I'm Caribbean Bound

                                   

                            Bags Packed ?                          Check

                            Charms Made?                         Check

                            Journal started ?                       Check

                            Passport?                                  Check

                            Set Sail Pass ?                          Check           

I’ll be gone for a week. I’ll be on the Freedom of the Seas with 149 crafters taking classes from Tim Holtz. Am I a lucky girl or what! 

Not my first cruise.  (or my second or even eighth for that matter)

Not my first class with Tim (or my second or even eighth for that matter).

I’m gonna have a GREAT time!  See ya on the third of October. I’m sure I’ll have some pictures to share!

Gosh, It’s a Ghost!

So I promised you the reveal of the Fall Project I’ve been working on. This piece is about 25 inches long and 8 inches tall.  It sits on a bookcase or can be hung on the wall.  I’ve got one sitting on my mantle where it will be joined by the rest of my Halloween decorations when they come down from the attic! 

It’s one of a series of three that I created for the Fall show season that starts soon.  They’ll all be listed on my ETSY site too so you can take a look at all of them there. 

Don’t forget that I’ll be teaching the Travel Photo Tray at Paper Niche. Class has been moved to Saturday, October 8 to accommodate the move to the new location!You can sign up for the class here. Come join us and take home a great wall hanging for your travel or family photos.

Making My Own Embellishments

   Halloween’s coming and I’ve been working on some items for my ETSY shop.  I really like to make as many of the embellishments I use as I can so I thought I’d share with you some of the embellishments. 

    It’s amazing what you can do with burlap!  I cut some flowers out of the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die with the burlap.  The weave was fairly loose and I didn’t want the flowers to fray so I went around all the petals with Fray-check, both front and back. Added some copper wire for plant tendrils and made some hat-pin embellishments to finish it. 

  I had some raw wood witches hats so I painted one purple and went back over it with Rock Candy Crackle Paint. When it dried I rubbed in some Black Soot ink and wiped the excess off.  It’s hard to capture the look of the piece on camera but it fits the piece it’s going on really well. 

    I Printed BOO! Out a few times on cream cardstock and distressed it by swiping it through Tea Dye and Vintage Photo ink diluted with some water on a craft sheet.  After it dried, it was spritzed with Sunflower Sparkle Perfect Pearls Mist  and left to dry.  It became the center of the bookplate.

     The last embellishment was the most fun to make.  I started with a Wilton Skulls Ice Mold.  Because they’re made of silicone, they’re also good for embossing powder.  I melted some clear UTEE and tinted it with To Dye For Orange. That created the transparent orange skulls. Cool, but not enough of a WOW factor.  I used UTEE Britz in Tiger Lily for my next set. That’s it!  Works for me. 

Stay tuned for the reveal of the project tomorrow!

Travel Journal reveal

Yummy Resist Paper!

One of the pockets, I've started
journaling on it already!

Cool embossed map stamp
and a sticker.

 I get so much scrapping inspiration from Life on the (Scrap) Beach Blog and video series. Kathryn comes up with the most interesting techniques and her projects are amazing! She’s even been featured on Graphic 45’s blog, that’s where I first discovered her. You can visit her here:

http://thescrapbeach.blogspot.com/

Early in the summer, one of her projects was a make-ahead travel journal. This idea had been simmering in my head since I got back from the Rhine Cruise.  I had been journaling on the program the cruise ship gave us every day and then had to put it all together with my pictures when I got home.  I kept thinking that it would have been so much easier if I had a real journal with me that I could write in as we went and then add pictures after we got home.  Then I could have added in my ephemera as I went, labeling and commenting about it. Instead I had to try to remember where I got what. It wasn’t pretty. 

Acetate, pocket and journaling
tag.  Gotta love it!

One of T!m's stamps embossed
on the back of an envelope.

So now I’m not only prepared for the Tim Holtz Cruise coming up at the end of this month (be still my heart!), but any other traveling I do.  I made it neutral enough to fit any travel I do. 

 This project was VERY liberating.  Thanks Kathy! I usually need to work within a certain palette with a specific theme attached.  Check out the ETSY shop for how my work usually evolves. For this project, because it was just for me, I didn’t feel the need to be bound by anything.  I started by picking paper.  I wasn’t too concerned with color because on a lot of pages I misted it a different color, distressed it with ink or stamped travel icons into it.  I didn’t buy any paper for the project, just went through my stash and picked paper I liked.  There’s a combination of MME Celebration Tracker (love that stack!), Tim Holtz paper (of course, silly question!)

Thanks, Kathryn, for teaching me how to add a pen to my journal!!

I started with 12x 12 sheets.  The papers that weren’t 2 sided I stuck together with a spray glue ad then cut everything down to 8.5 x 11”.  The surplus I used for dividers.  I used my Cricut to create some pockets from some of the papers and threw in a couple of acetates, just to break things up.   I liked it so much; I created another one just to keep track of my daughter’s wedding.  Love it! Click on any of the photos for a closer view and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you.

Blogger isn't cooperating today.  Excuse the layout, she just doesn't want to work and, after three tries at formatting, I'm done!