Citrus Twist Sunday Sketch - Selfies

Good morning!  Today I'm sharing a layout I made from Kasia's Sunday Sketch over on Citrus Twist.  For this layout I used bits and pieces of kits from past months, and threw in some great feather doodles from Leann Pearce over at ScrapFriends.

Here's the sketch:

And here's my layout:

I stayed pretty close to the sketch, with the exception of the circle clusters.  I really liked the simple design and think it was the perfect design to showcase a few mother daughter silly selfies.

Like many of my layouts these days, I started out with a couple of Heidi Swapp mists (teal and mustard) that I focused on the lower right corner and overlapped to get a minty color in the middle.  I chose some patterned paper for the base, adhered the photos to black cardstock, and stuck another piece of white cardstock between the photos and the patterned paper for contrast.

I printed out the doodled feathers on white cardstock and colored them in with red, yellow and orange gelatos.  Then I outlined them with a black sharpie to make them pop a bit and colored an American Crafts basic white frame to match.

Love this mint green paper clip arrow from last month's kit.

That's it!  Today is the last day to upload your sketch-inspired creations to the Citrus Twist gallery, but be on the lookout tomorrow, when the new Sunday sketch is revealed.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Awesome giveaway over at ScrapFriends!

Who doesn't love free scrapbooking goodies??  ScrapFriends is hosting a giveaway where you can win all of these fab goodies by doing the most simple of things.  Click here to follow the ScrapFriends blog and check out the giveaway details.  (I'm totally entering, by the way...so yeah I wish you good luck...but I hope my luck is better.  Muahaha!) ;-)

Here's how to enter (Note that you don't have to have a blog - in lieu of a blog post about the giveaway you can post the deets to Facebook or Twitter!):

1. Become a Follower of our blog (if you don't have a blog, feel free use your Facebook/Twitter account)                                                                                                  
2. Leve a link to this post and photo of this candy on your blog, Facebook/Twitter or Social Network.
3. Please add your entry  with a DIRECT LINK to your blog post about this giveaway (not your blog)  via 
   button below, before 23 p.m. Brisbane  (Australia) on December 15. 
4.  Anyone can enter!

{you can also grab our button in our left sidebar} 

{Entries which fail to observe the above will be removed and will not qualify for the prize draw.}

The winners will be identified via random selection from http://random.org and announced on December 18, 2013.

Good luck!

CSI and Scrap365 Collaboration! Case File #S365-1

Lots going on over at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration this month!  One exciting announcement is a new collaboration with Scrap365, the UK's biggest and best scrapbooking magazine.  Now, CSI will have a Scrap365 case file every other month, to coincide with the publication of the latest issue of Scrap365.   Congrats to CSI for the feature in this month's issue!  Now, on to the case file.  

Here is my layout.  The journaling is on the back of the page and talks about having the opportunity, during a recent train ride from Boston to Northern MA, to really "see" my daughter, without distraction.  Hence, the title..."Today I See You."  :-)

And here are some close-ups and info on the process of creating this page. Credit must be given to SannaLippert and her fabulous ScrapFriends tutorial on creating layered stampedbackgrounds.  I have been wanting to incorporate this technique for some time, and this proved to be the perfect opportunity.    (Be sure to scroll to the bottom to watch Sana's awesome video showing the process of creating a layered stamp background.  Being able to actually watch an artist's process is so incredibly helpful when trying to learn new techniques.)

I used a lot of elements received in my spring/summer Citrus Twist kits, such as the washi tape, little velum sailboat, vintage jewel brad and flair button.  I also grabbed some old supplies that weren't getting much love, like the scrap of leftover doily, and the rub-on "I see..."

Because the black and shadowing of the photo is so dramatic, I tried to pull a lot of black in throughout the page.  My Tim Holtz stamps and masks came in handy, but not in the traditional way.  Instead of using the actual stamps, I fussy-cut the plastic printed place markers that come in the stamp kits, to mark where each stamp gets stored.  Then I did the same with the plastic masking place markers and just glued them all on the page.  I liked the texture and the deep hue of the black that the plastic images produced on the page.

And, as promised, here is Sanna's awesome video tutorial. Thanks for stopping by!  

Tie-Dyed Scrapbooking

I love tie-dye.  I love that it reminds me of 3-day festival concerts of my younger years; of good music and good friends and of my youth...and of my daughter, for whom I have tie-dyed socks, onesies, dresses, sweats, sweatshirts, t-shirts...yeah.  I think you get the idea.  So when I saw Jasmine Shea's tutorial on how to tie-dye a scrapbook layout I was smitten.  Literally had to try it right away.  And, as luck would have it, the mists I have in my stash match up nicely with the Scrap Friends color challenge this month.  This layout was such fun to put together - I definitely think I will be incorporating this technique into future layouts.   So here's my first go at a tie-dyed layout.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

This is a photo of my munchkin a couple of years ago.  She was looking up at the sky and I've had an idea for a layout with a "keep on the sunny side of life" type theme ever since I took the photo.  I loaded on some black chalk on the right side to give that side of the page a shadowy look to fit the quote.  I darkened the clouds on that side with some chalk and ink, and left the ones on the left bright and colorful.  And I inked the wooden "memo" embellie white to brighten it up.

I didn't know it when I started, but when I took the rubberbands off the tie-dyed paper, it seemed like the upper left hand corner was just begging to be changed into a sun.  So I tore some painters tape and made a mask for the rays, and then added some liquid pearls for shimmer.

I remembered hearing this quote in the past and loved it but didn't know its origin.  Quotegarden.com to the rescue. :)

I had some hand made chevron arrows leftover from a recent layout, so I used them to draw the eye in to the photo. Added some buttons and voila.  Finished.

Always Thinking...

My kid is a thinker.  If she doesn't have a furrowed brow wrinkle by the age of 16 it will be a miracle.  Since the day she was born she has always studied everything with a scrutiny I've never seen in a child her age.  She approaches every bit of new information with such seriousness - a pretty stark contrast to the rest of her personality, which is anything but serious.  But when she comes across something she is interested in, or gets lost in her own thoughts, the brow furrows, the lips tighten into a line, and I swear you can almost see the wheels and gears turning in her brain.  This photo sums up that piece of her perfectly.  

I was inspired by yet another awesome Sanna Lippert tutorial where she created her background with paint and a brayer.  I didn't have a brayer so I used a paint brush.  I added in some chevron masks with spray paint and pulled out my scraps of paper to use them up.  Not even the holes left over from the hole-punched vellum went to waste on this one. The embellies are from my May Citrus Twist kit, with the exception of the buttons, which are American Craft.  Thanks for looking and Happy Monday!  <meta name="p:domain_verify" content="8df407bc94197f5fdaca5730a29196a1"/>

Love Always

For this week's CSI case file I went vintage.  This is not a comfortable scrapping style for me, and I always struggle with it.  But this file and photo felt like it needed a vintage layout, so I went for it.  Here is this week's color scheme:



And here's my take on it. (I used this sketch from the Scrapfriends Sketch Challenge #13 as inspiration) Thanks for looking!

Pulled out the bloomers again and a Heidi Swapp title word for the "Love"; handwrote a letter to my daughter and wrapped it in a scroll that I distressed with various Tim Holtz distressing inks.

Little birdie from my Citrus Twist kit, and I went outside and grabbed some twigs for it to perch on.

More Citrus Twist embellies, and a Little Yellow Bicycle word pin.  Bark from a tree in our yard to anchor the photo.

Sanna Lippert video tutorial - Resist Technique Tags

I just recently happened upon the Scrapfriends blog and holy moly the first post I read through was this (today lol)...perfect timing because I have a half finished layout with blank white tags that were just waiting for something like this.  On a mission this evening.  Chardonnay, ink, masks and embossing powder.  Hot, right?  Hehehe!  Check out this video of Sanna's start-to-finish (super amazing) layout using this technique.  And check back tomorrow for my first go at incorporating this technique.  Happy Friday everyone!