Speed Scrapping

(Update: Scroll to the bottom to see the final version of this layout.)

We played a little game on the Scraptastic Forum, where two teams of 5 persons each were to scraplift the layout of the person in front of them. I am #5 on one team, and was quite surprised to find out this afternoon that numbers 1-4 are already done, and I needed to scraplift #4's layout -- quick!

I didn't have so much as a photo or an idea, but I managed to pull this together. What I liked about the layout I scraplifted was the blackboard look, with white in the corners and a white line around the page. I tried to achieve that look by heat embossing some viney stamps in white and adding a white line. I used cardstock from the new Scraptastic Let Me Go kit, and paper and emellies from Just Breathe, maybe my favorite kit ever.

Now that I see mine, it needs tweaking. The bottom layer could be a bit smaller, and I don't like the small letters under 'mystery plant". I think I'll fix those and see what I think, then photograph again in the daylight.

My craft closet is a disaster, and just as I was finishing, half of the stuff piled up slid down to the floor. I'm not even thinking about it until tomorrow! Just close the door, Adele, and walk away...

This morning I fixed the things that were bugging me last night about this layout. I didn't like the small letters under the title; the layers were too big; the journaling was too close to the photo. After tweaking it a bit, here is the final version. It's not the best LO I've ever done, but I'm calling it good and leaving it at that:

Enjoy the Little Things

I was watching Julie Ebersole playing with wood veneer the other day, when I realized that I have some veneer as well as the stamp she was using. So, never loathe to shamelessly copycat, I made a similar card. The bird is heat embossed in white with an enamel dot for the eye, and the stamp is a Scraptastic exclusive. The scrap of patterned paper had some white stitching lines on it, so I simply continued the look around the card. Done!

Simon Says Stamp Happy Birthday challenge

I made some cards for the Simon Says Stamp Birthday Challenge, but for some reason the linky thing closed up early. Some of the contributors were smart enough to mention their blog sites in the comments section, so that's what I'm doing too. We are allowed to post 5 new creations, so here's what I came up with. Perfect timing too, because April is a big birthday month for my family.

Stenciled, Days 3 and 4

I've pretty much finished all of the projects I can do from the wonderful Stenciled class. I don't have a gelli plate, and I have translucent embossing paste on order. I may yet try to cut a stencil from clear packaging material and someday I might try stamping on a clear acetate card. Meanwhile, here's the rest of what I created during class:

Day 2. The idea was to watercolor through a negative shape, and the sample was a dog. I thought I would improvise by stamping a simple image and cutting it out to create the negative shape. I don't have watercolors per se, but I thought I could use watercolor pencils. Not so happy with that. When it dried I embossed over it in clear, then added details for nose, eyes and spots. Better. Then I messed up the words, and ended up just cutting out the pup and popping him up. Not my best project, but worth trying.

Day 3:

This next one was another of my "problem children". The white paste didn't show up much and the underlying sprinkles showed through. I patted some white ink over it and the darn stuff wouldn't dry, even after 24 hours. I die cut some leaves on vellum and didn't like them. Finally I stamped some on vellum and cut them out. I couldn't get happy with my butterfly and in the end decided to use all 3 of my samples. It's done. I'm over it.

Embossing powder over paste. It bubbled a bit because I used the heat gun right away:

Day 4.

You can't tell from the picture, but this one was dry embossed through the stencil before sponging on distress inks. That process gave me fits too because the Cuttlebug layers just didn't make sense. Finally I followed the instructions (duh!) and added a shim, and got pretty good results!

These next two might be my favorites from the whole class. We applied embossing paste and dribbled on different colors of embossing powder with a soda straw while it was still wet. It was SO hard to wait until the paste was dry the next day to heat emboss it. I did two versions.

 

Bonus! A nice little surprise was a couple of bonus projects. This one is misted through the stencil, angled, bordered and attached to the base.

And I like this next technique a lot. We sponged distress inks very lightly through a stencil, then without removing that stencil, added a more intricate stencil and sponged the same colors but with a heavy hand. I will definitely be doing this again!

So that was my adventure in stenciling. I had so much fun, made a lot of cards I'm pleased with and learned so much from a great group of instructors who kept it fun. Can't wait for the next class offering -- Clean and Simple Cards 3 coming up, I'm told.

Stenciled Class Day 2

Day 2 of the Stenciled class focused on sponging, stamping and watercolor. I was able to do most of the Day 2 projects with a little improvising.

I wasn't sure this one would work with a brass stencil, but it did. Ink was sponged around the edges, and then I stamped through the stencil with a text stamp. I like this effect a lot and will use it again.

The idea for the next one was to remove the top sheet from a set of stickers and use it as a stencil. My butterflies were kind of large and I ended up drawing around the edges and adding deelybobbers.

These next two were done by shifting the stencil as desired and coloring the images with colored pencils for a sketchy look.

This last one took some doing. I don't have plain old water colors, so I used metallic watercolors. I didn't like the result at all and decided to then trace around each section with a distress ink pen, which improved it considerably but was a lot of work!

There's one more I might do from Day 2 if I can figure out a good stencil to use for a silhouette. The instructor used a cute dog shape.

Stenciled Class

I have so much been looking forward to the Stenciled class at OnlineCardClasses. We are in Day 3 of four days and honestly, I got my money's worth just out of Day 1. I finished all of the exercises from that day, and learned so much about using stencils in creative ways. I didn't have many of the specific items the instructors used, but it was easy to substitute -- even crafted a couple stencils with my Cricut. I'm pleased with the results for the most part:

First Challenges of 2014!

Yipes! We're already a week into the month and I've already entered a couple of challenges, with more on my list that I want to get to.

First, Our Daily Bread Designs is sponsoring another challenge on behalf of Operation Write Home. This month's theme is stripes. I try to enter this one whenever I can because these generous folks pay shipping on up to two boxes of cards to our troops -- one for every 25 entries. Here are my stripes:

Then Simon Says Stamp has fun challenges on Mondays and Wednesdays. This week's Monday Challenge is to create something blue and you can enter as many as 5 projects. It just so happens that Operation Write Home had a call for penguins so I created a few and they fit perfectly with the blue theme:

I also got to do a little paper piecing with the new Operation Write Home stamps, also in blue:

I need to get busy with family birthday and valentine cards for February so I'll be a busy little bee working on those plus a few more challenges. Keeps me out of trouble! Unless you count buying scrappy stuff as trouble. Oh.

01/14/14 update:

Just finished this one for last Thursday's challenge at Scraptastic, based on a pin Danni found on Pinterest. Here's my take:

I got to play with a new tag die and new embossing folder. Which brings up the fact that I have spent ALL of my allowance this month on new scrapbooking goodies. It seems that every time CHA is going on, different stores have fabulous sales on stuff that's been on my wish list. So I've treated myself to an embossing folder, a number of stamp sets and singles, several dies, 3 inks and a Cricut cartridge.  I'm sure there's more. Depends on when you count this merry spending spree as starting. I. am. broke!