A Moo-velous Birthday!

I have really been awful lately about posting. I must improve in 2014!!

I just finished a layout for a scrapbooking challenge on the Paper Wishes Message Board.  This is Leyda's 13th birthday at Chick-Fil-A.  I called it a Moo-velous Birthday!  She had quite a weekend and birthday - movies with friends, getting purple streaks in her hair, great presents, and our family dinner at Chick Fil-A (her choice - no doubt as she gets older, the venue will become more expensive!) :)

For this challenge I asked members to use teabag folding on a page.  For mine, I created a frame for a closeup of Leyda. It does lay down nicely when it's in its page protector, but to get a decent picture I needed to remove it to get rid of the glare. So, it pokes up a little and you can see some of the white back-side of the paper....

All in all, I like the layout.  It is inspired from a layout in one of Paper Wishes' Personal Shopper packs.

Paper Wishes Guest Host Challenge for September 15, 2013

Hi all. I had a good time with this challenge! I think I'm going to use it more in the future to spark my creativity.  I decided for this challenge to have folks use magazine/catalog ads as inspiration for color combinations and layout.  I used two pages from the most recent USAA magazine:

 

And here is what I came up with:

Paper Wishes September Technique Challenge

Hi all. Glad to be back to bringing you monthly technique challenges!  This time I'm bringing back an oldie but goodie! And the technique may be new to some of you - emboss resist. I particularly enjoy doing this over patterned paper, or using a background stamp on the first layer.

Here's what you'll need:
1) Some patterned paper - you don't want anything too busy - the one on the left here is borderline - the one on the right is perfect. You wouldn't want to use any large prints - they wouldn't show up properly.

2) Then you'll need a stamp or two that have large "negative" or blacked-out areas. The Flower Silhouettes set below from HOTP is perfect:

3) Then you'll need Versamark ink (or similar), clear embossing powder, a heat gun, and a colored ink - I used dye ink here but it can be pigment ink as well. Pigment ink may need to be heat set.

The first thing you will do is stamp using the versamark ink on your paper.  Then, when you have arranged the stamping as you desire, sprinkle on the clear embossing powder and melt the powder with your heat gun.  It will look something like this:

Doesn't look like much yet. But just you wait!  Now take your colored ink pad and rub it over the entire piece of paper - I like to use a circular motion - this keeps you from getting lines from the edge of the pad. You can also use a dauber or Ranger sponge applicator.  When you are done, use a paper towel to wipe off the excess ink on top of the embossing.  Here's my example using brown ink over my design:

This first one is using the paper with the red berries - you can see it's a little distracting, but not too bad.

The second paper was much better suited:

Here you can see in the close-up how the paper design shows through the clear embossing:

Try this out and show me what you create! Have fun - try different papers and different colors of ink - try using a background stamp on the bottom layer before you emboss!

Challenges

To catch you up on my creative pursuits, here are a few challenges I've participated in recently.  These are all with Paper Wishes.

The first was an ATC swap - it was to be a Halloween or Fall theme.  I used one of their small stamps and colored with colored pencils. I then added a little Stickles (gotta have some glam!)

The next was a Round Robin we did with teams of 5 people. The first person does the background, the next person adds one element and so on until the card comes back to you.  Here is my card.  I added the background paper and the pennant (plain) on the front. The rest was done by my teammates.  It's so fun to see what everyone does!

And here is my entry for a sketch challenge:

Hope you enjoyed these - the next things you will see from me are new challenges. I will begin posting my monthly technique challenges again this month and then I am providing a guest host challenge for the week of 9/15. I really enjoyed doing that one but no hints until it's posted next week!

Where has Nancy been?

Well, I am embarassed when I look at this last post and see that it was in JANUARY! I've been away for WAY too long. Let me tell you about all that has happened in my life in the last few months - it has been a whirlwind!  In February I had gastric bypass surgery. The plan was to be in the hospital a couple of days, be out of work 2-3 weeks and then back to "normal." Well, that didn't happen. I had a complication, needing a second surgery, and then ended up in rehab (aka nursing home) for six weeks!  I was out of work for over two months. We had planned for me to retire in June and move to Virginia. This put all our plans out of whack. Instead of going house-hunting together, my husband had to go alone and send pictures back to me. We had a hard time finding a house in our price range that was in the area we wanted to be in, but we finally found one. We moved to Virginia in early June. Believe it or not, we're still unpacking! I still haven't found my embossing folders, my dies, my inks, my ribbons, flowers, rhinestones, pearls! Fortunately I have found all my paper and stamps. At least it's not all MIA!

Anyway, my belly has healed from the second surgery (it took 5 months!) and life is beginning to get back to normal. I did finally retire in August. I have lost 98 pounds since the surgery in February and from my highest weight a few years ago, I've lost a total of 173 pounds - can you believe it? I've lost an entire PERSON! It's been fun trying on new clothes and finding some old things I can get back into now. Most of my clothes I've had to give away but there are still a few out there.

So, expect to hear more from me - I will begin posting on a regular basis again very very soon!

Nancy

Here are some pictures of me "Before."

And here are some more recent pictures:

First Mosaic Moments Challenge of the Year

Our first challenge for 2013 was to do a page about ourselves - boy, is that challenging!  Well, rather than do a regular page about my interests, etc., I decided to do a page about the biggest thing going on in my life right now and be brave by posting it publicly!  I decided this past summer to pursue weight loss surgery and actually have an appointment this afternoon with the surgeon to set the date. Here is the result:

 

You can read all about the story and a step-by-step view of how I created the page here:

http://www.journella.com/storyboard/fullview/id/10372/Other-I've-Got-a-Secret

New Cards

Went to a fun webcam crop with my buddies at Paper Wishes this past weekend and made a couple of cards:

I love this format for a crop. I've done online crops but this is the first group I've done webcam crops with - it's so fun to SEE what everyone is working on and see the faces of the folks you talk with online all the time!