JULY DT REVEAL!

Oh how good it felt to create again! This is our first reveal with our brand new DT over at A PILE OF SCRAP! and what a job everyone did!!! Alissa gave half the team "Wisteria" by Basic Grey and the other half got "Early Bird" by Cosmo Cricket - I LOVE Cosmo Cricket so I was very excited to see it peeking out at me when I got my package. Each month, we are asked to create 4 pieces with our package but I ended up with 3 layouts, a mini project and 2 cards - the scraps are amazing for card-making! Here are my creations:

PLAYTIME - A little bit of everything on this layout! Even a little doodling...still hard to get my pen to do that! I liked the look of the naked Riff Raff dino so I let him be. Still lovin those Jenny Bowlin cards :)

BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED - A very simple yet fun layout. I got a new scalloped oval punch and thought it would make a nice flower...and then the layout just kind of grew from there! The inking is all done with Tea Dye distress ink (my fave!).

BE HAPPY - 7 different patterns on this one! Cosmo Cricket makes it so easy to mix up the patterns. I found that the Bazzill Swiss dot paper went so nicely with this line. I used a little bit of glossy accents on the Be Happy strip just to make it stand out a little more.

What is this you may ask? Well it was my Mom's birthday so I made a cd holder for her and then burned a cd with pictures of the kids. This is the front of the cover - I used my ScorePal to do a little embossing on the front cover (for a frame) and my ever handy pokey tool!

This is the inside of the case.

And the inside with the cd in it. I went to Cosmo Cricket's website to get a picture of the paper so that I could make the label on the cd with the matching paper. I didn't tell my mom what was on the cd so when they got home, it was a nice surprise for her :)

And to fullfill my birdie obsession, I made this cute little card with my new Slice cartridge "Big Kids". I think you may be seeing quite a bit of this birdie! The cream strip (that looks white) was embossed using the new Cuttlebug embossing strips, some ink and my brayer!

And last but not least,

A birthday card for my son who is turning 6 today! The lizard is courtesy of the Big Kids cartridge again - love him!
Hope you enjoyed my creations, make sure you head on over to Vicki and Jerusha's blogs to see what they also did with this line. Then check out Cheryl, Candace, Valerie and Jen's blogs to see they beautiful projects made using the Wisteria line.

Have a great week!!!!!!!!

SKETCH OF THE WEEK JULY 20-AUG 2

Hope you all had a good weekend - we had a major heat wave here this weekend and unfortunately, my scrap room is the hottest room in the house :( Last night, I wanted to scrap so bad but after 10 minutes of trying to stay in the room, I gave up. Today was much cooler and I happily made 6 cards today! Sketch of the Week today is inspired by numerous layouts in magazines and even some of the cards and layouts over on the APOS forum - a great way to use up some of your scraps (and a hint to pull out the sewing machine!) Be sure to check back later today for the APOS Design Team reveal - some BEAUTIFUL stuff!!

WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!!

And now for some contest winners! My biggest apologies as I had totally forgotten about the contest for Following Me until I (ahem) cleaned my desk off and found this stash of goodies! I had my son draw a name for me and the winner is:

CHUXFOX!!!!!!!!!!

Congrats!!!!! If you would be so kind as to email (at icecheeks@yahoo.com) me your address, I will happily send you out some goodies!

And to send out more goodies, the winners of the felties are

So that would be TraceyT and Sarah! Tracey is off to CHA so when you get back and a chance to catch up yourself, let me know where to send to :) Sarah, please send me an email and we can make arrangements too!
Have a great weekend everyone - we are in a heat wave here so I'm not sure how much scrapping I will get done as my scrap room just happens to be in the hottest room in the house :( Big DT reveal coming up on Sunday - stay tuned!

I honestly didn't think summer would be this busy..but with weddings, my parents coming for a visit and my new job at the LSS, somehow, bloggy gets a little neglected. On the plus side of things, I did teach my very first class this week and had the best time!!!!!!!! I can't wait for the one next month!

I did forget to post the last 2 of the Sketch of the Week so thought I would add those here!

ANOTHER CRAZY IDEA

I tend to get these crazy ideas every so often....and I happened to get one last week. I haven't decided whether or not to jump on it yet so last night I took a small leap.

Felt..........

I see all these really cute little felt embellishments and I just think that rather than spending the money to have someone else make (AND ship) them to me, that I should just start creating them all on my own. Well, as luck would have it, we found this mystery strip of white felt in the toy box yesterday! I have no idea where it came from and I am hoping it isn't anything important because I cut it up last night and created this:

So now I have it in my head that I am going to create some felties! Other than birds (which YOU just know will be my first creation, what else do you think will be popular?) If you leave me a comment and tell me your top 3 "wants", I will send 2 lucky winners some! I made this card for Cheryl's challenge on the APOS forum - to hand stitch on a card....you should go check out her cards!

And my other creation last night was for Candace's Tool Challenge which was to pull out the stamps! This is a shot of my son and his kindergarten teacher on their last day of school - he goes to French Immersion so that is why this is a french layout :)

I do have some awesome Kenny pics to post but want to save them until I scrap some of them....they are SO CLOSE AND SOOOOOOOO HOT!!!!! sorry, got a little excited there!

Gotta go get in the shower...my parents are here for the weekend and are on their way for a visit! Enjoy what is left of your weekend :)

Leave me some Love!

Thanks to Sarah I found out late last night that my comments were not working....and here I was feeling sad and dejected with no love..............It was a bit of a rough day yesterday as my best friend T's grandmother passed away.... It is so hard to watch people you love suffer :( Last night she said she was really at peace with everything which left this warm fuzzy on my heart - almost her entire family was there to help each other and it was really nice to know that she wasn't alone.
I slept in this morning...kind of dreading the yucky weather outside and just feeling kind of blah....but then I found some love from Cindyon my blog and it is a great start to my day :) The other great part to my day?? I get to go out tonight with T and see.... Well....he looks something like this:

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! Yep, I'm goin' to see Kenny tonight! Although, as luck would have it, it is an outdoor concert and it is cold, windy and rainy here today......but I'm up for it!
Have a great day y'all - hopefully if my camera doesn't get confiscated, I will have some fab pictures of the hotty to post tomorrow!!!

TECHNIQUE TUESDAY -(aka NO MISTAKES, ONLY OPPORTUNITY!)

Woohoo....Technique Tuesday!!!
Today, I am showing a technique that is great for making your own patterned paper. This technique is called Emboss Resist. With it, you can create pretties like this:

You will need:
glossy cardstock
stamps
Versamark
clear embossing powder
heat gun
reinkers
paintbrush
paper towels
wax paper
water
cardstock (optional)
iron (optional)

STEP ONE:
Stamp designs with watermark (Versamark) ink on glossy cardstock. Sprinkle clear embossing powder and set with heat gun. I used holographic embossing powder so there is a bit of sparkle in it.

STEP TWO:
Squeeze a few drops of reinker onto wax paper - always go darkest to lightest. I used red, magenta, orange and yellow. Dip paintbrush in water; lightly blot on paper towel so your brush is wet but not dripping wet. Dab onto glossy cardstock, smooshing your brush around, going right over top of the embossed images. Notice that the ink resists the embossed areas; the ink will stain and bead up a little giving the look of a watercolor. Repeat in three or four areas on the cardstock as shown.

STEP THREE:
Clean brush very well and change your water - if you don't, your colour will bleed and you will end up with mud! You are now ready to apply the next colour. DO NOT apply ink right next to the first color - leave some space between colours as you will fill in with your final and lightest colour.

STEP FOUR:
Apply the last colour (yellow) in between the other colors, sort of like a bridge between two colours. Apply the yellow in the available white space and then overlap some of it into the other colors...the results are layered and blended and quite beautiful! You can let it dry or hit it with your heat gun. Rub a damp Q-tip or paper towel over areas of the embossed design that has ink spots on it to get rid of any ink there.

STEP FIVE: (OPTIONAL)
You could be done now if you like the shiny embossed images or if you want to make it look more like patterned paper, simply put the glossy cardstock in between two pieces of white or cream cardstock. WIth a hot iron, iron over cardstock until you can begin to see parts of the embossed images coming through. Keep ironing until you can lift the top sheet of cardstock off without it sticking. What you are doing is removing the embossing now, but it will still leave the white image behind.

You now have your own patterned paper! You can stamp on it or use it however you would regular paper... So what did I create? Well, I did a layout (with the Sketch of the Week) and a simple, yet elegant card.

Now you may have noticed that the second half of my title had something to do with mistakes... well I seem to have made quite a few in the last projects I was creating. My friend Alissa tells me that there are no mistakes in scrapbooking, only opportunity for embellishment....and let me tell you how true that is!
When I was creating this technique, I got it all done and went to stamp on it and the darn acrylic stamp fell of my block and right into the middle of the pretty butterflies! EEK! Well, I managed to salvage a small piece of it and that is how the card came to be! Then, on the layout, I had smudged some ink so that is how the pinkish smudgemarks came to be...yes they were in the sketch but I hadn't intended on putting them there but I am somewhat (did I just say somewhat? Okay, I TOTALLY am ) of a messy scrapbooker...so smudges are nothing out of the ordinary!
Some other mistakes this week...
I made this card for Vicki's colour challenge (brown, green, orange and cream)

I was happily creating....got almost done....went to stamp the "believe" and darn if I didn't do it totally crooked!!! Grrrrr.... but, it was a piece from my scrap box and the only one in there....so that is how the button and ribbon came to be! And in my opinion, it totally made the card!
And if you have made it all the way to the end of this long post, thanks!! If you would also be so kind as to show me any creations that you make using this technique, I would be so happy, I might even attempt a cartwheel! Annnnnnnnnnd... if you showed me some of your embellishments that were created from a mistake, I would definitely do a sommersault! Definitely!!!!!
Have a scrapfreakintastic week would ya?!

SKETCH OF THE WEEK JULY 6-12

Alright, so I have a little secret to tell.... I have never enjoyed digital scrapping. I open magazines and see a digital layout and think "oh..those poor people, they are so missing out on the creative side of things". However, the more that I play with Photoshop, the more I get that you really can be creative with it! Learning how to import paper patterns definitely helps - this week I was inspired by the new Lemonade line by Basic Grey. What a gorgeous line - lots of grunge but still bright colours! I actually sat down and scrapped last night so hoping the mojo train keeps chugging along - have yourself a great week!

#$%@!$&*&% - or WHOOPSIES!

Um so yeah......had a not so great moment today when I decided to play with the blog a little bit. I spent some time this afternoon while everyone here was napping and decided to create a new banner with Photoshop. I am learning more and more with it and can get lost in playing with it but was happy (for the most part) with the new banner.... However, I then decided to play with the background - MISTAKE! I put a new one in, loved it but then it didn't match the background so I thought, no problem...I will just put the old one back....
PROBLEM!!!!!!!!! It erased everything from my main page except the dorky picture of me and my 2 sentence blurb that took me days to write!

So I did a lot of this -
And then wanted to do this -

But I sucked it up and fixed it for the most part.... however, if you know of any blogs that I forgot to add in my blog list, please be so kind as to let me know! I think that was my biggest panic of all.... my daily reads are like my daily "fix" if you know what I mean! I can't seem to figure out the colours like I want it to be but it will have to do for now.

So yeah, how do you like the new banner?!

MEET THE NEW APOS DESIGN TEAM!

Whew...finally a few moments to sit down and gush all about the new gals that have joined the Design Team at A PILE OF SCRAP! I have to tell you that helping Alissa choose the girls was extremely hard as there is a lot of talent out there! One thing that I really respect is the fact that she chose scrappers of all different styles and levels and I think that is a great inspiration for the every day scrappers out there. To the girls that didn't make the Team (this time!!), I am so proud of each and every one of them and honestly hope that they try again :) Without further ado...come meet the girls!

Valerie (aka Petite) - a detail-oriented scrapper. A crisp and clean style but with a lot of care and attention to detail. Check out her blog and if you don't speak French, be sure to hit the translation button on there! (it does give a good laugh as the translation can be wayyyyyyyyyy off sometimes!)

Cheryl (aka Alleycat) - I had the privilege of meeting Cheryl when I flew out to New Brunswick in February. It is amazing what this lady can do with a needle, thread and beads....simply amazing! She has a great sense of humor and is always willing to teach anyone who wants to learn. The pictures of her layouts don't do them justice because once you see them in person, you would be gob-smacked (isn't that a great word?!).

Candace (aka Colormehappy) - Another Edmonton scrapper!! It is nice to have someone out here in the same time zone as me :) Candace and I have known each other through our kids playschool and I have always liked her style - Alissa calls it very "Love Elsie" style. Kinda funky and she likes paint as much as I do!! She is a newbie to the forum and fits right in with the rest of us crazy scrappers!

Vicki (aka PrincessPea) - I think a great way to describe Vicki is enthusiastic! Although we have never met, I can feel her enthusiasm for her scrapping, for new products and especially for the chance to share and learn anything and everything about scrapping. With the new challenges coming, I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

Jen (aka Scrappinmama) - I was surprised when Jen entered the DT call...not because I didn't think she could do it but because she is a pretty quiet scrapper....and her version of the DT sketch rocked my socks!!! Jen has really impressed me with how much she tries new things and I think her style appeals to a lot of scrappers. Her first challenge that she posted on the forum yesterday is simply BEAUTIFUL and I can't wait to see what else she has up her sleeve! Make sure you check out her first challenge layout called Music!

And those are the new girls - I hope you add their blogs to your fave list! Deedee is on a kinda-sorta maternity leave (she will play with us whenever she is up to it) and Jerusha and I are proud to still be part of the team...but in new ways :) We came up with new and exciting challenges and the forum girls are eating them up! 3 new challenges will be posted every Monday (I will still be doing SOTW every week and then a technique every other week!) come check them out!!

SKETCH OF THE WEEK.......(or AW MAN, I FORGOT AGAIN!)

HAPPY CANADA DAY! I hope you are all getting to spend a great day with your family - I slept in this morning and am happily drinking a Tim Hortons...not sure what the day will bring us but hoping the weather stays nice so I can take the kids to the fireworks tonight!

So school finally ended.... I had my last day with my regular dayhome kids yesterday (I will miss them but hopefully we manage to make more playdates with them than we did last year!) and the new summer dayhome kids have started. I have been doing a lot of work over on the forum to get our newly chosen Design Team girls ready for the adventure - be sure to come back tomorrow and check out my post with all their links!

It has seemed a lot less chaotic but somehow my brain is still not working at top speed! I posted the Sketch of the Week on the forum a day early but somehow forgot all about posting it here until right now! Actually I did remember last night but I got a new printer (YIPPEE!!!) and spent last night playing with it! That and I did some blog surfing that I haven't done in a while...be sure to head over to Pinky's blog for a look at a funny layout and a chance at a some great goodies! (If you tell her I sent you, I get even more chances!). And while you're over there, I think you should also tell her that she should run a contest and make the prize be a layout made by her for ME! I just love her work - her style is truly her own and absolutely beautiful!

So the sketch...I was trying to highlight some new paper lines so this is courtesy of Fancy Pants new Kraft Kuts line. A lot of my faves in this line - birdies, kraft paper and die cuts!!

Have a great day - if you are Canadian, I hope you shout it loud and proud!