Saturday, December 4, 2010

Imaginisce Holiday Blog Hop

Welcome to our little Imaginisce 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop to warm you up on a cold day! What about a little Cottage Christmas Mitten Wreath to turn the cold into a cozy craft day? This wreath was created with a Maya Road Chipboard Album and the Imaginisce Cottage Christmas collection.
Close Ups of the mittens and cuffs. I used some clear stickers from Little Yellow Bicycle's Christmas Delight collection to add the sentiment and some fuzzy yarn to add some detail to the cuffs.
Make sure you have all of your supplies: chipboard mitten album, super cute Cottage Christmas 6 x 6 patterned papers, 12 inch cake plate, etc..
Trace the album on the back of the 6 x 6 papers, cut out the shape and ink the edges. Then assemble the parts with a good adhesive.
Use some of the Imaginisce Apple Cider paper to make the little "wood" brads for the mittens with the Imaginisce i-top. The 16 mm punch and brad daddies were the perfect size for this project.
Add some furry details to the mittens with some fun yarn, This was a bit of a challenge, but my favorite part of the whole project. I used some of Tombow's multi Aqua glue and just adore the look.

If you have not been to Cari Locken's blog yet, hop on over there and then hop back to the Imaginisce blog to solve our challenge about what our theme was for this hop.

Please download the Complete Tutorial below.


Mitten Wreath Tutorial


Thank you so much for stopping by -


Thursday, December 2, 2010

Some Newsworthy News


I am very happy to share that I am joining the Pit Crew of staff writers at ScrapStreet.com Magazine. If you are not familiar with this Ezine (electronic magazine), please come by and check it out. There are a lot of great articles and featured work in every issue as well as many opportunities to get your own work published. Check out the upcoming calls HERE. I am going have my own column each month, starting in February, and will be sure to share more details later. Hope to see many of you visiting this wonderful place.

Thank you for stopping by -

Life @ 39 w/ Little Yellow Bicycle

For this project, I wanted to show how you can use the gorgeous Little Yellow Bicycle Savor collection for themes other than food and cooking. Many of the sentiments lend themselves to a "Book of Me" themed project, which is what I have created with this layout.  I have about 9 more months to be 39 and have to say that this is a strange year. I feel like I need to meet a few more milestones before I turn 40 - kind of a short-term "bucket list" of sorts.  Anyone else feeling/felt this???
I love how the Decorative Edge cardstock has its own text box. It was perfect for making my title stand out. I combined a cursive alphabet with the "@" symbol, which I cut with my Cricut. I also adore the Savor mini banners and thought they made a wonderful accent to the title and a natural border for the content. See the instruction sheet for more details.
The other thing I really love about the Decorative Edge cardstock is how inviting it is to hand-write your journaling. I felt obliged to use my "best" cursive to share my feelings on this matter. This is all me, putting it out there, may as well write it myself - LOL. I used the epoxy buttons to make a border of buttons to frame the journaling.
Aren't the 10 Things Pockets the best? Sharon created this one to reflect the 10 Things I Love about being in the Kitchen. I decided to alter it to reflect the 10 things I love about being in my 30's. I wrote something on each of the numbered strips, including the car I am driving now, as opposed to what I drove in my 20's. No, it is not a mini van! But yes, it is an SUV. Go ahead and stereotype at will - hey I live IN the Rocky Mountains.

For more ideas, please see the instructions for this project.

Download Lifeat39Instructions_LizQualman

It has been such a wonderful experience to work with this wonderful collection from Sharon at Little Yellow Bicycle and to be the guest blogger for November.  Hope many of you found some ideas and inspiration from my projects.  I am really enjoying seeing what many of you have created with both my sketch and the Savor collection.

Thank you so much for stopping by -

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Imaginisce Sketch Challenge

It's my sketch that is featured this month at Imaginisce and I wanted to see how clever you can all be with banners, especially since banners can be made from a variety of things, flags being only one. I, for one, had mittens stuck in my head for this layout, but wait until you see what our design team has created for their amazing layouts in today's BLOG HOP! So hop on over to each of the team members Blogs listed in my right side column. And don't forget to enter this month's sketch challenge at the Imaginisce blog and you could win a $75 prize package. Click HERE for more details.
These photos are of my older sister and my son. She asked me not to publish these photos anywhere, but she never checks my blog...so oh well. I think she is crazy, cause these photos just make you want to smile. For this layout I decided to combine Cottage Christmas papers and embellishments with the mitten Snag 'Em stamp and rub-ons from last year's Polar Expressions collection to create this warming layout. Both collection mix n' match perfectly. So check your stash for some stuff from last year.
The mitten stamp from Polar Expressions was perfect for fussy cutting, inking and then adding a few pop dots to make them stand out on the page. I also used a white gel pen to draw the strings. Easy as 1-2-3 and looks like I put a lot of thought into it - NOT.
The acrylic Snowflakes included in the Cottage Christmas collection are a great embellishment for adding some flair and bling to a project. Then just add a metal Snowflake Glitz for some extra sparkle.

PLEASE feel free to use this sketch for my December Sketch Challenge as well - nothing like a little double dipping! I'll be posting it soon.

Have fun hopping around today to see the other DT member's work and thank you so much for stopping by -