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Playing Along With Let’s Get Sketchy – February Week 4

Posted on February 25, 2013 by daydesigns

It’s Monday once again and I have another layout to show you featuring a fabulous sketch from Let’s Get Sketchy.

It’s by our very own Jenessa Franco and I think it is so cute.

It’s a format I have started using quite a bit – 3 photos in row either portrait as they are in this sketch or, as I ended up doing, landscape stacked on top of each other. I have to give a big shout out to Shimelle Lain who does this a lot too and is the QUEEN at showing us how easy it is to embellish in a style consistent with the rest of our layouts as well as leaving all the room you need for journaling.

Here’s my layout.

These pictures were taken at the birthday of Christine’s “boyfriend”, Levi. His mother had bid on and won a birthday party visit by the Delta Fire Department at a school fundraiser. The kids loved it!! I think you can tell by Christine’s massive grin in the bottom picture that using the big fire hose was a huge hit!

I was drawn out of our house by seeing the fire truck across the street. (This is where I insert a joke about firemen, right?)

Flipping the sketch to suit my photos gave me a natural place to journal and enough room that I didn’t have to worry about it not fitting in.

I substituted the circles in the sketch for buttons and sewed them down with black thread to pull together the hits of black on the layout.

One final cluster up by the title finished things off.

Well, thanks for stopping by today. Since it is Team B’s week (I’m on Team A) I will be linking my layout up on the blog shortly. I hope you will too! This is our final sketch for the month of February which means that if you’ve been thinking about trying for the prize from Moments of Tranquility you’re rapidly running out of time! Get 3 of the 4 sketches completed by the end of the week to be eligible for the prize pack. We’ve had some truly amazing layouts submitted this month – it’s been fantastic to see familiar faces each week as well as new ones. Keep them coming everyone!

One final thing before I sign off. This weekend we at Let’s Get Sketchy are celebrating our 1st birthday!! In true LGS style, we are throwing a weekend long blog hop (yikes! better get my projects finalized!!) and I’d LOVE to see you all there.

Thanks, have a great week!

Posted in challenges, layout, Let's Get Sketchy | 10 Comments

LOAD213 Day 20 – Hidden Elements

Posted on February 20, 2013 by daydesigns

For today’s prompt, Lain asked me to make a page with a hidden element. I don’t do this ALL the time but often enough that I was ready with several options at hand. And then we celebrated Christmas (I was doing these layouts for Lain in December) and each of us was given a special gift from Greg’s Mom. They all came in pretty unique gift card envelopes which I immediately hoarded away for future use! Don’t we all do this? No? It’s just me then? Okay, I can live with that!!

Here’s my layout. Can you spot where the hidden journaling is?

Ta da!!

Here’s a closer look at that journaling card.

The gift card envelope had this great silver ribbon around it but I didn’t have anything quite like it in my stash so I improvised. I laid down a piece of double sided tape in approximately the same width as the ribbon then, after exposing the sticky side, sprinkled it with silver glitter. To make sure it was stuck good and strong and I wasn’t going to get glitter falling off into my page protector, I laid a piece of scrap paper over top and burnished the glitter with my bone folder. I swear to you, I can rub my finger over it and nothing comes off!

Additional silver accents and some contrasting dark blue pieces finish off this layout.

What will you do with a hidden element today?

Thanks for stopping by – have a great Wednesday.

Posted in layout, LOAD, LOAD212 | 1 Comment

Big BIG news!!

Posted on February 19, 2013 by daydesigns

I’ve been waiting and waiting to share this news with you all! I applied for a position that I never in a million years thought I’d get. It was one of those “what the heck, the worst they can say is ‘no'” moments.

Guess what?

THEY SAID “YES”!!!!

Who said what, you ask? You are looking at one of the brand new Staffers at Scrapbook News and Review, an online magazine dedicated to all things paper crafting.

Can I get a little “Woot! Woot!”?

Right now I really don’t know what all this will entail beyond submitting several projects each month for publication in either the magazine, blog or for the various classes offered through their classroom called The Art Studio. I will also be responsible for coming up with a tutorial once in a while. I’m still wading through all the intro stuff but once I know more you can be assured I’ll share it here.

Eek!

Oh, and the best part? I will occasionally be sent new products to review and create with!!

I’m a tiny bit giddy about this! My OLW in 2012 of FOCUS is paying off in spades!

Okay, off to make sure the spaghetti sauce doesn’t burn.
See you later!

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Let’s Get Sketchy Monday Reveal

Posted on February 18, 2013 by daydesigns

Is it really Monday again?! Must be because there is another sketch up at Let’s Get Sketchy. It’s Team A’s turn to share our layouts. Please be sure to stop by the blog to see all the beautiful examples from my team.

Before I get to my layout I wanted to let you know about our sponsor this month. We are pleased that Moments of Tranquility is donating a prize pack full of paper and Dusty Attic chipboard and flowers – read all about it here. Remember that in order to be eligible to win you need to complete 3 of the 4 sketches this month. Don’t panic though as you have all month to get them in!

Here is this week’s sketch

Don’t you just love those hexagons?! I was inspired to get a little artsy with my layout.

I have a template with hexagons so I slapped it down and added some gel medium to the page.

I have created a layout using school pictures for each LGS sketch this month – feels so good to cross that task off my to do list! Today is Marley’s turn again. I took my colour cues from her dress and then went digging in my scrap drawer. The square sheet behind the photo is actually a Christmas paper from Stampin’ Up but since the pattern is subtle, it completely works for a non Christmas project.

And now my details.

These are super old Martha Stewart tag stickers which I dressed up with some 1″ circles of the papers I’d used already. It makes a fun alternative to more traditional triangular or pennant banners.

My title was a little lop sided but I couldn’t move the letters once I’d stuck them down so to fix things I added that little ‘photograph’ banner sticker to the right side and now everything looks intentional. Easy peasy!

There was some residual ink on it from another project on my stencil but I liked how it added shading to some of the hexagons. To further emphasize the pattern I used my trusty Gelatos in silver and a deep red. Gelatos are super easy to use. Here I just added a few swipes of colour where I wanted it and then used my finger to rub it in and spread it around.

Thanks for stopping by today. Remember to check out the layouts by my other talented team mates and then go and make your own layout using this sketch. Hope to see you in the links!!

Posted in layout, Let's Get Sketchy, Marley | 5 Comments

LOAD213 Day 17 – Love Letters

Posted on February 17, 2013 by daydesigns

This is not your average love letter! LOL!

Lain challenged us today to write a love letter to one of our possessions as a way of feeling greater connection to them. I can definitely say I feel a greater connection to my laptop now! Since creating this layout – inspired by a total hard drive failure which left my laptop languishing in the tech room at Future Shop until just the other day – I have gained an appreciation for it which I hope never to lose.

This is an 8.5×11 layout turned landscape. It may be a challenge to fit into my albums but sometimes when you’re working on something and conventional sizing or orientation isn’t working, you just need to shake it up. Then it can literally turn things around for you!

As I said to Lain, I kept the colours light and fun in an effort to keep the mood light and fun. Believe me when I say this was not a fun time in my life. Being told my data was gone and knowing that my last back up was 8 months prior made me feel quite sick inside. THEN being told I could recover said data for a mere $1600 was more than a little gut wrenching! $1600?! Seriously?!

After some serious thought and a fair bit of “head in the sand” ignoring the problem in a vain attempt to make it go away, the tech guys and I came up with the solution that I’d buy a new hard drive for my laptop, they’d install it under warranty and then I could start fresh. $160 vs $1600. SOLD!! So now, if I ever find someone or something that can recover my data for significantly less than $1600, I have my old hard drive in my hot little hands. It’s not being sent back to some manufacturer in a far away land where I’ll never see it (or my data) again!!

Lesson well and truly learned!!

And now some detail shots for you.

I love this clock washi tape. The colours worked for my layout and the time motif reinforces the idea that I lost those 8 months as well as works as a reminder to set up a regular back up schedule from now on!

My title ended up having to be a little bit crazy because I didn’t have all the uppercase letters I needed, but in the end I think it also helps with the lighthearted feel I was going for.

I don’t do this a lot, but when I was looking at this layout once it was ‘finished’ I felt like this corner needed a little something extra. Instead of adding more embellishments, I roughed up the edges of the paper and then added a little rip. This is one of those design techniques that I generally don’t go for because I like a cleaner look but it really works here.

One last embellishment.

Thanks for coming by today. I appreciate you taking the time to check out my work! I hope you have a fantastic Sunday. If you have the time today – BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!! Preferably to an external source! Consider yourself told!! 🙂

Posted in layout, LOAD, LOAD213 | Comments Off

S.W.A.T Drill #2

Posted on February 16, 2013 by daydesigns

Time for our second Drill over at SWAT and this time we have a sketch for you to try. What do you think you can do with this beauty?

I turned it on it’s side to make it work with the photos I’d chosen and came up with this.

Fun, huh?

The back ground patterned paper is from Teresa Collins’ Spring Fling line (which I received as part of a blog hop prize from Sheila ages ago.) I have been using a lot of the papers when scrapping our recent trip to Puerto Vallarta as the colours are so perfectly tropical!

About the subject matter: I know my toes are not exactly the most photogenic part of my body but I really wanted to capture how relaxing this trip was for all of us. This view seemed to sum it up. Kids pool, palm trees, blue skies and lounge chairs. ‘Nuff said, right?!

Here are some detail shots.

Every now and then a layout needs a long title. Thankfully I’ve got approximately a million alphabet stickers to help me with that! I also had fun finding word stickers in colours and phrases that would work (I’ve maybe got only a half million of those! Hee, hee!!)

My journaling.

The flower and scalloped circle die cuts are also from the Spring Fling line – the brad is an old Basic Grey one from my stash.

I really felt like the page needed even more texture so I grabbed my Stampin’ Up Linen Thread and started wrapping.

I showed the layout to Marley at a point that I was happy with and she said it needed misting. I can’t remember what colour she suggested but I knew it wasn’t right for this layout. Some Mister Huey Opaque White though? Yes, please!! I think I may have a scrapper in the making!!

You may be wondering what happened to the circular element from the sketch. Well, I had originally placed a sun shaped die cut on the page (an old Little Yellow Bicycle one) and while I loved that it supported my story, the colour was too glaringly off from the rest of the layout. So what’s a girl to do? Trace around it with brown ink!! Problem solved!

The last picture I have for you today is a picture of what you can win if you play along with this weeks drill. Check out these goodies! Worth playing for? I think so!!

You’ve got until February 25th to link up your entry to be eligible to win this prize. And don’t forget about Drill #1. We are still taking entries for the All About You challenge and there’s a pretty sweet prize for that one too. So, get moving Scrapper!

Posted in challenges, layout, Mexico, SWAT | 2 Comments

Practical Scrappers – Valentine’s Inspired by Pinterest

Posted on February 14, 2013 by daydesigns

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My girls have been looking forward to this day for awhile now – hope my little love offerings on the kitchen table will be met with joy, love and appreciation! Or at the very least, no sneers and tears!

My cards to them were inspired by Pinterest. Have you been sucked into the Pinterest world? I have. Somewhat. If you’d like to follow me I can be found here. Not sure what the heck I’m talking about? Pinterest is a web site that allows you to set up virtual pin boards for different interests. (For instance, I’ve recently created a Valentine’s Day Ideas board.) As you’re trolling the internet looking for inspiration, instead of printing off images to stick to your actual bulletin board above your desk, you can ‘pin’ the image to your Pinterest board and visit them whenever you want. Others can follow your boards and be inspired by you and vice versa.

So now that you know the premise, let me tell you why I felt the need for the mini lesson! Today over at Practical Scrappers, we are featuring many different Valentine’s projects all inspired by images found on Pinterest. Make sure you check them out!

This was the image I chose as my inspiration. It originally came from a site called Fern Smith’s Classroom Ideas.

I love the recycling of paint swatches, the punched out hearts, the ombre colours (a really hot trend still) and the fact that they are book marks!

But I wanted to make cards to I used the ombre idea, the pinks and reds and the punched hearts as my ultimate inspiration and made these.

I went into my card stock scrap bag and pulled out all my Stampin’ Up pinks and reds. After playing around with the various colours I came up with this gradation. But I felt each layer needed a little something so I used one of my border punches to create added texture.

The stamps you see on the hearts are an old SU stamp set (it was in my “to be sold” pile but I may have to rethink that now!) I popped up one heart on pop dots and added a heart shaped gem for a bit of sparkle. Every little girl likes a bit of bling, right?

I am SO pleased with these! I know my girls are a bit young to appreciate them like I do but … it makes me happy to make beautiful things. In the end, that’s all that matters!

Hope you are having a fantastic Valentine’s Day! Thanks for stopping by today, I hope I’ve managed to inspire you a little.

Posted in Cards, Pinterest, Practical Scrappers | Comments Off