Sculpture Garden

Only one picture today.  This was a quicky done in a couple hours before I went and watched the awesome Bronco's game on Sunday!!!

Using the layout from Sketch and Scrap (http://sketchnscrap.blogspot.com)  and the Tic Tac Toe challenge from Scrap our Stash (http://scrapourstash.blogspot.com) I did this 8x8 layout.
No the Bronco's game had nothing to do with the colors I chose.  The person in the page did!

watercolor christmas card

 

My daughter and I took a stamping & watercolor class at our local store, Artsy.  I knew immediately I would need to pull out some old stamps and start playing.  I created this for the challenge over at Make it Sweet and Neat.  http://makeitsweetandneat.com/ and http://ynschallenges.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

I was having so much fun working on it that I forgot to take pictures along the way... so I took one picture showing many of the products I used, and a mid stage shot.

 

 

 

 

The products I used were:

 

Spellbinders cut and emboss Create-a-Flake

Tomboy the Craft Collection markers

generic watercolor paper

A VERY old Stampendous precious moments stamp - Winter Song

Sentiment stamped from a not as old stamp of unkown origin 

Cuddlebug snowflake emboss folder

CTMH Inkpads

Ranger Archival Black inkpad

Misc. scrap papers

 

I inked the negative side of the embossing folder with CTMH Twighlight ink then ran plain white cardstock through for my two side panels.  I stamped my image on watercolor paper and "painted" with the tomboy markers and a small brush.  If you look closely you can see I added puffy snow with a Snow Marker.  

 

For the finishing touch I added purple jewels to the corner and center of the snowflakes.  It was a lot of fun, of course anytime I get to combine scrapbooking and Christmas is a GREAT time!

 

 

 



2013 Christmas card 2

This is getting addicting!  I did this one primarily for Always Playing with Paper http://alwaysplayingwithpaper.blogspot.ca/2013/09/merry-monday-christmas-card-club-snowmen.html

I had fun working on this.  I used an old color challange from 52 CCT to choose my colors.  I had a hard time choosing between the purple and the blue in the end I chose the blue.

Products I used that I know the name of:
Cricut cartridges:
      Just because cards - card base and circle
      Ornamental Iron 2 - corner swirlies
     Joys of the Season - poinsettia and pine boughs
(I created a stamp out of the pine bough and stamped with CTMH Topiary.  Then I sprayed them with Moss Glimmer mist.)
Perfect Pearls Pewter - spray the tag I stamped my snowman on
All stamp inks were CTMH
All papers were from my stash, I believe these were Paper Studio, but I'm not sure.
CTMH bakers twine
sparkle jewels
Crayola colored pencils
The Stamp is an old one and I don't know who made it. 

I had a lot of fun with this challenge!

1st Christmas Card of 2013!!

I did this card for from the layout challenge at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and posted it on A.R.T. card challenge website.  My new favorite site.  For those of you who don't know me, I am a Christmas nut! It was a wonderful way to be able to listen to Christmas music in September!

Anyway.... Here is the sketch



As you can see I made some minor changes.  I changed the orientation of the oval and I moved my 3 embellishments to the other side.

I started with a little different idea...

I saw this cool idea where you stencil a design on a paper and then run it through your dry embossing machine.  I used this aspen stencil and then embossed with the cuddlebug snowflake folder.  Then I ran the perfect pearls medium across the raised image and brushed with silver.  The result was really cool.

Next I used a patterned paper from CTMH that looks like barn wood.  Using my Basic George cartridge I cut a 2.25 oval from the paper and then  cut that out to be a quarter inch smaller than the card.                                                                                                                                                      

Then I cut out the Aspen trees that I did and positioned it on the card to show through the oval. I used a corner punch and did each corner and place the patterned paper on the card using pop dots. I puzzled over it for quite a while because I discovered I did not like it as much as I imagined I would.  It was rather flat and did nothing for me.  So.... I spent a rather long time digging around in my stash and trying different things to give it the pizzazz I was wanting.  In the end I decided the Aspens were not going to work.

Now I had a thought.  Last year I saved some of my favorite Christmas cards.... Let's see if I could use something from them.  And Viola!

Add some ribbon from my stash and poinsettia brads from CTMH.  Now we are looking better.  Using the Home décor cartridge I cut a small frame and used the center of it to stamp 'Merry Christmas" and it came out great.  

Best of all I got in several hours of Christmas music!





Dual challenge part 2

The second page of this layout was a challenge on for SBC Layout 16.  I used the colors from color me scrappy challenge. 

Once again I rotated the layout by 90 degrees.  I used the same papers for the 2nd page as the first. 

Using Items from my stash I created the frames, flags and borders.   

 

Once again I cut a corner border for the center picture from the Sophisticated Cartridge.  I added crystals and a stick on title. 

 

 

 

dual challenge pg 1

 

So I entered another challenge.  This one is a 2 page spread.  Page one is for Color me scrappy and page 2 is for SBC


This is the Color me Scrappy challenge.  I chose my colors based on this challenge.

         

It was quite comical going through all my paper and cardstock and paper to match up the colors.  I had quite a few layed out until I finally was able to pick out 4. 

 

 

Then I decided I would rotate the layout 90 degrees to the left.  I sized everything for an 8 X 8 layout. 

 

 

I used the letters and corner border from the Cricut Sophisticated cartridge and the flames from the Camp Out. 

 

 

Using ribbon and sparkly things from my stash I cut banners and finished up with some journaling printed in brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

 

challenge scraps card

This one is short but sweet.   Using some of the left over papers, ribbons and paper roses I made a second card.

I actually measured and drew placement lines for the 3 blocks that would make the front of my card.  (my friend Nicole would be so proud!)

Using my Tattered Angle Glimmer Spray I lightly misted the front and inside of the card.  I held the card at an angle and sprayed from the corner in so it would give me a light but wide spread.

Then I adhered the base blocks with my trusty Elmer’s tape runner.  (love that stuff)  and cut out my other papers.  3 pieces at 1” by 2.75” and 3 squares at 1.25”

I then loosly measured ribbon to just fit under the rectangles and over the top of the card.  I did 2 pieces in green and 1 in orange. 

I placed the rectangles on the card just leaving about an 1/8^th of an inch around one side and bottom of background paper showing.  I stamped my sentiment onto the center square and put them in place.

I finished off the white roses by misting them with the same Tattered Angle Glimmer Mist.  Using Zots I placed them on the center square.  Then embellished with some small pearl stickons.

I put together some more  layering pieces and stamped my sentiment to place inside the card to finish it off.

The final card came out awesome.  I think it will make a great anniversary card for my husband! 

Artsy Card Challenge 2

Artsy Card Challenge 2 After picking up my packet from Artsy Scrapbooking in Loveland I started drooling.  I love Fall colors and this was some beautiful papers and colors.  Their challenge was that you had to make a card using their kit.  You could add any of your own stamps or plain brads but the only ribbons, embellishment and paper you could use was what came in the kit The contents of the packet had two white roses, 1 paper doily, 3 pieces of card stock large enough to make a card, and lots of miscellaneous pieces of paper ranging in sizes.  Some solids and some glittered and many patterned (double sided). I chose to do a wreath design with fall leaves.  Using the CTMH Art Philosophy I cut leaves out at 1.25”.  I chose 5 papers and did several out of each in both sizes.  Then using the same dark brown cardstock as I used for the card I cut out the branch in 1.25” and 1.75”.  I also did six leaves using my cuddle bug and the leaf stencils shown below.                        .                             Next I chose a background paper and cut it .25” smaller all the way around than the card base.  I adhered this to the front of the card with my trusty Elmer's tape runner.  Next step was to build my wreath.  I used the doily as the base and started layer.  I laid out all the largest leaves first and then filled in with the smaller leaves and added the cutout branches.  Oops let me back up real quick.  After cutting out the leaves I used my boning tool to lightly score veins and crease the leafs for dimension. Then I added a dark brown ribbon for my “bow”  And cut out the center of the doily so it would not distract from the wreath.

 I then stamped a solid piece of paper with the word Dream and cut it down.  Using a strip of glittered paper I cut out a banner and adhered the word to it and then pop dot attached my banner to the center of the wreath. 

Then I did some stamping  and layering and ribbon to finish off the inside.  I used my last 2 leaves that were left over from the front to tie it all together.

The final card came out really nice!    

Bloomin' Sun

Sun, Rain and Roses

Experimenting with black /white and texture

winter morning in spring

purple mountains majesty

one of my first pictures with my first dslr

getting some perspective

saguaro national park.
It's hard to really appreciate how big these guys are without something to give them scale.  My husband (standing next to it looking up) is 5'9".  Just as impressive is how much these things can weigh.
Fun facts:  A 10 year old plant might only be 1.5 inches tall. Saguaro can grow to be between 40-60 feet tall (12-18m). When rain is plentiful and the saguaro is fully hydrated it can weigh between 3200-4800 pounds. 

The Sentinal