PAT 11 ATC Swap...

Yes, I've been very quiet lately! I was feeling industrious a couple of months ago and signed up for several swaps at Splitcoast... I've never done internet swaps before so I was thinking it would be something fun and different. Well, it has been both fun and different, but I've also been hopping to keep up with them! I did two recipe swaps in April, and then four groups of ATC swaps for May, and next I have two more recipe cards and 8 more ATC's due mid June! I'm going to reveal the recipe cards all together in an upcoming post, but I wanted to share my ATC's.

I've only made a couple of ATC's previously and so I hadn't really gotten fully emersed in it, but I have to say I had a lot of fun with these little cards!! Participants in this particular ATC swap joined groups of different themes, and each person picked their favorite subject within the theme. So, everyone will make one card for everyone else's theme, and then you receive back the cards that are your favorite subject within the theme. Silly me, I was so excited I joined 4 groups... not a good idea for your first ATC swap! These cards require quite a bit of research and thought... mine are still probably very simple compared to what other swappers will come up with - I hope they're OK!

Anyway, enough jibber jabber - here's what I came up with!

Color Group #21

The four color mixes in the group were: white on white; monochromatic yellow; silver, robin's egg blue, and black; and black, turquoise, and terra cotta. I picked fuschia, celery, and basic grey, so I will receive four cards in those colors. Here are the four I did:





The white on white card was the first one I attempted. Normal monochromatic color schemes utilize different shades of color, but there really aren't a lot of shades of white to work with, so I decided to work with texture. I matted the different layers with mulberry paper and used a cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the background. The ribbon slide behind the frame is a Quickutz, and the corner piece is a spellbinders. I found the little frame in my white embellishment box - I think it's from Melissa Frances. I stamped and heat embossed flowers inside the frame, but they were hard to see, so I added Quickutz blossoms and white pearl paint for the centers. It was extremely difficult to photograph, but it was pretty cute IRL!



For the monochromatic yellow card I automatically thought of my new little bee stamp set from SU, so the whole card was created around that. I basically stamped the different pieces on different shadesof yellow and paper pieced. The dark yellow is mustard, and even through it kind of looks brown in the picture it is actually yellow. I paper pierced the edges as for a little added punch.



I think this was probably my favorite. I did the polished stone technique on glossy white paper, stamped the image on clear acetate, and then painted the back of the blossoms with silver alcohol ink. The black frame was created with a corner punch. The little silver frame was another find from my embellishments, and the butterfly sticker is actually a Jolee's sticker... hope that's not cheating, but I thought it looked great on the card!



This one didn't come easily for me. The colors naturally drew me to a western theme, but I didn't have anything to really go with it. In the end I heat embossed the horses on some Daisy Bucket patterned paper and added Quickutz hinges and stars to incorporate the western theme a little more. It still feels like it needed a little something else, but I never could settle on anything, so off it went! Still lots of other cards to make!

Designer Group #18

For this group each person chose a favorite designer or artist. I chose Laura Ashley, so those should be some pretty cards! Two members of the group chose Mary Engelbreit, one chose Susan Branch, and one chose Laurel Burch. Here are the cards I made for those subjects:





This is the first of the Mary Engelbreit cards I made. I didn't have any stamps or product from her, but I did find some cool dimensional stickers in the dollar section at Michael's, so I designed my cards around those. The patterned paper is from SU. I added the little red heart button and put QuicKutz leaves behind it.



This is the second Mary Engelbreit card. I used another of the dimensional stickers I found, mounted on a black scallop. I added some little white dots around the scallop with my white signo pen. The patterned papers are from SU; the felt flowers are from Zva Creative, and the pearl bling from Kaiser. I added some QuicKutz flowers and leaves to fill in.



This was the Susan Branch card. I have a lot of stuff from her, but unfortunately it is still in storage, since I don't have a full craft room at the moment. I found this stamp and colored it with markers. I stamped it again and cut the pie out and mounted it on a pop dot for a little dimension. The edging around the stamp is a SU rub-on. The red gingham ribbon is from SU, and the patterned paper and buttons are from my stash.



This is the Laurel Burch card and I have to say, it was fun to do! I actually didn't know who she was, so I googled her and found this painting on her website. I printed it out several times and cut out the little cat heads. I traced their wings on heavy glitter paper and cut them out and replaced the original wings, which printed out a little dull. I mounted them on different thicknesses of pop dots so it really looks like kitty heads flying through space. I added the bling across the bottom for fun. I was watching an old Star Trek when I was doing this one, so it was all in all a very cosmic experience. I wonder what Captain Kirk would do if he saw these things floating around through space!

Historical Figures Group #20

The cards coming to me will be about Albert Einstein; the other members chose Johnny Carson, Harriet Tubman, Louisa May Alcott, and 'signers of the Declaration of Independence'. For that one I chose Benjamin Franklin. Here are the cards I made:






For my Johnny Carson card, I wanted to have a sort of retro look. I found the little TV clip art with the picture of Johnny in it on line, along with the quote. The patterned paper is from an SU paper pack, and I rounded the corners and added the QuicKutz splat flowers to enhance the retro feel. It was pretty simple, but I really thought this one was fun!



This was another one that used a lot of computer help but was fun to do. I found this painting of Harriet Tubman on line and printed it in color and in black and white. I emplyed the spotlight technique to highlight Tubman, and used papers from Basic Grey to compliment the rich colors in the painting.



For the Louisa May Alcott card, I printed a copy of the original illustration for 'Little Women', which was actually drawn by Alcott's sister. My mother remembered the artwork and said the copy of the book she had was blue, so I made the card blue. I added some gold glitter paper under the illustration to mimic book foiling, and found some pretty laser cuts to add to the corners. The button was from my stash. This one was one of the last one's I made, on the DAY it had to be posted, so it was a very quick job, but I thought it turned out kind of cute.



OK, so I'm not at all sure how this one will be received! One of those things that looked a lot cooler in my head than it came out, so we'll see.... the subject was 'signers of the Declaration of Independence", so I printed a very small copy of the Declaration out on blue granite paper; the idea was for Ben to be flying his kite with a storm behind him. I found this cool Cricut die cut that was a town cryer, so I just cut the bell out of his hand and made a QuicKutz kite. The kite is mounted on pop dots and they are attached with a piece of string. My friend gave me the key, which, although way out of proportion, added a little fun to the piece. Again, in my head it was all much more exciting, so I hope the recipient likes it!!

Art Deco Group 5

The last group I joined was a group about different examples of Art Deco work and to be honest, I only joined it because no one else did and they needed a final group member. When it came to making the cards, I suddenly realized that I had NO idea what Art Deco was all about, and no supplies that fit the period, so I'm not at all sure how the cards are, but I gave it a go!






So for these cards I really didn't know what to do! The theme for this one was Art Deco ladies, and I loved this painting, with the square shoulders and angular features.... lovely. But what to do to it? In the end, the only thing I could think of to do was to use a corner slot punch so that I could add a thin gold frame around it and added a red flower to her hair. I mean, really, the painting speaks for itself.



The next subject was Art Deco architexture. I googled it and got a lot of pictures, and I really loved this picture of an elevator. I decided to make it come to life by making it dimensional. I printed it a couple of times and cut the 'walls' out. I made angular cuts in the corner so that I could bend the inner walls down toward the 'doors'. I added gemstones to the lighter panals on the door for a little fun.



This one looks really cool IRL. I found this example of an Art Deco building and printed it out about 5 times, then cut out the different layers of the building and popped them up. I added some thin lines of Glossly Glaze over the lines in the artwork, so it really has a lot of pop and dimension you can't see in the pic.



This is the final ATC for this swap, and it's a doozy! It might be too thick, so I hope the recipient is flexible bout that, but it was fun. The subject was Art Deco furniture, and I found this cool picture of an Art Deco screen, so I thought I would duplicate it. All the colors are little strips of paper 1/8 to 3/8" wide. I sponged them to mimic the heavy varnish of the original piece, and then I decided to add the title on the side so the recipient would know what the heck it was! The dragonfly brad was added from my stash just for fun...

Well, that's it for now!! Whew! I'll show you some of the recipes in my next swap... hope you enjoy!!

Scrapping with ATC's - Day 6 of the MDC Mothers and Daughters Traditions Blog Roll

Hello and welcome! Our Mothers and Daughters Traditions blog roll continues today with a celebration of ATC's. ATC's are Artist Trading Cards - little samples of wonders that papercrafters trade with one another to showcase their talents.

Cathy is our resident ATC expert on the MDC Design team. She did two awesome tutorials on her blog here and here if you'd like to learn how to make them. Leah also posted a wonderful new example today on her blog.

My part of the challenge is to illustrate how ATC's can be used on scrapbook pages. I had so many ideas for this, you have no idea! Wouldn't an ATC without a strong central image be great as a monogram title block, with the first letter being on the ATC and the rest of the title extending from it? Or you could use an ATC to create a journaling pocket, or several together to create a border. I think their are so many things one could do with ATC's and scrapbooking!

On my sample below I chose to use one simply as an embellishment, as you would a tag.



The ATC I used is one I received in a swap amongst our designers a little while back, and it was created by Leah. Isn't it awesome? There is inking, stamping, and heat embossing all contained in a 2.5x3.5" canvas. I loved receiving it, and am so happy to put it to good use! Here's a close up:



My page uses papers, stickers, and rub-ons from Basic Grey's Wisteria collection. Leah's ATC uses papers from Melissa Frances and this Basic Grey stamp set.

The picture is of my x's grandmother, so my kids' great-grandmother. She's a pip! Her name is Virgie, but none of the kids could ever pronounce it, so she became Birdie, which fits because she loves birds, flowers, and butterflies. I have a lot more pictures to scrap of her 85th, but since I had such a good one of her alone with the cake I wanted at least one page to just really focus on her.

I hope you enjoyed this sample - I wish I could have shown samples of all my ideas, but life rolls on! Don't forget to pop over to Leah's blog to check out her sample, and the main MDC Challenge board if you want to play along!

Vintage Elements - Day 5 of the MDC Blog Roll!

Mother's Day is a time for us to reflect back on the special women in our lives - mother, grandmother, daughter, mother-in-law, aunt, cousin, mentor, and friend. In honor of the special women in our lives, today our blog roll will feature two awesome challenges and I am the host of one of them!

I have always been interested in vintage styles from different eras. It my teenage years I was building and refurbishing dollhouses, which naturally lends itself to a lot of hisotorical periods . I especially love Victorian influences - floral patterns, intricately carved wood moldings and cornices, rich colors, and classic time pieces and framed photos. When I am trying to create a vintage feel to a project, I tend to pull a lot of these loves into my modern day scrapbooking and card making. It's interesting to think about a favorite period in history and see how the influences carry over into shapes, colors, textures, and embellishments.

Here's the page I created for my part of today's challenge (to create a project using vintage style...)

I used a lot of different elements to create a vintage feel to my page. First, you can see some Victorian influence in the nature elements on my page - flowers, butterflies, and leafy vines. I added some embellishments straight from my grandmothers sewing box and finished the page by adding a decorative corner piece and an antique looking bookplate to highlight the year of the photo.

I have to say, I loved the Best Creations paper that I used as my page base... it already included a lot of the key elements I needed to make my page vintage style and saved me a lot of time and work. First of all, the bottom layer of the pattern has a slightly worn and distressed look, and the edges are darkened so they appear inked. Distressing is an important feature of vintage style.

In addition to the flowers and vines I already mentioned, the paper also has a preembossed frame for your photo - it is very intricate and accented with a light glitter, all of which is very vintage. It's very hard to photograph this paper so you can see all the elements, but here is a little bit better of a close up on the frame:

You can see that I allowed my picture to hang down outside of the frames boundries. Here's another aspect of vintage work - it doesn't all have to be perfectly symmetrical or follow boundry rules... the vintage look usually incorporates a lot of building on layers that splay out from each other. Notice the cornice in the upper left corner - that's from my stash and adds a small bit of texture and depth to the border. Make sure you check out Leah's blog today - she's going to illustrate vintage style with some border work and layering on a card!

See those super cute buttons on either side of the picture? Those are real buttons from my grandmother's sewing box - they used to be on one of her coats and are probably from the 40's or 50's. Cool. Check out the scalloped circle under the left button, and here under the felt flower (from Zva Creative):

I punched them from newsprint and inked them to match my colors. My scalloped edged ribbon is from Prima and the pearl brads are from Imaginisce. Pearls are a form of bling sadly under used - they have a very vintage feel! I added the year from some old rub-ons I had. The felt butterflies are also from my embellishment box. I love this little cluster of embellishments - to see more of this technique check out Robin's blog today - she has a sneak peek of a vintage page she created using clustered embellishments to add to the vintage feel of her page.

Office elements often create a vintage feel - here the file tab and bookplate are from a tag sheet made to match my patterned paper, which again made it very easy to create my page since everything went together nicely.

So I definitely want to see some of your vintage style... To win some fabulous vintage-style blog candy from me, all you need to do is leave me a comment with a link to your project! Don't forget to check out Leah and Robin's blogs for more vintage inspiration.

By the way, are you wondering at all about the picture on my page? It's me and my mom - my favorite baby picture. Thanks for sharing it with me, mom!

For our second challenge today be sure to visit Melita's blog -she's hosting a very special challenge honoring the mother figures in our lives. Laurie, Mia, and Maria have all made samples for Melita's challenge, so make sure you visit them all!

Thanks for stopping in and have a scraptastic day!!

A Little More...

One last Autism page for the month of April... this week at the MDC Challenge blog the challenge is to scrapbook a cause near and dear to your heart. Being Autism Awareness month, I knew for sure I would be scrapping another page about Autism, but I also got all kinds of ideas for other pages, so they'll be on my task list! I would love to do a page honoring my aunt, whom we lost last year to breast cancer, and of course a page honoring my brother whom we lost due to an incorrectly diagnosed heart attack. I don't want to do depressing pages, though, so it may be better to wait a bit on those. I think it's important to scrapbook the bad things along with the good things in your life, because that's the only way someone looking back will get a real picture of your life. But, I don't want all of those pages to be morbid or angry - I think it's more important to tell the story.


Scrapbooking about Josh is the perfect example. When my kids were born I was heavy into scrapbooking and made pages on EVERY little event :) But then, since Josh has regressive Autism, the pages were kind of invalidated. After all, he lost the first words he spoke, he lost his ability to eat with fork and spoon, he lost, he lost, he lost. So for a long time I just stopped scrapbooking about Josh. I still took lots of pictures, but I was just grieving so much and I didn't know how to put what was happening in to words. Now that I am (mostly) past the grieving stage I think it's really important to just give a picture of what our lives are like. Hopefully, one day he will be able to look back at these pages and see just how far he has come! Even in this past year he has progressed leaps and bounds. I would guesstimate that he has jumped from cognitive abilities around those of a 17-24 month old up to about the 3 year old phase now.



Yikes - I'm going on and on again! Let me just show you the page:



This was a very easy page to do because the Bo Bunny background paper actually has a lot of character all by itself, so I just added matted photos and journaling strips along with my title, which I created with Quickutz lettering and a 7 printed off my computer. I used Sally's sketch from this week's sketch challenge at Splitcoast Stampers. The page is just about Josh's accomplishments at this point - here is the journaling:

-You can say short sentences, mostly for things you want. You've started doing a lot of echoing, and you like to use the word 'No!' Still no conversational speech, though.
-You've started changing the language selectors on your videos, so now you spell all your favorite words not only in English, but in Spanish and French as well. You like me to write the words down, and when I can't recognize them (because they are not in English) you spell them out for me!
-Still not potty trained, but you seem to understand what's supposed to happen and you clean up after yourself. It's just getting you to recognize when you need to go and getting you to stop what you're doing.
-You're ALL boy and you're a happy boy. You find beauty in unusual things. You love to be tickled, take baths and showers, and play in the dirt. You put yourself to bed if we don't do it on time. You still do a lot of stimming, toe walking, and jumping. We're working on that!
-You're a really awesome little guy!

OK, thanks for hanging and sorry about going on and on (and on!) I hope you all enjoy or are at least interested in learning about Joshie - he's such a great kid!! (I'm not biased at all... he really is great!)

Make sure you come back and visit - today starts the BIG BLOG ROLL at the MDC Challenge blog - lots of prizes and fun to be had!!! Have a great day!

Little Big Girl...

This week's challenge at the MDC Challenge Blog is a sketch challenge using either sketch 15 or 16 from Julie Bonner's 52 Weeks 52 Sketches - love her stuff!! I iused sketch 15, here:



And here is my page:

My layout was created using the new Alissa patterned paper, chipbaord, and brads we got in at the store from Bo Bunny. My title was created using the mini Blossom and Revolution Blossom fonts from QuicKutz. The pink flowers are also from QuicKutz.

I love this picture of my little daughter, who just turned 8 this year. Look at her trying to be a big girl and help with the dishes, standing on tippy toes with her too-big blue jeans. She LOVES to help out and thinks she's a grown up now! Of course she also thinks she deserves all the benefits associated with adulthood, so we're already butting heads... she's gonna be a heck of a teenager :)

That's it for today - hope you all enjoy your day!

Another Silly Seal page...

Hi - I have just a few quick projects to share today - life has been a little crazier than normal lately! Last weekend we had to drive all the way up to Virginia to take care of some legal issues - three days in the car, one day of rest, one morning of court.... aaggh! Then when we got back I had to work four 11 hour shifts to make up the time, so it's really been crazy!


I did want to share a story from our trip. Those of you who have known me any length of time know that my little boy has Autism. I want to talk about that this month because April is Autism Awareness month. In years past I have always hosted a crop to raise funds to benefit Autism research and I'm a little sad that I won't be able to pull one together this year, at least not in the month of April. However, I do want to talk a little about our life and what it is like and the challenges we face.

You see so much about Autism in the news these days, but I think most people still don't get it. When you hear the figures - 1 in 150 children will be diagnosed with Autism this year - what does that mean? That means that more children will be diagnosed with Autism this year than they will be with AIDS, cancer, and juvenile diabetes COMBINED. I'll say it again - COMBINED. Yet, as a disorder it receives less than 5% off the research funding that those same diseases receive. Let's face it, with a child being diagnosed with Autism in this country every 20 minutes, if your life is not already significantly impacted by knowing someone with Autism, it soon will be. There is no known cure, and the treatments that do are help are so expensive that even Jenny McCarthy has to write extra books and take on extra work to pay for it. Where does that leave the rest of us? I have been meeting with some mom's in our school and we are going to try to form an organization to get some services brought to our area - I'll share more on that as it develops. The bottom line is, in order for our kids to get the services they need, we have to basically create centers for it! OK, OK, off my soapbox, I promise!


So on to the trip. Joshie actually did very well during the driving part - we worry about how he will handle 18 hours in the car. During the day he typically requires a lot of sensory stimulation and expression - it's called 'stimming'. It causes him to jump a lot, walk on his toes, and make repetative and odd hand gestures (he looks like a miniature air traffic controller!) So confinement is not his friend. But he did great - he watched some videos on a portable DVD and played his favorite video games. We accidentally passed our exit and missed our original planned stop, and since exits in South Carolina are far apart it took us a while to find a hotel, so it was about 1am before we got settled in.


So here is another wonder of Autism - sometimes, quite frequently actually, children with Autism have difficulty with SLEEP. This means they may have trouble falling asleep and be awake until 11 or 12 or in bad cases even 1 or 2 in the morning. Or, it may mean that they sleep for an hour and then wake up, ready to go. Naturally, this can be exhausting for the family. After all, if your kid is only getting two hours of sleep a night, then that's all you're getting. Children with Autism can not be left unattended. And it's made more difficult because of the duration. We all remember what it's like to have a newborn with a sleep schedule that doesn't match our own. We suffer through it for 5-10 months and then hopefully they start to learn to go to bed timely and sleep through. Imagine 7 years of newborn sleeplessness! It's tough, really tough sometimes. I'm lucky, actually, because normally this isn't a big problem for Josh. It happened a lot when he was younger, maybe 3-4 times a week, and as he's gotten older the episodes have decreased to about 2-3x per month. I've always kept a bedtime schedule, so luckily Josh always goes down OK - he just sometimes wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning and that's it - he's done with sleep.

So I'm sure you guessed by now, that morning after we drove ALL day and couldn't get settled into our hotel until 1am, Josh woke up ready to go at 4!! Aaaggh! We had to barricade the door with the suitcases and the hotel table. We received an unfortunate room placement of being right on the ground level in front of the pool, so he kept whipping the drapes open so he could look into the pool. Good thing there aren't many people wandering around at that time! We tried to at least lay down, so I gave him a little bath to relax him and in return he got all the toilet paper wet and made lines of little wet clumps of it across the sink He kept running back and forth in the room squeeling with happiness and jumping on us to try to get tickled. He just would not be quieted! We finally just got up and left with only a few hours of sleep under our belt because we couldn't take it anymore! Trust me, it's a good thing this kid is so darn cute!


So we were worried about what to do on the way home - we were turning around to go home again only 2 days later, so we were already pretty tired. We weren't sure we'd be ABLE to drive if that happened again. We were happily surprised, then, when we got into our hotel room, ate dinner, gave Josh a shower, and he just climbed into bed. Look at this beautiful boy - I mean, who sleeps like this? An angel, that's who. Thank goodness bad nights are followed up by sweet times like this! Happily, we all got some sleep and the next day of travel went much better!







OK, so were you looking for a little actual paper crafting here?? lol - I did have Easter off and so of course I made it a point to get a little scrapping done. These are very simple projects - thankfully there is such a thing as "clean and simple" style, since that's all I have time for lately! I have SO many ideas floating around, it's very frustrating not having the time to execute them. Anyway, the first project is an ATC card - we're having an ATC challenge with prizes this week over at the challenge blog, so make sure you give it a go!

These are supposed to be Easter or spring themed ATC's. Mine uses my favorite new paper line that we got in - sei's Bridgeport. I LOVE the colors in the line, and it's got some beautiful floral patterns mixed with classic patterns. Also a lot of fun detail - lined/textured cardstock, embossed designs, and foiled patters - really pretty. I made the card base in the sei purple textured cardstock, then did a base with the green texture. At the top you see a small bit of one of the floral patterns, and they are separated with a little fence post Martha Stewart border punch that I just picked up in Virginia. The stamped calendar is from Imaginisce - it has a little birthday cupcake in the corner, so I covered that with a designer brad. The date I circled with my Copic glitter markers was the first day of spring this year. Very quick and easy and a fun celebration of spring!

Our scrapbooking challenge over at the challenge blog was to get inspiration from a magazine ad. I still had all the pictures sitting on my desk from the last page I did (it's a post or two back I think...) so I wanted to make a companion page (I'm a double page scrapper.)

I pulled my Basic Grey Marrakech paper pack out and tried to pick some patterns and colors that complimented the previous page. You can check out the ad I used on the challenge blog, but as you can see it was based on a series of blocks. I added the horizontal line to compliment a similar line on the opposite page. I had already journaled about the event, so I added an additional subtitle block and accented the page with chipboard embellishments. I also stuck a little Quickutz shell on for fun and to add to the water theme. It was a fun page to do because the pictures remind me of the seal show, which was really funny, and which my kids really enjoyed.

So that's pretty much it for now - I'm going to try very hard this month to increase my posting and give you some more little glimpses of life with Autism, so I hope you'll check in for that. Also, a new BIG announcement - at the end of the month the MDC designers are all doing a blog roll - it will be a 10 day event packed full of fun and heartwarming activities, so I hope to see everyone participating! Have a happy day and work some papercrafting into it!

An Eggstra Special Easter Hut!

This week at the MDC Challenge Blog we were challenged to make an Easter or spring altered item. I've been wanting to decorate one of these folding chipboard house kits from Crafty Secrets forever, so I thought it would make an adorable bunny house!

I used our new Beacon's 3-in-1 glue to attach all my papers to the chipboard - I LOVE this stuff because it grabs quick and dries clear and without wrinkling your project! I decorated the house with our super cute glitter accented Easter papers from Best Creations and the polka dot trim is dot to dot cardstock from Bo Bunny. The little bunnies in the window are cut out from the Best Creations paper. Check out my pictures:

I used my Nestabilities to cut some frames for around the photos that are housed inside the hut - all the windows are 'faux' with pictures glued to the back of the frame. To see inside, you simply remove the roof and untie the ribbon closure at the front of the house. It was very fun and easy to put together - to take the pictures I set it on some pretty Easter patterned paper for a little fun... and that's pretty much it! Very late and I still have to pull some orders so I'll hopefully be back soon with some more fun projects - so many ideas, so little time!!

On a personal note, I'm very excited today after finally getting a chance to meet some of the other mothers of Autistic children at my son's school... we are forming a nonprofit organization to get some services brought into my county, so I'm really excited!! Will keep you all posted, but we already have some fundraising ideas and it really feels like it's going to be a good thing for all of us!!