Playing with Paper!!

Finally I had a day to play in my Paper Spa! It was so fun too! I was able to complete a couple projects for TNT - my monthly scrapbook club. However, the projects were completed AFTER the meeting - which is ok since I was unable to attend the meeting at the last minute. I really hate missing the meetings as they are so inspiring and the ladies that are in the group are the most creative, fun (and sometimes funny) women that you will ever meet!

So, the first project I completed was the "dine-o'mite" challenge. Each month our fearless leader (Lori - the frugal scrapper) writes up a 'recipe' to follow. It is like a sketch, only in reverse. I tweaked mine just a bit, but am very pleased with the results.
I had these pictures I took of my husband and decided to 'force' myself to scrap them - as I had no inspiration when I started out. A couple things I really like about this layout were the journaling block. I decided - why make the journaling block rectangle, square or a circle - why not do a different shape. So, I cut the shape out of a journaling sheet using my cricut and matted it. I altered everything on the page except the BG striped paper and the seashells!! They are REAL too! I have a jar of seashells and decided to use those on the LO rather than a metal embellishment that the recipe called for. The next thing on this LO that I really like is the title. I cut the letters on my cricut - using the design studio software to weld the words together. I had some glossy chipboard from a package from Costco - when you get large photos printed, they put a nice piece of white glossy (on one side)chipboard in the envelope for stability - well this is a perfect item for cutting letters and other embellishments from. I used the polished stone technique for coloring the letters. I used the Adirondack alcohol inks in: stream; lettuce; and caramel. Did I already say that I like how it turned out??

This next page was the sketch challenge. Lori used a sketch from the pagemaps site. This was also a very fun sketch. I started with a blank black piece of cardstock. I chose my pictures and then looked through my stash to find a purple-ish color that would work with the pictures. I used my new EK border punch to punch the edge of the cardstock and then cut strips out of a very cool collage type paper. at this point, I wasn't real thrilled with the plain black BG, so I used gold metallic ink and dabbed it on with a tool that I have had forever. Once I was satisfied with the background I attached the photos and then had to decide how I wanted the title and journaling.
Since I felt the pictures told the story, I didn't think that alot of journaling was needed, however I did want to include the first line of the chorus of the song as this was what they were dancing to. I wanted to emphasize DANCE as the title - so I used my cricut once again to design and cut the lettering and then the alcohol inks to color the chipboard. I then overstamped a scroll stamp with black stazon. I decided to try printing the lettering on transparency and it worked beautifully. I ran it through the xyron and attached it to the page - if you look closely, you can see the shadow of the transparency - but it is the best I could do considering I added it AFTER the purple strips were attached. I found these ugly looking bracket embellishments in my stash and colored them with the alcohol inks. I couldn't get the color to quite match everything else on the page - but I showed it to my daughter, and she loved it - so that is all that matters!!
Happy Scrapping!