And the Winner is.....

Please take a moment to check out the bit of exciting MCS news at the bottom of this post!

So a little over a week ago I posted a chance to win some fun blog candy by running over to the MCS blog and checking out the 20 questions I had to answer there. Then you need to leave a comment here with the answer to the question 'What is my guilty pleasure' ....the answer was a Tim Hortin's Ice Capp (an iced cappucino/coffee). I went to random.org to choose the happy winner and the answer I got was....

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Min: Max: Result: 65

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Denise said...
Love the new picture of you Gabrielle! I so addicted to flowers too :) Your guilty pleasure is Tim Horton's Ice Capp. Don't know what that is but it sounds dangerous to your waistline, lol.
June 7, 2010 9:36 AM

Congrats Denise!!! (LOL! Looks like the key to being a winner for my blog candy is having the name Denise!...I believe the last time I gave away some blog candy it was a Denise too!...but a different Denise!) Please send me your mailing address to gpollacco@aol.com and I'll get your package right out to you! Thanks everyone for playing along!!

Some quick NEWS!!! Pam the owner of My Creative Scrapbook has let me know that she will be adding 100 new subscriptions to the fast growing membership for the Limited Edition Kit. She will be opening the shopping cart to the first 100 subscribers on June 25th. This kit is in huge demand but she's had to limit the size of the membership so that she can be sure to keep to the amazing value and quality of the kit. It's often hard for her to get the premium and unique embellishments and extra's in the larger amounts from the manufacturers, thus she's had to limit the number of kits available. When you sign up for this kit you will be getting the subscription starting Sept-Nov 2010. All I can say is this is my favourite kit! and I've never been disappointed with the gorgeous goodies in this one, you are not taking leap of faith when you order this one. To view previous LE kits you can check out this link Past LE Kits (The LE kits are labeled, just scroll down to view all the past months kits) for more information on this opportunity you can check out Pam's post HERE ..........I just wanted to give a quick little 'heads up' to my girls here so you can get a jump on this opportunity!

Thanks!!

~Gabrielle xxx

Some Whimsical Fun with Dusty Attic

I love it that my youngest daughter Meagan is still at that age where she live's in an enchanted world of dress-up, fairy hairbands and make-believe. That was the idea behind this l/o I made with the fun laser-cut dress-form from Dusty Attic and the corner flourish. For the dress form I painted it with a bronze metalic paint, I did a little corset lacing with some soft pink DMC thread and I just glued on a little trim and pearls to finish it off. For the corner flourish I simply painted it with some purple/orchid pearl paint and added a couple of lavender gems. The papers are by Scrap Beyond Reach (Afternoon Tea) and BasicGrey (Kioshi). The blooms are Prima and the crystals are Zva Creative. Here are a few close-up pic's.....



I noticed some comments in the last blog piece about availability of the Dusty Attic products to oversea's customers. There is a pdf file you can now view at the Dusty Attic site that gives locations of stores that carry the DA products and I believe many of them ship worldwide you can find the Retailers list HERE (just click on the 'Retailers PDF' at the end of the comment to pull up the list). The list will be added to as the retailer numbers grow, and don't forget to mention these products to your local scrapbook stores if you'd like to find them locally!

Thanks for having a peek!!

~Gabrielle xxx

Gotta Love the Dusty Attic!!

I always have more time in the beginning of the month to get some layouts done for Dusty Attic (the Lantern and iron fence designs on the l/o) while I'm stalking the mailman for my MCS kits :) ....I made this l/o for the Dusty Attic Design team and at the same time thought I would try out Gerry's challenge at My Creative Scrapbook to make your own patterned paper. So this time around I didn't use any patterned paper in my l/o I simply used cardstock that I stamped with some script stamps and inked with a little bit of 'Moss Green' Colorbox inks.

TIP: When you stamp with a script stamp that is shaped in a square you get a more 'natural' effect if you lightly wipe off the ink on the outer edges of the stamp before you apply it to the paper. This way the script writing fades out on the page.

For the lantern all I did was paint the laser-cut shape in black and cut out a piece of yellow carstock to put behind the lantern part to give it a 'glow'. I used some 'chestnut brown' Colorbox chalk in on the edges of the yellow paper to have the glass part appear more rounded. Here are some close-ups pic's (the pretty green ribbon along the bottom was from the June Main kit from My Creative Scrapbook, it was a pretty piece of ribbon I hadn't had a chance to use on my DT layouts, the pearl flourishes are from my dear friend Carolyn at Zva Creative, she was so sweet sending me some of her newest designs to play with).....

And a quick note, so many of you asked what is a Tim Hortin's Ice Capp? (in my last blog post) It's and iced cappuccino, sort of like a super thick frosty ice coffee....Yum! Don't forget I'm posting a winner for the Blog Candy on the 16th so come back and check if you won, and if you haven't posted a comment yet you still have a few days! ;)

Thanks!!

~Gabrielle xxx

June's Kits From MCS!! and a Yummy Blog Candy Giveaway!!

First off I just want to say although I know my 'reveal' day posts are long ones, hang on to the end of the post because I've got some fun blog candy to give away!! Also I wanted to let you all know that I've posted a lot of the tutorials I've shared at a side post to the right of my blog to make it easy to find them again as you need them. ...I was so delighted when I saw the new papers and embellishments in the June Limited Edition kit from My Creative Scrapbook!! Such beautiful soft and feminine papers, sweet florals and with a shabby-chic element to them....and loads of coordinating blooms, trims and embellishments! The papers featured in this kit are from Girls Paperie, I cut out some of the floral designs on one of the patterned paper for this l/o and dressed up a cut little die cut dress form with some of the velvet and pearl trim in the kit. Here are some close up details ....


A second l/o I made with this kit I used the cooler pinks (there are some seriously cute die cut papers in this collection!).....I took this picture of my oldest daughter Chloe picking some of the tulips in our garden a couple of weeks ago. When we first moved into our house I planted a whole lotta tulip bulbs so that every Spring we have a nice little cutting gardent to pick from....


I've got to say the hot glue gun is my newest best friend! It worked quick and fast to apply the pearl strand to my layout and the hold is extra strong. Here are some close-up details....


Included in the kit there were some really beautiful Prima blooms and a couple of them had some smokey plum colours in them. So I changed up the look of the kit a bit by using the blooms and some plum colour cardstock along with some of the more 'neutral' papers in the kit to make this l/o....

I find myself doing a lot of machine stitching lately on my photo's and papers, I think it's because I really like a fabric look to my pages, so the more stitching, ribbons and trims, the happier I am! Here are a few close-ups...


And finally I made a 4th l/o with this kit using the lovely feminine floral and polka-dot papers in this kit, I thought they would go nicely with this pic I recently took of my oldest daughter....

TIP: How do you get a nice even and smooth curvy line when cutting out patterned paper? I like to use the Bo Bunny Flex Ruler, it's a long 20" strip that is bendable, you can smooth it out the the exact shape you want (see the floral paper cut above) use it to draw a pencil line on the patterned paper and cut it out....and it even comes in a pretty pink! Here are some close-up shots of this l/o.....


After making 4 l/o's with this kit I still have loads of papers and embellishments left, I know I'm going to be using more of these goodies in future l/o's, love this collection! Now moving on to the Main kit for June from My Creative Scrapbook. This kit had beautiful grass greens and summery reds in it. The collection featured in this kit is the Sophie (Savvy) collection from My Minds Eye.

For this l/o I wanted to use the grass greens and creamy whites to compliment the photo's I took of my youngest daughter holding a bouquet of Lily of the Valley she picked for her teacher. I did some machine stitching with a fancy stitch on my machine around the outside edges and some masking with a cut-out of a butterfly (I just inked around the edges with some green chalk ink and then added some dots with green Stickles). I hand-cut some butterfly shapes out of the 7 Gypsies script paper (included in the kit). And finally I had some fun with the Prima clear crystal flourishes included in the kit.
TIP: To change up some clear crystal flourishes to better match your page you can use Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks and a Q-tip. Here I used Meadow Green ink and lightly dabbed the tips of the flourishes working inward. I added extra ink to the outside edges to deepen the colour there so that the flourish has multiple layers of color tint. If you are not happy with the results you can use the alcohol blending solution to remove what you've done and retry again (I believe you can remove the ink with nail polish remover too). Here are some close-up pic's....



For a second l/o I made with this kit I went with the reds. There are some really beautiful die-cut papers in this kit, the one I used here is 2 sided, I chose the red polka-dot side for this page....

I had some fun with my circle punch by cutting out a bunch of circles from the red polka dot paper (from behind the photo area) and sprayed a larger circle of cream/white colour paper with some Candy Apple Glimmer mist (also included in the kit) I layed out the circle cuts on the cream colour paper to create a large polka dot design. For the blooms I used a paint brush with some deep rose red Pearlex powder and tinted the centers of the white Prima blooms. The butterflies are a little stamp set included in the kit! Here are some close-up pic's....


And finally a 3rd page I made using the main kit, I used the blues and greens in the kit. I wanted to play up the the pretty floral design in the patterned paper, so I used a small flower punch on some of the green and aqua paper and layered them over the flower image on the page to give a 3D look to the blooms, and finished them off with some pearl 3D paint on the centers of the bloom images.

I was trying to get a 'gathered fabric' look in the ruffle I added at the top of the page. The MME paper is very thick and pulpy and works well for this. I just soaked a piece of the paper in some water and gathered one edge in kind of a fan shape. I then used the blow dryer to quickly dry the piece. It holds it's shape nicely once it's dry. Here are some close-up pic's....


There are 2 more kits available for the month of June, the Creative and Album kits and you can see the beautiful work done by the Design Team this month by checking out the Design team gallery at this link June Design Team Gallery ... We also had the priviledge of having the amazing Lucy Edson as Guest Designer for the Main kit!! Many of you know her from the Webster's Pages Design Team. She really wowed us with her beautiful creations with this kit! And we had the wonderful Jackie Anderson doing some Guest DT work for us using the LE kit for this month, Jackie always does such a beautiful job with the shabby-chic kits!

And now for some Blog Candy fun!! It was my turn to answer the 20 Questions posed to the MCS Design Team this month. Julie Howard (our blog girl at MCS) told me if I didn't send her a fun and different photo for the blog she would 'play' with my avatar photo....words like 'clown hair' and 'arrows' were mentioned! LOL! So I had an idea. Julie always says she hates working with a lot of blooms on her pages and I always joke that when I get all those pretty Prima blooms in the kits I scatter them on my bed and roll in them naked! Well, I spared you the naked part **shudder!** but I came up with a fun photo!! Come check out the link HERE and then post a comment in this blog thread with the answer I gave to the question 'What is my guilty pleasure?' .....If you do you can win a selection of some of my favourite embellishments pictured here....


~ 1 pkg. of Prima Blooms (Pink/red/white)

~ 1 pkg. of Flower Market Velvet Blooms by The Girls Paperie

~ 1 pkg. of Paper Girl Market Trims by The Girls Paperie

~ 1 pkg. of Making Memories Stitched Felt Dimensional stickers 'Flutter'

~ 1 pkg. of Imaginisce Glitter Flowers from the Lucy Bird collection

~ 1 pkg. of Zva Creative Pearl heart flourish

~ 1 pkg. of Petaloo Mulberry Street blooms

~ 1 pkg. of Queen & Co. adhesive pink pearls


You will have until the 15th of this month to post your answer, then I will use Random.org to choose a winner from the people who commented at this thread and post the winner on the 16th.
You can find the blog post for the answer HERE. Thanks for taking the time to read to the end of this very long thread :)


~Gabrielle xxx