I am a Honey Bee

All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel

Scrapbooking and Crafts

Giant Santa LO- Studio Calico 12.4.11 Sunday Sketch

Cards

12.4.11 Sunday Sketch

As with the start of every year we make resolutions. I am taking this opportunity to mak one for my blog… I resolve to have more scrapbooking and craft posts. As I made my 2011 recap I realized that the topics of my blog posts were not equally divided. I was noticing that my blog was becoming more and more like a typical food blog, and that is something I don’t want. I love food blogs but I never set out to have one, and I didn’t like how it was evolving towards that. I want to blog about food, obviously, but I want my posts to be equally divided up among the topics of my life, crafting/scrapbooking, and food.

So, I am resolving to actually scrapbook and craft more and to actually put those projects on the blog. I have so many vacation mini books complete that I never posted because I got busy/lazy/bored/etc. I am warning you now that you will be seeing posts related to the mini books I made for Montreal, Charlotte, and Utah in the coming weeks. And I am starting with committing to more scrapbooking posts right now with this one about a giant Santa!

I started out making cards before I began scrapbooking so I was tempted to make a card when I first saw this sketches. But card making is not really my thing anymore so I went with a scrabooking layout instead. I was inspired by the lower right card sketch because I felt it had great composition for a layout. I love when things run up and down a page vertically.

I did this layout quickly and that is just the way I like it! I used a fun glittery patterned paper for the background, which I misted for a little fun. I used an evergreen colored cardstock for the photo border because it was like the trees in the photo. I pulled out that sticker embellishment because it was black and red, like on Santa, and it was circular, similar to the patterned paper. The cardstock embellishment was from an old Cosmo Cricket Christmas themed elements paper that I cut out from its background. I then added an American Crafts pearlized brad to it. A little piece of scrap paper, a tag, alphas, and a ribbon finish it off.

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Ribbit LO- Studio Calico 4.10.11 Sunday Sketch

–4/10 Studio Calico Sunday Sketch–

This layout has been sitting on my desk at work waiting to for journaling, then for it to be scanned and edited, photographed and edited, and then blogged for months. Well today is the day that it is finally getting done!

Ribbit! I used to only scrapbook big events- birthdays, holidays, parties, etc. But that was back when I had to buy film. Over time when digital cameras got better and developing became super easy, I have changed my outlook on scrapbooking. this is a quirky post about Pricer catching frogs in E’s backyard. What’s the big deal? Well, I want to look back at this page years and years from now and remember that moment. I was something that kinda took my breath away. I was so excited that I had Price repeat this over and over to the poor froggies for my amazement and for photo taking. I feel that I was not properly educated at camp… how did no one teach me how to pick up frogs?!?! Silly I know, but it totally made my morning.

(close up photos to come)

How to catch a frog:

1. Appoach it from the side, be careful not to cast a shadow on it or make sudden movements.

2. Carefully put your hand in the water. Slowly move your hand to be under the frog.

3. Slowly raise your hand under the frog until touching. If all has gone well at this point, lift frog out of the water slowly. Ta-da!!

December Daily Book (Before)

20111130-225458.jpgLast year I started to prep my December Daily album but I bailed at the last minute in participating the documenting my month. My fall was less than stellar so I didn’t feel like celebrating everything going on. I talked myself out of it ‘what do I have to document?!? I feel crappy and it’s not like I do anything exciting. I’m busy with work- great I’ll take a photo of my desk every day. I don’t have kids so there are only so many things I can take photos of.’

20111130-225513.jpg

Well this year I am so damn determined to stick to it! I dug my kit out where I left it and ripped most of it apart. I did a new cover quickly last night. I started to play around with the pages inside it but decided that I should make that my 5 minute creative outlet every night and go with the flow.

I am going to use my Fuji Instax camera for the process. It’s going to be hilarious going to yank this massive play school like camera out of my bag every time to take a picture… Pricer will cringe. I have to admit that I’m totally stealing Kelly Purkey’s idea since she did this last year for her Dec Daily album. Looked amazing so I’m going to give it a try this year.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!!

You can follow tweets about other crafters and scrapbookers doing this with the hast tag #decdaily

 

Donut Love LO- Studio Calico 8.28 Sunday Sketch

Knsketch

– 8/28 Studio Calico Sunday Sketch-

The Sunday Sketch featured on 8/28 worked so well for what I had in mind for this layout about our visit to Doughnut Plant. Besides that I loved the doughnuts, I loved that they decorate the shop with plushy donuts, in both their round and square shapes, on the wall. I wanted to recreate that look on my layout.

Using scraps of patterned and solid papers I got to work punching them out with a square and circle punch. Then I used my crop-o-dile to punch the hole in the center to create the complete donut. After I arranged them I put a few of them on foam spacers to add a little dimension for the page. In addition to the donut accents, I added a sticker strip that I felt would also relate well to the donut shape.

I want a doughnut now…

paper

We have a friend coming to stay with us this weekend so we are in a mad dash to clean up the place. Mainly, my craft stash started to creep everywhere and after Spark all hell broke loose so I needed to spend some time pulling it all together again.

I started with ‘simply’ organizing my paper. Well, that alone is a huge chore. But it made me realize that I don’t need to so any more shopping (besides the monly Studio Calico kits I get) and that I need to scrap more to actaully use some of this stuff.

Pattterned paper, die cut paper, and textured solid carstock on the left.

Solid card stock on the right.

over 6″ of just solid 12×12 cardstock.

We’re not even gonna talk about the 8.5×11 paper I have. One could get a hernia picking up those sorters.

My name is Nicole and I have a pretty paper addiction.

 

 

PS. That’s not even all my paper. I still have patterned paper packs to add to that. And I purged just under 2″ out of it as well.

And Point! – LO

I tried to keep this layout fun and light because it features a fun time for us, well specifically Pricer. Once, when we went into the city we stopped by the Today Show to see the morning taping of the show and when we were there Price got to take a photo with Linny. If you didn’t know, Linny is a Today Show staple, he is outside EVERY DAY in the crowd. Crazy! But we love getting to see him point to the camera after the break return at 7.30.

 

As ‘simple’ as this layout is with just 1 patterned piece of paper for the backgrounds and photo, I tried to have fun with the embellishments. I used chipboard pieces that I painted and inked. I used the tag to create a spot for the title, that I made with alpha letters. I stamped and used used a brad. All of these things were pretty small so they didn’t overwhelm the page. My favorite thing I put on there was the heart shaped paperclip. Adorable!

‘Miss C’ LO

My niece Cara is turning 1 in a less than a week. I love her to death. She is just so adorable. It has been amazing to see her grow so much from this adorable little newborn. Over the year I have seen her every few months so I have the chance to document her growth. I took these photos at the end of August. I can’t wait to see her next week to see how much she has grown.

I am so addicted to my Studio Calico kits that arrive every month in our building vestibule every month. (Price is less excited… ‘great more stuff’) I love the kits but I really love getting to see awesome design inspiring layouts from the design team. I looked back on layouts from Stephanie Howell and Kelly Purkey for each of them for inspiration.

Andshedreams  Youarehere  Blog lucky

When I saw these layouts I knew that I wanted to keep them in mind for future inspriation. I loved the use of these butterfly chipbaord peices that Stephanie used in 2 of her layouts. Kelly used airplanes in her layout but I was looking at how they radiated from a central point on her page. Keeping the looks of all these layouts in mind, I got to work to create this page about Cara.

 

I am not a butterfly person. I actually was bummed when I first saw these since I have gotten quite a few butterfly things over the year since I have been subscribing to SC. And yet, Stephanie’s layouts sold me on actually using these Sassafras ones.

If you happen to like what is including in the Field Guide kit, including the butterflies, I suggest you hop over to Studio Calico and buy a kit, while it is still available!

Love Cousins- Studio Calico 10.2.11 Sunday Sketch

I loved the simplicity of this this sketch. The strips could be anything which I found really appealing. Strips of paper could help used up your scrap stash. Ribbons would be cute. Rows of embellishmens like buttons. I have so many little bit and pieces in bins and, as Price would point out, floating around everywhere so it’s a good way of using things up.

At my dad’s birthday party this summer I spent most of the time taking photos of my niece and 3 nephews. At one point Cara was laying on the floor so we had the boys lay down next to her so we could get a picture if all of them. Simply distract a 10 month old with an iPhone and you can get her to stay still long enough for a photo.

I dug through my scrap box so I could get some strips of paper to work with the sketch. I decided to use the patterns since there was not adominate color in the photo. Since there was no common color I decided to just make the randomness of the patterns to make the layout work.

I had these adorable chipboard embellishments for such a long time. I just had to get them but didn’t know what to ever do with them. I pulled them out because of the colors and I figured the animals would be a cute add on for the kiddie page. Plus it would work well with the faux bois patterned paper.

The Fourth on the 3rd- Studio Calico 7/10 Sunday Sketch

Emily-sketch

Everything came together perfectly for this layout. I loved this Sunday Sketch once I saw it. I loved my instant photos. I loved the Studio Calico ‘Boardwalk’ kit when it arrived. I saw that paper and my heart skipped a beat. The hexagon/honeycomb gets me every time.

Scrapbooking these instant photos reminds me that I need to order more since they were my last 2 photos. Must put that on the to do list.

I made a mistake when I was writing the jouraling. I, as usual, had a ‘Nicole has shitty handwriting and you can’t read that word’ error so I had to make the choice of starting completely over or to grab another piece of paper and fix that one bit. Since I was in no mood to look for that olive green in my scraps bin, I picked a different green and made it work by mixing it into the journaling.

 

Boardwalk is still available. Buy it. Love it. Scrap it.

Month: 7- Studio Calico 4.3.11 Sunday Sketch

Kelly's-sketchThis Studio Calico Sunday Sketch, and the layout that generated the sketch, was something that I really enjoyed working with. I liked the large blocking of the papers that was mixed with smaller images. I feel that a sketch like this can generate a lot of different layouts because the focus, and creativity, could relate to the photos, the journaling, or the large title.

I love taking photos of my niece, but as in most cases with babies, the photos might not come out very well because of all her movement. Instead of just filing these photos away on my computer because they were not picture-perfect, I decided to use them. However, instead of using large 4×6 photos, I used smaller 2×3 photos that I made even smaller by trimming them. The fact that Cara is moving, and therefore blurry, shows how animated she is. That itself is part of the story.

 

This sketch allowed me to capture the beauty in my niece without letting the ‘flawed’ photos limit me. It also allowed me to play with the color yellow. No, there is not yellow in the photos but as I was going through the papers I had at hand I came across this sheet. I felt the background brown went well with the color of the sofa Cara was sitting on. From there I started to grab more yellow/neutral paper and embellishments.

Ian Axel LO

Hello stickers. Not until this page was done when I realized how many sticker elements I used. Alpha stickers, labels, and 3 long ‘banner’ embellishments. The mix of types of stickers doesn’t make it seem like ‘sticker overload!’ The tickets are even craft paper like so it gives off an appearance that it is a paper embellishment I taped down.

I admit that it has taken me some time to let loose and not go THEME THEME THEME on my pages. When I first started scrapbooking my page would have been musically inclined being that it is about a concert, but I have realized (?) that it not ciritcal to be literal. Ian was wearing a blue shirt and Chad was wearing jeans so I wanted to pick up on the blue in the photos so I picked a paper to use, then I picked accents that went with that tone. For example, the yellow and cream on the paper was picked up in the yellow arrow tag, blue and yellow shaped sticker.

 

 

Summer Lovin LO- 6.26.11 Studio Calico Sunday Sketch

Kelly_sketch

I looked up when was the last time I posted a scrapbooking layout… April 25th! That is so damn horrible. I can’t believe it. But sadly that is the way things go. I have to prioritize packing all my stuff in May so craftiness was shoved aside. Then June was all about unpacking. But alas, packing is (almost) complete so I have some free time now to scrapbook.

Getting to create a space for my scrapbooking (to be blogged about at some point) took some time but it feels right. I feel comfortable using the desk station. I really see a lot of scrapbooking occurring there. I have already whipped out a few pages, one of which I am sharing now.

This layout is from a photo I took on the first day of summer. Out of all the photos we took this was the one that i loved the most. It was such a great night with Price that I wanted to feature him. (Plus the picture of me were crappy). The layout the sketch is based off of used a portrait photo but I just used a landscape one because, as always, a sketch is a jumping off point.

 

I love having all my supplies right at hand now. Because everything is in my face I took care in examining my supplies and using a wider variety than I typically would. I used quite a bit of supplies form my Studio Calico kits, such as paper and alpha stickers, as well as Stampin’ Up! paper and brads. The flag sticker is from Sassafras and the grasshopper ‘paper’ is the back of a business card from SC.