American Crafts Brads Challenge

The challenge on the American Crafts blog this week was to use two brads. Ha Ha! I don't know that I could ever use only two brads... especially if you are talking about their Elements brads. So instead of just two brads, I used lots of brads in two different ways! This page is about the picnic that Madison's first grade teacher invited the parents to come in for. I brought us sandwiches and yummy chips plus my Arizona Sweet Tea (oh how I miss it on this diet!) and her favorite drink from our little town's market, Mott's apple juice in a little can. We ended it with the best drumsticks on the planet... vanilla with caramel in the center! We did this to celebrate their class learning the long "I" sound like in Ice Cream!
First I used the brads as photo corners. These are the mini glitter black ones (one of my favorites!) They really make this photo pop off the page.
I also used the jewel brads from a couple of different sets to make the I for the title. It was really easy to do and makes the title really different from most of my usual ones. It all seems to go really well with the new Heat Wave collection. Hope you enjoyed!

Supplies: Blue- Creamy Coconut (back) (35107), Dot Strip- Tangerine Tidal wave (35113), Ice Cream/pink strip- Slammin' Strawberry (35114), Journaling sticker- Fork, Abode collection (42691), Ice Cream- Details Sandy (78032), Brads: Black mini glitter, Jewel : black, Earth Tones, Botanique. Thickers- Chit Chat Chestnut (42901), Niki Riki Yellow (53041). Flair- Heat wave (All products from American Crafts)

My New Adventure Into Me

So I still love scrapbooking and it is my #1 hobby, but I have always had this desire to paint. Sure I have done a few murals and artsy type projects but I have never just put a paintbrush to canvas and let my imagination take over. Finally I have decided to let all of my little fears go and do it. And this is one of things that has come out of that new adventure. The first ones that I have done have had more black silhouettes to them and so this one is much more colorful from the rest. I have been inspired by the fabulous colors that Becky Higgins has been posting on her blog and I would love to have her kitchen! I am thinking of opening an Etsy store to sell my paintings and make them customizable but that is another adventure that we are still working on! Here are some others, more to come!

Valentine's Day Decorations

This year I was inspired to make some Valentine's Day decorations. I fell in love with these coffee filter flowers that I saw on Elizabeth Kartchner's blog. I had to go and make them and this is what I ended up with.
I sprayed mine with Tattered Angel's Glimmer Mist in Brick Red and tattered rose pink to give it some extra color. I hot glued the flowers onto ribbon and added hearts that I cut with my MM slice. I then had the idea to hang this clear string across the window and hang things from it. Not sure if I will take the whole thing down after Valentines Day or leave the string up to hang things on it for all of the different holidays.
I hung these playing cards from Heidi Swapp on the string. I love the King and Queen ones!
These are MM shimmer alphas that I added to acrylic rectangles and then embellished them. This key is from Tim Holtz grungeboard that I painted with his crackle paint (I have to get more of that!) I tied it on with string.
Here is a shot of the king playing card. The garland obviously spells love and I added things like AC flair and punched scalloped circles cut from valentines paper. I am very happy with it and can't wait to do more if I have time!

Homemade Valentines

I gave the girls the option of either buying valentines with their favorite characters on them or making them. They both chose to make them and so of course my creative mind went wild! I pre cut most all of the paper and used a border punch at the bottom. All of the hearts I cut using my silhouette and let me tell you it was tired afterward! The girls had a lot of fun putting them together and they got to stay up late to do it!
These are Madison's valentines which she was very proud of! We added the suckers which was easy to do since I had already punched the border with holes!
Kaley did her own thing (of course!) and added the smaller strip on top of the other and had the circle and heart going off the edge of the card. She is more creative than I think even she knows!

Inspired by books

This weeks challenge on the American Crafts blog was to do a page that was inspired by a book. Now many of you might know that I love to read but rarely get the time to do so because of the whole having four kids thing. Except that last year I was introduced to these books, the Twilight Saga. Now I being a grown adult woman (barely!) thought that they were childish books and that they wouldn't hold my attention... HA! I immediately fell in love with them and read the first two that I borrowed from a friend and then begged my husband to buy me the boxed set for Christmas. He did and I read the last two each within a 48 hour period. I have seen the movies countless times and am currently re-reading the series because I find them that enjoyable. So needless to say I wanted to do a page that captured my current obsession with reading these books. Maybe if I had done this years ago I would have done it on the Harry Potter series but maybe someday I will dive back into those again, for now I am happy with these.

Materials used: Black Glitter cardstock #71414, Red Foil Cardstock, Black Zing! Embossing Powder, Red Heart Ribbon #92944, Thickers- Rockabye, Silver #43030, Cinnamon- Pomegranate #43048, Delight-Black #43061, Paper (Brown) Craft Fair- Elenore Battington #34719, (Grey solid) Halloween-Grimm #34782, All American Crafts. Other: Glimmer Mist- tattered Angels, Burnt Red, Black Ink.