CKC Portland!

I can't believe a month has gone by since I posted!  I have started my first Project Life type album.  I decided to start with National Park pictures...we have been to 18 parks and I had never scrapped any of them!  Thought this was the perfect way to dive in to PL!

Another thing keeping me busy is...I'm teaching at CKC Portland!  I am going to be doing a Punky Sprouts mini album on both Friday and Saturday.  Our owner, Shelly, is also teaching.  Her's will be an altered wall hanging.  Here is the info!

Wild About Mixed Media  (C123)
Friday from 4-5:30 and Saturday from 1-2:30.

Sponsor: Punky Sprouts

Are you wild about mini albums? Then this is the class for you! Who wouldn't want to go home with a completed mini album? That is just what you'll have from this class. Just add pictures and journaling at home! You'll work with one of Punky Sprouts' newest albums, the Teenie Beanie Sprout with pages of corrugated board, chipboard and canvas. Using mists, twine, canvas embellishments and handmade flowers you'll make a textured work of art to hold your beautiful photographs. This is a versatile mini using shades of coral & green florals, stripes and circle patterns with some wild zebra thrown in! Adorable!

What you’ll make: A mixed media mini album including canvas, chipboard and corrugated board pages
What you should bring: Basic supplies, wet adhesive (like Fabri-Tac or 3 in 1), Crop-o-Dile, border punch
What products you’ll play with: Punky Sprouts Mixed Media Album and Embellishments (Lil' Blossoms, Lil' Stems) Mists, Die-cuts and a fabulous line of patterned papers!
What techniques you’ll try: Handmade flowers, misting
What scrapping skill level is best: Intermediate to Advanced
How long class lasts: 1 ½ hours
Class price: $35.00 PRE-REGISTRATION, $37.00 AT EVENT

Sprout Your Inner Artist!  (C123)
Friday from 1-3 and Saturday from 4-6.

Sponsor: Punky Sprouts
Join Punky Sprouts for a fun and energetic class where you will make a beautiful piece of art to frame or hang as-is. You will leave class with a mixed media wall hanging and learn oodles of techniques that you can incorporate into your layouts and mini albums. Step outside your box and expand your skills and techniques to help your memory-keeping come alive!

What you’ll make: 12” x 12” mixed media art piece suitable for framing
What you should bring: Brown ink (such as Chestnut Roan Chalk ink or similar), scissors, liquid glue (preferably Fabri-tac or 3 in 1), heat gun, paper piercer, apron or paint shirt highly recommended.
What products you’ll play with: Punky Sprouts' Punky Playground, Lil' Blossoms (parchment), Lil' Blooms (metal); Lil' Stems (canvas); mist sprays, Acrylic Gel Mediums, paint, patterned papers, die-cuts, chunky glitters, doilies, ribbons, tulle, bling, decoupage
What techniques you’ll try: Building layers & dimension with gel mediums and many different textures, blend custom colors with paints and spray mists for an ethereal look, learn to work with a wide variety of textured embellishments. Learn to make the most trendy flowers used in scrapbooking, card-making and mixed media.
What scrapping skill level is best: Intermediate to Advanced (you should be comfortable with using a heat gun)
How long class lasts: 2 hours
Class price: $40.00 PRE-REGISTRATION, $42.00 AT EVENT
 

Creative Changes or Changing Creatively

Not sure if the title reads right but I am changing up some of the creative things in my life...namely scrapbooking!  In 2011, I ended my design team stint with Scrapdango in March and I think since then, I have only done about 4 or 5 layouts.  And the weird thing is...I don't really miss it.  I think I had sort of burnt out on it.

I had resisted Project Life (even though it is from my favorite scrapper!) because I thought it would make me not scrap at all.  When I mentioned that to Tadd, he said "So?"  At first I thought to myself...but I like scrapping but after a few days of pondering, I decided I would do it.  Now, as much as I love Becky and all the product, it seemed a bit ridiculous to buy all the stuff when my scrapbook room is busting at the seams with stuff.  So, I went to Craft Warehouse today and bought some variety packs of pocket page protectors and I am going for it!  My plan is to still do some layouts but mostly switch over to this format and make little layouts in some of the pockets.  I think it is exactly what I need creatively!

I also want to focus a bit on getting better with my photography.  I ran across the Take 12 project at Ella Publishing and am going to take that on too!  It is simply to take 12 pictures on the 12th of each month.  There are even themes...which I love!  I am going to try to stay on top of that so that I don't have 144 pictures at the end of the year that I need to do something with!  My plan is to do a 8.5 x 11 album with them.

And I will still be doing my Punky Sprouts dt gig!  Every album is different and I haven't seemed to get creative blocks when doing those assignments!  In fact, as another new thing, I am teaching a mini album class at CKC Portland in March!  I'll post here when I know the times!

Top 10 Layouts of 2011

I did this last year and it is a fun way to see some favorite layouts altogether.  I included a couple mini albums since I do so many of those!

 

 You can see all of the Play, Imagine, Pretend album here.

You can see all of the Seattle album here.

Fancy Gift Bag

Hey everybody!  I want to show you an easy way to dress up a plain old brown paper lunch bag and make it into a gift bag!  I have made these before but for this one, I added in a Lil' Stem ruffle along with some Lil' Bloom embellishments from Punky Sprouts.


Here is what you need:
*Paper Lunch Bag
*2 Pieces of Patterned Paper
*Glue
*Lil'Stem
*Lil' Blossoms
*Small Square of Velcro

1. Cut the top off your bag so that it is 6" tall. Mine is 5" wide...check yours and adjust the measurements I give here!

2. Cut the pp you want for the front of your bag to 5" (width) x 6".
Cut your other pp to 5" (width) x 8.5". This will be the back and front flap of the bag.
Cut a 5' (width) x 2.5" piece for under the front flap to hide the pleats.

3. Now you are going to fold the bottom flap of the lunch bag down. Like this:

 

 
 
4. Glue the front onto your bag...this goes on the side without the flap. You want to line up the bottom edge with the bottom edge of the bag...you can always trim at the top if you need to.
 

5. Grab your piece of pp that is the back and score (or fold) it at 6".

 

 

6.Take your Lil' Stem and pleat it.  I glue mine as I go to hold it all in place.  This doesn't have to be perfect (as you can see!).

7. Glue this pleated strip to the underside of the flap...this is the piece that you scored.

 

8. Now glue the 2.5" piece to sandwich the canvas in between the 2 pieces of paper.

9. Glue the back on. Line up the scored flap with the top of the bag. There WILL be a lip at the bottom...you want that! It will make your bag stand straight when we're done. 

 
9. Add a piece of velcro on the flap to hold it down. Your bag is finished unless you want to add some decorations!  I added a few different sizes of Lil' Blooms.  I chose to leave all my canvas natural but you could also mist them for some color!

 Here are a couple shots of the finished bag:

 

School Portait Solution

This is my newest Punky Sprout album using the new Teenie Beanie Sprout.  I used the blue and pink Authentique lines to do a book for my kids' school portraits.  I never knew what to do with them...as a stay-at-home-mom, it seems they are always with me, so I don't even keep a copy in my wallet! :)  We have the current year's picture on the wall but this way we can look back and see them grow!  I decided to do it by grade instead of year...so that I could see what each kid looked like at the same age.

I wanted to keep this super simple because I know the kids will want to flip through it a lot and I just felt that I wanted the focus to be the portraits.  Since the paper is pretty busy, I kept the embellishments to just the numbers and a little punched strip.  The numbers for each grade are from Bella Blvd and are white.  I used my Copic Markers to color them.  On each one, I used 3 different shades and blended them together.  This was my first time using Copics and I have to say that I now know why so many people are addicted! :)

 The Lil' Petal banner pieces are some of my favorite Punky embellishments but they were much too large for me to spell out school on the cover of this little album.  I learned this little trick from Punky owner Shelly!

Take the bottom tip of the triangle and fold it up to the top.

Cut along each side of the folded up triangle.

Then cut the remaining diamond in half.

You just made one banner piece into 4 mini banners!

Watch it Wiggle...Rainbow!

While I thought that everyone knew how to layer jello...I actually got a lot of questions about this so I am going to show you how I did it!  It is really easy but is time consuming since everything has to chill!

I used 6 different jellos for mine.  You could probably do the small boxes but my store didn't have all the colors I wanted in that size.  I ended up pouring a lot of jello down the sink though.

Make your jello according to the quick set directions on the box.  This involves putting ice into it to do a quick chill.  Pour the first color into your bowl.  I used a trifle bowl but you could use whatever...including individual cups.  Put the bowl in the refrigerator and chill for about an hour.  Then make the next color and repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Until your bowl is filled or you have all the colors you want!

Before serving you probably want to chill over night.

 This was a huge favorite at the party!

Rainbow Mobile

This is without a doubt, my new favorite party decoration!  It was easy, cheap and made a big impact!  I told Tadd that we may see these for every party we ever have! :)  While these are rainbow to go with Erin's rainbow party, you could easily use any color!  How about a maroon and gold one for a Harry Potter party (Gryffindor colors)?  Or lots of shades of pink for a princess party?  Red and green for Christmas?  I could go on and on!

Here's just a little tutorial in case you want to make your own!  I found these on Pinterest and here is the tutorial I used! :)



 First gather your paper.  I used cardstock.  I cut mine into 1" x 8" strips.  I found it easiest to have them laid out in piles when I was putting them together.  I used 8 strips of paper for my shortest mobile and 30 for my longest.  Just depends on how low you want them to hang.

Now, we sew!  As my friends can tell you, my sewing projects don't always go exactly as planned.  This, however, was a piece of cake! :)  I didn't measure or worry about being perfect at all!  I eyeballed the center of the strip and sewed a line down it.  Once I hit the end of the strip, I just pushed it through, about to the point my silver plate ended.  (like how exact that is?)  It really doesn't matter.  Then start the next strip.  ***DON'T FORGET to leave about 12" of thread at the start for hanging it up!

Here's a close up.  You can see that the gaps in between the strips aren't all the same width...but I can tell you, no one but you will notice! :)

All of them hanging up.  I really liked all the different lengths.   The tutorial I had used said to put a fishing weight on the bottom to keep them from curling up.  I did not do this and had no curling.  I think this was because I used cardstock and she had used vellum.  If you use something thin, you may need to do it!

And my favorite shot...looking up from underneath it!

If you make one...please link it up!  I'd love to see it!  Tomorrow...a rainbow jello tutorial!