A finished diorama....

Well Rascal managed to get his diorama finished.  Yay!!  He still has to finish up writing up the research neatly but that is just the fluff.

The subject of the diorama was any animal of his choice.  He chose une carcajou or wolverine.  Surprising, there is not much known about wolverines.  They are pretty solitary animals who can range up to 1000 sq. kms so they are a bit hard to study.  Helping him find the research was the hardest part.  We made a number of trips to the library, the Museum of Nature and the bookstore.   We read lots and lots of websites.  Eventually, he was able to come up with what he wanted to show.

As for making the actual diorama, the only thing he knew for sure was that he wanted to make the wolverine out of pipe cleaners.   I, being the A type personality that I am, had to learn to keep my ideas to myself and just help him figure out how to realize what he wanted.  Believe it or not, the only help that he needed from me was a drive to the Dollar store (a bit of cash) and lots of time to holding on to things while the glue dried.

I am pretty impressed at how well it turned out and hopefully his teacher will like it too.

As for my own crafting, I completed this layout over a week ago but I have been sitting on it.  It was for a challenge for LCOM's Amazing Scrap Race.  I was waiting for the reveal over at the site before I posted it.  The challenge was a fairly simple one.  Use a photography that was in black & white and over 10 years old.  The subject of the layout had to be something that you were thankful for.  That was it.  Everything else was at our discretion.

Materials used:  Pink Paislee House of Three pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock, Everlasting Keepsakes Framedangoes, Tattered Angels glimmer mist and glitter glaze, KaiserCraft bling, Basic Grey rubon, Prima flowers and packaging, American Crafts thickers and unknown ribbon.

All the little flowers were made using the Martha Stewart hydrangea punches.  Each flower was dry embossed to give it dimension.

I am actually working on a challenge for the Scrap Race tonight.  I have Challenge #2 completed but I need to finish the "special assignment".  I am just waiting for the kiddos to head to bed...or at least upstairs so I can take over the dining room table.  Hopefully mojo will stick around for a bit.

Ugh...Yet another Monday....

I really, really hate Mondays.  It is not that I hate going to work.  I like my job for the most part.  Of course, there are things about it that I don't like but there are things about it that I love so it is not the reason that I hate Mondays.  It is also not the fact that Mondays are the start of the week nor is it the fact that it marks the end of my freedom from responsibility. 

Nope...the reason that I hate Monday's is the fact that nothing ever seems to go right.  It is the day the Murphy plays havoc with me.  What can go wrong will....Mondays are the curse of lost keys, lost badges, missing lunches, forgotten agendas, crazy traffic, idiot drivers, car gas tanks suddenly on empty, and many other tiny annoyances.  Mondays are the day that I wish I could just hide under the covers and ignore the world.  But alas, that is not to be the case.

The one nice thing about Monday is looking back at what was accomplished over the weekend.  Most of this weekend was spent helping my son stay focused while he worked on his diorama and keeping my mouth shut.  I wanted to give him direction and help but I had to remember that this is his project and how he wanted to make it was totally up to him.  I must say that he is doing a great job.  It is almost finished and it looks like he is going to have it done well before for his deadline of Friday.

While I was biting my tongue, I worked on two projects of my own for the LCOM on-line crop.  One was a layout and the other was a Halloween decoration for the house.  When I was picking up the supplies for my son's diorama, I found a couple of bags of feathers -- really cool feathers.  I had an "Aha" moment.  I could see this layout in my head:

Materials used: Bazzill cardstock, BoBunny patterned paper, dictionary paper, tulle, feathers, ScrapFX chipboard, Perfect Pearls, Distress Ink, Archival ink, Berol Prismcolour pencil crayons, Prima centers, Stickles, Tim Holtz grungeboard, Ranger Paint dauber, iRock bling, miscellaneous feathers & flower stiles.

I made the tulle flower.  I have been seeing this style of flower popping up in embellishment packs recently.  Since I had quite a bit of tulle left over from my daughter's fairy princess tea party, I thought I would give it a whirl.  They are extremely easy and quick to make.

The other project was a pumpkin decoration for Halloween.

Material used: Dollerama wood pumpkin shape, Pink Paislee pattern paper, Basic Grey pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock, Distress ink, miscellaneous ribbon & feathers.

Those feathers made another appearance.  I am not sure where he is going to hang in the house yet but I think he turned out quite well.

Here is hoping that the rest of this Monday passes quickly and fairly quietly.  I think I am going to hide at my desk and keep my head down.  Hopefully, Murphy will choose to ignore me for the rest of the day.  I plan on doing more tongue biting tonight while my son puts the finishing touches on his diorama and hopefully I can work on a project or two myself.

More Retreat Layouts

Here are a couple more layouts from the retreat.  The first one has lots of hand cutting and I used one of the Marianne Designs dies.  The flower die is designed to run a thin ribbon through it.  There are two slits in each petal and the ribbon from the slits down through the central hole of the flower.

Materials used:  Basic Grey pattern paper, My Mind's Eye pattern paper, Echo Park pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock, Prima flowers, American Craft thickers, unknown glitter brads, Tattered Angels glimmer mist, Robin's Nest dew drops, Basic Grey stickers, Maya Road trinket pins, and ribbon from Fabricland.

This is how I will often find my daughter watching TV.  What I would give to be this flexible again.....

Materials used:  BoBunny double dot pattern paper, Jenni Bowlin pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock, American Crafts thickers, Prima flowers & doily, Studio G glitter glue, Kaisercraft pearls & bling, and for the life of me I can't seem to remember the brand of paper I used for the base.

I used a Martha Stewart all-around punch to make the border.  I backed it with cardstock since the lacy look got lost in the pattern of the background paper.  I also used the Cuttlebug quilling dies to make the leaves, the scrolls and the couple of the flowers.

I also made 3 cards at the retreat -- a Christmas card, an all-purpose card, and a little girl's birthday card.

Material used:  Bazzill cardstock, Kaisercraft bling, May Arts ribbon,

Here is yet another Marianne Design die.  I love poinsettias and I just couldn't pass up this die when I saw it.  I curled the petals to give the flower more dimension.

Materials used:  Bazzill cardstock, Prima flower, dictionary paper, clear glitter, and Tattered Angels glimmer and chalk mists.

The Spellbinder lotus pendant die helps give this card a water lily feel.  As you have probably noticed, I have been on a cyan kick lately.

Materials used:  Bazzill swiss dot cardstock, Copic markers, Memento ink, Kryon gold leafing pen, Prima Flower, Making Memories brad, May Arts ribbon, Prism Simply Smooth paper, & Ranger Stickles.

This last card is the one that came in second for the card sketch challenge.  We were provided with a layout sketch and had to interpret it in a card format.

That is all the projects that I have to share at the moment.  With October being a quieter month, I am am looking forward to being able to do more crafting.  I don't want to loose the momentum or the inspiration that I found at the retreat.

 Happy Thursday....only 1 more day to the weekend. :-)

Where did September Go....

Seriously, I blinked and it is the end of September.  How did that happen?

This month has been crazy busy with school starting, my birthday, my daughter's first class friend birthday party, other family birthday parties, ballet classes, my son's ji-jitsu, work, and travelling.  I only have one more weekend of commitments before I finally get to have a breather.  My parent's are arriving on Friday so this week has been spent re-organizing my tiny house to fit in two more people for the weekend.

Due to all the stuff going on, my crafting time has been seriously curtailed but the silver lining is that I attended a fabulous scrap retreat put on by Sweet Sentiments in Belleville this past weekend.  This yearly retreat is in a children's camp with a fabulous view of Lake Ontario. 

I managed to convince my friend Carmen to accompany me...it didn't take much to convince her. ;-)  She was looking for an opportunity to jump start her creativity just like I was.

We left for the retreat earlier than we planned and was able to stop at Ecstasy Crafts in Shannonville.  I love that they carry products from Europe.  The major score this time was a number of Marianne Design dies.  Wow....I wish I could afford to buy them all but I ended up limiting myself to 3 butterflies, 1 poinsettia and another flower die.

The crop ran from Friday night to Sunday afternoon with the crop room open all night for those individuals who were die hards.  The weekend went by very quickly but it was a very productive.  I ended up being able to finish 4 layouts, 3 cards and a Christmas ornament.  I even won the layout sketch contest and came in second for the card sketch contest.

This was the layout that won:

Materials used:  Bazzill cardstock, Graphic45 pattern paper, Pink Paislee pattern paper, BoBunny die cut paper, Riff Raff chipboard, Prima flowers, Wilton cupcake wrappers, Prima crochet doily, iRock bling, American Craft Thickers, pop dots, Martha Stewart all around punch, Prima packaging, dictionary paper, Tattered Angels glimmer mist and chalk mist.

  

It was the first project that I completed and after that mojo just flowed.  My second layout was about the kiddos and their cousin who looks more like their sister.

Materials used:  Making Memories die cut paper, Bazzill swiss dot cardstock, Prima flowers & doily, Wilton cupcake liners, Reminisce bling, Prima packaging, & Copic markers.

The butterfly in this layout is one of the Marianne Design dies.  I love the lacy look.  The only complaint I have with the dies is that it is not easy to remove the die cut from the die itself.

To be continued.....dinner is calling at the moment.

It is 1 am....

and I am still up.  I have been playing with Mix and Match Flower Outline Stamps.  I picked them up on a recent trip out to Heathers Stamping Haven.  I wasn't sure about them when I was looking at the stamps on the wall but when I saw some of the projects made with them....Cool! was the word that went through my mind.

I could see lots of fun cards and layouts...basically just stamp on whatever pattern paper I wanted a flower.  Cut out.  Give them a bit of dimension by pop dotting and curling them with a knitting needle.  Lastly, glam them up.

Naturally, there are all different styles and sizes of flowers, different centers and leaves.  Oh yes, another reason to be broke.  So I picked up four stamps.  I figured I could start with 3 different styles and sized flowers and one set of leaf clusters.  I would be able to play and layer to get different effects with these three.

So tonight, I dug out that enormously large bin of left over scraps of pattern paper and cardstock hiding in the corner of my dining room (I really need to learn to let things go).  I started to stamp and cut, layer and pop dot, glimmer and glam.....the verdict of this experimentation....I want to go back and get some more styles and sizes.

It is too late to take any photos tonight so I will share tomorrow.

On that note, I do have the card that I completed for the Great Impressions August Stamp of the Month contest to share:

This time I actually designed an interior panel.  I don't normally do much on the insides of cards other than stamp the sentiment but this time I did something a bit more elaborate:

Materials used:  Great Impressions stamps, VersaColour ink, Canson Watercolour Paper 90lbs, Tombow Markers, ClearSnaps glitter, KaiserCraft rhinestones, Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock, My Little Yellow Bicycle Zinnia Jewels & Pearls, BoBunny Peacock Lane pattern paper, Spellbinder's dies, popdots, & Zip Dry adhesive

If you are wondering if my card won....not this time but I did had fun making it.  September's challenge is with Halloween stamps.  I am not sure about this one.  I am not big on Halloween cards so I might have to think up some kind of layout instead.

I really should be thinking about hitting the hay.

Good night and Happy Friday....No...Happy Early Saturday of a long weekend no less.  Three days to play, scrap and experiment.  Oh dear, starting to ramble.....