Up in the Air

The newest release from Riley and Company features Riley in a hot-air balloon.

As everyone knows, I am crazy for hot-air balloons, so I had to have this stamp.

One thing I love about it is that the envelope of the balloon (the colored part at the top) is completely blank, so you can put in words or images or design it however you like.

For this card, I used two stamps from Wendy Vecchi, Studio 490. I stamped Riley twice … on one image, I colored and cut him out. I used a few colors in the BG family to coincide with this week’s challenge at iCopic.

On the second, I stamped the envelope, colored it, and added it to the top of the first image with pop dots. Then, I attached the entire thing with additional pop dots, so it has lots of dimension.

The background is Tim Holtz Distress Ink Coredinations embossed with one of his textured folders. I then sanded the top and then went back in with Distress Ink to color some of the sanded areas. This gave me a variety of colors and textures on the background.

The hills were cut by hand and then inked in Distress Ink.

The saying stamp is from Stampin’ Up.

As a final touch, I added a bit of Liquid Pearls.

The entire card is much brighter than it is showing … I’ve tried scanning and taking a picture and it just isn’t working. Normally my husband photographs these for me, so I apologize for the dull colors. It really is bright and cheerful in person!

Super Smore’s

This past summer, my husband and I decided to go camping by ourselves for the first time.

We bought a tent, reserved a campsite and planned our trip west.

We planned to use the campground like a hotel room — traveling along Michigan’s west coast during the day and spending the evenings camping.

One of the things I was really looking forward to was the campfire. While many people may have fire pits or outdoor fireplaces, our only chance to enjoy a fire outdoors is to go camping. I was so excited to have the fire pit, I refused to buy things to eat that couldn’t be cooked over the open flame.

So, when I stumbled across giant marshmallows in the grocery store, I knew we had to try them. Combined with gluten-free graham crackers and chocolate bars, we made amazingly HUGE smore’s. One marshmallow used an entire pair of graham crackers (before you break them into parts along the dotted lines) and a whole chocolate bar. Needless to say, we only ate one a piece and then gave the supersized marshmallows to our neighbors who were camping with their grandchildren.

Even though it lasted only a few minutes, it was a fun memory and I wanted to preserve it in my scrapbook …

I used these adorable papers and die cuts from Imaginisce, along with cardstock by Coredinations. It’s a relatively quick and easy layout because I used so many of the die cuts (they are so cute, I couldn’t resist!)

I did use a bit of sandpaper to distress the background and some 3D Dots to raise some of the images.

On the move

I am in the middle of moving from one house to another.

Moving is nothing new to me … I’ve moved 14 times in my lifetime — including 2 cross-country moves … but that doesn’t mean I like it.

This time is more difficult than most because we are drastically downsizing — our new house is less than half the size of our current one. On top of that, we seem to have accumulated much more during the eight years we have lived in this house than I have at any other time in my life. Needless to say, my house is currently filled with boxes for the new house, boxes for a storage shed, boxes for eBay, boxes for charity, boxes for other people and boxes that we don’t know what to do with.

My scrapbook room is partially packed — I have yet to find the right boxes for packing my collection of 12×12 paper, since I don’t want to break anyone’s back when they attempt to move it — but most of the rest has been placed neatly in boxes and is unusable for the next couple of weeks. To prevent myself from going through a crafter’s withdraw, I kept my Copic markers, my basic tool kit, some of my rubber stamps and few sheets of paper accessible. I figure at the least, I should be able to make a card without ribbon, charms, buttons or embossing powder, but at least I’ll be able to color until I get all unpacked and settled in at the new house.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a layout I did about another kind of moving — taking a train ride.

I wanted this page to show the train ride as much as possible, so I played with stripes, checks and other repeating patterns that remind me of train tracks.

The papers are from Webster’s Pages. They are actually part of the Spring Market collection, but I just used portions of the papers that didn’t have jars of peaches and fruit on them. I think they worked well.

The patterned cardstock is from Bo Bunny, the sanded cardstock is from Coredinations and the rest of the cardstock is from American Crafts.

For the title, I used some of the light patterned paper from Webster’s Pages and stamped on it with Hero Arts stamps (the words) and a Studio 490 stamp (the button holes). Then, I did one of my favorite techniques: I stamped Maya Road chipboard letters with a Studio 490 background stamp, then colored it with Distress Ink and then added shine with Diamond Glaze. I used the same technique on the banner (stamp from Technique Tuesday).

The tag was made with another Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamp. I stamped on patterned paper, crumbled it a bit and used Distress Ink to help age it. Never be afraid to stamp on softly patterned paper. It gives you a bit more dimension than plain cardstock. I used the same technique on the facing page.

And then I added a few brads and a photo corner (Tim Holtz) to finish it off. Since trains are so masculine and industrial, I thought a bit of metal was crucial to this page.

Korie: The First 18

My daughter is going to be graduating from high school in June. Since her albums contain all of her report cards, school projects and memorabilia, I decided to make a condensed version of her life for display at her graduation party — and for me to keep. This is the title page.

I love how simple and elegant it turned out and wanted to share the technique with you.

The page uses three sheets of Core’dinations Cardstock — two have designs embossed into the paper already and the third was one of the new Tim Holtz collection.

I sanded both sheets of the embossed designs. The clocks I left as is. The other one I tore and then lightly covered in Distress Ink to bring out the embossing and play off the background colors.

I then matted the photos and cut out the word Korie with the Cricut.

The timepiece is a new release by Tim Holtz for Idea-ology. It opens so you can place anything inside. I cut out a piece of cardstock from the background paper, unsanded and uninked, and added a spinner and brad from Tim Holtz. I then filled the watch with Art Glitter’s Black Gala Glitz. Gala Glitz is a mix of several different sizes and types of glitter. I love the look it offers and it is perfect for a shaker box, or in this case, a shaker watch. I used Art Glitter’s Designer Dries Clear adhesive to attach the watch to the page.

Finally, I added a ribbon from May Arts, attached with the Tiny Attacher, and new plastic letters by Tim Holtz.

This album has been emotional to create … I love looking back at the memories. I’ll be sharing more pages as I complete this special book.