Practical Scrappers: On Trend with Stencils (and Birthdays!)

Happy Monday! This is the start of a super busy week starting with the Broncos Monday night game tonight. Always a big one in the Peeples house. Can't miss a chance to watch the Raiders go down in flames. :) Homecoming is this week as well and that means a full calendars worth of activities for the high schooler. Can't wait to see him all decked out in his outfit Friday night.

Today you are lucky enough to get two posts in one. Somehow last week Blogger screwed up and the post I had scheduled for last Monday never happened. So I am going to share this weeks project as well as the one that should have shown up last Monday. First up is a layout I made using stencils. Stencils have become pretty popular and there are tons of ways you can use them. I chose to pull out my gesso and Tim Holtz distress pads to use with a Studio Calico stencil I recently purchased. 

I love the texture this adds to the layout. You can see it so much better in real life, but the gesso gives a little bit of dimension to the page and adds that visual interest. I tried to get the gesso on pretty thick to make sure the bubbles came out clear. After the gesso dried I dabbed a makeup sponge onto my ink pad and rubbed over the dried gesso. The gesso resists the ink pretty well so you get that great contrast. 

You can kind of see the roughness of the gesso here. That is the texture that I love so much. I think next time I will try a thicker modeling paste to see how that works. I think I've found a new technique and tool that I am definitely falling in love with! How about you? Do you work with stencils and what is your favorite way to use them? Share your ideas!!

Last Monday's On Trend was all about the birthdays. I definitely was glad to work on that one as we are in the midst of major birthday season for our families. Seems like we are celebrating just about every week! I chose to beef up my card supply and used my washi supply to help out. Here are the three birthday cards I created.

Love that washi! So practical and so fun to use. All these cards took were a little washi, a little ink, some stamps and a few embellishments. Simple to make and super cute. 

Don't forget to head over and check out the On Trend post at Practical Scrappers. There are some great looking projects on the blog.

Be back soon!

Lisa

S.W.A.T Drill with Fancy Pants

Good morning! I am excited to share the newest drill and layout from the S.W.A.T team today. It is a sketch with a twist challenge and the twist is to use twine. Bev Code provided our sketch and I loved it from the moment I saw it.

Awesome sketch, right? I knew right away which picture I was going to scrap because my scrappy friend Stacey had just given me a 5x7 picture of Chris and his best friend Creighton along with several papers and embellishments from the Fancy Pants Memories Captured collection. She had bought the same supplies for herself and we were each going to scrap our own layout and then see what we each came up with. It's a way for us to "scrap together" while still far apart. I have mentioned how much I miss my best scrappy friend, right?? Anyway, here is the layout I came up with.

What an awesome picture, huh?? Don't let those two cute smiles fool you. When these two are together you never know what will happen next. I love looking at this photo and remembering how super cute these kiddos were and how much fun they had growing up together. Now they are both in junior high and still cute in that junior high kind of way (wouldn't they love me saying that?)

I won't leave you hanging. I plan to share Stacey's take on this photo challenge soon. In the meantime why don't you take a stab at Bev's sketch and link up to the S.W.A.T. site. There is a gift certificate to 3 Scrappy Boys at stake! Don't forget to get your twine on there too.

Lisa

Crazy!

You know those periods in your life that just seem crazy busy? All of the sudden that is my life...non stop craziness. I just got back from a surprise trip coordinated by my husband to celebrate my 40th birthday which was last week and our 20th wedding anniversary which was a couple of months ago but went by mostly unrecognized because I was only a couple of days post surgery. He was awesome enough to plan a beach getaway, something I have been wanting to do for awhile now. He and I haven't been away on a trip together for years. We stayed at a friend's place in Del Mar, California and it was amazing. Less than a block from the beach, ocean views from the fabulous front deck. We relaxed, did a little exploring, mostly spent time sitting at the beach and just had some fabulous, uninterrupted catch up time together. There was a piece of me that would have stayed forever but alas we are back to reality and schedules and commitments. Yesterday alone I made 6 trips to the school and back...6! Ridiculous.

That isn't all that's taken my time. The weekend before we left on our trip I was surprised when my doorbell rang and my best friend was standing there, suitcase in hand and plans to spend the weekend hanging out with me. We had the best weekend! We met up with a couple of my super, amazing friends on Saturday for a fun birthday lunch, sat and talked and talked and talked, and this will make our husbands proud...even watched the Huskers game on t.v.! We made it to Archiver's to scrap on Sunday afternoon which was absolutely fabulous and so very normal for us. It made me miss her closeness even more. Thanks, Stacey for taking time to come and see me and for the surprise you were so good to keep! I know it was hard for you :)

I am behind in posting a couple of projects that went live while I was on my little trip. Forgive me for being late! First up is our first September drill at S.W.A.T. The challenge is to incorporate 3 S's into your project: stamping, stitching and spraying. I decided to create a two page layout of Grandpa's visit by train when the boys were younger.

I sprayed on the gray striped paper with a gray mist to give a little bit of the mist look without it standing out. The arrows are stamped and I faux stitched at the top of the page and stamped stitches over the arrows. I wanted the photos to take a little more center stage since they weren't super close ups. I liked the pop of orange against all the gray to give some fun interest to the page.

The second layout I have today is for the On Trend Monday at Practical Scrappers. We were to use gesso on the layout. I am pretty new to this stuff and did something pretty basic since I am just starting to experiment with it. You will definitely have to check out the other designers projects as there are some pretty amazing things they have done! For my project I used the gesso and painted a white frame for my photo. I took an embossing folder and pressed it into the wet gesso to add a little texture. When dried it didn't stand out quite the way I thought it would. I would go thicker for the next time and maybe add some color to help the pattern stand out. That's the fun of experimenting. It gives you better ideas for the next time.

That's it for me today. Heading out to run some errands and catch up some more from my time away. Have a super week.
Lisa