June's Art Journal Friday

Welcome welcome! When did the summer arrive? Here we are at the end of June and it's time for another Art Journal Friday :)

Same rules apply as usual - all welcome! Create a page or pages around the theme for this month, and if you can come and share your creations with us at our Ning site - lots of love to be had!

This month's theme... I thought after going with a quite emotional theme last month, this month we could look at something a little less emotive - technique! An integral part of any journal page is the background, and for me it's often the part I have the most fun doing :) for this month's page I decided to gesso the page as usual and then drip different coloured alcohol inks onto it in blues, greens and golds. I LOVED this effect :) and because of the gesso it didn't bleed through the rest of the pages (as it will do if you don't protect your page, look out!)

I'd love to see what your favourite techniques are for creating backgrounds on your pages - are you a gesso girl? Do you love using acrylics, or do you prefer watercolours, or collage? Or a mixture of them all? Let me know!

If you'd like to share your background with us we have an Art Journal Friday group over at our Ning community where you can upload your page, leave some love and receive some back :) come visit and say hi!

Happy Friday :)

Gayle xx

A Few Albums

Hi, Diana here to show you 3 personal projects I’ve been working on.

I've mentioned before my weakness for Cute Owls, I found this book at Target and couldn't resist not buying it; it is made out of recycled materials.

I am traveling to visit my family and thought of using it as a Journal book about my vacation. I decorated the cover and glued some nice pattern papers to the inside pages.

I’ll be visiting the same cities from my September trip, I’ve already made a travel journal for that trip and decided to try and do something different this time, there will be more journaling and less photos, and lets see if I can manage to add a minimal of embellishments to the inside pages, that is going to be a challenge.

My Next project is a Summer Mini. I downloaded THIS Free Class at Big Picture; it is called “10 Summer Photos to take right now”. I just love the photo ideas given there and decided to take the task, it will be great to use my camera more this summer, and since I’ll need somewhere to house these photos, I made this mini album

All the papers and that cute Kite are from Echo Park-Walk in the Park collection, as extra embellishment I added a Maya Road chipboard shape, a Sun flashcard from K and Company, colored Bakers Twine, Gems, Alphas and a Beach Ball flair from American Crafts.

For the inside pages I used a 7 Gypsies chipboard album that I’ve been hoarding for years.

Since the papers are double sided it was very simple to decorate both sides of the page.

Both of these albums are still waiting to be filled with photos, journaling and need some final details, I hope I’ll be able to share the inside of them once I’m done.

And finally I’ll like to share the cover of a project I started in May, sorry I can’t share the inside because it is a class I purchased also at Big Pictures and wont like to give away the creators hard work, but you can find out more about it HERE. The class name is “A Week of Life Lists”; I did some personal changes because I plan on making this a yearly thing.

I got this Fancy Pants Brag Book as a prize from sb.com on NSD, being stuck to the computer+craft table has its advantages ;) and decided to use it for this project.

Here is a close-up of the cover. The Journey title is a Donna Downey fabric stitched word.

This is my introduction page for May, I made sure to mark the start date (because it’s my birthday ;)

This last project is part of my goal to scrapbook more about me, we all know that feeling of our craft being focused a lot on our families, and personally I also make albums, cards and projects to give as gifts to family members. I’ll be sharing a few projects and ideas next month that will inspire you to make something about you J.

Hope I was able to bring some inspiration to your day.

Till Next Time

=Di

Glimmer Glaze coloring

Hello everyone! It's Julie here today to share with you a way you can add some pizzazz to your stamped images: Glimmer Glaze!

Glimmer Glaze is a fine glitter paint from Tattered Angels that adds a hint of glimmer and a shine to things that you stamp! They come in a wide array of colors. Once I started this project, I wished I had more of them!

I started off my project stamping out a ton of flowers (not all to be used on this project). I recommend using Dye ink because it does not smear when wet with the glaze. I used pigment ink on a set of flowers and I did get some smearing (but I actually liked the look it gave as well).

I started off using my first Glimmer Glaze color, Mellow Yellow. The Glazes come with a nail polish like brush to paint on your images and it really helps! You must wait for the first color to dry before using a second color.

Once my Mellow Yellow was dray, I used my second color, Waterfall. I did not worry about staying in the lines since these flowers were going to be cut out.

Once all flowers were dry, I cut them out. Once cut, I put them in the palm of my hand and I pushed down on the center to give them a raised appearance. After that, all I needed to do was to figure out what to do with them! I decided to make a few tags. Here are two that I made:

I encourage you to give these little paints a try if you haven't! They offer a stunning look!

Thanks for stopping by today!

I Heart Scrapbooking - Pocket Mini Album Tutorial

Hello, Diana here bringing you June’s Mini Album Tutorial. Today I’ll give you the steps on how to make this Pocket Mini Album

To make the body of the album you’ll need these 7 Gypsies Photo Carousel Pocket’s

I used 6 Pockets, 1 for the Cover and 5 for the inside pages.

Following the sequence of the photo bellow:

1) Round the two corners of the right side of the pocket and Ink all the edges of the front and back.

2) Cut two pieces of white cardstock to cover the front and the back of each manila pockets. Distress the edges of the cardstock pieces.

3) Adhere the Cardstock pieces to the Manila Pocket. Using a Scallop puncher cut half a circle in the top middle of what will be your Front Page.

4) Photo of how it looks once you are done.

For this album I used the My Minds Eye-Fine and Dandy, True Blue paper collection, even though it is a boy intended paper line, I have a weakness for cute Owls and I really like the colors. Another of my weaknesses is paper layers, as you can see on the photo bellow I cut a bigger piece of paper for the background and a slightly smaller for the front.

Next step is to decorate those two pretty layers. Fallowing again the sequence of the photo bellow:

1) Adhere the two pattern paper pieces together, add a piece of ribbon and bakers twine as shown, sticking the ends to the back of the paper. Overlay the pattern paper pieces and the album pockets and trace the scallop half circle. Now punch out the piece traced.

2) Adhere the pattern paper piece to the front of the pocket. Tie a knot with the baker twine.

3) Punch out 3 wholes for the binding. As a final touch add a Pretty Paper flower with a Brad in the center.

Like this Flower? Learn how to make it HERE

For the inside of the pockets cut 5 pieces of cardstock, round the corners and add lines to it for your journaling, on the top center I added a punched out scallop circle and a brad, you can also add a butterfly or any other shape desired.

On each page I used as a title the reasons why I love scrapbooking.

To hold all the pockets together put a piece of ribbon through each of the holes and tie a knot in the center of the spine.

As another way of keeping the album together I glued this yellow and white thick ribbon to the back cover, spine and front cover and tied a bow.

Here is a close-up of the cover; I layered some of the chipboard pieces, added gems, brads and letter stickers for the title.

As always I hope this tutorial will inspire you to make your own, if you have any questions or comments please be my guest.

Have a wonderful day

=Di

June's Inspiration Monday

Good morning everyone! June is here and I am thinking Summer! I did a google search this month to find our inspirational image by entering Summer in the search field and this one popped out at me!

Doesn't a pitcher of nice, ice cold lemonade just speak to Summer? What will this image inspire you to create? For my daughter and I, we thought it would be perfect to use as our inspiration for a Summer sleepover invite. Here's what we came up with:

We echoed the lemon slices in our "glass of lemonade" invite and used a Dymo label maker to add a little "Fun In The Sun" to it! The straw was our finishing touch! :)

So, does this image inspire something in you? If it does, please share with us here.

ATC's

Have you ever purchased a scrapbooking kit and once you are almost done using it still have leftover embellishments? This happened to me with a kit I got last year; it came with a complete package of these Melody Ross Chipboard Stickers

I only used a couple of them on layouts, and they are to pretty to just put away for some future project that will never be created; so I decided to make some ATC’s using also the scraps of paper and several other embellishments I had leftover from that same kit.

I used ATC cards from 7 Gypsies, the black card with a Tab and the 97% complete cards.

My Dymo came in hand to add some extra words.

This is something I’ll definitely do again, once I have time to sort through my embellishment basket.

Hope you all have a Wonderful Day!

=Di

Smashing the WCP Challenge

Hi Everyone,

Kristin here with this months Words, Colors and Photos challenge. I just received my SMASH book by EKSuccess, so I thought I would mix it up a bit and use that as part of the WCP challenge. If you haven't had a chance to check out these awesome books, see the video below. I think of it as a journal, meets organizer, meets creative planner. There are several themed books to choose from and you can order some fun scrappy supplies to go with it, including specialized post it type notes, funky artistic clips and folders to hold misc. stuff but most of all they built a fun canvas that encourages all types to create, organize and play!



So for this month, the Words: GUILTY PLEASURES will guide our challenge.

There happens to be a page in the SMASH book I have named guilty pleasures, so I will suggest the colors on that page to accompany our challenge. The colors are Kraft, orange, pink, maroon, gold, white and black.


Use the above pictures and words to create something, anything really about your guilty pleasures. If you would like to share your creation, feel free to visit our Scrappy Community HERE. I will be uploading my page soon! I hope to see you and your Guilty Pleasures :)


Enjoy the rest of your Saturday everyone,


Kristin xx

Challenge

Another month, another challenge. This time we will focus on the smallest and fluffiest members of our family.

I have so many photos of Sammy, and I’m slowly making layouts to put in his album.

This one will be the first page of the album.

All these layouts are 8”X8”, and I used sketches from NSD at Studio Calico, I did not win the prize but I was able to complete a few layouts.

A couple of double pagers.

All the pattern paper and most of the embellishments are from Basic Greys Max & Whiskers collection.

Now it’s your turn to make a layout or project of your furry friends, link them here or join us at our Scrappy Community and post them in our Let’s Scrap Group.

On June 29^th I’ll show them all here with a link to your blog.

Happy Scrapping

=Di