~ More of Me ~

I finally put together a photography blog. I still have a lot more that I want to add to it, but I did get my first post up finally. You can always get to it by clicking on the pick of Brooky to the right -------->

On another note I just got my new Swirlydoos kit for July and it's AWESOME!!!! I can't wait to start playing with it, but right now I am dealing with a three year old who is apparently in a bad mood. Yay for me!! We are sitting on our couch, once again, watching Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Fortunately, for me, I have my laptop, so I can somehow stay in touch with the grown up world. Otherwise, I find myself being thoroughly entertained by a giant yellow monster with red polka dots.

~ Crumpled Daisy Tutorial ~

I was playing around with some of my dies yesterday and came up with this scrunchy flower lol. Not sure if it's been done before, but I figured I will show you how I did it anyway. I used two of them on this layout I did of myself. I used items from the June Swirlydoos kit and I got the beautiful butterfly from StarSailorScrapper. She always puts together these amazing butterflies for the kits. The die I have is an accucut die and the flowers are about 4 inches across. It really doesn't matter what size you use for these and I am sure that similar dies have been made by various companies. You will need a spray bottle with water and some mist spray of your choice.
NOTE: You don't need a die with a hole in the middle.
I always spray the backside of my flower with water to get it pretty wet, but not too wet that it wants to tear apart. Just do one flower at a time.
Next just start scrunching up each petal as shown. Then repeat this step and the last step for the remaining flowers.
This is pretty much what they should look like. You can make them more scrunched if you want. It just depends on how you want the ending result to look.
Begin layering each flower on top of one another. Mine were still damp when I did this. If you don't have a hole it's nice, because you can use a brad to connect each flower once they are all stacked. Since I had a hole I used some glossy accents to glue them together.
Now I sprayed a few shots of my smooch spritz over the top. Don't move around the layers, just spray over the top.
Next I chose a flower center. The bigger the flower, the bigger the center you will want. Then once my center is in I start moving around and scrunching up my petals to reveal the original color. You don't have to spray yours, it's just something I chose to do.
So that's it. This is my finished flower. They are really easy and pretty. Any questions, feel free to ask.

~ Easy Water Distressing Technique ~

I have been doing this technique for quite awhile and I have been asked by a few people how I do it, so I thought I would throw together a quick tutorial that shows how easy it really is. Here is what you need:


1) Distress Ink of Your Choice
2) Q-Tip
3) Paper You Plan to Distress
4) Glass of Water
5) Distressing Tool

This piece of patterned paper I am using is part of a layout I just did which is also featured in the bottom of this post. Use your distressing tool of choice along all sides of your paper. Don't be gentle and if it tears a little that is a good thing in my book.

Ink your edges all over and don't be afraid to get crazy with it. Wipe some of the ink on top of the paper. Perfect isn't a word that fits into distressing.

Now take your Q-tip and saturate it in the water. Run your Q-tip along the edges of your paper and onto the top as well to spread the coloring around. Again no need for perfection, just let the water run here and there and saturate the edges as best you can by dipping the Q-tip in often.

Now start going around the edges of the paper, while it's still wet, and curl up and make small tears. To speed up the process of drying you can take a heat tool to your paper.

Here is my finished piece. The water really helps blend the inked edges in to the paper.
Here is the layout I used that piece of paper on. I call this "Speechless". I used an altered photo of Brooklyn. All of my layers of paper were distressed using my water technique, some more than others. This layout was used with items from the June Swirlydoos kit.

This is a close-up of some of the embellishments. The frame and clock are both Dusty Attic pieces. I inked over the tops of each one. The flowers are my torn apart Primas that I showed in my last post.

Here are my Prima centers and a couple of butterflies I cut out from some of the patterned paper in the kit.

Check out these gorgeous beads!! Also the rub on below came with the kit and I used that to get my title from. I distressed it a bit as well by being a little rough when applying.

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!!

Multiplying Prima Roses

I love Prima and their newest roses are some of my favorite. They come in a pack of 6 and it seems like I am always wanting one or two more. So for this particular layout I decided to tear the centers out of the Prima roses. As you can see I used three of the Prima Winter Rose Collection flowers in Marble Ice. I tore out the center which is a small rose all by itself and am left with the bottom layers. You can use the centers by themselves and as for the bottom, just pop a pretty button or other pretty little creation to fill it in. So instead of a package of 6 flowers, I have a package of 12. The distressing on this is a combination of Robinzberdz water distressing technique and a water technique that I do. Hers is so amazing and really wonderfully dramatic, which I love. Mine is more subtle. I will be showing that off this month on my blog, show check back for a tutorial on that.

This was made using items from the June Swirlydoos kit and it is based on a sketch by Beggahuna.

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!!

My Very First Sketch

I have been wanting to make a sketch for a long time now and I've finally gotten around to making one. Here is my very first official sketch!! YAY!! I had a lot of fun making it and I messed up and had to redo a ton and I think I used a little too much gray, but oh well!! Here is my sketch and my layout I created from it!

I created this layout using items from the Swirlydoos June kit!! This is a pic of my son dressed up as Little Jack Horner. If you can remember I did a Little Miss Muffet layout with my daughter Tyler and plan to do Rylee and Brooklyn in a nursery rhyme shoot this summer.

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!!

~ Sharing Some Published Layouts - SNR ~

Dropping off a couple of previously published layouts from Scrapbook News and Review Magazine. This first one is a layout I did for Mother's Day called Between a Mother and Her Daughter. I used items from the Prima Pastiche line among other wonderful embellishments from Swirlydoos.
I just printed out the words on my computer and inked the edges with Ranger alcohol ink.

I've been wanting to do a layout like this for a long time and I finally got around to it. These two hats belonged to Brooky when she was in the hospital. I am so happy on how this layout turned out and I wish I would have done this with all my kids' hats.

This is a Maya Road chipboard butterfly that I coated with purple Puffy Paint and then put a layer of UTEE over the top of that.
If you are interested in getting your layout published with Scrapbook News and Review Magazine you can go to their website and click on the Calls tab at the top right corner of the page. Don't forget to visit the forums at SNR and introduce yourself!! Get some great tips and join in on some fun threads!!