Cabbage Roses

A while back, I was planning on making myself a sash belt with cabbage roses on it to wear with a dress I purchased but ended up having to return because it was too big.  That happened after I had already bought a sash, something I no longer really need, but that still did not put a damper on my interest in creating cabbage roses.

So today while conversing with my friend about sewing, I had the urge to sew one, and ended up making two.  I used some fabric I had bought over 4 years ago when I made Zoe's baby bedding, and because of how careful I ration my fabric, I ended up with a respectable amount of fabric left.  Some time ago, my friend had found me this link, which I bookmarked and I pulled it up today to figure out how to sew these flowers.  It's a great tutorial; however if you're left handed like me, it's got a bit of a learning curve, because I tend to work clockwise, while right handed people tend to work counterclockwise.  I ended up having to save the files and then reversing them so I could follow the directions, however my flower didn't come out quite as well as I'd like, however for a first timer attempting to work in reverse, it came out alright.

The center stabilizer is actually a pearl.  As you can see the flower is worked around clockwise, which for some reason I find aesthetically pleasing.

Then I of course decided to try again, and this time without the stabilizer bead and I added a second piece of fabric between the folds and sewed that together to give it a different look.

This one is done without a center stabilizer, and it's also got another piece of fabric.. and it's quite a bit larger as a result of using longer length of fabric. And it also goes counter-clockwise.

I'm not sure which one I honestly like more, since they are both pretty and unique in their own ways.  However, I cant wait to experiment with different fabrics as well as different finishes.. the instructions suggest to hide the raw cut edges of the fabric, but I think I want to try this with the raw edges showing... there's just so many possibilites with this one set of instructions!  You can also do this with ribbon and other types of fabric.. satin, organza.. as long as it's not too thick it should work!

A Recommendation For a New Blog to Follow!

Nilda hosts one of my favorite blogs, called the Cuttlebug Spot.  A while back I posted a blog about their 1 year blogiversary, and she's created a new blog to feature the Gypsy, the latest product that ProvoCraft has put out for consumers.. it's basically like Design Studio, and a Jukebox all rolled into one hand held.  Anyway, to kick off their new blog, they've teamed up with Custom Crops -which is a great company run by two gals up in Chicago with great customer service and their videos are always fun to watch- to give away a brand new Gypsy!  I want one of these; but finances aren't feasible for me to throw down the cash for one right now.  But it's definitely on my wish list!

It appears that the Gypsy Spot also has a great design team, so I can't wait to see what these creative folks come up with!

Check it out... I think it's a worthy blog to follow!

Tutorial: How to Create a Complete Digital Layout using PhotoShop

One of the online crafting communities I belong to is Kaisercraft. Kaisercraft is a multimedia crafting company that's based in Australia.. I'm not sure where in Australia though. Personally, I think this is fantastic, because we've got a TON of US based companies, and from what I've seen online, one of the biggest complaints that folks have internationally is that there's not alot out there for international scrapbookers, and prices tend to be higher because of the exchange rate and also because of customs and other things. As my friend Ngaire put it -she's from Scotland; however she's not a scrapbooker- they just ship stuff in from the US to the UK, and then replace the dollar sign with the pound. So in situations like this, they are paying DOUBLE of what it's worth here in the US! Quite sad really. So, I think Kaisercraft is fantastic for Australia, and the rest of the world as well.

I call them a 'multimedia' crafting company because they do not just traditional scrap booking with papers and other type of embellishments, but they've recently come out with a digital collection as well as their 'outside the paper' products such as chipboard albums and other items that you could alter to decorate your home. Anyway, I was on the forums, and I came across someone asking for help to create a digital layout. I don't know what program she has; however I will be using Photoshop CS3 to do this tutorial. As far as I know, PS CS3 is very similar to PS Elements -which is what most people have since it's more affordable- so hopefully those with Elements or any other version of PS can do use this tutorial.

First things first. The only digital scrapbooking collection I have of Kaisercraft's is called "Tag This". It was a free limited time download, and it's a fantastic kit! It's in colors of blues and greens and black, and while it seems to be more geared towards boys, they did include some feminine elements; and this is great because I've got two little girls!

So, on to the tutorial.  I would recommend reading this through before attempting to do anything, to make sure that you fully understand the steps before taking them.

First, I would start by opening a new document. I think it's important to start with a blank slate and just go from there. Also this is helpful because when you download a digital collection, you NEVER want to save changes to the original file, because doing this will override the file with any changes you've made to it. To open a new document, you first open Photoshop, and then go to File > New. This is going to be similar to what you'll see.

Now, the three boxes you'll need to worry about are "Width", "Height" and "Resolution". I'm not sure what the settings are for the other collections -most likely the same- but for the "Tag This" collection, the resolution on the papers is at 12.4" for both Width and Height, and the Resolution is 300.  So first, you'll need to change the type of resolutions from "pixels" to "inches"; that's really simple; just click on the down arrow and then select inches.  You won't have to do it twice, because whatever you pick for one, it'll automatically change for the other one.

It'll look like this after you change the settings from pixels to inches.  You'll need to manually change the width and height settings to "12.4" for both the width and the height, and then change the resolution to 300.  It'll then look like this:

After you do this and select enter, you'll have a blank page pop up that looks like this:

Now, you can begin your layout.  I will be doing a VERY simple layout.  I'll show you how to "mat" your pictures the easy way, and I'll also show you how to select elements off of the embellishment digi sheet to apply to your layout, and of course I'll show you how to put your pictures to your layout as well.

Open up your folder with your digital elements and decide what you want to use as your 'cardstock base'.  I've decided to use the paper called "Tag-This-Paper6A".  Once you open up your base, you'll most likely see something like this:

Now to bring this paper onto your project, simply click on the paper and drag it to your workspace.  Once you do that, you may have to adjust it so it's centered correctly.  After you do this, you can close the original 'paper' document.  If for any reason it asks you if you want to save changes made, select no.  Yor workspace at this point will look the exact same; except if you look at your 'layers' menu to the bottom right -I'm not sure but I believe this is the default location for the layers menu in all versions of PS- and you'll see something like this:

This is one of the most important functions in photoshop.  Without properly using this function, your digi-layout will not look right.  It's really not that different than traditional scrapbooking, really.  You'll want your cardstock at the bottom, then you'll want your mat over that, and then you'll want your picture over the mat.  If it'll make it easier for you, you can rename your layers as you go along; and you can do this by double clicking on "Layer 1" (in this case anyway) and then type in the name you want to replace it as.  I'll go ahead and change mine to "Base Cardstock".  I will be using traditional terms to help ease you into digital from traditional scrapbooking.

Next, you'll need to decide what you want to do next.  Since this is going to be a simple and easy layout, We'll add a picture, and I'll show you the cheater method to matting the picture.  Of course, you'll need to decide what picture you want to place in your layout.  I've decided to use a picture of my nephew Mason. 

So once you open that in PS, at this point, if you feel that your picture needs editing go ahead and make these changes before you put it into your workspace.

In this case, I've gone ahead and cropped the picture down, adjusted the levels, fixed his red eyes, and applied a warming filter to the picture.  Since the digi-page is going to be in cool colors, the extra warm contrast will help balance that out a bit.  Of course, before you go and drag and drop it into your workspace, you need to adjust the resolution and decide on how big you want the picture.  Since I'm creating a one picture layout, I want the picture to be on the bigger side.  So, making sure you have the picture selected you'll need to go to "Image > Image Size" to make the adjustments.  You'll probably see something along the lines of this:

One thing I want to stress is that when you take pictures with the intention of using them to make digital layouts, you'll want to make sure your camera is set to take them at a higher resolution.  That way, depending on what you plan on doing with that picture, you can make it as large as you want in your project, or make it as small as you want.  Anyways, you'll want to make a quite a few changes at this Image size menu.  First, make sure that the three boxes at the bottom are checkmarked!  It keeps the picture from going all funny looking while you're making changes to the resolution of the picture and such.  Going back to the top, and working our way down; you'll want to keep the width and length at "pixels" because the only other option is "perecentage" and I honestly have no idea how you'd use that in this particular situation. Skip the "Document Size" width and height for a minute and make sure that your resolution is set to 300 pixels/inch.  Once you change that, you'll notice that both sets of your widths and heights change.  Since I want this to be 7" wide, I'll change the width in "Document Size" and it'll automatically adjust the size while retaining the necessary 300 pixels per square inch (ppsi).  When you're done, hopefully your image size menu will look something like this:

At this point you can click and drag your picture to the workspace, just like you did with the base cardstock.  For extra insurance, I would recommend saving your picture as a new file, in case you lose your work, and still want to use the exact same dimensions and such for the picture if you have to start over.  I'll just save this as "mason" in my picture folder.  Make sure when you do this, you do "Save As", not "Save" or it will overwrite your original image.

So, now that it's dragged into place and renamed, at this point, it's usually a good idea to save your project.  I'll go ahead to File> Save and save it as "mason-tag-this.psd".  When you're working with layers, it's always an excellent idea to save it as a .psd or photoshop document until you are done with the project.  By saving it as a psd file, you'll retain the layers so if you come back to it later, your layers will still be there.

Now to make a quick and easy mat.  First, you'll need to decide what color you want the mat to be.  I will usually pull it out of the page if the pattern is small enough, or I'll pick a color from the color swatch menu that I think will contrast nicely with the layout.  In this case, I'll use the eyedropper tool method to pull a color out of the page.  To do this, make sure you have your eyedropper tool selected, and then select a color out of the page.  In this case, I will make my mat in the aqua color, and adjust it from there if needed by double clicking on the square, and adjusting the color in the menu that pops up.

If you're a first timer, I'd honestly recommend pulling a contrasting color out of the swatch bucket to the right side of the screen.

Next, you'll want to select the tool above the eyedropper; it looks something like a misshapen star, and select the 'rectangle tool'.

Once you select that, you'll then want to select the misshapen star or as it's called "Rectangle Options", and make the following changes:

With traditional scrapbooking, I make my mats a quarter of an inch wider and taller than the picture.  This way, I have JUST the right amount of separation between the picture and the cardstock, without drawing too much attention to the mat.  Of course, if you have a different preference; by all means, make those changes.

One thing before you apply the mat to the paper, make sure that you have the correct fill selected; in this case make sure "Fill Pixels" is selected.  Once all the changes are done, go to "Layer > New > Layer"  by default,
it will place the new layer over the picture; however you can simply go to the layer menu in the bottom right and click and drag the layer under your picture like so:

Of course, I renamed it to "Photo Mat".  Next, making sure your rectangle shape tool is still selected and making sure you have the correct layer is selected, go ahead and click your mat on the screen where you want it to be.  Don't worry about placing over the picture, because if you adjusted your layers correctly, it will appear under the picture!  Once you've got it to your satisfaction, click on the top layer and continue.

Now, it's the fun part; adding other digital elements!  This particular kit came with letters -I think all of them do- and so I think I'll add the letters of his name to the layout to start.  Adding the letters will be just like adding the picture; since each letter is it's own file individually.  And as with the picture, don't forget to change the resolution and size to insure that your letters will be proportionate to the rest of the page.  And of course, if you don't like what the size looks like, you can go to "Edit > Step Backward" to undo any changes you've made.  And remember, any changes you make to your individual files, do NOT save them!  Of course, once you've added all the letters, you end up with a bunch of layers.  Because I may want to make adjustments of the letters as a whole, there's a way to merge the five layers of Mason into one whole layer.

You do this by simply making sure that you have your topmost layer selected -in this case it's the "letter N" layer and then go to "Layer> Merge Down".  This will cause the N and O layers to become one layer.  Repeat this until you go from the above layers to this:

If you get a bit too eager and accidentally merge the wrong layers together, or you mess up, simply undo your work.  Of course, you can rename the merged letters; I renamed it to "letters MASON".  Now, time to add embellishments.  The embellishments come two ways; individually as one file like the letters did, or in a sheet together.  One element I want to apply is a mesy dot.  After opening up the file and making size adjustments and then applying it to the workspace, adjusting where the layer goes and then renaming, I've come up with putting it in the bottom corner of the picture.  Pretty simple.

The difficult part is when you've got the embellishments on a 'sheet' together in one file.  You start by opening the image up in PS, adjusting the resolution to match the page and then deciding which embellishment you'd like to use.  In this case, I'd like to use the large round brad at the bottom left.

You'll start by going to your menu to the left and selecting the marquee tool.  Because this brad is round, I'd suggest selecting the Elliptical marque tool.  Once the marque tool is sufficently surrounding the brad to your liking, right click (not sure what you'd have to do with a MAC) and select "Layer Via Cut" which will create a new layer on your embellishment sheet.

Select that layer, drag it and place it to your liking; usually when you bring in an element from another document it automatically creates a new layer.  Unfortunately doing this resulted in a  HUGE brad, so to change this I need to make sure I have my brad selected, and then go to Edit> Transform > Scale.  I want it half the size, so I adjusted the width and height to 50% and then when I was done, I clicked on the check mark.

After adding a few extra embellishments, taking out the one large brad and adding three smaller ones, and adding text and a contrast box for it and adjusting the layers, I've come up with this:

But it's not done.. there's one final touch that has to be done; shadowing for relief and depth.  To add shadow, select the layer, and then double click.  You'll have a "Layer Style" menu pop up.  Select the one that says "Drop Shadow"  The default settings will look like this:

Since the brads are shadowed the same way as the default settings, I'm pretty much just going to leave them alone, except that I changed the size from five pixels to three.  Just continue to do this for every element that you feel needs it; in this case, I will do this to the picture, picture mat, the mat for the letters and Mason's name.  And here's the finished product!

I of course added a watermark, but you can still get the idea.  One thing I always do is save the image as a JPEG once I'm happy with how it turned out, and I keep the unaltered psd file.  You never know if you need to resize it later!  As a side note, the "i am special, I am unique, I AM ME" embellishment was from one of Kaisercraft's daily digital free downloads.  They do a new one everyday, so I like to check it out and download it if it catches my fancy.

Hopefully you've found this tutorial very insightful, and informative.  Don't hesitate to shoot me an email if you have any other questions!

New November Projects

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I figured it was time to get cracking on my creativity!  Plus, being a member of C to Shining C really helps with the inspiration and motivation to craft more.  Anyway, we've got a list of challenges for Monday through Friday, and I'm actually the hostess of "Scrap Your Stash Thursday"!  I was really excited being asked to be a hostess, and I've got a long list of ideas on how to incorporate my scrap stash into projects!

I wasn't able to participate in Monday's technique challenge.. but not for lack of trying.. it's lack of supplies!  However, I do plan on trying it when I get the chance.

Tuesday's color challenge was to incorporate Pink, Burgundy, light blue, white and light green (optional) into a project.  Most of the folks did  cards, but I was a rebel and made a Christmas tag instead!  I love the overall look; however, I'm not pleased with how the daubing came out; there was staining on the dauber which contaminated the pink ink and turned it into a more salmon color.

The tag is precut from glossy cardstock (I have a package of them that I was given several months back) and the pink and blue papers are actually from DCWV's 2008 Christmas stack; and of course I used scraps!  The dark read is actually from Papertrey Ink, and it's a new release color.. that is to say it was released in 2009; it's called Scarlet Jewel!  I have to admit, I wasn't too sure of the color when I got it; however I'm loving it for these Christmas themed items.  The white is just white cardstock from ProvoCraft, and the inks (Sweet Leaf and Twilight) are from CTMH, and the stamps are from Papertrey Ink's 2009 Holiday Tag Collection.

Wednesday's card challenge actually inspired me to think about family Christmas cards!  It's a bit funny because the inspiration actually started from the little circle from my tag.  I likes how it looked, so I used my Joys of the Season cartridge to cut the Scarlet Jewel into little tags, and then cut out circles to stamp the stamp on.  Then I realized they wouldn't make great gift tags, so instead I decided to use them on cards instead!

I scanned the card and tag separately -well together but not touching- and digitally put in a picture of our family, since I don't have any recent pictures printed of us.. or any period for that matter.  The card measures 7"x5", and the base is just 8.5"x11" cardstock cut down to 7"x10" and then folded in half.  Then the blue -which is also from Papertrey Ink and is called Enchanted Evening" is cut at 6.75"x4.75", and then the snowflake is also from DCWV's 2008 Christmas Stack.  Then the green -and AGAIN is from Papertrey Ink and is called New Leaf- is cut at 5.25"x3.75" so I can slip in a 5"x3.5" picture.  The tag is cut out at 2.25" and the circle is cut at 2".  There are some elements missing; for example, I plan on adding a little bit of ribbon tied in a bow to the top of the ornament -most likely silver- and adding photo corners in the upper left and lower right corners to put the picture in, that way after people get tired of having my card laying around, they can toss the card out and keep the picture.  I sure as HECK hope that doesn't happen; however I am realistic and realize it CAN happen.

And of course, we can't forget about Scrap Your Stash Thursday challenge!  I actually did this on Wednesday night, and for the first challenge, I suggested using otherwise unusable scraps to dress up a plain scrapbook page.  Here's what I wrote as the challenge: (slightly changed)

Yay, I'm so excited to be hosting Scrap Your Stash Thursday!  Anyway, for this first challenge, I challenge you to dress up a layout with otherwise unusable scraps.  Here's my plain white piece of 12"x12" with three pictures from a trip to our local park back in June.  I scrap the girls separate, and if I'm using a picture with both of them, it goes into their joint scrapbook.  Anyway, this is for Zoe's scrapbook.

 
 

Before and After

I could just slap a title on it, do some journaling and call it good.  However because the pictures are not only cropped down, but cropped down from 3.5"x5" so they're kind of small, and there's obviously alot of white space, even if it had a title.  I decided to pull out my trusty ole clear green folder full of scraps!   Everything came from a scrap, either in part or entirely.  The strip of blue is 12"x1.5" (I think) and came from the  DCWV Taj Mahal stack.  It was an off cut from another project, when I did the family picture in a frame.  The little flowers was from part of a sheet that came from DCWV Grade School stack; I trimmed it down to use the individual little pictures, instead of covering up the whole sheet of them.  The purple is from a offcut of a sheet of paper from Papertrey Ink, and the black was from a piece of plain black cardstock that I had used to cut out letters from a previous project and the brown is from a piece of Core'dinations cardstock that I was planning on using for a recipe swap, but I had sneezed and cut the paper at a bad angle, so I couldn't use the piece for the swap.  I didn't do any journaling because really there isn't much of a story to tell.  I did however do some captions under the pictures and I dated the page so we can always remember when this was taken.

On a whim, I also decided to weigh using my digital scale. And hey, what do you know, it's now lighter by .2 ounces!  It's not much but it's a start!

I'm not sure what happened to Friday's challenge or if there's even one, but these are the projects that I've worked on this week.  Hope you enjoyed them and I hope you can join us at FCTSC and join in on the fun!

Working With Vinyl

One thing I've always wanted to do with my cricut was cut out vinyl and then use it to decorate.  And I finally did!  I've done two projects.. and with a bit of fustration and I do have to admit.. a little swearing, I got them done!

This was the first one I did with Zoe's help.  On Monday, we purchased the wooden plank at Roberts, and then painted it bright orange and let it dry overnight.  Then the next day we went to a local place and I went a little crazy and bought a bunch of vinyl sheets.  Then we came home and put this together!  The ghosts and tombstones were from Paperdoll Dress Up, and the "Happy Halloween" was cut from Lyrical Letters in the Jack Sprat feature for the "Holidays" cut (page 67 of your handbook).  I was thinking to cut it it at two inches, but that ended up being way too small, and so I loaded it up on my mat and hit the 'fit to page' feature, and as a result it was cut at 4".  The Ghosts were cut at 2" (lower right) and 1.5".  And the tombstones were cut at 1.5" and 1.25"... I think.  I used a black sharpie to accentuate the eyes and mouths for the ghosts, and then did the same for the tombstone's features.

I made this one yesterday.  I believe the material of the board is MDF, and I learned that MDF painted with regular craft paint doesn't work very well.  You can't get an even coating.. as you can see; however it is not as noticeable in person.  If I do another one of these, I'm thinking I will need to buy either spray paint primer and use craft paint over it, or I'll just buy smaller sized cans of spray paint and paint it that way instead.  I do have to admit though, the paint is quite old and I think it had seperated at some point so that may have had something to do with it not coating evenly.  Anyway, after I applied two coats and let it dry, I took a dauber and with my "Spring Leaf" CTMH ink pad, I daubed the beveled bits to give them a bit of color.  Of course, I HAD to use my least juiciest ink pad, so I foresee a CTMH order with a reinker included...  Anyway, I used brown vinyl and used Lyrical Letters "Loop Dee Loo" font and cut out "The Hayfords" at 2.5" and everything else at 1".  My inital plan was to have "EST 2005" above "The Hayfords"; however the board wasn't tall enough to do so, and therefore I improvised.  The silver flourishes -they may be a bit difficult to see- were cut at 1.5" and they are from the Home Decor solutions cartridge.  And I love the saying I added onto it.. because Jeff and I are both gamers, and I know if we did not have that in common, our relationship wouldn't be as good as it is.  My biggest beef with this project isn't the paint, but the fact that some employee stuck the price tag on the FRONT AND CENTER part of the board!  The paint didn't want to cover it very well.  And again, I'm pretty sure that spray paint would solve my even coat issue, but nonetheless, I'm happy with how it turned out!

I really enjoyed working with vinyl.  My only word of advice, if before you cut it out, test the cuts on paper before you load your vinyl up.  This way, you'll know how it'll come out on the mat, and this will also let you know how much you'll need exactly; rather than eyeballing it or cutting out a full sheet of 12x12.  This way, you can cut off what you need and save the scraps!  And I think next time too, to save myself the headache, I will be investing in 12x24 mats so I can lay it out in design studio, and then lift it off the mat with the contact paper, versus trying to do it piece by piece by hand.. VERY frustrating with those curly letters!  I still had fun though!

Personal History Part 2

This week's challenge was to create a page about your "Humble Beginnings" which essentially covers your birth stats such as your birthday, your weight and length, where you were born, what time, anything about the hospital stay; that type of thing. What's so nice is that you're not really restricted to follow the exact guidelines, so aside from the regular baby stats, I journaled about the circumstances that lead up to my birth. It's not the idylic fairytale; however I felt that it needs to be told as part of my personal history. Anyway, here's the page!

I continued the same motif of dragging my inkpads across white cardstock. I really like the effect; it really gives it a look of being illustrated. Granted, I was NOT born in Spring; in fact I was born early Autumn however, Springtime often brings to mind new beginnings and births of cute babies, so I think in a way it works. I need to get a picture printed and placed in the pink matting, and I'm thinking to decorate the bush with flowers or something else. The journaling is actually hidden under the bush! When you unwrap the string from around the button, it comes out from being accordion folded.

Of course, I blurred it out for privacy reasons, but it's typed out in brown -to continue the motif of brown letters. The bush as you can tell is popped up with square foam adhesive. I printed the journaling on cardstock and five layers of cardstock is rather thick, so I did that so it would go under neatly. The bush is scored one could easily fold up the paper and view the journaling.

The ink colors I used are all from CTMH. The sun was done in "Honey", the sky was done with both "Crystal Blue" (lighter) and "Twilight", the grass was done in both "Sweet Leaf" (lighter) and "Clover", the pink matting was done in "Blush" and last but not least; the bush was done in just "Sweet Leaf". For the grass, I cut a strip of 12"x3" paper, applied the technique and then tore the edges to create a non linear horizon. Then taking my dauber, I daubed on "Clover" to the torn edges to create that horizon.

The brown paper again is from PaperTrey Ink, and I again cut it with the Jubilee cartridge set on "Runt". The bush really isn't a bush at all, but the foliage of a tree on the jubilee cartridge; you can find it on page 79; it's the shift feature of the mailbox cut which is really a tree and it's the "Runt" feature. I cut it at 2.5" with the 'real size' feature of my cricut selected. I did this because I wanted it at 2.5" high, and had I not used the real size feature it would have cut much smaller to be used as the foliage of a 2.5" tall tree. The sun was created by cutting down a piece of 12"x12" cardstock to 9"x9" (I think) and then lining up the paper in the lower right corner, I loaded up my mat and cut out I believe a 9.5" diameter circle using Plantin Schoolbook. This gave me the perfect corner I needed to line up the sun in the corner. The sun rays that my statistics are written on are offcuts from the 12"x12" cut paper; since I inked the paper and then trimmed it down for this exact purpose.

And that's how I did the page!

A Personal History Project pt 1 & Life's Lesson # 37

Over at the CMB, someone is hosting an "Book of Me" challenge.  Basically, it's a 21 week challenge where once a week, you scrapbook a page for a book about.. yourself!  So often as a Scrapbooker, we tend to scrap events around us... weddings, babies, vacations and just life in general, but rarely do we scrapbook about ourselves.  Anyway, week one is the Title and/or Dedication page.  And of course, here's my Title page!

It's not completely done; I need to add quotation marks and a period at the end of the saying.  And I want to embellish it a bit; however I don't have any at the moment that I'd be happy enough to put on this; however that'll change when I get some goodies in the mail.  I don't think I'll do much; maybe just put a flower or two along the ribbon, or at the very least over the knot I did with some embroidery floss.  I may crochet a simple flower or something!  Anyway, I used white Cardstock as the base, and using a technique I saw on a Close to my Heart video right on the website, I took my sheet of cardstock, placed it over some newspaper, then with my CTMH "Petal" inkpad, I opened it up and starting slightly off the edge of the paper, I started dragging it across as straight as I could.  And I did this from all 4 sides because the ink tends to collect and darken the edges up a bit.  The strip of solid purple came from my DCWV "Latte Cardstock" stack and I used my Martha Stewart punch -the name escapes me at the moment- to decorate the edges, and the white ribbon is by Offray and I ran it through my Xyron 150 sticker maker to make sure that it sticks down onto my cardstock.  And the brown cardstock is from Paper Trey Ink.  "My Personal History" was cut from "Jubilee", and the rest of the letters were cut from "Lyrical Letters". 

One major theme with this personal challenge is to have consistency and flow, so I will most likely be continuing the motif of dragging my inkpads across the page, and using a cordinating piece of cardstock to dress the rest of the page up, as well as use these two fonts and hopefully maintain the brown letters; I have to order more of this paper from Paper Trey Ink when I've got the money to do so again; I spent all of my extra money -and then some- on a new pair of boots!

On to the next layout.  Back in June, Zoe for some UNKNOWN reason decided to stick a wooden dowel up her nose.  We only found out about it because she came and told us "Guys I need your help, and Jeff and I looked up to her holding the bloody dowel rod and blood all over her face; she wanted help wiping her face up.  She had been sniffing and trying to rub it off.. which with Zoe that means "rub it all over your face and eventually it'll disappear".  She was not crying surprisingly enough, until I grabbed the camera, took this picture and told her it was going to be on the internet.  Seriously; the fact that I was going to stick this picture of her on the internet upset her more than sustaining the injury did!

The base of this layout is a green sheet of paper from my DCWV "Latte Cardstock" stack.  The chalkboard came from another one of their lines called "Grade School", except that I have it in 8x8 size.  The lettering was done using on white cardstock and with my Cricut Markers; I used Jubilee cartridge, and the "Life's Lesson From the School of Hard Knocks" was created in Design Studio So I could execute the lettering the way I wanted to.  The red is Papertrey Ink and I ran it through my Cuttlebug with my "Tiny Bubbles" folder before using my Martha Stewart Icicle punch to do the drips.  The black and purple cardstock is from Core'dinations and was run through my cuttlebug using my "Spots & Dots" folder.  If you do not know what Core'dinations cardstock is, you must be living under a rock.  It's paper that appears to be one color -and in this case black- until you distress the paper to reveal a different color under the top color.  A lot of paper comes not solid all the way through; that is to say they are usually cored in white, and just a layer of color is on the top or bottom of the cardstock.  Here's their website to check out their product.

Anyway, those are two of my latest layouts!