scrappin with Deedee....

Ok... seriously, we finally got together Deedee and I, hooray!!!  Something about the zero degree weather this morning, I thought, now that the girls are in the car... I'm going through the Starbucks drive through and heading over to Deedee's house.  Once you've got them bundled up and ready to go, you've got to keep going, or you might just not get out again.  After our morning coffee, we ventured into Deedee's craft room, and we started playing with a letter her mom wrote... back in the day.  I started going crazy with her beautiful BoBunny papers, and it had to become a funky valentine... don't be disturbed by the headless school girls.  Yes, there are more than one.  This has nothing to do with Deedee's mother, just my crazy collaging.  Deedee is making a beautiful vintage piece, and look at that cool photo of her mother's school house with the letter she wrote super imposed on top of it.  She's learning photoshop and it's quite inspiring!  She takes her time, so her pieces are timeless, and I jump right in, so my girls are beheaded... yeah.  Maybe this will inspire some fun valentines... It's coming up!!!  Crazy!!!

Deedee making a portrait canvas of Noah

12x12 inch canvas with gallery edges, professional acrylic paint and medium,  Tim Holtz crackle paint & distress inks, Cottagearts Art Blend Filters

Here's a photo of Deedee making her portrait canvas of her youngest son Noah.  Isn't it great?  She's making portraits of her other sons Jacob and Anthony too.  I'm sure she'll post photos of them when they're done, so you can see the final product!!!   Stay tuned...

Welcome to my house...

Deedee stopped by this morning after dropping her boys off at school.  When she saw the canvas portraits I made of my girls hanging in my dining room, she asked me to photograph it and post it on our blog.  :-)  Welcome to my house... it smells like Americanos... mmmmm.

More Custom Portrait Canvas...

Resources:  12x12 inch canvas with gallery edges, acrylic paints and mediums,  The Girls' Paperie - on holiday brads travel, Cottagearts photo filters,  Paper Source - Decorative Labels, Graphic 45 - Fantasy Floral paper, Tattered Angels - Screenprints Clear Stamps,

Resources:  12x12 inch canvas with gallery edges, acrylic paint and mediums,  The Girls' Paperie - on holiday brads travel, Tattered Angels - Screenprints Clear Stamps, Tim Holtz grungeboard & distress inks, Cottagearts photo filter

Resources:  12x12 inch canvas with gallery edges, acrylic paints and mediums,  Cottagearts photo filters, Tim Holtz grungeboard, Tattered Angels Screenprints Clear Stamps, K&Company Studio K Round Word Brads, the girls' paperie - on holida brads travel

Adapt to change

Today, I sat down with this photo collage I recently made and did a bit of scrapaging.  I found this photo "adapt to change" in the July's Sunset magazine.  Since I'm visiting my family in Portland, and revisiting places of my past and showing them to my girls... I am extra aware of all the changes life brings.  So, this page is about all of that... I bought the butterfly punch before I came to Portland, and I bought the bumblebee punch in Portland.  I like how the bumblebees are on the butterflies because both have symbolic meaning to me.  To me, butterflies symbolize freedom, and bumblebees symbolize cross-pollination... which is exactly what happens when you are able to call more than one place - home.  There are five of us in my family (both the one I grew up in and Adriaan, myself and our three girls).

discover

Tonight I started working on a digital collage for a scrapbook page that I want to make.  I've been thinking about being a mother, and how my children help me discover creativity... when I take the time to see what they're showing and teaching me.  I used filters from cottagearts for this collage, and put it together in Adobe photoshop.

Me and Kyle...my new page

The reason I love to make scrapbook pages, is that I'm able to say things with pictures that I don't have words for. This page is about a suprise visit from my brother Kyle last summer. No one told me he was coming, and I was super suprised. It was a wonderful visit.

Aeva drawing page

I'm just loving making scrapbook pages, where photography is the base of the design.  This is actually a digital collage.  I took a photo of Aeva drawing, and then another layer of an aerial photo of trees to give it more dimension.  When Emma saw the picture, she said, "Aeva draws just like you do!"  I had printed the collage and given it to Deedee.  Last night, Deedee asked me if I wanted to make a scrapbook page with her.  I didn't have any photos with me, but I saw the print out sitting on top of her scrapbook papers.  I asked her if I could replace her print, and use the collage on a page.  It was so much fun to take it out of it's original format, and make a scrapbook page around it.  The extra papers give it so much more dimension and tell a more whimsical story.  I always try new things with Deedee, and come home with a head full of ideas.  I love combining the clouds and the flowers.  This is one of the flowers I made the other day.  They're so much fun.

Zoo page

Check out this cool zoo page! I finished it at 2 a.m. the other morning. This is the best time to scrapbook because there are no interruptions. :-) I tweeked Angela's flowers and made my own design.

Finding Treasure

I've always been inspired by paper. The paper is what inspired this collage back in 2007.  The hills on the paper made me think of a treasure hunt, and so I found a photo of Emma collecting things to create this page.  I love how the decorative rub-ons make such a whimsical crown.  I also love how the vintage buttons give this collage so much extra depth.

Scrapbook page with flowers

Here's the scrapbook page I made with the vintage photos of the girls and some flower clouds I made.  I just love the distress inks, glitter glue, and glitter mist.  Wowie wow wow.  You can use them very subtle, and completely change the look of your page!  This page feels a whole lot like one of my journal pages.

Creating page elements...

Last night, I was looking at some wonderful scrapbook challenges and layouts.  I was especially struck by the layouts that have strong photography as the base of the story.  I had an spontaneous photo shoot with the girls last night, and they were so much fun.  We really connected while I took the photos, and I was so excited to see their personalities come through in the photos.  So, I'm taking each photo and making a story out of it.  I have an idea for a number of pages, and I'm collecting the page elements for them.  Here's a little peek at what I've done so far with one of the portraits of Emma.

A good day for a "Journal Spilling" adventure...

This morning I had to try out some of my new scrapbook supplies.  I started by looking through my new Journal Spilling book and gathering materials.  I found a piece of cardboard in the recycle pile, pulled out my new Tim Holtz inks, watercolor crayons, some bright page marker stickers, and colored staples, and then I started playing.  I worked quickly and started experimenting with the supplies.  When I was done, all my beautiful inks matched the new Tim Holtz paper stack that I bought and so I put my cardboard collage on one of my new papers and photographed it.  Then to make it personal, I pulled in a photo of Emma over the top in photoshop and voila.  Here's my creative "journal spilling" adventure.  I'm loving these new colors and inks, especially the distress inks.  They are super fun.  Now I've got to call Deedee, so we can get together and experiment!