Design Team Work - December - Project

I decided to do a project that stemmed from all the odd bugs I had outside my house a couple of months ago.  Here is the scrapbook / Crate Paper version of the classic junior high bug collection.

Behold, Cratecious Papericus!

I found a $1 - 3 dollar wood frame at my second favorite local craft store.  This would serve as the basis for my project / butterfly mount.

Using 'Faded Denim' Distress Stain from Ranger I stained the 'white' frame blue to match my paper.  I used just the one coat and heat set it. 

Using Crate Paper Random's 'Denim' page, I cut the background - later sanding the edges.

Next I used 'wallpaper' as a contrasting border between the blue denim outside and yellow inside under the butterfly.  Later I sanded the edges.

For the 'centerfold' I used the flip-side of the 'textile' page.  This page served as a background to set off the butterfly from the 'stand outs' page.

I added some gunmetal stickles to the stick pins in the butterfly's wings as well as the rhinestones in the center of the butterfly's thorax (I knew my college Zoology classes would pay off at some point) and abdomen.

I think if you click the pic, you can see the close up even closer....




I used the flip-side of 'curtains' to serve as the background for the 'phrase stickers' I used as the title.  The alphabet letters I used were from - glitz design - tiny (or teeny) alpha white type. 

Thanks for looking - please stay tuned for next month's entries.

Design Team Work - December - Layout

For this months layout I was given Echo Parks Seasons Greetings paper line.  The challenge was to come up with a winter based themed as opposed to last month's Christmas theme.  Once I got to thinking about it I decided to try to find out if there were things about winter that I didn't know.  Interesting facts so to speak.  Turns out I learned some amazing things about snow flakes, if the internet is 100% believable that is....  Who knew a snow flake could be that big - 15 inches by 8 inches!  I am only 64 inches tall.  That snowflake is giving me a run for my money.  I always thought snowflakes fell softly but at 5ish feet per second I may rethink this theory!

On with the details, for the basic page background I really tried to use more of the paper pages.  I used the flip-side of 'vintage santa' (sort of a taupe with small repeating white flakes) along with the blue strip of white snow flakes from the top of the 'borders' page - cut in half.  I added the strip of red on red snow flakes from the middle of the 'borders' page to the center.  This red on red piece was layered on top of the smaller blue with white flakes pieces (part on the top of the red strip and part on the bottom).  This layered bit was plaeed on top of the taupe with white snow flake piece and brown card stock.  Next I used the 'journaling cards' page to create some journal boxes to write on.  I cut out 'traditions', 'the nice list', and 'making a list' from the journal page itself, then cut the titles off each of the journal sections (I trimmed up the bottoms as well).  The green and blue edged journal pieces were layered on top of the flip-side of 'small poinsettias'.  The red edged journal pieces were layered on top of the flip-side of the 'borders' page. 

I used various snow flake punches from Martha Stewart to punch flakes from the following Echo Park pages, 'swirls' (the flip-side), 'Christmas Ads', and 'Christmas Ads' (the flip-side), 'ornaments', and 'ornaments' (the flip-side).

The black raised block snow flake letters were from American Crafts.  For the snow effect, I used 'snow cap' dabber from Ranger towards the bottom of the letters. 

For the middle snow flake, I hand cut a flake out of regular copy paper.  I used the thirds-fold process found on the internet when you google/yahoo/bing/etc cutting paper snowflakes.  Once I created a flake I was happy with, I used Rangers embossing ink and sprinkled some dark blue, light blue and white embossing powder.  I heat embossed that.  Once it was set, I used embossing ink again, and added some UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel) with some of the embossing powders left over.  I heat set that mixture and added one final embossing layer.  Once it was all cool, I cut the snow flake in half with a paper cutter.  I cut a translucent small button in half to use for the center of the snow flake.  I was pretty geeked with how it turned out. 

Lastly I used some Christmas Red (or as the bottle says xmas [so sorry for typing that Mom...] red) Stickles from Ranger on the center of the strip of red snowflakes on the background.  I also used a wee bit of crystal Stickles on the center snowflakes tips. 

Thanks for looking!

Design Team Work - December - Card

For this month's cards I opted to use the Crate Paper Random line I was given. 

Along with some robin's egg card stock, I used 'curtains' (looks like pink wood grain) for the inside of the first card, along with 'wallpaper' (white with pink birds) and some lacy ribbon on front.  I also edged the cards and paper with some distress stains.  As a final touch, I added a 'pretty little things' sticker from Crate Paper Random's sticker page. 

For the second card I also used Crate Paper's Random line.  Along with brown card stock, I used 'textile' for the inside of the card.  On the outside I used 'curtains' but instead of using the pink side, I used the flower side.  I popped the 'stinkin cute' sticker from Crate Paper Random's sticker page with the flip side / pink side of 'curtains' and brown card stock on the front center of the card.  I added a bit of lacy ribbon at the bottom for a final touch. 

Some the same line of paper produced two very different cards!  Pretty handy for one line of paper if you ask me. 

Thank you for looking!