Hugs & Kisses to Elise!

Hopefully you have arrived here from Susan's blog and are participating with us in our farewell blog hop to our lovely and talented Elise! We will all dearly miss Elise and her exquisite cards that have us "oohing" and "aahing" each week!

While we will miss her, we have had some fun keeping this little secret from her and planning some farewell projects. My project is an altered frame with a Tear Bear crafter to honor her as a member of The Beary Scrap Design Team.


My frame is covered with My Mind's Eye Just Dreamy Paper and spritzed with Creme de Cocoa Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist. Then I added one of Kimm's original Tear Bears with her hands full of paper crafting supplies and mini replicas of Elise's fabulous cards.


Elise, you've been fabulous and it won't be quite the same without you! I wish the very best of luck and hope to see you popping in to our blog and entering our challenges often.

XOXOXOXOXO Jamie

Now, hop on over to Patricia's blog next and in case you're starting in the middle, here's the hop order:

Susan @ Killam Creative

Jamie's Scrap Garden

Patricia's Crafty Spot

Gini @ Beadz

TBS Design Team blog

Please visit each blog, and as you're crying along with us, be sure to become a follower if you're not already *and* leave a comment. Please post our candy on your blog, too. At the end, come back here to The Beary Scrap Design Team blog and let us know you followed along - you could win (even if you're international)!

The hop is open through Saturday, September 4th, and we'll announce a random winner from all the comments on Sunday. The prize is an assortment of embellishments* you'll find on Elise's fabulous projects: satin and sheer ribbons, lace, pearls, pins, little baubles and delicious flowers flowers flowers!

Thanks for helping us bid a fond farewell to Elise! Oh, and don't forget to pop on over to her beautiful blog - Paper Love Affair.

Puppy Love at The Beary Scrap

It's the "Dog Days" of Summer at The Beary Scrap and that brings a lot of things to my mind-- hot afternoons, kids running through the lawn sprinklers, popsicles, time to start thinking about "back to school" (Yeah! I am excited about that!). But when I first thought about what I wanted to do for this theme, I knew immediately I wanted to make "Oliver the Dog." Now, if you have never met Oliver, he is one of Kimm's darling tear critters and boy is he a cutie, don't you think?


I ran into this darling idea for a baby shower gift and decided it was just perfect for my project (besides the fact that I am giving a double baby shower for two of my sister-in-laws on Labor Day weekend and I was looking around for something cute to give them!) And so I found a soft stuffed dog, matching flannel to make a receiving blanket, made a tear critter to match and put it all together in this clear gallon paint bucket.


Here's a closeup of my Tear Critter, done in white and black instead of brown and white like the pattern.


And my finished bucket with everything inside:

And I think it's just as cute as can be. One gift down, one more to make for the shower next week (my other sister in law is having a boy so I will be making another one of these, just in blue and brown instead.) Check out all of Kimm's cute Tear Critters at The Beary Scrap and our other "Dog Days of Summer" inspired projects at our DT blog!

In Stitches at The Beary Scrap

This week at The Beary Scrap we are all in "Stitches" as we try to show off different ways to stitch on paper projects. OOOOHHH, I love stitching on paper! I hardly ever use my sewing machine for anything else-- I am sure that is not what my mother imagined me sewing when she signed me up for a 4-H sewing class when I was 10, but oh well! I could actually mend some clothing, if I had to! But where's the fun in that? I'd much rather stitch paper!

For this challenge though, I didn't run to my sewing machine but to my newest Bazzill In'Stitchz 8x8 flower pattern that I've been dying to try. I used the flower template to stitch large flowers over these great pics of our trip to Florida last year. This was the first major (more than 3 days) trip my husband and I have been on without kids. Wow, total relaxation!




Then I decided I wanted to stitch my title as well so I printed the title out on my computer in the size and font I wanted then placed in on my layout and punched around the letters with a paper piercer-- I just had to be careful to make the holes close enough together that I wouldn't end up with any strange looking letters when I got done. It was a bit of an experiement, as you can tell if you look closely at my "florida" and see a couple extra holes. But it wasn't too hard and I'd definitely do better next time.


If you love stitching on paper too, hop over to The Beary Scrap and check out our Stitches Challenge. Get your entry linked by August 31 at 11:59 EST for a chance to win a $20 voucher from The Beary Scrap!

Sparkles & Bling at The Beary Scrap

After last week's Clean and Simple Sketch, I really got to play with all my embellishments for this week's Beary Scrap DT project dedicated to Sparkles and Bling! What fun! And what could be a better fit for Sparkles & Bling than a beautiful little ballerina in her sparkly costume for this year's dance recital?


My little ballerina just happened to be wearing a teddy bear costume and so what could be more perfect for this page than one of Kimm's Tear Bears!

So I made my own Tear Bear Ballerina, trying to position her in the same pose as the photo of my daughter and then went a little crazy with the rhinestones and pearls! I just love this Sparkles & Bling thing!

Check out some of the other sparkly projects at our DT blog this week and join us in our Beary Sweet Challenge with your take on our sketch for a chance to win a $20.00 gift certificate to great goodies from The Beary Scrap!

Clean and Simple Layout

Our theme at The Beary Scrap this week is "Clean and Simple"-- our DT coordinator, Susan, has come up with this great sketch and challenged us all to "Keep it Simple!"



Wow, this was definitely a challenge for me! I literally had to continually talk myself out of putting different embellishments on this page and I tried hard to stick to Susan's basic sketch. As hard as it was not to stick more stuff on it, I was really pleased with my resulting layout-- it was quick and simple and the lack of embellishments make the photos stand out even more. And so, here it is:

To create a layout design from Susan's awesome sketch, I rotated the whole sideways to the left and the s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d it out to fill two 12 x 12 pages. I used the new Bo Bunny Block Parade line for my page and I am so in love with these papers! They are bright and summery, with stars and hibiscus flowers, but at the same time have included brown, one of my all time favorite go-to colors for layouts (and clothes, and home decor, ya, I like brown!). I only used a couple of these delicious double sided papers and can't wait to put the rest of them to work!

My only concession to extra embellishment is the machine stitching around the blue paper and around the "Living the Simple Life" tag. I have the entire Block Party line, complete with flowers, stickers and epoxy and glittered brads but I refrained from adding EVERYTHING and just added a couple of stickers where there were already elements in the sketch.




Join us in keeping it simple and check out our Beary Sweet Challenge. You just might win a $20.00 gift certificate to The Beary Scrap for playing!

Here Comes Trouble-- Otherwise known as Jace!

Another great sketch from Sketchy Thursdays:


And here is my interpretation of the sketch-- I just can't stand to put only 1 picture, so I had to have 4! But here's my cute little guy, the youngest of my kids, who is more mischievous than the other two put together. Gotta love him!