Besties

Layout #20 of the year!!!!! Simple but I love it! THoltz paper, his die cut butterfly's using scrap art journal paper and some bling which seems to be a contradiction but works. At the bottom is a strip of Artisan Elements by pinkpaislee which I love. I inked it up using the new distress paints which I also totally love. Ok lots of the L word but hey Valentines  Day is coming up. The Distress paints are fluid & smooth but with great color. Finished with a touch of stencil punchinella using the metallic distress stain antiqued bronze. Very excited that page 20 of the year- bam done.

CSI: 57-Escape

In my quest to scrapbook more I have joined the challenge site CSI:Color, Stories and Inspiration. Every week they have a new challenge that focuses on a color theme, some elements and for you to tell your story. Here is the guideline of this weeks "case". They also offer members (free to sign up) a printout that goes with the challenge. I didn't get to that this week but I will try to incorporate it next time.

Here is my first posting to their site-I felt like such a newbie trying to figure it all out but I will get the hang of it as I go. The most important thing is I did it!!! My layout has photos from summer 2011. Amazing to see how young my boys look just 1 1/2 years ago.

I was quite happy with how this layout turned out. I love this new paper by Kaisercraft mainly because I love the look of bricks and photograph paper is quite dynamic. I used many inks on this from dylusions, color shine (Heidi Swapp), Glimmer Glam, India ink and distress inks. One of my new goals is to dust off my cricut and try to make the die cuts grungier. Not sure I succeeded with the ice cream cone (my first one was a hot mess). It's still kind of cutesy but hey it's an ice cream cone... The little bird is want2scrap covered in a few different teal paints/sprays. All in all I think I covered all the bases for the contest-just glad I managed to get it uploaded to the site!!!! Even more exciting is this is scrap layout #19 for the year. I am slightly behind pace of 5 a week but I am on a roll.

Follow Up Friday #2

It is a cold & blustery day here today in VA we are having crazy weather- 71o one day & 2 days later 27o (with a feels like of 11o) - what???? Anyway... I absolutely can not believe it has been a month already since my 1st Follow Up Friday which you can see here. Basically the theme of this monthly post is to do a project or technique that I have been wanting to do but just haven't gotten around to.

I was working on an art journal page and trying to figure out what to do for today's post when much to my happy surprise I was already working on it. I have been lurking, stalking, following but not joining in to  A Year in the Life of an Art Journal. I would read the emails and nod - nice idea and move on to my life. My goal this year is to submit more and this is the first place I am starting. I have started a new journal just for this project, yay, excited face. I am using a Moleskin Folio A4 sketchbook that my husband thoughtfully bought me. The prompts are every 15th & 30th of the month. I am a few days late getting this done but all forward movement counts!

The first prompt is New Year's Resolutions or one word. A lot of artists, sites...choose 1 word to represent the year. The idea is to strive toward or focus on that word as we all improve ourselves for next year. I am still working on doing this for the first time so I chose Resolutions. I also did not read-all the words- but they have an art journal idea as well and this prompts was to use watercolor and salt. Opps I will pay more attention next prompt!  

 Here is my Resolutions page. I started with multiple stencil images and modeling paste. Once dry, I made an acrylic spray for the background and added in Claudine Hellmouths Studio paints blending and shading with my fingers. I made an interesting discovery- spray mists do not work well on top of this paint. Normally I do not have problems using craft acrylic paint & than spritzing with a stencil either dylusions or glimmer mist. I am guessing the studio paints create a different finish and the mists run much more with this paint making the stencil image blurry. Interesting. I added some stamped border images coloring in with souffle pens. The text is THoltz's word play & Prima paper highlighted with oil pastel-love using that technique. I wanted tags on this page so I put them together and stamped a journal box to write my resolutions. The tag was spritzed a bit with glimmer mist. My favorite part of this piece is the clock, one of Tim's new stamps.

  I colored it and used glossy accents to highlight bits of it. Finally I added my year. It too was colored and covered in glossy accents- you can't see by the photo but it is glossy and luscious.

Very excited to work on my next page is this book which conveniently the prompt we on the 30th so I can! I guess there are benefits to being slightly behind! What are you working on today?