ScrapTiffany Recycled Blog Hop

It's time for the Scrap Tiffany Trash to Treasure blog hop.  If you just visited Renee, then you are in the right place.  If you were just dropping in to check on me and make sure I didn't fall off the face of the earth, well thank you.  But what are you waiting for??!!  Start out at Scrap Tiffany for lots of fun, prizes and tons of trashy treasure!!  I have had this old raggedy clipboard around my house for years.  I wanted to transform it into something beautiful.  I decided to take pictures throughout the process to show you how amazing I am....I mean how amazing the clipboard turned out...haha...but my camera has a mind of it's own and didn't want to upload the before picture.  You know that old saying "You're so ugly that you broke the camera"? Well that's how ugly this thing was, so let's just leave it at that. 
 

I chose some hot pink houndstooth print paper that I picked up at Michael's on clearance for 14 cents a sheet.  Score!!  The paper was not quite long enough to cover completely, so I cut a three inch strip off the bottom and started modge podging the two pieces to the board.  I put a layer of Sparkle Mod Podge underneath and on top of the paper, smoothing out all the air bubbles as I went.  I did one side, then trimmed the edges with my exacto knofe, then flipped it over to do the front.  This was a bit harder to make it go up underneath the clip but I finally managed to make it work with only a bit of the ugly wood showing.  I then added a strip of zebra print paper to cover the gap, and then after it was all dry I pulled out my acrilyc paints and dabbed around the edges to hide all the rest of the ugly wood.  Of course I used my fave color, lime green.  Once dry, I coated the whole thing with another layer of Sparkle Mod Podge.  So here it is all nice and pretty but it is not quite done yet. 
 

Next I wanted to hide that ugly clip.  I cut some scalloped circles with my Nesties and black cardstock.  I stacked about 5 or 6 of them on top of each other to add depth, and I embossed the top one with the Divine Swirls embossing folder inmy cuttlebug.  The letter "B" is cut with some scraps and the Storybook cartridge on my Cricut.  Some adhesive bling flourishes finished it off.  And here is the finished project.
 
 
 

I wish I had thought to take my camera with me to the training I just went to in Sacramento for a week.  I took this with me and every one in the room wanted one, including the man who was sitting next to me, haha.  Your next stop on the blog hop is Danielle at http://ecoscrapbook.blogspot.com/
What better place to continue the recycling theme, than the queen of recycled papercrafting.  Don't forget to vivit all the designers as their are prizes hidden along the way.

Bad, Bad, Blogger

I have been a very bad blogger.  This full time job stuff is no joke.  I come home from work in time to eat dinner and fall into bed.  I did however recently attend Scrap Camp.  That's what my group of scrap buddies call our semi annual retreats since the camp it is locaed at is pretty rugged; we have to bring in our own fire wood and trek through the mud to the bathrooms or the cabins, but it is cheap so we keep going.  I had a ton of fun working with stamps which is something you all know I never do.  So without further ado, here is the first Scrap Tiffany challenge of April

We were to use this sketch to create a card or a LO.  I changed it a bit to fit a card and used all Stampin Up papers and inks along with an American Girl Stamp and a few stamps from Close to my Heart.  Here is what I came up with, what do you think?

The colors are Pear Pizazz, Blushing Bride, So Saffrom and Pretty in Pink.  The flower and butterflys are American Girl stamps and I added a few rhinestones.  Stop by Scrap Tiffany and see what all the other designers came up with for this awesome sketch!

Sports Time

It is time for a sports themed challenge over at Scrap Tiffany.  I chose to do my card for this challenge as a Thank You card to my son's basketball coach.  I was inspired by the logo on the team's uniforms.

I used the same yellow and then I mimicked the basketball and wings from the logo.  The paper for the basketball was bought at Michael's and camer textured that way, I just cut out a circle and drew on the black lones with a sharpie to make it look like a real basketball.  The wings are cut from the Indie Art cricut cartridge and welded to a circle on the Gypsy to create the shadow for my shape.  My cardstock is American Crafts, ribbon is from my stash and I also cut the sentiment with a scrap of the textured paper using my Gypsy and the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. 

Metal Mania

 So sorry that I haven't been around.  I started a full time job two weeks ago after 8 years as a FT stay at home mom.  I am managing a payday advance center.  I used to work as a bank teller and once managed a store in the mall, many, many moons ago so it is easy stuff, but quite a change from wearing my PJs most days and crafting while the kids are in school.  I haven't done any crafting at all, but I did make this card a few weeks ago for a Scrap Tiffany cvhallenge.  We were to use metal or wire.  So go check out what all the other designers have in store and since I am late in posting this, I will be back in a few days with more Scrap Tiffany fun!

Orange October

I finally got around to scrapping one of my favorite photos from the World Series this year.  As most of you know we are huge San Francisco Giants fans and we were cheering for them the whole way.  We also attended the parade after they won when they brought home the trophy.  I have tons of pics from that and will probably do a seperate album for them, but I wanted at least one picture in our regular family album and I thought this picture that my 5 year old daughter took of the hubs and I watching the game on TV would be perfect.  I don't usually do one picture layouts, but I found this sketch on pagemaps.com that called for 2 small pics and thought it would work. 

Don't you just love the logo.  My friend gave it to me at our last scrap camp.  she bought it at a scrapbook convention but she is not really a baseball fan.  It was just a flat cutout, but I added Liquid glass and some Martha Stewart glitter in Onyx.  And one of my fave parts of this page is the SF Giants paper.  I custom ordered it from scrapyourtrip.com.  It was a bit pricey, but well worth it.  I ordered a few styles that I will be using when I get around to making a full album.  One of my tricks for these pages is looking for paper around Halloween time.  We don't celebrate that holiday, but the color combo is the same as our favorite team so I always am on the lookout.

The black patterened paper seen here (sorry but I can't figure out how to rotate this picture) by Making Memories is one of my finds.  The black polka dot paper is by My Mind's Eye and the orange dots I'm not sure of but I got it from my friend the Scrapmaster.  The tickets were made by trimming some scraps of white cardstock and using my Stampin' Up ticket punch on the corners and then doodling and adding some journaling.  The flourish crystal was a gift.  The border punch is Martha Stewart and I love the tone on tone.

And here is a close up of the trims and journaling.  the sequins were a gift from my NSSS Tini(not so secret sister from the Cricut messageboards) and the orange pom pom trim I found at Beverly's.

Color Inspiration

It's challenge time again at Scrap Tiffany!  We were given this picture to draw inspiration from.  I love the steel gray and the yellow together.  Now to be honest , at first I was a little scared of the combo.  Yellow is not one of my fave colors in real life although I do tend to craft with it alot, but usually in combo with other primary or bright colors.  And I don't tend to use grey, well ever.  As a matter of fact I have been using up grey cardstock as shadows or base pieces in some paper piecings just to use it up.  On the other hand in real life this is my go to neutral color clothing choice.  I recently knitted a baby hat and am in the process of a matching scarf for a pregnant friend and chose steel gray and white as opposed to typical baby pastels. 

So with that in mind as my secondary inspiration I made this sweet card to accompany the gift. The shaped card was cut from the Cricut Sentimentals cartridge, the scalloped circle and regular circle from Alphalicious with the circle for the tag hidden on the Gypsy and the hippo and sentiment are from Create a Critter.  The grey was something unknown from my stash and inked with Memento London Fog.  The teal is American Crafts, the yellow is Cosmo Cricket DeLovely and the gray pattern is a scrap from BoBunny Peacock Lane.  I also used Gunmetal stickles and silver opal Liquid pearls and the Argyle and Tiny Bubbles embossing folders.   I made two of these cards and the extra is in my Etsy shop so feel free to check it out.

Etsy Store News

So I have been toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop for quite awhile now and I finally decided to go for it.  I will mostly be selling my cards, but also the occasional altered art project, the hairbows I just started making and whatever else strikes my fancy.  My goal is to at least support my craft habit and possibly make some extra for my family.  I added an Etsy Mini to the side of this blog so feel free to check it out.  If you are a veteran Etsy-er(yes I made that word up) I would love feedback, constructive or otherwise.  I do want to change my shop banner and Ihave a ton more things to add to my shop, but at least I finally got it stated