Paper Ornament

Today I Created | A Paper Christmas Ornament.

When I first saw the Sizzix, Pumpkin 3-D pop-up die by Karen Burniston, I thought it would look good as an ornament. I just needed to find the right paper that was shiny and thick enough to be sturdy.

I finally found the right paper and decided to experiment.

Things I learned: Thick paper is perfect. You need at least 13 of the folded pieces to create a full ornament. You can only cut 12 shapes out of two pieces of 12x12 paper. Really sticky tape works well but can be messy.

I hung one of my old chandelier crystals at the bottom of my ornament to give it some bling.

Distressed Snowman Tag

Today I Created | A wax-resist snowman tag.

The idea for this project came from the lessons I learned while creating yesterday's Halloween tag.

I started with a pale blue tag cut from the eclips Christmas cartridge. I used the Tim Holtz Snow Flurries Texture Fades to create the snowflake pattern. I rubbed the raised surfaces with wax. Then I sprayed a light coating of Sea Glass Glimmer Mist and wiped off any excess. This created the overall snowflake pattern. I let this dry thoroughly so that the paper was stiff.

Next, I ran it through the Snowman Texture Fades to emboss the snowman on top of the snowflake pattern. The cool part of this technique is that the flat part of the Snowman Texture Fade flattened the background snowflakes so only the snowman is a raised pattern.

Finally I used Denim Distress Inks to highlight the edges of the Snowman.

Halloween Tag

Today I Created | A Halloween tag using a wax-resist technique.

I had an off-white tag with a Sizzix Texture Fade Cracked pattern embossed on it. I began to wonder what would happen if I rubbed the raised parts with wax and then sprayed Glimmer Mist on top.

Luckily I had a block of wax left over from my old candle-making days so I rubbed and sprayed and was quite happy with the results.

I added a pumpkin die cut sticker from Cosmo Cricket and used some buttons for eyes. The words and crow are cut from the eclips Halloween cartridge. And the tag is cut from the eclips Christmas cartridge.

This gave me an idea to experiment further with this technique.

Travel Page

Today I Created | A scrapbook page for a recent roadtrip.

I bought the new Wander paper by Basic Grey yesterday. I looked through my stash of photos that needed to be scrapped and found pictures of our recent drive up to Santa Monica. We were on our way to the Los Angeles International Airport but were early so we took a detour to Santa Monica.

It was a beautiful day and the pier wasn't too crowded. I don't like to go to local tourist sites but I hadn't been to Santa Monica in several years so it was fun. I never realized that this is where Route 66 ends. What a great bit of history.

I randomly collect squished pennies so I included one on this page. I don't know how archival pennies are but it is a bit of memorabilia that I wanted to include.

Painted Photo Binder Page

Today I Created | A painted photo page for my Binder

I discovered Dina Wakley's blog today. It was very inspiring. I used to paint in college but avoided painting in my scrapbook. After reading her blog I decided to try painting on a photograph.

I like the way it has a feel of being a painted portrait and yet retains the realism of photography. I painted just the background to add some interest to an otherwise boring background. I also overlayed an acetate sheet to create the black details.

I will experiment further with this technique.