Paper Recollections

Today's layout celebrates my daughter's spring orchestra concert and combines several of my favorite things - die cutting and stenciling.   To prepare the background page for the watercolor, I covered a piece of 12x12 white cardstock in clear gesso.  Next, I smooshed Evergreen Bough Distress Oxide Ink onto a piece of plastic packaging and used my Distress Sprayer to add water to the ink.  Using the "kissing technique", I "kissed" the packaging to the white background starting from the top left moving down to the bottom right of the background page.  I dried the background using a heat gun and repeated the process a few more times to darken the color.  I repeated this same process with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide Ink. After the ink dried, I placed the Vicki Boutin heart stencil diagonally across the top right of the page.  I used blending brushes to diagonally stencil hearts using Abandoned Coral, Antique Linen, and Evergreen Bough Distress Oxi...

Today's layout was inspired by Vicki Boutin's Metallic and Watercolor Live YouTube Tutorial.  This is a fantastic tutorial showing how to make scrapbook page backgrounds using inexpensive watercolors and a foil machine. I followed along with this tutorial to create a fun blue and green water colored background with silver accents.  To cover up the rough edges of the background, I went to Cricut Design Space and layered several brushstroke images on a 12x12 square.  I sliced the brushstrokes out of the square and cut this out of a 12x12 piece of white cardstock.  I inked around the inside edges of the layer using Black Soot Distress Ink to give this layer a little more definition before gluing it on top of the foiled, watercolored background. I printed a 4x6 photo and matte this with black cardstock.  I cut the title using my Cricut machine.  The shell embellishments come from a Momenta Cut and Emboss die set.  I used my Sizzix Big Shot to dry emboss an...

Today's St. Patrick's Day card features the Retro Oven die by Tim Holtz.  I just recently purchased this die along with some other products and wanted to combine them all into a holiday card. I started by assembling the oven using scraps of paper from my stash. The oven door was covered with a small piece of acetate.  I also cut the outline of the oven from 5 mm foam and adhered this behind the oven to create a shaker element.  I cut small shamrocks out of green foil cardstock using my Cricut machine and combined these with light green sequence to make the shaker material inside the oven. To create the card background, I started by inking a script stamp with Coffee Archival Ink and stamping it at the top and bottom of the card panel.  Then, I used a make-up blending brush to apply Mowed Lawn Distress Oxide through a gingham stencil onto the card panel.  I shifted the stencil and then repeated the process using Lucky Clover Distress Oxide.  Finally, I spraye...

Today's layout was inspired by Day 13 of @christys_beautiful_life 30 Days of Sketches Series 8.  Today's star sketch was created by Lottie Loves Paper.  The Scraptember challenge for this sketch was of course stars.  This layout was a labor of love as it took me all week to create it.  I knew I wanted to do some stitching, but I also wanted some color to come from behind the paper.  I designed the larger starbursts and stars in Cricut Design Space.  I cut the starbursts from a 12x12 piece of black cardstock.  The stars were cut from holographic cardstock. I popped up the larger solid stars using black foam tape. After gluing the rest of the stars to the black cardstock, I used a ruler and a pencil to draw in the rest of the lines in between the stars and radiating out from the center of the layout.  I used an embroidery needle and silver sparkle twine to stitch over the pencil-marked lines.  I filled in the rest of the spaces with assort...

Today's layout was inspired by Day 1of @christys_beautiful_life 30 Days of Sketches Series 8.  Today's triangular sketch was created by Laura Whitaker.  The Scraptember challenge for this sketch was stitching.   As soon as I saw the triangle on this layout, I knew I wanted to use a sailboat to document my daughter's new student orientation day at her college by the sea.  I used my Cricut machine to cut a large sailboat out of a piece of blue whitewashed cardstock.  After losing a time-consuming battle with my sewing machine, I was able to get some blue stitches around the edges of the sailboat.  I glued the sailboat to the blue star paper from Vicki Boutin's Color Study collection.   I used the blue and white striped paper from the Color Study collection to create the large banner.  I inked the edges of the banner with Black Soot Distress ink.  I matte the banner with a small strip of the black script paper from the 6x8 paper p...

Today's scrapbook layout documents my son playing on his Oculus.  I wanted the page to be simple and subtle, so I chose papers from the Echo Park A Boy's Life collection and coordinating cardstock colors. I started by layering up 3 patterned papers from the collection.  The inner layer was cut about an inch shorter than the rest and was matte with navy blue cardstock.  I also matte the three photos using the same navy cardstock and arranged them across the center of the page.   I chose two different fonts for the title block which was placed in the upper right corner of the layout.  I cut the word "Escape" using dies and the word "reality" was cut using my Cricut machine. I downloaded a free VR headset SVG file which I uploaded into Cricut Design Space.  It was cut using coordinating solid colors of cardstock.  The headset was popped up with foam tape to the bottom right of the layout.  I added a small block of journaling to the left of the V...

It's graduation time and I have a fun and easy layout to share with you.  This layout features my daughter at her Senior awards ceremony.  Her high school colors are black and gold which matched perfectly with this year's graduation collection at Michaels.   I started by layering strips of each of the washi tapes in the bottom right of the layout.  In the other corners of the layout, I used a stencil brush to add gold gelato through a star stencil. I recently purchased a Heidi Swapp Minc machine and wanted to add some gold foiling to the layout.  Using the Minc machine, I created my own gold foiled diagonal striped patterned paper.   I matte the photo with gold foil cardstock.  I placed a piece of the diagonal striped gold foil paper behind the left side of the photo.  The photo was glued on top of the washi tape.  I used foam tape to pop up the graduation hat ephemera piece across the top left of the photo. I used my Cricut machine...

Today's layout was inspired by a scrapbook page and sketch created by Allison Davis ( @allisondavis4svg ) and features the Simple Stories Fall Farmhouse and Autumn Splendor collections. I designed the layout in Cricut Design Space.  I cut a large hexagon using yellow patterned paper from the Fall Farmhouse collection.  I also cut a thin white hexagonal border from white cardstock.  I adhered the white hexagonal border to the large hexagon and glued this to a white 12x12 piece of cardstock.  I also used my Cricut machine to cut the pumpkins from white cardstock and vines from dark green cardstock.  The leaves were cut from patterned paper from the Autumn Splendor collection. I backed the pumpkins with a piece of orange patterned paper from the same collection.  I fussy cut flowers from two of the patterned papers from the Fall Farmhouse collection. I used the leaves, pumpkins, vines, and flowers to create two embellishment clusters on opposite sides of the h...

Today's layout features the Dear Lizzy She's Magic paper collection.  I love how the pink and blue papers from the collection coordinate with the three selfies of my daughter.   I glued quarter-inch strips of the blue and pink patterned paper as well as the silver glitter paper to the left and right sides of a 12x12 piece of light pink paper.  I glued a 10x12 piece of heart paper to the center of the layout. I matte the photos on light pink paper and distressed the edges of the paper.  I inked the edges of the paper with Faded Jeans Distress Ink.  I arranged the photos at a slight angle in three of the corners of the layout.   I used my Cricut machine to cut out a large camera and some hearts in various sizes.  I also die-cut four smaller cameras using the small camera die cut from the Lawn Fawn Shutter Card Add-On die set.  I glued the large camera near the bottom center of the layout.  I created three embellishment clusters using ...

Today's layout features Shilmelle's Sparkle City collection and Concord & 9th's Oh, Snap! stamp and die set.   I wanted to include a photo of myself in my scrapbooks since I am often under-represented in my layouts.  I chose a recent photo of myself taken in my crafty space and centered the layout around some of my favorite projects that I have recently completed. The inspiration for the layout came from Missy Whidden's "Love My Girl" scrapbook page.  I decided to use a patterned paper for the background of the layout rather than try to reproduce Missy's mixed media background.  The camera patterned paper from the Sparkle City collection was a perfect choice for the focus of this layout.   Using my Cricut machine, I cut doilies out of teal paper and purple glitter cardstock. I also cut flowers and foliage using the lavender paper and pink holographic dotted paper from the collection.  I staggered the doilies on the background paper and added t...