The Scrappy Blog Tour

If you enjoy looking at scrappy blogs, you may have noticed some designers participating in a blog tour that is passed from one to another to share the inspiration. I was super honored when my sweet and talented friend, Madeline Fox passed it on to me.  Visit Madeline's blog here to see her beautiful work. She has a real eye for color and her title work often great fun. Everyone finds different inspiration when looking at layouts, but the one thing that I have always been jealous of with Madeline, is her titles. I think its the way she combines different alphas, die cut words, and embellishments for a really unique design. It goes from being a title to an embellishment. 

Ok now on with the questions:

 1. What am I working on right now?
I have to admit that I am actually finishing up the last couple of pages of my December Daily Album from last year. LOL! As the new fun holiday papers have been coming out recently, I felt like I had to get it finished now or it wouldn't happen at all. Hopefully I can get some ok photos and share it with you all soon. That is one difficult project to photograph!


 2. How long does it take me to create a project?
Oh, this one had me laughing because I was thinking about Madeline's hilarious answer. I am guilty of being a pretty slow scrapper too. I usually say that it takes me about 4 - 5 hours for one layout. I rarely finish one without walking away and coming back the next day or at least later in the day. I will say that I do not start more than one layout at a time. I have been known to let a project like December Daily sit unfinished for months, but not layouts. 

 3. What are my favorite things to create with at the moment?
I love so many things, but number one is always patterned paper. That's not really a fun answer so I will tell you about the embellishments that I am loving lately. The first thing I thought of was GOLD, White, and Vellum. The sparkle of gold just adds that extra something and because of the years of dark papers and of course dark photos, I am loving adding alot of white and vellum to my layouts lately. I really am addicted to the Foiled Vellum stack by DCWV. 

I also love sequins! The obsession started when I was a kid making ornaments with my grandmothers, so I am enjoying that they are a current trend. 

 

but my constant fave is die cut packs, miscellany type packs and chipboard packs. 

 4. How does my writing/creative process work? 
First I have to clear off the mess from the last layout. I have to put it all away. Next I always start with the photos and most of the time that means at least one good old full sized 4x6" photo and maybe a second or third photo. I want to see my photos so most of the time they are not going to be tiny. I then pull out paper collections and choose about 5 - 8 patterned papers that I think will work. Next I go to my embellishment lamp thingie and browse for coordinating goodies. I always choose too many and that's why there is that clean up part before each page. :)

 5. How do I become inspired and stay inspired?
I totally get my inspiration from mfg and designer blogs and Pinterest. Well I "borrow" ideas from many of my scrappy friends and I love Skype scrapping with a couple of my bffs so they can tell me when to stop adding and call it done, or how to fix a page when it just doesn't feel right. If I am still blocked, I go to my sketches (SketchSavvy) because even if I have done a sketch once, if I liked it, I might do it again another direction or something.


 6. What is my signature style?
oh I really don't know what to call it. You guys tell me. I mean, I have noticed that I like my photos to be linear and I rarely place papers or photos on angle unless its in layering a bunch of papers under a photo. I like lighter layouts to allow the photos to pop, and I tend to have a horizontal strip or block of paper to ground my designs. I am also trying to make my pages less chunky so that they will take up less space in my albums. Some of my older layouts are so crazy thick or dark, and if I could, I would go back and mat every single photo with white cardstock! Those days of not matting photos had them disappearing on my pages. 

Here are some of my recent faves:

Thanks for hanging with me!  

And now it's my turn to pick someone who inspires me to continue with this Scrappy Blog Tour! I have volunteered my good friend and crazy impressive scrapbooker, Nancy Burke to be the next stop on this inspirational blog tour.....mostly because she is on holiday and can't say no. LOL!!!! No, seriously, she is uber talented and has been inspiring me for many many years. She is a great friend and has taught me most of what I know about the paper crafting industry. Her layouts always have whimsy...ok I am not sure what word describes it, but in my head, the word is whimsy. (little fun stuff?) Her photos are gorgeous and then she picks the best papers and on every layout there is something I want to copy so to me, that is perfect. 

Visit Nancy's Blog here and just take time to scroll and scroll! Also here is a link to her Scraptastic Gallery and A Cherry On Top gallery.   
Also check out her creative hand lettering book HERE

 

October Scraptastic sneak peeks!

Oh you guys will like the October Sneak Peeks from Scraptastic! Take a look and tell me which one is your fave.
First up is the October This Life Noted kit with lots of great colors and just look at that awesome stamp set!

Next is the "Heart It Races" kit. Awesome gold accents. I totally love this and that little fox is reason enough to order this kit.

And finally the "Thriller" kit which is my kit of choice this month because it looks totally fun, I love the glitter alpha, the wood veneer kitty and 31, and just look at that flair! I have to have that flair. I can't wait to play with it.

 

 

Yellow Watermelon

I LOVE YELLOW WATERMELON! I know it's not that much different than normal watermelon, but it always seems sweeter and it's something that you only get for a short time each summer so I just love it. I am not joking when I say I could eat the whole thing myself.

I used the cool star burst paper in this months "We Will Rock You" kit and Add on kit from Scraptastic. I also used "The Girl" stamp set from Scraptastic. It was designed by Kaitlin Shaeffer and I had see her use the stamps this way so I had to do it on my page.

For the stamp handle I inked the stamp with a light grey ink and then lightly inked the edges of the stamp with a darker grey before stamping. Gives it a bit of dimension. And here is a peek at the awesome The Girl stamp set.  

 

Make that a 3 pager!

If you saw my post yesterday with the layout "Astro Orbiter", I mentioned finding more photos of my family on that ride. It was a fun time. That ride is on top of a building in tomorrowland and it is high to begin with, then add the fact that you use controls to make your rocket go up and down. My son does not like heights so he was looking toward the center and not going up at all, we had to give him a hard time. Also my husband and I were stupid and got in one rocket together and almost couldn't breathe! We were cracking up and the photos will not be scrapped - too scary! LOL! But the other photos were just too fun not to use so I turned it into a 3 pager.  Its easy to do, just do one page on it's own and then a two pager.

Here is the rest of the ride. While I had the papers out I continued with the fun Thats My Boy collection by Echo Park Paper, and I used the same sort of mist and embellishment look to tie it all together.

For my rocket I used an older Inque Boutique stamp of mine and made a paper pieced rocket. I haven't done that in a long time :)

 

Astro Orbiter

First, I have to tell you guys that I borrowed the idea of the goodies around a circle on this page from a few other designers. I have seen several people do this sort of thing with mists, paint, stamps, embellishments, and stitching. Most recently I fell in love with THIS LAYOUT by the talented Kim Jeffress . I will totally be copying her Mickey shape at some point but for this layout, the circle was more appropriate.

I used the Thats My Boy collection by Echo Park Paper for its fantastic Disney colors.

To create the circle, I placed a plate on my layout and then unscrewed the nozzle on my mists and started dragging the tube part of the sprayers around the outside of the plate here and there, so I would have a nice circle.  Next I flung mist at the page with that same nozzle/tube piece for the splatter. ***COVER stuff - including yourself- before that kind of flinging. Trust me, I have alot of splatter on several pairs of pants LOL!

 

Next I machine straight stitched around the page and gathered some little cute things in the same color range to scatter around the circle. 

 

Now here is the funny part. I loved the way the page turned out but I remembered that I have other photos from this ride since my sister and I were both taking photos. I found some great ones that I totally need to include, so while this collection was on my desk I made another 2 pager to go with this! Stay tuned for me to post that tomorrow. :)

Working with Sketches part 1

Hey do you use sketches? If so I hope that I can inspire you to look at them a little bit differently. I did a blog post for Scraptastic Club Blog this week that I would love to share. It's about how to take a sketch design and make it your own. To see the sketches and my tips visit the Scraptastic Blog HERE.

Here are my two layouts using the Scraptastic September We Will Rock You Kit, Add on kit, and Stamp Set. Lots of fun papers and embellishments in this kit and look at this awesome flair!

This music staff is actually a nice wood veneer and I inked it with an orange chalk ink pad - love the woodgrain showing thru.

 Now just look at Brownie, my brothers mini chihuahua. He is too funny! He really believes he is a big dog. The little hipster dog on the arrow inspired my page because it reminded me of the photo of Brownie that I took a couple of weeks ago.