Blog Hop Reminder!

Just wanted to remind everyone about the Blog Hop starting on Friday, November 30th at "Meg's Garden" at 5 pm and you have until Monday, December 3rd, 2012 at 5pm SA time (Central Summer Time South Australia) to complete the hop. There will be lots of pretties to look at on each blog and a special "Eye Candy" prize from Meg's Garden hand picked by each DT Member  to be given away to one lucky visitor to their blog! Here's the link to the Meg's Garden Blog: http://megsgardenblog.blogspot.ca/ Hope to see you all there!!

Well I've been busy doing some layouts for friends. One of my friends that I've known since elementary school had posted this photo on Facebook of her Mom, older sister and herself that was taken by one of the street photographers in downtown Vancouver, BC. This was similar to the layout I posted of my parents at the beginning of November. My friend is not a scrapbooker but the photo was just "screaming" to be scrapped - so of course I downloaded  it from her Facebook and decided I should scrap it for her! Of course I just had to use the Webster's "A Ladies Diary" for this layout, as I had on the layout of my parents. I am so in love with this paper line! I did lots of layering and distressing on the layout and I added the "Memories" tag from the collection so that when my friend got it she could add her own journaling. I'm  sending it off to my friend in the mail tomorrow along with my regular Christmas card that I send to her. I'm really hoping she likes it! Here's the finished layout.

I have been doing quite a few layouts for my BFF of her niece and her great niece over the past little while. Well her niece just had a new baby boy so I've been taking some of her photo's off Facebook of the newest addition and scrapping them for her. I'm hoping to get a few others done and then send the whole bunch of them to my friend so she can give them to her niece for Christmas. I feel like a secret Santa, lol - I love doing surprise things like this for people! Anyway her the latest layouts I've done for her. The first one is of her daughter and the second one is photos taken the day her new little guy was born.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to see everyone at the Blog Hop on Friday!

Meg's Garden DT project

As soon as I saw this “Green Toile” paper from Meg’s Garden I knew it would be perfect for this photo of my grandson that I took in a small Japanese garden at one of the parks where they live. I felt that the dark pink flowers in the photo brought out the bits of pink in the paper. I was telling my grandson he looked like a movie star trying to hide out from his fans with the sun glasses he was wearing…hence the title for this layout.

I love doing fussy cutting on my layouts and these beautiful papers just scream “fussy cutting” to me. So I cut out the matching flowers from the 4” x 12” strip to pop up with foam down on the matching flowers on the right side of the paper. To frame my photo I took one of the pretty square doily papers (bond25) that Meg has and cut two of the laced corners off and then laid them together to make a square diamond shape and then placed my photo down on top.

For my flower cluster I used the 3 layer white Gardenia’s and the pink/cream open paper roses from Meg’s Garden.  I decided to try to mimic the white flowers in the paper and using some of my yellow scrapping chalk I used a q-tip and colored the center and stamens of the white gardenias yellow. The tiny pink and yellow rosebuds I made – you can find the tutorial to make the rosebuds on my blog here: http://scrappers-heavencanada.blogspot.ca/2012/10/rosebud-tutorial.html

Materials used from Meg’s Garden:

Paper - P6295 Green Toile

- bond25 square doily

3 layer White Gardenia’s

Pink/Cream Open Paper Roses

Other items used:

Distress tool

Distress ink “vintage photo”

Dusty Attic chipboard fountain

Recollections crystal flourish (cut into pieces)

Handmade pink & yellow rosebuds

Butterfly graphics printed & cut out & painted with Glossy Accents

Small pieces of coordinating paper to use behind torn and folded back corner

Foam pop dots

Double sided tape

Nine Days & Counting!

Mark your calendars for the

Meg’s Garden Design Team Blog Hop!

one of the longest Blog Hops ever done – around the World.

From Wikipedia:  ‘Phileas Fogg is the main fictional character in the 1873 Jules Verne novel ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’.

Fogg attempts to circumnavigate the late Victorian world in eighty days, or less, for a wager of £20,000 with members of London’s Reform Club.  He takes the wager and leaves with Passepartout, vowing to return by 8:45 pm on Saturday 21 December 1872. Under suspicion of robbing the Bank of England,  he is followed by a detective named Fix. Fogg has no idea about Fix's true intentions and Fix (wanting to get Fogg back to England so that he can arrest him) works with Fogg in the last half of the book.

While in India he saves a widowed princess, named Aouda from  Suttee during her husband's funeral. Passepartout rescues her and she accompanies Fogg for the rest of his journey. She and Fogg eventually fall in love and marry at the end of the book. Fix, who is really supposed to arrest Fogg, attempts to sabotage him by putting him in prison near the end of the book but he is quickly released. Fogg, who has been careful to keep track of every day in his diary, believes that he arrives home on Sunday and that he has lost his bet. However, he discovers, almost too late, that he has forgotten to adjust his timekeeping for having crossed the International Date Line and he wins his bet after all.’

Phileas Fogg had 80 days to circle the globe - we are allowing 4 days only but we have an advantage over his modes of travel – he had to catch trains, ride an elephant, an air balloon & more....

Make sure you complete the list – become a follower, like us on FB & leave a comment – at each blog.

Starts 30, November 2012 for 3 days at 5:00 p.m.

Eye Candy at each blog & a prize at the end !!

Quick Card

I just wanted to share a quick card I made for a 21st Birthday. I used Websters Park Drive collection for this card. I used one of the corners from the square doily from Megs Garden, a Prima flower and a die cut leaf from Heartfelt Creations. I did some distressing with my distress tool as well as my brown ink. A very simple and quick card to make but I think it looks really nice and I hope you do too!

 

November already!

Can you believe it? I think our September weather here in BC was more like August weather that it's sort of crept up on us all. October just kind of flew by. I mean there we were on Thanksgiving weekend here  in Canada and we were out on our boat fishing in shorts and tank tops! Then it changed drastically to pouring with rain and wearing ski jackets - crazy weather. 

On a more serious note in regards to crazy weather my thoughts and prayers are with everyone on the east coast who is having to deal with the ravages of hurricane Sandy. I just can't even imagine what you are all having to deal with right now. I don't think there is anything more scary than Mother Nature, which you have no control over! You are all in my thoughts every day!

Back to scrapping, I've been playing with the Graphic 45's "A Ladies Diary" again. I just love this collection! I've had this photo of my Mum & Dad taken of them walking down the street in downtown Vancouver, BC in 1946. My Dad was  in the Canadian Air Force and my Mum was an English War Bride and this photo would have been taken not long after she arrived in Canada. Back then not many people could afford cameras so you use to get photographers that would be on the street taking photos of people as they were walking and then try to sell the photos to the people. I'm really happy that my Dad decided they would buy the photo and I'm able to scrap it to pass down to my kids. I'm pretty sure in this day and age if people did this sort of thing on the streets now they would probably get arrested for being stalkers or something, lol.

I distressed all of my layers on this layout with my distress tool and my inks. I did some fussy cutting of some of the flowers and one of the ladies heads from the paper and then popped them up with foam dots. I just think this paper collection was perfect for this photo and I'm pretty sure I'll be using these papers on some of my parents other old photos. To see a larger version of the layout just click on the photo and hit your browsers back button to return to this page. Thanks for stopping by!

 

Happy Halloween!

Well I hope all the ghosts & goblins had a good time tonight collecting all their treats and hopefully didn't get to wet in the rain, well at least here in Campbell River it was raining, lol. We actually got more kids tonight than we've got in all 7 years living here. The little ones were just so cute when you open the door and see them in their costumes. We even had some older kids coming to the door, which was great since they were still in costume. I never mind the older kids coming if they have a costume on, it just gets annoying when they come to the door with no costumes and expect to get a treat. What was really great was every single kid who came to the door said "Thank you" and "Have a great Halloween". That really restores your faith in mankind when you meet young kids who actually have good manners and a smile on their face!

So I heard back from Heartfelt Creations and unfortunately I didn't make the final cut for their design team. I was a little disappointed but I still felt good over the fact that out of all of the applications I did make it to the semi-finalist group which I think was a pretty good deal! That gave me the confidence to apply for other design teams and I'm so happy to have made the DT for Meg's Garden! I got my papers and goodies from Meg's Garden in the mail the other day and OMG can you say "Beautiful", these papers are to die for, so, so pretty!  I can't wait to start playing with them!

I thought I'd share with you tonight the two layouts I did for the semi-finalists group using Heartfelt Creations papers, stamps and dies. The stamps and dies they sent are called the "Open Vintage Floret" set - they're so pretty, along with the matching papers. The first layout is another photo of my daughter that her friend took a couple of years ago - I love these photos...oh have I said that before, lol! The large flowers are made with the Heartfelt stamps & dies and the tiny rosebuds I made, which the tutorial I posted the other day.

The next layout I did to celebrate my 14th anniversary of the day I had surgery for breast cancer. Besides the pretty flowers made with the stamps & dies, I did some fussy cutting of the flowers from some of the matching papers, I was really quite pleased at how this layout turned out.

Well Happy Halloween everyone - I hope it was a good one!

Rosebud Tutorial

I've had a number of people comment on my rosebuds that I use in many of my layouts, so I thought I would do a tutorial on how I make mine. This tutorial was inspired by Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial which you can find here: Water Distressed Flowers. This is basically the same as what Gabrielle does for the center of her flowers but I do not do any water distressing. I do not claim this as my original tutorial, it is just my way of making the rosebuds. Here is what the rosebud will look like:

 To make this rosebud you will require a small 5 petal flower punch as shown below. I bought this one at my local Walmart which I think cost me about $3.99. The flower it punches is just a little over a ½" in size. For each bud you will need to punch out 4 flowers.

Using a stylus and a push pad take three of the small flowers and push down into the center of each flower to push the petals up as shown in the photos below. For the forth flower take it and fold the flower in half and keep doing this until you have something similar to the photo.

Now you can glue your flowers on top of one another, off setting the petals slightly on each layer as shown.

You should end up with your rosebud looking something like mine below.

I find these little rosebuds are great to pop into small areas of your flower clusters, or any other area you just need something small. If you're anything like me I hate throwing smaller pieces of cardstock away and these are perfect way to use them up!

I'd like to thank Gabi for the inspiration for this tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it.  Have a great week!

Lots of glitter

I've had this photo of  my daughter and my grand children printed out for quite awhile to scrap but just hadn't found the right papers for it until last night. I was digging through my goodies that I had got when Websters had a big warehouse sale back in the beginning of the summer. I came across this die cut piece from the "Ladies & Gents" collection and I just knew it would be perfect for this photo. I took this back in August of 2009 when my daughter brought the kids up for their yearly summer vacation with us. My grand kids love their Auntie Caitlynn and I just thought this photo of the three of them just showed all that love. Usually when I start doing a layout it takes forever for me to decide on my design but this one just seemed to fall into place so easily.

I really wanted to play up the blacks in this paper and I knew I had this big gray Prima flower in my stash so I used that and then went about making all the other flowers using black cardstock and a kind of pinky/peach color cardstock. I make my large flowers following Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial that you can find on her blog here: Water Distressed Flowers After I made the large flowers I decided to paint some glossy accents on the petals and then dipped them in some diamond dust. I love the way they turned out, just so much sparkle to them! Here's a closeup of the flowers.

I made quite a few of my little tiny rosebuds to place in between the big flowers and also used them for the bottom of the black flourish. Don't you just love this black flourish, it's from Recollections and I just thought it made this layout! I used some foam pop dots to pop up the title which I cut from another piece of Websters paper. Here's a closeup of the small rosebuds.

 Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great week!

Graphic 45

I am so in love with the "A Ladies Diary" collection of papers from Graphic 45 I had to make a card with them. I didn't put a sentiment on this card as I thought I could use this for a number of different occasions. So I'll wait until I use it to decided what the sentiment should be. I did some layering of the different papers from this collection and distressed all the paper edges with my distress tool as well as with some distress inks. I also did some fussy cutting of the pretty flowers from one of the papers which I popped up with foam dots in the top left and bottom right corners. The pretty flourish is from Zva Creations. Here's the finished project.

 

Beautiful Dreamer.....

That's the title for my newest layout of another one of my daughters photo's that her friend (the budding photographer) took - I so love these photos! The background paper and the striped paper are FabScraps "Victoria's Fantasy" paper line and the other papers are from my stash. I distressed all of my layers, but this time I only used my distress tool, I did not use my ink as I usually do on my distressed edges. I took a duplicate piece of the background paper and fussy cut the unicorn, the diamonds on the playing card, the face and the clown down the right side of the paper and then popped them up with foam on the background paper. I matted the photo but before sticking it onto the layout I took some tulle and gathered it up on one side and then stuck it down on the back of the matting in the top left corner, to mimic the tulle  that my daughter is holding in the photo. The butterfly is from Prima as are the mauve flowers with the feathers and the mauve roses. I handmade the small purple rosebuds and the large purple flowers with puffy paint. The pink flourishes that I had in my stash are from Recollections. 

 If you click on the photo you can see a larger version of the photo. I  hope everyone is having a great week. TFL

More Good News!

I have some great news to share today. I have been chosen as one of the Design Team members for "Megs Garden". If you've seen Meg's gorgeous papers you can understand how excited I am to be able to work with these papers! To celebrate the new Design Team members Meg is have a give away on her blog, so pop on over and check it out here: Megs Garden Blog

I've been busy making out some more layouts for the DT position at Heartfelt Creations. They sent me some of their papers and stamps and coordinating dies and we had to do two more layouts with their products and mail them in to their office. We won't know anything until October 31st when they make their announcement but I am keeping my fingers crossed. Of course I can't post the photos of these layouts until after they make the announcement but I loved working with these products!

I do have a couple of other projects I did that I will be posting here today. This first one is a quick card I made using some of the Websters "Hollywood Vogue" collection. The flourish is one I had in my stash and the flower is from Prima.

This next layout "You Make Me Smile" is a photo of my daughter when she and her cousin went to London and Europe this past summer, they were in one of the stores trying on hats. This was made using the "Mon Doux" kit from Swirlydoos. I did a lot of distressing of the layers here and on the background paper I added some bits of lace to peek out from some of the distressing. I made the bigger peach colored flower as well as the tiny peach and blue rose buds. The pretty flourish is from Zva Creative. The pretty butterflies are graphics from Lisa over at Swirlydoos, thank you Lisa! I printed and cut them out and added glossy accents to them. I was quite pleased at how the whole layout turned out. I liked the background paper I used for this layout as on the bottom right side of the paper there was a faint colored "Eiffel Tower" and Paris is one of the stops on my daughters trip so it seemed perfect! Anyway I hope you like it and don't forget I love to hear all of your comments. Have a great week everyone!

  

Still excited...

So after getting the email from Heartfelt Creations last night about making the semifinalist list for their design team I was so excited I couldn't sleep. So what does a scrapper do when she can't sleep? Scrap of course! 

I scrapped these two photos of my grand kids that I took when we were at the beach one day when they were visiting. I used Websters "Yacht Club" collection for this layout. I think I pretty much used every paper from this collection on this layout. I did a lot of fussy cutting - I just can't resist fussy cutting when it comes to Websters papers, they're all so gorgeous! I was quite pleased at how it turned out. I guess my scrapbooking mojo likes the late nights, lol. Anyway here's the finished product.

So I hope everyone has gone by Heartfelt Creations blog and placed your votes for your favorite semifinalist for the new design team - you have until October 17th to place your votes! Here's the link to their blog: Heartfelt Creations I'm still keeping everything I can cross, crossed - my poor eyes are getting really sore, lol!

Heartfelt Creations DT call

I'm very excited to tell you that I have been chosen as one of the semifinalists for "Heartfelt Creations" design team call and I'd like to share the three projects that I sent in with my application to Heartfelt Creations. The design team process is a little different....the semi-finalists have been chosen, but they are counting on people to vote for the finalists.  You must choose at least 5 of your favorites, and when you do, you are entered to win a $50 Heartfelt Creations Gift Certificate! 

This first layout is a few photos I took of my grandchildren while we were camping with our friends. Mikayla and Scott were watching our friends playing Mexican golf and I happened to glance over at them and they were standing there and Mikayla had her arms wrapped around Scott and he was holding onto her arms - they just looked so cute. Of course the minute they realized I was taking their picture they started acting all goofy, but that was okay I managed to get this one shot of them anyway, lol. So I hope that when they are young adults they'll be happy that I did get this photo of them. I used the Swirlydoos "Mon Doux" scrap kit for this layout. I did some distressing on the different papers and some fussy cutting of some of the papers, I was quite happy with the way it turned out.

This next layout is of my granddaughter taken in the late spring this year. She just started high school this September so this photo means a lot to me as she's just become a teenager but she is still my sweet little grand baby - I can hear her now groaning "Oh Gramma, I'm not a baby anymore!". I used the Websters "Hollywood Vogue" collection for this layout. I did some fussy cutting of some of the papers for this layout - I just love doing fussy cutting with Websters papers, they are all so pretty! I also did some handmade embellishments and flowers for the layout - I used a scallop punch in different sizes to put one of the ladies head silhouette's on which I used in the top right corner and made the two flowers which I used a bit of puffy paint on them. So here is how my layout turned out!

The last thing I wanted to share with you is an altered tissue box I did using Graphic 45's new "Song Bird" collection. I picked up this plain wooden tissue box at one of our local Dollar stores for $2.00 - don't you just love dollar store bargains? I love these papers - if I could I'd wall paper my bedroom with this paper, lol. I made all my own flowers for this project - I added stickles to some of the tiny rose buds and then puffy paint to some of the larger ones. I just think that the puffy paint adds a little something to the flowers. I also made the little fan that I have on the side with the flourish. I painted the flourish with some Tim Holtz distress crackle paint "Picket Fence". The two corner resin pieces are from Recollections and the pearl flourishes are actually one from Prima that I cut into two pieces, and the pearls all around the box are from a string of pearls I had in my stash. The pink butterfly is courtesy of Lisa at Swirlydoos, thanks Lisa! I added some glossy accents to it after cutting it out on the cardstock I printed it on to give it some depth. 

I hope you all like these projects and maybe give me a vote over at Heartfelts blog here: Heartfelt Creations"  I will be keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that I get chosen as one of the new design team members - have a great week!

 

Indian Summer

Well the weather is certainly making up for the crappy June we had here in BC. It's been gorgeous and sunny here (except for one kind of cloudy day, but still warm) with the temperatures up between 22 - 27 nearly everyday. So of course with the good sunny weather it means getting out in the yard and start to clean things up for the fall so I haven't got a whole lot of scrappy time in since the grand kids left.

I finally got started on a layout yesterday which I'm still playing around with - seems my mojo has gone off on vacation or something, lol. Oh well I'll just keep plugging away at it and hopefully I can finish it off today so I can actually post something new on my blog.

Oh one thing I did want to mention is that over on the "Swirlydoos Forum" my friend, Paulien van den Bosch, is going to be having Round Robin going on only for cards instead of layouts. It sounds like it's going to be lots of fun, you don't have to be buying the Swirlydoos kits to join in on this RR so pop on over and check it out here: "Cards, cards, cards" All of the members at Swirlydoos are so talented, I have learned so much from all of them since joining the group and we always love new members! Well I'm off to try and get my layout finished, I hope everyone has a good day!

A busy August...

I just realized it's been quite some time since I updated my blog. I had my grandchildren visiting for the month of August so I didn't get a lot of scrappy time in. I did get to work on a project for a Curio Cabinet using a pattern that I had purchased from Laura Denison at "Follow the Paper Trail". I don't know if you've ever been to her website but if you haven't you have to stop by and check out all of her great patterns she has for sale - she is a very talented lady! You can find her site here: Follow the Paper Trail You can either make this just as a trinket box with the drawer or you can make the drawer a mini album when you open it up. I chose to just have mine as a drawer. Remember you can click on the picture for a larger view, so here's my finished project... 

 I used a few Prima flowers on this project but most of them are ones that I made myself - the ones with the puffy paint on them. The butterflies I've used are from Lisa (starsailer) over at Swirlydoos, after I cut them out I covered them with glossy accents, I just love doing that with these butterflies, it just seems to give you a little more depth to your projects. I used Graphic 45's "A Ladies Diary" papers for this cabinet - I absolutely love this collection of papers! 

Here is a closeup of the cabinet with the front doors open. On the shelf I have a little shell that my granddaughter painted for me. I also took a small metal frame that I had in my stash and painted it with Picket fence crackle paint and cut out one of the ladies heads from the paper for the picture in the frame. There is also a tiny glass bottle with beads. The bottom part has a couple more flowers, a little bird and a small brass telephone I picked up at a second hand store. Hanging off the left side of the cabinet you can see one of Tim Holtz swivel clasps and chain holding a small heart and key I had in my stash. I've also added a couple of Lisa's butterflies that I've painted with glossy accents. On the shelf I have a little shell that my granddaughter painted for me. I also took a small metal frame that I had in my stash and painted it with Picket fence crackle paint and cut out one of the ladies heads from the paper for the picture in the frame. There is also a tiny glass bottle with beads. The bottom part has a couple more flowers, a little bird and a small brass telephone I picked up at a second hand store. Hanging off the left side of the cabinet you can see one of Tim Holtz swivel clasps and chain holding a small heart and key I had in my stash.  

This is the left side pf the trinket box. I cut out a dress form with my Cricut and then took some pink netting and gathered it for the waistline with some pink ribbon, there is also a small bottle with diamond dust in it. You can't see it very well but I used another one of Lisa's butterflies which I also covered in glossy accents.

This is the right side of the cabinet.The little wooden case with the wine bottles I picked up at one of our Dollar stores, tucked in behind that is a rose from my stash and beside the wine cabinet is an old clip on beaded earring from my stash.

Well I hope you liked this project and I hope you stop by Laura's website, I'm sure you'll find something you like. Have a great long weekend all and watch out for all the kids on the road on Tuesday as they head back to school!

Happy Monday All!

Well I haven't been posting a lot of layouts these past few weeks but I have been working on some that I will be posting later in August and I'll also have a bit of news to share. Today though I am posting a layout that I did of my granddaughters grade 7 graduation. I can't believe she'll be in High School in September - where did all those years go to! 

I decided I wanted to go for a more simple clean look for this layout as compared to the more shabby/chic style I usually do and I was really quite happy with the way it turned out. The layout was done using bits and pieces of goodies from my stash. The teal flowers are from Prima and the pink satin flower I made. I've done a quick tutorial for this flower that you can find in the post below this one. Here's the layout and I hope you'll give my tutorial a try. Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Satin Ribbon Flower Tutorial

This tutorial has been inspired by some of the many other flower tutorials that I have seen on the internet, this one is just my way of doing this flower. 

Supplies needed:

Glue

Needle & thread

Scissors

Self adhesive flat back pearls

7” of 1 inch wide satin ribbon

7” of ½ inch wide satin ribbon

Take your 1” wide ribbon and fold it in half and stitch the ends together. I know some people like to stitch the ends together after each flower layer is gathered and tied but I find it easier to do it at the beginning. Also some satin ribbons have one side that is quite smooth and shiny and the other is more of a flat/non-shiny finish (as mine is here). If that is the case fold the ribbon in half with the shiny sides together.

 Now take your thread and knot one end of it and do a slip stitch all the way around one edge, being careful to leave a couples of inches of thread hanging from where you started your stitching. 

 Once this is done you can then take the two threads from either end and pull together to gather the ribbon and tie the threads together. I like to tie/knot the two threads 3 times just to make sure it won’t come apart. Now you can just sort of play with the ribbon to get the gathers the way you like it.

 Repeat this same stitching process to the ½” wide ribbon, pull to gather and tie the tie ends as done previously. You’ll notice that the thinner ribbon is a lot more gathered than the 1” ribbon. If you would like more gathers in the 1” ribbon you can add and extra inch or two in length to the 1” ribbon. The wider the ribbon the more length you will need if you like lots of gathers. I just happen to like mine to be less gathered on the bottom. Remember it’s your flower so you can do which ever way you like!

 Now you can glue the two layers together and add your pearl center and viola – you have a simple and pretty flower to add to your layouts or cards! You can also use a brad or whatever type of bling you’d like for your center.

I hope you'll give this tutorial a try. If you have any comments I'd love to hear them and if you have any question you can email me at sdinnell@scrappers-heaven.com. TFL!

Back home....finally!

Well I've actually been back for two weeks but I just finally managed to get in some free time to update my blog. Babysitting all of my daughters pets while she was away went pretty good. At least I managed to get in some exercise since I had to walk the dogs every day, lol. Now that I'm home I figured I'd start doing my beach walks again, since I had got use to walking everyday with the dogs, This way I can start losing some of this weight I'd put on since I quit smoking at the end of January. So far I've managed to lose 7 of the 13 lbs I've put on - Yeah!

This past Saturday we had a big BBQ for my dh's birthday which was on Sunday. It was a great time as we cooked a big huge Bison roast. I'd never had Bison before and boy was it yummy! One of our friends is the chef at our local pub around the corner from us and he made up his own yummy marinade  for the Bison and then he also brought over this super delicious Brandy Peppercorn sauce to have with it - did I say this was yummy? Very yummy! I thought I'd share a picture I took of the BBQ with you just below. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great weekend!

 

National Scrapbooking Day/Month

So May is National Scrapbooking Month and there was a ton of fun things happening in the scrappy world. Lots of blog hops, challenges, scrap fests, and cool prizes to be won! I did as many blog hops as I could (boy there are some talented scrappers out there!) and tried out some of the challenges. The layout below was for one of these challenges. Over at Swirlydoos we had a challenge to take the Swirlydoos logo with us on one of our typical days and take photos of it to scrap. So my photos start out at my first stop of the day at the post office, next stop was Walmart (that's the Walmart greeter holding the logo). Then I did my daily stop at Starbucks for my frap and then finished off at the beach walk by the "50th Parallel" sign. I asked some poor German tourist if he could take my photo holding the logo by the sign. He looked at me kind of weird but he still took the photo. I can just imagine the conversation he has when he gets home to Germany and is telling his friends and family about this weird Canadian woman he met, lol!

I used some of Prima's pretty "Sun Kissed" papers for this layout and the yellow checked paper is from Websters "Western Romance" collection. The bigger flowers I made following Gabrielle Pollacco's "Paper Flower" tutorial that you can find here: "Paper Flowers"  The leaf vine I cut on my cricut machine after taking the leaf graphic (courtesy of Lisa G at Swirlydoos) and making it into an SVG file to use in the "Make the Cut" program, The orange satin flowers I had in my stash. the yellow butterflies are also courtesy of Lisa G (aka starsailor) at Swirlydoos. I cut them out and added glossy accents to them, I love how the glossy accents makes things look! The butterflies pearl path I made using some pearl drop paint I found in the fabric painting section at Michaels. Super good deal, I got four different colors for $8.99 and the tubes are quite a good size and the end result looks great! So here is my finished layout....

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great day!


 

June already?

Wow, it really has been awhile since my last post! We finally got some good weather so I've been out in the yard doing all of my gardening that is normally done in March but our spring weather has been terrible. Now I'm back down on the mainland taking care of my daughters dogs for her while she and a cousin go off to Europe for three weeks.

Anyhoo I have done a couple of layouts and a canvas during all of this time away from my blog. This canvas was done using my friend Paulien Van Den Bosch's tutorial over at Swirlydoos here: Beach Card This tutorial is for making a card using some sticky back canvas but I didn't have any of that but I did have a couple of cheap canvas frames from the dollar store so I decided to use that instead and make it a wall hanging. I was really quite pleased with how it came how so I gave it to my MIL for Mother's Day.

Paulien always comes up with such cool ideas for her cards and layouts. Like on this one where the material around the edge of this is just cotton bandage material and the white netting is the kind of netting they use to put over a bandage to keep it in place. Who would ever think to use something like that and that it would look so good? Since this canvas was a lot larger than a card I decided to make a title for it to add to all the blank space in the middle. I also added some seagulls that I cut out with my cricut machine and popped up with foam pop dots and some fencing that I had in my stash.


This next layout is photos of my granddaughter - I can't believe she's 13 already! Seems like just yesterday that she was born. I have been wanting to do a layout on my granddaughter for a while as I have all of these letters and drawings etc that she as done for me and I wanted her to know how much I loved these things and have a special spot (behind the photos) that I could slide all of these keepsakes into so I wouldn't lose them. As soon as I saw these photos of her I knew they would be perfect for this layout. I used the Websters "Western Romance" papers "Love Notes" that went perfect with this whole layout. The papers even matched my granddaughters shirt she is wearing perfectly! I did some fussy cutting from some of the papers of the cowboy hat and letters and the corner piece that says "Love Letters" and popped them up with foam pop dots. The butterflies are courtesy of Lisa at Swirlydoos. I cut them out and added some glossy accents to them.

I have another layout to post but I will do that this afternoon. Thanks for stopping by, have a great day!