May 31, 2012

It Down To The Wire

It makes me laugh to post this layout now. I did this layout awhile ago and I just read my journaling again. Man was I naive. Optimistic but naive. Rollout day and I did managed to rollout as planned but it was only after putting over 160 hrs of overtime! Sometime I laugh at my rosey outlook, as I always have it, because I always seem to get burned by it. I guess that is why favorite saying is "If at first you don't succeed, don't be surprised"!


I bought this paper a long time ago with the plan of using it for me hubby and his fascination with computers but instead thought it worked great for this layout.  Because the paper had just a large graphic I kept the rest of the embellishments pretty minimal.


Supplies: Patterned Paper: Die Cuts With a View - Paper Pad; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: Doodlebug Alphas, American Crafts Thickers, and Making Memories Chipboard Alphas; Embellishments: Fussy cut geek saying from a co-ordinating paper, Jillibean Stickers.

May 30, 2012

My Garden

Well Hello! I know I have been a little hit and miss lately but life has definitely been hectic!  Between work and spring cleanup/cleanout I am finiding myself with little time these days.  Don't get me wrong, I still find some time to scrapbook but the time I used to spend photographing my layouts and doing posts seems to have disappeared.  But never fear, I sent some time side last night to do all my photographing and I have a slew of fun layouts coming your way.

This layout is about the one and only tomato I managed to grow last summer.  I have determined that I have not inherited my Grandmother's ability to grow fabulous tomatos (could be because I live in a different climate) but I was quite proud of the single tomato I did manage to grow.  Isn't it pretty?!  It sure was tastey too! There is nothing fancy about this layout; I used Comso Crickets Garden Variety Collection which I had in my stash and it came together really quickly.  I love it when I can do that!


Supplies: Patterned Paper: Cosmo Cricket - Garden Variety Collection; Embellishments: Cosmo Cricket - Garden Variety Chipboard Pieces, My Mind's Eye Journaling Spot, and Drywall Tape.

May 22, 2012

Behind the Scenes - Part 3

Welcome to Part 3 of my peak behind the scenes of how I scrapbook. If you missed the two parts you can find it here: Behind the Scenes - Part 1 and Behind the Scenes - Part 2. Now this peak behind the scenes is the kinds of Scrapbooking for what I call everyday life, you know all the stuff that happens in between big events.  I usually find it's these sort of layouts is where I am most creative and this is the layout I will be doing.


So onto some fun stuff ... actual scrapbooking! I usually start with my photos and pick out the ones I want to use.  Sometimes I will keep possibilities off to the side in case I need another photo while doing my layout.  It's at this point that I will rough out my photo orientation if I am not using a sketch.  Because I only had four vertical photos I decided it was best they be placed all in a single row.  If I knew I wanted the photos to be cropped I would do it now but in this case I wanted them to be 4x6.


Next i move onto picking my paper.  I usually try to pick colours from my photos and in this case I went with greens, yellows and pinks from the dresses.  I have a bunch of 6x6 paper pads and seeing as I wanted just strips of patterns I decided the 6x6 format would work.  So I picked out 5 patterns (I always try to use the rule of odd numbers when putting things together) that co-ordinated with my colours and that looked good together.


Now I wanted my strips to be a little bit longer than 6 inches long so I cute each 6x6 square in half so that I could stick them together end to end to make it long.  I like to do this because most of the time my seams will be hidden and I find it wastes less paper when I am only looking for a strip.


See here I taped the two ends together and unless you were looking really hard, most people would not notice the seam.  After I had the two pieces together I trimmed it to be the size I wanted  (9x2)


I do a test run to see how things are looking.  Not bad but something is off.


I can't see enough of the patterned strips.  So I crop my photos to be 4x5 instead of 4x6.  Now that looks better.


I take out my bazzills white cardstock (a staple in my stash!) and dry fit it to my liking.  Once I have the arrangement I like, in this case I played around with the patterned strips till I got the order and placement just right, and then I stuck it all down.


Next came the title.  That's where I usually start after I have what I consider the layout part down.  This is now embellishing to me.  I picked out my letter stickers (most of the time it's Thickers ... I have an obsession) and I new I wanted to place the title on something so that it didn't get lost on my background.  I laid out the letters on my clear ruler and then pulled out a few journaling spot books that had spots that went with my patterned strips.  I laid my letters on each only until I decided which looked best and once I found it, I stuck the letters down.


Now I decided I wanted the spot to have another layer so I stuck it on a scrap piece of paper that was bigger than the spot then using my scissors I cut around the curves of the spot leaving about an eight of an inch border.  I then added the rest of my alphas to finish my title.  I also chose a border die cut strip from K & Company that I wanted to use but there was the problem of it not reaching all the way to the end of my cardstock.


So I figured out where my title block would sit and that's where I made a cut.  This allowed me to shift the border strip over to the edge of the cardstock and my title block will cover up the gap.


See, you can't even tell!


Now that I was happy with my title block it was time to focus my attention on the bottom right side of my layout.  I always work opposites, I find it balances out my layout for weight and focus.  I started with my journaling spot.  Now if I am not sure how things will look I will start with just laying things out and then once I like what I am seeing I will glue it down.  I am always afraid on something moving and I can't remember how I had it so first chance I get that puppy is glued down!


Now I wanted to use flowers on this layout so I had some picked out.  Hey it's a layout about girls so I always take that opportunity to girly it up.  Most of my layouts are about my hubby or my puppy so I don't get much chance to go flowery!  I layered a couple of canvas flowers in colours that worked and then used a Flair button as the center of my flower.


I decided there needed to be more height to this side.  I wanted it to touch the border die cut strip along the top.  So I found some flag poles from an embellishment set from Pink Paislee that worked great so I used two of them.


I decided that I like the heart shaped Flair so I added it to my grouping too.


Next I added in my journaling.


And because I follow the rule of odds I decided to add another Flair button over my title.


At this point, I was pretty close to done but I wanted to use some bakers twine.  So I threw in an eyelet and then wrapped some bakers twine around my die cut border strip.  I really liked the texture it added.


I liked it so much that I decided to add a few stitches at the tops and bottoms of each of my background strips in a complimenting colour.


And there you have it, my completed layout.  I sure hope you enjoyed this little 3 part Behind the Scenes peak.



Supplies: Patterned Paper: Crate Paper - Farmhouse 6x6 Pad, Crate Paper - Random 6x6 Pad, and Basic Grey - Oliver 6x6 Pad, Basic Grey - Fort Lauderdale 6x6 Pad; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts Thickers and Making Memories Alphas; Embellishments: K & Company - Journaling Pad, Twine, Eyelets, K & Company - Border Strips, Basic Grey - Fort Lauderdale Build a Flower, Basic Grey - Fort Lauderdale Journaling Spot, American Crafts - Flair Badges, and Pink Paislee - Soiree Flags.

May 17, 2012

Me & My Dad

My Dad loves to Bust a Move! And he is pretty good at it. I have always thought I was a pretty good dancer but when it comes to dancing with my Dad I always get my toes stepped on.   Dad says it's because I can't let anyone lead but me ... LOL!  He also jokes that when I was a little girl I would love it when he would spin and twirl me around the dance floor.  I love memories like that!  That is why I scrapbook, I want always remember these things!  Either way, I always have fun trying to dance with my Dad even if I won't let him lead and I end up super dizzy!


The journaling spot I used was pretty close in colour to the background paper so it seeemed lost so I mounted it on the red polka dot background and then I traced around it with a black zig pen.


Supplies: Patterned Paper: Echo Park - For the Record Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts - Thickers and Cosmo Cricket - Tiny Type; Embellishments: K & Company Border Strips, Echo Park - Die Cut Stickers, and Sequins.

May 8, 2012

Mother's Day Blog Hop Winner!

Sorry about being a day later than promised with posting a winner but it was a busy couple of days for me this weekend.

Without further ado, and thanks tothe winner of Mother's Day Blog Hop is  Random Int generator, Dana MK!  Yeah Dana!  I am so excited for you.  Please send me (jenniferdewolfe (at) gmail (dot) com) your address as I think I have your address from prior to your move and I will drop you prize in the mail!

And because this is my 400th post, I decided to choose a second name for a celebration prize Devra you we the lucky commenter chosen!  Please send me (jenniferdewolfe (at) gmail (dot) com) your address and I will get your goodies sent off to you!

Thanks to everyone who joined in the blog hop and for leaving such wonderful comments!

May 3, 2012

Mother's Day Gift Box and Blog Hop

Welcome to the Mother's Day Blog Hop! I would like to take this opportunity to with all you Mom's out there a very wonderful Mother's Day! You should of arrived here from Moongirl's blog and if you got lost along the way you can go back to Amanda's blog to get your bearings!

For this Blog Hop, we were challenged to create a page about your mom, about you as a mom or even go past scrapping into a gift idea or paper crafts project for Mother's Day. The interpretation was left up to us so for this hop I decided to make a pretty little box to put the gift for my Mom in. The box is very easy to make even if you don't have the Scor-Board like I do. So let's get started! Pick out two co-ordinating double-sided papers; one for the bottom of the box and one for the top of the box.


I trimmed my bottom piece to be 8x8 and then scored it at the two inch mark all the way around.


After scoring, I folded all of edges inward so that the pattern would end up on the inside of the bottom of the box.  The lid will cover most of the bottom box so the pattern is better used on the inside!


Pick opposing sides and trim the two of the folds to the perpendicular fold line.


You will now adhere these folds together and you will see the box start to take shape.  Repeat on the other side.


Now, it's time for the top.  I cut the top of the box to be 8.5x8.5.  I wanted the edge of my top lid to have a decorative edge so I took out a border punch and fancied it up a bit.  Once I had the decorative edge done I then scored my lines so that the finished top size would be 4.12 in size.  To get this it will depend on the size of border punch you use.  For mine the score lines were at 1.75.  Now fold and adhere the box for the top just like you did for the bottom one. 


I had some reminants left over so I decided to make a paper rosette for the top of the box.  I have done a tutorial on this technique here if you are interested in how I did it.


I stuck the rosette on the top of the box.


Added a crochet flower and a button with ribbon.


And there we have it.  The most adorable little gift box that took me 20 minutes to make.  Knowing my Mom this will end up on display somewhere so that is why I wanted to make it extra special for her.


So how about a give away?  Leave me a comment and become a follower and I will pick a lucky winner on Monday to win a scrappy prize!  So next on your hop head on over to the talented Adele's blog and thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: My Minds Eye - Kaleidoscope Collection; Embellishments: Button, Crochet Flower, and Ribbon; Tools: EK Success Large Scallopped Edger Punch and Martha Stewart Scor-Board.