Happy Day! A Blogger Award!

I am so excited! This is the first ever Blog Award that I have I received and it is a "Stylish Blogger Award" from VinDeeLoo. This totally made my day! Thank you so much! This is so awesome.



So when you receive this award your are supposed to do the four things listed below. Upon receiving this award I must:
1) thank the person who gave this award to me and link it back to their blog
"2) share 8 things about myself
3) pass this award to 8 other individuals that I have recently discovered
4) leave a comment so that they can pass along the recognition!


And so, of course, first I want to thank the fabulous Becca who visited my blog, left me a sweet comment and then gave me this award! Visit her blog and see her awesome creations at http://creationswithbecka.blogspot.com.

Second, I have to share 8 things about myself, wow!
1. I am married to my high school sweetheart, David-- our 14th anniversary will be this month. 14 years sure goes fast!
2. I have three great kids who keep me very busy and also occasionally make me a little nuts!
3. I love to read and have read 8 books since Christmas-- I love historical fiction and highly recommend anything by Michelle Moran.
4. I am a serious football fanatic! I am in mourning from February until September because there is no NFL or college football to watch. Go Denver Broncos! (It's going to be a better year next year! :)
5. I hate snakes with a passion.
6. I love Diet Coke, autumn and going on vacation (especially to DisneyWorld).
7. I was born on Halloween and also have two nieces (from the same family) who were born on that day. We witches celebrate together every year.
8. I am a completely addicted scrapbooker and paper crafter! My husband thinks I have an illness but I call it my therapy.

And now, I will be passing this award on to these 8 fabulous ladies:
Kira-- My Tear Bears
Corinne-- Celebrating Ordinary Moments
Lori-- Pinkcloud Scrappers
Leslie-- Leslie Krochta's Creations
Rene-- Simply Cute
Cheryl-- Sweeet Designs by Cheryl
Alicia-- Time to Create
Helena-- Scrappassion

Congrats ladies, you're all very talented!

Sparkly Snow and Happy Kids=

NO WINTER BLUES HERE!

It's Week 2 of our Winter Blues Challenge at The Beary Scrap and while I may be wistfully longing for the warm sand and sunshine that I showed you in my layout last week, my kids are loving the winter snow and are not the least bit blue about it! Unless you count the tips of their noses, which may truly have been a little blue after playing outside for two days last weekend at my grandparents cabin.

As I have an entire pile of pictures from last weekend and really wanted to squeeze as many onto this layout as I could-- so I used a simple layout that lines up 12 photos of about the same size. Here's a bit closer view of each page:






I made my SNOW title by using a Marvy Uchida snow pen-- this is so cool. It writes almost like a paint marker and doesn't look like much in the beginning:

Then you use a heat tool and go over the writing until it puffs up like snow!


Here's a side view to show the dimension:



Making snow letters was so fun! And just a couple of things I learned--
*thicker is better, if you write too thin to begin with, it doesn't puff enough, so pour it on
*be careful with the heat gun, you can scorch the snow and it will turn black
*if you do scorch it (yes, I did!) or if it's not thick enough, just add more & do it again
*it says to let ink dry before heating for a more uniform effect, but I got a more natural snow look by heating it when it was wet

That's it for my Winter Blues, now I really want to see yours! You have just a few more days to join our Winter Blues Challenge, it might be snowy where you are and a great weekend to stay in and create!! Plus we are still looking for some Guest Designers and would love to have you enter our Guest Designer Challenge, check out all the details here and Good Luck!

Beat Those Winter Blues!

Our theme for our new challenge at The Beary Scrap is Winter Blues-- now this can be a wintery project or reflect how to beat those blue days when winter starts to get L-O-N-G!

I have to admit, I am utterly, completely, totally sick of winter and can't wait for it to be spring so I thought I'd use my project this week to spread a little of the sunshine I found on vacation to the Bahamas earlier this month -- this layout is sending rays directly to all of you out there!

The base of my layout is a crushed velvet embossed paper. I chose to use a plain white piece but then brushed over the velvet embossing with teal blue chalk to give it just a touch of color.


I hope a little sunshine comes your way this weekend and that you have time to do your own Winter Blues project to enter in our current Beary Sweet Challenge. Remember, it can reflect winter or how you escape those winter blues-- however you want to take it! Enter your project before Feb. 28th 11:59 EST for your chance to win!

Beary Scrap Sketch + Fabric

Are you feeling that long winter stretch yet? Cabin fever? Sick of the snow, cold and ice? Well that definitely must be what I am feeling-- it's been a week of sub-zero temperatures here in Idaho and so when I started looking for pictures to use this week, I was immediately drawn to these sunny photos taken last July in the old mining town of Virginia City, Montana. What I wouldn't give to put myself write into that sunny day, exploring a town in the mountains in a beautiful part of the country! Oh well, summer is going to come again someday!

I used these pictures on my Sketch + Fabric-- the element the Beary Scrap DT has added this week. I was really excited to use fabric on a layout, this is a trend I am seeing a lot of on websites, blogs, magazines and in stores. So I raided my stash (my fabric stash takes up only one drawer into my entire craft room of scrapbook supplies!) and found this lovely green & brown piece to pair with Basic Grey Origins paper.

I tore the edges of my fabric to give it a frayed look though I have to warn you that this does not leave straight edges or a perfect rectangle-- so if you are a perfectionist who loves straight lines, tearing the fabric may not be for you. Then I machine stitched it onto my background. Stitching the fabric was trickier than I thought it would be-- I didn't adhere it before I started sewing and sew it slipped a little bit as I went-- next time I would definitely put it down with some Fabric-tac or Alene's Tacky Glue. But now I know!

Here's a close up of the fabric and stitching:


This was a great challenge for me and I will definitely be using fabric again-- I love how it turned out with a slightly softer feel to the page, which I think accents the lazy feeling of the summer pictures.

I hope you are working on your own version of our sketch-- make sure to enter it in our Beary Sweet Challenge before 11:59 EST on Feb. 14th for your chance to win. And stay warm, wherever you are!

2D Sketch-- 3D Frame

Happy Friday everyone! It's a new sketch at The Beary Scrap this week and so I have a new project to show you. I have wanted for awhile to try using one of our Beary Sweet sketches to make something other than a layout or card. I just wondered how that would work but couldn't quite wrap my mind around it until this week-- then I finally found the perfect thing and sketch to try it out on!

And so here is my altered frame, with the right hand side being taken from the sketch.


First I painted the edges of the frame black with craft paint. Then I covered each side with paper from My Mind's Eye. I absolutely love these colors, and they just happen to match my bedroom perfectly, which is where I will be putting this little frame. I adhered the paper with good old glue stick but put a coat of glue on both the wood frame and on the back of the paper to ensure a good old.

Here's a view from the top so you can see the painted edges:



And here's a view of just the right hand side, which is based on the actual sketch, though I flipped it the other direction so that my bow would be at the far right edge. I added some pearls in the top corner and made my bow out of ribbon and tulle with a decorative pin through the middle.


And there you have it, my experiment on converting a 2D sketch into a 3D project. I'd love to know what you think! And I'd love to see your take on the sketch so make sure to join our current Beary Sweet Challenge .

Callling all Creativie Ladies!

We have some HUGE news over at The Beary Scrap -- we've all been so excited planning this and now it's time to let you all know-- we are currently looking for 4 Guest Designers to join our Design Team and share their awesome creative talents with us!

You can enter our search for Guest Designers by creating a new project based on this sketch:


Check out all the details, terms, benefits, etc. at The Beary Scrap Store Blog -- you have until March 5 to enter your project! Good Luck!

Baby Boy Album. . . . Finally!

Remember, a few weeks ago when I posted a couple pages of this baby book and said I was going to post the rest? ? ? Well, here I am finally getting around to it. The book has been done for awhile and delivered to a local customer, I am just slow at getting it posted. So here it it-- all 20 pages of a Baby Boy album:

Title Page-- Page 1


A close-up of that cute puppy


Pages 2 & 3


Pages 4 & 5


Pages 6 & 7


Pages 8 & 9



Pages 10 & 11



Pages 12 & 13



Pages 14 & 15



Pages 16 & 17



Pages 18 & 19


Page 20

I hope you like my pages and ideas! I leave the mats blank and just write in the dimensions for them to add their own pictures. I did a pink and brown one at the same time for another customer and was really excited about how they turned out. Thanks for taking a peek!