Merry *DCWV Christmas Made Stack *

I recently got the New DCWV Christmas Made Stack and it made me want to push stuff off my desk and make a layout. :) I really love the designs and the bits of gold foil, but my favorite part is the tags! There are a lot of cool tags and cards to cut out - seriously a lot and I just used two for my page but this candy cane one is totally the cutest one, so I kind of worked my page around it. LOL!
 There is another fun stack called the Jolly Whimsy stack and I will try to take a photo my page for that one tomorrow, its a very cute stack. 

I got some glassine envelopes from a friend and I used one as a shaker bag with sequins in it and I cut strips from another larger bag and used a scalloped punch so that I could layer two strips for a border under my photos.

I used some super old chipboard alphas for my title and I used gold rub n buff and then added bits of glitter.

So Very Thankful *Scraptastic November kit

I have another fall layout to share today using the November "Home" kit from Scraptastic. I am thankful for lots of things - today its my weather, but my boys are right up there at the top of the list.  I love this photo of my son and Noel, he was at day 10 of No-Shave November last year and he was looking nice still - LOL! The colors in my photo work so well with these great products. I don't know about you guys but I like a light neutral background, not cardstock, but something with a bit of a pattern. When I saw the packaging for the Prima Resist Alphas, I had to use it for my background.

 

And speaking of using things in a non-traditional way, the Thickers were looking fun too so they got to be background as well. :) If you haven't used alphas or packaging like this on your pages, you just have to give it a go. I mean, who is going to use all those extra alphas - q, z, p,v, 9, .... you know what I mean. I actually use alot of v's because of Savvy and my friend has a son named Zane, so we do use some of those but look at your other alpha sheets that you have used alot and see what's left and you will know what you can afford to use up in a new set - or just use that old set.

 Someone was telling me that they like the look of the stitching I do thru alphas... well, I  have to be honest. I am not doing it because of the look, although I do like that. I do it because all the chipboard alphas tend to fall off over time! I can not tell you how many page protectors have alphas sitting at the bottom of them. Not cool. Those vinyl alphas are the worst for sliding down your page. It won't stop me buying them because I love them, but they have to be stitched. So many adhesives fail, sometimes its a bad lot, sometimes its a bad product. Stitching doesn't fail.

I love pumpkin everything!!! *Scraptastic Novemer kit

I have another layout to share using my November "Home" kit from Scraptastic Club kits. I have to tell you guys that this is just a really yummy kit! I have some of the Echo Park and BasicGrey products but putting them together with these other products is just making it really fun to do some fall layouts! Isn't it amazing when someone puts together a kit and you think, wow what a great group of goodies!

So here is just a simple page about one of the signs of fall for me - Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte and Pumpkin pastries of any kind. I am drinking a homemade version of it now. :) Anyway, one of my favorite things in this kit is the BasicGrey Persimmon embellishment pack and I have been wanting to do a row of embellishments. It's an easy fun way to add dimension, variety, and interest, just put a couple of things on foam squares and overlap slightly. Oh and these Maya Road hearts are awesome as is, but I painted them with Ranger Terra Cotta Color Wash and they match these papers perfectly. Mists and color washes make great stains for your wood veneers and there are some fun veneers in this kit! I will be back tomorrow with another layout using this kit

What is your favorite fall drink or snack?

November Page Maps

I know you guys love a good sketch and PageMaps does some great ones. This month they asked the BasicGrey DT to be guest DT members and create examples for some of the sketches. I will share my layout, but you just have to CLICK HERE to see all the gorgeous layouts that the rest of the team and the PageMaps team created for the November sketches.

So here is the super fun sketch that Becky sent me to play with. Its got lots of possibilities. I could have used one nice big square photo but I loved the way the sketch looked so I decided to stay pretty close to it. 

I was going to create a mountain of little triangle stitched banner to wrap around the background paper because it would be really unique, but then I pulled out all the fun embellishments for the BasicGrey 25th and Pine collection and found the gorgeous stitched banners and I just had to use those for my page. Oh and if you haven't looked closely at this collection and all of its goodies, you really should check it out HERE. I look at this collection and it reminds me of the cards and gift wrap, and decorations in the department stores when I was a kid. I just think of shopping with my mom and looking for trees with my dad. My big tree is a combo of handmade family ornaments and glass ornaments and this collection is ideal for photos of family Christmas and my main livingroom.

 

  I have an addiction to Christmas ornaments so I pulled out these chipboard ornaments and attached some gold bakers twine. I added some of the new Basic Grey Candy Buttons to the ornaments for a bit of texture, if you haven't seen all the new colors of these Candy Buttons this season, check them out. I am loving the neutrals including this ivory color. I am definitely going to need to pick up some more soon.

 

You may have some of the BasicGrey Wax Seals from one collection or another because they are super cool, but as they are, some of the fine details don't always show up that well, so I have rubbed white paint into the depressions and then wiped it off with a paper towel to give this sort of a look. I just love it!  So go see all the November PageMaps sketches and pick one out to use with your new BasicGrey collections and be sure to share your finished layouts :)

The "Home" kit from Scraptastic

Today I am going to show you the Scraptastic Club kit that I am going to be working with this month. It's the "Home" kit with the Add on and exclusive stamp set. I also have a layout on the Scraptastic Blog today. I really like the way it turned out.  But first, here is an instagram photo I took with my phone before diving into my kit. Lots of gorgeous Echo Park Reflections Fall and BasicGrey Persimmon, with Maya Road wood hearts and exclusive wood veneers and flair from Scraptastic.

 

I started out with a fun page showing what happens when you try to split the wishbone with Savvy! My husband thought it would be a great photo and Savvy loved the idea. He grabbed that whole wishbone and took off! It was hilarious! Of course we chased him down and got it back because its not a safe thing for him to have. Still, it did make for some fun photos :)

 

 I LOVE these cool Prima Resist Alphas that come in the Home kit this month. I wanted my title to be this deep rust color so I chose to use a color mist that is very bold and right away let me tell you guys that this is one of those times when you need to cover your work area and clothes, because I got mist on my layout and my hands are kind of stained. The alphas are stickers, so I placed the alphas on one of my acrylic blocks before coloring them. They do take some time to dry and you may just want to plan ahead and let them dry overnight. For my alphas and wood pieces on this page I used the Terra Cotta Ranger Color Wash dye mist

 

 I love the look so much that I pulled out one of the hearts and one little house wood veneer and made them the same color, mists or dyes have a wonderful stained effect on the wood shapes. Here are a couple of close up photos so you can see how cool they turned out. I hope you guys will give it a try. Visit the Scraptastic store to look thru all the great mists HERE.

Creatures of the Night -Scraptastic October kit

It's a dark stormy day here, so we are watching movies and making halloween treats :) I got my Dalek pumpkin carved last night and it was a big hit with my guys.

I just wanted to share one last layout with the October Blackbird kit from Scraptastic Club. A couple of photos I took when we walked around our neighborhood last year. I used some of the stamps from the Blackbird stamp set and the Never Tear Us Apart stamp set. I decided to use the liquid pearls to fill in a few of the hearts. The block that the title is attached to, is actually a piece of cardboard backing from one of the packages. Don't forget to look at the nice cards that are in your embellishment packs.

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween Everyone! and take lots of photos!

A little Rotten Layout and a Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Everyone!  What are your plans for tomorrow? Don't forget to take lots of photos even if you don't have little trick or treaters.

I have another Halloween kitty page for you guys. I cant help it, he just poses so well. :) Check out this cool Haunted Manor Collection by Recollections (Michaels Stores). The kitty stamp is also from Recollections to go with this collection - actually there are a bunch of stamp sets, but this page needed a grey kitty stamp.

The banner bits are cut from the patterned paper, and I added tiny black gems to the spiders, and bigger purple gems for the other embellishments. Have you seen the new DCWV Gems? There are some great iridescent finishes on some of them, like these purple ones.

  

Sketchy Thursday at Scraptastic

Everyone loves a scrappy challenge, right? For a chance at a $20 gift card to Scraptastic Club store, visit the Scraptastic Blog here and play along with Sketchy Thursday! I really like the sketch this month because I left alot of room for interpretation. I was thinking you could add photos or embellishments, move things around, flip it... whatever. You have to see what our amazing Design Team did with it (HERE).

You guys know I don't normally use extra bold background color but this orange woodgrain is so awesome and I had this fantastic photo that I took last week of Figaro by my Halloween tree. Also I wanted to use the stamped image "Things that go bump in the night" for my title because it suited this photo so well. That ornament that fig is staring at doesn't have the velvet ribbon on top anymore. I found it on the floor the next morning with the top chewed off. LOL! I decided to stamp on vellum and also to print my journaling on the vellum. I tested both of these things and found that the best way to stamp on vellum is to use heat embossing powder and this black sparkly one is awesome. But first I printed the journaling onto the vellum and you can buy printable vellum but its not even close to the type of opaque vellum that I wanted. I found that if I used the printer settings on "draft", the ink didn't bleed as much and it dries nicely.
*also... just a side note.. I LOVE my new camera :) It's a new Canon SL1 - smallest and lightest but so totally awesome and the touch screen is my fave part and I didn't even care if it had that feature - makes it amazing to focus specifically and changes lighting. LOVE it. 

Oh I forgot to add that I LOVE the wood veneer spiders in this kit but I wanted this one to sparkle so I used the same heat embossing powder on him.

this is how we do Halloween *October Scraptastic kit

How do you do Halloween? Plastic pumpkin and kitchy costumes like the 70's, haunted and spooky, or Bright and glittery? We lean toward the sparkly at my house. We have lots of Nightmare before Christmas things, including my Halloween tree and wreath, and we have wonderful treats and cocktails while handing out candy and watching classic halloween shows - not so much scary as fun.

For this layout I used the awesometastic (my son's word) October Blackbird kit, add on kit, and Blackbird Stamp set.  This layout has some Pinspiration that I thought I would share. If you are on Pinterest as often as I am, I know it is sparking more than a few creative ideas and probably too many calorie filled recipes to mention. After typing this I am making pumpkin muffins :) So first I will share the pinned image that inspired me. These are the cutest Halloween cupcake toppers!

 

The orange and black fluffy fringy crepe is fantastic and I totally thought it had that halloween party look. I recreated this look by cutting a couple of layers of fringe and ruffling them under my title and then another layer under my photo block. It's just that bit of texture that I needed.

 

Blackbird kit and a haunted layout *Scraptastic

 

Normally I don't take photos of my kits from Scraptastic Club, but the Blackbird kit, add on kit, and exclusive Blackbird Stamps are just too fun and I have to share. Sorry about the blur - took them quickly with my phone :) So first I am going to show you a a close up photo and then I will share my first layout because I really love it! Click here to see the full kits for this month

 

Yes, I will be sharing some halloween layouts but I had to do a Haunted Mansion layout too. This is an old photo of my son, just posing for a photo in Liberty Square of the Magic Kingdom, and the mansion just looks so nice in the background that I had to do a page using a quote that came from the script on the Mark Twain Riverboat. Its a photo that doesn't have alot of color so I went light with the layout and it really lets the photo still be the focal point. Also I recently got this awesome bat punch so I will apologize in advance for the abundance of bats on future layouts :)