Simple Scrapper June pages--and a sale!

Hello! The month is winding down, and I wanted to share what I created for Simple Scrapper. Before I do, I'd like to draw your attention to the waning hours of this terrific promotion:

Before June 1, you can save 20% on a 6 month membership to Simple Scrapper! Enjoy inspiration for stories and design, participate in focus groups to help energize your scrapbooking and simplify your process. Follow this link to join!

And now my pages:

This first page I used some photos from Christmas to scrap my son's long-time love of Legos. I used a new sketch and an old story starter for inspiration, plus June's Scrapbook Circle kit Have a Little Fun Today. Love the Crate Paper products from the kit! Here's some details:

I sewed along the stripes on the background paper for some added dimension. Time consuming and not so simple, but I like the result.

And then another history page, this time a history of Star Wars and me:

I used a new story starter and an old sketch for this. I do actually have Star Wars scrapbooking products (of course I do), but I prefer suggesting the theme instead of going all literal. I chose products with stars and some graphic black and white products, a la Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers (that sounds like a band). Here's some details:

I had taken these photos of me and the boys on Star Wars day. My husband had been teaching at a conference on that day, so he wore his Jedi robe and sent me this picture. The Force is strong with us.

Thank you for checking out my pages! I hope you go visit Simple Scrapper to check out the sale and see everything that membership has to offer.

Happy birthday, Padawan

We celebrated the birthday of my eldest yesterday. It was his 11th, so we joke that alas, he is a muggle since he didn't get his owl for Hogwarts (bonus geek points to you if you get that!). We plenty of geeky things in place of the owl, including our traditional birthday outing to Space Aliens for dinner.

Here is a recent layout I did celebrating my eldest:

A few years ago I bought Star Wars Crafts on Black Friday at the Mall of America. Since then I've made crafts for both boys, but Rowan is particular is obsessed with them, especially the stuffed animals. I made a tooka doll, and my mom made him a washcloth wampa. Later he asked for a bantha; I needed a model so he built one out of cardboard for me. I put this page together to remember this phase in his life, just in case he outgrows his love of all things cuddly Star Wars.

Here's some details:

Amazingly, when I planned this page, I forgot to  print a picture of the FIRST Star Wars craft. I had already made the page when I realized this, so I printed it small and tucked it under one of the two. I numbered the photos to assist the story, since the photos are out of order.

The title I cut on my Cameo using Baronesse font, I think. It's a little retro, which is nice for Star Wars. And stitching through the middle of chevron? Love it.

I was near the end of my Studio Calico August kit with this page, so I cobbled together a title with all the alphas I had left. It looks a little crafty as a result, which I liked.

The journaling I added as strips, inking the edges a bit in blue.

Thank you for checking out my page! This past week was busy with birthday planning for us, so next week will see more blog updates. And in the next couple weeks I plan a giveaway!

Geek girl scrapbooking

This past year I decided to just own up to how much of a geek I am. I love space movies, comic book heroes, and supernatural thrillers. I love Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Avengers, and Supernatural, among others. My license plate says DETH STR. My avatar is Buffy fan or Buffyfanlarson. I am a geek, and with that I'm OK.

Here's two pages I made recently celebrating the geekiness in our house:

 

 

This two page layout I thought of when I got new plates for my car. They still say DETH STR, but we have kept all the old plates from our past spaceships automobiles. Seeing them lined up made me think to take photos of all other Star Wars gear in our house and make a page. (Well, not ALL the Star Wars stuff, but some.)

Here's some details:

 

On the details above you can see how I stamped and embossed a line of triangles, then painted inside some, just for a little color.

  

More paint, this time with old chipboard letters.

 

I also made this page recently:

 

I got the idea for this page from a pin on Pinterest. I could never find the sign to buy--it always linked back to Tumblr--so I used the sign as the journaling for this page.

  

I had a lot of fun mixing patterns and colors from the Studio Calico kit I used--February, maybe?--and loved how perfect the background paper looked with this theme. And the Pantone color of the year--emerald green--is perfect for the page, especially matched with the orange and red.

More details:

  

  

 

I made the title with my Cameo, as I did with the last page. I liked layering two different colors for a little more depth in the title.

Thank you for sharing my geekiness with me. Tell me: are you as much of a geek as I am? :-)

Stitching on my pages: from the Scrapinar

Wednesday I had a wonderful evening participating as a panelist in a scrapinar on stitching for Lain Ehmann. I made my first video tutorial, this time on stitching on layouts,* and I spent some time answering questions on stitching and enjoying the company of people who love this craft of ours. You can see my video here.

It's fitting, I suppose, that the first video I made is on stitching. I have sewn and cross-stitched for a long time. I am cross-stitching a sampler right now with a verse ("The diligent farmer plants tress of which he himself will never see the fruit") and sewing various Star Wars crafts. I also had two pages this week picked up for the July Scrapbook Trends magazine, both of which included stitching, and one of which will be published in the stitching section. I love to add stitches to my pages. Love.

I wanted to share the pages I made for that scrapinar, plus some extra tidbits I didn't share in the scrapinar, which of course came to me after it was done. (For the record, I used Studio Calico's January kit Block Party for all of these layouts. I added bits from my stash as well, since these were the last pages I made with the kit.)

Here's the first page I made, which highlights the machine stitching I tend to do:

I didn't do any hand stitching on this page, but I did some typical machine stitching as a frame and to zig zag some elements together at the top of the page.  Here's some details:

Here's the second page I did. I love the design, and I hand stitched the tickets together to add some contrasting color and texture to the page. I also stitched a line through one of the paper strips (just me stripping on a page again, LOL!) to add some texture. Plus, a confession: I had used an adhesive eraser to remove some gummed up adhesive, and it damaged the patterned paper. The stitching distracts from my damage.

Here's the third page, probably my favorite since it depicts the group I scrap with, the Scrappin' J's. On that note, mad props to the first J's: Janet for taking photos of me stitching that I used in my video; Sandra, which was going to but got sick; Jennifer, who took the photos in the above layout; and Jolene, who at first couldn't believe I sewed on pages but now does so beautifully herself.

I hand and machine stitched on this page:

And the last layout, a gift I made for my parents (they're not interested in much else but scrapbooking pages from me). I hand stitched circles using my Bazzill template and I machine stitched the title and date.

 

  

Note: looking above, you can see that super thin letters are not good to stitch on. Learn my lesson before you stitch and only sew on thick letters/numbers like the ones below:

 Thank you for viewing my pages! And now share: do you stitch on your layouts? If so, what do you tend to do?

*Just a quick note: I am planning on making two more videos at least, one of heat embossing multiple colors at once and another on making a mini album. Come back and share in the videos! I'm hoping to make one or two a month, possibly more when I'm not grading papers in the summer (heh).

Star Wars Crafts

A few months ago I found the book Star Wars Crafts, I think when I was shopping for Christmas presents at Barnes and Noble. I showed it to the boys, when were not interested. Recently, however, they each pulled it out and asked me to make something from it. Since it was spring break, I did.

I made Dominic's project first: a Yoda finger puppet.

The easy part was first: cutting the fabric. Of course, I discovered then that I had a dull pair of Fiskars.

Next, sewing a miniscule piece of fabric. It's kind of tricky to sew felt, and a couple times I got too close to the edge and had to resew, but eventually I got it.

I stuffed the head, sewed the robe on it and voila!

Happy boy. It took only one time of the dog grabbing it before he learned to keep it in his room.

The next one was trickier: a Tooka doll from the clone wars. It was actually pretty small, which made turning it inside out after sewing kind of tough. I pulled a lot of threads doing it. Still, I got it repaired, then stuffed it, and started on the hardest part: adding the ears, arms, and legs. Handstitching.

Please know that I love stitching on pages, but actual sewing? I made this page to commemorate how I feel about sewing:

 

It took me all day to hand sew. I added the first purple strip and was reminded of an Olivia Newton John video:

 

When I added the second, it looked all right.

Even better, Rowan played with it all day.

The force is with me. Always.

Happy Star Wars Day

Fourteen years ago my future husband pulled up to my apartment to take me out on our first date. His truck sported the license plate "X-Wing," and so began my relationship with Star Wars.

Our cars currently sport the plates "TIE FTR" and "DETH STR" (the pizza guys and my students love this), and our boys are even more fans than my husband. So in honor of Star Wars Day, here's my LO honoring the Force that ties our family together:

May the Fourth be with you.

Rainy Day Creating

It's raining outside, so it'll be a day of indoor creations. I made cookies last night using my new cookie cutters I got in Seattle: ABC cookies (already been chewed). They came with a gingerbread recipe, which was GREAT. Especially when you dip the cookies in Duncan Hines Whipped Frosting. Mmmmm...

This morning I've been doing this:

Not fun, but important. I've been tweaking some assignments for my AP English course, printing them out, and filling out the copy order form. I think I only have about 4 more assignments/handouts to fix.

The boys have been creating too. Derick's gaming buddies are coming over tonight, so the house is clean (yes!) and the downstairs set up for Star Wars gaming. Rowan, of course, discovered this, took out the spaceships, and started setting up battles with his brother.

They (Dominic) had one near tantrum, but it was resolved by taking out more ships and someone (Rowan) letting his brother win.

Nothing like a little diplomacy.