Thank You Susan & Susie!!!

I participated in a contest over on Susie Bentz's My Time To Play blog & won!! She is a design team member of Susan Weckesser who was hosting her annual Christmas Love campaign. I recently received my prize package filled with Ranger goodies! Thanks to everyone!!!!

 

Journal Your Christmas

My friend Deborah Mahnken has been doing Shimelle Lane's Journal Your Christmas for years & her books look fabulous. My journey to this project has been slow indeed. I made a book with Deborah in 2010 and actually got 6 days done. 2011 saw me do nothing, 2012 make the base for the book and 2013 I took a book binding class with Deb that built another base to a book. That was the catalyst to triumph! I actually signed up this year and started working on these books. My idealistic mind had me working on all the books at once- on the same day at the same time. Right! That quickly became too confusing so I settled on working on 2012. As of today I am on Day 28! I don't have my covers done but I am saving that for last. My book is huge & chunky which I totally love. I am a bit worried I won't be able to fit it in the binding but time will tell.

A bit about the class. First off, for one sign up fee you are in and can participate every year and have access to all the previous information. That is amazing!!! So many classes give you a finite time and you are locked out but Shimelle is obviously a very generous spirit!  She has PDF  prompts everyday that arrive in your email which encourage you to watch, listen and taste the holiday. This year she also had a "focus" prompt to help you with your photo taking. There are some awesome tips and lessons on camera apps, SLR settings...I really appreciated all the work that was put into these PDF's. There is also a forum where folks post their pages and that is a great place to go for inspiration.

Ok so here we go. I will post a couple of days at a time-enjoy!!!

 Day 1: So it begins!!!  Inspired by Deb we stenciled over a glassine envelope (love this look) and used it as a pocket to hold tags and photos. My oldest son was in his high school play so that got my December memory journey off to a good start.

 For most of this book I captured whatever was going on that day. I did also follow some of the prompts that Shimelle posted but as I am working on last year I didn't always have the photo or journaling to go with it...

 The great thing about pockets is if you have multiple things going on that day it gives you the extra storage space you need in a cute package!! Plus it helps add to the chunkiness of the book-love!

The back side of Day1: I followed a Shimelle prompt and had a photo of our tree. I tend to work chronologically but this book helped me to be less rigid about that. I mean it isn't going to matter even 3 years from now if the story isn't on the exact day. The important thing is to get the story & photos archived.

 Day 2: I didn't have any photos for this day so I went with a prompt of Shimelle's "a countdown memory". I switched it up a bit and put our Christmas photo from years ago in there along with the story of counting down to my husband being home for our holiday. I used a 7 gypsies card from my stash for this page-amazing how happy it makes me to use the products I have been "saving" for years!

Day 3: Kind of a record for us getting the tree up this early but we had some busy weekends ahead and were heading out of town for Christmas so I wanted to get on it and enjoy my tree.

So far so good, loving this class!!!! 

Viva Las Vegastamps! DT Tryouts!!!

I love this company's stamps- Viva Las Vegastamps! they are quirky, fun and detailed. Totally up my alley. I so would love to be on their design team. One of my favorite things about these stamps is they drive me to create unique and interesting projects. 
My first project for the tryout is this colorful quirky altered lunch box. Super glossy, with bold beautiful color. I used lots of the stamps on this mainly from plate 922.

 This tin will be a box to put Project Life cards in and is a gift for my sister-in-law for Christmas (shhhh don't tell her). I used a tissue paper technique to get the stamps on the tin. I will be sharing how I did these techniques in later posts over the next few weeks. 

  Here is the backside of the tin- love this funky "Sitting Elephant" guy! 

 Some close up shots with the great detail that makes me love this tin. "Whimsical Bug" hurdles the latch. The more time I spend with this tin the less chance my SIL will have of getting itl!!!!

My favorite stamp shockingly is "Whimsical Owl".

Here are the shots of the sides of the tin. The kitty quote is something my family  reference a lot. Yet another fun thing about making your gifts you can personalize them to fit the receiver. 

Side 2: of course the fish in boots is trying to get the flying bee called "Bee Hung Up"!

My 2nd project for the Viva Las Vegastamps! DT tryout is a mixed media canvas. There are multiple techniques on this canvas but one of my favorite stamp techniques is turning a stamp into an embellishment using utee. Again I will share this technique later in the week but it creates a unique embellie that you can color to suite your canvas, scrap book page etc. Very dynamic and with a cool metallic shiny finish. 

On this canvas I used the Viva Las Vegastamps! Moon stamp. Ironically I have wanted a stamp like this for years so I was very excited to find it! Here is a close up of the embellishment. Totally cool!

 3rd project is an art journal book. The cover was made with a gelli print technique. The colors are vibrant & luscious.

Inside the book all the pages are gelli prints, comprised of paper, tags, envelopes with fun flips and flaps. I put some of my favorite stamps and quotes in this book. The stamps were colored in different ways, some with spray inks, markers, twinkling H20's... This is actually a class I just taught on the weekend- I love this little book!!!

Back ground gelli plate with some hand made washi tape. Here I used one of the "whimsical houses" stamps from plate 910a. The "skinny girl" comes from plate 922.

Here is another page using the "whimsical bird in mask" eclectic & fun Viva Las Vegastamps! For a stamp addict like me this company is heaven! Thanks for taking the time to look at my creatios and giving me the opportunity to join your great company.