July Reveal for the Beautiful My Creative Scrapbook Kits!!

I had a lot of fun with this months Album kit!! I loved the soft grey/blues with the touches of gold....they reminded me of the old BasicGrey Vagabond collection....so this inspired me to go with a very distressed look for this page. To get the extra distressed look to the edges of my papers I used the same technique I shared with you last month when I made the fan design on one of my pages for the main kit. I soaked the edges of my papers with water about 1- 1 1/2 inches into the edges of the paper. (I first inked the edges) Then just draw in and crumple the edges some. I like to blow dry the edges to get them to dry quickly and keep the shape I molded into the paper. Once the paper is dry lightly brush your chalk ink over the wrinkles to make them stand out more.
TIP: I shared this little tip with some of you a while back but thought I'd share it again in case you missed it. Have you ever felt like you needed another 'neutral' design paper for your l/o's but have come up blank? I love to use old books. I went to a thrift shop and picked up an old book with weather pages for .25 cents, this same book has seen me through many many l/o's! Here I tucked bits and pieces behind the patterned papers and also used some for my blooms. Here's a close-up pic....

I also made up a couple of little flower techniques for this page. I shared a heart punch bloom technique with you all last year but this heart punch technique creates a bloom that sits a little flatter. You can find the tutorial HERE. I alsos shared a tutorial to make the ruffled blooms I made from the bookpaper HERE Here's a close up detail picture....

I used the greenish/neutral papers in the Album kit to create this next l/o. I again went with a very distressed look, layering a number of papers. I've been wanting to scrap these pic's of Meagan and my Dad at the cottage doing some fising off the dock.....I think my Dad spent more time putting worms on the hooks and rescuing Meagans hoods and lines than they actually spent catching fish. But I know the both enjoyed every second of it!

There are some really cute embellishments in this kit, some awesome twine trim and very cool epoxy brads. Here is a close-up detail pic of this page (I used the Torn flower technique to make the blooms on this page)....


Another kit that was just packed with beautiful papers and blooms was this months Limited Edition Kit!! Do you love the look of stitched papers but just don't have the patience to do the stitching?? This kit had 3 gorgeous pre-stitched papers in it! I just loved the fun lady-bug motif in this IOD (Iron Orchid Designs) collection! And Pam included the cutest lady-bug embellishments to go with it. I thought this design would nicely compliment this sweet picture I had of my baby niece Kiera (Professional photos taken by Stephanie Robins Designs)......

I kept the white Prima blooms their pristine white for this l/o and simply just added some of the ladybug embellishments to finish of the page design. Here is a close-up pic of one of the embellishments.....

A second l/o I made using this kit, I went with the pinks and black accents. I did a fan pleat in two of the opposite corners and tacked it with a rose. The photo is of the same baby as in the above photo except that she's a few months older now. It was such a pleasure cuddling my baby niece.....gosh, I love babies!

....There were some beautiful sugary pink roses in this kit, I used half the package for this page and half for another. The small pink roses were made from pink cardstock by my daughter Chloe (she's had a little more time on her hands right now while she's off school so she wanted to help me out a bit) She used the 6 Petal punch technique you can find at the right side of my blog. Here are some close up pic's .....


A third l/o I made using this page I went with the pretty pink die-cut paper, the green stitched flourishes are already added to the paper, no need to sew! The photo is of my other sweet little niece Jade, this little one was constantly on the go! I was surprised I actually got her to hold still enough for some pic's!

For this l/o I used some of the matching IOD blooms mixed with some of the Prima blooms included in the kit.....check out the cute little pom-pom catterpillar embellishment (also from the kit) here are a couple of close-up pic's, you can see the detailing in the pre-stitched paper....


For this fourth l/o I made for the LE kit I used another one of the pre-stitched papers. I couldn't believe how my little niece was dressed in just the perfect colors to match the papers in this kit! (not at all planned, just a happy co-incidence)

I really love the music note paper that Pam included in this kit, it makes such a nice accent paper to the other papers in the kit. I cut the butterfly out from the note-paper. Here is a close-up pic.....


I enjoyed working with this kit so much that I even made up a 5th page using this kit! I had to laugh at my little niece Jade, I don't think she was at my sister's house more than 3 minutes before she kicked off her little sandals and was scampering through the grass barefoot!

I shared how I made up the heart and flourish circle design in the monthly DT thread over at MCS called "How did they do that?" (It should be posted in the next day or so) ....Here are a couple of close-up pic's....





And last but not least I got to work with the wondefully summery Main kit this month. Lots of spicy warm colors and fun embellishments especially for those water/beach photo's you've been wanting to scrap! For my first l/o for this kit I went with the soft yellows and ocean blues. The photo is one of my niece (my youngest bro's daughter) on the dock at their cottage catching some rays, I just love the way her cute pup Dahlia has her head resting on Alicia, so cute!....

I thought it might be fun this month to see if I can make up a sketch from one of my pages and see how I do at it. I still have a little to learn about how to get some of the shapes to translate to a sketch but I chose this l/o to make into a sketch. SO if anyone wants to give this sketch a go by all means go ahead and try it! and Please! do leave a comment here with a link to the page you made from the sketch I'd love to see it!....

As a design team we made up a LOT of beach themed pages using this kit but I thought I would do a couple of l/o's showing how the papers are very versatile and could also be used for non-beach l/o's. For this page I used the brown tone papers and added a little pink cardstock to accent it.

I was in stitches watching my little niece just tackling on of my sisters houseplants. She would crumple up the big leaves in her little hands until I thought they would never recover but somehow they always bounced back! LOL!

TIP: I made the white lace edge around the bracket cut paper by using the Martha Stewart lace-edge punch. This is a little trick I learned from my talented friend Pattil Hamil. Punch strips of the lace or decorative edge paper, then cut them into smaller pieces, (one or two scallops) then stick them on piece by piece behind the matting. Here are a couple of close-up pic's....


And finally a 3rd page I made using the Main kit I went with the sunny yellows and cornflower blue's. The photo is of my youngest daughter, definitely a girly girl but still happy to play with frogs, worms, snakes, you name it! Hard to see in this picture but here she's holding a frog she found in the garden....all smiles about it!

I used these pretty glimmery blooms by Petaloo in the kit but I wanted them to be a little larger so I used them as a center for some larger blooms I made using my Torn cardstock Bloom tutorial found to the right of my blog. Here's a close up pic...

Tutorial, Making Ruffled Blooms (Mum Style)

Last year I shared a flower tutorial with you using a spiral cut design ~~> HERE ....this is a kind of twist on this flower design. By using a pair of scallop edge decorative scissors (these can be found inexpensively at your local craft store), you can create a flower that resembles a ruffled Mum bloom.

Step 1
Begin by cutting out a rough circle shape from your cardstock/patterned paper or try what I used here, some paper torn from an old book (I picked up an old book at a thrift shop for .25 cents and it's gone a long way in providing me with weathered newsprint type paper for my projects) As you can tell you don't have to be too fussy in cutting the circle shape, mine clearly isn't a perfect round.


Step 2
Using a pair of scallop edge scissors, cut out a spiral design into the circle. I didn't even bother penciling out a spiral design to cut, I just did it free-hand. Just be sure not to cut the spiral too thin because in step 3 you will be cutting into the strip. You can also ink the ruffled edge at this point if you'd like to add another layer of color and dimension to your bloom.


Step 3
Using a plain pair of scissors snip a little cut into the indent of each of the scallops, being careful not to cut too deep (half or 3/4 of the way down is good).


Step 4
Now you can begin rolling up your strip of scallop paper, starting with the edge shown in the above photo.


Step 5
Some people find it easier to use a tweaser to hold the center of the bloom as they wrap the strip around into a circle as shown in the photo above.


Step 6
The middle of the circle design provides a perfect little platform to glue your rolled up paper to. I used some white glue here but you may find using hot glue a better method here as it's a quicker dry method.


Step 7
Now simply just ruffle back the petals with your thumbs to get a cute little ruffled bloom. You can create larger blooms by cutting a larger circle and having a longer spiral to work with. Below is the finished bloom (which I placed inside another cardstock bloom I made using a heart punch (see tutorial I posted just before this one for the steps to create the blue flower).....


You can see the finished page I made using these blooms soon as I have the July MCS reveal posted....hopefully sometime today! :)

Thanks for having a peek!

~Gabrielle xxx

Tutorial, Creating a larger rose with a heart punch

Have you ever had a bunch of medium/small blooms that nicely match your papers but need a larger 'center-piece' bloom to go with your page? Here's a cool solution. By using a heart punch and a simple circle punch (you could easily hand cut small circle) and choosing cardstock to coordinate with your patterned paper you can make a quick larger bloom for your page.

Step 1

Punch out 9 heart shapes and one circle shape from your cardstock. (I used the Marvy Uchida 1 1/4 inch heart punch and the Marvy Uchida 1" circle punch) Ink all the edges of your edges with a neutral color chalk ink like Colorbox Chestnut chalk ink or a complimentary color to your cardstock.


Step 2
Cut a slit into the middle of each heart shape just a little more than halfway down. and ink the inner cut edges too. slightly bend up the petal from the place you ended the center cut and lightly curl back each petal using a pencil or a wooden skewer.

Step3
Put some glue down on the circl piece and lay 5 of the petals around the edges of the circle adding glue if needed. This can also be done with a glue gun but remember quick drying hot glue does not give you a lot of time to maneuver the petals.


Step 4
Now add another blob of glue to the center of the bloom. Lay down your last 4 heart shapes around inside the first circle of petals. Your larger bloom design is now ready to add the smaller co-ordinating bloom to the center. In the photo below I used a bloom center I made using the Ruffled Flower (Mum Style) technique to create this finished bloom.....

For the tutorial on making the Ruffled Flower (Mum Style) bloom see my next post.

Thanks for having a peek!

~Gabrielle xxx

Dusty Attic Lamp!

Most of you who are familiar with my work know that I am mainly a layout girl and I rarely stray into the world of cardmaking and altered art. Well, here my friends is my first try at making an altered piece! I had this beautiful piece from Dusty Attic Designs, a intricately cut stained glass window design. As soon as I saw it I knew this would be something I would like to use on an altered artwork project rather than a layout.

When my girls were babies I had bought this inexpensive lamp at a garage sale. I simply covered it in some cardstock and added a flower fairy picture to it for their bedroom. Well, now that they are a little older I thought it was high time to do a make-over on this lamp (aside from the fact that it was starting to look pretty shabby, and not in a good way! LOL!) Last year I painted their room in green/purple so I went with these colors for their lamp. Here is a full shot of the finished lamp.....

I began the job by giving the whole lamp a coat of DecorArt Americana Stucco in the colour 'Pale Willow'.....Then I lightly brushed the dry stucco with a little bit of Chestnut Brown chalk ink by Colorbox. I then glued on the Dusty Attic Stained Glass window piece and the brick pieces (which I painted with some brown, orange and white paint. .....the brick design can also be found at the Dusty Attic site)

To get a stained glass look I used some Lavender Stickles to fill in the grapes and some Eucalyptus Stickles for the leaves. I used some soft watercolor paints in the diamond panes and then coated the design with some gloss medium to get a glass effect. I then used some bronze 3D metalic paint on the design itself to get the leaded look that stained glass panels have. Here are some close-up peeks at the finished piece so you can better see the details....

Thanks for having a peek!!

~Gabrielle xxx

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....

True Random Number Generator

Min: Max: Result: 65

Powered by RANDOM.ORG

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