Who else is stoked that we've reached our first milestone- 100 fans!? Actually, we've surpassed that already, and I can't tell you how elated I am that so many people like what they see. I sincerely appreciate your support. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! If you missed it on the group page, there was a tie for 100th fan. I am not sure when they 'liked' my page, and who was last to 'like' it, so I'm giving the honors to both of the 'likes' I saw when we reached the 100 mark. (Both these individuals showed up in my feed at the same time, and the magical number was exactly 100). The winners- the 100th fan winners- are Rachael Longely and Kristin Furoy. Rachael has already been in touch with me; Kristin if you are reading this now, please PM me! Otherwise, I'll PM you tomorrow.
Also, I'm celebrating this milestone by challenging you throughout the week, and giving you more opportunities to win prizes. Who wouldn't like that?! Its all free stuff- of course you'll like it! Every day, starting today and ending next Thursday, there will be a different challenge; a sketch, random question to answer, embellishments or elements to use on projects, etc, so be ready and please participate! I'd love to have everyone join! Our first challenge, is to use cute summer printables (they're free!) on a project. It doesn't matter what the project is; just find a unique way to use it. When you're done, upload your project to my group page, and that'll be your entry for today's challenge. The winner will be picked early tomorrow morning, and then I'll post the next challenge. SOund good? I think so!
Speaking of winners, Jacinda Horvath was the lucky winner of yesterday's Win it Wednesday challenge. Yay Jacinda! Thanks- everyone- for participating! You made my day!
For Easter this year, I bought the girls a bead set. They had seen it in the craft aisle at Walmart, and they wanted it right then and there. I told them to wait, because they might get it for something special (such as Easter). I'd rather give them stuff like this than candy...We sat down the day we gave them their present, and helped them make bracelets. Even daddy helped out. It was a really great day to spend time together and bond as a family. Its a moment I'm going to treasure for eons.
I sat at my work table and layered the card stock and patterned papers onto the kraft base, then just stared at it. The wheels were turning, I just couldn't make up my mind. I was either going to spray ink again, or stamp. Finally, after chewing on the old lip for a while, I decided to go in a different direction and stamp this time. I don't do it often, because I don't often like the way it looks, but this time it rocked. I loved that my stamping was imperfect- it lends the layout a weathered, old look- and that suited me just fine for this layout. I didn't want it to be too bold in the background- the pressure I used was perfect.
I haven't used flowers on my layouts in a long time. I had set my mind quite some time ago, to try and use elements other than flowers to embellish my pages, and now that I've thought about it, I've succeeded in that area! I"m quite pleased! I used to use flowers a lot (or, so I felt). It felt pretty good pulling out the flowers again. I used some of the beads out of the girls' bead kit to add some oomph to the centres of the flowers. Apparently I shouldn't have done that. Maren noticed it and told me it wasn't nice that I had taken beads out of their bead kit. I tried explaining to her why I did it, but it still doesn't matter. What I did was wrong. Oops! I thought using them as flower centres would help tie the jewelry making theme together quite nicely.
Lastly, I used a Recollections journalling card to mat my journalling and incorporate the title into it. The title also is part of my journalling. The alphas are a mixture of Carta Bella's Well Travelled collection and Echo Park's Here and Now collection.
THis layout was very simple to put together. Once again, I did some misting and spraying, using my Dylusions Calypso Teal spray ink and Bubblegum Pink spray ink; then, I layered these scraps of card stock and patterned paper on top of it. (I had pulled out the patterned paper to use on another project, but didn't like it. I used it here to add an element of sophistication to my project). I also ran the blue card stock through my Cuttlebug, using the polka dot embossing folder for a little more visual interest.
To complete this layout, I used a journalling card (Recollections) to mat my title to.
Then, I thought it would be fun to use the clouds that I had cut out using my Cricut, so I adhered them with some pop dots in random places, slightly overlapping the negative cloud shapes. All the patterned papers I used here were scraps that I've had lying around and piling up. I need to get them used up, so I can move on! There's a mixture there of Jillibean Soup, Carta Bella, and the sticker embellishments are Echo Park and Jillibean Soup.
Thanks for dropping in and I'll see everyone again later on!