Memories Artwork™

Decorative Tag for Wine Bottle - Thank you gift

Let me start off by saying that we have an absolutely awesome pediatrician who really goes beyond his call of duty to help us. He's really helped us out a lot concerning Danny's ADHD symptomatic and returned our desperate calls during Christmas vacation and although he was actually on sick leave! I don't know of any doctor who will do that!

So, I was thinking....we need to thank him in a very special way. I thought, well, a good bottle of Tuscan wine and a Kristina Werner card that I recently purchased would do the trick. But as I saw that bottle of wine standing there, I thought... something is just missing. I need to dress that thing up a bit. Finally, I decided I would make a long tag, punch a hole through the top so that it would fit snugly over the wine bottle and then decorate the tag....which is exactly what I did. ;-) 

   

I inked the edges with Tim Holtz fired brick distress ink, then I took this fabulous Hero Arts vintage thank you stamp, embossing ink, and Tim Holtz Walnut stain distress embossing powder and embossed it, rubbed the crystals like he always says to achieve a distressed look and tied a piece of jute? Not sure what that is called. Afterwards, I decided to emboss around the circle with a 7Gypsies clear stamp and some gold embossing powder since I wanted it to look elegant as well as vintagy. It's simple, but classy, which is what I was aiming for. 

We'll be dropping it off tomorrow. I really do hope it shows how grateful we are to him for all of this support, but I think it will do the trick. ;-) I hope this inspires you to create something of your own as a gift for someone special.

Everyone have a beautiful Sunday!

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 Decorations & Cards

Hello out there! I'm still alive, just busy busy!! Aren't we all? Some of the busy time was spent creating nice things for Christmas and I wanted to show you some of what I've been doing and hope to inspire you to make some wonderful Christmasy creations of your own!

Here I took an ordinary frame and turned it into Christmas decoration for my mantle.

   

This was inspired by a card I saw on Kristina Werner's Blog. 

 

Gold embossed pillow box for small items, such as stockings, socks, jewelry, chocolates... the list is long. ;-)

I love hanging little things like jingle bells....they're so cute!

If you would like to give money, a little tag holding a gift card or money is really cute!

okay... one more card...

I'm really into the sheet music and birds (Jen Wilson digifile). I recolored the bird in photoshop, cut it out and adhered. The scroll is also made with PS Elements.

Hope this gets you into the Christmas spirit! I'm off to a Christmas market now to show children how they can decorate gingerbread men! And to freeze... LOL

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

Of Halloween Minialbums and Christmas Tags

Good evening all... or should I say nite nite? ;-)  Well, I haven't done much this weekend, besides work some for my day job, grocery shopping, taking the kids to the indoor playground, washing clothes, cooking, etc....BUT, I did get in some scrapping, YESS!!!

I wanted to show you this sweet little pumpkin I made. I got the idea from Jennifer McGuire who posted it on www.twopeasinabucket.com and I thought it was so adorable, I just had to try it out! It's very easy! (Her photo is a bit nicer though....love how it's always mirrored at the bottom. Wonder if I can do that in photoshop. ;-)

 

The one on the left is Jennifers and mine is on the right.

I've started on the cover of a Halloween mini-album...something that I've been wanting to get around to for a long time and when someone on Simea's Design Team asked for Halloween stuff, I thought, NOW's the time! So, with some papers from the Basic Grey Eerie collection and an SEI mini chipboard album, I got to work...or rather "play". ;-)

Then, I checked out Kristina Werner's blog, since she always has such awesome video tutorials on her cards, and I found the most awesome acrylic Christmas tags! You MUST go visit her website!! So, I decided to put my cricut diecut machine to work once again, cutting out tags out of thin acrylic. Worked like a charm! ;-) So, I made these cuties. I just luuuuv acrylic, don't know why. It just gives it a clean elegant looking touch.

Just love these! Can't wait to attach them to a Christmas gift (which is still a loooonnnng ways off!).

I also needed to gift wrap my daughter's gift to her kindergarten friend for her birthday, but I didn't have any giftwrap at home, so I did this.

I'm so into kraft colored paper (this is actually post office wrapping paper) and butterflies. This butterfly is from a clear stamp set by Amy Butler and I think I've fallen in love with this butterfly....it's so awesome, there's so much detail. I stamped it with fluid chalk ink, cut it out and pop-dotted it. Very simple, but it has a great effect.  "Laura" liked it. ;-)

I'm still working on some custom work, which is also fun, but very time-consuming. ;-) So, I'll have to touch base with you some time this week! Stay tuned! ;-)

Scrapbooking things over the weekend

I was experiencing a bit of withdrawal from scrapbooking, but I really need a creative break after finishing a large wedding album that I really put my heart into.... here is a peak:

In November I will be attending an artist market and I'll be selling all kinds of Christmasy items, such as cards, tags, frames, gift boxes and minialbums (if I make it that is..lol). So, I got started with a few cards this weekend (I know...ughhhh...it's only September and the weather is still so beautiful!). Anyhoo....here are some of the cards I made... one of them is not a Christmas card. I just saw a German stencil I picked up at a hardware store and got an idea. ;-)

This card above was inspired by Kristina Werner Design. You should check out her blog, just awesome!!

 

And THEN, I made another something inspired by Lisa Tutman-Oglesby and her fabulous ideas. You should go check out her blog as well. Very inspiring!  This was made very quicky, using modge podge to adhere and then cutting off the excess paper around the edges. You have to work very fast with modge podge as it dries very quickly. Slap on a few stickers and violá! There you have it! An entirely new and personal notebook.

That's all for now! Stay tuned for more!

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!

Altered Cork Memo Board & a hybrid boy's birthday card

Hello my fellow blog readers! First of all, I would like to thank you for reading and looking. I wish I would have more time to read all the blogs I would like to read, but it's just not possible. But anyway...THANK YOU! :-)

Came up with this idea yesterday for some reason. I used to post our monthly schedule in our kitchen, but it seemed so drab, so I decided to get a cork memo board and dress it up a bit. didn't take long at all! :-)

I think it turned out pretty cute. ;-) I look forward to putting our schedule up there now!

And this is a hybrid card (PSE 6.0) for my nephew Luke.  Since he will be turning 11, I thought I needed to make it look cool.  So I did all of that in Photoshop, printed on cardstock and then inked the edges. Eh violá!

A few cards & a candle

This must be card month or something. :D But, I'm having fun nonetheless. I love to create and to inspire, which is why I share my work....in the hopes to inspire my readers! I want to spread some scrapbooking love across Germany! The word has spread a bit, but it's nowhere near what it is in the States. So, here goes nothin':

The flower is a heidi swapp large flower folded twice and glued together, then affixed with the birdy brad. The border is a material decorating ribbon with an adhesive lace border on top, hero arts stamp and the leaves are stamped with SEI mimosa clear stamps and cat's eye chalk ink and the entire card was inked with Tim Holtz walnut stain ink.

 

This card was made with just part of an SEI mimosa patterned paper, cutting the flower around the edges, adhering, then used pearl gems around it, hero arts birthday stamp, small flower also from the patterned paper and then inked with holtz distress ink. Very simple!

 

This is a regular candle (if you can tell) decorated with patterned paper (hard to see here), a heidi swapp flower, unknown crocheted flower (dawanda) and a making memories vellum tag, K&Co gem, Basic Grey brad. Very quick and simple.

Ali's cool idea for a creative project

I was looking at Ali's blog and was stunned by the project suggestion she just posted.  It is so easy and it looks SO cool! Try it out. All you need is a frame, a punch and some 3D adhesive and your ready to roll!

I do promise to take a better photo and replace this one on the weekend. Since I work during the day, there is no chance to do that. ;-)

This is my "better photo"... :-)

At last....my C R E A T E letters

I was finally able to catch up and take some photos of my CREATE letters! This time I downloaded the photos properly, so here it goes.....completely inspiring...at least to me. :-)  Now I need to see what I can do with my "ART" letters....can't wait!