Life Outside the Fishbowl

Fabric and Vellum Cards

We just got back from a fabulous 10-day "holiday" in England and while I'm uploaded photos, doing loads of laundry, etc. I thought I'd post a couple of cards I made for ScraPerfect before I left.

I've been playing around with fabric recently, and used a length of (Mist)able ribbon from Pink Paislee to make the flower on this card. I rolled the fabric into shape and used the Best Glue Ever to adhere the flower. After the glue set, I misted it with a few different colors from Smooch Spray to Tattered Angel's Glimmer Glam. I started with the Smooch Spray. After that dried I decided I wanted a bit more glimmer, so I broke out several colors of Glimmer Glam.

For the background, I used clear embossing powder & a Hero Arts stamp after treating my paper with the Perfect Crafting Pouch. Then, I broke out many, many colors of Distress Ink. This was then adhered to a scrap of Cosmo Cricket paper, wrapped with a red ribbon. I added my fabric flower and a stamped tag.

This card is on it's way out to some good friends, who not only met us for dinner and brought the kids books - which they won't put down - but had to suffer through Thomas getting sick all over the restaurant.

And another card....

This is vellum layered over some cute cloud paper from My Mind's Eye. I had just gotten these stamps from Red Lead Paperworks and couldn't wait to use them. I stamped them onto vellum using Memento ink in London Fog after treating the vellum with the Perfect Crafting Pouch.

Once the ink dried, I took the Best Glue Ever and loosely traced around the circles. After the glue was tacky I used silver foil.

To ahere the vellum, I also used the Best Glue Ever. Seriously - it's the best thing I've ever used for vellum. You only need tiny, tiny dots to hold the vellum and they are virtually invisible.

Finishing up the tag I stamped onto a smaller manilla tag, added a few buttons and ribbon (from Red Lead), and a cut-out of the bird.

More Echo Park Projects!

Here's a few more Echo Park projects that I made for ScrapbooksPlus this month using their On the Record collection, combined with some Teresa Collins.

How About a Contest?

Do you like prizes? Sure! ScraPerfect is having a giveaway on their Facebook page. All you need to do is "like" their page and leave a comment on their "Win a Prize" post. One lucky winner will win all of their products - enough to last you for a year easily, if not lots longer!

And, if that wasn't enough, they've now opened up their own Etsy store for those who don't have a local scrapbook store near them.

Art Journaling

The gals at the Outlaw Women's Scrapbook Emporium yahoo group started art journaling together, and I joined in. Robyn's been giving journaling prompts and sometimes a bit of direction. I picked up a 7x10 Canson Mixed Media journal to start these.

And now I've got four journals going at once ... which, actually, is O.K. since I can move between them and let wet pages dry.

This first pages was about fears, and we were to write out our fears then gesso over them. Which is how I started....

I used quite a few different stencils on this, including one I picked up at Inspired from Patricia Seggebrush's class. You can find it at Stencil Girl Products (bubbles). Also, a bit of stamping (Unity, Hero Arts, and Stamper's Anonymous-Tim Holtz).

I also played around with Claudine Hellmuth's paints. Can I say how much I love them? They're more transparent than opaque, so you can see what's behind them.

I loved the look so much I used the same circle stencil and added it to another page, this time just laying the entire stencil on the page and swirling Claudine's Blank Canvas paint in each circle. After painting in each circle, I rubbed it around with my finger so that more would build up around each edge.

The bicyle stamp is Hero Arts. Underneath the circles, my fav Crafter's Workshop stencil again - sunburst (until the new releases are out!), Tim Holtz tissue tape and a bunch of different paints. This page started out as a scrap of pink Bo Bunny paper that I used to show Rachel how stamping with paint works. I didn't want to keep the pink, so I painted over it, stamped it, etc...

Pretty Hanging Lights

I saw this display at the Arhaus in Fairfax last week and snapped a pic with my phone.  I really love the multiple fabric shades - and the fabric! Wish I had a place in my house to do this. Sigh....

Echo Park - For The Record

The August kit from ScrapbooksPlus is a combination of Echo Park's For the Record and Teresa Collin's Notions. Can I say how much I love the colors of the Echo Park? And they coincidentally happen to really complement all the vacation photos we took in California. So you'll be seeing lots of theme parks and hipstamtic pics this month!

My first layout is shots of the kids at Legoland. They recently opened a new section of miniland - seven scenes from Star Wars. Their reactions were priceless - they were so exited about each one. I mean, really, look at those faces!

I used Shimelle's 4x6 layout from April's Photo Love as a starting point for this layout. I'm also scraplifting myself, as I had done a layout using her April sketch with the same Echo Park paper.

So... back to the layout. I have two themes going on in the layout: circles (as in lego bricks) and measurements (because the scenes were done to scale). Oh, and a bit of swirled accents to break up the horizontal lines and repeat the swirls on the bottom of the Echo Park paper.

The ruled paper and the polka dotted paper are Teresa Colllins. The background, red dotted, tag, and stickers are all Echo Park. I also used Lily Bee Design alphas and KI Memories glittered stickers. The stickers are 12" long and have words and swirls. I just wanted the swirl part and cut that from the sticker pack.

 

Art Journaling

I've got another long post with more art journal pages. Which is funny, because no sooner had I taken photos then I started adding to several of these... which is O.K., it's like a work-in-progress.

First, this is a collaboration with Rachel, my 7 year old. I had taken the kids with me to Plaza Arts and as I was putting away some of things I bought (neo crayons, ink) she asked me about them. So, we did a page together while I showed her how to use some of the supplies. Then she wanted her own.  And specifically told me that she did NOT want to SHARE mine, she NEEDED her own.

So the next week we frequented Michaels putting together her own art kit and journaling book. I dug in on the neocrayons - no way was I buying a set for her. Those things aren't cheap!

I picked up some Golden glaze at Plaza Arts, hoping it would be fluid and drippy. It's not, but I enjoyed using it.

Image transfers, collage, stenciling, stamping and rub-ons primarily for these pages, and a bit of shading exercises with pan pastels.

 

And a third journaling book....

This one I bought at Plaza Arts. I liked the cover (it had polka dots), but the inside pages are really thin. I've had to glue a bunch together. But it's still fun to play...

 

Wilton Cake Sheets & Rachel's Glee Birthday

This year, Rachel wanted to do another Glee cake for her birthday. After remembering how well last year's turned out and inwardly cringing... I said "sure."

Then I remembered that I'd seen these new Wilton cake decorating things at AC Moore and Michaels. And I had a couple of coupons....

So we picked up some of the sugar sheets, edible markers and a punch insert. Oh, and small gold edible stars that Rachel had to have.

The sugar sheets really are just like paper. I used both scissors and a paring knife to cut shapes out of them - both worked fine. For the cake, I printed off a photo from the computer onto plain paper and cut out my images. Then, I traced around them with the edible markers onto the sugar sheets.

For the hand, I sprayed some food coloring onto a plate and used my fingers to paint on top of the sheet to shade my hand. The black lines are the edible marker.

When we went to punch out the stars I realized that I only bought an insert and not the entire punch. Not happy about that. I made do with the punch - the edges were not as crisp as I would've liked, so I covered them with icing (which wasn't as straight as I hoped). 

When I saw a demo at AC Moore they took the sugar sheet scraps and clipped them into tiny pieces of confetti - and we did the same. Rachel heavily sprinkled on her gold stars (just like Rachel Berry I guess....) and the cake was done. A huge improvement from last year!