LOAD Day 3 - You Big Ol' Softy

For LOAD Day 3, my prompt was to make a page about a “Softy” in my life, or use something soft on my page. I chose to do both!  My Dad was a real softy, so I used this page to tell how the strict disciplinarian turned into a bit of a marshmallow when his grandkids came along.  

To make this page, I used papers from DCWV “Main Street” collection and a few odd bits of cardstock scraps from my stash. The photo mat is actually flocked paper from the DCWV collection, and that’s where I pulled in the “soft” item on my page. I also softened the edges of some elements with distress ink. 

I wanted a masculine-looking font for this layout, but one that wasn’t too harsh, so I used “Habitat” from a collection I downloaded at FontBundles.net.  They have a lot of great fonts that are free to download.  I used that for the photo caption tabs.  I also used Creating Keepsakes “CK Man’s Print” which was released years ago on a font CD, but which you can now download for free at FontsMarket.com.  The title “Daddy • Dad • Poppy” was made with some stickers from my stash.  They were the wrong color of teal for this layout, but I colored over them with a W7 Warm Grey Copic Marker.  

I use my Copic markers to change the colors of my scrapbooking supplies all the time…in fact, it was the primary reason I first started buying them.  I used several markers to get just the right color on my embellishments on this page.  The blue-ish chipboard heart was originally a sky blue.  First I colored it with Brown E25, but the surface of the chipboard was slick and it didn’t cover evenly, so I sanded that lightly, leaving it very distressed.  Then I colored it with BG72, G24, and BG13 in that order until I got just the right shade I was looking for.

The remaining embellishments were some hearts from a Basic Grey “Sugar Rush” sticker sheet (I colored one of the hearts with the E25 and BG13 to cover some colors that didn’t match), phrases from Tim Holtz and Heidi Swapp, plus a chipboard heart and a glitter heart that came from my stash.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Come back tomorrow for my layout with a “twist”!

Summer Fun

I don’t know why, but spring and summer seem to wreak havoc with my schedule.  Maybe it’s because there’s so many things going on with schools and holidays, and then suddenly it’s summer and there’s more holidays, and kids to deal with, and summer vacations…. And even though both my children are fully grown (although one does still live at home), I still always seem to get lost in there somewhere.  This spring, all the Crafty Neighbors were busy getting ready for our cruise at the end of May.  It was something of a challenge because during our prep time we had three conventions, National Scrapbook Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day, several birthdays, tax season (did I mention that Shelley is an accountant?), and our Crafty Neighbor garage sale.  That was just January through May! I foolishly thought things might slow down for us, but that was not to be.  I’m leaving on another cruise in about four weeks with my Aggie Moms group, we have another scrapbook garage sale coming up next weekend, we’re trying to find a venue for our annual Think Pink for the Cure crop, and I just got back from my second convention in two months.  Whew! I guess I was not meant to live a slow and relaxing life – I wouldn’t know what to do with myself anyway!

Speaking of the convention…last month we went to the Great American Scrapbook Convention, which is now owned by Creating Keepsakes.  Last year, I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed to be making a come-back, but then this year there were less vendors again, so I don’t know if last year was just a fluke, or what.  This weekend was the Heirloom Pro Rubber Stamp Show.  This one has always been a bit on the small size – they use the Grapevine Convention Center – and the last few years, they went from having a full room plus vendors out in the halls to not even being able to fill the main room. I was starting to worry about them.  They come here twice per year, but was it worth it? Today, it seemed like they, too, were having a bit of a come back, and there were several new vendors we hadn’t seen before.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Laura, Cindy, and Sixta
Laura is going to be one of our instructors on the next cruise!

I hadn’t really intended to do any shopping (I know, that’s what I always say!), but we stopped to do a FREE make-n-take at the Craft Fantastic booth, and then I had to buy some jewelry parts to turn it into the piece I really wanted.  I also bought a few more Copic markers for my collection, and select Tombow markers.  I like the Tombows for my calligraphy…the brush tips are wonderful.  So here’s what I got, including the glass piece we made at the CF booth and the cute bag tag we made at the Fun Stampers Journey booth.

So the make-n-take was FREE, which is pretty unusual in itself, but all we did was add the paper to the glass.  The show special was to offer a bracelet kit for free that you can add your glass piece to, but all they had was the antique color, and I much prefer silver, so I bought these pretty bird cage brooches, some pinch bails, and a bit of ball chain.  When I got home, I pried the pin back of the bird cage and sanded it down good, added one of the pinch bails and the ball chain, and voila!

What do you think? I think it turned out really cute, but I’m not sure if I want to keep it or give it away!  While I try to decide, I should tell you about our semi-annual scrapbook garage sale.  I know this won’t mean much to you guys who live out of state, but for anyone in the DFW/North Texas area, this is a must-see event! Our sale is so big and so good that we have people drive from Louisiana to shop – more than 4 hours away!  It really is that awesome!  This year I have 23 vendors, each with at least two 5-foot tables full of merchandise.  If you’re looking for scrapbooking and craft supplies, stamps, punches, Cricut, inks, totes, etc., we’ll probably have it.  So come on out, next Saturday, July 21, to the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas Service Center at 6001 Summerside Drive, Dallas, Tx 75252 from 9AM to 2PM.  Sorry but all our seller space is full.  If you’d like to be on our waiting list, visit our website (see the link below), and sign up for our mailing list to make sure you don’t miss it next time.

That’s it for today.  I’ve got to get to work finding a location for our Think Pink crop.  If you know of a good place in the North Dallas – Carrollton – Plano – Irving area, please let me know!

Celebrate Life!

The theme for our 2015 cruise was Celebrate Life!, and our cruise instructors designed many fabulous projects to express that theme.  Here’s is a picture of the door decorations we made for all the participants. 

The decorations help make it very easy to find your room on these huge cruise ships!

One of our first classes on the cruise was a Basic Copic markers class taught by Debby Worthington.  Debby shared some basic insights on working with Copic markers and then everyone completed these cute cards and a 2-page layout using the techniques we learned:

 

If you'd like to know more about Debby, you can read all about her on our Instructor page of the Cruise FAQs website

More Scrap Projects and Gamsol

Twice this week, I have shared with you projects made from a single page kit I brought home from our last scrapbooking cruise.  Today I have two more projects to share that were made from the same scraps.  I think I added one piece of blue cardstock, but for the most part, that’s it.

The first one I did was this sympathy card.  This features a butterfly from my stamped image stash.  I wish I knew who made these butterfly stamps.  I have several of them that I bought several years ago when the Scrapbook Barn, a LSS near me, was open.  I would love to see if they still make them.  I know there were several others that I didn’t buy. 

This time, instead of using my Copics, I decided to color it with pencils and do the blending with Gamsol.  If you’ve never played with Gamsol, you should check out this video Colored Pencil Blending with Gamsol by Inky Antics.

My last project I will show you today is an 8x8 scrapbook page.  This is not a size I usually make, but I had a large piece of the blue cardstock left and it wasn’t the right size to make a card, so I decided to do a small-format page instead.  I think this is a great use of scrap paper because I can save up a bunch of these random pages, put them in a small album, and I have an instant gift for someone.  All it needs is a few embellishments and pictures!

 

The "for real...off the hook...we're solid" strip is the flip-side of the barcode strip from CTMH paper 

Question of the day:  Have you ever colored stamps with pencils or markers, and if so, what is your favorite method?

Two Floral Cards

Today I’m offering up two cards.  Both of these cards were made from the scraps left over from yesterday’s page layout.  The stamped images were some extras left over from a recent stamped image swap.  They are both from Stampin’ Up’s Happy Watercolor stamp set and I used Copic markers to color them.  I have not added sentiments to these two cards.  I’m trying to decide if I need to add anything to the front.  What do you think? 

Breaking a Creative Block

I haven’t posted anything from my 365 journal in quite some time.  Obviously, it is so far behind that it’s really not even a 365 journal any more, but I’m still determined to finish all 365 prompts.  I believe the last page I posted for that was Prompt #128, so I thought I’d pick up the trail with #129, “What have I done over and over this week?”

I did this page a while back when I had a lot of work that wasn’t getting done as quickly as I would have liked.  The result was a lot of late nights, so I took an easy approach to journaling this page and went with a doodle/zentangle.  I used Copic markers for this project, and I had originally intended to do some shading/blending with them, but in the interest of time, I just let the page be. 

I’m sorry to say it’s been a year since I got off-track with this project and I haven’t even come close to getting back into a regular groove with it.  I’m really not even sure why.  I love working in my art journal, but it seems like every page is so time consuming and I have to think so hard and work so hard at it that I don’t have time to finish it.  I feel like these pages should take about 30 minutes to an hour, tops.  But day after day, I sit here with the same pages and prompts, and I’m not sure what to do with them.  I don’t want to call it a creative block because I still feel very creative, and I often know exactly what I want the page to look like.  The problem is that I’m not always sure how to get the results I want and I wind up spending too much time trying to figure it out.  So it’s more of an engineering problem than a creative one.  I guess I just have to keep working at it, and eventually my block will become unstuck.

Question of the day:  What do you do to break out of a creative block?