Creative Inklings

New Mini Book - He{art} Felt Creation

This book I'm showing today is made entirely from scratch, and came together over a few days. To start, I selected a piece of gorgeous Michael Miller fabric and some felt that I wanted to work with, and a pile of scrap chipboard pieces that were 5" squares. I had a few themes in mind for the book, but after going through hundreds, no thousands, of photos in iphoto, I decided on focusing on the relationship between Rowan and Molly through the years. I created a folder in iphoto to collect all the photos of the two of them, then decided on the best ones from there. They had to be able to be cropped to a square shape to fit in the book, so that eliminated a few that otherwise I would have picked. Next, I spent hours selecting various quotes that I thought would work with the photos. I enlisted the help of my husband for this part, and together, we found eight quotes that spoke to us. For the cover, I created my own Ali-style digital element in photoshop, using some definitions of "siblings", a bracket, and the words "growing together". Next, all the quotes and the cover title were printed on my new FAVORITE product, Claudine Hellmuth sticky-back canvas. LOVE this stuff. The title element was then die cut with my QuicKutz circles. The inside pages were carefully constructed, and handsewn together. Each quote was sewn to a piece of fabric, then adhered to chipboard pages directy. The "Happiness" quote on the inside cover is a stamp by Stamping Bella, and the initals are cut from "Yogurt" QK alphabet, and hand stitched on. Here are a few shots of the process and the finished book, but for a slideshow of the whole thing, please check it out HERE on 2 peas in a Bucket. Have a great week!

It's Bellarific Friday and......

I'm a new Bellarific Babe! Emily asked me about a week ago to be part of her Stamping Bella design team, and I was honoured and thrilled to be asked to be part of such an extremely talented group of designers. I had to say yes! So, today is my first day as an official "babe". I will be focusing on scrapbooking, but will be also be showing other projects like mini books, canvases and more! Emily has the most incredible scrapbooking supplies at her Boo-Tique! She has all the latest and greatest paper, embellies, tools, and of course, her STAMPS! Today's bellarific challenge was an amazing sketch designed by Nikki - absolutely loved this one because it worked  really well for both cards and scrapbooking. I used the new Collage Press Sweet Shoppe paper - it is so yummy I could eat it!

I thought since I will be focusing on Scrapbooking on Fridays, I will start to include some "Scappy Tips" each week. So, here's my tip for today:

Add some shimmer: One of my favourite products these days is Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels. My friend Christine introduced me to the stuff, and I've been hooked ever since. It's a spray shimmer mist that comes in multiple colours, and is very easy to use. For today's project, I used it to add colour and shimmer to my plain Prima Flowers and to my QuicKutz butterfly. My favourite is irridecent gold, because you can add shimmer with changing the colour. I like having the control to add or change the colour of my accents, so Glimmer Mist is great for this. You can find Tattered Angels Glimmer mist at Stamping Bella.

Supplies (all available at Stamping Bella!)
Cardstock: Kraft
Patterned Paper - Collage Press Sweet Shoppe
Letter Stickers - American Craft Lax, Jenni Bowling Chalkboard
Flowers - Prima (plain)
Dies: QuicKutz 4 by 4 butterfly
Other - QuicKutz adhesive cork
Other - Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, Adhesive pearls, buttons, linen thread, sewing machine

Owl Sweeties

Emily (Stamping Bella) had an amazing new release of stamps yesterday - have you seen them!!! Love the owlies - I bought two different owl stamps, and her flat backed buttons (too fun!). I was playing around last night while I watched Mad Men with my husband. I combined the image with some Collage Press papers, also from Bella. The main panels of the card are all hand cut, and inked in black, for a different and whimsical look.  The hearts are cut with nestabilities, and since I didn't have a sentiment that worked, I used the cute XO brads by Queen and Co. Have a great weekend!

Bella Fun!

Oh My Goodness!!! Life has been soooo beyond crazy lately, with trying to sell our house and everything that that entails, that I haven't had time to blog about our fabulous night at Stamping Bella a few weeks ago! We booked a "girls night out" at Stamping Bella, complete with a chocolate fountain, appetizers and wine! Nicky taught the class, using fabulous colouring techniques. It was a struggle for me to finish, I had so much gabbing to do! Emily joined us for most of the night too, which was such a treat! I actually make quite a few Bella cards that never make it to my blog, because I always give them away as fast as I make them. Anyway, since we were staying at my inlaws this week, while our house was being shown, I found one of my creations that I love, so I "borrowed" it from my father-in-law to share with you all (I'll give it back - I promise!). The card was for his 65th birthday, from my hubby and I. We're both MD's, so I used docabella and docafella. The sentiment is computer generated, and the inside says "statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest". Anyway, here's my docafella/bella card, and the cards we did with Nicky from our class. I highly recommend one of her classes if you haven't already done so!

I'm also including some pictures of the fun we had that night! We've already booked our second extravaganza for November (insert HUGE grin here!).

Sympathy Cards

Recently, I had to make a couple of sympathy cards for close friends. I usually have a card on hand for almost any occasion, but I didn't have any sympathy cards. It's very difficult to make a Sympathy card in a hurry, so it got me thinking that maybe I should make a few to have on hand. In between then and now, I already had to give one away, so I can't show you that one. If you don't have a stamp set on hand with a sympathy sentiment, I suggest you add that to your wish list - it's a must! For images, I like using all kinds of nature images, flowers, branches, trees etc. For this sample, I also added some gorgeous glass flowers by Stamping Bella. The main image is calleds "Weeds", by Stamping Bella.

A Fella Card

I added a much needed element to stamp collection, a few "Fellas". Masculine birthday are always much tougher to design, especially when all you have is flowers and cute bunnies! I picked up a few fun fellas from Stamping Bella,and got to work with my colouring over the weekend. I was having huge success with my Peerless watercolours, until I hit the skin, that's when it looked like my fella developed severe liver failure, and a nasty case of jaundice. So, I had to throw away my oh so beutifully coloured image, and try again, this time with Copics. I loved how it turned out this way too, and this time the poor fella wasn't jaundiced, so that was good. I guess I could have made my first attempt into a get well card, but you'd need a sick sense of humour to get it....

So, here's the card. For me, the only way I get good success with my Copics is to stamp with Vivid! ink on whisper white cardstock. I've tried it tons of other ways, but this is the way I found works for me. To complete the card I doodled a frame around my fella, added some scraps of yummy October Afternoon patterned paper, and some mirror-backed Bella baubles.