so)...but in print form. I tend to make a rough draft and then...slowly, carefully copy those thoughts onto the page so it's legible. Cursive? UGH! I hate mine. I taught myself calligraphy and since then there has been some improvement. So you can imagine my thoughts at a recent challenge to hand letter a title. I shuddered to think about it. How could I pull off anything halfway decent?

  My first thought was to use my cricut to make a stencil. I started to do just that. Then, I decided to challenge myself. Could I mimic the look of a simple font? Looking at the screen, I carefully practiced a few times on a scrap sheet of paper. I decided it wasn't half bad. Now for the big risk! I pulled over the sheet of background cardstock and started the title. My one and only tombow marker slowly ran along the surface of the page. what resulted was a close rendition of the font I had in mind. It still needed a little more. I filled in the letters with the brush tip end, then took my black pen and made an outline. I actually liked it!  I decided to challenge myself to a little cursive. this time, my orange marker slowly moved across the page...and somehow, the results seem to fit with the fun, kid feel of the page.

-Arrow papers and orange triangle print from Sassafrass monstruosity.

-MM chipboard arrow- I drew on it with a white crayon, then inked it

with fresh green with moss green edges

-crate paper ribbon

-basic grey brads

- MM just chillin boy's collection: metal pow sign, diecut and journal spot

submitted at:

Sketches for You August #1 Scraplift and Ink challenge

Frosted Designs: need a little direction challenge

Club CK August week 1 Scrap Challenge; hand drawn title

Flowers Everywhere!

  Flowers have been such a big trend, that it's no surprise they are popping up all over the place at CHA. What's a girl to do when she can't buy all of the pretty flowers out there? Learn to make her own of course! There are a lot of advantages to making your own flowers. The main one being that you can customize it to fit your page. That's a big plus when your main topic of interest is a little boy. I have always admired the flowers but really don't always want girly looking pages.

Recently, I took the fabulous flowers class at Scrapbook Challenges. It was a great class! I could do everything at my own pace and I learned how to make 6 different flowers.I highly recommend the classes there and am looking forward to taking some more! Here are a few samples of things I made:

These were my first handmade flowers. I used crepe paper and buttons.

I did not make the small red flowers. I did make the white daisies with red crepe paper. This was for several July challenges at Sketches for you. The materials used on the lay out are K and company and Making memories.

I made these roses for the MS. Scraptastic 2010  Competition using crepe paper. I cut the leaves on my cricut, then used a bone folder to crease them. I inked them, folded them and sewed them to the page. The PP used is all Basic grey.

Then, to my delight, Club CK hosted a one hour challenge involving another flower technique. I love the flower, though I do find it a bit bulky in my album.

These were made using Crate Paper lemongrass papers and some buttons from my stash.

To learn how to make this fab flower, check out the video at Club CK. BTW, I didn't have all of the supplies they asked for in the video, but still managed to make the flower. The one thing I wished I would have had was the spritz to dampen the paper and make it easier to work with.

I hope you will decide to try out some handmade flowers of your own. If you do, there is a great challenge over at Scrap our Stash for August. Even if your flower isn't handmade, they would love to see you flower embellished pages. So please go check them out...and stay tuned to the blog for more of my hand made flowers.