My scrappin' life

I still do! a layout using WOW! embossing powders

 

Ahhhh, finally summer arrived in our part of the world! And isn't it lovely!?

I so much enjoy the sunshine and the warmth! Anne is studying for her exams in the garden, getting a nice tan. Doors and windows open all day, laundry hanging in the back yard, walking barefooted all day, Marlijn going to the swimming pool...

Anne and I just said to each other this morning, we wish it would go on like this until about october :)

The layout I'm sharing today was made for WOW! Embossing Powder. My husband and I are together for 26 years and in march we celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. 

Let me show you how I created this page. First I sprayed glimmer mist at the top of the paper and dragged the paint down the page using a bank card. I stamped the heart with Versamark and embossed it with WOW! Primary Ebony. 

After that I stamped the heart a second time on scrap paper and cut out the inner part with a craft knife. Now I could use it as a mask laying it on top of the embossed heart.

   

I put a piece of Punchanella on top of the mask and filled the dots with Versamark using a piece of blending foam. 

Then I took away the punchanella and the mask and embossed the dots with Suzy West Honey.

   

After that I put the mask back on top and sprayed the heart with glimmer mist. The embossed parts work as a resist. If I would have put a piece of kitchen paper on top after spraying the dots would have been totally clean. But I like how some of the glimmer mist pools in the lower parts of the embossed texture and wanted to keep it that way so I let it dry by air to get this specific look. 

   

To create the black letters on the tag I traced them with an embossing pen and then embossed them with WOW! Primary Ebony. 

   

To add the blue color on the edges of the heart I used a brush and glimmer mist.

Finally I placed a piece of torn scrap paper just below the top of the page and stamped along the top using the Vintage Wallpaper stamp set with Versamark and then embossed with WOW! Primary Ebony again.

The little stars were made using Punchanella and Stazon ink.

 

   

I hope you liked my little tutorial and found some inspiration to use WOW! on your own layouts!

 

Slush Puppy Fun

Hi everyone!

I hope your all enjoying a nice 4-day weekend! I am! Especially the lovely weather which is much better than expected.

Today i want to share with you a layout I created for the Scrapbook Adhesives^TM by 3L blog.

I used my E-Z Runner Permanent to adhere pieces of book paper on the cardstock, Then I put stripes of Washi tape around the book paper and let some Wild Plum glimmer mist run down the page. Then I used the E-Z Runner to put the the paper circles and the picture on top. It is so easy applying the adhesive around the round edges! I also used this for the paper embellishments.

For the heavier embelishments I used Crafty Power Tape, one of my all time favorites. This adhesive is so strong and so easy to use. I even used it to adhere the heart jewel.

For the flowers and the word awesome I used 3D Foam Squares – White, Regular Size. They are great to add some depth to your page. I also used them for the buttons and the metal number that has a gap on the backside that needed to be filled in order to be able to apply it to the page. The foam squares filled the gap and stuck the number to the page at the same time.

Finally I used DODZ™ for the the flies in the middle of the page. I made these by hand with wire and beads a long time ago and just found them again while I was looking for something else. Happy findings! :)

Products used in this layout:

 

And here is a little something I created yesterday. Check back later to see what I used them for :)

Wishing you all a lovely, sunny and creative weekend!

Intohimona Skräppäys 2012, Finland (long post, lots of photos!)

Hei!

Wow, I can't believe I was teaching in Finland at this very moment already a whole week ago!

Time flies! But finally I have some time to update my blog and show and tell how awome Finland was!

On friday morning I took the train to Schiphol airport where I met Marsha at noon. Unfortunatelly Revlie couldn't go and Marsha was so sweet to step in for her. Our flight to Helsinki left around 2pm. Our connecting flight to Jyväskylä had a little delay so we arrived there around 8pm.  Riikka and Minna picked us up from the airport and drove us to the Peurunka Spa Hotel, where we met Mira from Amelia Askartelu, who organized this event and invited us to come to teach.

We had a lovely dinner with Elina, ‘Creomi‘ and Riikka. The dessert was quite interesting. Dill marinated pineapple, raspberry sorbet and licorice… Uhmmm, what can I say... interesting! LOL!

On saturday I taught 2 workshops and Marsha one. I was surprised by how relaxed the Finnish girls were and how independend. No stress at all, although especially the masking workshop it quite intens with lots of information and techniques. Such a pleasure to teach here!

 


There was a wonderful buffet for lunch and dinner with lots of Finnish food. Things we had never had before but also some food I recognised from trips to Sweden and I loved. Yummy!

On Saturday evening after my last workshop we went to the Areena. This was a hall filled with tables where people could crop and around them several shops where the croppers could get their supplies. Great concept! I was so happy to discover a little shop specialized in Washi tape! It's called Teippitarha which means Tape Garden. But I thought it was Tape Heaven, LOL! The owner Janina shippes everywhere and she has these special envelopes that hold up to 10 rolls of tape and cost only 2 euro's to ship, so check out her website if you love washi tape too! :)

Riikka surprised us with some beautiful and delicious "typical Finnish" gifts in a lovely bag she made for us using fabric from a Finnish designer. 

This is a picture from her blog.

Marsha got the Jaffa one and me the green one. On my bag are prints from street views of Helsinki. When Marsha and I went into Helsinki on Monday morning we actually spotted the big wheel and we went into the market place of which there is  a print on the other side of the bag! So fun!

Here's a picture of all the lovely gifts we got from Päivi (Pamppa) & Kaarina the book about card techniques they wrote, from Kaarina issues of Ihana, the magazine she owns (she also interviewed us for an upcoming article :)), from Maiju a book she wrote (thank you Heini for all the translations! :)), also about card techniques, from Mira a set of punches, a t-shirt and a lovely magazine called Inzpira and everything else from Riikka. Thanks girls, it was a big surprise and very much appreciated! :)

On Sunday morning Marsha was teaching the first class, which was a long one, 4 hours. So that gave me the oppertunity to go outside, walk to the lake, enjoy the sunshine, the lovely surrounding and the quiet peacefulness! The wheater was beautiful and I sat on a bench for a while looking over the frozen lake, feeling the warm sun on my face.

After that I went back into the class room and sat at the table next to Marsha playing a little in my art journal while she was teaching.

After lunch it was time for me to teach again, this time Marsha and my workshop were overlapping.

After the workshops and cleaning up Minna drove us to Helsinki. I think it took us about 4 hours to get there. This gave us a chance to see a little bit more of beautiful Finland and a lovely sunset. Thank you Minna for driving us and telling us all kinds of things about Finland!

 

The next morning we got up early, had breakfast and then took the shuttle from the hotel to the airport where we put our suitcases in a locker. Then we took a taxi into Helsinki where we arrived around 9 am.

What a lovely oppertunity, that we had some time before our flight at 2pm to get to see a bit of Helsinki. The wheater was wonderful again. We first went to Tuomiokirkko, the Catherdral of Helsinki and were surprised to see how sober it was inside. Then we went to the Kauppatori (market square) which was not complete yet, to early in the morning I guess. So we went into the Market Hall that is right next to the sea side. Wen we opened the doors we didn't know that it was a market hall, we just were curious because we recognised the building from my bag. Such a nice surprise. A lot of food, typical Finnish food like Reindeer, Moose, a lot of fish, Finnish bakery and even bear! Bear? Are you kidding, really? Yep! And it only costs 160 euro per kilo, lol!

After that we went back into the center and had coffee with cake at Fazer's. Mmmmmmm!!!! Particularly Fazer's classic chocolate (Fazerin Sininen maitosuklaa) is famous throughout Finland!

Then we walked to the train station, a beautiful old building, did some fun shopping on our way there and then took a bus back to the airport. We arrived just in time to check in for our flight back home.

After a good flight we arrived at Schiphol airport from where took the train home. Marsha got of after 45 minutes and I continued for another 2 hours and 15 minutes to arrive in Groningen where Erik and Marlijn were waiting to pick me up.

What a wonderful weekend it was, but how good it also was to come home!!

Huge Kiitos to Riikka, Mira, Minna and all the lovely ladies that made this happen! I really, really hope to go back one day to teach in your wonderful country!

And thank you Marsha, for all the fun and for being such a great travel companion and room mate!

Have a lovely weekend!

 

Exciting news from Prima!

April 1 was the official distribution start day of Prima's new Art-Zine ‘My Prima Place’.

I feel honored that one of my projects is in this first issue with step-by-step instructions !!

We’re ready to excite, inspire, motivate, and share …….the wonderful world of Prima!

We are very pleased to announce the imminent arrival of our premier issue of "My Prima Place”, a complimentary publication dedicated to all things 'Prima'.

This 28 page bi-monthly Art-Zine created by our in-house Editor, Sherry Mendoza, which showcases a variety of styles and projects including Scrapbooking, Card Making and Mixed Media.  

With beautiful photography and written tutorials prepared by our talented international design and education team, My Prima Place will be a great source of inspiration, information and influence. We will also be adding projects and features from acclaimed guest-artists and designers from all over the world to keep every issue fresh and informative.  

Prima's Art-Zine will be available from stores and distribution to stores will commence on April 1st, 2012. 

And here's a little sneak peek of the inside:

Magazine enquiries: sherry@primamarketinginc.com 

Sales enquiries: sales@primamarketinginc.com

 

Creative Jump Start Summit 2012 - my video

Yesterday I told you what I did to jump start my creativity. There's a lot of ways to do that and in January you had the chance to sign up for the Creative Jump Start Summit 2012. During that monthh you got links to videos made by an awesome bunch of artists that showed you really cool ideas and ways to get going. My friend  Nat Kalbach who organized this all asked me to join in and share with you what works for me. And I was very happy to do that! So today I want to share with you the little video I made.

It's simple and not long. You won't hear me talking in it or actually see me doing anything but I think it might help you a little to jump start your creativity whenever you feel like your mojo is gone or you just need a starting point to get going.

Enjoy!

 

 

Hope you liked it!

Challenging myself...

I'm working on a big, new and exciting project right now that I can't tell you anything about yet. I have awesome products to work with and I can do with them whatever I want. Fun, fun, fun!!

But I have to admit... I'm struggling. I'm stuck! It's not that I don't have ideas, they just don't come out the way I want. I can't seem to find the right mood, the right starting point. I messed up a lot of beautiful products, been working on it a couple of days and really don't have anything done yet.

This afternoon I found myself sitting at my desk, staring at the mess without a clue what to do, i felt as if all my creativity was gone...

It was time to do something to get out of this situation, the deadline is approaching fast and I'm getting a bit nervous...

So I decided to do something not related to the project. To challenge myself to jump start my creativity (where did I hear that before :)) and challenge myself!

I told myself to create a layout within 1,5 hour (including the time for getting the materials together) and use at least 3 different paint/ink mediums. Now you might think 1,5 hour is enough but for me it really is a challenge. I hardly ever finish a layout in only 1,5 hour. It's hard for me to just go with the flow and see what happens. I think to much. About the products I want to use, the colors, the embellishments, what to put where, which pictures to use, how many, what size and so on...

So since i didn't want to waste any time digging out supplies I decided to use whatever was on my table. Now if you look at the picture below you get an idea of how my table looks and that there was plenty of stuff I could use, LOL!

The little empty space in the front is where I sat creating my layout :) I just grabbed a box with old letter stickers, some inks, acrylic paint, embossing powders, glimmer mist, masking tape and stencils and started working on a white piece of cardstock.

I used stencils, filling the shapes with versamark and embossing powders. Sprayed on top and added acrylic paint and distress inks using other stencils and punchenella. I messed up the bottom of my page, so i cut it smaller and added it to a black piece of cardstock using masking tape around the edges, love how that turned out!

Then I added the photo on top, made the title out of some very old left over letter stickers and found some embellishments lying around that fitted.

And there it was... a completed layout within 1,5 hour! And it felt good! :)

 

 

There's some really old 7Gypsies book binding tape on here :) So fun that it is finaly being used!

 

 

Love this shadow picture of Nat and me in Vienna, we had such a good time there!

Now what did challenging myself bring me? Well, I found out that there is still some creativity left in me, LOL! Did it help me with my project? I don't know, I haven't gone back working on it yet. But I'm sure about one thing. I will stop thinking, just go with the flow and it will be ok! Oh and another thing... I definitely will be using masks and masking tape in it! :)

So what do you do to jump start your creativity. I would love it if you leave a message telling me!

And talking about jump start... If you for some reason didn't sign up for Nat Kalbach's Creative Jump Start 2012 in January and missed out on all the awesome videos, come back tomorrow and I'll share my video with you. Maybe I can help you jump start your creativity a little :)

 

A layout and a 30 minute mini book out of one sheet of paper

This month we had a fun blog hop at the Crafty Power blog together with Fancy Pants. 

My first project is a layout for which I used Fancy Pants beautiful “It’s the little things“-line. And ain’t that true!! Most times it’s the little things in life that bring us the most joy and happiness!

Like our little parakeet that became so tame that it would sit on my daughters shoulder. It made her very happy and gave her much joy!

Something else that might seem as just a little detail but that can make a big difference is your adhesive.

You might think that all adhesives are the same, as long as they stick it’s ok, right? …NO WAY!

Once you’ve used SCRAPBOOK ADHESIVES by 3L™ products you will know the difference and you will realize that having really good adhesives while crafting can make you extremely happy! 

SCRAPBOOK ADHESIVES by 3L™ products are easy to work with, they have wonderful stickiness (even after a long time your projects will not fall apart!), tape runners will not break… I can go on and on telling you about how much I love these products but you should try them yourself and you’ll be convinced!

So, now on to the layout I created 

To apply the paper to the background, for the picture and the doily I used MyStik™ Permanent Strips Dispenser.

I used 3D foam squares for all the die cut pieces to add some depth to the layout.

For the small parts, like the letters of the word “Happy” that were even to small for the little 3D Foam Squares I used Crafty Foam Tape that I cut in the right size.

At the bottom I created a textured border using Photo Corners, classic white. In previous projects I have sprayed photo corners with glimmer mist to make them fit my project but in this case I liked them just the way they are!

Adhesives used in this layout:

And still being in the Fancy Pants mood I decided to use their fun materials for my second post this month too!

So, how to create a mini-album out of one 12×12 sheet of scrapbook paper?

OK, plus some journal and design embellishments and a 1/2 transparent sheet… But hey, the base of this little book is really just one sheet of paper.

I took the “card” sheet of the “it’s the little things“-line and covered the back with an Adhesive Sheet 12×12. Then I cut all the cards loose and backed them together 2 by 2, creating 6 double sided pages. Quick and easy!

Then I cut a half flocked transparency in 4 pieces the same size as the little cards and tucked them in between. I folded and glued together some journal embellishments and tucked them in between too. Some of the folded journal embellishments I slided over the edge of the transparencies, then glued them down using a MyStik™ Permanent Strips Dispenser .

Finally I embellished the pages with little design embellishments and rubons.

The die cut on the front cover was applied using 3D foam squares – white, regular size.

I used 2 little black tie-ribs to bind the book.

Adhesives used in this project:

  

 

Thanks for stopping by today!

 

Welcome to the "Art of Layers" Blog Hop! Giving away Ronda Palazzari's book!

What a happy day it is!!

My sweet and amazingly talented friend Ronda Palazzari is having her book "Art of Layers" officially released today!

An awesome book filled with techniques using paper, paints, fibers, stamps and much much more... and ohhh the yummy colors this girl uses!! Love it!

To celebrate the release of the book Ronda asked me to participate in this fabulous blog hop. All participants are giving away one copy of "Art of Layers" authographed by Ronda.

This is F&W media’s description of the book:

“Basic scrapbooking has you place photos and embellishments on cardstock or patterned paper - easy and...well, basic. The next step for most scrapbookers is layering. But trying to get that rich, interesting layered look can be very intimidating. Where do you even start? "Art of Layers" teaches scrapbookers and beginning mixed media artists just how easy it is to get to that layered look in any papercrafting project. Author Ronda Palazzari teaches readers 50+ techniques that will serve as tools to pull out whenever a layered look is desired. The chapters allow the reader to build their skills, from paper techniques they won't be afraid to try adding fabric, embellishments, and stamping to finally giving spray inks, paints and gesso a try.” 

 

Now who doesn't want to be the lucky winner of that???

 All you have to do is leave a message on this post and I will pick one winner! The deadline to comment is Sunday Night 8 pm EDT (Midnight Amsterdam time).

Ronda has send me this wonderful layout featured in the stamping section of the book to share with you:

Don't you just love the colors and all the layers? You will find more projects from the book on all participating blogs, make sure you don't miss them!

If you came here blog hopping you where at Lisa Dickinson blog before arriving here. Your next visit will be Ali Edwards!

If you came here directly and found out right here, right now about this blog hop, make sure to check out all the other blogs too. Here's the list of all participants:

Ronda Palazzari

Emily Pitts

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Lisa Pace

Nathalie Kalbach

Kelly Purkey

Dina Wakley

Amy Tangerine

Lisa Dickinson

Birgit Koopsen <<< (You are here :))

Ali Edwards

Have fun and good luck!!!

 

 

Impressions of Vienna (as seen through my Hipstamatic camera)

What a wonderful weekend I had in Vienna!!

I had so much fun teaching with my sweet friend Nat Kalbach at the ScrapMe!-event last weekend!

We laught so much! About our friendly landlady (was she??), about the language (we had a hard time understanding it all and thought we would sound Austrian if we just put an L behind all words, workshopl, drinkl, airportl.... LOL... just kidding my Austrian friends!), about the food (wow, so much food on 1 plate!), the "Autobus(an)haltestelle" and much more!

We enjoyed the nice weather and had the chance to go into the city doing some sight seeing. Vienna is beautiful, I'd never been there, but I sure want to go back some day and enjoy the city with my family!

The students were amazing! They made us feel very welcome and they were very relaxed, no stressing out about time or about sharing products. They were definitelly "freundliche Wiener"!

The food was delicious and we stayed in a lovely "Wiener-style" pension.

Huge thanks to Conny Tannheuser who made it all possible and took so good care of us! And also a huge thank you to our wonderful group of students who I hope enjoyed the weekend just as much as I did!

Here's an impression of Vienna as seen through my Hipstamatic camera:

Lens: John S, film: Blanko, no flash

                                                       

 I hope you enjoyed this little tour through Vienna! Thank you for stopping by!

WOW embossing powder DT-call!!

Tonight I'm leaving for CHA! Very exciting! I will spent de night at Schiphol Airport and fly tomorrow morning.

I kind of freaked out this morning... when checking in online I got a message that the bank had not confirmed my payment and I could not continue check-in. Whaaattt??? I booked this flight in september, I have a confirmation, what the...???

It appeared to be a failure on the KLM website and all was fine, pfffff!

Anyway... Im very happy and excited to announce that I'm now an endorsed educator for WOW embossing powder! How cool is that??! The WOW and Suzy West collection is truly amazing. A huge variety of colors in gloss and puff, fine and regular and Ultra High. There is always a powder that fits your project! 

Now, if you're reading this and think I want to be a WOW educator and/or DT member too, here's some great news!

WOW is looking to add 2-4 new members to the team! Go to the blog for all the details. Good luck!