Hello crafters, Has the weather finally warmed up for you? I hope it has! I think we may have skipped spring entirely this year and gone straight into summer. We have had some gorgeous sunny weather and I already have hot summer days and cool treats on the brain. So, when I saw the Cool Summer line by Carta Bella with its fun summery colours and cute motifs, I couldn't wait to create with it!
Everything on this page (except the baker's twine and stitching) comes from the Carta Bella Cool Summer kit and Chipboard elements. I have listed the items I used below. The best part? There is still a lot of paper, alphabets and fun elements left to create countless more pages or projects!
I've taken up paper gardening and I love it! One of the best things about a paper garden is that you can make up your own colors and who's really going to call you on it. I really like using flowers on my pages and cards so this is a great way to build up my flower stash and these flowers look so real. I used the Susan's Garden dies and tools from Sizzix and I have to add that I'm a tool junkie and I have a ton of tools so I really hesitated before buying this tool kit but I'm so glad I did. I didn't need another pair of scissors and I sure didn't feel that I needed any more tweezers but I love these tweezers and I use them all the time now. The 'lining' tool is also something that I didn't already have and it too is great. I also LOVE the veining pad and the effects that you get from this and now I find myself cutting all kinds of leaves and veining them. The best way to really get started with these dies is to watch Susan's Videos. There is also a PDF that you can download with all of the basic instructions but the starter video is really well done.
I, of course started with white paper and chose my colors for my flowers. There's no doubt that my garden will have unique colors and I'm good with that. I chose to start with the Peony. If you look at the first picture below, you will see how I set up for my spray jobs. I like to use paper towel to soak up the excess and my Color Catcher prevents any over spray in my work area,
I cut and colored all my pieces for 2 peonies and then I let them dry while I got my work space ready for the shaping portion. Here are a few pictures that show how I started the assembly portion of my flowers. most of this will make more sense once you have watched the first two videos.
I chose to use the 'Pure Sunshine' Dylusions spray and a bit of 'Fired Brick' to color the flower petals and I used a combination of both 'Fresh Lime' and 'Cut Grass' Dylusions sprays for my leaves and calyx. I then just gave this a rub with 'Walnut Stain' Distress Ink. I then started my experimentation with glues.
I found that that Mod Podge did the job well. I like to spoon a gob of glue onto my work surface and dip my petals. Here's a picture of the bottom of my flower so that you can see how I connected the 2 calyxes to space my larger petals.
Here is a closer look at my completed leaves after veining. they just need a bit of shaping at this point but the veining alone makes such a difference. you can also see how using the two colors of spray made them look like they were slightly aged. I love how these turned out so I made a very simple card to really show off the actual flower.
I also used my newest border punch for this card and I wrapped it around to the back of the card for a classier look.
I was so enthralled with my new garden that I chose to make the Hibiscus as well. Here are a few pictures of this flower in it's growth period. Once again, I started with white cardstock and this time I used my Copic markers to color my flower petals and some Glimmer Mist for the Leaves.
I used a small Dixie cup to house my flower as it was in the drying process. I also used some old flower soft that I had to dip the end of my stybus but I didn't like the color so I squirted it with alcohol ink to change the color to one I liked.
I really like how it turned out but what am I going to do with a flower like this? I knew that I wanted to be able to use these flowers on my Scrapbook pages and cards so here is how I used my flower on a page that I did about my grand daughters. I still have to add my journalling block somewhere but you can see the effect that the flower has added to the page.
Here is a close up look of the flower on the page. those letters by the way were colorful left over chipboard letters from past projects. It was rather easy to convert these to something suitable for my page with just the right combination of sprays.
Here is the completed layout from last week's bonus project. This is a picture that I took on Mother's day of my daughter with my grandson. It was so easy to just add my picture to my already completed background. I really liked the picture and I wanted it to be bigger than my pocket size so I printed it the size that I wanted and I just cut it strategically and placed it as desired on my background. I didn't want the big gap between the two halves of my picture so I simply adhered my lower image to come up higher than the background paper and come up slightly over the pocket edge. This is something that I do frequently and this doesn't cause any damage to the image.
I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial and are enjoying the rest of your Long Weekend. I am including the list of products and tools used for the card and the Hibiscus flower here and I will include some instructions and a list for the Scrapbook page on my Blog.
I was given a project to do this past weekend, and I learned how to do a little folding book, so I thot I would share the idea with you. It's not my design, just my decorating, but it's fun I think you 'll like it!
First was to choose some papers. Mine is going with a stampede project, so I chose the Bo Bunny lines, Prairie Chic and Anthem. And the base is Kraft cardstock.
First step was to cut 8x6 in kraft, score at 4"
cut 2 hinges 4x2 and score at 1" and taper the ends
attach one to the bottom right, and one to the top left.
then attach 2 4x6 kraft pieces.
cut another kraft sheet 4 1/2 by 6 1/2 score 1/4 "on both sides and 1/2 along the bottom.
snip out the corners and adhere sookwang tape along the edges. Don't set down yet tho', first you need to sandwich the ribbon between the layers.
use a circle punch to cut a half circle for the tags.
fold and line up both sides glue the ribbon UNDER the pocket you just made. Then in line on the other side glue another strip, both sides are about 12" there will be a pocket on top on the right side also, and I seem to have lost the before picture? All the pieces were inked on the edges with vintage photo.
I used 2 different sizes of Tim dies to make the tags. The largest and the next size down.
Then it was time to decorate. See the ribbon under the pocket with the star on it? the tags have patterned paper on both sides, and then I will add photos, and journalling.
the inside with all the flaps open
and the back pocket with the larger tags. Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did making it :-) Have a Happy Scrappy day! Check out my blog and see what else I've been up to.
