Saturday, November 30, 2013

The last day of November

It's the last day of November, and with this post, I'll be all caught up. 48 layered digital templates given away on the blog this year so far.  So let's get started with no further ado.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

7 more layered digital templates!

We're getting down to the end of the month, and I have lots more templates left to catch up on my giveaways.  Today, I have 5 for you.  I hope you enjoy them!
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Monday, November 25, 2013

Just 5 More Days!

At the beginning of the month, my goal was to catch up on my template giveaways. By the end of the month (Saturday), I need to get up to a total of 48 templates given away.  To that end, I have 6 more templates for you.  These templates are based on a baby book I made for my sister for Christmas of 2010, you can tell that my style has changed quite a bit in that time, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for this early work.

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Keep checking in throughout the rest of the week.  I have 11 more templates for you between now and Saturday.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog November Hop



Welcome to the November Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop!


If you came from Jemma's blog Just Jim-Jams. If you just stumbled upon the hop, I'd like to invite you to go back to CKCB, so you can see all the ladies' contributions.  

It’s November, so I’m sure you’ve been seeing people all around you making declarations of what they’re thankful for.  I’ve made no secret about the fact that this has been a difficult year for me. Between health issues, trying to graduate, and trying to figure out where I’m going with my life, I’ve been exhausted, confused, or both pretty much all of the time.  Even though I’ve spent a lot of the year feeling sorry for myself, that’s not really who I am, so I decided to take the month of November to re-discover, re-center, and rejuvenate myself.  Being a papercrafter, it was only natural to document the whole journey in a 30 days of thankfulness mini book. 

At the same time that I decided to embark on this project, I received an invitation to join a Facebook group hosted by Lain Ehmann called 30 Days to Fly.  The general premise of the group is to gather a community of people who want to make some kind of change in their lives and give them a series of prompts everyday to hasten them along that journey.  I loved the idea that I could use the community as an accountability partner to make sure I really followed up on completing the project. 

As if that wasn’t coincidence enough ,  a couple days in, I see the blog hop challenge for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog is a "So Thankful mini book." I began to believe that perhaps God really did want me to get this done.  I’ve been participating with CKCB for 5 months now, and after participating in the Hop last month, I really wanted to keep doing it.  The fact that it wasn’t any more work than I already committed myself to was just bonus.


I shared the bare book at the beginning of the month, but here’s the cover once I embellished it with my November Kit.

I’ve really been enjoying the prompts from 30 Days to Fly, but I’ve also skipped a few of those prompts to work on things that were more applicable to me.



My favorite page is from Day 7.  I used the art papers I made with my gelli plate to die cut shapes and embellish the page.  It’s very much outside of my normal style but I also enjoyed it a lot.



The most fun prompt so far has been “pretend.”  The idea being that sometimes you just have to put on a front of confidence and push through your doubts in order to get through a difficult spot.  The paper on that page of the book reminded me of a grid of streets.  I imagined one of them being the path I’m on or who I am, and it intersects the path (or person) I want to be.  The page is very simple, but it says a lot to me.



Thanks for stopping by. I hope you’ve been inspired at this stop in the hop, and I encourage you to take the challenge to go on your own journey to find yourself every once in a while.  

Your next stop on the hop is Dawn's Scrapbook Cottage. Don't forget to leave me a comment before you go to let me know you were here!

Here is the order of the hop participants in case you get lost along the way. CKCB  http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

3 Scrappy Boys Anniversary Blog Hop

Welcome to 3 Scrappy Boys
Four & Fabulous Anniversary Hop!



If you found your way here from Sally’s Blog, keep reading you are right where you should be!

If you have stumbled across this hop by chance, we hope you’ll hop back to 3 Scrappy Boys so you don't miss out on any of the fabulous ladies who are joining us today! 

To celebrate our Anniversary I created this layout using my April 2013Add On kit.  If you’ve been watching my blog and my entries at the 3 Scrappy Boys blog, you know that I squeezed a TON of adorable cards and layouts out of this kit and a few sheets of cardstock (10 projects to be precise).  I hope you enjoy these projects as much as I have!



I love the colors in this kit more than I can tell you.  They are so much the colors of my life, so I just wanted to create and create and create with it.  In order to stretch every last inch of usefulness, I used one of my favorite tricks.  If only small piece of a paper or other embellishment will be on view in your final layout, cut it and only use that small piece.  That way, you can use the rest somewhere else.  In this case, the vertical  wood grain print is actually a 5 by 6 inch piece scrap that I cut in two pieces to give the illusion of a long vertical piece, I did the same thing with the horizontal ruler patterned paper.  There is only one doily that has been cut apart to use in two different areas.

I also want to remind you that tomorrow evening at 9 PM EST, I'll be hosting the first ever LIVE crop for 3 Scrappy Boys.  For more information about that event, see yesterday's post.  If you want a personal email reminder email me with the subject "3SB Live Crop."

Do you have any “go-to” tricks for stretching supplies that you really love?  Tell me about them or anything else you’d like to share in the comments section to qualify to win our blog hop prize (You have to leave a comment on each stop on the hop to to be entered. If you don't have a Google+ account, you can email me your comment).

Your next stop on the blog hop is Michele’s Blog Stuff By Belle.

If you get lost along the way, here is the complete list to get you back on the right path



Now don't forget when you are done hopping head on over to our forums and join the fun!

We have lots of fun challenges and fabulous prizes waiting for you!  


We will be hopping until Sunday 24th at Midnight.

Our winner will be announced early in the week on the 3 Scrappy Boys Blog
and Face Book Page make sure you LIKE us to stay in contact.


Have fun and thanks for hopping with us today!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Live Crop Reminder...and some templates!

I'm usually a 12 X 12 scrapper, but I did Lilah's baby book in 8.5 X 11.  Today, I'm giving away some templates based on layouts in that baby book.








Also, I wanted to remind you about the LIVE CROP I'm hosting for 3 Scrappy Boys on Thursday November 21 at 9 PM EST via Google+ Hangouts On Air.  If you're not familiar with Google+ Hangouts, I would strongly encourage you to check it out. It's an awesome piece of social networking software that allows audio, video, chat, and screen share capabilities and much, much more.  We'll be doing this event via Google+ Hangouts On Air, which has the additional benefit of publishing a live feed to YouTube.com and making replays available via YouTube. The live You Tube feed means that you can participate even if you don't have a Google+ account.

Let's talk a little about what we'll be doing during the live crop.  It's going to have 4 parts:
1) Make and Take using the November 2013 3 Scrappy Boys Main Kit,
Thanksgiving tree02
We'll be making a Thanksgiving home decor project that turns into a mini book when you're done using it as a decoration.  In addition to the items from the kit and adhesive, I also used the following in my Thanksgiving Tree project
  • 3 ft of orange ribbon
  • gold embroidery floss
  • buttons
  • paperclips
  • cereal box or other chipboard packaging
  • small tree branch or twig
  • silhouette cut file or .pdf of leaves to make the pages
  • kraft cardstock
  • hole punch or crop a dile
  • binder ring
  • pen/markers/stamps for embellishing pages
If you want to work on your tree during the live crop, I'd advise cutting the leaves ahead of time and having them ready to embellish.
Thanksgiving tree03
2) A live, scrap on your feet challenge taken on by yours truly,
I'll have 20 minutes to make a layout using scrappy prompts chosen by the roll of a die.

3) A gathering of project ideas for the November 2013 Main Kit from around the internet.
4) A giveaway of an embellishment prize pack from 3 Scrappy Boys.
To make sure you get the invite to the room once it's open, you have some choices: 
  • "Like" 3 Scrappy Boys on Facebook--I'll be posting the room link there when it's open
  • RSVP for the event via Google+ I'll post the link there.
  • and/or, if you want to get a personal reminder and invite from me once the room is open, email me with the subject "3SB Live Crop" and I'll send you an email when we're ready to start.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

The Half-Way Point

We are half-way through the month of November, and things are really about to start getting crazy, so lets take it one step at a time.

First, I wanted to remind that I'm hosting a Live 3 Scrappy Boys Crop on Thursday, November 21 at 9 PM EST.  There will be 4 main components of the crop: 1) a make and take project using the November 2013 Main Kit, 2) an impromptu scrapbook challenge (don't worry, I'm the only one racing the timer), 3) Inspiration for how to use your November Main Kit, and 4) A Giveaway!  One lucky winner will get this embellishment prize pack from 3 Scrappy Boys!



Melissa at Simple Sketches has a new sketch out today.  I love how she always pushes me just a little outside my comfort zone.  Usually, it's by tilting elements on the sketch, but this time, she included the dreaded circle.  I don't use very many large circles in my layouts.  I don't know if it's because I'm too much of a perfectionist, and I'm worried I won't get them cut just right.  In any case, I never cut a circle larger than 2 inches without being prompted.  

I started this assignment quite a while ago, and even posted my partial progress on the 3 Scrappy Boys blog 

Unfortunately, when it came time to finish this layout, I couldn't find it.  I know!  That's just insane.  How could I lose a layout.  I don't know.  I just don't have any idea where it is, so I couldn't finish it at last weekend's crop (the only time I had allotted to work on it).

Apparently, I was way off my game that day because in addition to losing the layout I needed to finish for an assignment, I also forgot to bring any patterned paper.  (Crazy!)  My only excuse was that I was really excited about some of the mixed media things we were working on at the crop that day.  Since I didn't want to let Melissa down, I went ahead and made a different layout without patterned paper.


The background is tiers of crumpled tissue paper, and I brought in color with cardstock and art papers I made using a gelli plate.  Isn't this a fun little layout?  I especially like the brass paperclips in each of the embellishment clusters.  It's such a small detail, but I love a touch of gold.

I still have something like 30 templates to give away before the month is out, so I better pick up the pace. Let's do 4 today.

You can download the first template here.

This template was based on a paper layout.  I did using my October 3 Scrappy Boys Trio kit.


I loved how the journaling formed a frame all around the page. Click here to download the next template, which is also based on a layout I made using that kit.




Here's another template based on my work for 3 Scrappy Boys.  I made this layout using the April 2013 Add On Kit.


Here is one last template based on a paper layout using my October 2013 3 Scrappy Boys Trio Kit.