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House Renovation Scrapbook

Katy — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:12:06 +0000

My good friend Elise bought a house this past spring – it is a cute house in a great neighborhood, but it hadn’t been updated since it was built in the 80′s. This showed the most in the kitchen and bathrooms, where the cabinets were beat up and the floors were old vinyl tiles. She got a great deal on it and made significant improvements, so as a housewarming gift I made her a scrapbook so she can keep track of the before and after photos, and write down her memories about renovating. Here are some photos of the covers and inside pages:

For the cover and inside pages, I cut down a bunch of thin cardboard packaging I had lying around and covered them with retired Stampin’ Up! DSP. I spritzed the pages, journaling cards and photo mats with Log Cabin Smooch Spritz and inked the edges. And to finish it off…I added some freehand doodling – I’d just bought Doodling for Papercrafters and was eager to try it out.

I love how it turned out and more importantly, Elise was thrilled with it. I can’t wait to see it all filled up with before and after photos!

Gobble

Katy — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:02:22 +0000

Wishing you lots of good gobbling today! I plan on taking photos of everything I cook today and inserting them in the bottom of this layout. In MDS I’ve got the photo placeholders all set up: 3 squares with Soft Suede Mats.

Update: I totally forgot to take photos of what I cooked, so I’ll have to take some photos of leftovers. I’ve updated the image to show the Soft Suede mats.

The home stretch: Fun and Cute week

Katy — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 01:46:03 +0000

So I slacked off on Classy and Elegant last week, didn’t I. I’ll try to make up for it the last 2 days of november since I don’t have a theme for those two days.

But here we are in this week, the 4th week of November. The final style I’m going to explore is Fun and Cute. The Moxie Fab blog describes Fun and Cute this way:

What makes a fun and cute card? To begin with–a happy color scheme, a sweet sentiment, and an uncomplicated design. Throw in some whimsy (like cartoons and doodles), a few simple shapes (like hearts and stars), some friendly patterns (like polka dots and gingham), and voila! There’s a smile on your face and a song in your heart that’s unmistakably fun and cute.

This sounds pretty close to Clean and Graphic, huh? Here is what I came up with for my traditional scrapbook page:

Not exactly a traditional size though…4×4. Nothing fancy about this card at all. Just me, some scissors and retired paper.

Rock-a-bye-baby

Katy — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:20:17 +0000

My project for today celebrates my new favorite person. Congrats M & J!

Artisan Award – Scrapbook Page #2: Road Trip

Katy — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 03:27:53 +0000

This is my favorite of the three scrapbook pages I submitted for Stampin’ Up!s Artisan Awards. It falls somewhere between shabby and classy…there is a lot of distressing but the lines are pretty clean.

Blizzard

Katy — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 13:52:20 +0000

For today’s Hybrid scrapbook page, I decided to use an image as my background. The photos on this page were taking during the three (THREE!) blizzards we had in Delaware last year. The snow turned the park next to my house into a Winter Wonderland.

One way to do this in MDS is to save your photo in the program folder where the background papers are stored. When you save photos in this file, then you can also use them to fill in punches…neat trick I learned on the My Digital Studio website that I also used on the Kissing Through the Years page last week.

Once I printed I punched out scallop circles and mounted it on Baja Breeze cardstock using Stampin’ Dimensionals. Then I glued small photos of Lucy and Albie playing in the snow. I could have put more care into writing the subtitle, and I may try to cover it up with another, more professional looking layer later.

Team Stinkypants

Katy — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:13:36 +0000

One day late, but here is the digital scrapbook page that I made in the Clean and Graphic/Simple style. I based it on Clean and Simple Stamping’s FTL102 sketch. This page is a great example of how easy it is to adapt a card sketch into a scrapbook layout.

Stinkypants is a nickname that I gave my cat Onyx, because despite how beautiful she was, she was very skilled at becoming very stinky. Over time in evolved into a term of endearment for all of my pets. I can’t wait to print it out and frame it!

Clean and Graphic Week & Spin!

Katy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:42:34 +0000

This week I’ll be working on projects that are in the Clean and Graphic style. The Moxie Fab blog described this style this way:

Straight from the pages of Card Style magazine itself, the clean and graphic style is characterized by the utilization of white space, clean lines, and simple treatment of text. It is no-frills, bare-boned, modern, and hip. And while you might be surprised at how minimally clean and graphic cards might be embellished, you might also be amazed at how quickly their messages are communicated.

So, here is my first project, a scrapbook page of my friends daughter playing with a toy I got her at Disney on Ice:

I wanted to capture the motion in the photo on the page, so cut the photo and mat in an oval and stitched around it in a thread that changes colors. I doodled the border and wrote the title myself. The base is Whisper White, mat is Pacific Point, and the colors used in the doodling/letters are Basic Black, Regal Rose, Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery, Bashful Blue, and Lavender Lace.

Tomorrow: Clean and Graphic 3D item. Should be interesting…still trying to wrap my head around this one!

Grandmom’s Vintage Necklace

Katy — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 02:19:25 +0000

One of the items that was passed down to me when my mom died was a great vintage necklace that belonged to my grandmother. I found a photo of her wearing it (I think she was around 20?) and I’ve always wanted to display the two together. So I thought that my shabby/vintage scrapbook hybrid page was the perfect opportunity.

What makes this page hybrid, is the 5×5″ scrapbook page in the upper right corner that I made from a photo of Grandmom in her wedding dress. The whole mini page was done in MDS, then printed, then distressed. Here is a close up:

I’m really pleased with how this came out, and can’t wait to find a nice frame and hang it along with the other old family photos and documents that I have.

Kissing Through the Years

Katy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:02:58 +0000

NaBloPoMo Thursdays will be digital scrapbook pages.

Last week I was purging my back room and found a treasure trove of old photos of my mom. I’m planning on doing pages for most of them, but I was really inspired by the two photos I found of my mom and dad kissing.

Again, I struggled with making it look shabby/vintage. One of the things I discovered, which I really love, is the vellum “look” on the right. To do that, I inserted a Whisper White page layer (not background) and then adjusted the opacity to 20% (you’ll find that in the box on the right of the MDS program). It makes it pretty transparent, but with a tint of white, just like vellum.

Another thing I do to add depth – I add drop shadows to pretty much everything but text boxes (again, this feature is in the box on the right of the MDS program). Most of the time it is hard to see, but I think it makes it look like I’ve added dimensionals, or that the embellishments are really “on top” of the page layers.

Coming up tomorrow and Saturday: hybrid cards and scrapbook pages.