Layout of the Week: Halloween Headstone

Even though it seems like summer only just arrived here in Oregon, the calendar says it's time to get ready for Fall!  Never one to miss out on seasonal decorating, these extra large pennant banners just jumped right out at me during the EK Success Craft Fest this fall in Portland.

These large arched chipboard pennants are 10" x 16" and when flipped upside down it just screamed Halloween headstone!

I gathered some fun Halloween papers & embellishments, some new, some older...

I think I used all these papers, except the tiger stripe.  After laying everything together and deciding which to use, it just didn't seem to fit into the look I was creating.  For my first step, I used the Soot Ink Pad from Tim Holtz, rubbing it along the sides and over the enter front of my headstone.  Then I cut strips of paper and attached them with spray adhesive, before adding some fun embellishments like self adhesive strips, ribbon, twine, a tag from 7 Gypsies, punched bats and a piece of jack-o-lantern flair.  We're planning to use the Halloween Headstone as a fun place to attached little notes in our booth during this weekend's Scrapbook Expo.  After the Expo, I'm planning to add some orange glittered THICKERS announcing Happy Halloween!

Tips:

Sand double layer cardstock, such as Core'dinates, to add a distressed look to your Halloween projects.

Don't be afraid to give your tags a distressed look too!  Wad them up & rub with ink to give them that "just found in the haunted house" look.

Trim your patterned papers and lay them over another coordinating pattern.  This diamond pattern takes on a banner look when trimmed.

Punch a strip with your favorite punch and mount it over a thick ribbon for a custom embellishment!  The bats have also been sprayed with Luminarte black shimmer mist (difficult to see in the photo) for and added texture.

Supplies:

Paper Accents

Tim Holtz Ink Pad

Papers-Teresa Collins, Authentique Paper, Core'dinates

Various Ribbon, Paper Twine & Yarn

Tag-7 Gypsies

Spritz-Luminarte

Sticker Strips-K & Co.

If you're looking for other creative Halloween inspired ideas, stop by Today's Creative Blog for Get Your Craft On Tuesdays.  100's of creative types submit their creations each and every Tuesday, I'm sharing this project and I'd love to see yours over there too!

Layout of the Week - Punky Posh Mini Album with Punky Sprouts & Chatterbox Part 1

Ta Da!  I shared a sneak peek of this album with you last week and here is the finished product!  As you can tell, I'm very excited about this mini album!  I love all of the albums from Punky Sprouts, who makes these very cool albums.  The albums all include pages made from chipboard, ivory canvas and acrylic.  The comb binding on this album, Punky Posh, holds the pages together very loosely.  The binding is loose so you can pull the pages out, decorate them and replace them on the binding.  The flexible style of these albums is my favorite quality.  It allows you to push your creative boundaries as far as you want on each project.

I took this album home and my first thought was that I should add some of my own pages into the mix.  After reading about so many creative uses for burlap all over the blogosphere, I just had to use it in this album.  And with my love of sepia tone photos, I knew that a brown canvas page would look great too.

To decorate my album, I chose papers, ribbons and embellishments from the Together, Fabulous and artsy.licious collections by Chatterbox.

If you're looking for more fun ideas using the Punky Sprouts albums, check out their blog!

As for me, I'll share some more detailed photos of this album in Part 2 of this post next week.  I'll be writing it this weekend as I pack for my trip to Mexico.  I'm lucky enough to be celebrating my upcoming 40th birthday with two close friends I met in the dorms my freshman year at UofO.  We'll be laying in the sun & having a few margaritas this time next week.  After I'm back, I promise to make more rounds of all the cool, creative blogs out there!

If you're in need of a party tomorrow night, don't forget to stop by Ann's Virtual Girls Night Out.  You'll meet lot's of other fun bloggers and get tons of comments for your blog.

If you're looking to find other creative bloggers, stop by Today's Creative for Tuesday's Get Your Craft On Blog Hop.

Layout of the Week - FRIEND chipboard mini album

I'm excited to share this week's Layout of the Week with you!  But first, I want to apologize for missing all sorts of blogging opportunities last week.  It was Spring Break here and we took Jake in to have hernia surgery on Tuesday.  We were expecting to be home that day, but our wise surgeon advised us to stay overnight in the hospital just in case the little guy needed some extra pain meds.  And thank goodness we did, those extra pain meds let him sleep through just a few of the MANY interruptions...I know that the wonderful nurses & residents have to check in on patients all night long, but boy, it sure would be nice if patients could get more sleep in the hospital.  So my schedule was thrown for a loop last week.  But I'm bouncing back this week, just like Jake...baby steps for both of us!  If you're in the Portland area & in need of an excellent Pediatric Surgeon, I highly recommend Dr. David Bliss.  He's done surgery twice now on Jake and he's a great listener, explains everything so even people who aren't medical geniuses (like he is!) can understand and he's saved the lives of countless preemies, infants, toddlers & kids!

So back to my project!  I created this mini album to celebrate Delaney's 8th birthday.  I did actually get it done a couple months ago, so she did get to see it before her 9th birthday!  I used Bo Bunny's My Word Chipboard FRIEND album and Basic Grey's Lime Rickey collection pack, plus a ton of fun embellishments to create a fun, bright colored album, perfect for Delaney's Tie Dye Slumber Party Photos. (Read all about our Tie Dye Slumber Party activities HERE.)

I used one of my favorite tips to squeeze a ton of photos into this small book.  I created photo collages with Costco's photo organizer program so I could cut them apart and put all different sizes of the tiny photos on my pages.  I love being able to create these collages and use so many photos in such a small format album.

Here are all the fun inside pages!

Of course, since it's Friday, you can join me over at Ann's for her Virtual Girls' Night Out!  I'll be celebrating mine by working the crop tonight at Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio in Beaverton...if you're in the area, call to sign up (we have a couple spots left) or stop by & shop, I'd love to meet you!  Be sure to check out our online community if you're in need of some extra inspiration, we have 300 project photos for you to enjoy!

Tips

Use Costco's photo collages to squeeze a few more photos into your projects!

Don't be afraid to mix it up with bright colors & patterns, it creates a whimsical page!

Use paint to coat the edges of your chipboard albums, it covers up any number of flaws in your (or my) paper cutting skills!

Supplies

Basic Grey Lime Rickey collection pack paper & stickers

Bo Bunny My Word Chipboard Album - FRIEND

So many embellishments...it would take a year to list them all, if you have a few you're wondering about, leave me a comment & I'll get you the manufacturer info.

I've Been Published!

I'm happy to announce the publication of my first article! Please click on the following link to read my article from the November issue of Scrapbooking.com Magazine

Scrapbooking.com -- Article - H-O-M-E Project

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This article describes two Fall theme projects that I recently created. The two projects were created using one Rusty Pickle chipboard letter set and the same Bo Bunny papers & stickers. I created the first project for my home and then used the leftover chipboard pieces to create a second project.

Check out Scrapbooking.com Magazine's site and sign up to have their newsletters delivered to your inbox here:

Scrapbooking.com Magazine

I am honored to have my work recognized by Scrapbooking.com Magazine and hope to be published in other magazines soon!

Layout of the Week - HOME

OK, I know you can see that this isn't technically a layout! But it's the project I managed to finish this week. Sometimes I just feel like doing something "outside the box". I was looking for something to hang above the mirror in my foyer and these Rusty Pickle chipboard letters jumped right out at me. Alright, that isn't quite how it happened, when I was at the store one day, Twila said, "Hey, Julie, why don't you take these home & do something cool with them!" I did think of where to hang them right away, it just took me a while to get to the project.

I'm going for kind of a Fall pallet downstairs in my home. Dark red in the family room, a pretty gold in the nook, a great color from Devine called ginger in the dining room and aspirations of a nice caramel macchiato type color in the kitchen & foyer. I say aspirations, because in August we'll have been here 5 years and it's still the same "builder's off-white" as the day we move in. Well, at least we've painted most of the rest of the house. And if the foyer's walls weren't 2 stories tall with a huge staircase, it would probably be painted by now too. I guess I'm waiting for one of two things to happen #1 we have enough extra money to hire a painter or #2 our overworked friend Jeff, takes pity on us and does yet one more "honey-do" job for us! Jeff has been doing "honey-do" projects for us for years. Outside of simple painting & yard work, home improvement projects aren't Dave's (or my) strong suit. So when it comes to balancing a ladder on one step & a couple phone books, Jeff's our guy! Don't laugh, I've seen him do it, in the stairway of our last house. I was the one standing there, mouth dropped open, with the 9 & 1 pushed on the phone just waiting to push the other 1. There was Dave, pushing against the ladder while it balanced on one step & the phone books, while Jeff perched on the very top on tip toes, perfectly edging the wall up to the ceiling.

It's awesome to have friends who'll risk their lives for you....but I digress! This cute wall hanging will perfectly match my caramel macchiato walls, in the event that Jeff feels like risking his life again for us sometime in the future!

So, to be sure it matches, I chose papers from Bo Bunny's Beautiful Life collection. This collection is a great combination of Fall colors: browns, reds, oranges, greens. I used copper acrylic paint on the edges & backs of the letters. I thought about tying them together with ribbon, but I liked the more rustic look of thick twine. For embellishments, I used some paper leaves I had in my scrap room. I'm not sure who makes them, they were shared with me by a friend who thought she could never use all that were in the jar she bought them in. For the final touch, I used a couple of the matching stickers from Bo Bunny's Beautiful Life collection. I mounted the stickers on copper metallic paper and tore it around the sticker's edges, just to cover up the adhesive on the back.

Right now, my HOME wall hanging is hanging in a door way at Whimzee's. So maybe that will give me time to bribe Jeff with some ice cream...to come over & paint the foyer!

Supply List:

Rusty Pickle Chipboard set H-O-M-E

Bo Bunny's Back to Basics Beautiful Life Collection papers
H-Life Stripe (I used the back of this one.)
O-Collage
M-Leaf
E-Blessed

Copper Metallic Acrylic paint from Tulip

Paper Leaves (not sure of their manufacturer)

Bo Bunny's Beautiful Life Collection stickers

Thick Twine (not sure of its manufacturer)

I'm also thinking that I might print some tiny sepia tone photos of the family & hang them on the letters too, but that's a thought for another day! Enjoy your week!