Valentine's Day Tags

We actually have a free day at home tomorrow.  No amazing Austin outdoor festival to check out.  No birthday parties.  I got all my Valentine's day papers and stamps and dies and spread them out on the floor of my craft room a few weeks ago.  I am really hoping to sit down with the kids tomorrow and make some cards together. They love doing projects together and so do I.  

I was looking around for inspiration and found these tags we made last year.  

Red + pink stamped tags.  I pasted a family photo on a folded piece of patterned paper, so that it stands up like a frame.  

We made more tags for his class Valentine's party, with bubble wands tied on. I was knew there would be a ton of candy there, so I went for the less sugary but still fun option I think.  Avinash helped me with the stamping and added his coloring as well.  

These are the cards we made.  I still love that little fox.  This year I am thinking prize medallions, paper airplanes or robots maybe?

We Are Home| Adding a large stamped element to a page.

Studio Calico has this fabulous new stamp set called House Guests that I was dying to use.  It is a large 4x6 set with interchangeable parts.  It seems suited to card making, but I really wanted to put it on a layout. 

I started playing around with the "guests" that go inside the house.  I mostly used my favorite black ink from Ranger Archival because I knew it wouldn't bleed if I watercolored on top of it.  I of course had to stamp a set for Nandini too.  There was nothing about the little guests that she didn't love. Cats? A girl drinking tea? And a sleeping bear?  Heaven.

I carefully colored in the shape outlines with my waterbrush.  She painted in her own style, the perfect abstractness that only three-year olds can create.  Her set won.  I gave up my tortuously colored guests and made a crazy abstract set instead. 

Putting it all together after that took some more thought.  I thought about using a few different new pictures from the house, but ended up with just one.  The kitchen is definitely a favorite spot, combined with roses from our garden, this picture was just so fitting.    I layered a few different softly colored patterned papers together across the middle but I decided to keep a lot of white space on the page (big Marcy Penner inspiration there).

The title "We are home" was the first thought I had when planning this layout.  A statement, but also a prayer and a promise to our family.  The letters had to be woodgrain for that. 

We bought a house! Close to the city but feels like we are in the woods.  I love it so.

Hello Story.

I started taking this class with Ali Edwards a few weeks ago and am happy to report that I am still keeping up with it.  With a lot of online classes, it is easy to lose steam a couple lessons in.  I have found over the years that Ali Edwards is a great source of inpsiration and someone I go back to over and over again for ideas or just a push forward.  I started one of my favorite projects of the year, my Day in the Life mini book, because of her inspiration to name one.

Here are some of the projects I've completed so far.

I made a timeline of my life.  I really loved doing it and I realized that I have a lot of old stories I want to tell. The old pictures are photos of photos I took while at home a few Christmases ago.  Turns out they did come in handy.   I kept it simple with kraft paper, sequin paper (from Michael's), washi tape and some subtle ledger patterned paper.  The embellishments are from a very old set.

 

 

Apple.  I combined my love of rainbows and recording what my kids say on this layout.  The photo is from this year's Holi.  In case you can't read it, Nandini has always called oranges 'apples' (and used to call all snacks apples), and now refuses to call the color orange anything other than apple.  So cute and so strong ;)
I used my Studio Calico kit for the stamps and leftover patterned paper strips, stitched in place.  I used the bubble mask to mist on white and silver because the strips were looking to disparate and needed something to make them into a cohesive background.  I added some random chipboard pieces and wood veneers here and there too.

Noted: Nirupama.  More pages for my sad little 'this is me' handbook I started months ago.  Finally motivated to go back to it.  I filled out a mad libs about myself.  Then I watercolored over it.  I used mist (mint julep, gold) and the neon blue paint dauber because it can be really hard to get a nice soft teal blue with a regular watercolor set (for me anyway).  I added some dear Lizzy embellishments (I think most people use that cute little fox for their daughter, but I totally used it for me), chipboard letters and strips of SC patterned paper and washi on top.

Hello Journey.  One of my favorite layouts.  I worked on this while at a crop with a friend.  That made it super fun in and of itself.  I cut out the large Hello before even getting my August SC kit.  Just adore this design.  I used the previous month's paper from Kesi Art.  I love this brand, but luckily I had two so I felt free to use it, lol.  I combined circles with some large hand cut triangles to echo the paper and add a little balance. I was actually happy with my cascade of journaling for once.  I wrote about enjoying the journey.  Something I know my mother also valued a lot while we were growing up.

Tell me, what projects have you been working on lately?

Imagine.

I have been having a lot of fun with Studio Calico's Neverland kit this month.  I have made three pages so far and have not even cut into my favorite papers yet.  This month I swear I am finally going to use Kesi art paper on a real layout, I swear! 

I made this page last week, and I love it.  I used the b-side of an echo park paper.  The front is full of PL style journaling cards, but none of them really spoke to me as much as this cool maze pattern.  Blue is also a fave background color for me. 
I used gesso on the bubbles stencil.  Avinash punched these hearts for me the other day (much to my initial horror!), but turns out I really like them and the bokeh effect they create on the page. 
I added a few wood chevrons, puffy foam stickers and die cut shapes I made.
I misted some fabric thickers in red and added a few different ones for contrast, blue foam, silver glitter and grey chipboard. 
Totally channeling Soaphouse Mama Ashli and tried out some pen doodling here and there.  I continued the doodling and bits and pieces across the page as well as the photos for continuity.  Linking this up for Simon Says Stamp Water challenge. 

 Another Neverland page.  I made a big die cut background for this one.  I cut apart the new Maggie Holmes quote paper and stitched on some favorite lines.  I added layered a few more papers under my photo, anchors and red starburst.  Anchors are a bit weird I admit, but I think they can be used non-thematically.  Like butterflies or birds.  Or with birds?  I think it worked.
This MME pinwheel paper was a lot of fun to cut up and use as embellishments.  The colors in the paper are a bit muted, but it still looked nice.  I just scattered some candy dots and drops of mist around to finish it up.

And last but not least.  My first page for the new One Story Down!  I was so happy when they re-opened their virtual doors.  One of my favorite designers over there is Two More Days.  I used her Welcome to the Weekend kit for this page. 

feathers and skunks and moons, oh my.

Sharing a new layout here today.  I started this one last week and had to wait a few more days for fresh printer ink to finish it.

There was a controversy you see.

This page started with an idea.  To use the moon and back stamp on a cream tag, stamped in neon pink ink.  I love that stamp and wanted to do something a bit different than all the dreamy yellows and blues I've been seeing.

I decided to pair it with the painted and glittered feathers I made a few days ago.  Pink feathers, painted gold (Martha Stewart craft paint) and dipped in glitter. I am selling a set of these feathers in my Etsy shop if any one is interested. 

Then I got out some grey cardstock from this month's kit, some older wood veneer stars and my fave Heidi Swapp gold color mist to splatter on the page.

 I slipped a bit of patterned paper on the bottom, adhered my feathers and few more wood veneers.  I thought about adding more layers, but I think there is enough going on with the combination of neon and feathers and glitter.

This is my finished product.  I re-printed the photo because it was way too dark before.  Still pretty dark now actually.  Can you tell we are hanging out around a wood fire pit roasting smores? Just the fire? Ok.

I decided to take a picture of my layout right before naps, I guess I was used to the light fading much earlier.   They both were so fixated on what I was doing. I couldn't keep them away if I tried.

Hey, I only have one cupcake sticker on my sleeve, what gives?

 Nandini even brought a crayon with her to make some more last minute corrections. Oh, and Avi had one too but at least he thought to bring a grey one. 

Ryan had some design ideas too. He really wanted me to switch the picture, so I revised it a bit. I subbed in this daytime picture of our 'skunk place' adventure.  Not my favorite, but it is a better photograph.

So far, neither picture is glued down too well.  What do you think I should do?

linked up at Craftionary.

ps. Did you hear that google reader is soon to be no more? You can still follow me on blog lovin' if you like. 

cheek pinches & all

Hi, I am sharing a few pages I created this week.  Having fun with my stamps and my silhouette, using my February Studio Calico kit.

I really liked this basic grey paper and used it as the inspiration for this layout.  I love how the color seems to have been layered on in strips.  I added layers of washi tape here and there to echo that.  Then I stamped triangles and layered many sheets of kraft under the photo.   I wondered when I would use that $&#%! stamp, but this photo of Avinash trying to pinch Nandini's cheek was just perfect.  Where does he learn this stuff?

I also stamped the date in the corner.   Rainbow stripe washi tape is from glitz. 

I was playing around with fonts and created this title card.  I ended up using it a stencil instead.  So I ended up with stamping, embossing and stenciling on one layout.  Quite like the look.  

 And, one more recent page with my February kit. This is another Basic Grey paper, which really reminded me of a page by Michelle, love that girl.  I used that month stamp here again and a Mama Elephant "CELEBRATE" stamp as well for good measure.  Love those black glitter thickers.  They will look good on so many different projects I think.

Beyond Grey - X marks the spot

I am hosting this fortnight's challenge over at Beyond Grey again.    I planned a straight-forward challenge this fortnight, so you can adapt to whatever you are celebrating or in the mood for. I love paper crafting, but adding a different texture can take a project to the next level. For this challenge try to incoorporate stitching as one of the main design elements of your project.  Head on over to Beyond Grey to see what the other designer's have come up for the challenge.

I used this new 5th&Frolic patterned paper from Dear Lizzy as a template. I let the arrows spill off the paper and repeated it to highlight the title. The burlap feather embellishment came pre-stitched.  I am also in love with the gold glitter and gold foil letter stickers.  They just feel so luxurious, and perfect for the pirate theme I think.

Link up your stitched projects here too (direct links only, please).

 

School Pages

I had so much fun scrapping pictures from Avinash's first day of school.  I made two pages and I still feel like I could make a few more, heehee.

I made this page for One Story Down, using lots of printables and a digi stamp set as a mask and a guide for a die cut as well.  Of course I had to use my school- themed washi tapes: math class, yellow airmail and math notes (do you think I'll buy anything with the words math in the name?  yes, yes I will).  Putting this up for the tape challenge at Simon Says Stamp! too. 

I love this picture of Avinash and my Dad, they are such a strong pair and I'm glad he was here for Avi's first day.  I made this page with this month's SC kit the night it arrived.  My favorite part is the library card and apple paper cips. 

And in fairness, because I'm nothing if not fair, here are some pages about Nandini's naming ceremony over the summer using Amy Tangerine Sketchbook line.  The doodling reminds me of a mehndi design, so it was just perfect for this.

I fussy cut lots of paisleys here and added pearls and doily sequins as well.

I also used some of the Michael's version of the Amy Tangerine paper, which also came with yummy vellum and tons of these tags.  Had so much fun glittering this vellum using Martha Stewart chunky glitter.  It's not exactly a two pager, but they do coordinate well.