Memories Artwork™

Fun gals at my Basic Scrapbooking Class!

I just wanted to give a big thank you to all the gals who attended my class yesterday and who where patient with me.  I am a bit embarrassed to say that I was late for my own class. I had everything set up, but miscalculated the time as I hauled everything all by myself up and down stairs, in and out of the car....and let me tell you ...it was a LOT of "stuff" ;-).  Close to starting time I realized that I still needed to freshen up with a shower as I had been sweating up a storm.

Thank the LORD for my friend Antra! I don't know what I would have done without this gal. She's just a great friend, what can I say. :D She was there just in time for me to drive home for a quick shower.  She checked off the girl's names as they came in, took in  the money and gave them their handouts and their goody bags (see below). So, I was about 20 minutes late to my dismay, but it was the fastest shower including hair that I have ever taken. LOL Lesson Learned! In the future I will set things up the evening prior!

Last, but not least, a special thanks also goes out to my wonderful husband Erik who is so supportive of me and puts up with my scrapbooking mania!! Love you dearly!! XXOO

At any rate, everyone introduced themselves and we got to it.  Unfortunately, will 9 attendees, it was a bit tough to get around to everyone and instruct all appropriately. I will either have to limit the seating the next time or come up with a different concept. Maybe an actual layout sketch for everyone to follow or something to that effect. Just so they get the feel of things. I do plan on continuing holding classes (I promised!) maybe more in the way of special techniques or special subjects, etc.

So, with no further hold up, here are a few impressions of yesterday's fun class!

Stay tuned for more classes! If you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, you may do so using the link way up at the top left side on this website.  You'll receive information about upcoming classes as well as tips, tutorials and trends (TTT). ;-)

Everyone have a wonderful Sunday!

XOXO,

Acrylic Mini-Album with basic instructions

My resolutions for 2010....documented within an acrylic mini-album..

     

   

   

Acrylic Mini-Album

Instructions:

There are different types of acrylic or other translucent materials.  In this case, I just got some thick transparency at a hardware store in A3 size and cut down the number of pieces I needed to 6x6 inches with a guillotine paper trimmer, which worked great. 

Then you have all of your pieces laying in front of you that you need. After that I wanted to vary the pages a bit. So, what I did was to cut various pages into shapes, but using a template I made from a Making Memories journaling pad. I used a permanent marker to trace the edge of the journaling page and then just cut it out. Since it was going to be covered anyway, the marker would be covered up. If you like you can ink the edges with staz-on ink or with acrylic paint in case you don't want to cover it with paper.

Generally, with acrylic albums, you're doing to want to plan out the pages carefully, maybe even with a sketch as you'll want to cover front an back pages equally, so as not to have adhesive, or the back of other paper or embellishments showing through the page. Sometimes, it's a good idea to use double sided paper and then you can cover any bits of adhesive with embellishments. At any rate, plan ahead so you don't run into problems there.

After cutting some of the pages into shapes, I also stamped some of the pages with stay-on ink as well for a variation in the background. Staz-on is the BEST!

Two holes are sufficient to hold the album together. I made sure to put in the holes before I started designing the album to make sure I don't cover up anywhere where I wanted the holes to be. You can use jump rings or ribbon or you can bind it with a regular binding system....whichever way you would like.

For the first time I used fabric in an album as a background. It looks as if it's sewn onto the album, but I just machine stitched a frame on the fabric and adhered with regular old tombow adhesive runner.  This worked surprisingly well. After that I needed to see what to place on the back side. Every double spread is matching in color to prevent chaos for the eyes. :-)  Generally, one page will contain a photo and the other some very important journaling.

On the page with my hubby and I, I stitched a heart on the other page before adhering the fabric, which I then also filled with buttons and pearls using gluedots.  The key I adhered with fabric glue and the keyhole with diamond glaze, which is really almost as tough as super glue, yet acid-free. I left the back side of the heart, because I liked the way it looked on the other side.

As for my resolutions, I'm thinking that if I spent so much time with this album, I just might stick to them better. Who knows?

Christmas Cards & Journal Notebook Class

Hey Peeps!!!

Yes, I know... making Christmas cards again.... but I look at something and then get so inspired that I have to do something about it. It's like an itch. LOL Anyway... I made a few Christmas cards again and wanted to show you a few pictures of the journal I made in Karla Dudley's Journal 3 Ways Class. The class has already begun, but I'm sure she will be having more workshops. Now, I have to tell you, this woman amazes me! She has 5 kids, including 2 sets of twins...two boys, two girls and the oldest is another boy. Wow... is all I can say. Then she's got kids getting sick all over the place, but takes the time to shoot videos and show her students how to make cute journals. I have to hand it to her, Karla: My hat is off to you girl! You are just a cool gal!

Little "medallion" tutorial here:

So, I made these two cards with "medallions" on them that I made myself. The easiest way is to take a 12" strip about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2" wide, cut along the edge with either scallop scissors or zig zag, but it should be something that is uniform, no tearing scissors or anything like that. Next you want to fold the piece back and forth like an accordion, maybe scoring each line before you do that to make it work a bit easier and look straighter LOL. Then just glue the ends together with tacky tape so it doesn't come apart, then push down on the middle part to make it flat....go ahead, I promise it won't fall apart. But, in order to hold it together, you're going to need something sturdy to put on that middle part. Use a scallop circle, a big button, or a regular circle, a flower, anything you want, but you will have to make sure you use a good adhesive to make it stick. I used glue dots, which seemed to work pretty well. Make sure they're heavy duty and the cardstock is fairly heavy weight. Chipboard might be even better.  Then just use 3 D glue dots or pop dots to adhere to your card or layout. I really love the look of it. Next time I'm going for ones a bit smaller though. ;-)

On this one, I originally stamped the flourishes with opaque white stazon ink, but you could hardly see it, so I went over it with a white gel pen to make it stand out more. Truly had fun making the medallions!

Now to Karla's Class! She's so sweet and her videos were so cute. Making the journal was easier than I thought. Tomorrow is week two! Can't wait to see what she comes up with! :D Check out the journal I made today.

The angle of the photo I took, makes it look crooked, but it's not, trust me. ;-) I got this free Katie Pertiet border swirl brush from Designer Digitals. Go check it out!

These are the inside pages using Karla's swirls from the class. Love those swirls! Can't get enough of them.

Here are the pages with the journaling brushes that Karla designed. Don't you just love her handwriting? I mean, okay, mine is not the worst handwriting, but I just loooove Karla's... kind of looks similar to Ali Edward's style of handwriting.

So, folks, that's all for now. I've really got to get to bed! ughhhh....busy week... what am I saying? Months!

Nite all!

Jackie

Super Halloween Cards tutorial video

Ladies (and Gentlemen...in case you're reading)

Wow, just had to share this with you!! Kristina Werner makes fantastic videos on her blog and now she's made yet another fabulous video tutorial for three (yes, three!!) awesome Halloween cards she's designed. They have really cool shapes and cute details.  Check it out on her Blog and lots of other videos. Now just sit back, relax and enjoy this load of creativity!!!

Fantastic Flower Video Tutorial by Donna Salazar

This video tutorial is a bit older, but I thought I should share it with you anyway, since some of you may not have seen this. Donna Salazar makes these terribly cool flowers in this video, just awesome. Watch this to see how they are done!

Update from Jessica Sprague's Free Photo Editing Class

Just thought I would give you an update on what cool things we get to do in this class, just awesome:

 

Reporting on Basic Scrapbooking Class

Wow! What a nice turnout! Eight wonderful students I had for my Basic Scrapbooking Class this past Sunday and what a nice bunch they were. :D We really had a lot of fun and I think the girls were able to take a few ideas home with them. They were hooked! We had two pre-teens and one teenager as well and they proved themselves to be quite creative!

Check out their beautiful creations:

Thanks to Tanja Fury, my ex-coworker, friend, entrepreneur, life coach, (check out Auxell Coaching) who helped me with organizing and assisting the students where she could. I could NOT have pull this off without her. :D Big kudos for her! Thanks to her gorgeous girls as well for helping me before the class started.

My special thanks also goes to Beate Baylie at BEL and "associates" who provided the means for a perfect location for holding classes!!

Please check out my class schedule for more fun-filled classes! Can't wait to meet you!!