Hello Handsome...

Well, if you are one of my American friends, you have hopefully by now recovered from the food coma that is Thanksgiving!  We had a wonderfully filling, quiet day with family where we all reflected on the many blessings we are thankful for.  I hope that each of you, whether you celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday or not, had a fabulous Thursday surrounded by those you love.

CSI has another great case file for you to solve this week, featuring a really unique color scheme that I found perfect for a more masculine page featuring none other than my better half. ;-)

Here is the case file:

And here is my take on it:

The journaling strips are actually straight, but because the strips are adhered to cardboard,
they curved the paper a bit making the strips look crooked. :-/

I started this page by cutting different patterned papers into various sized strips and then inking the edges.  I laid them all over a 12x12 piece of cardboard and adhered them to the page/covered them with Mod Podge.  Then I laid some more paper strips down horizontally, covered parts with Gesso and started layering stamps, fibers and scrap paper.  Really love the way these colors compliment the grainy black and white of the photo!

CLICK HERE to see what the rest of the design team came up with for this challenge, and come and play along with us!

Enjoy the weekend, friends. xoxo

Shawna

CSI Case File #81 Special Investigator Reveal

Hey everyone!  Case File #81 has just been unveiled over at CSI!  This is my third reveal for my July Special Investigator gig over there.  My last contribution will be revealed next Friday the 26th.  I will be sad for this little assignment to end, but at the same time, I am looking forward to participating in the challenges again and enjoying the anticipation of a new case file every Friday!  Anyway, here is this week's challenge:

I chose the "6 word memoir" for my testimony prompt and journaled "far from where I once was" on the right side of the photo.  I really enjoyed creating this visual representation of my particular journey of how I got to where I am today.  Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!  Now head over and see how the other investigators interpreted this week's file.  Have a great weekend!

3 Kisses

Seriously.  Does a color scheme get any more gorgeous than this?  This week's CSI case file is just so pleasing to the eye that no matter what you create from it, it's pretty much guaranteed to be gorgeous.  These are some of my favorite colors right now - from fashion to decor - so I couldn't wait to get going on this layout.  Thanks for stopping by!

For the chevron, I used my Heidi Swapp chevron mask and brushed on molding paste, misted with mint green  Color Shine.  It was a bit deeper than the seafoam green I was going for, so I went over it with some quick dry white fluid chalk ink.

I wanted to add some sort of pattern to the chevron to mix it up a bit so I took a random background polka dot stamp I had and impressed some dots into the molding paste.

Well, lookie there.  The doilies made another appearance (contrary to my declaration of never using them again.  Hey - they make a great paint palette.  hee hee.  (And you will note I actually used them as a real embellishment in the upper left corner of the layout...I'll eat my words...they're not as bad as I thought.  Still don't see my self using them all that frequently though.  This was a momentary lapse in reason. ;-)  Anywhoooooo!  For my title took some Thickers and painted them pink to match the flowers.

I layered stamp and masking in the background using the random polka dot background stamp, with varying pressure and amounts of ink, and then overlapped the polka dots with some Kraft colored chevron masking.

The camera and smile were the ends of a journaling card that I cut.  Saved the middle journaling piece for later use.  Then I added some gold liquid pearls for detail.

This is my favorite part of the layout.  Love the way the colors all blend together in this quadrant.  I added some extra glitter to the white flowers, and twisted a silver piece of twine to pull it together.

Ran a peach piece of something or another with pearls running through it.  I think it looks really pretty...or you could look at it and see a garter.  Let's not go there.  It's pretty.  Shush.

Materials used:

Mint green background paper (not sure of brand - got in my Citrus Twist kit)
Studio Calico Sundrifter collection 6" paper pad
Heidi Swapp chevron mask
Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Mint Green
White Thickers
Color Smart gloss acrylic paint in pink blast
Studio Calico journaling card
Wilton 4" doily
K& Company Brenda Walton wood art
Martha Stewart course crystal glitter
Recollections flowers
Recollections fabric with pearls
Recollections adhesive faux pearls
Ranger Liquid Pearls in gold
Random silver twine
Black ink ball point pen

Have a great week everyone!

It's a good day for a sunburst!

I tried to scrap some fall photos the other day.  Didn't work out.  This is the time of year where everyone comes out of hibernation and basks in the sunshine.  So warm spring and summer layouts it is!  This one was really fun to make.  The hubs thinks it looks "unfinished" but I didn't want to cover up too much of the sunny rays so I think it's just fine the way it is.  What do men know about this sort of thing anyway? ;-)  Happy Friday everyone!  Hope you all have a fabulous weekend.

I started out by cutting a sunburst mask out of cardstock.

Placed the mask over another piece of white cardstock, grabbed a circle stencil, and added some yellow mist.

I layered a red mist over the yellow to get some firey orange in there.

Removed the mask and got a great contrast of the bright colors and the bright white!

Outlined the rays with a roller pen, stamped and added a bit of shiny bling 

Really felt like I had to bring the green from the grass in the photo into the layout and settled on  these green rosettes.

Materials used:
white cardstock
Heidi Swapp Color Mists in Mustard and Sweet Cherry
Tim Holtz Visual Artistry Lost and Found cling stamps
Sticko dimensional stickers
Webster's Pages bloomers in Happy Green
Graphic Call 45 Curtain Call Let's Dance patterned paper
vellum phrase from who knows where
Roller pen