Layout of the Week - Punky Posh Mini Album with Punky Sprouts & Chatterbox Part 2

I thought I'd share a few detail shots of the album I featured last week.  I'm still in love with this album.  I have some more ideas for creating a totally different look with this same album.  I did make another of Punky Sprouts's albums last week.  And after I return from my relaxing vacation to Mexico, I'll share it with you.  I'm in Mexico as you're reading this, hopefully laying in the sun sipping a margarita celebrating 40th birthdays with a couple of my closest friends.  I don't have my 40th for a few months, but we're all going to celebrate all year...there's no law against that...is there?

I like to embellish these little mini albums with all sorts of things.  For this one, I added some tags, ribbon & twine.

I liked the burlap page I made so much, I added a little scrap to the cover.  It was fun piling things on the cover over the dry brush painting I had completed earlier.  I think the date tag is a great idea, it's always fun to remember the exact date of an occasion.  The felt birdie was a fun last minute addition when I thought the empty space was a little too much.

For Delaney's page, I created a girly look...sparkly glitter paper, velvet flocked paper with a scalloped edge, pom pom fringe, ribbon and a butterfly.

I created my own page to add to this album, trimming burlap and using a zutter hole punch to create the holes.  I thought the rough texture suited a rambunctious little boy!  I added the bit of ribbon on the right at the last minute, just pulling on the burlap's twine pieces to create a space to weave the ribbon.

This was my quickest page of this album, just a square of lime paint to frame my photo.

This page probably took the longest to create.  I wanted a brown canvas page, so I got some at my local sewing shop and cut two pieces the same size as the album's other pages.  I used my sewing machine and ivory thread to add the details.  I'm not very experienced with the sewing machine, so I tried out the scallop stitch on this project.  It's so nice that when we use machine stitching on papercrafts people don't expect or want perfectly straight lines.  This would drive my mother nuts, she's such a great seamstress and tried for years to teach me to sew.  But she was forever pulling out my mistakes and I finally gave up.  I'm excited I finally found a use for that sewing machine that was stuck away in a closet!  And thank goodness, I still have my mom to do the "real" sewing! :)

Oh, and I love the felt embellishments that Chatterbox made to match these collections, so cute and self adhesive too!

On the back of my canvas page, I stuck with little circle embellishments and a tag to create a boyish look.

This was another quick page.  Delaney is our artist, she loves all things creative.  So I just grabbed a foam brush, dipped it into the paints I was using on this project and randomly added touches of color to this ivory canvas page.  For a final touch, I added a little tag & some fun embellishments from my packs.

After the last busy page, I wanted to calm things down a bit.  I used the self adhesive felt embellishments on this one.

I love acrylic, especially when it's mixed with other types of pages.  For the acrylic, I painted the Tropical Water paint around the edges with a small, dry regular paint brush.  When you try this type of technique, don't be too perfect, the messy look is in! :)  I used a Crop A Dile tool to punch two holes in the right edge and then tied a couple ribbon knots as accents.

I like how the acrylic page looks when it's turned & placed over the photo on the left too!

This page is on the right behind the acrylic.  I used a patterned paper to cover this page and then placed a smaller torn, inked piece of foiled paper on the left.  Next I inked around the whole page and added a little garden twine on the left, as a fun contrast to the foil paper.

For a fun Jake page, I chose a checked paper and some star & button embellishments.

For my last Delaney page, I used acrylic stamps and my lime & tropical water paints to stamp some flowers onto the canvas.  It was fun adding a little tag & butterfly as a finishing touch.

Again I used the stamps and my two paint colors for this page.  For my little journaling, I used a letter stamp that creates an old fashioned typewriter still look.  I stamped, "At Home Together, Our Favorite Place," in brown ink.

This acrylic page was my biggest stretch yet....  I used a large Technique Tuesday stamp in Versamark ink and then added lime embossing powder and heated it with my heat gun.  Just let me tell you, this technique is not for the faint of heart or perfectionists out there.  The acrylic folded up all funny while I was heating the powder.  I was doing this page while I worked a crop at the store and boy everyone was nervous about how it might turn out.  I'm pretty sure they all thought I'd ruined the page.  But I grabbed two pieces of white paper and used them to help me flatten the acrylic back to its shape.   I think it turned out great!  It definitely isn't perfect though.  There are a few little spots of embossing powder that didn't get blown off the ink and created little green spots.  And the acrylic isn't as flat as I would like it to be.  But I love the look and don't really mind the bumpy-ness of the page.  What project is really PERFECT in the end anyway.  How would you know it's homemade if it's perfect!!!?

Here's the stamped, embossed acrylic page laying over the page to its left.

For my final page, I used the teal blue flocked paper, a bit of ribbon and a little monogram tag.

As you probably noticed, I used sepia tone photos again on this project.  If you've never tried them, you definitely should.  It's impossible for me to imagine how busy this album would be with color photos.  And of course the perfectionist in me loves when color schemes are in harmony in my projects.

You should also know that it's OK to just shoot some photos around  your house or yard and use them in a family album.  This wasn't a photo shoot, we were just hanging out outside in the yard on one of the few warm spring days here in Oregon.  I did get my mom to shoot the family photo, but the rest are just candids my husband & I shot with my point & shoot.  So don't worry about everyone matching and setting an appointment, just get together & take some photos.  Depending on your chosen papers, sepia tone or black & white can cover a million color matching mistakes!

I decided to skip photos on the back cover.  Just a little paint & a dry brush...the ribbon is tied around the whole page.

Supplies

Brown Cardstock - American Crafts

Patterned Papers - artsy.licious, Fabulous and Together by Chatterbox

Embellishments - Tags, Buttons, Journal Boxes, Ribbon

Kaisercraft - Acrylic Paint: Lime & Tropical Water

Ink - Brown Pigment Brush Pad by Color Box and Versamark Pad

Stamps - Technique Tuesday and Provo Craft

Embossing Powder - Zing by American Crafts

Ribbon - Various Manufacturers

Garden Twine - Unknown Manufacturer

Sewing Supplies - Burlap, Brown Canvas and Ivory Thread from Local Sewing Shop

A little note from Julie...I hope you're all having wonderful weeks!  I am in Mexico this week to help my friends celebrate their 40th birthdays (well, I'm celebrating mine too, albeit a bit early!).  I can't wait to see what I can find on my vacation to inspire my next project!  Have a wonderful weekend! :)

Layout of the Week - Family with Graphic 45 Papers & A Special Annoucement!

This week, as the sun shines outside here in Oregon, I want to share my family with you.  Dave, my wonderful husband,  is a sports fanatic who loves to play with his kids.  He managed to combine those this week...he got Delaney to fill out an NCAA bracket and then had Jake do one too.  Dave used blocks with the first letter of each team and had Jake pick his favorite of the two.  Yes, it took quite a while and Jake's bracket is full of M-named teams (his current favorite letter).  Poor Jake didn't fare well with Montana last night, but he still has a chance to beat his Daddy.  I keep telling Dave that knowing about sports really has nothing to do with winning with these tourney brackets.  On to Delaney, my beautiful, talented, creative daughter, will be 9 on Sunday.  Delaney is so well-rounded, she loves participating in all sorts of sports (those talents come from Dad), creating original, eye-catching art pieces and she's a "bit" of a perfectionist (that, I'm sorry, comes from me!).  She is thoughtful and loving, especially to her little brother.  So that makes Jake last.  Mr. Jake is now two and FULL of ENERGY!  He loves the movie "Cars," any every character in it.  We're missing Sally right now and he asks for "Yaddy" every chance he gets...I'm sure she's around somewhere, probably in one of Delaney's shoes.  We all love to hang out together and are very excited that the weather's warming up here!

So that's a bit of our story!  On to my layout...this design idea came to me a bit backwards.  Usually I have a photo and then come up with a layout.  OK, sometimes I have a paper collection that I love and take photos to go with it.  This time, I was inspired by a pile of mismatched Graphic 45 papers laying all over my counter while I was creating projects for the Graphic 45 design team call.  Seeing these papers, most are the backsides, reminded me of a patchwork quilt.  I thought & thought about how to combine them and came up with using a brown background and my favorite sepia tone photos.  I didn't shoot a new photo for this page, I remembered that my mother-in-law shot some photos of us when she was visiting in early December.  This one was almost our Christmas card photo, but it didn't quite make the cut.  We were very excited at the time, being huge Duck fans and having just attended one of our most exciting games ever...the Civil War win over the dreaded Beavers!  So we decided to have a Duck theme Christmas card.  Even though we didn't use this photo, we found some even more fun Duck photos of all of us.  My trusty sepia tone came into play because dark green and almost neon yellow don't exactly match the Graphic 45 color scheme.

Since I had been thinking of this project as a patchwork quilt, I searched the internet for patchwork quotes.  I found a few that combined the quilt idea with the family idea.  I didn't find one that fit my thoughts exactly so I made up my own.  I didn't want a big wordy journal box or title on this one, so I used photoshop to print my quote right on top of my photo.

For the patches, I cut my papers to 2 1/2" square and then used a ruler to gently fold the edges in 1/4" on each side.  I tore upward along these folds so the white would show on the edges.  Next I inked the edges with brown ink.  I used one little Hermafix square on the back of each square and placed them on the brown background, leaving an area in the bottom right corner for the photo.

This was my very first attempt at machine stitching on a layout.  I'm pretty excited with the results.  I had been planning to give it a try.  Dave put a table in the laundry room for my sewing machine and I dug the poor thing out of one of the "holes" or storage closets in the bonus room.  It had been in there more than 5 years.  I was surprised it worked at all.  I searched the internet for ideas on machine stitching and found tons of them.  So I experimented with an extra sheet of my background paper and extra little squares.  I adjusted the tension, stitch width and lenght, writing each of the number combinations next to that particular stitch on my sample sheet.  When I found one I liked, I used it.  I chose ivory thread for this project.

After sewing around the page twice, I decided to create my own embellishment for my title.  I cut a piece of patterned paper twice as long as my photo, tore it leaving a white edge, inked it with the brown and folded it into pleats.  I used the same straight stitch I used on the whole page to stitch my pleats together.  I went over the pleats twice.  Next I stitched down my brown ball fringe ribbon.  For the title, I inked the edges of the Graphic 45 letters with black and adhered them with pop dots.  To attach my homemade embellishments, I used glue dots.

I was very happy with how this layout turned out.  I loved machine stitching and can't wait to use it again!  Next time you're together with your family, shot a photo and remember to create a layout to celebrate these special people!

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

I want to share some exciting news with my readers!  I am now a featured writer on the Oregon Women's Report website.  I am writing a series of fun, anecdotal stories about scrapbooking.  I'd love it if you'd stop by over there and read my first one!  I'm planning to post each article here also.  I'll post one in both places every two weeks or so.  If you're from Oregon or just interested in all the cool women writers on the site, sign up to receive updates from OWR in your inbox.  Thanks! :)

Don't Forget!  Join me at Ann's tonight for Virtual Girl's Night Out!  Stop by to join in the fun, meet lot's of great women bloggers (and sometimes some male bloggers too!), hop around the internet leaving comments and getting some for yourself too!

Tips

Of course, use sepia tone or black & white to help your photos blend with your chosen papers.

If you're looking for a new way to include journaling in your layouts, give photoshop a try!

Look at the backsides of your papers, they might inspire a layout all by themselves.

Think about creating your own embellishments.

If you've got a sewing machine, try machine stitching!

Supplies

Graphic 45 papers...from all different collections, most are the backsides.

Graphic 45 alphabet letters

Bazzill brown ball fringe ribbon

Dark Brown Ink - Cat's Eye ink pad

Ivory thread for machine stitching

Meet my 200th Follower! And the Layout of the Week - Friends

WOO - HOO!

200 followers!

YEAH!

OK, you can tell I'm SO excited to have my 200th follower!  And since 200 is a pretty big milestone, I want to share my 200th follower with you.

Meet Adrienne from Kitschalicious!  She has one of the cutest blogs I've seen, all covered with polka dots, little cherries and a splash of glitter.  But that's not the only reason why I love it....the craft ideas & projects are wonderful!  If you've got tons of little Happy Meal toys underfoot, just check this out....a Happy Meal Toy Wreath!  Boy I wish I hadn't give ours all to Goodwill after they didn't sell in the quarter box at the garage sale!  So click on over to Kitschalicious, be sure to leave a comment to say HI, sign up to follow Miss Adrienne's adventures & tell her Julie sent you! :)

I met Adrienne on a great blog hop adventure sponsored by Today's Creative.  I've been participating for a few weeks now and I've met so many awesome bloggers.  I'm pretty sure that Today's Creative is now responsible for my last 20 or so followers!  ThAnKs! :)

Every week there are between 100 and 300 crafty blog posts listed for you to check out.  I have tons of awesome ideas for my scrapbooking, decor and organizing, so many that I'll never have time to get to all of them, but still, so much fun to hop around & see who's over there.  So click on over to Today's Creative to see the "Get Your Craft On" post.  And be sure to see whose crafty blog is being featured today.  Kim created Today's Creative & she's also got a personal blog loaded with funny stories & crafty ideas, so skip on over to Scrap to My Lu!

to see what's up with Kim.

OK, now on to this week's Layout of the Week!

This is one of my favorites that I've made in the last few months!  I really LOVE Lily Bee, who made this cool paper!  Their die cuts are to DIE for...is that a pun??? :)  I knew I'd save this paper for something special and this photo of me & two of my bestfriends is just the thing.  That's me, Amy & Julie.  We've been friends since freshman year in college, wow, 22 years, say it isn't so!  We've been through all sorts of things together good, bad & ugly, but we're still together, well, Amy lives all the way out in Denver, but as together as you can be across a few states.  Julie & I really are together, I bought her house and when she moved a few blocks away, that's pretty together for two almost 40 year olds!  Every time we are lucky enough to be together, we take a self portrait.  Now, we've been doing this since college and even with the introduction of digital cameras into our lives, we still do it the old fashioned way...no, not with real film, but without anyone standing there looking at the screen to see if we're really in the photo!  It's a tradition, even the order we stand in is always the same.  There have been many special occasions when Julie & I (yes, we're the 2 Julie's) have taken a self portrait, just the two of us with a space in the middle, to let poor Amy know she's missed!  This photo was taken last fall when Amy came out to visit for a Duck football game...we're all University of Oregon Alumni and fanatically proud of our school & just about everything related to it.  It's Oregon, afterall, no NFL here!  So GO DUCKS!

I knew I'd have to print this one in my old standby sepia tone if it was going to work with the cream/brown/pink color scheme.  There's no way dark green and neon yellow would match with this subdued color scheme.  I kept the photo 4 x 6 so I'd have plenty of space for lot's of fun embellishments.  I added some cute ball fringe ribbon and a couple other pink & brown ribbons.  I love the Mark Richards Mosaic Tiles, cute little pink squares.  This was my first layout using them & I just can't stop!  For a some more bling, I added a little field of pink & brown Prima flowers.  For the centers of the flowers, I looked for tiny bronze brads.  Not finding any in my HUGE stash up in my studio, I settled for some copper ones.  Then I dipped them into some G Studio glitter glue and then my favorite brown Pink Paislee glitter.  I think they turned out great!  I also used the G Studio glitter glue & brown glitter to add a little flourish to the brown birdie paper near the top of the layout, a little difficult to see in the photo, sorry!

I used brown ink on the edges of my papers in this layout, I love the added texture it gives.  For my title, I chose some brown THICKERS.  I painted "3" & "us" with pink G Studio glitter glue and sanded the letters for "of".  I like the juxtaposition of the soft pink glitter and the roughed up word in between.  Hey, aren't we all soft & glittery sometimes and just a little rough around the edges other times!

I did enter this layout in Lily Bee's Design Team contest this week, so wish me luck!

Hopefully I'll see you Friday, over at Ann's, for her Virtual Girls' Night Out!  Such a great place to meet other cool bloggers, get & leave a few comments and see what's going on in the blogging world! :)

Tips

Of course, print your photos in sepia if it will help them blend better with your papers.

Don't be afraid to use one 4 x 6 on a layout, it will give you lot's of room for embellishments!

Ink the edges of your papers & embellishments for a little added texture and it's free to boot!

Chipboard letters, dress them up with glitter glue or down by sanding them.

If you're brads don't match your layout, dip them in glue & coat with opaque glitter, no one will ever know what color they really are!

Supplies

Patterned papers & die cuts - Lily Bee

Mosaic Tiles - Mark Richards

Glitter Glue - G Studio

Glitter - Pink Paislee

Ribbon - Creative Imaginations, American Crafts

Flowers - Prima

Brads - Making Memories

Ink - Creative Cafe

Alphabet - THICKERS by American Crafts

Layout of the Week - Bo Bunny's Love Bandit

I hope everyone is all prepared for Valentine's Day! I still have a few cards to make & projects to finish. I've been a very busy girl for the last week or so. I've finished quite a few projects. One for Delaney, this Valentine layout and one to submit for an Ella Publishing contest...if it wins, I'll share it with you when it's published and if not, it will make a fun Layout of the Week. I'll share the others with you soon.

I created this week's layout with my favorite Valentine collection of the season, Love Bandit by Bo Bunny. (Check out Bo Bunny's Blog for lot's more Valentine inspiration!)  I love the use of color on these papers. It's refreshing to get away from just red & pink papers for this holiday. Not that I don't love all the hearts & sparkle Valentine's brings, but too much of anything can be overkill. So this cute collection full of little racoons & bugs jumped out at me.

Once I chose the paper, I happened upon a sketch contest on Ella Publishing's blog. When I looked over the sketch, I thought it was the perfect layout for my papers & the photos of my kids. Since brown is one of my favorite colors, I love to use sepia tone photos. These photos are from Jake's 2nd Birthday a couple weeks ago. He's wearing his red Christmas "mun-in" (monkey) jammies and they certainly didn't complement the Love Bandit papers at all. So I printed them in sepia which looks great with the browns & other colors of these papers.

Lately it seems like I've been making a lot of single page layouts.  In the past, I was a total double page spread (DPS) girl.  My love of symmetry always led me to create two pages for each layout.  But I have started to find more value in one nice large photo for a single page layout, you know,  a picture is worth a 1,000 words & all.  But I love this Love Bandit paper collection so much, that I decided to add a right side page to my sketch for the Ella contest.  I chose the blue patterned paper, I like how it coordinates with the brown background of the left side without being exactly the same.  See what you think....

And here the two layouts are side by side, just like they'll look in my album...

I hope everyone enjoyed my Valentine layout!  And I hope you enjoy your long weekend...hopefully it is a long one for you like it is for us!

Happy Valentine's Day!

See you back here tomorrow for Ann's Virtual Girls' Night Out!  All you bloggers out there really should check out Ann's party!  We have a lot of fun every Friday night, meeting & greeting bloggers from all around the web and the world!  I wonder if Ann's theme will be Valentine's Day or the Olympics or a combo of the two.  Those of us on the West Coast are very excited that they Olympics are in our time zone this year, maybe we'll catch more of the action!

Tips

Use sepia tone photos to easily coordinate a layout with brown tones.

Use 7 Gypsies buckles to hold just one little knot of ribbon instead of on ribbon running all the way across your page.

Don't be afraid to use two different background papers on one DPS.  Do try for a solid or unobtrusive background if one side is a pattern.

Don't let your photos hide your pattern.  Get out that craft knife & use it to trim around part of your pattern.  Check out the right side layout.  I used the craft knife to cut around the portion of the tree that would have been hidden under my photo mat.  Then I stuck my photo mat under that portion of the tree, letting the tree pop out over my photo.

Don't let those extra dots that come in the packs of THICKERS go to waste, use them as mock brads!  I put them on my tags on the left side layout.

Supplies

Bo Bunny:  Love Bandit patterned papers, chocolate dot paper, stickers, ribbon

7 Gypsies:  Pink Buckle

American Crafts:  Green Glitter THICKERS-dots & bracket

Martha Stewart:  Punch Around the Page Punch