January 2019

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I am happy to report that I DID work on going through pictures yesterday while eating apple cinnamon pancakes for breakfast.  Now I just need to make it a weekly thing :) The hubs took Ryan out of the house for a bit too so I got to work in my craft room just a little.  Didn't totally finish the layout I was working on, but that's okay because it involves a lot of fussy cutting and that just takes time.

On to today's layout!  Since I've shared all of Ryan's baby book here, I feel like I can share other post-Ryan layouts.  I mean, it's my blog and there aren't any rules, but in my head I had to wait until I posted all of his baby book here.  So anywha!  Here's a layout from two years ago.

I love that diamond patterned paper but I think I only have teeny scraps of it left after doing this layout.  It's a good thing that I stocked up on Blueberry Bushel cardstock because I use it a LOT on Ryan layouts.  Like, constantly.  I've done quite a few monthly roundup layouts post-Ryan; we just take random pictures of him all the time so these types of roundup layouts are the best way to share the pictures, though it sometimes makes color combinations a bit tricky.  I have to giggle at the pictures of him in his wolf costume--I told him to grab something warm to wear when we were on our way to the Y one day, and he brought me the costume.  It really WAS something warm to wear, so I let him, and man was he the most popular dude at the Y that day.  Ha!

I really need to figure out a good place to take pictures of my scrapbook pages and color palettes in this house.  I mean, I took these pictures in NC and they're too dark but I have the same problem here.  Anyway, today's color palette is Riding Hood Red (still a favorite of mine, it seems to play a bit nicer with other colors than Real Red does sometimes), Bashful Blue, Smoky Slate, Blueberry Bushel, and Whisper White.

Hope your week is off to a great start.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Numbers, My Paper Pumpkin
Ink:  Riding Hood Red, Blueberry Bushel, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Riding Hood Red, Blueberry Bushel, Smoky Slate, Thick Whisper White, Frosty Day DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Stars dies

Nordic Noel Colorblock

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I have enough Christmas pages done already that I don't have to make any new ones between now and January.  : D

A couple of years ago I came up with the idea to take all the photo Christmas cards we got and make a color-blocked layout for my scrapbooks.  I'd only done pages for a year or two, but after we moved to Alabama I found all the other years' Christmas cards.  So I made A LOT of pages all in a row, which is why I don't have to worry about my Scrappy Monday posts all month.  Teehee.

Basically I picked a different patterned paper pack for each year and just went to town.

And some years I have more cards than others.  This time I ended up needing to make five pages total.

I thought I had gotten all the cards in but then I found a couple more that had been hiding, so whenever the 2014 scrapbook pages make it into an album, this will be the last page.

Well, you know what they say...places to go, things to do.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Numbers
Ink:  Garden Green, Real Red
Paper:  Garden Green, Real Red, Calypso Coral
Accessories:  Deco Labels Framelits, Itty Bitty Punch Pack star

Best of Serendipity

Howdy, folks!  I hope you had a good weekend.  Hubs and I went to Liverpool and had our picture taken on Penny Lane and at Strawberry Field and listened to lots of Beatles music, so that was pretty awesome.  I'll work on posting some Liverpool pics on my other blog (link at right).

Then we got home last night and I saw this sketch from As You See It:

...and I thought hey!  I can do serendipity squares with that.  Behold!

The rectangles are done with the serendipity squares technique (though obviously you don't *have* to make it squares).  I first learned this technique in the Splitcoast Dare to Get Dirty challenges several years ago, and it's fun and freeform and kind of chaotic.  So here's how I did it this time.

Step 1.  Choose your colors.  I wanted to use the Sweater Weather DSP, so I went with Chocolate Chip, Crushed Curry, Sahara Sand, Soft Sky, Tangerine Tango, and Very Vanilla.  Anything goes here, just pick whatever colors appeal to you.

Step 2.  Smoosh some ink pads around on plain ol' Very Vanilla cardstock.  You could do just one or two, but I did three (Crushed Curry, Sahara Sand, and Soft Sky).  I'd stick with the lighter colors for this step or else your stamping won't show up as much.  I stuck my ink pads on the paper and then kind of twisted them, but you could just drag them across the paper or sponge on color or however you want to do it.  It's like improv stamping!

Step 3.  Start stamping in a random pattern.  Generally, I'd advise working with your largest stamp first, which in this case was the ledger stamp from The Open Sea, and then work your way to the smallest stamp.

Step 4.  More stamping, this time I added the leaf from Best of Autumn.   The last stamp I did was the teeny harlequin pattern from Best of Shelli to fill in any bare patches.  If at this point you're thinking you turned a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock into a piece of powerfully ugly cardstock, you're doing it right.

Step 5.  Cut it up or punch it (hexagons would look cool!) or use die cuts, whatever you like to make smaller pieces.  Important safety tip:  when using a guillotine-style paper trimmer, keep track of where your thumb is as you cut.  I totally tried to cut my thumb off today, but luckily I was unsuccessful.  I like my thumbs and prefer to keep both of them firmly attached to my hands.

Step 6.  Sponge the edges.  You could skip that part if you wanted to, but I like the look so I did it (the un-sponged pieces are at the top if you want to see the difference).  Then you just mix up your serendipity pieces and use them on cards.  You could do just one little piece and then cut it up so it's more like a triptych and you can tell it was all one piece, but I like to make lots of pieces and then choose random ones so the pattern doesn't carry over from one piece to the next.

Really, you could vary this technique just about any way you can think of with all kinds of background techniques.  Do polished stone on glossy white cardstock and stamp on that.  Throw some heat embossed stamping on there.  Use painter's tape to make stripes or something.  Got a kitchen sink?  Throw that in there too.  It's very forgiving, and generally I think my whole piece of paper looks really ugly and then somehow it all works once it's cut into smaller pieces : )  For this one, I kinda wished my leaves had shown up a little better on the serendipity, so I just added a leaf to the sentiment piece.

So there you have it!  Now I kinda want to do a more girly serendipity, or maybe a nice wintry snowflake one.  The sky's the limit here, have fun : )  And let me know if you try this technique 'cause I wanna see!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Autumn, Best of Greetings, Best of Shelli, Morning Post Numbers (the frame around my sentiment), The Open Sea
Ink:  Chocolate Chip, Crushed Curry, Sahara Sand, Soft Sky, Tangerine Tango
Paper:  Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, Sweater Weather DSP
Accessories:  Deco Labels Framelits, Dimensionals