Design Team Call

To all "Australian" paper craft artists, Meg's Garden is having a Design Team Call! Meg is looking for a few awesome Australian paper craft artists who can showcase the Meg's Garden products!!

If you LOVE papers and lots of embellishments and use them to create layouts, cards and off the page projects, then show us what you love to do!! Meg is looking for talented artists who inspire others to create.

What is expected of a Meg's Garden/Designs Galore Design Team Member?

The ability to showcase Meg's Garden products!
The ability to take good photos or scans of projects!

The Details:
Design Team is for 6 months from 1st July 2013 - 31 December 2013
Create a minimum of 1 layout/project per month posting on both your blog and Meg's Garden blog - dates will be given when team is picked.
Promote Meg's Garden/Designs Galore by posting the above layouts/projects on other online galleries and blogs with working links to the blog.

For further details please email info@megsgarden.com

The Secret Garden

I was surfing around the internet the other week and I came across this really cute little garden that someone had made using a hollowed out book and they called it "The Secret Garden". I remembered how I liked reading that book. Of course being a scrapbooker the first thing I thought was "I could make that with scrapbooking goodies". So that's exactly what I did and here is my "Secret Garden"!

The chair I got off of eBay, the door knocker I got from Home Hardware, the door I made from Popsicle sticks, the small blue & white rosebuds I made myself, fencing, moss, and rocks are from the $Store, papers from Graphic45 and K&Co, key, larger flowers and greenery is from my stash. If you'd like to check out the real one I used as inspiration you can check it out

here: CLICK HERE

Happy Friday!

With all of the traveling and stuff this month I forgot a card I did manage to sneak in between things. This was a lift of one of my talented friends Paulien Van Den Bosch's beautiful cards, she is so talented and is such an inspiration to me with all of her beautiful cards, layouts and OTP projects! You can see Paulien's card that I lifted here, Paulien's card. Here is my lift of Paulien's card.

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Monkey Tree

Wow I can't believe I haven't blogged since the end of April! May has been a crazy month. I had to go down to the mainland at the beginning of the month to have my yearly check up at the MS Clinic with my neurologist and I stayed there to visit with the kids. My dh then flew down to Vancouver and we went down to Las Vegas for 6 days, super hot weather and we had a blast. Since getting home we've been so busy doing yard stuff etc I haven't really had time to do anything else.

I do have another Design Team project for Meg's Garden to share with you.I love this photo of my grandson playing on a maple tree and I thought the colors of the tree would go perfectly with the reds in the “Ode to a Summer’s Day” collection. I used the “Summers Day” as my background paper. The next layer is a piece of light green cardstock which I punched the corners on.  I then used one of the pretty square doilies from Meg’s Garden and the final two paper layers were a “Summers Day” and a “Summers Dance”.

I took a piece of cheese cloth from my stash and sprayed it with Tattered Angels Glimmer mist in “Lily Pad” and then dried it with my heat gun. I decided where I wanted to lay my photo and then glued the cheese cloth down running from the left side and bottom of the photo and poking some pieces underneath where the photo would be and glued my photo down. For my flower cluster I used the white meadows, burgundy/cream open paper roses, rose pink open paper roses and champagne kisses. I love the champagne kisses flowers, there are different sizes in the pack and the color is so soft, they would go perfect on any layout with any papers! I also took a couple of the wire stems that I cut off the flowers and wound them around a thin paint brush, so when I took them off I had little curly Q’s to pop into the flower cluster. I used some alpha stickers from my stash for the title and then added a few gems to the layout to finish it off. Here's a closeup of the flowers and cheesecloth.

Materials Used From Meg's Garden

Papers - P6337 Summers Dance

                P6333 Summers Day

Bond 25 Square Doilies

Flowers - White Meadows

                 Burgundy/Cream Open Paper Roses

                 Rose Pink Open Paper Roses

                 Da801 Champagne Kisses

Other items used

Pale green cardstock

Cheesecloth

Alpha stickers 

"Lily Pad" Tattered Angels Glimmer mist

Green Gems

Thanks so much for stopping by and having a look at my projects, have a great day! 

 
 

More Prima

I'm still playing with the leftovers from my Prima Rondelle papers and I decided to do some tags with the papers. For some reason I've got into making tags lately and I used the new "Dream, Wish, Hope" stamp from Prima as my inspiration for my tags. I made the two large pink and one peach colored flowers using my heartfelt dies and matching stamps and also the small pink rosebuds and the rest are all Prima flowers from my stash. I had all the flowers and papers just laying on my scrap table and the tags just kind of took on a life of their own. Anyway I was quite pleased at how they turned out when I was finished. I hope you like them and if you have any questions just leave me a comment and I'll try to answer it. If you'd like to see a larger view of the photo just click on it and then hit your browsers back button to return to this page. TFL and have a great week!

 

For You Card

Well I've been using some more of my left over Prima Rondelle papers and made another card. Did a lot of distressing on all of the papers with my distress tool and some "Vintage Photo" distress ink. Used some black lace from one of my Swirlydoo's kits. The small pink rose buds I made, along with the large flower using my Heartfelt Creations stamps and dies. The two black roses are Prima from my stash and the leaves are from Dusty Attic. I hope you like it and thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend!

 

Love lives here...

I found this coat/hat rack at the dollar store and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to buy it (a bargain $3.00) and alter it. The actual top of the rack is 14¾” x 5½”. So I used the purple card stock for the background and since the paper is only 12” wide I cut a strip 12” x 5½” and then a piece 2¾” x 5½”. I knew that my top paper layer would cover up most of the seam between the two papers and then cleverly used my butterfly and flowers to cover up the other bits of the seam.

I used the 12” x 4” strip of the “Summer Beauty” paper and then cut three pieces 6” x 3½” one from each of the “Buds of May”, “A Summers Dance” and “Summer Bouquet”. I distressed all my papers, except the purple cardstock with my distress tool and distress ink. I did the cutting a rolling back of the papers before I glued them all together. For the “Summer Beauty” paper I also cut a piece 6” x 3½” from the 12x12 paper and glued that to the back of the 12” x 4” piece so that when you rolled it back you would still see the patterned paper. For the next two pieces they would be laid face down and the paper rolled back so you would then see the patterned side of the paper. The bottom piece, the Summer Bouquet, would just be laid flat and my little white heart would be laid down on top as shown.

I used one of the French White Open roses which I had used my ink to die the edges purple and placed it right on top of where the papers start to open and stuck a couple of little purple petals from my stash tucked in to the paper rolls behind the rose. On each corner I used a white gardenia, a mia green flower and a yellow handmade flower. My words were cut out on my Cricut machine and the purple letters painted with “Diamond” stickles to give them some glitter. To finish it off I added some white pearl flourish strips I had in my stash which, for some reason, do not want to show very well in the photo but look quite pretty IRL, lol. Here are a few close-ups.

Meg’s Garden Products Used
Papers - Summer Beauty P6334
                  Buds of May P6335
               A Summers Dance P6337
               Summers Bouquet P6336
Flowers - White Gardenias
                 Mia Green
                 French White Open Rose
Other Products Used
"Diamond" Stickles
"Vintage Photo" Distress Ink
Recollections white pearl flourish strips
Small piece of white cardstock for title
Purple cardstock for title
Yellow cardstock for handmade flowers
Prima Hydrangea petals
Small White Heart
Prima Butterfly   

A few tags

I didn't realize that it has been a few days since I last posted on my blog. We've been a little busy what with Easter and family birthdays and our weather has finally begun to feel like spring, it took long enough, lol! The weather on Easter weekend was absolutely gorgeous. On the Saturday we took our boat out for the first time this year and did some fishing and crabbing. I managed to get about 6 ling cod but they were a bit on the small side so we threw them back. One of the poor ones we threw back it took so long to get the hook out of him, by the time he was back in the water the poor thing was dead. We didn't notice him floating right away but one of the bald eagles that was watching us from way up in the trees noticed and flew down and grabbed him for his lunch. I got a photo of him coming down to grab it but I only had my small camera and was a bit of distance away so the pic is not that good but I'll show it off anyway, lol.

You can click on the photo to see the larger photo.

In between all of this stuff going on I did manage to get a bit of scrappy time for myself so I decided to make some tags with my leftover Prima Rondelle papers. I still have a bit of the papers left so I hope to get a card or two made with it. Anyway, here's a photo of the tags, and of course you can see a larger view by clicking on the photo. I hope you like it and thanks for stopping by!

 
 

Prima Rondelle Collection

I am absolutely in love this line of Prima papers! In fact I've been hoarding these few papers that I was able to find. I kept wanting to use them but then I'd think "Oh, no - what if I can never find them again!"  I'm sure we are all guilty of doing this at one time or another, lol. So the other night I decided it's now or never and pulled out the Rondelle papers, got out the photo I wanted to scrap and away I went! Here's the finished layout..

For my background paper I chose the "Etude" paper.  I distressed all of the papers with my distress tool and some Vintage Photo Distress ink. With having most of the paper black I wanted to try out a bit of molding paste on here using this cool ribbon I bought the other day. It's that ribbon you can buy to use when your making things like wreaths at Christmas with all the holes in it. I thought it would be perfect to use as a stencil. Here's a photo of the piece I used.

So this is the white circles you can see on either side of the background paper. I then took a paper doily from my stash and cut that in half to lay under the other layers of paper. For the top 6"x6"paper I used the "Gavotte" paper. I then cut a 9" x 1¼" out of the pink polka dot side of the "Cabriole" and the same size piece out of the "Cottilion" paper. I cut a "V" out on one end of each of these papers and staggered them as shown in the photo. Once all of the papers were glued down I added a piece of black lace and bow to the 6"x6" piece of paper.

I took my piece of "Cabriole" and fussy cut out the flowers and hummingbird from the left side of the paper. I took the hummingbird and scanned it and took it into my graphics program so that I could mirror the image and then printed it out on cardstock and cut that out so now I could have the hummingbird on the left side of my layout. I placed my photo, which I added some cardboard to the back of it to give it some dimension, where I wanted it on my layout and then proceeded to place my flowers where I wanted them. I had the sheer grey fabric flower from Prima in my stash and I new it would be perfect for this layout. I used some small Prima black roses and the pink ones I made using my Heartfelt die and matching stamps. I also used some pop dots on some of the fussy cut flowers and also the hummingbird. I added a small Prima "Say it in Crystals" flourish from their Tea Thyme collection. The journaling card was one of the "Friday Freebies" from Prima. I also added a small key above the photo and my layout was done and I am really pleased at how it turned out. Here are a couple of close ups...

 

 

Box & Mini Album

Well I've been spending the last few days making a mini album and a box for it to go in. I actually started out with the box and went from there.This past January my dh and I celebrated our one year anniversary of quitting smoking. To help with not smoking my dh had purchased a couple of electronic cigarettes to help him out.  The boxes that they came in were quite sturdy and I thought these will be good for something down the road - you know how us scrappers hate to throw anything away, lol.

So this box is not really big, only 4¼" x 4", so the mini album wouldn't really be big either, only 3½" x 3¼". The box does have some depth to it so I was able to make the spine of the mini album 1½" and has 8 pages (4 front & back) to it. Because the mini album was so small I didn't do a whole lot of decorating of the pages as the photos I was using were only about 2¾" x 3". So I basically used bits of lace and small flowers that wouldn't make too much bulk to the album.
I'm making this for my daughter who is in University right now studying to be a Veterinarian. The album contains photos of all of the pets she has had and still has, so I'm really hoping she likes this, it can be her brag book of her fur-babies, lol.

For the box I used the Graphic 45 "Songbird" paper, the teal flowers and small pink rose buds I handmade, and the larger pink rose is Prima, the pearl flourish is from my stash that I picked up at the dollar store. I added some "Aqua" stickles to the teal petals and added some Dusty Attic leaves to the cluster. For the Mini album cover I used the Websters Western Romance collection "Love Letters" paper, using the lighter teal side. The flourish is from Tim Holtz grunge board which I've dyed with the Prima Teal ink chalk. I also used the same ink to dye my ribbon used to tie the mini album closed. The teal & pink flowers I handmade and added a little white scribbles paint here and there on the petals of the teal ones. The butterfly is courtesy of Lisa from Swirlydoos that I printed out and then added some glossy accents to it. The pearls are from my stash. For the inside pages of the mini album I used Webster's "Petite Papers" 6x6 collection pack. Here's a close up of the flower cluster on the box.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this mini I made and I am going to try to do a tutorial on how I made the Mini album with chipboard. Take care  and have a great weekend, TFL!

Meg's Garden "Ode to a Summers Day"

Good morning all! I just wanted to share a couple of projects I made using the new papers from Meg's Garden.

I love these new papers from the “Ode to a Summer’s Day” collection by Denise Ann. For this layout I used “A Summer’s Day”, “A Summer’s Dance” and “A Summer Bouquet”.  I distressed all the papers on this layout with my distress tool and also some Vintage Photo distress ink by Rangers. I die cut the Summers Day paper and then laid that down on a piece of pale green card stock and another piece of paper from my stash.

For the pieces under my photo (yes that’s me way back in 1955, lol) I cut one of the corners off the Bond 25 Square doily and used some of the distress ink on that. I then cut a piece from the top left of the Summers Dance paper (to get the paper that was more of a red color) and then a smaller piece of the Summers Day 4” strip (so it was a bit darker green shade).

The Summer Bouquet paper is definitely made for fussy cutting! So I fussy cut three pieces of the flowers from the paper to lay around the photo. I then took one of the white gardenias and inked it with Fired Brick distress ink and laid that down over the fussy cut flowers along with two of the Lilac & Lavender paper roses.

To finish off the layout I used some green alphabet stickers from my stash and outlined them with a fine tip black sharpie. I know you’ll love working with these new papers just as I do, TFL!

Materials Used from Meg’s Garden

Paper - P6333 A Summer’s Day

            P6336 A Summer Bouquet

            P6337 A Summers Dance

Bond 25 Square White Doily

Lilac & Lavender papers roses

White Gardenia

Other Items Used

Pale green cardstock    

FabScraps Victoria Tree paper

Vintage Photo distress ink

Fire Bri8ck distress ink

Distress tool

For my next project I used the new “Ode to Summer’s Day” collection for this card. I thought that the image of the man and woman would be nice for a card that could be used at anytime of the year to give to someone you care about.

I cut the base for my card out of a pale green cardstock which, when folded in half would make a 5” x 7” card. I cut the bottom 5” x 7” out of the “Summer’s Dance” paper. What I love about these papers is there is the 4” x 12” strip of matching papers to the 12” x 12” sheet which is perfect for when your making cards, you don’t have to cut into that pretty 12” x 12” piece, you can save that for a layout or another project. So I cut out the image of the man & woman out of the 4” x 12” strip of paper, which would be 3” x 4”. Out of the 4” x 12” strip of a “Summer’s Day” I cut a piece 5½” x 1 ¾” and I then used  a piece of Green Toile paper that I had in my stash approximately 4 x 1 ½. I distressed and inked all of the papers and laid them out as shown in the photo. I added a strip of lace down the left side of the card and added one of the white Meadows flowers and used two of the Dusty Attic leaves in the top left corner.

Materials Used from Meg’s Garden

Ode to Summer’s Day

Buds of May P6335

A Summer’s Dance P6337

A Summer’s Day P6333

Flower – mead Meadows

Lace L2920

Leaves da810

Green Toile  P6295

Other Items Used

Mini alphabet letters

Green Alphabet stickers

Green rhinestones

Well I hope you like these projects and thanks for stopping by!

Graphic 45 Design Team 2013 Audition

So graphic 45 is having their 2013 Design Team call so I've decided to through my hat into the ring. I figure you don't know unless you try right and I so love Graphic 45's products! I seriously don't think Graphic 45 could come up with anything bad. Anyway these are the projects I'm entering in for consideration as a Design Team member. This tissue box I made using Graphic 45's "Songbird" collection.

 I love this "A Ladies Diary" collection, don't you? I knew it would be perfect for this photo of my friend and her Mom and older sister.

Some more Graphic 45 yummyness with the "Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe" papers mixed with some Bo Bunny papers.

 This is a photo of my Mum when she was 15 yrs old in 1936 in Bedale, England.

I love this layout of my grandson, I think he looks so serious and mature!

This layout I did for the Ultimate Design Challenge over at Swirlydoos, it helped me move on to the next level (week 4) in the challenge.

This layout is of my daughter, her friend is becoming a budding photographer so she always gets my daughter to model for her so she can add the photos to her portfolio.

This is a photo of my Dad, my daughter and my granddaughter taken a couple of years before my Dad passed away.

This was one of my Meg's Garden DT project.

My Tim Holtz configurations box.

Thanks for having a peek at my projects and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I make the top thirty!
 

 
 

Swirlydoos March Card Challenge

So this month for the Swirlydoos Card Challenge we have six teams! I am the first one for team 6 so I got to come up with the card that the others in our team will lift. So here are the twists for this months challenge:
#1. Create a, Peek -a - BOO/ Slide Out, element on your card.
#2. Use some sort of frame. (handcut - diecut - crafter's clay - resin - stamped)
#3. Everyone loved Miranda's Metal foil tape tutorial for the UDC, so I thought it would be nice to use that technique.
So amazingly enough I managed to get all three of the twists into my card!

 So I have a pull out tag that you can see at the top that you can write a little note on or add a photo, my butterfly is made with the foil tape and I used one of Pink Paislee's frames which I died with teal chalk ink.I liked doing all these twists so much I decided to do them for my son's birthday card!

So if you lift up on the tab on the Happy Birthday (which of course is made with foil tape) there is another message saying "Make today awesomely fabulous!", which would be my Peek-a-Boo element and my frame is another one of Pink Paislee's frames which I used some "Vintage Photo" distress ink on and laid it over my clock, which just happened to be almost the same time as my son was born! So tomorrow is the reveal date for week 2 so I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. Pop on over to Swirlydoos and check out the "Challenge" forum. TFL!

My Journal

I decided to finally try Drew's journal that I showed you a picture of last weekend. I didn't have the actual Prima Journal that Drew used but I decided that was okay because I wasn't sure how it would turn out and didn't want to mess up the journal so I picked this book up at the Dollar store. It had hard cardboard covers on the front and back but I decided to add a thicker piece of white mulberry paper that I had as it had so much texture to it. It also just has regular lined paper inside as I want this to be more of a journal to write in rather than an art journal.

I painted the mulberry  paper with gesso first. After that was dry I painted a thick coat of mod podge on the paper so I could use it as the glue base for most of my products I wanted to lay down. I laid down different pieces of lace on the cover, a piece down the left side of the journal and pieces along the bottom. I also used some  embroidery thread laid down in different areas and a piece of burlap on the top right side. I then painted another layer of mod podge over everything and allowed that to dry.

Once that was all dry I used three different glimmer mists on my journal Tattered Angels "Lily Pad" and "Tuscan Sun" and the other one is a small one ounce bottle of glimmer spray called Ditto that I picked up for a $1 at Michaels, it's a really pretty blue shade. I wish I'd picked up a whole bunch of them now, lol. 

When this was dry I laid down my Prima window frame and flowers, layering them slightly over each other running down the middle from the top left to the bottom right. I also added my chipboard letters to the cover.  When this was dry I then panted it with another layer of gesso over everything. After that was all dry I sprayed my glimmer mists again over everything. When that was all dry I dry brushed some white and black acrylic paint over different areas just to help show off the different textures. I just kept doing this layering of paint and glimmer mists until I got the look I wanted. Here are a couple of close ups.

Well I think it turned out not to bad for a first attempt. I'm really liking this working with different mediums so I'm going to have to stock up on some more of these goodies. Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!
 

Live with Prima Winner!

Don't you hate it when you go to bed so tired but you can't fall asleep! I went to bed like 4  hours ago and I tossed & turned until I finally thought forget I'll just get up. Anyway I was so busy last night posting my layouts I totally forgot to tell you I was a winner on "Live with Prima" on Thursday night! I'll be stalking the mailman till my prize arrives, lol.

Drew was doing the broadcast on Thursday night and he was doing this awesome altered journal...

 Is this just not the coolest journal cover? I saw this a month or so ago on the internet and I printed it out cause I wanted to try doing one. I was so excited when I found out he was doing the class on Thursday. If you want to check it out you can go to Prima's Ustream channel here: Prima. You really should check out the video. Well I'm off to bed again to see if I can get to sleep this time, lol.

March already!

Okay I can not totally believe that it is March 1st already! So all three of the layouts below were made using the "Belle Chanson" Swirlydoos kit. Isn't is amazing at how versatile these kits are? Three layouts and they are all totally different but they are made using the same kit. I still have tons of goodies left from the kit to make more layouts or cards. The Swirlydoos Kits really are worth the money that you spend on them. Okay so that you can see what I mean, here are the three layouts......

This one above is a photo of my Mum when she was 15 yrs old taken in May of 1936. 

This next layout is a photo of my Dad, my daughter (his granddaughter) and my granddaughter (my sons daughter and my Dad's great granddaughter). My Dad passed away two years later, but he did get to meet his great-grandson one month before he passed away.

So this last layout, done using the same Swirlydoos kit, with a couple of items from my stash, and I think, it made a great masculine page. This is my son and his son and my nephew and his son. I really do hate to realize my son and nephew have little ones of their own - I'm sure I'm still only 29 yrs old! LOL, okay you can stop laughing now! So here's the last one I did...

 Isn't it amazing how all three of these layouts came from the same kit? Anyway I'd love to hear your comments on it! TFL and have a great weekend!