Tic Tac Toe for Back to School

I love this time of year-- back to school! And no, it's not just that my two older kids have been driving me crazy and I was excited to send them back (though that is a tad bit true.) As a former teacher, there is just something about the smell of a classroom, clean and awaiting new students, that makes me smile! Mostly it's the promise that the new school year holds-- those piles of new notebooks and unsharpened pencils, new school clothes and backpacks all represent the journey that the kids will undertake this school year and makes me wonder where they will be at the end of it next May and how they will have grown and changed.



So my project for this week's round 2 of our Tic Tac Toe challenge is a little teacher gift for the first day of school. This one is actually for my 4 year old's preschool teacher as he doesn't start until next week and her gift is still at my house-- the other two kids already took theirs on back to school night.


This was a really quick and simple gift to make. I used a small legal pad and just covered it by cutting a 5 x 8 piece of paper for the front and gluing it securely to the top of the notebook (not the paper itself). I cut a 5 x 9 piece for the back and folded it over the top to cover where I glued the first piece. The pencil holder is an empty Prima flower bottle that I have been holding onto knowing it was too cute to throw away! It's always great to reuse stuff!

I used some not-so-typical school paper from SEI's Sonoma collection. I really love the colors of these papers and they are perfect for a more vintage look instead of the typical bright primary colors. I thought the sheet of numbers really represented a back to school theme. I also used the Die Cut Labels and Arrows from that collection. These are all a fantastic price right now at the store so make sure you check them out!


For the Tic Tac Toe choices I used distress (dark brown ink around the edges and I used my Zutter Distress-All to roughen up some of the papers), glitter (red Stickles around the apples) and lace. For me lace wasn't an obvious choice for a back-to-school project either but I really loved how it turned out and adds to that vintage look.


YOUR Tic Tac Toe projects so far are phenomenal! Check out everything that has been entered so far by clicking here, it's definitely worth looking! There are still a few more days to enter this challenge for your chance to win a $20.00 voucher to The Beary Scrap so spend some time this weekend getting your creative juices flowing.

Tic-Tac-Toe . . . .and a Tear Bear

At The Beary Scrap this week we have started a brand new challenge-- Tic Tac Toe! I am so excited about it and had lots of fun making my project this week.



For my tic-tac-toe project, I chose paper piecing, pearl and button to make this baby card for my neighbors who just had a new little girl:


To start I paper pieced a Baby Tear Bear-- this is the first time I have made one of these tiny little guys and they are oh so cute! Just as easy as the original Tear Bears to make and the perfect size for a baby card.




I used My Mind's Eye Alphabet Soup Girl papers to make my easel card-- I love these colors for a baby girl-- I'm not a big fan of pink so to mix it up with a little blue and even green was perfect!

Then I added my pearls and my buttons are actually stick pins with pastel buttons on the ends.

So, if you haven't done it yet, pick your three squares on our Tic Tac Toe board and enter your project in our current Beary Sweet Challenge and good luck!

Are you a . . . .

BRAVE GIRL?

Well, sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not, just depending on what it is. But I know one thing for sure, I was nowhere near as brave when I was a little girl as my 7 year old daughter is. She'll try anything and shows no fear (and yes, I definitely realize this may not always be a good thing!) She is up for adventure of any kind and I have spent many moments this summer cringing as she rides her bike down hills, does front flips off the high dive at the city pool, being pulled on a tube behind a boat on the lake and her new love-- waterskiing-- which is the subject of my layout this week.


I am pretty sure I was at least 12 years old before I attempted to waterski, but not my daughter-- she outshone her older brother and several cousins by learning this summer and her usual comment was "Go faster." What a girl!


I stuck to the basic sketch for this layout but wanted to mix it up just a little from last week and so I tilted the sketch a different direction and then added three smaller pictures to the side of my main image. I used the fabulous new collection from Echo Park called Splash-- you have got to check it out! Kimm just got it in the store this week and it is perfect for summer activities of many kinds. I just love the bright colors. I did add some hot pink in the mat for my main photo and the letter stickers to make it a little more "girly." I used Element Stickers from the Splash collection pack to accent my page instead of the flowers on the original sketch and added Stickles for a little shine to my wave.



So go on, be a brave girl and do something a little adventurous this weekend! Or just spend a little time crafting and enter your take on our sketch in our current Beary Sweet Challenge.

New Sketch at The Beary Scrap

Happy Friday to everyone out there! I hope you have enjoyed seeing the absolutely FANTASTIC creations the Beary Sweet ladies have offered up this week in conjunction with our new sketch challenge. We can't wait to see how you interpret the sketch!

My take on the sketch is a 12 x 12 layout using My Mind's Eye Fine & Dandy True Blue papers. I think these papers include some of my favorite color combinations ever and they were perfect for a picture of my 4 year old celebrating his birthday.



I loved this sketch and pretty much stuck right to it, except for substituting stars for the flowers since this is a boy-ish layout. All the accents are from the same Fine & Dandy collection-- buttons, brad, and trim-- I love it when they all come matched already!

Check out all the details for our current Beary Sweet Challenge featuring this sketch here-- we hope to see your entry soon!

Summer Sandals Inspiration

I have been enjoying some golden summer days this week-- my son's baseball games are finally over, the weather here is beautiful (high 80s, no wind-- that no wind part is amazing for Idaho!) and we finally have a little time to relax and enjoy some gorgeous summer nights outside. This mood has definitely carried over into my project for The Beary Scrap DT this week as here is a picture of something from my closet that inspired my card today:



My current favorite pair of sandals! I love sandals, I would wear them all year if I could. Unfortunately, the snow here kind of limits that but I do basically wear them April through October anyway! I love the big flowers on these sandals and so I borrowed this element and translated it into a summer card.



I made my flowers from sheets of artist canvas-- the ones that are ready to be put through a computer printer. I found a chipboard flower I liked and traced it three times. The first flower I cut right on my tracing lines, the second slightly smaller and the third slightly bigger. Then I stitched down the middle of each petal to copy the stitching on my sandals and put them together with a brad. I love the result!





I hope you are enjoying a little summer (or winter) sunshine this week, depending on where you live and you have time to fit a little paper crafting into those relaxation hours! You still have a few more days to enter our Inspiration from Your Closet Challenge so make sure to get your project posted for a chance to win!

Beary Scrap Closet Inspiration

Just not my closet! It is our second week of "Find Inspiration in Your Closet" over at The Beary Scrap Challenge Blog. For my project this week, I decided to go a little different route with the clothing inspiration and use an article of clothing in the pictures I wanted to scrap as inspiration for my page.



I wanted to scrap my son's 4 year old portraits and so I took the shirt that he was wearing and scanned it on my scanner, printing out my own designer paper to use on my layout. This saved me a ton of time searching through my stash looking for just the right colors to match the pictures-- the paper was already perfect!



For other papers I did stick to the main colors in the plaid print and also added some buttons that look just like the ones on his shirt.



I hope you will all take the Inspiration from Your Closet Challenge and show us what you come up with . Enter your project in our current Beary Sweet Challenge by July 31 11:59 EST for you chance to win!

Challenge= Baseball + Denim

We have a brand new challenge over at The Beary Scrap Design Team and Challenge blog --it is to take a piece of our favorite clothing and use it as inspiration for a project-- well, the very first thing that came to my mind was. . . . can you guess what this is?




You got it! A pair of very comfortable jeans-- I know everyone has their favorite pair that they love to pull on and they are just as comfy as a pair of sweats or pajamas. And so using that as my inspiration, I have used denim on my baseball layout this week.


I sewed an old piece of lightweight denim right on top of my cardstock and patterned paper. I have a pile of old jeans in my basement that someday I am going to sew a quilt out of (emphasis on someday, I am sure it is going to be a long time from now!) Until that day, they are great for cutting little pieces out of for scrapbook projects. I sewed a double line with yellow thread to mimic the sewing on old a pair of jeans and then also sewed around the journaling spot circle to make it look like a baseball.

I also die cut some stars out of denim on my old Sizzix machine, it's not high tech but it works great for fabric! Other embellishments include a cardstock star, tickets(which are actually Valentines' themed but I covered up the love words!), baseball woven ribbon, yellow bakers' twine and some 3-D baseball stickers.



To make this layout I used the August Guest Designer Sketch from Sketchy Thursdays-- I LOVE their sketches! The challenge was to use the sketch, incorporate a summer theme (baseball), use red, orange and /or yellow (I used red and yellow) and have a journaling spot (my baseball)-- wish me luck! :):)



I can't wait to see what the rest of our lovely DT ladies have in store for us with this theme and to see your projects too. Make sure to enter your project in our current challenge and share some inspiration with us!