County Fair and two winners

It’s time to share my County Fair pages! The January kit at Studio Calico is live and it is beautiful, as always.  But first I want to share the winners of the two giveaways I had last week.  I said I’d draw a winner on the 24th, but a nasty stomach bug for Christmas and then an extra long trek home yesterday (thank you D.C. traffic!) has sort of sucked up all my free time since Christmas Eve.  Ugh.   But at long last I have two winners!  The winner of the Echo Park Paper collection pack of  her choice is…… #7, Jennifer!  The winner of the Photo A Day class giveaway is……..#22, Donna B!  Congrats ladies and I’ll send you an email shortly with info.    Thank you for all the comments on both those posts… I love reading them.

Now, back to County Fair!  I got three add ons this month, Kissing Booth, Shooting Gallery, and Photo Booth.  I loved them all pretty equally to be honest.  My first layout is my main kit only one.

You: I knew when I saw that woodgrain paper that I wanted to use this photo since it’s mostly wood slats in the pic.  I thought it would mesh in a cool way.  Well… I struggled with this one forEVER.  I just couldn’t get it right for whatever reason and finally just settled with it as it.  I used my brand new Cameo to make the circle die cut and then misted over that to tone down the white cardstock.  Supplies:  County Fair, Silhouette Cameo, adhesive foam circles, glue glider pro, Mister Huey’s Clay

Dear Valentine:  I love Valentine themed stuff!  This page is just a bunch of red, pink, hearts, and love.    I used the Cameo to cut out the heart/flower design and my heart layering punch to add some dimension to the background.  Supplies:  Kissing Booth, County Fair, Silhouette Cameo, adhesive foam circles, glue glider pro, heart layering punch, JBS cough syrup ink

Hot Shot:  This is one of my faves this month I think.  I just love these pics of Will and the cowboy/bulleye theme…perfect and so fun.  I stamped the bullseye design on the paper and then hand stitched around it for a different look.  Supplies: Shooting Gallery, Fiskars fingertip knife, Rusty Keys Chalk ink, Brad Setter, JBS Spice Tin ink, adhesive foam circles, glue glider pro

Photography:  Once I figured out how I wanted this page to look, it came together pretty quickly.  I found a shutter symbol image online, blew it up to the size I wanted in word, printed it out, cut it out and then traced the pieces onto different patterned papers.  Very easy!    Supplies: County Fair, Kissing Booth, Shooting Gallery, and Photo Booth, adhesive foam circles, glue glider pro, Brad Setter, heart layering punch, JBS Lemon Drop, Black Stazon

And that’s it!  Enjoy your last few days of 2011… I hope to be back soon with my cover page for Project Life! 

Echo Park Paper Co. Guest Designer (and another giveaway!)

I was so excited to get an email from Echo Park Paper Co. a couple months back asking me to guest design for them in the month of December.  They generously sent me some goodies to work with and I really love the layouts I made with them.  Their collection packs really make it easy!  First I created this layout with their ”For the Record” collection.  I loved the For The Record sticker and wanted to use that as my title.  I took screen shots of my Shuttercal calendars and then merged those together in photoshop.  (sounds more complicated than it was!)  I wanted a bunch of small photos to represent the 365 in my photo a day.  Then I used the packaging in the collection (that shows all the different patterns in the pack) as a border along the bottom of the page.  Quick and easy!

Next I worked with the “Happy Days” collection and it was perfect for these pics from the park.  Love the bright happy colors in this line!

Finally, I used the “Seasons Greetings” collection with some photos from our town’s Christmas parade.  I made some large holly leaves out of patterned paper and handstitched around them for some extra dimension.  I love that subway art style sticker embellie.

Be sure to stop by their blog for lots of inspiration and to see their newest collections.  I love the boys’ one! 

If you’re a fan of Echo Park, you’ll love this next part…. Echo Park is letting one of my lucky readers pick out and receive a collection pack of their choice! So, leave a comment on this post and if you win, be ready with your fave collection.    I’ll draw a winner on the 24th.

(And don’t forget to enter the Photo-A-Day class giveaway here.  I’ll draw a winner from that on the 24th as well.)

Merry Christmas! And a special thank you to Echo Park!

Photo-A-Day class giveaway!

I promised a giveaway for a spot in my Photo-A-Day class that starts January 1st and here it is!  I cannot tell you how excited I am about this class.  I started photo-a-day January 1st, 2011 and have gained so much from the experience…beyond the priceless moments caught on “film”.  If you are interested in seeing my project, just click on the photo-a-day link on the sidebar.  I’m working on assembling my photos into a book after the new year.  Cannot wait to get them all printed together!  Anyways, to read more about the class, click here. There are 7 amazing ladies who helped contribute their photos, ideas, tips, and inspiring creations to the class as well.  I hope you’ll join us in this project…. sign ups end December 31st!

Now, if you’d like a chance to win a spot in the class, just leave a comment here on this post and I’ll draw a winner on the 24th.  Good luck!

 

Sneak Peeks of County Fair

County Fair is the name of Studio Calico’s January Kit and believe it or not it goes up for sale in just a week.  How did December fly by so fast?  How?! Here we are just days from Christmas!  Amazing.  I have 4 sneaks to share…and loads of product left over that I wasn’t able to find time for.    I got 3 add-ons this month:  Kissing Booth, Shooting Gallery, and Photobooth and loved them all equally.  I also used some of the Prima chalk inks from the shop for the first time and LOVED them.  Will definitely be ordering more colors next month! (Oh, and grab that layering heart punch if it’s still in the shop… it’s a great complement to the little heart stickers in Kissing Booth!)

One more quick note… you may have seen that I’m teaching a Photo-A-Day class over at SC starting Jan. 1st.  You can read all about it and sign up here.  Tomorrow I’ll be back with a giveaway for a spot in the class, so be sure to check back then.  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Greetings!

I blogged about Shutterfly’s photo cards a while ago and finally got around to actually making my cards over the weekend.  The hardest part was just getting a photo to use.  What is it with 8 year old boys and strange smiles for photos?  ugh.  Anyways, after about 50 snaps and countless reminders to “look this way” “make a happy face” and “don’t grab your brother’s head” (yes, really) I finally got one shot that I was willing to put on our card this year.    This is why candids work so much better for my children!

And here are a couple outtakes.   

Love that Cate’s the only one who’s paying attention to me!  ha!  I just wish I had this in focus. 

I also wanted to quickly share a page I did for a sketch challenge a few weeks ago on Basic Grey’s blog.  I’ve been meaning to share this for awhile now!  You can see more of the details here. 

Thanks for stopping by…have a great Monday!

Brooklyn Flea

Popping in quickly to share my Brooklyn Flea pages from this month’s SC kit.  I should be at the grocery store instead…but I’m procrastinating on that chore! 

Let Love Grow: This is my main kit only layout.  I loved that stump stamp and thought it would make a great flower shape.  So I stamped it with some Mister Huey’s and Cut and Dry foam (you make your own ink pad essentially by spritzing some mist on a little piece of the foam!) and love how it turned out.  Definitely a technique I’ll use again. Supplies:  Brooklyn Flea, Glue Glider, Cut and Dry Foam, Brad Setter and Piercing Tool, Mister Huey’s Green Gable, Mister Huey’s Custard, Mister Huey’s Plum Thumb, Stazon Brown, JBS Cough Syrup

My Favorite Disney Photo: I used a larger photo for this one and then ended up trimming my layout down to 8.5×11 at the last minute.  I love this shot of my three big kids after a full day at Disney last December.  They were worn out!  I used the twine to make some circles…what going to make them Mickey ears at first, but that got too complicated and I just settled on circles instead.  I just punched a circle of cardstock and covered it with adhesive, then started laying down the twine in a circle.  It would have been much easier with the glubers sticky circles.  Note to self.  Supplies:  Snow Cone,  Glue Glider, Mickey punch

Christmas Cuties:    For this one, I kept it pretty simple.  Just made a stiped background and some banners out of patterned paper.  Added some punched circle photos and that was it!Supplies:  Shiny Brite, Glue Glider, Foam Tab Circles

One & Only: This last page drove me nuts trying to get the design down.  I’m still not thrilled with it, but I like the ampersand element. Oh well.  It’s about my daughter being the only girl.  To make the ampersand, I traced the mask and then poked holes around the edges.  It’s a little tricky b/c you need to keep your holes in parallel lines if that makes sense.  I used a ruler to keep them aligned, but they’re still not perfect.  Then just stitch with twine.Supplies: Salvaged,  Brooklyn Flea, Glue Glider,  Brad Setter and Piercing Tool, Foam Tab Circles, ampersand mask

And that’s it!  Now… off to the grocery store.  Guess I should make my shopping list first though, huh?  Have a great day!

North Pole Breakfast

We’ve started a new tradition this year… having a North Pole Breakfast on the morning after Thanksgiving.  A fun way to kick off the holiday season.  We also started Elf on the Shelf this year and read the book last night before going to bed.  The elf, who we named Zippy, wasn’t supposed to start doing his thing until tonight… but he must have thought since we read the book, all systems were go.  So he got out of his box last night and we found him this morning… getting an early morning bite of donuts before anyone else!  Here are some “after breakfast” photos of Zippy.

And here’s the crew enjoying their breakfast of snowballs (donut holes!), strawberries, and hot chocolate.  It was very early and still dark when they ate!

They were very suprised to see Zippy out already and we had a great time sipping hot chocolate and listening to Christmas music.  Plus all three big kids came up afterwards to say thank you (unprompted!!!) for the North Pole Breakfast…so I think this tradition is a keeper.