Paper Girls Challenge #8

Welcome to our 8th Challenge with The Paper Girls Challenge.  The challenge this time around is using chipboard - either use it bare or cover it somehow.  Thanks Sheryl for pushing me to break out my chipboard.  I have such a stash of this stuff, I just needed the kick in the bum to use it.

Thanks again to the wonderful Kristy Lee at Scrapbook Steals for a fun sketch to work with.  I've had this picture on my desk waiting for a great layout to work with.  I have use chipboard in 2 different ways in this layout.  The first, and probably most obvious is the title.  I found these bare chipboard Thickers on a shopping trip to Tuesday Mornings (you never know what you can find in that store.  I have scored some major deals there!).  I loved that I could color them whatever color I wanted.  Well, for this layout, I thought the bare color was perfect!  ;-) 

I also found the hearts in my stash and thought they would be great with this sweet picture of my 2 bugs.  But I didn't want them bare, so I broke out my Studio Calico Mister Huey's and spritzed away.  I used Heirloom Blue and Plum Thumb and accented with Opaque White.  A pizza box makes the a great color catcher!  As you can see, this box is well used.  :-)
 

Kevin loves when I scrap.  As I was creating this layout, he was in my scraproom the whole time, helping me pick out papers and accents.  The purple Stickle accents were completely his choice.  I think they worked great here.  Now though, I'm looking at this layout and wondering if there is anything I should add.  Does that ever happen to you?  Leave me a comment, let me know what you think!

Well, I didn't hit 50 followers, so the blog candy is still up for grabs.  When I hit 50 followers, I will pick 1 follower to win a little sweetness!

Until next time! Cheers!

Paper Girls Challenge #7 & a Prize?

Hi All!

Welcome Back for Paper Girls Challenge #7, courtesy of Charity.  I love Charity's sketch and how she fussy cut the peacock on her layout.  In case you haven't been over to the blog (and you should...all the team did a great job on their layouts), here is the sketch we all started from:

After living in Montana for 4 years, and then moving back to St. Louis, I couldn't believe it was March 24th and we were in shorts and having a fire. This Scrapping Mama knew she had to document this!  Then when I saw the swirl in this sketch, I got the wild idea that it would be fun to use a twig and "roast" a marshmallow.  You would think after 2" hail last weekend, it would be easy to find a twig on the ground to use.  Nope.  So had to "borrow" one from my tree (shhhh...don't tell the hubby!).  I thought it would be cute to use a button for the marshmallow, but after trying two different buttons, it was time to come up with a new idea.  So off to the basement I went. I found some Styrofoam from some packaging (upcycling!), cut it into a rectangle, rubbed the corners on counter to soften the edges a little, and then inked it with 2 shades of brown.  It is truly skewered to the end of the twig. 

I hope you enjoyed the blog hop last week!  It was a lot of fun for us, too.  We loved seeing all the entries.  I thought I would share what my 28 Spring ATC's are going to look like (when I'm done).  I was lucky enough to crop with a couple of friends for National Scrapbooking Day.  After working on a 5 pages, I started gluing the little cardinal pieces together.  I got a WHOPPING 1 card put all together.  Hee hee!  Most of the little stuff is all put guled up.  Now I just need to put the rest of my cards together.  At least I have my sample and now I am ready to crank out the remaining 27.  YIKES.

I hope you enjoyed today's post.  Does anyone feel like winning a little blog candy?  When I hit 50 followers, I will pick 1 follower to win a little sweetness!

Until next time!  Cheers!

PGC Blog Hop

Hi All!

Welcome to The Paper Girls Challenge's first ever blog hop - an ATC hop! 

So, what is an ATC, you may be thinking?!?  ATC stands for Artist Trading Card.  They are the size of a playing card.  I call them baseball cards for papercrafters!  If you are still going, huh?  You can see the post I made about my 1st ever attempt at ATC's here.  And now let me show you what I made for a Summer ATC swap:

When I think of summer, I think of growing up in California and going to the beach and sailing with my grandparents.  I had just read an article in a craft magazine about using embossing powder to create the look of sand (wish I could remember which mag it was...) and knew I wanted to incorporate all these thoughts into my ATC's.  Here is how I made the ATC:

• I grabbed a bunch of different colors and textures of embossing powder, my Versamark pad, and my heat gun and went to town.  Normally I worry about over heating and cracking what I am embossing, but not this time.  While the melted powder was still hot, I kept adding more layers until I got the rough look I wanted. 
• Blue ink sponged above the embossed portion (and maybe a little over the top edge of it) gave the look of water. 
• From there, it was time to brake out my Cricut and cut the cloud and boat.  The boat is popped off the background to give a little more dimension to the ATC. 
• Last, but not least, I couldn't forget about the seagulls, so I hand drew those in.

One of the biggest compliments I could ever receive is that I inspired someone else...which is what Judy told me about this ATC!  Hop on over to her blog and see what she made...
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT - before you go, make sure you leave a comment for a chance to win our PGCB prize!

HERE'S THE BLOG HOP ORDER:

The Paper Girls Challenge Blog

Amber Sheaves

Kristina McKeen  <--- You are here!

Judy Stech

Kyla Norris

Charity Becker

Erica Bass

Heather Gray

If you didn't start at the beginning, hop on back and start there.  For every comment left on the blogs, you will get an entry to win this prize:

How to Participate:

Want to win? Get one entry for commenting on each of the blog posts, "like" the Paper Girls Challenge on Facebook, and finally become a follower on our blog. It's simple, you get to see some fabulous projects.  C'mon...you know you want to!

Want to have more fun after seeing all of the inspiring projects? Join in! Link up an ATC created by you and you will get an extra entry for the prize!

International readers are welcome to play along but currently we are only shipping prize packs to the US and Canada due to shipping costs.

And now I'm off to create 28 Spring Themed ATC's. 
Happy Hopping!

PGC #6: Inspiration Challenge

Welcome back for another challenge from The Paper Girls Challenge.  This time around, Amber gives us this picture to use as an inspiration:

You can pick colors, shapes, tiles...whatever moves you from the picture.  I loved the tile affect, and I am warming to the colors.  They aren't my usual pallette, but seeing this picture made me want to use them.  Little did I know that the always AMAZING Kristy Lee had a sketch up her sleeve for the Amethyst 8 sketch for Scrapbook Steal's MWM that would work perfect for this challenge - and Authentique's Blissful, which was the steal to go with this sketch, was perfect for the layout I had.  Here is Kristy's layout:

And here is my intrepretation from Amber's picture and Kristy's sketch:

I love this picture of my not so little guy!  He was 19 month's old in this picture.  He looks so much older to me in this shot, with his intense look and skill at holding the screwdriver.  And when I got my steal of Blissful, I realized that it worked great with everything I wanted to do.  And I was able to use some scrap paper to cut the nuts - BONUS!  I also raided my hubby's toolbox for some washers to highlight the journaling.

I hope you enjoyed this challenge from The Paper Girls Challenge.  Just a reminder, you have until Friday, April 27 at 11:59 pm MDT to post your intpretations http://thepapergirlschallenge.blogspot.com/ for a chance to win some prizes.  Good luck and happy scrapping/card making!

Cheers!

PGC #5

Is this really our 5th Paper Girls Challenge?  It feels like just yesterday we were just talking about starting a blog.  And now here we are with our 5th challenge - a recipe challenge (or as I call it, a Melodee challenge, since she used to issue these number challenges on the Scrapbook Steals site). 

Here is the "recipe" for this challenge:

1 Photo
2 Journaling Cards
3 Different Ribbons/Trims/Twine
4 Stamped Images
5 Non Paper Embellishments
(Brads, Buttons etc...)

BONUS
6 Words in the Title

Thank you Melissa Dehne's for the marvelous MidWeek Mojo sketch at Scrapbook Steals.  It was fun to work with your sketch to complete this recipe.

Here is how I followed the recipe:

1 Photo - that one is pretty obvious
2 Journaling Cards - where my actually journaling is, as well as the date ticket
3 Different Ribbons/Trims/Twine - red and green polka dot ribbon and the yellow twine flower
4 Stamped Images - 4 white snowflakes on the right side
5 Non Paper Embellishments - 2 snowflake brads at the end of the ribbon and 3 red brads in the strip of tickets

Well, I thought I had all 6 elements, until I was typing up this post up.  Oops, the title was supposed to be "And The Party Keeps Going On".  Glad that was just the bonus.  ;-)

I know all of us can't wait to see what you come up with for this challenge.  Remember to post your links on our blog for a chance to win a great prize!  We all know that sometimes it is hard to finish a challenge by a deadline. So if you finish one late, feel free to post it to our Facebook page any time. Make sure to let us know which challenge it was for!

Cheers!

The Paper Girls Challenge #4

Welcome back to Challenge #4 for The Paper Girls Challenge.  We are love having everyone play along!  And thanks to everyone who participated in my stamping challenge last time.  It was fun to see everyone break out their stamps!

The challenge this time was a wonderful sketch by Sheryl. 

I switched it up a little by using a horizontal photo instead of a vertical one.  I loved using Authentique's Journey for this layout.  The blues and gray's played so nicely with the black and white picture.  Kevin (my almost 5 yr old) had fun picking out papers and embellishments with me for this layout.  I think he is a little scrapper at heart.  My honey also wrote the journaling this time around (a first I think!).

We look forward to seeing your layout's for this sketch!  Be sure to link them up on the Paper Girls Challenge blog.  You can also post them on our Facebook page for some extra ohhh's and ahhh's.  :-)

Cheers!

...and we have a winner!

Thank you to everyone who hopped along with my friends and me on the Scrapbook Steals blog hop.  It was so much fun seeing what everyone created, as well as all the wonderful comments.  I also wanted to say welcome to all my new followers.

Before I announce the winner, I wanted to answer a couple of the questions that came up during the hop:

• This wreath took about 4-5 hours total to put together.  Once I got on a roll with the hot glue gun and buttons, it was pretty fast.  It was adding all the little touches at the end, like the tiny buttons and stick pins that took a lot of time.
• I only covered about 3/4 of the wreath, leaving the back painted, but uncovered.  I held the wreath up to the wall to determine how far I had to go to cover it.
• It took about 7 packages of Basic Grey buttons and brads to cover, but that is because I added a little depth by adding a second layer.  It looked great without that layer added too!

I hope I have inspired at least a couple of you to try this project on your own.  I know I will be making a second one for my daughter's room - as soon as I get more glue sticks.  ;-)

And now our winner.  Random.org picked comment 43 out of the 132 wonderful comments left over the weekend. 

Melissa D.Mar 10, 2012 12:50 PM

So pretty! I've never done a wreath but I am thinking I should. Nice work Kristy!

Melissa, send me your mailing address to kmackeen1@gmail.com and I'll pull a little prize package together for you.

Until next time!

Cheers!