Beachy Keen Buttons

Buttons, buttons, buttons galore and a few buttons more. I collect buttons like I collect ribbon - meaning I have them everywhere!

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers was the perfect chance to make buttons shine. On this layout, I used buttons in a rather non-traditional way by inserting brads through the button holes for the centers of the flowers. The smaller brads fit through just fine, but the larger brads - like the bling brads from Stampin' Up - have wider prongs. For those, I used my Close To My Heart precision file to sand down the holes until the wider prongs could slide through. ***TIP - this sanding thing works much better on harder (typically shiny) buttons. Though it wasn't impossible on the softer plastic ones it took much longer. ***

For this layout, I used papers from Little Yellow Bicycle and Sassafras Lass - still from my Magpie Kit. I love this kit and still have tons left, so you'll be seeing more projects with those products, I'm sure! The cardstock is Bazzill and Coredinations, and a mixture of Prima, Petalloo and Close To My Heart flowers. The alphabet stickers are puffy Rainboots Thickers (my favorite of all of my favorite Thickers!) - the words were outlined with a fine tipped journaling pen.

Thanks for visiting me and be sure to stop by Practical Scrappers to see other innovative ways to use up your button stash!!!

It's color challenge week at Frosted Designs!

This week we were challenged to use three colors in our projects:

Teal Brown Lime Green

I used a scrap patterned paper in the challenge color palette from my stash; flowers from Bazzill Basics (large brown daisy) and Prima (pearly flowers); sparkly teal brads from Reminisce and stamped brown swirls from Close To My Heart. The title stickers are puffy Thickers from American Crafts.

Be sure to stop by Frosted Designs for more inspiration in this charming color bracket!

The first step of a giant leap of faith.... plus a RAK winner!

I have butterflies of excitement causing a rumbly in my tumbly today. With the 100% support of my amazing husband and fantastic friends, I took the first step of my leap of faith journey today and started the process of opening my own scrapbook kit of the month club.

Coming Soon....

LUCKY GIRL CRAFTS MONTHLY SCRAPBOOKING KITS

Holy moly. Just typing it is crazy!

Many more details to follow!!! Gotta get manufacturers lined up and things ordered and shipped to me so I can work up some seriously kick butt kits full of awsomeness. If you're interested in my monthly kits, which will be packed with tons of my papers, ribbons, embellies & more from every body's fave companies, shoot me an e-mail at jasafras98@yahoo.com.

For now, I will leave you with a winner for my recent survey RAK. Without further ado....

MEGAN, come on down!

E-mail me with your mailing info and I'll shoot a little somethin' somethin' your way in the next day or two.

Tales from the ribbon obsessed....

I am such a tactile, texture person that I could never truly give up traditional (as opposed to digi) scrapping. Not that I'm super girl with the computer anyways... but still. There are just too many fun things out there to run beneath my fingers - satins and twills and crochet and twine, grosgrain, denim and more... what's a girl to do, really, but collect them all?
I have a serious addiction to ribbon. Jars and drawers and nooks and crannies are all jammed pack, not to mention the pockets of all of the scrap bags I own. I even scour the monthly kit clubs and order them based off of their ribbon offerings alone. So, needless to say, when this week's ribbon/fiber/floss challenge came up at Practical Scrappers, I was practically drooling with excitement!
For this springy card, I used the Basic Grey Sugar Rush card kit and made my little random flower petals out of some sparkly pink twill that I had in my stash. I also added a little scrap of gorgeous orange crochet trim behind my popped-up sentiment.
Check out our DT's amazing work - it's the last week for the current Practical Scrappers team - so be sure to say fond farewells those lovely ladies. Our new team starts up next week, and their talent is going to knock your socks off!
Scrap happy. friends!

The masked crusader...

Frosted Designs challenge this week is to mask something... either with tape, ink, paint, glimmer

mists, etc. I was excited about this challenge because, though I don't often use masking, it's one of my favorite techniques.

For this layout - once again made with my April Magpie kit, I arranged chipboard flourishes on my white cardstock before spraying on some home-made glimmer mist. I distressed my edges with pearly blue paint. Papers are from Little Yellow Bicycle, stickers are Prima, and cardstock is from Bazzill. The rest is from my scrap stash.

*HINT* To keep the masking parts from flying around when you spray your mist, attach a small bit of repositionable adhesive to the backside. This will keep your pieces in place for nice, clear masked images.

The best way to know life is to love many things...

I've been following the 2 Sketches 4 You blog almost as long as I've been blogging myself. Though I don't often get a chance to participate in the challenges, I am always inspired by the fab artwork Laura & Kazan's team put together each week... not to mention drool over the weekly prizes.

Speaking of prizes, I like trying my hand at winning on several of my favorite manufacturer's blogs, including American Crafts Studio blog (hello, Thickers!). The weekly prizes over there are always amazing!

Since I finally was able to find my April Magpie kit, which had a bunch of American Crafts papers and their new Dear Lizzie stickers, plus some fun die cut paper that worked great for the 2S4U sketch, I worked my mojo to create this springy card:

I love that I was able to create such a pretty card with stickers! It's nice to not have to lug all my stamping gear out for one teeny, tiny card, ya know?

Anyhow, this card was created with American Crafts cardstock, glittered paper, and their latest line of Dear Lizzie Remarks Accent Stickers and Dear Lizzie Remarks Phrase Stickers.

In addition to the American Crafts items, I also used some Kaiser Craft & K&Co. pearl bling, Stampin' Up grosgrain ribbon & pop dots, Little Yellow Bicycle die cut & patterned paper and Powder Puffs chalk ink, plus a little ribbon slide from my stash.

A little tree-hugging love...

Happy Earth Day - OK, a little early, but still...

This mini-wall hanging that I created for the Frosted Designs challenge was created using a recycled tag from a pair of jeans. It already had the big eyelet and twine, so it was already halfway done!!!

I stamped a tree on the canvas tag and colored it in with Bic Mark*It pens. I added some funky florals and a button to the top for the leaves. The sentiment was also handwritten with Bic Mark*It pens. Finally, I added a little 1/4" grosgrain bow to the top to finish it off. A super quick & easy way to make a little creation with some recycled goodness! Seriously... this took me 10 minutes to create. Love that!!!

Don't forget to stop by the Frosted Designs site today to see what other tree projects our amazing DT has come up with! Oh - and from my home page, scroll down for my Practical Scrappers post and enter a survey for your chance to win!!!!

Blingtastical!

Whew! What a week! My husband and I had a special post-anniversary trip to Fresh & Wyld Bed & Breakfast in Paonia last weekend, followed by day in sunny Grand Junction, dinner with his parents, a huge Science Sunday that I helped with in children's church, followed immediately by a scrapbook class that afternoon. This week, I started & finished two 20-page albums for a local school district's retiring teachers, we had Family Fun Night for a few hours at the kiddo's school last night, and today, we're heading out of town to visit family and my home town. I'm exhausted already - good thing I can sleep on the drive over!

Anyhow, spring is finally decided to make it's presence known in Western Colorado - finally - and it's been great. It definitely got me in the mood for this week's project at Practical Scrappers, where our challenge was to use bling or glitter in our projects. I picked bright colors for both standard gem-bling and glittered papers and accents for this fun layout.

Almost everything from this layout (including the sketch) was from the April kit from Magpie Club - she's super funny and a great scrapper, and she's a Colorado girl (well, a British-born Colorado girl) - so I feel extra good about supporting her. She has a monthly sketch challenge - using any products - for a chance to be a guest designer for a month for her kit club. Here's April's sketch.

Papers are primarily from American Crafts, except for the die cut scallop and itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny yellow polka dot, which are both from Sassafras Lass. American Crafts also had those adorable coordinating chipboard & die cuts - from their Dear Lizzie line, plus the flocked green Thickers. The glittered journal block and letters are from Prima, and the rest of the bright & funky bling is from K&Co.

Today's the last day of the Blog Hop at Practical Scrappers - be sure to stop by the challenge sites and enter for a chance to win a bunch of amazing prizes!!!

Tossing around a few thoughts... Want a chance to WIN?

As many of you have probably heard by now, the company I was most recently with has closed it's doors, so I'm a free agent now, so to speak. I'm not sure where my scrappy future will lie, but I will continue the monthly Girls Night Out crops for the foreseeable future.

I'm tossing around the idea of starting a kit-of-the-month club but since that has a pretty large financial commitment, I wanted to see what you thought about it first.

Post a comment to this post with your answers to this short survey by next Wednesday, April 28 for your chance to win a prize filled scrappy goodness from me!

1) Would you be interested in a monthly kit club?

2) If so, what would your ideal price range be?
___ $20-$29 ____ $30-$35 ____ $36-$42

3) What would you likely commit to?
___ Annual Subscription w/ Discounts or Special Incentives
___ 6 Month Subscription w/ Discounts or Special Incentives
____ 3 Month Subscription
Other/Please Describe:

4) What kind of products would you like to see in the kit? Please check all that you'd like to see!
_____ Coordinating Cardstock & Patterned Paper
_____ Die Cut (Shaped) Papers
_____ Specialty Papers (Glittered, Flocked, Embossed, etc.)
_____ Flowers
_____ Alphabets
_____ Stamps
_____ Inks/Pens
_____ Stickers
_____ Bling (Pearls or Gems / shapes made with bling)
_____ Vintage Items (Fabric Trim, Book Pages, Tags, Cards, etc.)
_____ Buttons
_____ Ribbon
_____ Hat Pins
_____ Journaling Blocks
_____ Sketches and/or Product Recommendations
Other/Please List (including fave brands or product lines):

My friend _________________ referred me to this survey. Be sure to enter us both for the scrappy prize!!!

Feel free to forward to a friend as well - if your friend wins, you'll get a prize too!!!

Thanks for taking the time to fill out my survey. With my 30th birthday right around the corner, I want to make a decision in the next month or so to start my next decade off right!

Mark It Up

Isn't this card just yummy?! A cute cupcake, lots of bling and my favorite color combo... this might be one of my favorite projects!

Our challenge this week at Practical Scrappers was to use markers for our project. Here, I used Staedletter fine-tip markers to color in my stamped image (direct to stamp) - that way I was able to pinpoint the exact areas for each color without having to do some masking or paper piercing technique. Quick and easy - what's not to love about that?! After I colored everything in, I huffed on the colored rubber stamp (essentially breathed on it to re-moisten the first-colored areas) and stamped it onto white cardstock. I traced around the flowers and touched-up trouble spots, then cut out the cupcake and popped it up on pop dots.

I also used marker to create doodly frames around the blingy pink cardstock and the large pink circle, plus to write the sentiment.

You don't want to miss a visit to Practical Scrappers, too... our amazing design team has been knocking it out of the park lately - their projects really rock!

And speaking of amazing Practical Scrappiness.... did you know that next week we're having a Spring Challenge Blog Hop starting on Monday, April 12th - featuring not just Practical Scrappers, but Cuttlebug Spot, Scrap that Poetry, 365 Cards, Pile it On & Sketchy Thursdays. Be sure to join us for all the fun!!!

Keep on dreamin'

Happy spring, friends! We finally saw our first sunny and somewhat warm day this week, so I've been inspired to work with bright colors, like on the card above.

Our challenge this week at Frosted Designs was to incorporate the word 'Dream' into our project. Since it's getting close to gradation season, I thought the rub-on sentiment would be perfect.

This unique card uses so much randomness from my stash that I can't credit anything by the flower - Prima - and the Kaiser Craft bling. Oh - and the ink that I used to distress everything, which is from Close To My Heart.


Thanks so much for stopping by! Be sure to check out all of the other work from the talented team at Frosted Designs - I for one can't wait to see what they've come up with this week.

Practical Scrappers seeking new DT members

Practical Scrappers Design Team Call

Are you interested in being a designer for Practical Scrappers?

We will have a new term beginning May 1st and lasting until July 31st.
To apply please do the following:
1: Become a follower of Practical Scrappers
2: Sign up for the Practical Scrappers Message Board
3: Read the Design Team Guidelines available at the link on the sidebar
4: Email Christine at practicalscrappers@gmail.com with the following information: Your name, blog address, & message board name. Please also tell us if you have any other special talents including making videos or making sketches.

Deadline to apply is Sunday, April 18th!