In search of Pink Nuns, the layout edition

A while back, I blogged about my search for nuns in pink habits while in Rome. And today, I've finally gotten around to creating a layout in honor of my obsession. Since I didn't actually SEE any pink nuns in Rome, I wanted to make the background very, well, pink. And I wanted it to be frothy and girly and just plain fun (for me, anyway). So I grabbed some Prima: papers, flowers, and bling. I can't think of a company that does over the top girly better than Prima does. I pulled out all my pink paints, inks, and Glimmer products. And this is what I came up with:

I added tons and tons of flowers:

And coated these Melissa Frances cherubs with a light layer of pink Glimmer Glam:

I used a Glimmer Screen and a couple of shades of pink Glimmer Mist to create this water color element:

I painted some white chipboard letters with pink paint, and used pop dots to fit them over top of the pearl bling:

I had originally intended to put my journaling directly above the watercolor element. But, I quickly realized that, first, my nun story was kind of long and wouldn't fit in that space, and, second, I didn't want all that black or brown ink marching across my pink layout. So I wrote out my journaling on a 5x7 card and attached it to the back of my layout.
I'm enjoying this extra day off from work. My parents are coming down for a short visit, and Mom is going to share some of her cross stitch designs for next month's market. Can't wait to see what she's been up to. Happy crafting, everyone!

Back to School challenge

Recently, I've been following a new blog called the Counterfeit Kit Challenge. They take an image of a monthly kit from one site or another, and challenge you to create your own kit inspired by the items listed/pictured. There are tutorials for homemade embellishments, and now layout challenges. So yesterday evening, I tried my hand at the first mini challenge, the back to school challenge.

For this challenge, I watched the "Scrapbook Stamping" lesson for January on the TwoPeas website. The idea is to make a layout using word stamps for your title (or subtitle, or as a border), and then, to participate in the Counterfeit challenge, you have to use your inspired kit. With me so far? So here's my layout:

The stamp is from a Donna Downey collection by Unity Stamp Company. Everything else (except the centers of my flowers, I guess) is taken from my counterfeit creation of the JBS December kit. Can you see the doily tucked under the title and the bingo card? The original kit had Maya Road doily transparencies. My doily is recycled from a package of Prima flowers. I cut it out and painted the backside green to make it stand out a little from the paper underneath. My yellow flowers were colored using Glimmer Mist in Mimosa and Jingle Bells.

The picture in this layout is of Alton and I standing on the side of one of the great pyramids at Giza. This was the first 'site' we visited on our tour of Egypt. What an awesome place to begin with! A century ago, you could climb all over the pyramids. These days, there was only one that you could climb, and only a small way up. Which was fine with me, because it was a rather dizzying experience. We're standing near the entrance to the interior of the pyramid. For a small fee, you could walk/crawl inside of the pyramid. Alton and I opted not to go inside, because our guide assured us that we would be able to enter one of the step pyramids for free later in the day. So here we are, and in case you can't tell, I'm having the time of my life, standing on a building that was created some 4 and a half millenia ago, half a world away from home, and sharing it with someone special.

Okay, I'm done waxing nostalgic for now. Off to play with the pink nun layout (I hope). Have a great weekend, everyone!

Keeping it simple

I finally had to go back to work today, and it was not pleasant. First, there was the walk to work: across The Wooden Porch of Terror, down the street to the detour around the The Glass Hill, and then walking in the street at The Intersection of Polished Glass. If I thought I could have found a parking space, I would have been MUCH safer driving to work today! And then there was work itself. Lots of chaos and confusion as all the people who didn't have court earlier in the week tried to figure out what to do next, and we coped with a week-long calendar for Admin squashed into two days. Needless to say, I did not get much accomplished other than sitting in a courtroom waiting for my turn.

Anyway, I didn't really seem to accomplish much during the rest of my time at home. Only one layout finished, and it was a very simple one about the courtyard from the Vatican Museum:

I wanted to do more layouts, but the spill I took on the driveway Tuesday left me just sore enough to feel uncomfortable standing at my scrap table. Probably because I didn't try to scrap on Wednesday until AFTER I'd attempted to remove some more of the snow off my back porch. With my dustpan, because I don't own a snow shovel. This year is the first time in 10 years of living in Robeson County that I've actually needed one!

I did make some pretty decent progress on The North Wind. Here's the before picture:

And here's what's finished after 2 days of snowbound stitching:

I came home today with every intention of getting some scrapbooking done this evening. Here's what I accomplished:
1- pulled some papers and began plotting my "Pink Nun" layout;
2- watched a video class and pulled some papers for the "Counterfeit Kit Challenge";
3- admired the newly released Unity Stamps (I only want about $300 worth of them. Dream on, girl);
4- chatted with the gang at Webster's Pages Ning board;
5- admired the newly released (or soon to be released) Webster's Pages lines.

That about covers my scrappy progress for today. And I have nothing to show for it but a credit card in danger of being used too much. I'm going to try to be good, but when the product is soooo pretty, it's really hard.

Maybe tomorrow all those Pink Nun and Counterfeit ideas rolling around in my head will turn into something tangible!

Til then, keep creating, and keep safe!

Snow Day!

Greetings from frozen southern North Carolina. It's another day home from work due to the ice and snow. I know I'm going to be really, really sad when I do make it back to work and have to catch on everything, but I did have fun crafting and creating yesterday. I finished two layouts and got a little stitching done, too.

I started with this two page layout covering the beautiful artwork of the Vatican Museum:

While I was digging around for the papers for the museum layout, I ran across the photo I used in this next layout. It's a picture of me as a toddler. I took it from my parents' house a while back, intending to create a layout using WP Wonderfall line. Somehow, I never had time to get around to it, and the picture kind of got buried. So I drug it back out and finally got it scrapbooked. Here's the layout:

And a couple of detail photos:



I also spent part of the day working on another angel ornament. It's not a ton of progress.


I think I'm going to go back to "The North Wind" for any stitching I do today. Seems appropriate, somehow, given the frozen world outside my window. I also need to shovel my porch. It doesn't get any sun, so it'll never melt if I don't help it along. Sigh! I'm really not looking forward to the task. On the bright side, walking to work means that I won't have to scrape my car windows. Stay warm, stay safe, everyone!

Half Penny Angel and the snow

Yesterday evening, I finished an ornament for a friend. The design is Half Penny Angel from The Primitive Needle. I converted it to an ornament, stitched it on 40 count Sand Dune by Lakeside Linens, and finished it as a pillow. This was my first attempt at adding beads to an ornament. It worked, but it was an... interesting... experience. I don't know if I did it right, but I added the beads as I was joining the front to the back, placing the bead between the two sides on every 3rd stitch. The beads were all on the inside of the piece, and I had to push them through when I turned the ornament right side out. There's probably a more efficient way to do that...
Anyway, here's the ornament:

I've got the day off today, due to a ridiculous amount of snow (ridiculous for southern, coastal plains North Carolina). This is what it looks like outside my window this morning:

The weatherman is saying that we already have 3 and a half inches. That's great. What I'm not looking forward to is the ice storm arriving this evening.

The plan for today includes napping, reading, scrapping, and stitching some more versions of the ornament in the first picture of this post. Stitching can be a bit of a challenge in this household. I leave you with this image of the assistance I received last night in finishing the ornament. This is what my lap looked like:

Notice that there is room for a third cat to squeeze in just below my leg, since I OBVIOUSLY curled my leg up for just that very purpose (and not because it's comfy to sit that way for a few minutes). And please don't think for a minute that that unused space stayed empty for very long.

My first Egypt layout (and my crazy cats)

I created my first layout from our Egyptian vacation yesterday! Here it is:

I used papers from the new Spring Market line from Websters Pages. The background is glimmer misted with "Jingle Bells" and a Crafters Workshop screen.

I layered some of my cutwork and added buttons to try to create some dimensions for the piece:


I distressed my accent photo, but then forgot to distress the main photo before I glued it down, whoops! Check out the man carrying a load of pita bread in this picture. It was hot, fresh baked, and absolutely delicious!

Alton and I both loved the experience of wandering through that market. The entire area is protected from the heat by those movable carpets you see overhead. Along with a few touristy stalls, there were pharmacies, a butcher shop (which stank to high heaven), electronics stalls, clothing stalls, and, of course, the spice stalls. Basket after basket full of red, black, white, green, and blue peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, and many others. I bought some chamomile and saffron. While I didn't write down how much I paid for the saffron, it was something like a dollar or two an ounce. I saw it in a local grocery store the other day for, I think, $15 an ounce. I haven't used it yet; I'm waiting for the right occasion!

In other news, it looks like we might be getting a major ice storm overnight and into tomorrow, so if court is canceled maybe I can get a ton of crafting time tomorrow! And if the power goes out, at least I know that I'll have the cats to keep me warm. Sometimes I'm so jealous of them when I see them taking one of their many naps. Here's Lucky in sweet mode:

And Princess guarding my ottoman from all the other cats:

And finally, I watched Lucky being weird this morning. Honestly, I don't know what else to call it. He climbed onto the window from the cat tree and left his hind leg cocked up against the tree for about a minute and a half before moving on to attack Spike. Weird, weird, weird.

Happy crafting everyone, and stay safe!

Is this really a 2-page layout?

When I first started scrapbooking, all I ever did were two page layouts. And I had a difficult time conceiving of a single page layout. There were always too many pictures that I wanted to use, and the idea of cutting down from 6 to one or two seemed ridiculous. Of course, now, I almost never make double paged layouts. The changeover was fairly subtle, but I think I can trace its roots to my discovery of Bad Girls Kits. Those girls did such a wonderful job of encouraging creativity and trying new things, and most of what I was inspired to do only took one page.

So now, when I actually need to make a double paged layout, I struggle. I struggle a lot. Take these two pages here:

I mean, it has many of the qualities of a double page layout: continuity of paper and embellishments; one over arching theme; only one title and one journaling spot for the two pages together. Don't get me wrong, these two pages are meant to sit side by side in an album, but consider the creative process I used to get there. I made the left-hand page, and when I was finished, I made the right hand page with the same basic set of products. I didn't lay them out together and map everything out at one time. So I'm not sure that it really is a double page layout. Or, if it is, maybe it's just a very poorly planned double layout. What do you think? (be nice)

Details:

I 'made' these flowers using some small silk flowers layered on top of some Prima canvas flowers, and also added some American Crafts flower ribbon. The ribbon had quite a bit of netting on either side of the flowers, which I trimmed off. I used some of that netting as lacing in these JBS buttons:

And finally, I trimmed off some of the green paper on the right hand side that's behind the pink paper and cut sever flowers out of it to add to the front of that page:

The journaling on this page is about our walk past all the bridges and towards the Piazza Navona in Rome. Hmmm, comparing this layout to my last one makes me realize that I somehow managed to get the pages in my Rome album mixed up. It's not a huge deal, but I wonder how that happened!

I'm curled up with one of the cats in my favorite chair right now, but I'm thinking I might be heading towards a nap in the very near future! It's so cold and blah outside, the perfect weather to cuddle up with a warm, purring little friend and take a snooze.

PS. Did you notice that my warrior angel has ripped her way through my layout?