A Pleasant Surprise!

I got a nice surprise last night when I saw that I had received the honor of being chosen the Freak of the Week at ScrapFreak! One of the fun things the Freaks do is to require you to answer some questions before they give you the FOTW blinkie so I thought I would share the questions and answers with you all.

1. Whats the one scrap tool that you can't live without and why?
I guess that would be my paper cutter since it is the one tool that gets used for each and every project.

2. What was your favorite game as a child?
I don't really recall playing board games but my favorite make-believe game was to play in the woods and pretend that I was Laura Ingalls Wilder.

3. Where do you find your inspiration
Oh, gosh, everywhere! Ads, clothing, nature, blogs, online galleries, etc.

4. Tell us about your scrap space or scrap room.
I do have the luxury of having a scraproom (it was Kacie's nursery when we bought the house). It's not fancy but it is comfortable and functional. And my sweetie refinished the hardwood floor and painted the walls for me in paint custom tinted to Stampin' Up! certainly celery green.

5. In your introduction thread, you mentioned that you used to stamp alot. Do you still stamp? and Do you incorporate your stamping into your scrapbooking at all?
I had been drifting away from stamping but doing those tags this week reminded me how much fun it is to play with ink! I was an SU! demonstrator from Feb 2002 through Oct 2006 and started out scrapping with cardstock and stamps. A couple of years ago I started adding non-SU! stuff to my pages until I was doing more scrapping than cardmaking and rarely stamping on my pages. This was in part because I started doing dt work for message boards/online stores. Now that I am not selling SU! and taking a break from dt work I am enjoying the freedom to do what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it!
I have been enjoying getting to know all you Freaks and participating in the fun challenges here.

PS- As an extra bonus I also won the Quickie Crop prize of a $20 gift certificate to the ScrapFreak store! Can you can Grungeboard?

Messy Fun!

I haven't played with ink in a while but the tag projects Tim Holtz has been posting on his blog at www.timholtz.typepad.com are so inspiring that I just had to pull out the ink, embossing power, paint, glitter, etc. and have some messy fun!

I don't own most of the Ranger products used in his examples so I improvised with what I do have and pulled a few things from my bag of trickes learned when I was an SU! demonstrator.
Tag 1: I don't have any crackle paints so I just dry-brushed the tag with a little MM banana acrylic paint. In hindsight I wish I would have used a bit more! I accented the tree with a little Liquid Applique puff paint.
Tag 2: The only thing I really did differently here (other than using SU! inks and EP) was to use clear flowers from Queen & Co. inked with StazOn rather than alcohol ink.
Tag 3: Regular EP instead of distress powders.
Tag 4: I haven't done this one , yet.


Tag 5: Instead of Ranger alcohol inks I used an old marblizing technique. I saturated a cotton ball with alcohol then put one drop of SU! brilliant blue ink and two of ballet blue on it and dabbed it onto the glossy cardstock.
Tag 6: for this one I made my own glimmer spray by taking a travel size hairspray with about an ounce of hairspray left in it and mixing in about 12-15 drops of ballet blue ink and roughly a 1/2 teaspoon of micro pearl PearlEx powder. The hairspray acts as a fixative so the PearlEx does not rub off after it dries.



Tag 7: I do own one Distress Ink in weathered wood blue so I used that for the base tag. For the stamped and embossed top layer I used this cheat to emboss my SU! dye inks: First ink the stamp with Versmamark watermark/embossing ink then apply dye ink on top of the Versmark. Your stamped image will show the color of the dye ink but the embossing powder will adhere to the Vermark.
Tag 8: Here I used Making Memories paint then inked over it with the weathered wood distress ink.


I'm looking forward to seeing what Tim has up his sleeve for days nine through twelve!

A Couple of New Pages

This week's contest challenge at Scrapperie is to "go 3D" and to use a photo with the subject/s engaged in an activity rather than posing for the camera. I decided to use one of the photos I took of a few of my nephews and grand-nephews at our family gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving.
In this first layout (inspired by the challenge but not my entry) I cropped the image down to just Zach because the way he is jumping in the air just nakes me smile! :)


For the contest entry I "went 3D" by layering and pop-dotting the photo. Brandon (holding the football)and Jake are four layers thick, Nick is three layers, Zachary is two layers, and for Max I just cut around his head and arm with the craft knife and slightly lifted them.




Now that I got these done I am spending the rest of this evening participating in a mini cyber crop with my new friends at ScrapFreak. :) I am a cybercrop junkie! I had fun with the crop last weekend at The Scrapbbok Site and even won two crop prizes along with a third one for participating in their November challenges.