Spring Layout Using Basic Grey Highline

Spring means baby animals on Grandma & Grandpa's farm.  My kids love seeing, petting, and even holding the baby animals.  When I got Basic Grey's Highline collection, I wasn't necessarily thinking spring on the farm, but you know what?  It was perfect for this layout.  Here's my spring layout using Basic Grey's Highline collection.

I started knowing that I wanted to use some of the paper that had orange on it, solely because it made my photo pop (it mirrors the orange in my son's sweatshirt).   From there I just started papers and stickers that I liked and layered them up.

I know that beautiful hand-painted titles are really in style right now. However, I don't have good enough handwriting to pull this off, so I cheated and pulled a font that looked similar to a handwritten title and cut it out in black paper with my Silhouette.

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Togwotee Snowmobiling Travel Layout

My husband is a snowmobiler, I'm a scrapbooker.  This year he got to snowmobile in Togwotee, WY for the first time, and he kindly sent me some amazing pictures so I could scrap them.  We may have different hobbies, but we certainly can find a way to make them work together. Here's my Togwotee Snowmobiling Travel Layout:

I grabbed Imaginisce's new Perfect vacation collection to scrap this photo.  The tone of the colors seemed to be just right to really make the photo pop.  There's also a really nice gender neutral feel to this collection, and a season neutral feel.  What I mean is you won't be finding any palm trees or sandy beaches in this vacation collection.

These Studio Calico wood veneer pieces are some of my favorite go to embellishments. They come in lots of different shapes, are easy to color (though, I often leave them just plain), and work great on both layouts and cards.

I also mixed in some word stickers and alphas from Simple Stories Urban Traveler Collection.

Do you (or a loved one) have a winter hobby you like to scrap? I'd love to hear all about it, or better yet see it!

I Heart Summer Jellyfish Layout

Do you every have a trip or event that you take so many photos at, that it takes you a while to scrap the whole thing? I've been scrapping our trip to the Omaha Zoo last summer little by little. I have so many great photos from the zoo, the hotel, the pool, etc., etc. that whenever I have a little time I scrap usually just one or 2 pages from the trip.  I've completed another one this uses Simple Stories I {heart} Summer collection to document the really, really cool jellyfish room in the aquarium.  Here's my I Heart Summer Jellyfish Layout.

I loved how the colors in I Heart Summer really make the dark blue photos pop (the jellyfish room is dark because the jellyfish glow!).  I cut the 12 x 12 sheets down to 5 x 5 pieces for the background squares.  The journaling cares are 3 x 4 that I then matted with extra paper and popped up with foam dimensional adhesive. 

I raided my leftover embellishment stash for most of my embellishments, but I did break out my brand new cork stickers from American Crafts DIY collection (a really cool collection of cork, kraft, and chalkboard embellishments that you can check out by clicking here). Oh boy, scrapping summer really makes me excited for it to be warm again!

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Gel Printing Resist

A while back I decided to get my hands messy with the world of mono printing with a Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate.  A while back I showed you this project using the gel printing plate with paint and a stencil (a pretty traditional way to use it).  Today, I have a technique that's a bit different. Today I have a step by step tutorial showing you how to doe a gel printing resist with a Gelli Arts plate, gel medium, a stencil, and Tim Hotlz Distress Stains.  Here's what a finished gel printing resist paper looks like:

and here's what it looks like made into a card:

To try out this technique you'll need:
Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate
Faber Castell Gel Medium
A stencil (I used ones from Studio Calico)
Distress Stains (I used Barn Door, Peacock Feathers, and Squeezed Lemonade)

You may also want:
Mini Mister
Brayer
Non Stick Craft Mat

Start by covering your gel printing plate in gel medium. Don't be afraid to be generous and put quite a bit on there. The more gel medium you put on, the more contrast you'll get with your resist.

Next, put your stencil on your gel plate.  Some stencils will cover the gel plate completely, some won't. In this example my gel plate is 6 x 6, while my stencil is only about 4 1/2 x 6.  This is no big deal, since I will be trimming down my final piece of paper anyways. 

Take a piece of paper (I cut mine to 6 x 6, the same size as the gel plate), place the side you want the gel medium to go on directly down onto the stencil covered gel plate.  Push down firmly with your hands, or run a brayer over it to transfer the gel medium from the plate onto your paper.
I used a dictionary/newsprint style patterned paper, but you can try out any plain card stock or patterned paper that you would like, as long as they are light enough in color to let some stain show through later. 
You'll need to let the gel medium dry completely before moving on to the next step.  I usually clean my stencil and gel plate while waiting. You can use baby wipes and/or hand sanitizer wipes to clean your gel plate. Let your gel plate dry, and then just store it back in the container it came in.

When your paper is printed and dry, it's not going to look like much, since the gel medium is basically clear. Now is where we add some color.  Take a few colors of distress stains, and cover your paper with them. You can put them on in a striped pattern,

or you can place it in splotches all over the place. Get creative, and try some different things out to see what you like best. The best thing about using the distress stains is that you can apply the stain directly from the bottle right onto the paper. Just swipe it right on using the foam applicator tip.

There's just one more step left before you can use your creation.  Grab a mini mister and spray your paper with water.  This will make your stains mix and blend.  It will also make the resist areas pop more on your paper.
Now you can trim down your paper and make a card or 2.

The card above shows a card I made using the paper I gel printed with the triangle mask.

I decided to play up the stripes of color, so I divided them even further with washi tape.

This second card uses a circle mask, and is a bit softer over all.

I love the big areas of white (resisted) space I got with the circle mask.

I have another card using this technique and a tutorial video over on A Walk Down Memory Lane's blog today. Just click here to head over to it. And remember, you can find links to most of my videos by clicking on the video tab on the top of the blog just under my Taylor Stamped banner.

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Baby Boy Cards Using Pebbles Special Delivery

I have to be honest; I love Pebbles new baby collection Special Delivery.  In fact, I love it so much, that I'm having a tough time figuring out where to start creating with it.  I have it all...all the papers, 6 x 6 pad, die cuts, stickers...all of it, and I love it all so very much that I keep trying to use it all at once. Have you ever had that problem with a collection? I decided to take a step back and start with something small.  I always need baby cards, so I decided to start with that.  Here are 2  baby boy cards using Pebbles Special Delivery that I created.
 

 Vellum is super trendy right now, and I think it goes so well with a baby card.  It just adds a nice soft touch.  I don't always like trying to find a way to hide the adhesive that I use to attach vellum, so I decided just to sew the vellum on this time. 

I had the idea that it might be interesting to clip a bunch of embellishments up in the corner of the card.  I picked a few and tried them out and rearranged a bit before adhering them in place. It's really a very simple card, but I like the way all the elements came together for a clean, soft baby card.

The second card came about when I had this little fox and the photo frame sitting next to each other.  I wondered what that little guy would look like sitting in the frame.  The answer was, he looks adorable, so I had to make another card built around him perched in the frame.  

 A few gold rub-ons from Pebbles and some gold star sequins from Queen and Co. finished off the look. 

Now I need to make some baby girl cards, so I have some of those in my stash, too! 

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MOPS Garden Party Layout

Have you seen Pebbles Inc Garden Party? It's a gorgeous spring line with lots of floral prints, pretty pinks, and butterflies.  I don't always have a lot of photos to scrap with pretty, spring-y, girly collections, however, recently I was cleaning out some old picture frames, and I found 2 photos from my first year of MOPS (Mother's of Preschoolers).  They were of the steering team from the start and end of the year.  I knew they would be perfect with Garden Party. Here's my MOPS Garden Party Layout.

 This layout started with the 2 photos and the "Bloom where you're planted" journaling card.  I built the rest of the layout around those 3 things. When I was going through the Garden Party Journaling Card book, the bloom card just jumped out at me. When I started MOPS, I was a new mom in a new state, and this is where I made my first friends.  These ladies really helped me bloom and grow in my first years as a mom.

 I got to use so many flowers and flower prints on layout, I can hardly stand it. It's a nice break from the typical boy stuff I get to do. Even the alphas have flowers on them!

That floral pocket contains the journaling for this layout. 

I couldn't write a better phrase to describe what these ladies do than "plant kindness, gather love".

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