Fire Up the Grill!

A few warm humid days recently and my thoughts have drifted to summer time!  Seriously?  I wish Spring was more.  Yes MORE. More days, more warm sunny Spring days with flowers blooming and breezes drifting through the newly opened leaves on the trees.  Lately, we don't seem to get too many of those days.  We get cold, damp, rainy. Then BAM we get hit with the humid days.

So let's make the most of them! One of the things I like best about Spring and Summer, is getting to cook out on the grill.  No, that's not a picture of my "real" grill!  It's a little grill treat box that I made. Guess what??  I'm going to share how I made it.  Keep reading.....

Looks pretty cute just as is.  But check out the inside.......

There's space to store some sweet treats!  This would make a cute favor box on your picnic tables at a BBQ party, a neat way to package up a hostess gift for a party you might attend, or maybe a way to gift a special something for Father's Day, a birthday, graduation or family reunion!

Here is how I made the grill

What you will need:

• Black cardstock
• White cardstock
• Red cardstock
• Daddy's Toolbox Template set by Kelleigh Ratzlaff
• BBQ Weather Digital kit by WM Squared Designs
• Scissors and/or paper trimmer
• Bone folder
• metallic mini brads
• Metal or metallic cardstock
• Adhesive runner
• Foam adhesive

Grill Base: I used the Daddy's Toolbox Template set by Kelleigh Ratzlaff as the base for my grill (I used the large toolbox).  I cut it from black cardstock. Follow the direction to build the toolbox then trim off the curved "latch" and score the two overlap flaps on the tool box lid so they will bend inside the grill lid.

Grill Trays: To create the side trays I cut 2 squares of black cardstock measuring 2.75". I scored them at the .25" mark on all 4 sides.  Follow the template below, cut on solid lines, score and fold on dashed lines.

Fold the small corner tabs for one side under and adhere as if you were creating a box lid.  On the other side apply the adhesive to the entire underside of the .25" edge.  Attach the tray to the grill base by placing the long center piece inside the grill and adhering it.  Adhere the two corner tabs to the exterior of the grill base. Repeat for the tray on the other side of the grill. I embellished the grill trays after they were assembled. If it is easier for you to do it beforehand, feel free to do it that way. The directions for the embellishments are just a bit further down.

Grill Controls: To make the grill controls, cut a 3.5" x 1" piece of black cardstock. Score it lengthwise at .5" and fold.  Attach silver mini brads as control knobs on one outer side.  Run adhesive along the underside of the opposite long edge. Place the fold along the front edge of the grill box with the brads on the exterior of the grill. Adhere to the inside of the grill. Use foam adhesive dots under the exterior portion to attach it to the front of the grill.

Grill handle: I used metal to make my grill handle. I work with metal frequently and had some small scrap pieces I was able to use. You could use metallic, gray, or even white cardstock for your handle.  I simply cut a thin piece 3.25" long. I rounded the ends slightly. Adhere it to the grill cover using foam adhesive. Since the handle is very thin, you may need to cut down your foam adhesive to "hide" under the handle. When you pop out the foam squares or dots, the "negative" space that is left behind is great for this type of thing. Simply cut a few small pieces to use to adhere the handle. This is a great way to stretch the use of your crafting supplies.

Embellish the grill: Using the elements from the BBQ Weather Digital kit by WM Squared Designs, resize them to your liking, and print them out on white cardstock. I like to use Epson Premium Presentation paper matte. It really produces nice colors from my inkjet printer.  Leave enough space at the bottom of each element that will stand on the tray to cut a "tail" of cardstock.  Use you scissors to trim the elements. For those that will stand on the tray, do not cut all the way around the element.  Instead at the bottom of each element cut leaving a square of cardstock. This "tail" will act as a stand to adhere to the grill and allow the element to stand up.  Score this "tail" along the bottom edge of the elements and fold the tail back behind the element. You can use a marker to color the exposed part of this tail black so it won't show once it is adhered in place.  Place adhesive on the underside of the tail and adhere it to the grill tray.

On the opposite grill tray, I cut 2 circles using Spellbinders Dies and a circle punch from red cardstock to look like a cooking burner.  I adhered a mini metallic brad as the burner control. I printed, cut and trimmed the BBQ utensils from the kit and hung them from the cooking tray.

I also printed word art from the BBQ kit which I adhere to the lid of the grill.

Now the fun part..... fill the grill with sweet treats and Enjoy!

Age is Just a Number

I was working with a new digital kit by Kim B and Jen Reed called Eat Cake: Boy.  The also have a "girl" version of the kit. It's filled with pinks and purples and greens. The purples and blues of the "boy" kit just tugged at me! I ended up making a rather feminine card with the kit.

 I did some wet paper technique to create the flower from some petals I cut using one of my Sizzix dies.  They were just too flat to put on the card without jazzing them up. I even blinged them with some gorgeous chunky glitter.

The Eat Cake Word Art that I used on the front of the card, begged me to add this sentiment inside the card!  hehehe!!!

I made a matching envelope using Cover It Up: Invitations by Krisi's Kreations.

Above is the front of the envelope.......

 .... and this is the back.

Now I wonder who this will be going to?  :)

Butterflies bring Wishes

I was making another wedding shower card today and decided to include some butterflies.

I was inspired by this weeks post at The Shabby Tea Room.  Isn't this a gorgeous cake?

I also wanted to use music paper on my card.  I used a digital stamp by Arty Pants called Music and Swirls. You can find it at the Digichick Boutique.

The digital papers that I am using are by Kellie Mize, the patterned papers and the solids are part of her Iced Latte set. These are also available at the Digichick Boutique.

I'm really happy with the simple yet elegant, slightly shabby look to this card.  I wanted it to be subtle and happy.

I liked it so much, I decided to make a graduation card too!  The sentiments on the two cards are digital stamps by Arty Pants as well.

Other Ingredients
Gems: Kaisercrafts
Ink: Ranger
Tools: Spellbinders Dies, Cuttlebug, Marth Stewart Punch

A Hat from the Heart

Last week was so busy. It was Spring Break for the kids. We had fun. We got to visit with some family. We also did a lot of praying.  A member of my family is fighting cancer and this has been a really tough time for her.  Our family came together to rally around her and share our strength with her. We are hopeful for some positive news soon. In the mean time, we keep praying.

My sister's step-daughter Liz created a hat for her cousin that is also fighting cancer. She did this so her cousin would realize she always looks great even when the fight might cause her to lose her hair or feel weak.  I just love the photo of Liz wearing the hat she made. She is so cute.

I made 2 versions of the page.  Liz likes the second one with the extra poppies on it.  Which one do you like best?

Hope your week is off to a good start!

Ingredients

Digital Kit: Beauty Within by Scrapmuss Designs and AnnaBV Designs

Autism, Heritage and Soot!

What a week this has been!  It is Spring Break for my kids.  My youngest has been spending the week away staying with our cousins.  I've helped my oldest get his driver's permit, visit his selected college campus and spend some time visiting the city where it is located.

I've also been working with a new release kit from WM Squared Designs called My History.  I did a page that shows the lineage of my family from my great grandfather who traveled to America alone at the age of 17 years, through to me.  I included the passenger list from the ship he traveled on, an old photograph of my grandparents with my father as a child.  And then finally one of my favorite photos of me with my "Pop-pop".

Wendy has some awesome additional word art available to her newsletter subscribers!  Make sure you visit her blog and sign up!

As a mom to kids with autism, I find a really special use for this kit.  Beyond making beautiful scrapbook pages and craft projects, I can see the kit and accompanying word art being used to create pages to help those with autism to recognize family.  Imagine making a mini album with all the family, grandparents, cousins, siblings..... that can be reviewed before a large family gathering to help your loved one with facial recognition, or to refresh their memory of people's names. Or even to help explain the relationship of each family member.  The designer, Wendy, has more to add to this kit over the next week.  Keep tuned to her blog for add-ons!

OK - so that explains the Autism and Heritage in my title.  Now what about the soot?  Well......  we had a problem with the oil burner at our house this week.  Seems it needed some cleaning out.  And then something went wrong while it was getting cleaned out.  Soot was blown all throughout the basement.  Guess where my crafting area is?  Yep. The basement.  Right outside the door to the utility area where the oil burner is located.

There is a thin film of oily soot all over everything!  Not just the table and floor, but my fabrics, fibers, ribbons, tools, papers, inks, paints, flowers, lights, boxes...... you name it!  I'm so thankful that I had a good bit of my stash stored INSIDE drawers or containers. I'll be able to clean up the containers and salvage the items inside.  However, I really like to have things out where I can see them, so I remember that I have them and am more likely to use them. So a lot of my stuff is out in the open.  All of those items are bathed in soot!

As I've started to clean things, I keep getting all sooty and feel as though I am re-sooting (is that a word?) things.  Like it's multiplying and spreading!  Ack!!!!

Somethings will not be able to be cleaned and I'll just have to dispose of them.  I'm trying not to think about that.  I'm trying to remain positive.  I know it will take me weeks to get it all cleaned up. BUT..... at the end of all of this, I will have a cleaned, purged crafting area. Perhaps I will also have a better storage system that can handle it when the soot hits the fan!  LOL

Off to do some more cleaning. Hope to have more to share soon!

Recoloring Alphas and more Metal

Today is the reveal of another Designer Showcase at Ideas For Scrapbookers using the same sketch.  Every other month one of the contributing artists creates a sketch and we all design a project based on that sketch. This time Heather created this awesome sketch for us.

I dug out some older photos of my boys when they were young and here is what I created.

 

The opportunity to create a page with a truck on it just begged for me to play with some metal!  You know I love to work with metal!! {insert happy dance!}  I used some Ten Seconds Studio slate sheet metal to create the diamond plating.  Sanding it lightly gave it that worn/silvery look on the raised parts. The stars at the top are also metal that I embossed with some Tim Holtz folders and colored with alcohol inks.

The alpha that I used for the word "Firemen" is from Prima.  They are really cool, they are a linen material.  Super flexible.  They came in a cream color. But I really wanted red to go with the firetruck.  A little dabbing of alcohol inks..... 

..... and now they are red!

See the tiny alpha for the word "in"?  That started out as a hot pink glittery alpha from Making Memories (pink = not gonna cut it on a "boy" page! LOL)  So I took the alcohol inks to those too....

In the photo above the "n" has been recolored, the "i" is still the original pink.  Pretty easy to do!
OK now let's get a look at that firetruck.

As you know my hubby is in the fire service. He has spec'd out and had several firetrucks built over the years. When I told him I was building a fire truck..... he was baffled. But he was pleasantly surprised with the end result. It's all paper pieced together. I used paper from the Prima back Rock On Bro' for the red - it's all shiny just like a real fire truck!

These photos may not be the best quality photographs, but they are some really precious memories. I'm so glad to have them preserved on a nice page now.

Want to see what the other artists did with Heather's sketch?  Hop on over to Ideas For Scrapbookers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cows and Trains

Strange title? Sure - but that's what I've been working on!  I created the above scrapbook page with some pics from a few years back. My folks live in the countryside. My middle son loves seeing all the cows and farm animals when we get to visit.  This kit "EIEIO" by Chelle's Creations was just perfect for making this page.

I was looking to make a graduation card for my oldest son. He is graduating from high school this year. I wanted the card to be masculine, but fun. Since it is such a cross-roads point in his life, I decided to focus on the accomplishments he has gained to this point as well as the promise of the future that lies ahead of him.

I made the card look like a schedule board in a train station.  It shows his graduation, and entrance to college as the trains in the schedule. I thought this would be quite unique. Since he was a young boy, trains have been one of the things that fascinate him.


Hope you are having a great weekend!

Live Your Life

Last week two really wonderful digital designers, WM Squared Designs and Jady Day Studio, released a collaborative kit called A Life So Sweet. Awesome kit for celebrating life in general.  There are a lot of elements and word art in there that provide encouragement ... and some ribbons for cancer survivors too!  It's just a great kit that could work well for all sorts of milestones in life and for guys or girls, young and old!

These bright colors are so vibrant, they make you happy just to look at them!

Cousins

**Update - we had some sunshine today, so I got a little bit better photo of the layout.**

Really wish that I had a better photo of this layout to share. April showers were pouring down today, so my lighting was very dim.  See those dark flowers?  Those are actually a lovely shade of purple velvet.  They pick up the colors from the photo and add a nice soft texture.

It's been a while since I've gotten to scrap an entire page with actual papers and elements. I've been doing a lot of digi scrapping recently. I really like that there is no adhesive in digi-scrapping, so if I want to move an element, I just slide it over with my mouse. No ripping things apart!  Another nice part to it, it's so much easier to share a true representation of the final product since it is already digital!

I did this page for this weeks Designer Showcase over at Ideas For Scrapbookers.  We are all sharing projects using ledger papers.  A timely showcase considering that it is tax time here in the states!

This is a photo of my cousin Jill and I. We are typically both the mammarazzi with our cameras capturing the action at family vacations and get togethers. So it's rare to have us in a photo, and really special to have us in the same photo! Many thanks to my other cousin (and also a mammarazzi) Kristin for snapping this photo. It has quickly become a treasure of mine!

Would you believe that all of the items on this page are from my stash?  Yep. I fell in love with the Cosmo Cricket papers when they came out. I bought them, but never really had a page to do with them!  I don't often get to make "girly" pages. But this photo was perfect for this project.  You see, my cousin, she's an accountant. So the ledger papers combined with the flowers and feminine elements was just right for this photo!

I triple layered a few different border punched papers beneath the photo and simply used my finger tip to ruffle them up a bit.  The twill measuring tape ribbon is folded in the corner and held by a decorative stick pin. You can get a better idea of the color of those purple flowers in the photo above.

My hand writing is not the neatest. But I still appreciate hand writing journaling on my pages.  It reads "We may be cousins, as the years go by, we seem more like sister friends"

Hop on over to Ideas For Scrapbookers to get a look at what the other artists did with ledger papers.

And make sure you've gotten your taxes submitted!

Funky Chic Wedding Card

A friend of mine is getting married soon. She likes funky stuff like animal prints as well as chic, blingy stuff. So I made this non-traditional card for her shower.  The papers are all from the Prima set "Rock On".  The red paper is all glittery and shiny!!

I created the lace border across the bottom using an edge punch.  You can see how over at Ideas For Scrapbookers today. 

The card is so much blingier (is that a word?) and shinier in real life!

Hope your week is off to a good start!

Wedding Shadowbox

I've been so anxious to share this project with you. I completed it quite a while ago, but it is for a friend that is getting married soon. Her shower is today so now that she has opened her gift, I can finally share it with you!

This is a hybrid project. I used digital scrapbook papers from Vanilla Noir and Vita Fortunata both by Quirky Twerp. The colors and patterns in these kits is absolutely amazing. They are so rich and elegant. That's why I keep using them over and over again on my projects!

 

To create the heart I rolled a bunch of roses. I used Paper Roses by The Cutting Files to cut the paper. Then I sat and rolled them up tightly. I dab of hot glue at the bottom secured them.  I designed the background in Photoshop and adhered the roses around the heart that I created.  I secured a string of pearls around the edge of the heart for some added elegance.

Isn't it gorgeous? I'm really happy with how it turned out. I hope that this will adorn their home for many, many years and be a reminder of the love they have for each other and the vows they are sharing.

Many blessings Candace and Andrew!

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