Interviews with my boys

I love interview/ survey type layouts. It lets us have a little insight to people that they may not think to write down otherwise. I often ask my kids to answer questions, and I type them up in Evernote for putting on layouts later. I did good this time- I asked the questions and got them on layouts within a week!  Plus I used half way recent photos!

Supplies:
template-I Love You template album by Cilenia Curtis  coming Feb 1st to Digitals
papers and wordart-A Study in Gray and Yellow by Angie Young   coming Feb 1st to Digitals
font- Minion Pro

I used the same template and the same kit components for both layouts. I just changed around where I used the papers for each layout. It doesn't matter- they are going in different albums anyway. The point is, now I know that my younger son wants to be a dentist when he grows up. Who knew?! lol

Superhero Comic Cookies

I made these cookies to go with my son's cake that I showed you last time. This is BrettBoy- the burrito lovin' superhero star of my son's comics.

Here's basically how I did it. 

I used this chocolate cookie dough, which was SO easy to make and roll!  It didn't rise or expand AT ALL!  Perfect for cookie cutters! (Georganne has a great blog- check her out!)

I used a round cookie cutter. Once cooled, I used royal icing (not my glaze icing), with a black thick icing, and outlined Brettboy's face. I let it dry a few hours, and tinted some royal icing for Brettboy's face and hair. I thinned the icing a bit and filled in the faces and hair, and used toothpicks to push the icing into corners and pop any bubbles. 

Once they dried overnight, I used an Americolor food color pen to draw the faces on. 

They aren't perfect. But that's not the point, right?

Brett loved them and they tasted GOOD!

Original Superhero Comic birthday cake

So my son draws comics. Often. He has one superhero comic character that he draws quite often that he calls Brettboy. For his birthday, I made Brettboy into icing and put him on the birthday cake!  Wanna see?

Well?

Brett loved it!  I love it! It turned out so much better than I expected.

Want to see how I did it?
First I made Brett draw the character about the size I wanted and then I made 3 photocopies of it (this is a delicate operation! I needed extras just in case one broke!)

I taped it to a platter and taped a piece of waxed paper over top of it.  Then I made black royal icing and piped the outline. CLICK HERE for my recipe and a tutorial from Cookie Week. 

 I made him three times. :)

 Then I waited a few hours for the outline to dry. If I didn't, I could have not only messed up the outline, but the black food coloring would have certainly bled into the white. Then I let the whole thing sit overnight to dry completely.

 Here is Brett when he first saw the Brettboys in icing. He was very excited!

 I managed to get Brettboy on the cake, only breaking his neck!  (I had a feeling I would, but once he was on the cake, we could hardly tell.)  I took the body (and then the head) and added just a teeny bit of wet royal icing to the back to use as glue.

 I used a black Americolor food dye pen to draw his face.  That was nicer than I expected.  Royal icing dries nice and hard.

It was at this point I wished I had made the speech bubble the same way! Instead I piped the black outline straight on the cake. I let it dry a few hours, then filled it in with white. Unfortunatey the white never dried completely, so when I wrote "Happy Birthday" the point of the pen dug into the icing a little bit. Oops!

 I used the "B" symbol that Brett drew on his comic and more wax paper to make a bunch of symbols.  I would either use one for the top of the Brettboy on the cake, or, if I had enough not break, use them around the side of the cake.
(The rectangle above the B is a burrito- because it's Brettboy's favorite food.)

 Here is the final cake. I used royal icing to glue the B symbol to the Brettboy and also had enough to go around the cake. We think it turned out pretty awesome!

My next post will be the cookies I made to match!!

Ready to Soar

My friends and designers Cilenia Curtis, Angie Young, and Aria have started a new blog and challenge about art journaling- creatively expressing themselves.  They would love for you to join them.

Here is the blog.
Here is the shop.

The kits that they are making for this project are very detailed and beautiful.   I am not really an art journaler per se (and if I were, I think I'd prefer using tactile supplies like paints and textures) but what they are doing is really fun to see.

I used the kits (pieces by all three designers) to make the following layout. I took a beige paper by Aria and changed the color, but the rest of the supplies are as they were sold.

Supplies:
Follow Your Art Jan -  A Seed Grows by Aria
Follow Your Art Jan - Ready to Soar Word Art by Angie Young
Follow Your Art Jan - Book Pages by Cilenia Curtis
Follow Your Art Jan Date Tags by Cilenia Curtis
Artist Tool Box 04 brush set by Cilenia Curtis
font: My handwriting font.

And did I mention I took the picture using my new camera?!  It's a Canon 7D and I'm SO excited about it!

Check out the art journaling blog and let me know what you think about it. :)

iPhoneography and little snowflakes

Hi friends!

Have I shown you these photos yet?

Before Christmas the kids, Art and I were strolling through Lowe's (does anyone else love walking through home improvement stores/ I just LOVE walking through the kitchens! Oh, back to the point.  We found these cardboard glasses, like "3-D" glasses, that claim to let you see snowflakes, Santas and snowmen.  Well, we looked through them at the Christmas lights in the store, and they were pretty cool. 

Fast forward to Christmas morning. I had stuffed one pair of glasses into each of our stockings, and when I opened my stocking, I was surprised to find 4 pair!  Art and I had the same idea- but he bought me one of each! How funny is that?! We spent a while passing them around and looking at the pretty lights.

Later that night, I think, Austin got the idea to look at the lit Christmas tree in our front yard.  I found that the colored ligths didn't look as awesome as the white icicle lights hanging from the eves.  Then I wondered if I could photograph that. 

Guess what?!  It worked! I took these pictures with my iPhone and the normal Camera app.  I just held the glasses in front of the lens.

Then I tried out my XTi!  I used Aperture Priority, which I use most of the time, and left Autofocus on, and got these shots, which turned out even better!

I was so excited I emailed my Digi friends right away!  Now I'm showing you!

This was the best 99¢ I ever spent!  I put them in the Christmas box so we can play again next year. :)

Did you make a fun purchase for Christmas?  Did you and your spouse have the same idea?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year friends!

So far so good, right?!

Did you make any resolutions?  I don't like to- because I never keep them, but throughout the past week I did compile a list of about 23 goals.  Not like "lose 10 pounds" kind of goals, more like things I want to do once or consistently.  No pressure. :)  Things like only take online classes for photography, blog 2 times a week, spend more quality time with my  husband, be a better Mom, get off the freaking internet and MAKE something!  You know, easy stuff! ;)

Today I made my first layout of the year- a Christmas compilation layout.  You've seen all the December Daily/Journal Your Christmas/ Holiday Templates layouts that I've done- I'm not holding back! lol  I have more stories to tell, but went ahead and made this one that will be printed 9x9 inches and put into my Christmas album. In this album I have 1 page for each year (for 14 years now), and a couple of extra "favorite ornaments," "Christmas card list," etc. pages.  I am 3 years behind. ;) Ooops.

Left:

 Right:

I didn't use a template for these- I just threw them together and then copied the layer styles from a template onto my photos and title. I did use the kits from the Holiday Templates class by Paislee Press and Creashens, so it matches the rest of my layouts. I also used the fonts Marketing Script (title), and my handwriting font that I told you about a few weeks ago.

So did you get anything scrapbook or photography related for Christmas?  I'm dying to get mine in the mail!  Well, on Christmas morning my sweet husband gave me a reflector, a gray card, a Gary Fong Lightsphere flash diffuser (but I don't have the flash), and a filter for a lens I hadn't ordered yet. Oops!  Guess what?  Now I've ordered both of them, so it's all good!  I'll be stalking the UPS truck all week!

Oh, and guess what else?  I'm expecting something else!!


No!  Not that!!


No babies!!

My sweet husband let me use some extra money (not that we have any of that!) to order the camera I've been saving for!!  I'm a lucky, lucky girl! Yep, I'm stalking the UPS man double this week!! You'll be seeing LOTS of photography posts from me!

I hope your Christmas was great and that you have a super awesome new year!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, friends, and best wishes for the new year!

I am enjoying having my family here for the holidays, so I'm not posting much. I have scrapped a little, though! We're making cookies, fudge and mounds bars, and enjoying some Christmas movies. I hope you are enjoying your holiday as well!

I'll leave you with some photos of the holiday display at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Writing Christmas Cards

I am really starting to like these templates! One day the template I chose had lots of paper pieces and took me forever to do, but the rest have been fairly easy. I have to admit I have not kept up with watching the videos from the class and I have not been home for one chat yet. :(

But I have scrapped more than I had in a while, so I'm happy with that. This one has lots of little information- the stuff I'll forget over the years. Is it bad that I had to look on the internet to find out how much a stamp costs right now?! (44 cents, by the way.)

Here's my layout. I turned the template sideways so I could get my wide photo on there. Then I deleted the "journaling block" layer and just filled in journaling wherever I wanted to. I also threw my Christmas card on there. Yep, this is the card I'm mailing out. I made a 4x6 card in Photoshop and had it printed as a photo at Walmart. One of these days I'm going to print nice folded cards, but I needed it FAST since I was running behind!

Supplies:
template: Tiffany Tillman Holiday Templates 2011
kits Oh Joy by Creashen
and Oh Joy by Paislee Press
fonts: Marketing Script and my handwriting font

Fabric Flower Art

My dear friend Cilenia (who is the digital designer I often scrap for) is an amazing artist!  She recently made this art quilt that I just adore!

Isn't it gorgeous?!
Check out her post- she has lots of pictures of her process.

I went to her house yesterday and she taught me how to do the same art!

I will mention that I tried to steal the aforementioned art quilt but she blocked me every time I went near it!!

First she taught me how to draw the flowers:

Then we set that aside to dry and she had one ready for me to paint:

What do you think? I love it!  Not as much as hers, but I was afraid if I kept going I'd mess it up, and I really wanted to save it! I came home with my drawn flowers and her artist pencils, and plan to play for a long time!

Thanks, Cilenia, for sharing your art with me!

Outdoor Lighting- Christmas Day 10

Today I'm sharing my layout about our outdoor Christmas lights. This is the first time that we've ever done outdoor lights!

Left:

 And right:

Supplies:
template: Tiffany Tillman Holiday Templates 2011
kits Oh Joy by Creashen
and Oh Joy by Paislee Press
fonts: Marketing Script and my handwriting font
The pictures of people were all taken during daylight. The light photos were all taken at dusk.

Christmas Wrapping

I have finished another layout for my Christmas album- this one about wrapping presents. I used a template and supplies from Tiffany Tillman's Holiday Templates 2011 class.

Supplies:
template: Tiffany Tillman (Holiday Templates Class 2011)
papers: Creashen- Oh  Joy kit
and Paislee Press- Oh Joy kit
date tag: Tiffany Tillman Hol11 date tags
fonts: Marketing script at 80pts, Georgia, my font at 12pts


My all time favorite part about this layout is the journaling font!  Guess why!!  That's MY HANDWRITING!!  My first Christmas present was having Darcie Baldwin make my handwriting into a font! It looks better than my actual handwriting and I love it!!  Thanks, honey, for buying it for me for Christmas!

Online Gaming and Christmas

Sorry I haven't been around in a while. Part of it was how busy we were around here, and another part was I just haven't been feeling like scrapping.

Our Thanksgiving went well, for the most part. We had my in-laws here which was wonderful. We always stay busy when they come.

On to Scrapping!!

I have an announcement! I'm so excited to say I am CTing for Angie Young! Have you seen her store? Her designs are so pretty and fit right in to my style! I'll show you a Christmas page I did with her new "Vintage Christmas" kit in a minute.
Here are a few of my favorite Angie Young kits:

Nice, right?!  She has a ton of stuff, so go check her out!


First, I made this page:

Supplies:
Papers: Whimsical Holidays by Aria
tag and safety pin: Art Journal Project by Cilenia Curtis
painty edge: A Little Vintage Christmas by Angie Young
all of DigitalScrapbookPages.com
Fonts: Mom's Typewriter, Pea Lacy Chunky, and Teen.

I tend not to use items from a bunch of different kits at the same time, but this one turned out well.

On another note, don't you love how there is so much inspiration out there? For example, in December, I can think of three major projects that are very popular for Scrapbookers: Ali's December Daily, Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas, and Tiffany's Holiday Templates 2011. I love them all! Here's the best part... you can take what you love and what inspires you from all sources and make it your own! For example, none of these three classes begins until Dec 1st.
Guess what- I started already!!

Supplies:
A Little Vintage Christmas kit by Angie Young
brush from Artist Toolbox 4 by Cilenia Curtis (for blending photo)
font: Pea Snow

I don't do a page a day, but I try to take pictures most days in December, and I use layouts, themes, and techniques I see from these sources and more as inspiration in my own projects. Isn't this a great hobby?!

Will you be doing a December or Holiday project this year? What are you planning? I'd love to know!