Scrap Our Stash--Valentine Weekend Challenge

Come join us for our Special Valentine Weekend Challenge. Just send a picture of your Valentine or Love project along with a brief description to scrappinpsycho@live.com. Your project does not have to be a new project - the only guideline is that it must have something to do with LOVE or VALENTINES!

Each entry will be posted on the Scrap Our Stash blog. Entries must be received by midnight on February 14th. On the 15th each of the Scrap Our Stash Design Team, and Guest Design Team members will cast a vote for their favorite. Then the top vote getters will be posted and readers will be able to cast their votes for their favorite. All votes must be received by midnight on February 28th. The top vote getter (winner) will be announced on March 1st and will be given the opportunity to be a Guest Design team member for the month of April.

Entries will be posted starting at 12:01 AM on 2/13/10 and will be posted in the order received. So, get those entries in now!

Be sure to come back and see everyone's projects and then after the 15th to cast your vote for your favorite.

The Wall That Heals--2 page layout

This was a layout I created for the Scrap Our Stash February Challenge...This month's challenge was to use 10 items on your project.  I created this layout for the challenge...it is about our visit to see the traveling Vietnam Veterans Wall.

 

Ok now here's the details... :)

I wanted to use 10 pictures for this challenge, but once I got going on the layout, I liked it with 12 pictures better, so I came up with a new "10" idea.  I used 10 groupings of stars...these were layers of large gold sequins, paper punched stars (red and blue), small silver star sequins and 10 black brads in the centers. The stars were all adhered with foam squares for dimension.

I also used my Fiskars Apron Lace border punch and some red card stock cut to 1/2" wide to create the punched border. I love how skinny this little border turned out and I used one of the scallops as the end near the rounded photos, and cut off the excess border where the two pages meet. For this 2 page layout, I used 4 of these borders.

My title was created with some black chipboard alphabets that I glued directly onto another piece of the same red pattern paper I used to punch some of the stars. I added a star accent here too.

Here's a picture of the star accents where you can see how shiny the sequins are. For the part of the layout where I took a close-up photo of the wall, I used vellum to cover the names, then cut out a window to highlight the main name and glued a chipboard nameplate on top. You can see some of the nameplate here in this photo on the bottom left corner.

Supplies used:

White and red card stock: Hobby Lobby

Pattern Paper: Basic Grey (Boxer 6x6 pad)

Silver and Gold sequin stars: Tree House Studio

Star Punch: Creative Works

Border Punch: Fiskars (Apron Lace)

Corner Rounder: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper

Vellum: Close To My Heart

Chipboard Alphabet, Chipboard Nameplate and Black Brads: Heidi Swapp

Looking forward to creating some more projects with the theme "10". What a great way to use up some embellishments I've had for a while now.

Merry & Bright

Over at Scrap Our Stash, the January challenge is to scrap something you got for Christmas or to use some of your scrappy goodies you received for Christmas. I didn't receive any scrappy goodies this year, so I just used my Cricut that I got for Christmas last year and made a layout about a special gift I was given this year from my husband.

I used my SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot) software with the Cricut Expression to create the title from a font I had on my computer. I welded the letters together and cut them from red cardstock, then glittered the letters with stickles glue. When that dried, I traced the title with a white gel pen (Ranger Inkssentials) to make it pop up off the brown paper.

 

I wanted to use some non-Christmas papers for this layout, and I used three papers from Die Cuts with a View (Eco Stack). The red frame paper with a cream center had a bunch of brown flowers on the left side which didn't work for my Christmas theme, so I cut the left side of the frame off, then cut out the red border with an exacto knife. I traced the cut out shape onto the brown paper, cut it out and placed it next to the cream pattern, then glued the red border back on top, making sure to match up the edges. You can see some of that detail here in the picture below. Once the frame was pieced back together, I placed it back onto a busier pattern paper. I did cut out a square in the middle of this background pattern so I wouldn't be wasting the paper, then glued the frame on top.

The pictures are matted onto a metallic gold paper, then the main photo is raised up with foam squares.  I stamped some labels in ColorBox brown pigment ink, then hand cut them and used them in various places on my layout. The larger lined label is where I wrote my journaling. The label stamps were all from Green Grass Stamps. On top of the labels, I added some Making Memories holly and berry buttons, then I glued some clear jewels from The Paper Studio on top of the red buttons and around the leaves. The labels are attached with brown Heidi Swapp brads and I added some Diamond Stickles glitter glue to the label edge. I was able to use some older Making Memories definition stickers from my stash and I placed these on the top label and underneath my collage of photos.

I used my Fiskars Apron Lace border punch and some more of the brown pattern paper to create a border between my photos and my journaling. Making Memories glitter number stickers were also used under the stamped journaling label to add the year to my layout.

We'd love to have you join us in our January Challenge over at Scrap Our Stash!!

Cards made from scraps

Here are some cards I made from the same scrap paper technique I highlighted in an earlier post on my blog.
I loved the mix of the patterns once they were cut and adhered to the putty colored strip and was inspired to create some quick Christmas cards. These cards are also featured on the Scrap Our Stash Challenge blog today.

The first one uses a small section of the paper strips and a couple of different stamps. The angel was stamped directly onto the black card base with versamark ink and heat embossed with clear powder. The stamp "Merry Christmas" was also stamped with versamark. I sprinkled some Heat and Stick powder onto the sticky ink, and heat set it quickly to melt the powder, then sprinkled on some black glitter and heat set it again. The top corner was rounded with a corner rounder to finish off the card.

The next card used a kraft colored card base to warm up the card and I hand cut some holly leaves from the left over green paper scraps. The red berries were punched with the larger end of my Crop-a-dile and I adhered the leaves and berries to the card with foam tape, then added diamond stickles to accent them. The saying was stamped with black ink directly onto the putty colored strip of paper that held the pattern papers.

 

 

Again, this is a fun way to use up your scraps! :)

Honorary Texan layout

The December challenge over at Scrap Our Stash is to use your scraps. I created a layout for the challenge and wanted to share the pictures here. This was such a fun layout to create because I just sifted through my paper scrap drawers and pulled a variety of patterns.

Then I cut the scraps into smaller pieces of varying width and length using my paper trimmer. These pieces were trimmed with scissors on one end to create a "v" to simulate ribbon.

I used a piece of white cardstock that had been stamped on one side. The stamping wasn't something I was going to use on a project, so I turned the paper over and used the white side to create the photo layer and the strip that the pattern papers are adhered to.

 

To adhere the strips to the white piece, I just added adhesive on the back of the white piece, then randomly placed the papers on the adhesive, making sure the ends were staggered.
 

I didn't worry about the overlap to the right of the white strip. I ended up cutting off those ends when I was done lining the papers up.

Then I was able to take this strip of papers and I sewed them down to my layout with black thread to create some texture and to make sure all the patterns stayed in place. For some more 3d texture, I included some gold and silver star shaped sequins that were added in three places and attached with black brads.

For my title, I stamped a frame onto another piece of the white scrap paper, colored it with markers, then stamped the word "honorary" inside the frame with mini alphabet stamps. The frame was cut out and attached to the layout with 3d foam squares. The rest of the title was created with some white chipboard letters.

This is a fun way to use up quite a mix of pattern papers. Some of these wouldn't have been good to use with this layout in a full piece, like the black bird paper, but when they were cut into small strips, you see mainly the colors and not the actual pattern on the paper.

I have a few more projects to share with more of these scraps, but I will wait and post those separately.

I can't wait to see how you use up your scraps! Once you have completed your project ,email a picture and a brief description to scrappinpsycho@live.com and it will be posted on the Scrap Our Stash blog for everyone to see. Your entry must be received by midnight on December 31st. A winner will be chosen and announced on January 1st. The winner will be offered the opportunity to be a Guest Designer for the month of February.

Yeah for Dec 1st!

I can't believe it's already Dec 1st....yikes!! :) This year sure is moving by quickly. We had a great Thanksgiving with family who drove several days to visit and I've been under the weather since they left, so I'll keep this short and sweet.  I did want to let everyone know that the Scrap Our Stash blog has posted the December challenge: to create a project with your scraps. If you create any project with at least 50% scraps, then be sure to submit it to the blog and participate along! Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

"Identify Our Stash" Contest

The other design team members and myself took pictures of items in our scrapbooking stash and we are hosting a contest over at Scrap Our Stash Blog to see who can correctly match the name of each design team member with the photo of their stash.

Each of the design team members has also placed a clue on their blog as to what is in their stash. A stash prize will be given to the person who gets the most right answers first. To submit your answer - send an email to scrappinpsycho@msn.com by midnight central time on November 30th. You can email one answer at a time or all 7 at once. You can answer as many time as you'd like. Good luck to everyone! :)

My clue is that I like to store items by type in my scrapbook room and I sort by color. I didn't take a picture of my obvious favorite stash item (stamps) but chose something that I love to use on my layouts and cards to tie everything together.

Scrap Our Stash

I am so excited to announce that I was chosen to be part of the design team for a new challenge blog, Scrap Our Stash, which focuses on using up items from your own supply of scrapbook items. The first challenge will be announced on Dec 1st...so be sure to participate! I'm looking forward to working creatively with the goodies I already have on hand.

This was my layout I created for the design team call....we had to create a project using items from our stash.

 

Here's some detail shots from the layout:

I used some Rusty Pickle Stickers (boy and girl sets) that I had been saving...ok, hoarding for a while now. I inked the edges of the stickers and added crystal stickles over the words to make them pop. Then the stickers were mounted to the layout using 3D foam tape. The words I chose from the sets were "Eww! Girl cooties!", "Eww! Boy cooties!" and the title sticker says "Bricks and mortar make a house but the laughter of children makes a home". The last accent I added were some buttons from my large button collection.

I wanted to challenge myself to use white cardstock for my layout base, so I added some distress ink to the page edges with the ink blending tool and stamped them with a formerly unused Fancy Pants flourish stamp and some tan chalk ink. The small bits of pattern on the layout are actually some Basic Grey die cut tags that I had been collecting, and they added a great touch to the layout without using pattern paper. I inked the edges of these also, and layered them onto the page in groupings near my word stickers.

Journaling reads:

Your laughter and encouragement of each other is so inspiring. You are both so different, but get along well and accept the differences between you. You make me proud. I pray your relationship as brother and sister will only continue to grow over the years. Always know you each hold a special place in my heart.


Be sure to visit the challenge blog, Scrap Our Stash, to see the other design team layouts as each new member is revealed.