Divide a photo across pockets Pocket Your Year 2016 challenge

I've been playing with the Project Life app digital scrapbook page making ability to create pages with lots of photos with the same type of theme but taken at different times. In this page with photos of nature, mostly taken on walks during lunch and breaks at work, there are at least 2 pictures that go across two pockets, because I found that the whole picture didn't show in the 2x2 square but I wanted to show everything in the pictures. Since it's a digital page, there's some overlap in the pictures that wouldn't happen with a physical page, but I hope it still counts.

The first two photos on the left side of the bottom row are the same picture, just with the red flower the focus in the first one and the purple flowers the focus in the second one.

The other repeated pictures are the flowering trees in the second to bottom row. They are the third and second squares from the right side. The trees were close enough to photograph together but not close enough to fit in a 2x2 square together, so in one square I focused on the tree on the left side of the picture and in the other I focused on the tree in the right side of the picture.

There may be more photos put in two boxes but it was fairly late last night when I was playing with the app, so these are the only two I remember for sure.

Organizing My Stamps

I had purchased some of the stamp storage sheets from Stamper's Best when I bought my birthday presents there. I bought them because when I was doing my Christmas cards I found it was hard to look at everything that might go together since I had the stamps separated by theme on CD cases (such as all the Christmas decorations in one case and all the Christmas trees in another). I found, after doing all the cards, that I had missed one of the stamps from a Stampin' Up set because I hadn't thought to look in one of the cases. Because of this, I decided I wanted to try organizing a different way and the storage cards seemed like a good idea, it would make it easy to flip through all my stamps. I discovered, as I was organizing stamps onto those first cards I bought, that some of the clear stamps I own had started sticking to the CD cases, almost bonding to them, so I decided to move all my stamps to the storage cards.

I put the storage cards in 12 x 12 page protectors so that if a stamp comes off, it won't get lost. The pages themselves fit in 8 1/2 x 11 page protectors but when I put any stamp mounted on foam cling on the pages, they no longer fit. I only ruined one stamp taking them out of the CD cases, which was a really small number, given how many stamps I own. I had previously, a few years ago, ruined a couple stamps when they stuck to the CD cases, but somehow had never connected that the CD cases were causing the issue back then.

I bought both the clear and colored storage sheets for my birthday to see which ones I liked better. I like the colored sheets better. They are a little thinner than the clear sheets, since they are laminated cardstock but it was hard to tell what clear stamps looked like if there were some on each side of the clear sheets. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it might to change the stamps from the cases to the sheets, which was nice.

I bought this organizing rack at Costco to organize my bills, but found that I only had 2 folders I needed to use, so I decided to use this organizing rack for my stamps and use a smaller organizer I had sitting in my craft room not being used for bills. I also am going to use a paper holder I had siting around from Cropper Hopper (like this one) since I have a few more pages that aren't in the holder above and trying to force them into it made it too hard to be able to flip through the pages.

Some of my saying stamps. The computer is from Stampin' Up's Computer Quips set. We're all computer geeks in my house so when I saw it a few years ago in the catalog, I knew I had to get it.

Some of my animal stamps. My husband loves polar bears, so I bought these two polar bear stamps years ago when I saw them. The blue stamps are from The Angel Company, which I understand went out of business. That's too bad, I really like their stamps.

I've been buying a lot of costume stuff for Steampunk costumes, so I've also been buying gears and Steampunk related stamps. I even made a Steampunk Mardi Gras mask at a mask creating party before our friends' Mardi Gras party this year (I put a picture of it at the bottom of this blog post in case anyone wants to see my mask). These are my gear/Steampunk stamps with shape and scrapbook related stamps behind them.

My flower stamps with flourish stamps behind them. I mounted some of my clear flower stamps (from the Build a Flower set by Katie Pertier and marketed by Autumn Leaves) on foam cling so I could use them with a stamping gear by Inkadinkado I bought at Joann's. (This round set is the one I got.) I tried the stamps on with the gear without them mounted on foam cling, but because there's a raised area at the edge of the block where it attaches to the gear, it didn't work because the stamps were below that raised area. I think the gear is perfect for getting the petals exactly where I want them, so I mounted just the petals on the foam cling. I over-estimated how much foam cling I needed last year when I was replacing the tack-it-over-and-over glue I was using to coat the back of my unmounted rubber stamps to get them to adhere to the stamping blocks, so I had plenty left to do this small project.

My food and liquor related stamps.

This is how many CD cases full of stamps I used to have. I bought 23 storage sheets between the two orders and I already had one storage sheet I had gotten for free last year with an order, so I have 24 storage sheets. I think I still have one empty one, so this whole CD tower was consolidated down to 23 storage sheets. Not bad!

The mask I made at our friends' Mardi Gras Party

Me in the mask I made, wearing one of my corsets and a bolero jacket I bought to go with my corsets.

More floral cards

I went to a friend's Stampin' Up party a few weeks ago and bought the background sampler stamp set. It came with 4 stamps, an argyle stamp, a line stamp, a dot stamp and a floral stamp. In the new catalog there was a design showing a flower stamp that was an outline that the inside had been stamped with the background floral stamp from this set. I got the set last night from the hostess, so today I decided to play around with them and try the same idea. I used the pre-embossed cards from Die Cuts with a view and colored them with my watercolor pencils.

I used the line stamp, the floral stamp, and the dot stamp to make the background of the petals. I used the "build a flower" set I bought a while ago that is by Autumn Leaves to outline the petals, using one of the stamps from that set. The blue and pink are chalk ink and the purple is dye ink. I stamped the background stamp, then stamped the petal and center stamps on the background and cut them out. I layered the petals behind the center of the flower. 2 of the flowers I popped up with 3d foam tape and 1 flower I adhered directly on the card. The background is embossed with flowers. This card was colored with a pink pencil.

Close up of the pre-embossed card and the background stamps.

This one is the same basic card as the one above, except I used 2 blue flowers instead of the one blue and one purple. I also used a blue pencil instead of pink.

Close up of the pre-embossed card and the background stamps.

This card has a 2 1/4 inch square in the middle that isn't embossed. I cut slits along the top and bottom of the square and layered 3 different shades of blue ribbon over the square. The pre-embossed design is dots on this card. Other than that, it is the same basic card as the two above, assembled the same way and stamped exactly the same way. I used a purplish pink pencil to color the background of this card.

Close up of the pre-embossed card and the background stamps.

More trifold cards

I made a few more tri-fold cards for the craft fair I went to on June 29th and 30th. I forgot to take pictures before I put them in the plastic, so sorry about the bags. Since none of them sold, I took one of each out of the bags and took pictures again once I got home. So here they are without the bags, thanks for being patient with me.

This one I stamped 4 different sized star stamps on the red paper with my Versamark watermark ink, that makes an image just slightly darker shade than the paper. I then mounted the green star paper on the smaller of the two folds. I cut a light blue square and then a smaller square out of the green star paper and layered the two squares. I cut out a star using my sizzlet die and layered that on the squares. I placed the squares on the flap in a diamond configuration.

Same card as the one above, but using blue cardstock for the base instead of red.

I had fun creating this card. When I went to Micheal's last week, I bought a package of sparkly colored hot glue sticks. I made a dot of the red sparkly hot glue on a scrap paper and stamped it with one of my flower rubber stamps. After the glue had cooled a bit, I pulled the stamp out of the glue and it made the impression that is mounted on the square on this card. For the rest of the card, I stamped the flower stamp that I used with the hot glue on the red paper with my versamark pad. I then mounted the flower patterned paper on the smaller flap (this paper has glitter in the center of the flowers). I cut a square of the red cardstock, inked the edges so it stood out a little and then layered it with a smaller square of the flower patterned paper. I then mounted the hot glue flower seal in the middle of this layered square and mounted the square on the card.

Updated flower cards

I made these cards a few months ago. I didn't really like how they turned out, so I revisited them last week, trying some new stuff to see if I could get them to look better. I had bought these flower stencils and embossed them. They were just too plain all by themselves on the paper.

This one was pretty easy to do. Just emboss the leaves, dot and flower. But it's just missing something.

To update this one, I just put yellow paper on the background diagonally and then mounted the flower, part on and part off the paper. It just gives it a little more pizazz.

The hardest part of this one was making sure the petals lined up like they were supposed to around the center. Again, it just looks funny floating in the middle of nowhere like that.

I tore brown paper and put it on the edge of the card to make it kind of look like a tree trunk. I then cut green paper with my grass edge scissors and mounted that over the bottom of the stem. Now it looks like a flower growing out of the ground instead of out of nowhere : ).

Again, the flowers just look like they are floating in the middle of nowhere.

This one I just added grass cut green paper. It grounds the flowers and makes them look like they aren't floating.

Yet again, the flower pot looks like it's floating in mid air.

I put brown paper behind the flower pot to make it look like the pot is sitting on a table.

Make and Take Scrapbook Pages

I like these pages, but I think I might sell them at the craft fair next week. I've had them for a while and haven't used them yet, so my guess is they just don't mesh that well with my scrapbooking style.

This one was a workshop project from a Stampin' Up workshop. The title says "Snow Play" and it has those pretty snowflakes stamped all over the bottom of the blue and the white cardstock. Like I said, really pretty, just not really my style, since the only 8 1/2 x 11 scrapbooks I do are my boys' ones and these snowflakes just strike me as a little too elegant for a boys' scrapbook.

This one I did as a make and take at a crop I went to a while ago. All the paper is by Ann Griffin, if I remember correctly (it's old enough that I can't find the paper online, sorry). It was definitely fun folding that paper mat so that it looked like that. Tons of scoring and then folding and scoring again. It's really pretty, but I so seldom do one picture pages that I haven't used it yet. Oh well.

Girl's Birthday Card

It's been a busy week that hasn't left much time for paper crafting, unfortunately. We had a party last night for some friends, so the week has been spent tidying the house. Not that it was bad to begin with, but I always want it to be perfect before people come over. Though, the boys' rooms were BAD to begin with : ). I think it comes from them being in the basement where I very rarely go.

I made this girl "Happy Birthday" card the other day. It utilizes the "bloom dots" cuttlebug template I bought last week. The square clips my wonderful husband found at Staples when he was there picking up some transparency markers for himself and thought I'd enjoy them. He also got me a package of red and blue spiral clips that he saw that day. The flower is from the Autumn Leaves "build a flower" set I bought a while ago. I had stamped the leaves and stem, but the green pad was just a little too bright to look good on the rest of the card so I adhered the ribbon over the stamped lines. I think it took a mistake and made the card actually better for it. If you don't like what you've done, just experiment, especially if you're just going to throw the card away or start over if it doesn't look good : ). The "Happy Birthday" is a Basic Gray rub-on I picked up on clearance last week at Roberts. I had tried some other smaller rub-ons there too, but that didn't work out, so I took it off and started over with the strip. This one worked much better! Glad I only paid less than a dollar for those rub-ons or else I might feel guilty : ). After my husband bought me the clips, I was looking through the Splitcoast Stampers gallery for ideas to use them and several people had put ribbon through them and just attached them to random places on the cards. That's where I got the idea for the clips from. The ink on the flower is chalk ink that I bought at Robert's last week. I love the different look the chalk ink gives than normal ink.

Friends Cards

I used the Stampin' Up "Mini message" set on this one also. I stamped the background with flowers and stamped a "Friends" foam stamp I had (by Plaid" on part of it. I cut out the square, mounted the tag in the center of it with ribbon. The eyelets I used in the holes are flower shaped.

This one I made with die cuts from Creative Memories that I found in my stash while cleaning it out. I had just bought a Simple Impressions Sizzix's embossing folder I found on clearance that said "Friends" so I decided to try it out on this card. I embossed it on white paper and then colored the paper with chalk. I cut the grass with my "grass" decorative scissors and mounted the "friends" on the grass. I colored the butterfly's body brown and used chalk to highlight the embossed parts on the die cuts. I mounted cardstock behind the cut out part of the butterfly to make it a little more vibrant.

Another one from the Creating Keepsakes kit.

Thank you cards

I've made tons of Thank you cards. Maybe I should actually start sending some of them? : )

I made this one for a craft show my mom and I did. I stamped the flowers, cut them out, arranged them in a bunch (mounting some on 3d foam tape), drew the stems, and then stamped the bow. I used an alphabet template I have to write the words "Thanks a bunch".

This one was made for the craft show also. I stamped "Thank you" on some handmade paper I had, then matted that on a different color of the handmade paper. I stamped the background with the star stamp. On the tag, I stamped the "Thank you" part of the "Mini Messages" Stampin' Up stamp set and then stamped the star over that also. I mounted the tag over the card with the ribbon and some brads, using eyelets in the holes so the ribbon didn't tear the holes.

This set is called "Window Box" and is from Stampendous. My husband and I went to Archiver's scrapbook store when we were in a town with it for a friend's party (we went early so I could go to Archiver's : ). We were wandering around and he found this set and thought I'd like it so pointed it out to me. I truly have a great husband. Anyway, I had owned it for a few weeks and hadn't thought of anything to do with it, so I looked on splitcoaststampers.com to see if there were any ideas in their gallery using it that I liked. I found some cards by "cropmom66" that I liked with the set, so I took her basic idea and changed it a little to fit the products I have on hand. I stamped the sentiment and the 3 butterflies stamp on white cardstock, colored it with my watercolor pencils and blended them. I then cut out the stamped images, mounted them on blue cardstock and then red cardstock. I mounted blue organdy ribbon (from Stampin' Up) on the bottom along with 4 mini brads and then assembled the whole thing. Same basic design as Cropmom66's (her idea), but my own little twist on it.

Same basic card as above, but with different stamps and assembled a little different.

Same basic card as above, but with different stamps and assembled a little different.

Another card from the Creating Keepsakes kit. The part that says "Your kindness was very much appreciated" goes in the pocket on the card.

An invitation

I made this card for a scrapbook birthday party I threw myself this year. I embossed the flowers with a cuttlebug embossing folder. I stamped the "Let's Party" (a dollar wood mounted stamp from Micheal's) and then heat embossed it. After that I colored it with a pink watercolor pencil and blended it. I love circle paper clips so decided to hang the tags with them.

Noel's Challenge

Noel Mignon posted a challenge on her blog to use a pronoun on a layout (see the challenge here). I had originally thought to do a "Me" layout using pictures of myself from my childhood and teenage years that I had around here ready to go. However, as I flipped through my pictures, I didn't have hardly any and those I did have make more sense in the context of remaining with all the rest of the pictures from that subject. I did stumble across this picture of my husband and myself about a year before we got married (we dated for 2 1/2 years before we got married). I decided to do a layout using this picture and the title "We!" I used my new flower stamps also. This layout is so totally beyond what I normally do. Normally I fill most of the space with pictures and journal a lot, but this picture pretty much speaks for itself and since there is only one, I made the big flowers to fill the rest of the space. But I think it turned out great! My husband thinks so too, except that he hates this picture : ).

Wish me luck on the challenge!

Danielle

A flower Card

This morning my sons and I went to Shopko and then to the library. While at Shopko I picked up a new stamp set, named "Build-a-flower" by the Autumn Leaves company. It has 34 different stamps, each one a different flower part.

Later this afternoon while reading through the scrapbookaddict blog ring, I came across a post from Michelle entitled "Well, at least I tried" (Michelle's blog) that featured two very cute flower cards. I decided to try my new stamp set out making something similar to Michelle's card. It was fun to do, though the card is a lot bigger than what I normally make, a full sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper folded into (my normal cards are half a sheet of paper folded in half).

The center of the flower is one stamp, the petals another one, the stem another, and the leaf a final one. I stamped the petals in orange and then colored them with a yellow watercolor pencil, blending it with a brush and water. I added a little rhinestone in the center for a little bling and tied some orange rick-rack around the stem in a bow.

A little closer look at the flower.

Thinking of You Cards

These cards are ones with the sentiment of "Thinking of You."

Another one from the Creating Keepsakes card kit. It was fun experimenting with different types of cards than what I usually make.

Please see the "Hello Cards" post to see my inspiration for these next three cards. This is a set of stamps called "Window Box" by Stampendous. I colored the sentiments with my watercolor pencils. I really like the vase stamp on this card.

Another one from the Window Box set. The lady bug is really cute. The top 3 mini brads are red and the bottom 3 are blue.

I love this butterfly stamp from the Window Box set.

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

I'm having fun making frilly cards. We only have 2 boys, so when I scrapbook I usually use masculine colors and themes. It's been fun making cards that are more girly.

This first one I used a Cuttlebug embossing template called "Textile Texture" to do the red layer. I then put blue organdy ribbon on it, layered with a white organdy ribbon with a ribbon charm that matches the swirls on the embossing template.

This one I started by cutting a piece of green paper with my Provo Craft grass pattern decorative scissors. I then stamped the flowers in 3 different colors and cut them out, adding a rivet (an eyelet without a hole) to the middle of the flower to give it a 3d effect. I then put the flowers on the card, drew the stems and leaves on and then mounted the clouds I drew and then cut out. I later added a butterfly stamp from one of the $1 Studio G sets. In the corner it says "Think Spring" in a rose color.

I got the idea for this one from http://www.ilovecraftrobo.com/. The owner of that site has templates from classes she taught and one of them was a card basically like this, but it used prima flowers instead of stamped ones. I used the flower cut out she had made, but drew my own circles for the stamped flowers, cutting out both the circles and the big flowers on my craft robo. I stamped the flowers, colored them with my watercolor pencils and blended them. I then cut them out, added mini brads in the center and mounted them on colored papers mounted underneath the holes on the inside of the card. I then took the big flowers I had cut, layered them so each layer showed and added a brad in the center to hold the layers all together. I then mounted it on the rest of the assembled card. I didn't add any sentiment, but that can be added later if we want. I made this one for a spring card swap on scrapbookaddict.com and liked it so much I made 6 more for me to keep.

I was going through my paper sticker binders where all my precut die cuts, stickers and other embellishments are held looking for ones I could send to Mindy from scrapbookaddict.com who is going to start a cropping group for autistic children in her area (her daughter is autistic). I came across these Creative Memories flower and butterfly die cuts and pulled them out so I could make a card with them. I highlighted the raised area with chalk, colored the body part of the butterfly brown with a marker, and then layered them together, adding green paper cut with my grass decorative scissors. It's pretty simple, but I like how it turned out.

I first embossed the white layer with the "Divine swirl" cuttlebug embossing folder. I then ran my versamark pad over it, embossed with heat and stick powder, and added white perfect pearl powder to give it shimmer. I then embossed the swirl stamp (the one seen on the tag) on white card stock using clear embossing powder and my versamark pad so it would basically just be see-through. I then took a q-tip, dipped it in my blue ink pad, and covered about a third of the strip with blue ink, which served to highlight the embossed stamp. I repeated the process with green and then yellow (I really need to invest in a brayer soon). I then took a circle vellum tag, stamped the swirl on it, added a little bit of color with the heat and stick powder and luster rub-ons (which are kind of like chalk) and then added the color to the tag also. I then added eyelets to the tag to put the ribbon through, mounted the ribbon with brads to hold it in place and mounted that whole assembly on the card.

I embossed with the "Divine swirl" cuttlebug folder, but put the embossing facing the card so the design is set into the paper instead of being raised from it. I then cut a little piece of the blue paper with a set of decorative scissors, punched 3 holes and added ribbon in the holes. I embossed a flower template I had, cut it out, highlighted the edge with chalk, and mounted it in on a square of white cardstock which is then mounted on the purple embossed part. I found a epoxy sticker that I liked for the center of the flower.

This one is really simple. I embossed the flower and the stem and the leave (it's hard to see the embossing in the picture) and cut it out. I then mounted it on handmade paper I had bought that has little flecks of flowers petals in it and mounted that whole thing on the card.

This one is the same as the one above it, just a different flower template.

This one is embossed with "Divine swirl" again. The pink piece of paper is cut with the same decorative scissors as the previous one and has ribbon tied to that again. I used the flower from the Cuttlebug "2x2.75 Flowers" embossing folders that usually has dots around it, but cut it out around the petals eliminating the dots. I highlighted the embossed part with chalk and mounted a mini brad in the enter of the flower. I then mounted the flower on one of the Cuttlebug "2x2.75 decorative squares 2" and added that to the overall design of the card. Lots of embossing, but I feel it came together well.

This one is my favorite card I've done lately. I embossed the pink layer with the "Textile texture" cuttlebug embossing folder. I then mounted a strip of purple cardstock on top of that. I took some prima flowers Kathy M from scrapbookaddict.com had sent me for wining a challenge last year and layered 2 different colored ones 4 times onto a strip of pink cardstock with mini brads in the center. I then mounted that pink strip of cardstock with 3d foam onto the purple strip of cardstock, making it pop up from the card some. I cut a square from pink and then a slightly larger one from purple and mounted a pair of slightly larger prima flowers on the pink square with a mini brad through the center to hold it together and mounted the whole thing in the lower right corner of the card. I discovered that I love the prima flowers and wished that they hadn't been packed away with my nick-knacks for a year while we built our house last year : ).

This one I used the "Script" cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the gold paper. I then stamped the word laugh on the red ribbon and on the gold rectangle. I mounted the ribbon across the top of the card and then mounted the gold rectangle on a bigger red rectangle and mounted those in the bottom right corner of the card. I added two blue primas layered and held together by a mini brad on a gold square mounted on a bigger red square and mounted that on the card also. I think altogether it makes a very striking card.

This one is the same card as the one above, just with the script embossed on orange instead of gold. I like the gold better, but wanted to experiment to see which looked best.

Thanks for looking!

Danielle