Sunday, February 19, 2012

I want Candi

Just a very short post today to comment on Craftworkcards "Candi". For the record, I bought these, and was not given them. I bought a back of Regal Silver (CAD$4.99 at my LSS).

They say there's about 400 of them in a bag. I'm not going to count them to check, but there really are a ton. These are going to go a long way!


When put on a scrapbooking page, they look like brad heads, but a bit bigger. With my ruler, it's a 1cm diameter. They don't have any adhesive on them, so you can use a popdot to adhere them to your card or layout.  They are actually made of paper, so I was a bit dubious at first, but for the price (works out to just over 1 penny per circle), you can't go wrong.

And in case you were wondering, yes, you can recolour these. Here's my little experiment below. The left dot is plain, the middle is coloured with alcohol ink, and the right is coloured with a Copic marker.


When I put them in the bright sunlight, you can see that the colouring's not perfect but the above photo is more like what they would look like on a layout.


So that's my 2 cents.  Actually 4.2 cents Canadian, including taxes. :)


Saturday, February 18, 2012

This looks a little sketchy....

I love using sketches. I was over at http://www.sketchsupport.com/ looking for a little inspiration. They have great online sketches that anyone can use (and they also have books that they sell chock full of them).  Anyway, their 2-pager #24 called to me because it was all 4x6's pretty much, so a nice quick and easy one. Yeah right.

Here's what I started with:


Yup.... that's my mess of a desk. So much for my New Year's resolutions...

Anyway, this was really what I started with:



And I ended with this, created for Scrapbook Queens:


I've been going a little crazy with my Cameo lately, but I love cutting out shapes and laying patterned paper within them. This time, I used Bella Blvd patterned paper. It's got flowers on it, but the blues and greens I felt were good "nature" colours to go with the boys outside at summer camp. I also cut out some script letters. I love the "Suzie's Hand" font. One of my favourites.

I scooped up some Candi from the store (it JUST came in). They're little circles of paper, but totally look like brads. Don't be surprised to see them on almost everything I make in the near future.


And I'm loving these wooden letters (Pink Paislee). I normally paint things like this, but they look great as is.


The last thing worth noting... a little cut out bunny ears as a nod to Cooper's tendency to do this behind Nathan's head in every photo opportunity. Attaboy.


Materials: sketch by sketchsupport.com, cardstock - Bazzill Basics (Two Scoops), patterned paper - Bella Blvd, vellum - World Win, silver dots - Craftwork Cards Candi (regal silver), font - Suzie's Hand, wooden letters, Pink Paislee (Expressions Wood Shop)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

BFFs

So lots of creating lately, not so much blogging. I've also been scouring the internet looking for washi tape. Have some ordered and now waiting for the delivery. Can't wait to try this stuff!

Today's layout is a sneak peek for Scrapbook Queen's monthly design team. I used some great papers from Echo Park's Day in the Life line. I just picked up some more beautiful paper from their "A Boy's Life" line at the store, and they have "Yours Truly" in stock, too. Love the bright colours!


I used my Cameo to cut out some white Bazzill and a couple of the sheets of EP paper in zig-zag pattern (or if you're fancy, you call this "chevron" :) ). Then I layered it on top of another pattern. I like how they're all light colours so it doesn't come off as too busy (in my eyes, anyways).  I was inspired by Kate Vickers' madd sewing skillz and sewed around the edge of my layout. LOL.... so crooked. Good job I don't make clothing!

I added some amazing thick green flower ribbon by Petaloo, a wooden doily (Maya Road) that I painted blue, a doily, some stickles and of course some bling. 

Color Me Crazy has these awesome 3d flower stickers that are all white.  I coloured some yellow and some blue to match the layout. They have alphas too... I'll probably have to pick up some more of these because they pick up the colour so well. For paint, I used Twinkling H20s (yellow) and plain old acrylic (blue). A little paint to frame the whole layout. Oh, yeah, and some orange buttons. And the kitchen sink.


I really like the colours of this layout. It's so springlike and bright. Makes me happy. :)

Materials: Patterned paper - Echo Park (A Walk in the Park), Title - Grungeboard, green ribbon flowers - Petaloo, wooden doily - Maya Road, yellow/blue flowers - Color Me Crazy, cardstock - Bazzill, Stickles, acrylic paint, buttons - Doodlebug, rhinestones - Dollarama

Monday, February 6, 2012

My MidSummer Fairy

A short post today to share a new layout of my daughter, all made up for her school play last year.  I had some trouble with colours at first because I liked the green of the leaves in the background, but in the end went with the more aqua colour from her t-shirt.  I was really happy with how the title turned out. I love to mix two different fonts, weld them, and mat them so that they really pop off the page.


I cut a few bits of "greenery" from the Cameo and dry embossed them, as well cut some vines (with the hollow leaves) from some tools at Scrapbook Queens, then a few pearls. Also, on the left of the photo is a really nice border die cut from Memory Box. Some flowers for good measure. :)


I had meant to mention something in my last post about choosing letter heights for cutting. If I'm not sure, I'll lay my cutting mat over my layout. Then I can see exactly what measurement my letters should be cut at. I always have my grid turned on in the software for this. So handy!


Supplies:  Patterned paper - My Minds Eye and Authentique, pearls - Prima, little white flowers - Maya Road, cardstock - Bazzill, die - Memory Box "loop border"

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Blowing Bubbles



I started working on this layout at the last all day crop at Scrapbook Queens. I ran out of time... can you believe it? Two and a half layouts in 14 hours. Way too much fun and chatting. It was a great way to spend the day.

Now that I have it home, I've finished it off with some work on my Cameo. I wanted to have some clear iridescent bubbles on there, but after searching the internet for ideas, the closest I could find were made of glass, and I don't want that in my book.  Next idea was to use my Twinkling H20's, as I have several whites that are iridescent. Then, I pulled out some vellum as it was the closest thing to clear that would take the paint.

Next, grab a good bubble shape from the Silhouette Studio library. Scrreeeech.... no good file. What? Actually, I was pretty shocked because they really have everything on there. Or so I thought. Good news is that bubbles are round, and I can make circles. :) I fancied them up a little and made my own file (available for download here (download Bubbles studio file in Google docs).


I cut the bubbles out of vellum and painted them with stripes of Iridescent Violet and Iridescent Green. Needless to say, when the vellum got wet, it went all crinkly (like printer paper would), so I waited for it to dry and then had to iron them. Funny, I iron scrapbooking stuff but not clothes. :) Anyway, they were done and I moved on to the title.


I wanted to try something different, so played around with different fonts. Then I started playing around with the line types. I thought it would be cool to do an internal offset and make it be a dashed line... it would look like stitching without all the work! I'll save that idea for another day, though.  I decided to do a dotted line on the outside of the text, and print pink-on-pink.

Something else I learned today.  After one piece of nice cardstock and several sheets of copy paper, I googled to find out why my text print and cut was NOT printing on my Cameo.  Well, turns out that you need to turn the printing feature on in the line style.  From the Silhouette site:

To turn on lines for printing, please do the following:
  1. Go to the "Line Style" icon (located along the top right toolbar - it is the icon that looks like a serial of varying dashed and solid line styles)
  2. Select your desired image(s)
  3. Check the box in the "Line Style" menu labeled "Print Lines of Selected Images".
This will have all lines from selected images print.
I hope that saves somebody the extra 30 minutes it took me to print the title (and I wonder why layouts take me so long... sigh).  Here's the text ready to print:




You can see that "print lines of selected shapes" is ticked on the lower right.  Also, I rotated one of the words 180 degrees in order to conserve paper.

I have to say that this was probably the most complicated title I've ever made. On top of the above issues, I also welded the text and then went back and editted the points so that all the letters properly joined each other. Sometimes script letters don't end up touching each other properly (like I joined the beginning of the "L" to the "B") Finished text product:

It still needed a little oomph, so I added Stickles for good measure. :)


In putting together the rest of the layout, I used tons of bling. I have so much of it. Today I realized that I need to use it, not collect it, so I piled it on.  The cheap bling from the dollar store doesn't hold its shape very well when you pull it off its sheet, so I use vinyl transfer paper to make the process easier.  Sparkle everywhere.... Stickles on the title, pink cardstock glimmer misted, and tons of swirls and hearts. Perfect layout for my girly-girl daughter. :)

Supplies: Basic Grey "Life of the Party" patterned paper, pink Bazzill cardstock, Stampin Up kraft paper, various sources of bling including Prima, Kaisercraft and Forever In Time, Stickles, "Perfect Pearl" Perfect Pearls Mist, vellum, Twinkling H20s