Top 13 Projects of 2013: Year In Review

Hello everyone. I can't believe a new year is dawning!  As 2014 approaches, I wanted to look back at my creative projects from 2013 and post a few of my favorites.  I love seeing these types of posts on your blogs and wanted to follow suit. 

Below are 13 of my favorites in the order that they appeared on my blog this year. The blue titles hyperlink back to the original posts and tutorials. 

At The Sea - Pebbles Inc. 

I'm All Ears - October Afternoon

Welcome Little One - Echo Park Paper

Lollipop Tents - Echo Park Paper

Delight - Little Yellow Bicycle

Sailboat Tag - Pebbles Inc.

Silly Amazing Handsome You - My Mind's Eye

The Race - My Mind's Eye

I Fell In Love - Fancy Pants Designs

Tuesdays With Cory Mini Album - Fancy Pants Designs

One Fine Day - Fancy Pants Designs

Toilet Roll Reindeer - Fancy Pants Designs

Shaker Card - Crate Paper

Do you have a favorite among these?

As it turned out, 2013 was the Year of the Pub for me. I had 38 projects in print publications this year including work in Paper Crafts Magazine, Creating Keepsakes, Better Homes and Gardens (specialty issue Make It Yourself), Scrapbook and Cards Today, Scrapbooking & Beyond, CARDS, Scrapbook Trends, Create and Simply Handmade.  Sadly, most of these magazines have either ceased publication or will publish only (or primarily) in digital form in 2014. 

I hope 2013 was a wonderful year for you. If you've written a list of favorite projects from the past year, I'd love to see your post. Please link it in the comments. 

Happy New Year!

Capturing Graduation: Simple Stories

My layout today celebrates my brother Michael’s college graduation. His education was interrupted a few years ago by a tour of duty in Iraq. He was deployed right before exams and was not able to finish the semester. I was so proud of him that he went back to college, repeated that semester, and graduated.

　

My brother’s degree is in construction management, thus the white hard hat in lieu of a mortarboard. But you can’t have a graduation layout without a graduation hat.....so I made one. I used black and white baker’s twine from The Twinery for the tassel. It was really fun and easy to make.

I love these Simple Stories journaling cards. They are a must-have in every collection. These school-themed ones are from Elementary, one of the earlier lines. I thought they fit perfectly here. The background paper is from Simple Stories’ Awesome line, which is, well, awesome. I love SS's new basics. This particular pattern has faint stars. Love that.

Simple Stories is running a challenge to post a project using its element cards. You can find the challenge here.

Supplies:

CS: Bazzill Basics

PP: Simple Stories

Alphas: Basic Grey, October Afternoon

Stickers:  October Afternoon, Crate Paper

Button: October Afternoon

Twine: The Twinery

Sewing Machine: Bernina

My Growing Boy

My baby is growing up too fast.  I caught him here last year, at age 1, before he was weaned from the bottle, dragging along his favorite blanket and toting along a puzzle. I'm so glad I thought to grab my camera and get these shots. They really take me back.  Cory went through a stage where he took that blanket and a puzzle everywhere he went: from room to room in the house, in the car, to the grocery store, at school, etc.  It was such the cutest stage.  I miss my baby!

I used the December "Naughty or Nice?" kit from Scraptastic Club.  It's full of a great mix of holiday papers from Lily Bee, Echo Park, Fancy Pants and Crate Paper.

Scraptastic Club sponsors challenges each month with great prizes. Come play along. There are four challenges and you have until Dec. 31 to upload your entries. The prize this month is the Random Collection from Crate Paper. Oh, I love that line!   You can find the challenges on the Scraptastic Club Blog here.

December Daily - Day 5

Back with another post from my December Daily. This is Day 5, which was a Monday. Since we didn’t do anything especially Christmasy on this day, I decided to use this page to focus on a few of my favorite things of the holidays.

　

I had planned to handwrite the journaling, but it was too long. So I just printed it directly on the calendar overlay from Ali Edwards. Below is an excerpt of what I wrote:

I love the stories of Christmas. It makes me smile to think of the wise men following that yonder star, of the humble trek to Bethlehem and of a babe born in a manger. I also love the secular stories of Christmas: the sappy human interest stories, those Hallmark tear-jerkers, bright messages from friends on Facebook and blogs and the familiar Grinch and Charlie Brown. 

This is how the spread looks in my album.  I'm using an American Crafts 2-ring binder that came with the Studio Calico December Daily kit.  You can view Days 1 - 4 here.

December Daily Supply list:

Echo Park: Holly Jolly - 6x6 pad, 12x12 collection kit, chipboard, stamps; Metro Dots and Stripes - 6x6 pad, 12x12 collection kit; Season’s Greetings 12x12 collection kit, chipboard, brads; Everybody Loves Christmas 12x12 collection kit.

American Crafts: Album

Ali Edwards: calendar overlays

Hambly: Transparencies

Bo Bunny: ribbon

Fancy Pants: ribbon

Crate: stickers and chipboard

Cosmo Cricket: tiny type

Jenni Bowlin: letter stickers

October Afternoon: letter stickers

Martha Stewart: kraft tags

The Twinery: twine

Making Memories: Buttons

My Mind’s Eye: Stamps

Ranger Industries: Ink

Sewing Machine: Bernina

Kit club: Studio Calico

Scraptastic Club Guest Designer

It’s December and I am so happy to welcome in the holiday season. Today, I officially start my December Daily and my little one opens the first door of his Lego Advent calendar.

But first I want to share that I am a guest designer this month for Scraptastic Club. It’s a great kit club that gives you a choice of two kits each month. Both kits have great add-on options too. You can find the kits here. 

I chose the Naughty or Nice? kit.

Here’s my first project. I scrapped a photo of my Dad with my brothers on Christmas morning. I love this Crate ornament paper. I pop-dotted some of the ornaments for dimension then set off the paper by adding borders punched from cream cardstock down either side.

The large green die cut is Bo Bunny and it had a blue scallop design around the perimeter, which made the die cut too big for my design.  So, I cut off the blue and stitched a red frame to ground the die cut. On top, I added a tag using a cute reindeer stamp from Imaginesce and alphas from Lily Bee.

Scraptastic Club sponsors challenges each month with great prizes. Come play along. The first challenge is to use border punches and you have until Dec. 31 to upload your entry. The prize this month is the Random Collection from Crate Paper. Oh, I love that line!   You can find the challenges on the Scraptastic Club Blog here.

August Freehand Scraps Kit

I just love the August kit from Freehand Scraps and had a wonderful time this month as guest designer. The kit is chock full of papers and embellishments from Bo Bunny, Webster’s Pages, Basic Grey and Crate and they all worked perfectly together. Here is a photo of the August Kit:

Here is one of the layouts I made from the kit::

 

This is my friend’s little girl last Halloween. Isn’t she the sweetest? I used Bo Bunny's Gabrielle papers here with embellishments from Basic Grey's Out of Print collection.  I misted the lace sticker above the photo to match her outfit and used ink and stamps to re-color the large die-cut butterfly, which is shell colored in the kit.  The letter stickers are from Webster's Pages. Here’s a closeup of the titlework.

I don't normally put the title at the bottom of the page, but it fit the design here and allowed room at the top for the butterflies to roam free.

While I had this Bo Bunny line out, I though I’d make a card. I fussy cut the big butterfly from one of the patterned papers, inked the edges, then “painted” it with Claudine Hellmuth’s multi-medium matte. I love that stuff. It is similar to modge podge but isn’t as wet or shiny. The multi-medium helped to stiffen the butterfly a little to give it more body and also allowed me to mold the wings up a bit. I added some pearls from the kit to the butterfly’s body. 

To make the card base, I used a premade 5x7 notecard from American Crafts and cut a piece of pp for the front.  I sewed it on, tucking in a border of lace from the Crate trim card in the kit. To finish the card, I added a Webster's button tied with twine (also in the kit) and stamped a short sentiment.

I'll be back later this month with more projects from the August kit. For more information about Freehand Scraps, follow this link: http://www.freehandscraps.com/

Gathered Ribbon Flower Tutorial and Sneak Peek

I'm really honored to be a guest designer for the August kit of Freehand Scraps. The new kit is chock full of yummy goodies, which I can't reveal quite yet. But I can show you a few sneak peeks.  Today, I am going to show you how I used a few products in the August kit to make a gathered ribbon flower.

One of the items in the Freehand Scraps kit is this Crate trim from the "Neighborhood" collection. Love Crate trims! I used the shell-colored ruffle ribbon to make my flower. This trim is perfectly suited for flower making because it has the nice elastic at the bottom, which is easy to run a needle through.

I used orange embroidery thread here so you can see my stitches. The stitches won’t show so you can use any color thread you have on hand. Make sure you tie a good knot at the end of your thread because you will have to pull on the ribbon to gather it.

Use your needle to make long running stitches on the elastic part of the trim. After you’ve stitched the length you need for your flower, use your fingers to gently gather the trim. The ribbon will naturally curl into a circle. You can make your gathers tight or loose, depending on the look you prefer. Once you have your circle, either backstitch or tie a knot in the other end of the thread to secure it. Then stitch the two ends of the ribbon together to hold the circle. Don’t worry about stitching neatly because none of the stitching will show once you add a decorative center.

The ribbon was a little too pink for my project, so after I had gathered the flower, I misted it with Tattered Angels’ “Peach Delight.” I love the way you can use mists to color ribbon and trim.  I always mist lightly first, then again if I want more color. The photo above shows the flower after a first spray with mist.  To give the flower a deeper hue, I misted it again.

The last step is to embellish the center. I used a small circle sticker from Basic Grey’s “Out of Print” collection topped with an adhesive pearl. Both the sticker sheet and adhesive pearls were in the August kit.  After my flower was completed, I used it as a decorative center on a die cut butterfly to mimic the butterfly wings in my photo.

Now you have a sneak peak at one of my Freehand Scrap projects. I'll post the full layout next week.