Castle Queens Layout

I just love being a part of the amazing Scrapbooking community. I have met some really wonderful people both at crops and on-line and the support and encouragement is incredible! When I heard my friend Pinky was going to be taking over the website Tally Scrapper I gave some thought to joining up. Then when she announced Tally Survivor I decided to join up and play along. Basically every week they present a challenge and you make a layout to fit those requirements. I thought that it sounded like a lot of fun and would help me to experiment with my art in a new way. I don't normally create one page layouts but I think I will do an album of my layouts for this challenge!


This is what I came up with to fill this week's requirements which are:
Must have WHITE SPACE or NEGATIVE SPACE
Must have at least one Photo with MORE than one person in it.
Must have Tan/Brown AND Blue!
Must have at least 2 staples and a piece of recycled scrapbook packaging.

I used a sheet of Glossy Cardstock for my background. Then I took some Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam in Tide Pool and kind of just dripped it all over my paper. It's funny, I was going to just brush it in "waves" randomly on my paper and then before I could even start it went, "drip, drip, drop" and I said "COOL!" and kept dripping it all over my page. Then I grabbed my Puerto Rico and Sapphire Glimmer Mists and spritzed them on my background. I sped up the dry time a bit by using my heat gun carefully. I didn't want to blow the drops around... just dry them quicker. Once it was dry I grabbed the packaging from my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher and trimmed it a bit. I was going to mat my photo on it but decided that the flourish looked like waves so I just offset it a bit. I decided to use my brand new D'Stress Tool by Imaginisce to distress my photo and the packaging piece. Then I used my Tiny Attacher to add the staples to my photo and fill that requirement. I love the way that it just added a little something to it! After adhering the photo and packaging to my layout with my Pink ATG gun I cut my title. I used some Kraft Cardstock and cut it using the "Skinny" font feature on the Ashlyn's Alphabet Cricut Cartridge. Next I added my ribbon to to bottom with some Scor Tape. The ribbon and the flower both came from my Precocious Paper March Sampler Kit. After adding a tiny bit of journaling (hey, I've gotta remember where we were) I used my I-Rock tool to add some bling to the flourish.

I'm so proud of this layout! I didn't start with a sketch like I normally would. I just sat down with my stuff and started playing.... I can't wait to see what our next challenge entails!!! Don't forget to come check out Tally Scrapper sometime soon!

Precious Baby Boy

This month for my Precocious Paper Design Team assignment Tessa sent me the fabulous March Sampler called "A Walk in the Woods. This set is a gorgeous combination of teal, green and brown and is so beautiful! Besides the gorgeous handmade flowers she also send co-ordination ribbon, leaves and pins in the kit. Well, I sat down with the set of flowers and rummaged through my stash of papers and created.....


A baby boy page? Yep, I have two little girls but my bestie has an adorable baby boy, Tylen, so I grabbed a stack of photos from when he was just one day old and started getting scrappy. I used one of my all time favorite paper lines, SEI's Chick A Doo. I just bought another pack of this paper last week because I love it so much! I actually used this line when Ty was born to create a mini album for his baby pics. You can see the posts about it HERE, HERE and HERE! I just love adding flowers to my layouts, even when they are about baby boy's and the Precocious Paper ones are my favorite!!! Hope you will give them a try sometime!

BLOG CANDY ALERT: So I have a TON of goodies from CHA and I'm itching to give some of them away! How about the premier issue of the Cricut Magazine?


All you need to do is become a follower and leave a comment on this post and you could win! My brother is getting married tomorrow and both of my girls are going to be flower girls so I will announce the winner on Monday! Make sure you leave me a way to contact you...

Precocious Paper Hair Clips

I wanted to do a different sort of project this month for my Precocious Paper Design Team project and I've been seeing all these really cute hair accessories lately.... so I decided that the Sweet Dots Felt and Fabric flowers would make the perfect hair clips! They would be so fun for any little or big girl to receive as a gift and they were pretty simple to make!


I simply covered a clip with some cute red ribbon. Then ran a line of hot glue and stuck my Sweet Dots Flower into it! But I also wanted a fun way to present them as a gift...


I created this card with my Hello Kitty Greetings Cricut Cartridge and instead of cutting out the flower that goes on her head I just skipped that step and clipped on the flower clip that I made instead! Now I have a beautiful gift to give to a special little girl :) Now you should hurry over to the Precocious Paper Etsy Store and grab some of these fun flowers to play with too!

Pancake Day Layout

I love my Helmar tape runner!!! Just used it to assemble this gorgeous layout. Notice the Cosmo Cricut Early Bird papers that I WON a few months ago! They were soooo super generous in their prize pack! I love the papers so much that I was kind of afraid to cut into them, LOL! But lately I've been trying to actually USE my stash... You might think that means use what I have before buying more but I'm not that strong yet... The three patterned papers I used are called Farmer's Market, Ribbon Sandwich and Sunrise. I used my Old West Cricut Cartridge to cut out the title.


You may have noticed this GORGEOUS flower near my title. I bought it from Precocious Paper a GREAT shop on Etsy. The owner, Tessa, makes all kinds of beautiful flowers that can be used in scrapbooks, on cards, to make headbands... what ever you can think to stick a flower on! Take a minute to browse her shop and you will be drooling! This particular flower actually didn't have the brown cardstock in it but it felt like it needed a little extra color to anchor it with all the pattern on my page. So I pulled it apart and added the cardstock and I am so happy with the results! I feel a little strange because there is NO ribbons or buttons added to this one but I didn't want to overpower it!

Making this layout has made me hungry for pancakes! Luckily, the Park Forest Pancake Day is coming up quickly, September 25th, and I will be able to enjoy another great meal with family and hopefully see a few friends too!