Christmas Memories ~ DT for The Scrapping Stamper

Christmas is always a very special time of the year!! This layout is of a photo taken when our children were much younger. Our three oldest and a cousin gathered around my husband at his parents' home. He's reading the Christmas story to them, explaining how Jesus' birth is the reason for our celebration. It has been such a joy over the years for us to share our love of the Lord with our children and to see them grow to love Him as well. 

I hope you and your families have a wonderful and blessed 2013!!

Enjoy your New Year celebrations!

I created this page for the December Scrapping Stamper sketch by Shannon White.

"Christmas Memories"

Shannon's Gorgeous December Sketch:

It is such a blessing to be on Shannon's Design team and work with her lovely sketches each month! I used Donna Salazar Products for this page to enter into her December Challenge to create a holiday themed project using ribbon and at least one Donna Salazar product. 

Tips and Techniques:

Hand Crafted Flower ~ I used a combination of DSD Spellbinder Bitty Blossoms and Grand Peony dies to create this lovely rose with one of my twine flowers underneath made in jute. My tutorial on creating the twine flowers can be found here. 

Ribbon and Pearls ~ This is an older technique that I revived for this project. I punched a small hole on both sides of a corrugated ridge, leaving two ridges without holes to space. On each end I just punched one hole on the side where the ribbon would end. I laced my sheer, iridescent ribbon onto a yarn needle and laced it through the holes, but not pulling tight, so there would be a puff of ribbon between each set of holes. To hide the holes, I placed a red pearl between each puff.

Corrugated Board Mat ~ I love the grungy look of Donna's corrugated board by Zutter. I use a foam brush to apply paint to the ridges and leave the valleys the natural kraft color. When I try using a bristle brush the paint tends to go down into the valleys as well. I went back and lightly rubbed the torn edges with some distress ink.

Distrezzing ~ I distressed all the straight edges including my photo with my handy DSD Distrezz-It-All by Zutter to get the heavily distressed edges in a flash.

Hanging Christmas Ornaments ~ I didn't have any punches or dies for ornaments, so I traced an ornament and hand cut them. I used my finger to apply a little glue and some Mojo Dust that Natasha sneaked into my last order. If you are looking for Donna Salazar products, be sure to check out Natasha's Store. To achieve the hanging effect, I hand stitched from the ornaments to the top of the page. 

Crackled Border ~ I applied a nice thick coat of white DecoArt Texture Crackle to the top edges of my page. It cracks as it dries. It takes a while to dry so some patience is required. ;-) When dry, I used my finger to apply some gold Rub and Buff. 

Antiqued Doily ~ Several colors of Distress Ink rubbed over the doily gives the nice antiqued look and brings out the design. 

DSD Products used:

Antiquities ~ Vintage Gears

Antiquities ~ Die Cut Ribbons

Antiquities ~ Harmony

Antiquities ~ Queen Bees

Antiquities ~ Time for Tea

Stamp ~ A-Note-Ation

Spellbinder Grand Peony Dies

Spellbinder Bitty Blossoms Dies

Zutter Corrugated Board 

Zutter Distrezz-It-All

Other Products Used:

Tim Holtz Typeset Alphabet Decorative Strip Die

Sizzlets ~ Branch w/Leaves

Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page ~ Swirling Lace

Want2Scrap ~ Self Adhesive Pearls, red

DMC Embroidery Floss

Doily ~ My Stash

Ranger Distress Markers ~ Fired Brick, Aged Mahogany, Vintage Photo

Ranger Distress Ink ~ multiple colors

DecoArt ~ White Texture Crackle

Adhesives:

Beacon ~ 3 in 1 Advanced Craft Glue

Scothc ATG

Crafty Power Tape

Designer Dries Clear Glue

Xyron Permanent

Krylon Spray Adhesive

I've also entered this at:

Word Art Wednesday Challenge #60 Faith; Anything Goes

Scrapping Every Day Miracles December Main Challenge ~ Scrap where you find joy during the  Christmas Holidays with a twist - include glimmer and/or sparkle. Gary and I find great joy in sharing our love for Christ with our family during the holidays. This photo is Gary sharing the Christmas story with our children when they were younger. The sparkle is the glittery dust on the ornaments and bright shiny pearls with iridescent sheer lace. 

Thanks for stopping by! I treasure your comments.

~ Blessings ~

Thank You Card and Christmas Tag

I finished up my ScrapThat! projects earlier this week and had some time to work on a couple other projects. The first is a thank you card I created for the Donna Salazar November Challenge to create a 'Thank You' card including the color BROWN, using a tag, and at least one Donna Salazar Designs product. If you've followed me for a while, you know I'll be using way more than one of her amazing products!! 

I've also created this card with Mona Pendelton's CR84FN Card Challenge #68 to focus on the beautiful color pallet of burgundy, gray, and cream. This is my first time to enter one of her lovely challenges. If you are not familiar with Mona's gorgeous work, you will want to stop by her blog, Cupcake's Creations. You are in for a treat!! 

"Thank You Card"

Here is the lovely color pallet photo from the CR84FN challenge:

Tips and Techniques:

Flower/Leaves ~ I used Donna's Rose Creations Die Set by Spellbinders to create this gorgeous rose and leaves. I recently placed an order with Natasha and she added a little baggie of MoJo Dust (glitter) to my order that I just had to try out here. I used my finger to spread some glue on the edges and dusted with Mojo for lots of sparkle!! The leaves were cut from the grey print paper, then inked this lovely color for my required "brown" element. 

Chipboard ~ I painted this Want2Scrap Chippie with burgundy paint, then when dry with some cream. When the top coat of paint was still tacky, I rubbed it off in places to distress and reveal the burgundy beneath. 

Fussy Cutting ~ I keep a baggie of fussy cut pieces from my Donna Salazar paper scraps. The corner piece and butterfly came from my bag of goodness! 

Distressing ~ I distressed the straight edges with my DSD Distrezz-It-All by Zutter. I just can't say enough about how much I enjoy using this sweet machine!! 

Machine Stitching ~ I added a straight stitch around the border of the grey print mat. 

Tag ~ I used a scrap of Donna's Artistic Paper for my tag. I printed "Thanks" using Marcelle Script font which I found on the internet, then used a Martha Stewart tag punch to cut it out. I added a little Frayed Burlap Distress Ink on the edges. 

DSD Products Used:

Botanique ~ Family Portraits 

Botanique ~ Cards

Antiquities ~ Harmony

Artistic Paper ~ Journal Cards

Spellbinder Rose Creations Dies

Zutter Distrezz-It-All

My second project of the day is this sweet Christmas tag I created for the Bo Bunny November Card challenge to create a tag. I used a mix of Bo Bunny Christmas lines. 

"Christmas Wishes"

Tips and Techniques:

Handcrafted Flower/Leaves ~ This flower may look familiar since it is the same as the once on my  thank you card, but without the Mojo Dust. The edging here is translucent medium I applied with a fine paint brush. I created these flowers last December for Joseph and Rachel's wedding card box. They didn't have room to keep the box, so I am reusing the flowers here. The leaves are cut from the Spellbinder Foliage Die set and then pinched and inked for dimension. 

Crinkle Ribbon ~ I dyed some rayon crinkle ribbon with distress ink to match the color in the image of the girl and scrunched it up to dry. I topped the bow with a button from the Snowfall collection. 

Fussy Cutting ~ When I saw this sweet image on Bo Bunny's Noel Cheer paper, I knew it would be perfect cut out for this tag. 

Distressing ~ This time I hand distressed the edges along with some inking. The doily and lace were also lightly inked to age them a bit. 

Bo Bunny Products:

Noel ~ Stripe

Noel ~ Cheer

Father Christmas

Snowfall ~ Buttons

Both of these projects have been entered at Word Art Wednesday Challenge #56.

Thanks for stopping by! I treasure your comments.

~ Blessings ~

Dick ~ Word Art Wednesday GDT Reveal

My thoughts and prayers are with those in the areas affected by Sandy. Although we had high winds for a day or so and prepared for the worst, we were fortunate not to lose power. 

This is my final project as a Guest Designer for Word Art Wednesday. It has been a delight to word with the Amazing Word Art this month.

This week's Word Art is based on Hebrews 4:16 ~ "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." One of the very special people the Lord brought into our lives is Dick Edwards. He worked with my husband back in the 80's. Gary was instrumental in helping him get into alcohol rehab. After completing rehab, he became like a part of our family, even celebrating birthdays and holidays with us. We have so many special memories of special times spent with Dick. I am so grateful that the Lord gave us the privilege of having Dick in our lives until his death a couple years ago and allowed us with grace to help in a time of need in his life.

"Dick"

This week's sponsor at Word Art Wednesday is:

Lisa's Altered Art

Please take a moment to check out her wonderful shop.

Be sure to go to Word Art Wednesday to download your free copy of this week's Word Art and to see the amazing inspiration by the talented Word Art Wednesday Design Team.

Techniques:

Word Art ~ I printed this week's word art on some lightly patterned paper, then inked over it to bring in the color of my background paper before distressing. I inked first, then distressed to keep the white edges. 

Stitching ~ I stitched randomly here and there on this page including this stitching above the word art, several rows below my title and some fun x's on the side of my corrugated board

Handcrafted Flowers ~ I created several of the flowers including the blue one here and off white one in the photo below using my new Bitty Blossom dies by Donna Salazar. The leaves were also cut using Bitty Blossoms. I created the blue flower below using Donna's Grand Peony dies and added a jewel brad to the center. The rest of my flowers are an assortment from Petaloo and May Arts.

Layering ~ Under the photo I used a number of distressed layers including patterned papers, Donna Salazar's Corrugated Board by Zutter, vintage dictionary page -torn and inked, burlap, and cheese cloth. Distressing was done with my Distrezz-It-All. I just don't know what I would do without this handy little distressing machine these days!! :-)

Gears ~ These Donna Salazar Want2Scrap gears were so much fun to work with. I inked them with Donna's Mix'd Media Inx in Patina - I just dabbed it randomly, not covering the entire gear, I then dabbed some Ranger Paint Dabbers in copper. I used my heat tool close over the paint until it bubbled up, then did the same with the gold Paint Dabber. 

Corrugated Board ~ The photos don't do justice to the distressing on the corrugated board. Of course the first thing I did was run the edges through my Distrzz-It-All. Then the ridges and edges were painted with a mix of metallic green and black paint. Once that was dry, I coated with Clear Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint which gave a shiny crackled finish. Finally I added some fun stitching. 

Heat Embossing ~ next to the matted photo I stamped Donna's Lace Corner image using her Mix'd Media Inx in Jasmine, and embossed using seafoam white embossing powder. 

Pearl Flourishes ~ You can get a lot of mileage out of your flourishes by cutting them apart to use on different parts of your page like I did with this sweet Zva Creations flourish. 

Paint Splatter ~ In the top corner, I used a stiff paint brush to splatter some metallic paint behind my title for a bit of extra texture and dimension. 

Donna Salazar Products:

Antiquities ~ Tails of Travel

Antiquities ~ One Sheet Wonderful

Antiquities ~ Time for Tea

Antiquities ~ Die Cut Ribbons

Lace Corner Stamp

Spellbinder ~ Bitty Blossoms

Spellbinder ~ Grand Peony

Want2Scrap Chipboard ~ Sprightly Sprocket

Smooch Spritz ~ Sea Breeze

Mix'd Media Inx ~ Patina, Honey, Jasmine
Zutter Corrugated Board

Zutter Distrezz-It-All

No surprise here ~ I'm entering this layout in Donna's October sketch challenge using this fabulous sketch by Mistra:

Other rules ~ use green - a flower and my leaves, and at least one DSD product - I think I have that covered. 

Thanks for stopping by! I treasure your comments.

~ Blessings ~