Monday, July 15, 2013

Hello and welcome to our little Christmas in July blog hop! If you're following along, you've just come from Jen's blog. If you're just dropping in, you can catch the beginning of the hop at Ruth's blog. In either case, I've got lots to show you, so stick around!

Like most people, I take tons of photos in December, especially on Christmas Day. Now that my sons are older, I don't feel as overwhelming a need to scrapbook every. single. one. Still, even paring down leaves me with a dozen or more photos to work with.

I had tons of BoBunny Blitzen papers and embellishments left over from a class I taught last year, so I employed it in creating these layouts:




I found that I still had tons of Christmas morning photos even after I made these layouts, so I switched to pocket pages to store and display the rest of them. I recently bought several sheets of cream-colored notebook paper at Hobby Lobby, and I immediately came home and sliced them all up into 4x6 and 6x4 blocks for creating journaling blocks for just such pages. A few embellishments and some handwriting, and voila!

(front)

 (back)

 (front)

(back)

I hope I've given you some inspiration for getting lots of Christmas photos scrapped, as well as using up any older Christmas stash you might have lying around. And to help get you into the Christmas mood, I'm giving away a couple of little stocking stuffers from my Etsy shop: A yard each of Maraschino and Peapod baker's twine, and a foot each of red polka dot and green gingham ribbon tape. To win them, simply become a follower of my blog. If you are already following, just leave a comment letting me know, and you'll be entered
to win too!

Now onto the next stop: Margaret's blog

Friday, July 12, 2013

DIY Friday

Do you love the look of those adorable little enamel dots, but don't have any in your stash? I can't remember exactly what got me started on this quest, but at some point recently, I started looking for ways to create my own enamel dots. I found an interesting tutorial on YouTube that used floral beads, and it seemed like an inexpensive way to create (and recreate, as needed) tons of these little gems. I couldn't find the beads, though, so I started doing some brainstorming of my own. Here's my first attempt:

I started with copy transparencies I already had on hand (I use these to store my unmounted rubber stamps on). I rounded up a couple of nail polish colors from my bathroom cabinet, and picked up a few more from Dollar Tree and Walmart. I also gathered up all my small circle punches.

 

 Next, I painted a coat of each of the colors I wanted to use onto the transparency, then let it sit to dry for about 10 minutes.


 I cut out my strips in preparation to punch them. I liked the look of one coat, but to get more even coverage, I decided to go ahead and do a second coat.


 You can see here that the strips of color do have some transparency to them, though I wasn't sure how that would translate on the actual scrapbook page.


Time to punch! I had this little "craft punch" that makes circles about 3/8 of an inch. It's not a very sturdy punch, and eventually got so it didn't stand up very well to the acetate. It began to hang up, so I had to abandon that, even though I liked the size.

 

 Next, I tried my Crop-a-dile. This little workhorse punched right through the plastic like a hot knife through butter, but I quickly saw that the little circles tended to fly all over the place!


 I tried punching with the Crop-a-dile facing so that the punchies could fall directly into the little plastic cup I was collecting them in. Eventually, I started holding my left hand over the top and then ejecting the punchies, but that left me with no hands to take pictures! ;)


Finally, I tried my old-fashioned hole-punch.


 I found that it didn't completely punch the circle,so went back to the Crop-a-dile to finish out the job.

So, in the end I had a cup full of - you've probably already guessed this - candy-colored confetti. That's right, my creations look more like confetti than the coveted enamel dots. And they did not have an adhesive backing, which meant I would need to use some sort of liquid glue to attach them. Still, I had to see how they would look on a layout.

Just so happened, I had one that needed a little extra "something," so I gave it a go, and this is what I came up with:

I have to say, while I like the end result (I may play with adding a few more), but this was not the look I was ultimately going for. I still have another idea or two I may try. And I think I'll use the rest of my confetti on some card creations!

Would love to see your examples of DIY enamel dots! Please feel free to link me up in the comments!

LH

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

New items in my Etsy shop!




Hey all!

I've just come back from vacation, and it was wonderful! Hubby and I went back to Gatlinburg, Tennessee for the 3rd time. We stayed an entire week, and we even drove over into North Carolina and visited the Biltmore Estate. It was breathtaking, and I could never imagine living like that!

At any rate, before we left, I ordered some new lovelies for my Etsy shop, and they arrived while we were away. These fabric ribbon tapes are repositionable like washi, but they are made of actual cotton fabric. Look for some projects putting these little honies to use in upcoming posts. Meanwhile, hop on over to the shop and pick up a few feet to play with!



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