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The Punky Sprouts design team got to design with Becky Fleck's Pagemaps for the July Newsletter!  I always enjoy doing that!  Her sketches are so fun to work with!  Here is my page:

I used some of Sassafras's new Sunshine Broadcast line along with Punky Sprouts' lil stems for hte strip and to make the flowers.

Want to win some Punky goodness?  You have TWO WAYS TO WIN!
1) Use Punky products and any of the July sketches at PageMaps and post it to the Punky Blog or FB page by July 31st!  The dt will pick our favorite!

2) Use the sketch on the PageMaps blog to make a layout and link it up there!

Here is what you can win for both of those:

Playing with Actions

I love playing with actions in my PhotoShop Elements and had some fun this morning just playing around with some pictures we took this weekend.  We went downtown to see the ships on the waterfront but when we got down there, we realized that it was the morning of the Rose Parade!  Oops!  Luckily, we found some room on a curb on the top of the Burnside bridge!  These are some pictures Tadd took at the parade and I took of the ships, kids and Portland sign (which I've always wanted to get a picture of!).  Because I was just playing, I used a different action on every photo!  Fun!  These are all free and I've given you the source.  I'd love to know what you think!  Tell me which is your favorite action!

SOOC (Straight Out of Camera):

Coffee Shop: Soft Autumn Glow

 

SOOC:

 Pioneer Woman: Colorized

 

SOOC:

Coffee Shop: Bold Pop

 

SOOC:

 Pioneer Woman: Seventies

 

SOOC:

 Coffee Shop: Velvet Cream

 

SOOC:

 Coffee Shop: Sunny Pop

 

SOOC:

 Coffee Shop: Color Pop 2

 

SOOC:

 Coffee Shop: Butterscotch Vintage

 

SOOC:

MCP: Mini Fusion

Geology Geek

I did this layout a couple months ago while at the beach with some friends and just realized that it never made it up on my blog!  Thought it was good timing to post it since my Geology Geek is currently on a science field trip with about 80 of his high school students!  Thanks for looking!

Using some MLS Scraps!

After making the 2 cards for Erin's teachers, my scraps form My Little Shoebox have been sitting on my table.  Last night I decided I should play with the stamps...I don't do enough stamping!  I loved this little flower stamp!  I stamped it in a line across the yellow paper and then stamped it on 3 different colors of scraps of MLS I had!  A great way to use up the little pieces!  I then cut the colored flowers out and applied 3D Crystal Lacquer to them.  I have kind of been on a 3D Crystal Lacquer kick lately!  Then once they dried, I used some pop dots and placed them over the flowers I had already stamped.  The happy stamp is also from MLS.  I stamped it and then drew over the letters with the Crystal Lacquer...it is a fun, shiny look!  And since my favorite thing in scrapbooking right now is tiny alphabets, I used some of mine from MLS to spell out birthday!

Last Day of Preschool

Today was Erin's last day of preschool...for this year.  She'll be at the same preschool next year but with a different teacher.  Her teacher this year was also Isaac's teacher for his 2 years of preschool so I think next year will be a bit strange (for me) at least at first! :)  Here is a picture of how happy she is to have the summer start!  (ok, not really, she just liked the bouncy house!)

I made a few thank you cards for the teacher and assistant.  I used some My Little Shoebox Farmer's Market that I had left from this album!  Such great paper and can be used for way more than "farm"!

Dynamic Duo Blog Hop!

Welcome!  Today is day 8 of the Dynamic Duo Blog Hop featuring products from Punky Sprouts and TaDa Studios!

I did my album using the newest album from Punky Sprouts, the Trunk Punky.  The Sweetie Sprout is still my favorite but this is a very close second!  Loved working with this!  (not that they aren't all wonderful!)  I received the Jolly Holly Days paper from TaDa to work with.  What a great Christmas line!  I knew when I saw it that I wanted to make a little recipe book of all the treats we make each year.  Here is what I did:

I decided to paint all the chipboard a cream color.  I hadn't painted everything like this since my very first Punky album!  There are no embellishments on the front because I know this is going in the kitchen with my cookbooks!

Here is the album opened up.  So far the flaps are blank...originally this was going to be for my mom and I was going to write something here but now I'm not so sure I'm not keeping it!  :)

To add some dimension to the book while still keeping it relatively flat, I decided to cut out some of the designs from the TaDa paper and use Sakura's 3D Crystal Lacquer on them.  I love this stuff!  It is so easy to use!  I also used some Baker's Twine on every page.

This TaDa paper had great designs for fussy cutting...so great that even someone who doesn't much care to fussy cut (ME!) couldn't resist!  This ric-rak is cut from the paper.

Loved this Gingerbread man with the bite out of his head!  I have been meaning to stitch on the canvas pages of a Punky album since I started designing for them and I finally did it!  I used a big needle and used the Baker's Twine.  I did it freehand...no marking where to do it so the stitches are all different sizes but I really like how it turned out!

Here's a close up of the stitching.

Loved these stockings and just had to "hang" them! 

These great big scallop edges are one of the reasons I love this album!  So glad there are 2 of these pages in the book!

Hard to tell in the picture, but here are 2 little acrylic pages that open in the middle.

Some more great shapes for fussy cutting!  On these, I put a little bling before I put the 3D lacquer on it!  Works great!

And there you have it...all my favorite recipes in once easy place!  Can't wait to pull this out at Christmas and have the kids look at it with me!

As with any great blog hop...we have prizes!
Rules for a chance to win FREE products 

Each day go to the following 2 blogs: 
http://tadacreativestudios.wordpress.com/
http://getpunkysprouts.blogspot.com/
Post comments to show your participation. New inspiration will be posted daily. At the end of the 12 day hop, please go to each manufacture’s blog and post a comment telling them your favorite album style and favorite paper collection used in the samples shown during the hop. Your name will then be entered in a drawing to win both! 3 winners will be picked!

Good luck!

Cocoa Daisy Crop

Last weekend, one of my favorite online sites, Cocoa Daisy, had their spring crop.  With tons (well, 18) of challenges, fun games, great classes, and some great RAKS it was hard to keep up! :)  I had some great aspirations of getting a lot of layouts done, especially since they give the week after to get them done.  But, life keeps happening even when I want to scrap! :)  Pretty happy that I got 3 done though.

Patterns and Colors Challenge:  For this one there was a picture of some fabric that we were to use for inspiration.  They were very bright and had lots of different patterns and I immediately thought of this MME paper.  We also had to use circles or squares, mist and a border punch.  I just love how this one turned out!

 

Standing in a Line Challenge:  Pretty obvious from the name...this one we had to use lines of some sort.  I had my pictures in a line, used strips of paper in a line and doodled a line for the border.  There were so many pictures for this, I kept it super simple...even for me! :)

Night Market Challenge:  This challenge was to use black as the background and use pictures of something at night.  These were the only night pictures I had and they aren't good but I still wanted to scrap them and this seemed the perfect time!  Not my best layout but glad to have the story down!