A New Week of Remembering

This week I’ll return to my first love in paper crafting—scrapbooking.

Last week my aunt passed away. She is really the last member of my father’s family I had any contact with, and with both my parents gone, it is a grief that has been hard to bear.

I hadn’t quite decided what I would concentrate on this week, but as I sat thinking about my aunt, I remembered a photo that I had brought home after packing up my mother’s things when we had to put her in a nursing home. My mother passed away last December 30, and I’ve been going through these old pictures quite a bit since then.

Then my mother’s twin sister sent me a copy of a photo of almost the whole family when she and my mother were teenagers that I had never seen before. You have to understand that my mother’s family of origin was not your run of the mill large family. They were the Duggars before the Duggars became the Duggars. At one time they were the largest family in the state of Colorado and had their picture taken for the Rocky Mountain News. But that’s another photo and another story.

Any way, the photo of my aunt and uncle and this huge family photo of my mother’s family made me yearn to scrap them and put in words my feelings for my family.

So I’ll be sharing some heritage scrapping this week. Starting tomorrow I’ll be sharing some family photos and some ideas for scrapping old photos.

Butterfly Banner

Sorry for the delay.  Life sometimes gets in the way of what we have planned, and that certainly has been the case here.

My oldest granddaughter loves to dance and sing and since her birthday is next week, I thought I’d make the last banner of the week for her.

Here’s a wide shot of it and I’ll zoom in close to show you the details.  I really think she’s going to love it.  She such a dear little girl. Really she is, and I know you would think so if you met her.

  When Abigail was visiting last summer summer she told me she wanted to change the colors in her bedroom from the babyish pink she’s had since she was 2 to a more grown up teal blue with some pink, but not much pink. She’ll be 8 next week.  Isn’t it funny that just as Abby thinks she’s too grown up for pink, her grandmother is painting her scrap studio pink! 

Does that mean I’m regressing or that I’m just doing what makes me happy? 

Here come the close ups. 

The banner says Dance, Sing, Play.  She loves all three of those, and will do any of them at the drop of a hat if asked. 

The tag is from Winter Woodlands—again.  I really like this shape and I’m sort of stuck on it.  I cut it at about 3 1/2” with a shadow and the butterfly is from Designer’s Calendar and cut with shadow at 3” I used my white Signo pen for faux stitching.  I used a little pink Stickles on the butterfly wings wherever there were cuts.  The swirl came from Ashleigh’s Alphabet and I used Diamond Stickles on them.  I only adhered the body of the butterfly to the shadow so it would look like it was flying. The pattterned paper is from My Mind’s Eye and K & Company. I think the cardstock is Bazzill. 

The flowers are done using the 5 petal flower from George, but I had to do quite a bit of trimming on the long petals.  I cut for flowers for each finished flower. 

The bows are tied with 5 loops on each side which I secured with a clothes pin while I tied them with a separate ribbon.  I used three more of the paper roses in the middle. 

A week’s banners and I hope you enjoyed them.  Next week I’m planning on doing layouts for multiple photos on a page.  I’ve got to get busy this weekend and get them all planned and ready.

A Wait

I wanted to let everyone know who comes by to see today’s banner that I will be posting it later today.  We’ve some unexpected interruptions in our normal routines and I’ve not quite got it finished. Check by later. 

Ready for Some Cold Weather?

Call me crazy but I love winter.  Frosty mornings, chilling evenings and the prospect of massive amounts of snow make me turn into a little kid again scrambling for my mittens and snow pants.  No colors better define the temperature and feel of winter than cool blues, white and silver. When I was planning this banner my hands went without plan or thought to those colors of my paper stash.  The only conundrum was exactly which papers and shades of blue I would use.

Now for the promised banner. 

The paper in this banner is from last year’s DCWV regular Christmas  and  Glitter stack.  The ribbon is Hobby Lobby and I purchased it over 3 years ago to make invitations for my grandson’s baby shower.  The snowflakes are from a package of Christmas buttons from several years ago. I am always glad to have new supplies, but I have to say, I do like knowing that what I do buy get used and is not just taking up space or becoming part of a collection of scrapbooking supplies. 

I also used a cereal box for the chipboard snowflakes and letters  to give them weight and stability.  More about recycling later.

The cuts are from A Child’s Year for the large square scalloped tag, Winter Woodlands for the hexagonal scalloped layer, the snowpeople and for the snowflake.  The letters are once again from Gypsy font’s monogram feature.

The edges are inked with a silver ink and faux stitching done with a silver gel pen. The layers are pop doted to give dimension again.  Dimension, dimension,  dimension!

Here are the tag by tag pictures.

 

All the ribbons hanging down?  I thought they sort of looked like icicles.

I think my daughter is going to love this and I can’t wait to give this to her in a couple of weeks.

Though today’s banner is not as detailed as yesterday, I still think the overall effect is still beautiful.

Tomorrow the banner is not seasonal or even for a specific celebration.  My hint for you today is this—DANCE!

A Fall Banner

First of all I want to say thanks to everyone who has visited my blog this week.  I enjoy seeing you visit. If you like what you see, please leave a comment or follow me! 

Can I just say before I zoom in close and show you all the details on this banner how excited I am about it.  I am thrilled at how it turned out. I loved working on it and planning on sharing with you all.  I won’t make you wait any more.  Can you tell how excited I am about this. It’s a gift for my beautiful daughter in law and I can’t wait to give it to her. 

Do you think she’ll like it?  Wait, I give you a close up of the first panel. 

You know what I’ve learned about paper art?  It’s all about dimension!  The more--the better!  I really meant to put the shadow behind this tree, but somehow I forgot.  Duh! The tree was cut from Stretch Your Imagination at about 3 1/2 and the tags are cut from A Child’s Year at 4 with a shadow.  I inked the edges with my Tim Holtz Distress Ink/Walnut. I sanded the edges of the Coredinations ( Love that paper) and used a brown Zig writer to do the faux stitching.  The extra leaves are from Designer’s Calender at 1”, but more about those later.

The second tag:

And a side view:

I love this tag.  I used the font from Gypsy Font Monogram feature and cut it at 3”.  The apples and basket are from Doodlecharms.  The basket is 3” and the apples 1”.  I inked and chalked the basket after I cuttlebugged it with the Distressed Stripes folder.  The letter is faux stitched and there’s a lot of pop dotting going on—a lot! 

Oh, and I strung this banner with twine and a button.  Fun! 

The pumpkins are from Stretch Your Imagination cut at various sizes.  I used my brown Zig pen to put in the detail and then chalked them to give them depth.  Then POP DOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love this banner! Have I said this?  Oh, yea.  I did.

Yes, it’s wheat from My World and I cut about 10 of them, detailed them with my Zig writer, chalked them and then . .  out came the pop dots.

There are those leaves again and that basket.  I detailed the leaves with the Zig writer, chalked the leaves to make them look more like real fall leaves and to give them lots of dimension and pop dotted a bunch.  I also added brads to add authenticity to the basket. 

Oh, and that patterned paper in the background of all the tags, it’s from a fall DCWV stack from a lot of years ago.  I have so much paper I’ve never used!! I am working on that.

There you go.  Day 3 of Banner week.  How am I doing?  Leave a comment if you like the work.  I love to read them. 

A Tiny Banner

Tiny things fascinate me. How did that guy write the whole Declaration of Independence on the head of a pin? Yes, I think about those things. It’s crazy being inside my head.

Any how every year I try to find new ways to celebrate my husband’s birthday, and this year I came up with the idea to make a banner that I could hang in his car. This little banner is the result of my labors. He loved getting in his car on the morning of his birthday and finding this banner hanging from his visor.

This is the banner that caused my head long plunge into banner mania.

It’s only about 2 feet long and the tags are only 1” wide. And those pinwheel rosettes? They’re ba---ck. They are barely 1” across and were tedious to fold and put together, but my man is worth it.

Once again I have to apologize for the photography. I really could not get a good photo of this banner no matter what I did.

I used Coredinations card stock again. I love that stuff. It cuts like a dream on my Expression and is so easy to work with. The ribbon is from Hobby Lobby from their fabric department. Instead of hot gluing them to the ribbon, I used staples which I thought gave it a slightly industrial/manly look. I used A Child’s Year for the tags and Base Camp for the lettering. Besides the rosettes which I love to use and hate to make, it was a pretty quick banner.

Here’s a close up and then I’ll let you go:

Darn! I wish I could get a better picture.

Exciting Site

Ever put a word into your gypsy or DS looking for an image and come up with no possibilities that use cartridges you have?  You know you have a suitable image in the cartridges you have, but you can’t remember where. The Gypsy’s search feature seems especially poor.  DS’s search feature is better but not top-notch. 

Well girls, do I have good news for you.  I found this incredible site this morning and I wanted to share it with you.  It’s called cricutsearch.com and it’s crazy wonderful. 

I typed the word “duck” in and got a oodles of possibilities and it showed the page it is on in the handbook and exactly what the image is.  It seems very up-to-date and complete. Yowsa!  You are going to love it!

Go on over and try it out if you, like me, get frustrated with your current means of searching for images. 

Thank you for this wonderful resources whoever you are!!

http://www.cricutsearch.com