Sketch/Template 12

Happy Tuesday! I'm back with another free template to share. This template features more hexagons because I'm on a hexagon kick lately. In fact, I used the negative hexagon cut from the last sketch I posted on my example page. So if you have the free .svg file from my last post, you'll be all set to work with this sketch.

The sketch was based on this layout that I created with my February Scraptastic Club kit called "Hearts A Flutter". I loved these photos of my daughter concentrating while addressing her Valentine cards. She always works really hard to pick out the perfect card for each one of her friends.

I only have a few extra example pages because I was too sick to send the sketch out early! Marlene came through for me with this absolutely adorable snow themed page. I love the letters that she chose for her title work, and the layered octagons totally rock!

Nancy also supplied an example page using the sketch. I love the awesome color combination she used and the super fun title she chose for this layout about her husband making his own cheese for the first time. I think it's great that she adapted the sketch to work without the hexagons too!

I was able to create a digital layout with the sketch this week. I did it yesterday morning! There's nothing like waiting until the last possible minute. Right? I used some digital supplies by Jenni Bowlin from the store at Jessica Sprague's website to complete this page about my son playing at the park.

Before I go, I have a free matching digital template that I made in Photoshop Elements for digital scrapbookers. Please click the link below to download it!

http://www.box.com/s/a3lf70v57a0rq681z3rm

*Please remember to read and respect my terms of use. If you’re not familiar with what’s allowed and what’s not, please review the TOU file found in the template download.

A Happy Monday

My kids went back to school today after a week off for Mardi Gras vacation. It’s so much quieter here! I’m finally starting to feel better too. I was diagnosed with pneumonia last Thursday and I have been on five different medicines. I’m trying to listen to the doctor, so I’ve been getting a lot of rest. I haven’t been able to do much scrapbooking, and I haven’t been much help around the house either. My poor husband has had a lot to keep up with lately. I’m sure that he’s grateful that I’m feeling well enough to get around now too!

I have a few layouts from last week to share. They’re made with brand new products that went live today at JessicaSprague.com!

1: Writing Valentines

I was a week behind on my Photoshop Friday class series so I had to hurry up and catch up! This is my take on the "Expand A Title Across Two Pages" lesson. The papers are from the adorable Free Spirit paper pack by In The Making Designs.

Supplies:
Free Spirit Paper Pack
Photoshop Friday Expand A Title Across Two Pages
Framed: Postage Stamp Pack

2: Absolutely Charming

I loved the Photoshop Friday assignment on adding Dingbats to journaling. I have always wondered how to do that without spacing and trying to change the font in the journaling itself. Very cool!

Supplies:
Photoshop Friday Adding Dingbats To Journaling
This & That Charming Collection

3: Perfect Valentine Picker

I made this page with a template that I created to giveaway here on my blog weeks ago. I'm really into the hexagon trend lately. It's so different and fun!

Supplies:
For the Love Mini Class + Kit
Valentine Bingo Card Kit
Template Freebie

4: Dude

My son tried so hard to convince me that he needed to bring this adorable kitten home. My husband is allergic to cats, otherwise that kitten would've been a part of our family on that day. I really wanted it too, so telling Brandon no was HARD! LOL

Supplies:
Photoshop Friday Stroke A Border
Kraft Capers Paper Pack
A Boy's Life Element Pack #1
A Boy's Life Element Pack #2
A Boy's Life Paper Pack #1
A Boy's Life Paper Pack #2

A Couple Of Cards

I hope everyone had an amazing Valentine's Day! We had a really sweet time here at my house. To make the day even sweeter, I made several different cards for friends and family with my Scraptastic Club  Hearts A Flutter kit and add on. I thought it would be neat to share them as my project post today.

On this card, I fussy cut another doily and popped it up to give the card dimension. I used Maya Mist to spray the chipboard heart, and I stamped part of my sentiment in the lower left hand corner. The white crochet flower came from my stash.

I designed this entire card around the super cute tabbed embellishment. I covered one of the big chipboard hearts with paper and then inked the goodness out of it! Once the ink was dry, I tied it up with a cute little bow. This card went to my husband because the sentiment was just perfect for our relationship.

As you'll see on this card, I'm on a complete twine kick lately. I tied this heart with twine too, but before I finished the knot I added a little button to the center of it. I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the swirls on the bottom of the card. I love that thing!

Feel free to lift any of my cards! They don't have to be Valentine cards. I find that making cards is a GREAT way to use leftover scraps from your kits.

Speaking of Scraptastic Club, the March reveals are up and Jessica did an AMAZING job on these kits. (She always does!!) The first kit is called Be Amazing and it has the most adorable butterflies ever in it!

This is the Be Amazing add on. I love the kites and the honeycomb and hexagon accents. The colors are so pretty!

This is the kit that I’ll be working with! It’s called Celebrate Life. It’s whimsical and totally fun. I’m going to use it to scrap several different birthday pages. I’ve already pulled photos that coordinate with the kit. The washi tape is to die for! Seriously.

The Celebrate Life add on is awesome! I absolutely can’t wait to play with the Chalkboard mist. I can definitely see using it to color some of the flowers and I’m sure I’ll come up with more ideas.

The kits will be available for purchase on March 1, 2012 but you can sign up as a member and you’ll get the first choice of kits before they’re available to the general public!

Pros And Cons

Hey y’all! I was recently asked to review the Phillips Satin Perfect Epilator as a part of a BzzAgent assignment. This is a photo of the goodies that I got in the package.

Of course, Murphy’s Law went into effect and I had just shaved my legs the night before I got the epilator in the mail! I had to wait a few days before I could try it. I checked out all of the neat attachments, and I was especially impressed by the tweezers with the LED light and mirror inside. I did try those right away and they completely rocked! They made it really easy to see and grasp my fine eyebrow hair.

The day soon arrived to try the epilator itself. I took a shower before I started because I had heard that opening your pores helps the epilation hurt a little less. I tried the epilator both without attachments and with the massaging attachments. Honestly, it HURT! I’m not a wuss either. I have a tattoo and I didn’t even cry when I got it. I kept trying to use the epilator in different ways based on the directions. I pulled the skin tight and I made sure I was epilating in the right direction. I tried it on my underarms and legs. I really, really tried but I just couldn’t take it. I’ve heard that the pain gets better if you’re able to do it repetitively, but I couldn’t do it!

I did like the razor attachment. That was a lot easier to use and there was no pain involved. Right up my alley! It was quick and super simple to use. I will definitely use the razor attachment and the tweezers. I wish I could say that I liked the epilator more because it definitely left my skin silky and smooth where I managed to epilate. I will definitely try it again to see if I can build up a tolerance to it, but I was disappointed with how painful it was! Have any of you tried epilating? How did your experience go?

Interview With A Scrapbooker

Guess what? I was interviewed at Paper Goodness! Maricar asked some wonderful questions about my creative process. If you've ever been curious about how I create my pages, you should definitely read the interview here.

Happy Mardi Gras!

***To my email subscribers, I’m really sorry if  you got this post twice. Blogger hiccupped and ate my first post!!

We really haven’t done much to celebrate Mardi Gras today. I offered to make jambalaya so we would at least have a nice Southern dinner but the kids vetoed it! Instead, they wanted tuna fish out of a can. I swear, I can’t do a thing with them!

Recently, Miss Jordan saw a commercial for St. Jude and we ended up talking about why some of the little girls in the video were bald.

When we talked about cancer and chemotherapy she asked what she could do to help. I told her that they did have a charity called “Locks Of Love” that makes wigs out of donated hair. As soon as she heard that, she started talking about donating her hair!

I took her to Supercuts because I knew they had a program that would mail the hair to Locks of Love. They cut NINE inches of hair off of my sweet girl. She asked the hairstylist to take as much as of her hair as she could to donate.

We had an impromptu photo shoot in the backyard after we got home. She looks a lot older and more sophisticated with her new hair cut. Doesn’t her zebra jacket totally fit her sassy little personality? I certainly think so!

Valentine’s day came and went very quickly around here. I got the kids to write their cards the weekend before because we always seem to end up doing it at the very last minute.  Alexis was thrilled with her Hello Kitty valentine cards.

Jordan begged for SpongeBob valentine cards. I love how she marches to the beat of her own drum. She said some of the other kids asked her why she had “boy” valentines. She told them that she liked SpongeBob and that was that!

I originally bought Brandon some Thomas cards, but when he saw Jordan’s SpongeBob cards he just had to have those! Since I’m the best Mom in the world, I went back to the store and bought him some. Rotten child!

I have a few layouts to share before I go today! ( I know. You’re so not surprised. Right?)

1: Volunteer

I took Alexis with me to volunteer for her hippotherapy organization one weekend in December. It was freezing, but the fundraiser went really well. The hit of the event was having your horses' photo taken with Santa. The big photo is of Alexis with her therapy horse Kody.

Supplies:
It's a Start Templates Set 8
4EVER (Collab Mini Kit)
4ever (Collab Mini Kit)
4Ever (Collab Mini Kit)
4Ever (Collab Mini Kit)
4Ever Mini Kit

2: Birthday Boy

I was inspired to scrap this page because of the letter "G" prompt at Scrapbookers Anonymous. My G themed things are "gifts" and "girls". I used an older Scraptastic Club kit called Birthday Bash to create this page. I love being able to go back and finish up tiny little scraps in older kits! It gives me such a sense of accomplishment.

I scraplifted Cindy Tobey's "Hanging With My Peeps" layout from page 71 of the July/August 2011 Creating Keepsakes magazine. Of course, I went off on my own tangent as usual.

3. Surprise! Card

This card is a total blatant lift of Julie Bonner's awesome card that she made for the most recent CHA release. She used Jillibean Soup, but I had still had a few more Imaginisce Birthday Bash scraps leftover from that older Scraptastic Club kit. It never hurts to have an extra birthday card on hand!

4Shared Issues!

I’ve been getting emails that the 4shared download links on my blog and the Ideas For Scrapbookers blog aren’t working. People are reporting that my files are asking for passwords. I would like everyone to know that I am aware of the issue and I’ve been attempting to resolve it. The entire situation has me confused as I have never assigned a password to any of my files. I have emailed 4shared several times to ask for help. Recently, I received this response. "Hello, Thank you for contacting us concerning the issue. We are aware of the issue. We are working hard to get the problem resolved as quickly as possible." I replied again and asked how long it would take to get the issue fixed, and I got this reply. "Our programmers are working on this issue. We will do our best to fix the problem as soon as possible." Unfortunately, I do not currently have the time to go through my 4shared files to download them one at a time and transfer them to Box or another file hosting service. I am very sorry that you all are having problems downloading. I’m hoping that 4shared is able to fix the issue soon. In the future, I will be using another hosting service because of the lack of response and customer service issues with 4shared. 

You Make The World A Better Place To Be

Check out the new page I created! If you remember the hexagon layout I made a little while ago, you'll recognize the negative cut on this layout. I'm a big fan of using as many scraps as I can, so I thought it was really neat to be able to work it into the design of my page.

I have some detail shots to share as well. I loved the sentiment on the die cut and I knew right away that I wanted to use it as the title on my page. It was too perfect to pass up!

I matted the polka dot flower on a doily that I fussy cut out of one of the patterned paper pieces. I also added hexagon journaling spots to fill in some of the missing pieces of the negative diecut.

I used a few word strips and a tiny scrap of ribbon on the upper left side of my design to balance the page. A cute button tied with twine finished everything off!

*Please note: All of the supplies for this layout came from the Scraptastic Club Hearts A Flutter kit and add on.

Sketch/Template 11 with a .SVG Freebie!

I’m having another busy blog week because I'm already back to share another sketch. I also have a free template, a free .svg file, and some awesome example pages from a few friends to share. Let's get going! Please feel free to download the sketch to your computer by right clicking on the image and then clicking "Save As". This sketch was inspired by the hexagons that are popping up all over the internet. I'm hopping aboard the latest scrappy trend and you can too!

The first example page is by my good friend Nancy. I love the photo of her with her husband and the quote she used as a title is just perfect! She used fabric hexagons and they turned out wonderfully. All in all, this page is super sweet!

The next page is by Juliann Marchant. She's on the Scraptastic Club design team with me and she used the awesome "A Boy's Life" kit to create this layout. Juliann used a polka dot mask instead of hexagons and she did some wonderful stitching to draw the eye around her page. Her photo is so fun too!

Thank you for the example pages Juliann and Nancy! I always appreciate the creative help.

I created an example page as well. I used the Scraptastic Club Hearts A Flutter kit and add on. I cut the hexagons on my Cricut using Sure Cuts A Lot software and the free .svg file that I'll link below. I usually make a digital example as well but I ran out of time.

This is what the .svg file looks like. It's sized at 8.5x11 inches but it's easily resized. You can also use the negative space between the cuts as chicken wire if you cut some of the edges off. I love it when you can use one file for two different applications.

 

Here's the download link for the free hexagon .svg file. http://www.box.com/s/z49motgaiyboz1ph2sr3

This is the link for the free layered digital template. http://www.box.com/s/c84p1pmcciq625q4oy06

Silly Valentine Suckers

I'm back to share my latest Scraptastic Club project with you! I absolutely loved the chipboard hearts that were in the Hearts A Flutter kit this month. I misted mine with shimmery red Maya mist and they turned out really pretty. I decided to use them on this page about two of my kids enjoying Valentine's suckers that were almost bigger than they were!

The title Thickers really stand out on the dark pink paper. I also added some tiny blue gems from my stash to add a little more sparkle to my page.

My favorite paper in this month's kit was the doily paper. I ended up fussy cutting quite a few doilies so I could use them to embellish my page. They really helped ground the embellishment clusters.

I cut the banner apart so the journaling card would show through and I used blue gems to hang it on the page. The little journaling card was perfect for my theme and a button tied with string finished one of the doilies with a fun detail.

I hope you all have a creative day!

Getaway

We’ve had a busy February so far. Brandon was selected as the Terrific Kid in his class at school. Ronnie took off of work so we could go watch the ceremony. The teacher told us that if she could plant him in the school yard and grow 20 more Brandons, she would have the perfect class! Isn’t that sweet?

Brandon wanted to his picture taken with me, but when Ronnie took the photo he made this face. I can’t believe they’re taking my photo AGAIN! (You asked for it kid. LOL)

On Saturday, Brandon made a really good friend at Alexis’ hippotherapy barn. They have a stray cat that just showed up one day and he adores Brandon. They spent a lot of time cuddling and meowing at one another. Bubs wanted to take him home but Ronnie is really allergic to cats so no luck!

Alexis doesn’t like to wear her helmet when she rides but we all insist on it! She was waiting for Kody so she could mount and ride.

I took this photo of them walking into the arena. We really appreciate the volunteers who show up early Saturday morning to help Alexis ride.

After we got back from hippotherapy, my Mom came over to watch the kids. Ronnie and I drove to Biloxi, MS to see Ronnie’s favorite comedian. We booked a room at the Imperial Palace and it was beautiful.

The décor was lovely, and it was really nice to be out as a couple. We went to dinner at the buffet and I had the best cappuccino! I’d love to just pick up their machine and take it home with me. If I thought I could get away with it…

After dinner we headed to another casino to gamble a bit and watch the comedy show. We didn’t win a single thing but it was still fun to play. The comedian was hilarious and risqué as always!

We ended up coming home really early in the morning because my Mom called at 6 to let us know that Jordan had been throwing up since 11:30 that night. She didn’t call sooner because she knew we would’ve come home. I was so thankful that she watched the kids, and to have her deal with a sick kid was even more of an issue. So yeah, she’s pretty awesome!

I have several different pages to share with you all today. I’ve been doing a lot of digital scrapping lately.

1: Favorites

I'm running behind on Jessica Sprague’s digital art journaling class because life happened! I am working on catching up a little at a time. This is my take on the "favorites" prompt. I loved this paper because it's so bright, fun, and funky. It goes well with my personality! LOL

Supplies:
Jessica Sprague's Digital Art Journaling Class
KI Memories Pop Culture Paper Pack
KI Memories Pop Culture Hip Chip Pack

2: The Magic Of This Moment

I decided to scrap some photos of the hotel from our little getaway this weekend. If you look closely you can see me in the mirror in the top photo.

Supplies:
Countdown Template Pack
Valpolicella Add on Paper Pack
Valpolicella Elements Pack
Valpolicella Paper Pack

3: You

I used Becky Higgins' Amber kit to finish the Photoshop Friday assignment from last week. It's really good to go over some of the techniques again! I love Photoshop Friday.

Supplies:
Amber Edition Journaling Cards
Amber Edition Days + Numbers + Arrows
Amber Edition Paper Pack
Impressions Painting Brushes
Photoshop Friday Converting Photo to Black and White

***I have one more awesome thing to share with you! Remember this sketch that I posted a while back?

I was so surprised to see that Kelly Goree had used it as inspiration for one of her CHA pages! She did an absolutely amazing job with the sketch and I was so flattered to read that she likes my style. Pretty cool right? Especially since I adore her style!

The new Basic Grey releases are all gorgeous and I really love what Kelly did with the What’s Up line. You can visit Kelly’s blog by clicking this link.