Faber Castell Design Memory Craft

Good Friday to all of you!  I am super excited to post this today.  Fair warning....this is picture heavy today.  So, go grab a cup of something (I've got my hot tea) and enjoy!

Today I am submitting this blogpost as an audition to Faber - Castell Design Memory Craft for a spot on the Guest Design Team.  For those of you who read this regularly you know how much I LOVE my gelattos!  I have become very attached to all my products made by Faber-Castell.  They are all in a special bin that I can grab for on the go.

I have so many pics that I am scrapbooking and I like my layouts to be a little different.  That's where I use my gelattos, PITT pens, and Aquarelle pencils.  I thought I would show you a tutorial today on how I made one of my double 12 x 12 layouts.

This is where I begin.  I have my pics arranged how I think I want them.  My gelattos and PITT pens are at the ready.  I have my patterned and other solid papers out for inspiration.  I know it's a stretch, but....in the pic in the upper righthand corner is a small postcard.  It is my "jumping off" point for this layout.  I loved the colors and the seahshell on it.  The pics I have chosen to work with are all of my children when we were in Hawaii.

Once I moved my pics out of the way I got down to work (not work, just fun!).  I began by distress inking all of my pieces (I used brushed cordoruy distress ink from Tim Holtz).  Once that was done, I used several turquoise gelattos to edge my base cardstock.  Just a quick, thin sweep of color along all the edges was perfect.  I dampened my finger tips and rubbed the gelatto color to smooth it out some.  It is not perfect.  Some areas are wider than others but I think the sweep of color pulls the whole layout together.

Next step was to use the gelattos to add color and dimension to the embellishments on my pages.  I used my Cameo to cut out a piece of coral, some shells, and a number of seahorses.  I scribbled Snow Cone, Turquoise, White, and Champagne Gold gelattos on my splat mat.  Then, with a small brush and water, I painted in the details on each embellishment.  For the seahorses I used a very old paintbrush and pounced the color onto the shape.  This gave an irregular color pattern and added some depth.  The gold was added on the crown and spikes of the seahorses and also around the edges of the coral.

 Here's a close-up of the seashell and the title piece once I added the gelatto color.

 To give some dimension on the layout I thought it would be nice if the sand dollar had more of a natural, domed shape.  I know you could use a stylus for this, but I had a perfect ball point pen end to do it!  I turned the shape so that the right side was facing my palm.  Then gently pressed down and moved the end of the pen in a circular motion.  This allowed the paper to shape like a dome.  It turned out perfect! I used the same technique to give the seashell a dome on the right side layout below and on the starfish on both pages.

Once I had added color to all the pieces I attached them to my layout.  I LOVE how it turned out.  The small amount of turquoise gelatto on the edges of the main page really add to the layout (Trust me on this one.  I accidentally left it off the right side page.  Once I looked at it,  I saw how much the pop of color adds and quickly fixed my oops!).  You can see in the pic below that I used some fishing net to add layers.  I used the Champagne Gold gelatto directly on the net to add some pops of sparkle.

I have posted many of my projects that have used gelattos or PITT pens.  Take a moment and look back through some of my posts (like the last audition for Faber Castell that I somehow mistakenly sent in late. I somehow got the time change wrong.  The realization was awful!  But the submission was of an awesome mermaid mixed media canvas.  Check it out.).  The gelattos are so versatile.  Try them.  I bet you will love them just like I do!

Do you like the page?  I would love to hear from you!  Leave me a comment below.  Also, find Faber-Castell on Facebook  (http://www.facebook.com/DesignMemoryCraft) , Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/designmemcraft/), or Twitter (https://twitter.com/DesignMemCraft).  They have some of the best designers and they love to share their projects!

As always, I hope I have given you some inspiration today.  Stay happy and craft often!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!  Just a quick post for well wishes.  I'm sure your house has been chaotic like mine.  I just love having all of my children and my parents here.  The laughter and fun is just what we all needed!

Life is quickly getting back to "normal" here though.  I have spent a whole week prepping for my next quarter projects!  Woohoo!!!  I am very excited to show them.  Just wish I could find the camera.  It's here.  I know it is.  Used it for Christmas.  I'm pretty sure the cats put it someplace!  I have several things I want to share with you.

So, without the camera to take pics of the new stuff, I will share some pics that I took before Christmas.

 I know these are not traditonal Christmas colors, but.....   These precious mini roses and mini daisies were just so pretty.  I brought them home, arranged them, and they opened perfectly!  Just a small dash of loveliness.

 Chrismas treats for the school kids.  These cute little reindeer are wrapped around Hershey bars!

 The pic above and the one below are from the gift card class I taught at the beginning of December.  We made the 5 gift cards in class and the cup card was a take home.  The cup, the Santa, and the present all pull off from the top to reveal a git card.  The others are more mini envelope size.  Class favorites were the Santa (my favorite), the coffee cup (duh!) and the small red and white that holds multi cards.

 Below is a re-visit of the Christmas album I made this quarter and a few of the inside pics.  I still just love this book.  I holds so many pics from Christmas.  Now to print them (after I locate the camera) and  stick them inside!  Love that my album is just waiting for pics!

 I like to make interactive minis with pockets and tags and pages that are fun for the person looking.

Hope this was a little inspiration on a cold winter day!  It's cold here and I am loving it.  A chance to wear a sweater (in Texas that might only be a day or two in the year!).  Working the Scrapp n' Savvy Sampler today and tomorrow.  Always fun.  Hard work, but fun.  Live nearby?  Stop in next week.  The boss is away and we will play!  Sale, sale, sale!!!

Blessings for a Happy New Year to you all.  May God bless you abundantly!

Christmas crafting with the girls

I am very fortunate to be surrounded by talented people in my life.  I cannot express how much fun this makes my life.  I know that I can always create wonderful times with these people!

About a year and a half ago one of these talented ladies, Tove, invited several of us to her home for a day of crafting.  We were each responsible for creating some sort of loveliness of our own desire and then make a kit for each person.  We each then taught our design to the ladies.  Of course there was lots of laughter and lunch for all.  It was SO much fun!  So much in fact that we decided to do it again.  And again.  We have done this a couple times now.  Sometimes there is a theme like a holiday, but mostly it is just what we want to create and share.

I thought it might be nice to host this one.  I decided it had to be Christmas themed and off we went.  We had 4 of us for our Christmas crafting day with the ladies! (Melissa, Tove,  Barbara, and myself)  Oh what fun we had!  I thought I would share our craftiness with you today.

First up is Tove.  She was so sweet and brought a hostess gift for me.  She is from Norway and recently had returned home.  She brought me the most adorable little boy and girl dressed for the season.  They are absolutely precious!

 I love that they stand up on their own!  Even with my monster cats on the table next them they remain upright.  So cute!

And this is Tove's creation for us.  This star is huge!  It is made with 5 yardsticks that are glued together then strung with a strand of Christmas lights.  I hung it from my bannister so it can be seen inside my house but also through the front window.  It looks so cool at night!  Love it!

Next up is Melissa.  She is a "newbie" to the group.  She is incredibly talented and just doesn't know it!  She kept telling us that she felt like a kindergartener in college!  Too funny.

 This is her creation.  I fell in love with it.  I have a soft spot for vintage looking pieces and this one hit the right note with me.  The cone is paper mache that we covered with a kraft paper that had french phrases on it.  We tore the paper into small pieces and modge-podged it on. She gave us each a package of Prima wood buttons to add.  I chose to add some mini twine bows to some of my buttons.  She also included an initial of our last name.  I added glitter to it and to the edges of the burlap flower for the top.  A large pearl made the center of the flower just right.  Everyone made their trees different.  It was so fun to see how everyone interpreted the project to fit their style.

Next up is Barbara.  I gave everyone very, very short notice for this.  Barbara literally had one evening to design her project!  She had us make some very cute ornaments.  They fit perfectly on the small Christmas tree in my breakfast room.

 This was just the tag she tied on our kits.  It was too cute to not do something with so I glittered it and added a bow!  Perfect!

 Crystals dangling?  Oh yeah!  I'm on it!

All of the pieces were cut with the Silhouette.  Yep, still love my Silhouette!  Aren't they adorable?

And last of course is mine.  I had it in my mind to create a wintery scene in a lantern.  I had it totally planned out and then could not find any of the things I wanted!  I ended up making the lanterns.  They are quite large.  Larger than I expected.  About 14" tall.  But when all was done, I think they turned out great.  I painted the entire thing white then made a wash from turquoise paint.  Gave it a frosty look.  Inside the lantern is papered with antique music paper.  I added white paint to some artificial greenery to give a snowy effect.  Glued them in and added the snow at the bottom.  I added a frosty turquoise and white glitter to the eggs and the nest and a little on the beak of the bird.  Glued all that in.  I decided I needed a bit more bling so I added these cute little teardrop aqua colored gems that I found in the wedding department of the craft store.  Perfect.  Added ribbon (lots of it) and the large snowflakes.

A close up to show you the bling I added.  It really worked and reflected the light giving it a twinkle.  Some of the ladies were going to add a small strand of battery powered lights to theirs.  Love that.  I think I can keep this out beyond Christmas as it is more of a wintery scene.

I hope you enjoyed our crafts.  It is cold here; a bit unusual for us.  Wherever you are stay warm!

New layouts

This summer my family and I went to Spain.  We were there for about 9 days and it was wonderful!  We rented an apartment in Madrid very close to a subway entrance.  It was so easy to just get on the subway and ride to wherever we needed to go to catch our trains for a daytrip.  Of course, we walked our bums off too!  I joked that I should have packed hiking gear instead of what I brought.  And add to that the high heat that was unusual for the region at the time of year.

But we had a blast!  And of course I took pictures.  Mounds and mounds of pictures.  My kids tell me that sometimes I take them in a most horrible pose.  But then when I get home and they see it on the screen that is not 2" square, life is good again.  They even love some of them.  Alright, so bottom line is that I took around 750 pics.  I kept around 575.  The others were just either too blurry, did not capture what I wanted, or I let someone else take said camera and well, hum, they didn't turn out so well!  Now comes the gigantic chore of scrapbooking them.  I am more of an event scrapper at this time.  So I must get this done!  Christmas is coming!

I thought I would share some of my favorite pages so far (I really haven't gotten that far!). Here goes:

 This is the cover page.    The 2 tags pull out from the side and have journaling on them.  This is what my kids call the mandatory, horrible family vacation photo.  Is it really so hard to just look at the camera and pretend you are smiling for real?  (just joking)

 I really like this page.  I like how the date is incorporated in the embellishments and I like how the city map can be pulled out.

 I have numerous photos that I wanted to keep but are basically ones that will help us remember how everything looked.  so I decided to stack some of them.  I like the look of this page with the swirls and the gray pastel I brushed on around the page.  It was also a great use of all the small scraps I had.

 The page above and below are facing pages.  I fell in love with the architectural details in this Cript and thought it would be fun to mirror those on the page.  The resin pillars from Prima are perfect.

 I have this love for banners.  I think they are so cute.  Just had to have them on a page or two!

That's all for today.  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  If you are one of those brave souls who chooses to explore the retail world on black Friday, then be safe!  I am headed for another cup of java and a blanket.  Maybe I can catch a few more z's before all the children get up!

A little decor

Last year while at CHA, my boss found these adorable galvanized metal stands.  They had a black chalkboard in the center and were scalloped around the edges.  Very cute!  She puchased one for each teacher and asked us to make something that would show our classes for the upcoming quarter (obviously it would change from quarter to quarter).

I teach around 6 classes each quarter for her.  So, I made a small tray that fit exactly inside the chalkboard part.  The tray was equally divided and in each section I placed something from each of the class projects and a little tag with the class name, dates, and price on it.  The whole tray was then placed on the stand with magnets so it could be removed and updated the next quarter.  I also took the time to decorate the stand itself with Tim Holtz distress paints and some other fun things.  I included my name on the top as well so people would know it was me!

 This is the frame after I painted and embellished it.  Sorry, but I did not take a pic before!  You can see that I was playing around with a tiny, tiny piece of chalk on the board.

 A side view 

This is the original tray I made for the stand.  6 classes each with its own small sample space.

 Everyone loved the idea enough that I had to make it a class!  This is what I came up with:

Can you see that the little lantern in the bottom corner lights up?  So adorable.

The tray itself is only 7 x 4.  I love the idea that this is something that is small enough to be placed on a desk and is easily changed for each holiday or season.  So many possibilities!  The trays are made with chipboard; takes a little time to put them together.  The little lantern in the lower corner is from Tim Holtz.  It comes with a battery pack so when you plug it in the lantern lights up!  Very cool.  I made a few modifications to it for the class.  I added a dark metal element under the numbers to help balance it visually.  Liked it better (now I have to make a new one for me!)  I also made 2 other holiday kits; one for Thanksgiving and one for New Year's.

Again, I made a design change for the class kit by adding very tiny twigs under the leaves on the tree.  It added dimension and looked so freakin cute!!!   Sorry about the glare on the tag on the top.  I used stickles on top of the stamped "so Thankful" image and my photo light just kept catching all the glitter!

New Year's has an old fashioned look.  I love the metallic colors with the deep black.  Feels glamorous to me.  All the stars and swirls were cut on the Silhouette.  Did I mention before how much I adore my Silhouette?  Oh My Gosh.  I love, love, love it!  It cut those pretty black stars (see all the little detail on them?) perfectly.  When I removed them from the mat they lifted perfectly.  I did not have to sit and meticulously pick out and cut out by hand all the little spaces.  Nope, they came off perfectly because they were actually cut perfectly.  And the swirls?  Cut those from a thick glitter paper.  Perfect.  No special tools to take them from the mat or little chads on the edges to cut off.  Again I love my Silhouette!  Sorry, I digress!

I have so many ideas of things to make for the next few holidays.  Not all of them are trays.  The stand is a chalkboard too so I was thinking of integrating that with a design.  Hope this inspired you today.  Happy crafting.

Changing things up a bit and a little help

Life is crazy here (as usual!)!  I really thought that with 2 of my kids away at college it would be a little calmer.  Who was I kidding?  The reality is there are still 3 at home and they are a full time commitment.  And did I mention that I love it?  Well, I do!  If you know me then you know my kiddos take center stage with me.

So, 2 are away at school.  That has left me with some reorganizing to do.  There are things that needed to be packed away and put away.  I have left that chore for some time now.  Slowly I have been doing this.  One week I packed (or re-packed since the boxes were falling apart - rubbermaid to the rescue) all the oldest's things.  We have a bedroom for each child.  However, when the oldest left for school I took over the smallest bedroom for my craft room.  That said, all of his things had to go someplace!  I did not kick him out completely.  The bed and some of his things are still there.  I just share the space.

A huge shift in reality just occurred recently though.  My youngest daughter is now being schooled at home.  She has a medical condition that does not allow her to be at school right now.  She is in high school so she is following an online school program.  Kinda nice for old mom here!  However, I have found that I need to be in the same room as she is while she is working on school work.  Keep her on track and answer questions.

Enter operation re-do craft room to accomodate her and her desk!  Wow.  I spent the weekend redoing the whole room.  Cleaning.  Cleaning out.  Moving furniture all over the place.  I am lucky to have kids who help out though.  My son was invaluable to me when moving the furniture!  I am almost done.  Give me the day and everything will be in its place.  I think I will like the new arrangement.  I can get to all my stuff easier.  And my daughter is right there with me!  I love that.  And the biggest benefit?  If someone comes over I can just shut the door!  Woohoo!!!

So, I have changed things up a bit.  Hoping I can post more often.  And the little help I mentioned?  Well, I actually had 3 little helpers but only caught two on camera.

 The one above is the old, fat cat.  She was lurking among all the boxes.  She was actually snooping hoping to find a sock to pull out!

Then there was the little guy.  He doesn't care as long as he is in the middle of it all.  Amazes me how he can lay on top of just about anything and go to sleep.  He was rather peaceful the whole day on top of the desk.  I kept piling things around him.  He just stayed curled up.  Then we moved the bed.  Oh my!  He went crazy!  His toys were under the bed.  He took each and every one and found a new place for them to be!  He is so funny!

Maybe a pic or two of the new space this week.  Check back and as always stay crafty!

Ready for a little Christmas

I just love Christmas.  It is just such a special time of the year.  I hate seeing Christmas stuff in the stores in say, August, but I love Christmas.  I have made my first mini for the season already.  The class is this Monday.  The mini is made with Authentique's Joyous paper collection.  It is so pretty!  Great colors and patterns.  I have purchased quite a bit of it for numerous projects yet to come.

Here's the cover.  It is made using the Zutter 8 x 8 bamboo covers.  After you make your pages you bind them with an "o" wire and it fits in to the cover perfectly.  It is so clean looking.  Recently I purchased a Silhouette Cameo (and seriously love it!!!).  I made the light pole and sign hanger with it.  There are lots of goodies inside; fun trinkets (Tim Holtz and some others); fun interactive layouts.  Ready for the season.

So, if you have already signed up for the class you will need to bring your basics to class.  Include a glue pen to glue fine details, pop dots, glue dots, zip dry, and distress ink if you desire (I used frayed burlap I believe).

If you have'nt signed up yet, there is still a spot or two left.  Just call the store (281-288-7289).

Hope you have a great weekend.