Nature Inspired - View Master Wheel

Our Crop Chocolate DT Project this month was "Nature Inspired".  There are so many places to go with this theme and originally, I was trying really hard to tie the theme in with Easter, which should have been easy enough, but what I really wanted to do was scrapbook this picture of my youngest son.  This ties in two types of nature, the natural background of weathered wood, flowers, etc and the nature of a parent . . . to always feel that their children are a true blessing, which I do.  With that said, I will begin to explain how this layout was created.

CC Supplies:  All paper used was Fancy Pants Country Boutique, with the exception of the white cardstock used for the view master.   I also used, Lifestyle Circle dies and Country Boutique Embellishments.

Non CC Supplies, Misc. brad and Kaiser Rhinestones, Fiskars hole punch.  Stampin Up Punch.

I began by cutting out two identical circles, one out of white card stock and one out of copy paper.  The circle I cut was   3" and this will become the View Master wheel.  Set aside the card stock circle, using the copy paper circle fold in half and then in half again.  Mark the folds with a straight edge to find the center of your circle.  Fold the the diagonals to create to create 1/8 pieces (like 8 slices of pizza).  Place the two circles together, copy paper on top.  Use a piece of re-positional tape to hold the bottom circle in place if needed.  The copy circle acts as a guide as you punch notches around the circle.  Using a 1/8" handheld punch, punch notches around the circle on each of the eight crease lines on the outside edge of the circle and one in the center for the brad. Discard copy paper circle.  On the card stock circle you can stamp images or words.  One image in each of the 4 quadrants so that when the view master reel is turned it will reveal only one image at a time.

I then cut a strip of wood print card stock 3-1/2" wide and 12 inches long, I centered a 1-1/4" punched hole in the 3-1/2" wide strip (this is my view master window). I then attached my 3" inch circle with a brad to the back of this strip so that when turned each word (or image) would show through the window.  To the right of the 3-1/2" strip, I then carfully punched a partial hole (i also punched an identical hole in the 12 x 12 background paper) to allow the wheel to turn.

This completes the view master portion.  I then attached this strip to the right side of my layout.    I then cut out a black circle to frame the hole of the view master to bring attention to it.  I adhered my picture to the layout.

I wanted to use the pre-cut embellishments that came with this kit.  So I decided what I wanted printed on each embellishment i.e. "Tyler . . . some people call you . . .",  "I call you"  and "A Blessing".  I put this in a word document the way that I wanted it to appear on the embellishment and printed on copy paper to check placement.  When I got everything placed the way I wanted, I took repositional tape and taped the embellishment over the printed copy and put this back through my printer so that it would print on the embellishment.  I then adhered all embellishments to the layout.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Thanks for taking a look.

Washi Tape Flowers

Hello friends.  Our challenge this week on Crop Chocolate was to make our own flower on a project.  I wanted something unique.  Washi tape is my new love, so I knew I had to make a washi tape flower.  I had white polka with red washi tape, so i knew immediately what picture I had to use.  A picture of my daughter when she was a little girl.  I am finding it so much fun to go back and scrapbook some of the old photos of my now grown children.  It just brings a flood of fond memories back to me.    The flower in lower left corner is a handmade flower using washi tape.  Other materials used are: CC Products:  All paper (except misc. green) was from the Your Truly collection by EP.  MM Paper Reverie Sienne Gems  Non CC Products:  Green Paper, Misc. Pearl Brad, Cosmo Cricket Blackboard Vintage Mix and Misc. Washi Tape  (the dimensional rose is made with washi tape).

Hope you enjoy this.

Fur Baby Love.

The Crop Chocolate February DT Project was Fur Baby Love and the above is my entry.  Hope you enjoy this project and that it may give you some inspiration.

We have two fur babies living in our house and deciding which one to use for this submission was a little difficult.  But I really wanted to use my Paris Girl paper so . . . the toy poodle seemed to be the obvious choice.  Our poodle's name is Teddy and he has been with us for 10 years now.  This is a picture of him and my daughter, when he was about 1 year old.  He has always been her dog and "Puppy Love" is certainly a term that describes their relationship.  The two are still inseparable and their love for each other is so obvious.    I had a wonderful time creating this layout, but I really love all European style papers and crafts, so that made it so easy.  With the exception of one sheet of black paper, all of the paper I used was Paris Girl by Carta Bella and was purchased from Crop Chocolate.  Other items used in this layout was:  naked chipboard letter, white spray paint, Nestabling heart, Teresa Collins Spring Fling Bling, SU En Francais stamp, Paris Girl stickers, misc. pink ribbon TH Black Soot Distress Ink,  MS Black pen, and an Eiffel Tower and Heart charm.  

I wanted white letters with french script on them.  I began with naked chipboard letters and used white spray paint to paint them.  I set them aside to dry.  

I took my black and white picture and double matted it with an inner matte of patterned Paris Girl Paper and a small outer matte of black paper.  The black mat really makes the picture pop on the page.   

By the time I had the picture matted, my letters had dried.  I then took TH Black Soot Distress Ink and stamped the En Francais script onto the letters.  Again, I wanted to make the letters pop, but a mat would not really work for this.  So I took a MS Black pen and edged the outer edge of the letter in black.  When the letters were  placed on the lighter background this really made the letters pop on the page.  

I used Teresa Collins Spring Fling bling on the letter P to give it some accent.  I used a Nestabling Heart on the the letter O  and on the Letter L, I used Pink ribbon to tie a heart and Eiffel Tower Charm to the letter.  I glued these letters and the photo on the background paper with glue dots.  I then used the Eiffel Tower, two poodles and a ticket stub from the Paris Girl stickers to finish embellishing my page.  All finished and I am very happy with this page.  I  am so pleased with how the chipboard letters turned out.

Valentines

Hey - I want to share with you my entry into Crop Chocolate weekly challenge.  This week was "anything goes", so I took advantage to get some of my Valentines crafts out of the way.  I decorated three (left over) Christmas boxes, with a beautiful line of paper from Echo Park called "Be Mine".  These boxes will be filled with Kisses and other delectable treats.  I am very happy with the way they turned out.  I decorated the insides as well as the outsides, in hopes they will be recycled again for another purpose.  There are some other great projects out there this week, come and visit at www.cropchocolate.com.

Crop Chocolate Challenge

Our challenge for this week was use blue, green and white in your project.  This is a simple card using CC Products  Playground Grass Stain paper, TH Tumbled Glass Distress Ink, TH Shabby Shutters Distress Ink, Non CC  Stamp, white cardstock and bling.  I stamped my flowers and heat embossed in white.  I then used TH tumbled glass and shabby shutters and inked over the white embossing.  Added some bling and it was just that simple.

ICE

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a member of the Crop Chocolate Design Team.  I was totally stunned and excited to receive this position . . . and a bit intimidated, but mostly excited.

Our theme for January is ICE . . . there are so many fun things you can do with ice, hut my mind immediately went to a picture of my oldest son's prom, which I had put off scrapbooking for a few years.  The theme of the prom was "What Dreams are Made Of" and the decorations were all snowy and icy.  The igloo in the background just sealed the deal.

This allows me to show you, what I think, is a really great technique.  Don’t you just hate it when you use glitter on a layout or card and the glitter flakes off every time you touch the card or look at the page?  Glitter is pretty, but I like it best when it stays in its place.  Well today I am going to show you how to use glitter and seal it so that it does not flake off.

To compliment my picture I chose to use Winterland paper by Fancy Pants throughout the layout.  I used the Below Zero for the background.   I cut letters and snow flakes using the Mistletoe design card with my Slice.  The glitter technique that I used with this layout is shown in the way I applied the glitter to the letters "DREAM" and to the snowflakes.  I wanted them to look icy, but not be messy.

In this picture, you will see I cut out letters, using Frigid paper for the words "What" and "are Made Of" and the Cards paper for "Dreams" and the snowflakes.

Now to adhere the glitter to the letters and snowflakes to give it an icy effect, I first sprayed the letters and snowflakes with Aleene's Tacky Spray and sprinkled with Hint of Violet Flower Soft Glitter.   The beauty of the Aleene’s Spray is that it dries very quickly.   After I shook the excess glitter off, I then sprayed the letters again with Mod Podge Gloss Lustre spray.   Again, this dries very quickly.    For this application, I think is much easier to use the spray instead of the brush on Mod Podge.    Using Mod Podge allows all of the beauty of the glitter to shine through, but not flake off.  I love this technique and it can be used with anything you want to glitter.

Below Zero paper is used for the background.  I attached the lettering "What" and "Are Made Of” which was cut from Frigid paper.  I also used Martha Stewart Snowflake punch and punched snowflake border on the top and bottom of a strip of Frigid paper and attached to the background paper above my photograph.   I used Electric Winter Transparency by Fancy Pants and attached the snowflakes and the letters "Dream" (cut from Snow Angel) with pop dots to give it some dimension and then placed this over the layout.  I also used a pretty mint green Pebbles Pearl Candy Dots to accent the snowflakes.

I hope you find this technique helpful in your future crafting.

Valentine Tag

Weather here is cold and getting colder . . . great weather for playing with paper.

Crop Chocolates weekly challenge this week is a project containing flowers, pink and bling.  So it sounded like the perfect recipe for a Valentines project.  Here is a gift tag ising CC Products FP Love 6x6; Paris Girl Le Grande Tour Paper (used in flowers), TH Spun Sugar Ink Pad.  Other products En Francais Stamp, misc. ribbons and charms.  Want 2 Scrap Bling.    The background is lightly stamped in Spun Sugar Ink with French Script, although it does not show up well in the picture.