April's Art Journal Friday

Welcome to this month's Art Journal Friday! With May nearly here and the weather being SOOO much better (aren't you just loving it!) I am feeling colours this month - the light is better and lasts longer, and the world looks completely different just for having a little sunshine fall upon it :)

So keeping it simple, for this month's art journal prompt, create a page using any combination of oranges, purples and/or gold, in honour of the wonderful sunshine that is making a reappearance! All are welcome, and if you'd like to share your page and some love, you can come chat with us at our Ning Community and upload your work there.

Look forward to seeing you!

Happy Art Journaling :)

Gayle xx

p.s. simply can't post today without wishing congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton on their wedding day - best wishes for many happy years ahead, from The Scrappy Tree girls!

Layouts

A few weeks back I posted a challenge about making a layout using less then 5 types of non paper embellishments, this is not easy for me because I am guilty of over decorating my pages, but I managed to make this layout using only: gems, ribbon and a glitter sticker.

The following beautiful layouts were made by two talented members of our Scrappy Community

Michelle Unruh

Michelle used only a gem flourish, and she rocked her Cricut machine.

Jean Marmo

Jean used corks and a bright flower that looks amazing on her page.

Beautiful!! thank you ladies for sharing with us your wonderful work.

I’ll be posting another challenge in a couple of weeks, and we would love for all of you to participate, so please leave a comment and let us know what kind of challenge would you like to see, all suggestions are welcome.

That’s all for today, hope you all have a great day!

=Di

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day bloggers! We all hope that you are able to do something good for the planet today whether it be big or small. Today, I'd like to show you how I repurposed an item that some people might throw away.

I started with this Crystal Light container. I love the shape of this and I knew it would be good for some sort of project. I decided I would get a head start on the end of the year teacher gifts with this and make it into a gift container for a set of bookmarks for my daughter's third grade teacher.
I love Crate Paper's Emma Shoppe line and I decided to use that on this container. To fully use every spare bit of that paper, I lined the outside of this container with the very first sheet of paper that was in the collection pack; you know the one that shows you a sample of each of the papers in the pack? I like to do that with my collection packs. Gotta use every last bit! :) I added lace, a Bazzill bloom, Crate paper accents, including the Crate Paper brad. I recommend using Yes Paste as your adhesive! It is able to stick to plastic and does so with ease!

Now, for the bookmarks! What could be better for a teacher?! I used a mix of Hero Arts Stamps and Papertrey Ink stamps on these bookmarks. All of these bookmarks were made using scrap paper from Crate Paper and scrap cardstock!

Thank you for stopping by today! Happy Earth Day!!

~Julie

Soda Pop Bottle & Wine Cork Picture Holders

Hello, I’m back to share another Green Project.

I saved these bottles because of there cute and small shape and decided to use them as Picture Holders with the help of a Wine Cork and Tim Holtz Memo Pins
For the bottle decoration I used one of my favorite Crate paper line: Restoration, the colorful and fun vintage design goes perfect with the photos I selected of my parents back in there dating days.
I protected the photos with Therm-O-Web Self Adhesive Laminate and matted them on a piece of pattern paper.


This Friday April 22nd is Earth Day, here are some Freebies you might be able to take advantage of:

April 16-24: Free entrance into National Parks for National Park Week
April 22: Bring in any empty cosmetic product to Origins and get free samples.
April 22: Bring in a travel cup at Starbucks and receive a free coffee or tea at participating stores.
April 22: Bring in 5 plastic grocery bags at Disney Stores and receive a reusable shopping tote. While supplies last.
April 22: (Texas only) Visit the Green Mountain booth at these local Earth Day events and receive afree tree to plant at home or in your community.
April 22: Free homemade Organic Milkshake at EVOS

Comment and share with us in what ways you Go Green in your daily life.

Enjoy your Day!
=Di

Recycled Mini Album Tutorial-This & That

Hello and Welcome to April’s Mini Album Tutorial.

This month we celebrate the Earth, I’m sure most of you apply at least one of these to your daily life: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. With today’ Mini Album we’ll be using all three of them.

Reduce: the pieces of Pattern Paper you have in your scrap stash.
Reuse: a pair of old and torn Jeans.
Recycle: a piece of Card box.
You will also need: Fabri-Tac and embellishments for your album cover.

Why the title This and That? Because this mini will be a home to all those extra photos that don’t make it to a layout or an album.

Are you ready to turn this:
Into This:

*Album Cover

My Album cover is 7” X 7” I won’t give you measurements so you can make the album the size you want, but keep in mind that the longest piece of paper in your scrap stash might be 12” and you’ll need to fold that in half.

Step 1:
To make the Front and Back Cover cut 2 equal size pieces from the card box and 1 thin piece for the album Spine.
Arrange the pieces on the fabric and cut leaving at least 2” on each side to fold.

Step 2:
Adhere the pieces to the fabric using Fabri-Tac, start with the spine, and then attach the cover pieces on each side. Cut the corners in an angle for an easier fold (sorry I did this step backwards)

Step 3:
Adhere the fabric flaps tucking in the corners.

*Album Pages

Arrange the paper in the order you want them to appear, make the Crease of your first page in the same thickness as your cover spine, the next page should be just a slight thinner, continue this process with all the pages, they do not need to have an equal size, the unevenness gives a nice look to the album.

*Making the End sheet

This will help us join the book block to the cover, and it should be only slightly smaller then the open cover. Make sure the Crease is also as thick as the spine piece and centered.

Time to put the paper together, add glue to the Creased folded part of your first page, and adhere it to the End sheet. Continue gluing all the pages together.
Give your album more personality adding some tags and envelopes.

Now that your book block is complete and dry, it’s time to adhere it to the cover. You’ll only add the glue on the back part of the End sheet, start with the spine, then the back cover and finally the front cover.

*Decorating the Front Cover

Here comes the fun part.
I added the jeans pocket and tucked a Donna Downey Canvas Tag inside. The birds and bird cage is a Donna Downey iron on, some brads, flowers, ribbon, gems, alphas and my cover was ready.

Here are two more ideas on how to Reuse the jeans fabric.

I made this little notebook using the same technique of the above mini album but without a book spine. The inside is made out of white paper folded in half and stapled in the middle. I'll be using this book for my grocery lists.

And finally these flowers, don’t they look cute made out of blue jeans?

And there you have it, a few ideas on how to recycle those old pair of jeans.

As always I’ll have this complete tutorial posted at our Scrappy Community for future reference.

Have a Great day and Go Green! :)

=Di

Recycled Tins

Earth Day is Apr 22nd, and for all this week we will be posting ideas about how we can use our Craft to Recycle. We already have all the decorative supplies in our scrappy stash, so now just look around your house to find interesting objects to be altered. Today I’ll share these cookie Tins, although they were already beautiful I decided to add a few extra embellishments to make them more decorative. You can also cover the tin with pretty pattern paper. For the body I added three crocheted doilies and tied a ribbon in a bow. I decorated the lid using the pretty pattern it already has adding only two flowers and a chipboard bird that I painted using chalk ink.

I like how these two tins have similar colors, so I tried to embellish them in a similar way.

As the previous one I tied a ribbon in a bow around the body of the tin, it has so many pretty details I did not want to cover.

I covered the lid with a crocheted doily, added some flowers, a chipboard butterfly that I sprayed with some glimmer mist and as the final touch a cute metal owl.

These two tins will hold some of my vintage embellishments, and will add a nice decorative look to my scrappy space.

Best start of the week wishes, and Think Green ;)

=Di

The Bargello Technique

Hello bloggers! Today I wanted to share a technique with you called the Bargello Technique. I found a wonderful tutorial from Splitcoaststampers. Splitcoast has a wonderful resources section on so many techniques. Make sure you check it out sometime! I had never heard of this technique before and I was excited to give it a try. 1. To start, you need at least 4 pieces of patterned paper. Mine is from Cosmo Cricket. I cut mine 5 inches by 6 inches. 2. Next, cut 3/4 inch strips. I cut two of each paper.

3. Then I used a random, old piece of paper to glue my strips on. Don't use anything thick as your backing. You will need to cut these and things will be easier if you don't make it thick.

5. Once you have all your strips adhered to a paper backing (remember to let glue dry first if you use glue), cut various thicknesses of stips.

6. Once you are finished cutting, you can arrange the strips anyway you like! Play around with your arrangement.

7. I wanted to use a diecut on my pattern (optional of course. You could use it as a full background if you wish) so I did adhere my strips on top of another piece of paper like I did before I cut my stips initially. I learned the hard way that cutting the diecut image without the pieces mounted on top of another piece of paper can lead to some frustrating puzzle piecing of the diecut image! LOL. This die is from Papertrey Ink.

8. Here is my final diecut using the Bargello technique.

9. I wanted to use the next size down of the diecut to add to the card I wanted to make.

10. Next I decided on it's placement.

11. Next I used a Hero Arts stamp on a scrap.

12. Then I cut out the image.

13. All that's left to do is figure out the final placement of all my pieces! I cut another piece of Cosmo Cricket paper as a background for my Bargello diecut. I inked each piece and I also stamped a sentiment on the front. The sentiment is also from Hero Arts.

14. The final card:

15. A bit of a close up:

**I hope you are able to try this technique. I really enjoyed myself with it. ** You can also check out my card on my etsy shop. I even made a twinchie with the left over scraps.

Thank you for stopping by today!

~Julie

Layouts using only 5 type of Embellishments

I have trouble not adding extra paper layers or embellishments to my layouts, it has become my style and I really like it, but once in a while, changes are good. I challenged myself to try to add only 5 types of none paper embellishments, this is what I made:

My Boyz (I ran out of letters “s” and had to improvise ;)

Brads, Clips, Ribbon, Cotton Twine & Thickers. Using pattern paper as the background instead of cardstock gives more life to a page and the half die cut paper is a great decoration.

This ledger envelope from Making Memories and tags also serves as decoration, all that was left to embellish were the title and the photos.

My Favorite Guy

Brads, Clips, Staples, Ribbon & Lace

Am I the only one who has a husband that refuses to pose for the camera? I gave up and just took random pics of him. My background paper is the biggest embellishment, and it is also my title, the photo booth type photos do not need to be matted on paper because they already have the white frame they came with.

Wrestling Masks

Brads, Staples, Cotton Twine, Chipboard & Thickers

These photos crack me up; it’s my niece and husband posing with there Mexican Wrestling Masks before they left to see the actual match.

Part of my paper decorations are the die cut and label pieces from the same paper collection, I normally end up using less then the third part of those shapes.

The circle punch shapes are distressed, I matted a small spiky circle and a brad.

Now I challenge you to make a layout using only 5 or even less none paper type of embellishments, post them to Julie's Let's Scrap group at Our Scrappy Community.

Did you notice I used the same paper collection "Knave of Hearts by Collage Press" for my three layouts? well, I would like to invite you to Julie's new Group Use Your Scraps, here is a description of the group in her words: Here's your chance to use all your scraps and show off what you've made, no matter what type of project you've made! We'd love to see the magic you can make with scraps!!

And finally I would like mention that all three layouts are made using the fabulous Sketches of online class Sketchbook 3 by KP, I took the previous two and just love that class.

I hope we'll start seeing your creations at our scrappy community :)

Earth Day is getting closer and we will be celebrating it for a complete week with recycled ideas and projects, mark your calendars for April 16-22 .

Sending you the Best week wishes from the Windy City!

=Di