Family Love Layout - Layout of the Week

This week I'm sharing another layout I created Plus Corp's CHA booth at the Winter 2014 show.  When I saw the new Vintage Camera Decorative Roller Stamp from Plus Corp., I almost jumped up & down!  I LOVE anything with a camera on it!  I immediately knew which paper I wanted to combine with this awesome stamp.  The Camera Bag paper from October Afternoon's Travel Girl collection was the PERFECT paper to complement the camera stamp.  Once I had the stamp and my paper, I headed to Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio (the LSS where I work here in Beaverton, Oregon).  I knew that we would have some great solids to coordinate for my layout.

When I first started planning this layout, I didn't know which photo I would use, only that I just HAD to make a layout with this super cute camera stamp.  I started to consider photos and realized that we had just had our family photos taken right before our Disneyland trip.  I have a friend who is an AMAZING photographer and a teacher too (in her spare time...ha ha!)  If you're in the Portland-Vancouver area, please consider her for your family and senior photos! Check out her website Stacy Major Photography.

I decided to use my shiny silver metallic paper as the background and layer gray and aqua on top of it.  I mounted my photo on a black matte and placed it on a horizontal strip of gray textured paper.  Next, I rolled my Decorative Roller Stamp with its cute cameras across a piece of textured white cardstock from American Crafts.  I really like the vintage look the textured cardstock gives to this stamp.  What would normally be a solid black impression is distressed using textured paper.  I worked at getting the stamp straight by laying my paper down next to a ruler and making every effort to roll my stamp perfectly along the ruler.  I think it took about three tries to create a camera strip to my liking.  And, just in case you have one of the Decorative Roller Stamps from Plus Corp. and are unhappy with the impressions you get at first, be sure to grab a piece of printer paper and roll the stamp around until your image is clear and perfect.  The images on the stamps I used did not come out perfectly on the first try.  Some black ink was printed in between the cameras and other images on the other stamps I used for my projects.  After rolling them around on printer paper a few times, the images began to come out perfectly clear with no black ink in between. To create a focal point, I used a vertical strip of the camera paper behind my photo, tearing and distressing its edges by rolling them back & forth between my fingers.  

Even though we are wearing gray and white in our photos, I decided to print my photo in black & white for this layout.  I really love the look of black and white and it looked perfect with the palette of aqua, gray and silver I chose to go with my October Afternoon paper.  I used my SMASH date stamp next to my photo, so we'll remember when we had this fun family photo shoot.  After stacking and adhering my papers, I used my sewing machine to machine stitch aqua, gray and white thread in a combination of zig zag and straight stitches.  I like the effect the stitching adds to my project, it coordinates with the vintage look of my camera stamps stamped on textured paper.  It also contrasts with the shiny silver paper and bold sans serif  Bebas font I used for my title.  Last summer, it seemed like everyone on the internet was hashtag (#) crazy, so I thought it would be fun to use one of the hashtags I use on Instagram as my title.  I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the title.  #familylove is a hashtag I try to use on all my family photos, so I will be able to easily find them when I want to share them.

For embellishments, I chose a couple groupings of sequins and one tiny wood veneer camera from Studio Calico.  I painted this camera just like the cameras I used in my Wood Veneer Camera Shadow Box blog post.  I used pewter mist from Luminarte as paint, read about it in my shadow box post.

This was another fun chance to create with a brand new product.  I have some more projects created for Plus Corp.'s booth at CHA and I'll share them soon!  In case you missed last week's post, I shared my Disney Carsland Layout using another new roller stamp from Plus Corp and 2014 winter release stamps from Technique Tuesday.

Sharing this project over at 

The Link Party Palooza!

So much fun over there, be sure to stop by & check out all the great St. Patrick's Day & Easter theme projects!

"Say Cheese" Disney Carsland Layout - Layout of the Week

A few months ago, I was asked to create some layouts by Plus Corp. for the Winter 2014 CHA show.  I was really excited to have a chance to work with Plus Corp's brand new Decorative Roller Stamps and Decorative Tapes.  The stamps I used were so new, I had one of the only sets in the US to play with!  Fun Fun!  With 12 roller stamps and 12 decorative tapes to choose from, I just had to grab some recent photos and use my imagination to create some super fun projects.  My very favorite project is this layout featuring a photo of our family with Lightning McQueen.  Our August trip to Disneyland and California Adventure was AMAZING!  And I was SO happy that I purchased the Disney Photo Pass CD full of our trip photos.  Knowing ahead of time that I would probably want to buy the CD, I was sure to have our photo taken by the Disney photographers every chance we got!  I love the CD and all of our photos, but I do wish that there were more photographers and photographers with every character we met.  It was strange that our photos with Mickey & Minnie in Toon Town had to be taken on our cameras.  It would have been nice to have professional ones with these characters.  But, all in all, I was very impressed with the quality of the photos and excited at the opportunity to reprint my photos many times, in any size I want!

This photo is from our very first day in the theme parks.  My little guy, Jake, has always been obsessed with the Cars movies and their characters, so of course, Lightning McQueen was at the top of his list of characters to meet.  To this day, he still tells everyone who will listen that Lightning McQueen lives in Disneyland and that he met him!  Such a fun memory!  We had just about every photo shot with our whole family and then again with just the kids.  I wanted as much versatility as I could get for my projects later.

For this layout, I looked to the photo for my color palette.  Bright red, electric yellow and black are classic Disney colors and help me show off Lightning too!  Putting them on a white background helps them jump off the page!  Textured white cardstock from American Crafts is my go-to white paper, it's a perfectly bright white and cuts like butter on my Silhouette Cameo.  To give my white background a more custom look, I used a paint brush to splatter acrylic paint onto the paper.  The black & yellow paints are regular acrylic from Kaisercraft, but the red is DecoArt Ultra Gloss Acrylic Enamel (usually used for painting glass).  I love how the red splotches are SO shiny!  I looked through my stash and the local scrapbook store where I work to come up with supplies for my layout.  Polka dots always make me think of Minnie and Disney, so I choose some polka dot elements in my color palette and grabbed my Mickey outline punch and Disney castle punch (I bought those years ago in Disneyland).

I arranged my elements on the page and balanced them out with another little cluster down in the bottom right corner with a little tag & some washi and a castle.

The new black honeycomb roller stamp from Plus Corp. was the perfect thing to mimic tire treads going across my page.  I used colored pencil to few in a few hexagons here & there.

For my title, I used the brand new "Say Cheese" stamp set from Technique Tuesday.  I stamped "cheese" with Versamark ink and embossed it in glossy red.  I used a couple of the hashtag word stamps from the set around my page, stamping them onto tags I cut on my Silhouette Cameo.  I inked the top tag in red before stamping it to help it stand out from my page.

This is one of my favorite layouts ever!  It was fun working with the new roller stamps from Plus Corp., along with the 2014 "Say Cheese" stamp set from Technique Tuesday too!  Stay tuned to this blog next when I share another Plus Corp. CHA sample!

York Peppermint Pattie Snow Ice Cream

Today is our third day of snow here in Portland, Oregon.

We don't get a lot of snow here, so the 8 inches I have in my yard is a TON of snow for us!

We have done all the typical stuff that we usually head to the mountains for...sledding, CHECK...snowball fight, CHECK...build snowman, CHECK...put the car in 4 wheel drive and see if it's really that slippery out there, CHECK...after 3 days, we were sort of running out of things to do.

Then I saw a recipe a friend of mine posted on Facebook for snow ice cream!

I don't remember seeing this before, so we were all pretty excited to try it.

The recipe called for snow, milk, sugar and vanilla.

Thinking we might be running low on milk and seeing freezing rain in the forecast, I decided to go my own way and make up my own snow ice cream recipe.  I used International Delight's York Peppermint Pattie Coffee Creamer to flavor my ice cream.  My husband, kids & I LOVED it and we can't wait to make it again!  Maybe we'll try it tomorrow, although we'll have to break off the piece of ice on top of our snow (the freezing rain is clinking against the windows now).  After that, it may be another five years before we get this much snow again, so we have to enjoy it while it lasts!

York Peppermint Pattie Snow Ice Cream

8 Cups Snow

1 Cup International Delight Peppermint Pattie Coffee Creamer

1 Cup Milk

1/3 Cup Sugar

1 Tsp Vanilla

Scoop the snow into a large bowl, top with other ingredients, stir and enjoy!

As, I think of all the other wonderful flavors of International Delight Coffee Creamer, I would imagine they would all taste wonderful substituted in this recipe.  I'd love to try the Cold Stone Creamery Sweet Cream and Heath.  I'm sure you have your favorites!  I'd love to hear which ones you use to make your own Snow Ice Cream!  Leave me a comment!


Don't forget to stop by my friend Kim's link party for
all sorts of inspiration... Winter, Snow, Valentine & otherwise!

Find it over at Today's Creative Blog