Experimenting with Watercolors & Crayons

The Little Yellow Bicycle biker ganged is teaming up with Faber-Castell this week.  I was super excited to get my hands on some of their goodies. I was crossing my fingers for some gelatos because I had played with someone's at a crop and enjoyed them. When I got watercolor pencils and crafter crayons I was honestly a little perplexed because the last time I played with water color pencils, well let's just say it didn't turn out very good.

It looked like bad doodling that just didn't blend very well when I attempted to paint. Luckily these were different. They were so much easier and forgiving.  And the crayons were too much fun. I create these tags with the watercolor pencils and crayons.

I am sure there is soo much more that you can do with these products but my natural instinct was to do an ombre effect. I don't know what you think but for a first time playing with these projects, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I think it's less my talent and more of a testament to how crazy good these products are. And if you read my disclosure at the bottom of this page, you know that I only say what I believe.

I layered clear cuts, chipboard, bits from the paper crafting kit and white canvas from the Naturals collection that I colored on and then topped it with a cute little birdie!

I did a little multi-colored ombre for my 2nd tag and I love how it feels like a sunset. Each time I see it, I think of that and sunsets make me happy so it was only natural to add that sentiment to it, topped over some cork and clear cuts flowers.

I hope you enjoyed my little experiment and that it inspires you to step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Supplies:

Faber-Castell Mix & Match Art GRIP Aquarelle Watercolor Pencils in Red

Faber-Castell Mix & Match Paper Crafter Crayons in Neutral

Little Yellow Bicycle Poppy Collection:

PY-135 Cardstock Stickers - Favorite Pieces - with glitter and embossing (29 pieces)

PY-140 Cardstock Stickers - Fresh Verse - with thermography and debossing (43 pieces)

PY-279 Chipboard Shapes - with glitter accents (29 pieces)

PY-230 Clear Cuts Shapes - with glitter accents (28 pieces)

PY-220 Fabric Favorites (18 pieces)

Little Yellow Bicycle Naturals:

NA-JT10 Jute Pack - Light (4 colors, 72" each)

NA-CRH20 Cork Shapes - Zig-Zag Rounds

NA-CVH10 Canvas Shapes - Scallop Circles

Let me know what you think in the comments below. 

Thanks for stopping by! Now go on and get crafty :)

Sunshine & Happiness | Lily Bee Design + Gossamer Blue Kit Club EXCLUSIVES

After you check out this giveaway opportunity from Gossamer Blue, you'll find info on my Paperhaus giveaway and blog hop at the end!

Imagine my excitement when Kristen, the owner of Lily Bee Design mentioned she was creating EXCLUSIVE papers (and a stamp) for the Gossamer Blue kit club. I was just hoping and praying she'd send me a few spares. Little did I know though that Lori, owner of Gossamer Blue, would be inviting a few of the Lily Bee Design creative team to play with her kits this month!!! Saying I was excited is an understatement!

The June kit and add-ons can be found HERE.  I worked with Lori to create an easy peasy joint challenge for a chance to win a kit for yourself!!! All you have to do is create a summer themed layout, using mainly Lily Bee products, upload it to the gallery and you'll be entered for a chance to win a June Main kit! Details are on the Lily Bee Design blog.  Here's the inspiration layout I created for the challenge.

I mentioned that Kristen designed some new exclusive papers for this months kit, which I used along with goodies from her Sweet Shoppe collection. Seriously so lovely! You can see more of the exclusive papers and stamp HERE.

When I think of summertime, I think of sunshine & happiness and when I think of sunshine & happiness, I think of sun rays so...I created ray-like elements in my layering.  Can you see it in the photo above?

Finally, I had to journal about how happy she was during our Mother's day picnic at the park before we ventured over to the Houston Zoo.

I hope you'll play along with the "Summertime" challenge for a chance to win a Gossamer Blue Main kit of your own.

Before you go check out the PaperHaus blog hop HERE on my blog for an easy peasy chance to win a RAK from me!

Let me know what you think in the comments below. 

Thanks for stopping by! Now go on and get crafty :)

Always Your Biggest Fan

If you're here for the Paper Haus Magazine Blog Hop and my giveaway, keep reading and see the link at the bottom of this post.

Yep, I will always be my girls' biggest fan. I mean their daddy and brother might rival me but that's A-OK with me. I snapped this selfie photo of us once she was done with her field day races, which she did soo good at, by the way! It was so much fun cheering her and her class on. The class didn't place in the top 3 but they got Best Sportsmanship!  Anyway, here's the layout I created to let her know I will always be her biggest fan!

Created using American Crafts Amy Tangerine Yes, Please.

To create this layout, I machine stitched over the background paper in a random zig zag pattern and then layered papers, journaling bits, stickers, die-cuts and anything else that came into my view. LOL.

I added a little mist splatters, hand stitching around the heart and sun and then the title.

For the journaling, I just drew lines with my pen, did my journaling and then drew more black lines. To complete the journaling, I unscrewed the cap from my misting bottles and ran them over the journaling lines.

Thanks for stopping by today! Now, check out the PaperHaus Magazine blog hop in the post below for lots of inspiration and a chance to win the prize I am giving away!

Kiddie Park & PaperHaus Summer Magazine Blog Hop

We are celebrating the release of the Summer Issue of PaperHaus Magazine with a blog hop! There is SO much inspiration, techniques, projects, and exclusive artist interviews inside this edition! Click on the magazine below to view the entire summer issue. It's truly ah-mazing!!!

To ring in Summer, I want to share a page I made using the new Crate Paper "The Pier" collection included in the Gossamer Blue June kit. I will have more to tell you about designing for Gossamer Blue this coming week. In the meantime, run over there and scoop up one of these kits! It's filled with Lily Bee Design Sweet Shoppe and exclusive Lily Bee papers and stamps, Crate Paper, Basic Grey and more! I seriously feel so lucky getting to design with this kit!!!

When I saw the frames in this collection, I knew they would be perfect for all these photos I took of my daughter enjoying Kiddie Park - a park my grandparents took my mom to when she was young and took me to when I was a young child. It was such a wonderful, nostalgic experience!

I simply printed the photos to the frame sizes, adhered them to the back and then embellished around them. I added bits and pieces of embellishments under and over the top and then I chose 3 frames to stitch over and around.

I will never forget the feeling I had taking my girls to Kiddie Park. There were even moments when I felt like I was actually reliving my childhood through them!

Giveaway!

Today, I am giving away a great RAK to one random commentor who is also a follower of my blog! I have been purging my craft room and lucky for you, the purge includes all sorts of recent collections. I just don't have room for it all! All you have to do is "Join" or follow my blog and leave me a comment. I will draw the random name and post it here on my blog. Last day to enter is June 8, 2013 at midnight CT. 

Your next stop on the hop is Katrina Hunt.

Our Summer Delight event is all about fun summer days filled with scrapbooking and crafting! We want to share with you what we have made! Every day on the PaperHaus Blog there will be amazing inspiration and tutorials so be sure to stop on by everyday in June!

So Lovely & a Requested Tutorial

I was blown away last week by all the kind words left on the American Crafts blog, their Facebook and the link I posted on my personal Facebook about this layout. Paige Evans challenged me to create projects using lots of photos. I accepted the challenge and then double challenged myself to push my creativity a little farther than my usual layered look.   Here's the layout I created...

I don't want to admit how long it took and I actually have no idea. I just know it took longer than expected and it doesn't have to be the case for you. I'm sharing some tips and the "how-to" for this layout:

1. I created triangles and banners in Photoshop and added my photos to them.  Here's a tutorial for how to do that.
2. Once I printed the photos, I adhered them to a background paper. At this point, I had 5 large photos and a lot of empty space.
3. For these next steps, I'll tell you what I did and then share a big tip.
4. I cut the larger triangles freehand out of pattern paper, being careful to make sure certain words or patterns that I wanted to show on the layout were included.
5. I then filled it in with medium triangles and then added the smaller filler triangles.
6. I wanted every. single. one. to be a triangle so that meant A LOT of thinking and A LOT of triangles that just didn't fit right after I had already cut them. There's one or two on there that I did at the end that didn't quite make it into a full triangle. 
7. Here's the tip: When I was almost done I had an a-ha! moment. After adhering the photos and probably after cutting and adhering the larger pattern paper triangles, I totally should have hand drawn triangles with a pencil directly on the layout and then cut the smaller pattern paper triangles to that size.  Once I started doing that, which was probably 3/4 to completion, it went by much SUPER fast because I wasn't having to guess each cut as I was cutting them. It was like having a pattern to cut to. I hope that makes sense.
8. Once I had all the triangles glued down, I realized some of them kind of faded into the background so I drew lines around them to add definition.
9. I kept the embellishments to a minimum since the layout had so many other things going on.

I hope this answers your questions. If not, please leave me a comment below, email me or contact me on Facebook and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Here's a few detailed shots.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Make sure to head over to the American Crafts blog for more inspiration and while you're there feel free to tell them what you thought of my layout!

Exotic Wildlife Zoo

Good morning, everyone! It's Friday and we have a 3-day weekend so I am super excited today!  I'm not sure what we're going to do this weekend but I wanted to show you what we did the last time we had time off from school and work.

I grew up in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, about 3 1/2 hours away from where I am now.  Oh how I miss living on the lake! Anyway, we headed out to a new exotic wildlife zoo. We had such a great time, aside from the deer in the petting zoo trying to eat my littlest daughter's skirt. And let me tell you how traumatic that is for a little girl who LOVES her skirts!  That aside, we got to feed camels, deer, llamas, baby goats and all sorts of animals I never thought we'd be close enough to ever meet.  We also got to see zebra, who were being shy that day, goats, who were actually standing way up in in trees, bison hanging out and so much more. Here's how I captured the details for my oldest daughter's album.

I had so many photos so I decided to make them either 2x2 or 2x3 and put them at an angle. This allowed me to still have a design aesthetic and include all the photos I wanted. I kept all the pattern paper to 2x2 and  luckily the title card and journaling card were 2x3. I added a few embellishments to some of the pattern paper. I intentionally kept embellies to a minimum. I used American Crafts Amy Tangerine Yes, Please to make this all come together.

The journaling goes a little something like this:

Supplies: Fulfill Paper (35936) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Reflect Paper (35938) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Share Paper (35930) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Perfect Paper (35932) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Understand Paper (35939) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Priority Paper (35941) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Truth Paper (35944) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Hopeful Paper (35946) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Life Remarks Accent & Phrase Stickers (42365) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Goodness Printed Chipboard Letter Stickers (53458) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Dream Mini Marks Rub-On Transfer Sheets (42369) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Adhesive Badges/Flair (85624) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Simplify Stitched Vellum Embellishments (85628) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Discover Tiny Matte Puffy Accents (42366) Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, Adhesive Badges (85658)  - Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm 

Thanks for stopping by today. If you like this project, I'd love to have you leave some love for it HERE on the American Crafts blog.

Lovely Bunny Fun

Little Yellow Bicycle's new Spring collection called Poppy, is full of gorgeous vibrant colors and I'm not just saying that because they gave me some to play with. I really, really think they chose a beautiful color scheme. This collection captures the essence of Spring, from Easter to all the wonderful blooms. For this particular project, I honed in on the adorable bunny rabbits and wanted to capture the story of my littlest girl getting bunny smooches.

I just love the journaling cards. Their style in this particular collection kind of reminded me of Project Life style scrapbooking so I channeled that look.

I used a combination of the journal cards and laid them out in a grid around my photo, embellishing them here, there and everywhere to make little individual "scenes". 

See that cute little bunny playing in the flowers, peeking up over the fence? She's just too cute. I really enjoyed making all the little scenes on each card and I hope it's inspired you as well!

Supplies:

PY-104 Poppy Field Damask/Aqua Script

PY-134 Journaling Cards - with thermography (10 pieces)

PY-135 Cardstock Stickers - Favorite Pieces - with glitter and embossing (29 pieces)

PY-140 Cardstock Stickers - Fresh Verse - with thermography and debossing (43 pieces)

PY-304 6X6 Paper Pack (24 sheets, 2 each of 12 designs)

PY-305 Paper Crafting Kit (73 pieces)

PY-279 Chipboard Shapes - with glitter accents (29 pieces)

AS-211 Canvas Alphas - White, Esfera

Bouquet of Flowers

We're celebrating Moms over at Little Yellow Bicycle so I made a little something for my desk with the Fern & Forest Girl and Naturals collections they sent me. My hubby and kids bring home flowers for me often and we're always so sad when they begin to wilt so I thought it would be fun to create a bouquet of flowers that never die.

I used cutting files and my CAMEO to create the flowers. Each flower had a small hole punched in the middle on them, which were the perfect size for the tiny sticks I found laying in my flower beds outside. I just inserted the sticks into the center hole in the flowers to create the stems and glued them together with liquid adhesive. I've had a couple of questions about this so here's a further explanation...To adhere the flowers to the stems, I threaded the stem through the paper flowers and flipped them over so that the flowers were facing down on my craft mat and the stem was in the air. Since the flowers are not flat the stem poked through the front quite a bit but that's okay for now. It actually helped it from falling over.  I then added a generous amount of Scotch liquid adhesive to the stem and left them there to dry. Once dried, I turned the flowers right side up and cut off the top of the stem and placed buttons in the middle of the flowers.

These adorable paper flowers sit right here next to my desk and are such a wonderful reminder of my girls.

Little Yellow Bicycle Supplies:

FNG-304 6x6 Paper Pack (24 sheets - 2 each of 12 designs)
FNG-135 Cardstock Stickers - Favorite Pieces - with glitter and embossing (31pieces)
FNG-140 Cardstock Stickers - Fresh Verse - with glitter and debossing (43 pieces)
NA-WB20 Wood Buttons - Etched
NA-SP10 Stick Pins - Wood Buttons
NA-SP30 Stick Pins - Cork Flowers

Love You Always | Nat'l Scrapbook Day

Welcome to the American Crafts National Scrapbook Day Blog Hop! I hope you'll be inspired to whip out your American Craft supplies and start creating after you make your way through the 20 design team members'  blogs. There are a lot of fun challenges in this hop so there's no excuses not to play along!

MY CHALLENGE: Create an embellished, multi-dimension layout using a grid!

To create this layout, I cropped my photos to approximately 2x3 so that they would fit inside the frames. Prior to adhering them, I layered different types of pattern papers (from my 6x6 paper pad). I distressed some and left others with the cut edge. 

The Love You Always chipboard fit great inside the frames. I chose to add the yellow striped chipboard over the yellow striped frame but I embellished it by punching the red gingham and adhering it to the LOVE chipboard piece and popping it up over the sentiment. This was perfect for my title!

I added more clear cut shapes, rosettes, stickers and more to the layout to tie it all together.

I added my journaling, the cutest picket fence chipboard and the date using a date roller stamp.

Here is the full hop list in case you get a little lost along the way, or maybe you just ran across the hop from right here on my blog and you're just dying in anticipation to see them all right now. Either way, make sure you go through the entire hop, leave a comment on each blog, then visit the American Crafts blog to win a "super ginormous prize"! 

Paige Evans

Jill Cornell

Corrie Jones

Patricia Roebuck

Leslie Ashe

Becky Williams

Jen Chesnick

Monika Głód  
*** Heather Leopard ***

Andrea Budjack

Allison Waken

Kimberly Neddo

Diana Waite

Leah Farquharson

Michiko Kato

Melissa Mann

Angie Gutshall

Erin Stewart

Carina Lindholm

Lilith Eeckels

American Crafts

Next on the hop is Andrea Budjack!

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Simply Wonderful: PageMaps + Little Yellow Bicycle

I'm super excited to get to work with PageMaps again. I do love to design my own layouts but there's just something about sketches that simply the creative process and that's good to mix in as often as possible!  Little Yellow Bicycle and PageMaps teamed up this month and I was given this 12x12 sketch to design with.  Here's what I created, something Simply Wonderful in my opinion.

I used the Fern & Forest Boy collection that Little Yellow Bicycle sent me. The colors are so bold and striking. To create this layout, I painted Heidi Swapp mists on the paper with my fingers, adding in the Bronzer color between the colors.

I then stitched a circle over the dried mists and added banner strips under the photo as a sort of mat. I added additional elements, such as journaling cards and chipboard to give it added dimension.

Lastly, I used sticker letters for the word "simply" and then wrote the word wonderful using a sketchpad app on my iPad and then traced it in Silhouette Studio. Several of my fellow LYB DT members thought I had written the word with twine and I love that it kind of looks like that but without the fuss.

Thanks for the opportunity, PageMaps and Little Yellow Bicycle! LYB is doing a fun sketch challenge giveaway over on PageMaps so make sure to check it out HERE!