Very Mary

A quick holiday card...

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! We celebrated in style here with a big dinner for the three of us! (Less pressure to be a perfect chef if there are no guests involved.) Besides the fact that the pumpkin pie required an extra 40 minutes in the oven and totally screwed up my timetable causing me to delay dinner by an hour and subsequently burn the bottom of my homemade rolls, all went well. And was very enjoyable. Enjoyable enough that I have volunteered my culinary services to make a turkey dinner for Christmas Day. Wish me luck!

I have some photos from the big day, but like the majority of my photos, I have not edited them, and if I'm honest, I'll admit that I probably won't even look at them until after Christmas. Such is my busy life. :)

But not so busy that I can't stop and make a quick holiday card to share:

Supplies:

• Bo Bunny Chocolate Double Dot patterned paper
  
• American Crafts Boarding Pass patterned paper
  
• Hero Arts Houndstooth rubber stamp
• Hero Arts ClearDesign Frames and Messages stamp set
• Versamark watermark ink
• American Crafts white embossing powder
• American Crafts silver mini brads
• Doodlebug Designs Lily White Flocking Powder
• Provo Craft Cricut diecutting machine
• Provo Craft Accent Essentials cartridge

A few things to note:

• This is a lift of one of Kristina Werner's cards from her class A Year in Cards: November 2009, which details three great ideas for simple, easy to make holiday cards.
• With the exception of the silver brads, the entire card is made with scraps!
• The snowflake is a diecut from the Accent Essentials cartridge. I inked it up with liquid glue and covered it with white flocking powder.

And now....to work on our family Christmas card...

Good Things Come in Threes...

Isn't that what they always say? So true.

Check it out right here: Write.Click.Scrapbook.

I'm joining the inspiration collective! Seriously fabulous group of ladies. So many of whom I have admired for a long time.

So that translates into more scrapbooking right here. (Possibly a little less blogging, but still...more scrapbooking! Yay!) And that's always a good thing, right? :)

The Write.Click.Scrapbook. theme for October is Eye on Design. A few of my favorites:

• The Last Quiz (I love the journaling in quiz format, and those snippets of photos are a great way to include multiple photos and still keep the design clean.)
• Fun at King's Island (Cool, linear design, and I Iove the stars.)
• Finding Fall (Leaf prints...great accent! All the fall photos are making me want to get out and document before the season is gone!)

For my page, I mixed some old and new patterned papers with digi paper and frames to create a Halloween layout. I finally documented some of my snapshots from last year:

You can find more details about the design here, but I wanted to show you a few detail shots of the little butterfly. I stamped him in black ink, colored with colored pencils, and then overstamped with glue, so I could apply velvet flock. He's attached with foam adhesive because I love the added dimension:

The entire center of my layout is also popped up with foam adhesive:

I'm officially in Halloween mode, and as you can see, it's seeped right into my scrap studio. Fitting, though, since it's October 1st and all. I'm ok with that. I have a few more pumpkin photos from last year to scrap. What are you scrappin' these days?

Supplies: Cardstock, Patterned Paper: Making Memories, Little Yellow Bicycle, Digital Paper: Spooky Scary Kit by Jen Allyson, Roll With the Punches Kit by Michelle Underwood, Digital Frames: Curled White Photo Frames by Mary Ann Wise, Stamp: Hero Arts, Versamark: Tsukineko, Flocking Powder: Doodlebug Designs, Clear Frame: Little Yellow Bicycle, Gemstones: Hero Arts

Because the leaves are all ready falling...

sniff...a little Autumn project to share:

I used Provo Craft's Stretch Your Imagination cartridge to cut the tree and the word "Autumn," both of which I attached with foam adhesive to a plain kraft background.

The wood grain stamp embellishing the tree is from Banana Frog's Backgrounds set:

And with that, hope you're enjoying a lovely fall weekend! :

Paolo (a layout)

I have a little music crush. Maybe I've mentioned him before? Mr. Paolo Nutini? Yes, maybe once or twice. I just can't help my fan-girl tendencies. (Never mind the fact that I'm a good 15 years beyond the age of your typical fan-girl.)

I love Paolo. I love scrapbooking. It was only a matter of time...

We can blame the American Crafts Studio Blog:

And as Derrick says, "Paolo is just going to LOVE this."

The super-size star, which is very similar to Paolo's tattoo, is from Provo Craft's new Hannah Montana cartridge. (Tell me, do you think Paolo would love to be linked in any way to Miley Cyrus?)

Did you notice anything very "un-Mary" about this layout? *GASP* I used paint! Shocking, no? It made a great foundation for the photos (btw: from Paolo's website) and journaling, and it wasn't nearly as messy as I anticipated, so I think I just might be a convert. After all, I need to get in touch with my artsy self.

After painting, I stamped with Hero Arts Dots and then stitched a frame around the edge of the cardstock. The title letters are vinyl Thickers that I backed with cardstock, and the cool little spiral is a rub-on from the Rock-star accents MiniMarks.

I accented the main photo with a pink flourish die-cut from the Hannah Montana cartridge and embellished with a Precision Pen.

And there you have it, one of the first pages for my new "There's Something About Mary" album. And do you suppose that with all this free advertising, I should petition for a few concert tickets?

Supplies: Patternd Paper, Flair, Rub-on, Thickers, Pen: American Crafts; Stamp: Hero Arts; Die-cuts: Provo Craft; Paint: Folk Art

Home (a card)

I just shared my stamping school project over at the Banana Frog blog! Click here to can find instructions to create this sweet, homespun card using the Backgrounds, Greenwich Park and Funky Paisley stamp sets:

Enjoy!

Supplies: Cardstock: Bazzill Basics; Patterned Paper: Bo-Bunny, Die Cuts With a View; Stamps: Banana Frog; Die-cut cartridge: Going Places by Provo Craft; Button: The Paper Studio; Punch: Fiskars

Back to Bidness...Color Focus (a card)

It's been a very long while since I scrapbooked anything for fun, but I've been catching on friends' blogs and I've been really inspired to get moving on some of my own projects. Hopefully, I can set aside a little time for that this summer. We'll see. So far, it's been a very busy June and my prediction for July is even busier yet.

Back in May, I scrapped a little vintage-inspired card for Banana Frog's color focus. Here's our inspiration piece:

And here's what I came up with:

Very different from my usual linear, colorful style, but a fun challenge nonetheless. I printed a vintage clip art piece and used an X-acto knife to trim it to shape for my card sentiment. I used the Take Note set for the scroll background and to create a foundation for the vintage clip art, which I accented with a plain tag, fancy ribbon and velvet scallops.

You can see the rest of the design team's interpretations here and here!

Dream Big (a layout)

As promised, how ever many days ago...

Here is my other layout for my friend Heather's album:

Jonathan asked us to create a page with a photo of ourselves and some words of wisdom or encouragement for Heather. I chose to journal about how she inspires me. She is always challenging herself. Always. Heather just isn't a person who sits back and lets things happen, and frankly, she doesn't give herself enough credit for that. She works very hard at life. Sometimes even (most of the time, if I'm feeling honest here), she makes me feel downright lazy. I could do without that part, but if nothing else, she certainly inspires me to get moving. :)

I went very clean and simple on this layout. So much so that I skipped my trademark stitching, but added dimension by popping up the middle portion of the layout with foam adhesive. "Dream big" is from the Graphically Speaking cartridge, and I used one of my favorite Hero Arts stamp sets: Thank You Flourishes.

I like it. I might have to recreate something similar for my own book. You know what they say...no sense reinventing the wheel and all that.

Oh, and someone else likes it too...

Scrapbooker- in-training? Yes, yes I think so.

Supplies: Die-cut cartridge: Provo Craft; Butterflies: American Crafts; Stamps, gems: Hero Arts

My Heart (a card)

Been super busy with assignments and one very special kiddo's two year birthday....more on that later. :)

Here's a quick card share to start off the week:

This is very literally a 5 minute card. My fastest ever!

I stamped the heart from Banana Frog's It's All About...Hearts set onto white cardstock, cut it out and attached it to a scrap of kraft cardstock. A simple rub-on and a flourish from the Home Decor cartridge, and voila!

Color Focus...#1 (a card)

The color focus for May was this lovely little creature:

I used the colors for inspiration and made a boyish card:

I used the block of stars from the Super Stars set:

I stamped it onto different colors of cardstock, which I embossed with white powder and adhered to a transparency card. The star is from Provo Craft's Home Decor Solutions cartridge, and the #1 is from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.

Check out the rest of the design team's interpretations of the color focus here and here!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: Making Memories, Bo Bunny;Stamp: Banana Frog; Rub-on: American Crafts; Tag: Avery; Die-cutting machine/cartridges: Provo Craft

29 3/4 (a layout)

I finally had a chance to catch up on some of my favorite blogs, and man oh man, were you all busy while I have been whiling away the hours schooling myself on vampires! Today, I managed to be semi-productive and finish a layout for Banana Frog:

For a while now, I've been envying other scrapbookers' ability to use these full sheets of wild American Crafts patterned paper (this is Chic from the Moda Bella line), and for me, it was a stretch, but I kind of like how it turned out. Not my usual style, but it's good to change it up every once in a while.

To create the title block, I stamped the journaling block from It's All About...Circles onto white cardstock, and trimmed it out. I stitched around the border with white thread, and I matted the block on a marquee border die-cut from Provo Craft's Storybook cartridge. The numbers are from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, which comes with the Cricut Expression.

That's all for now! Enjoy your weekend!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: American Crafts; Stamps: Banana Frog; Ink: Tsukineko; Butterfly: Me and My Big Ideas; Gems: gel-a-tins; Die-cutting machine and cartridges: Provo Craft