I spent Friday and Saturday cropping with the girls from Rubba' Stampa' and Scrapbooka's Attic. I had a lot of fun. It's a great group - lots of fun stories and silly sarcastic personalities (my favorite). Here are some photos:
Christina (above) is the woman in charge! It's her crop.
I spent most of the crop with that heat gun in my hand! Thank goodness it's quiet!
My Mom made me the best little book. It's filled with life advice. I love it!
I was so pleased and tickled to get to crop with Sue (above), who is a frequent commenter on this blog. I smile every day when I read her comments. She was kind enough to bring me a little gift, which I am modeling in the photo below:
Canvas bead bracelets from Alisa Burke. They are just too cool! I'm thrilled and have been wearing my bracelets all around!
Sue and I did a page swap. My Mom took a photo of the two of us. I printed it out. We each scrapped a page with the photo and then gave the pages to each other. Here's the one that Sue made for me:
And the page I made for Sue:
I love doing page swaps! So nice to have a page from someone else. I really think that every crop should involve making some sort of handmade swap.
In any case, I was working pretty darn fast (for me) and managed to make quite a few things over the two days! They're mostly paint and paper with a few embellishments.
All Bundled Up
I printed my photos at 2x3" (I always crop with my Epson PictureMate Photo Printer!), so to create the other rectangles, I used an exacto knife to cut a 2x3" rectangle from a piece of paper. I used the leftover paper as a stencil and sprayed with Glimmer Mist. I love the neat but messy results!
The hearts were cut from patterned paper. I then used gesso and watercolor to decorate them further!
I painted the snowflake and then added some rhinestones for a touch of bling!
Go Sox!
This page is part of my "settling in" phase. I came to the crop without an agenda. No deadlines. No product that I had to show off. No parameters. And it was a hard adjustment. For at least a year, maybe a bit longer, I've had to make about 17 layouts or paper projects per month to satisfy all of my scrapbooking commitments. I've scaled back and now I have the time to make pages just for me. But because I haven't scrapped without some sort of product parameters in such a long time, it took me a while to settle down and find myself again.
Don't get my wrong, I like this layout, but I felt very trapped while I was creating it. And simple as it looks, it took me a really long time to finish it.
The good news is that I loosened up after a while!
Learning to Pose
I know that title looks painted, but it's actually hand cut from black cardstock.
I had fun painting all of the black scrolly swirls. I only brought gesso, watercolor paints, and Glimmer Mist with me. (I usually use about twelve art mediums!) It was hard to get the effects I wanted with the limited supplies, but fun to try!
My Mama Made Me a Dreamer
I have had this blue cloud paper-fabric from the Love, Elsie line forever. I pulled the adhesive paper off of the fabric and used the fabric to make little flowers.
The title was hand cut. I find that I'm quick enough with the exacto knife these days that I can cut faster than a Cricut!
Every Single Time
I was glad to do the page swap, but sad to lose the page. So, i re-used the idea of a blue circle.
The nice thing about the photo printer is that I was able to take these mirror photos and scrap them right away!
I had fun doing a little pen work with my Uniball Signo - best white gel pen ever!
I also spent a little time working in my art journal and painted two faces:
I think you can see the improvement from the first face to the second. They're both watercolor on top of a gesso base. I'm looking forward to painting some more faces and learning more, getting better each time (hopefully).
I probably won't post again until after Thanksgiving (it's on Thursday, for those of you outside the U.S.). So, I want to wish everyone a lovely holiday! Hope you get to spend time with your family! I'm looking forward to spending time with mine!
Thanks for stopping by!
