Mixed Media Hearts

Hello there friends!  I know it's been a while since you all have heard from me, but I promise, I've been busy!  School starts early here in Indiana, we went back at the end of July and I have blinked my eyes and Christmas is just days away.  And no, my shopping is not done lol!!

I've had alot on my plate it seems these past few months.  So, I have been spending alot of time in my craft room.  Sometimes to craft and sometimes to just shed the crap off from the day, and that would be literally and figuratively lol!!

I do have a few pages to share with you, but I thought I would share this one with you first.  It is a representation of me.  I have a mother's heart.  I am a mother to two wonderful sons and step-mother to a beautiful daughter.  I have two beautiful grandchildren, and another on the way!  They fill this mother's heart with countless emotions.  But the love I have for them defines me.  It guides me.  It helps me to rise above and compels me to take the higher ground, even when I don't want to.  They make me a better person.

With that being said, here is my artistic representation of my "sappy" paragraph above!  I hope you enjoy it and that it inspires you to create an artistic representation of yourself!

I will make sure that all the supplies that I have used are labeled for you!  Enjoy your evening and I hope you enjoy my creation!!

Always,

Leslie

Secret Garden Vintage Tag

Hi everybody!  Today is my day to share over at She's A Sassy Lady!    Here is the creation that I shared!  I just LOVE tags, and I also love all things vintage!!  Tags are so awesome because you can use them on a page, as a gift, or just collect them for yourself!!  So, today, I just used materials from my own stash, which means this really cost me $0 to make!!

We all have that "pretty" paper that we just don't want to cut up!!  We just like to look at it!!  Lord knows I have MANY papers like that!!  So, why not make that into a tag!! My "pretty" paper is called Secret Garden 2 by Fabscraps.  I just LOVE the woman surrounded by violet flowers and vines!  I used 2 different sized tags.  The large tage is a #8 size craft tag and the smaller tag is 4 3/4 x 2 3/8.

I simply traced the shape of the larger tag on the part of the paper that didn't have an image on it, and traced the shape of the smaller tag over the image of the woman.  I also cut out the title Secret Garden from the paper as well!  Then, just adhere the paper to the tags.  I also went over my tags lightly with some Milled Lavender Distress Ink.  When I added the smaller tag on top of the larger tag, I used small pop dots to just give it a little lift. Now come my favorite part!!

I have added a small cluster of flowers to the bottom right of my tag.  It adds such a nice touch!!  You don't have to go too crazy, unless you want to!!  I used 1 larger flower with two smaller flowers and just 3 leaves.  I found some light purple tool and some pink pearls and tucked those in behind the flowers.  And I took some floral wire, wrapped it around a skinny paint brush and stuck those behind as well!!  For the top of the tag, I just took a small amount of plain lace, inked it with the Milled Lavender Distress Ink!!

And here is the finished product!!  Perfect for a vintage page!!  Or you can save it, and now that pretty paper you have been hanging onto is even prettier!!  I hope you enjoy my creation and that it inspires you!!  Have a great week my friends and keep on crafting!!

Sunflower Card

Hello!!  I know I haven't posted in a while, it's been a long few months, but I'm back!!  And I have a very special project to share with you today!  Today is my day to over at She's A Sassy Lady and this is the project I created! This card is dedicated to a dear friend of mine, Susie, who passed away in June.  Her favorite flower is the Sunflower.  Susie loved making cards and sunflowers, so what better way to honor her memory than to make a sunflower card!

I started out by stamping my sunflower on vellum using espresso dye based ink.  I then stamped my sentiment, from the CTMH Treasure Life stamp set.

I have been experimenting with blending colored pencils!  Just plain old crayola colored pencils!  I used odorless mineral spirits and a paper nib to blend the colors!  You can purchase odorless mineral spirits at Walmart for just a few dollars!

The card base is just plain brown cardstock, as is the yellow.  I cut the yellow card stock down by 1/4 in so that they would layer nicely.  The first yellow layer I put through my cuttlebug to add texture and the second yellow piece was attached to the vellum using my xyron.  That way you can't see any adhesive!!

I used some foam to pop up the top layer of the card!  I don't like to pop things up too high, just enough to bring attention to the stamped vellum!  Then, to finish this card off, I wrapped some twine around the card twice and finished it off with a bow!

I hope that you enjoyed my creation today!!  I really enjoyed making it and I know my dear friend is looking down and smiling!!  Have a great week my friends!!

Mommy's Baby Boy

Hello Everybody!!  Today I shared this layout over at She's A Sassy Lady!!  I am so grateful to be part of the DT, thank you Sheila!!  Well, last month I shared a baby girl page, so it's only fair that this month I share a baby boy page!  There is a special story behind the making of this album that I am frantically working on!  But let me show you the process before I share the story!

My goal, now that my craft space is almost complete, is to use more of what I have on hand!  When I start a page, I like to lay out the papers to see how well they play off of each other!

Then I start cutting things up!  These pages are for an 8x8 album so I was limited as to how much I could embellish!  In my humble opinion (lol) I like to mat my pictures on black cardstock because it can really make your photos pop!!  The journaling was printed on plain white printer paper, I just changed up the colors on a few words to make it cute for a baby boy layout!

I really loved this journal spot!!  If you are making a little girl layout, you can just change the font color to what ever works with the colors in your layout!  And here is the final product:

The title was cut using George on my Cricut at .75 and the flowers were from my stash!  So this layout cost me nothing to make!  Everything I used were materials that I had on hand!

This layout is part of a project that is very dear to me.  A woman that I work with didn't think that she and her husband could ever have children.  Back in about February she wasn't feeling well and had gone in to see the doctor.  Come to find out, not only was she pregnant, but she was due April 17!!  I have not seen her since she found out the wonderful news.  She has not been able to work due to health concerns.  As soon as I found out, I knew that I just had to put together this album for her.  What a miracle this has been for her! And, I am thrilled to let you know that her miracle arrived on Monday, a bit early, but healthy!!  So I better get cracking and get the rest of the album finished!!

I hope that this project inspires you to create something special!  Have a great day everybody!!

Baby Girl Layout

Hello my crafty friends! Today is my day to share over at She's a Sassy Lady!!  Today I would like to share a layout that I did when my grandaughter was born.  It's so hard for me to believe that she will be 3 years old next month!  My craft studio is currently under construction. The kids moved into their own home last weekend, and I have gained my craft studio back, but it is just not workable yet!

I really hope you enjoyed today's post!!  Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope that I have inspired you to create some beautiful pages of those special little ones in your lives!!

Vintage Handmade Flower Video

Hello my crafty friends!!  I would like to introduce you to my very first You Tube video!!  I know it's just a flower...  but it's my flower lol!!  It took alot of hard work, trial and error, a few tears and a glass of wine to complete!!  It was first completed on Saturday, and then the editing program stopped working and everything was lost!!  So, up and early Sunday, got to work on it, and the final project was finished and uploaded to You Tube at 11:34 pm!!!!!  And then I was in bed by 11:35 lol!!  So please watch, and go easy on me!!  It's my first attempt!!!  Also I would love for you all to subscribe to my channel!!!  Thanks for watching!!

Valentines Day Layout

Hello there my crafty friends!  Today I shared a layout that I created over at She's a Sassy Lady and I thought I would share it with all of you too!!  Now I usually try to share a tutorial on how I created something, but I am not feeling very well.  But, I really really wanted to share this with you!  It's a single page layout of my grandaughter for Valentines Day and of course it's loaded with Prima goodies!

My Silly Valentine

Well I hope you all take a little time this week to tell the people in your life how much they mean to you!!  Happy Valentines Day to all of you my crafty friends!!

Vintage Art Journal Page

Hello my crafty friends!! Happy 2014!!  Today is my day to post over at shesasassylady.blogspot.com Thank you so much to Sheila for having me today!!  Well, as many of you know, my son got married in November and I have over 600 photos to sort threw to scrapbook!  So, before I dive into that project, I felt the need to play in my art journal!!  This page does not have a photo in it.  I also did not go out and purchase anything extra to make this page!  I only used what I had in my stash!  I think it's a good thing to go through what you already have and use it!!  What I love about this page is that it started out as just a white blank page!!  I did not know where I was going to go with this, but as I began to dig through my stash of papers and embellishments, a picture began to form in my brain! This does not happen often lol !!

This is the completed page!  I will try to point out a few tricks I used!  I apologize for not taking photos while creating this, but I was in the moment and my camera wasn't handy!  I started out by tearing 3 different patterned papers and randomly layering them in the center of the page.  I used Golden Mat Gel to adhere them to the page.  I find that works better than my ATG gun when I know I will be adding water to my work!  I then added a floral frame for the page out of more paper from my stash!  Before laying down the frame I distressed the edges and inked them with Vintage Photo Ink. I used two different stencils on this page as well.  For that aged/vintage look I used modeling paste by golden on Prima's crackle stencil.  On the post card I cut out, I used modeling paste mixed with brown acrylic paint and the mini ledger stencil from The Craters Workshop.  I then gave them a good shot with my heat tool to dry all the modeling paste I used!

One of the next things I did was mix more brown acrylic paint (cheap cheap cheap) with water.  Then using my fingers, i spread that mixture all over my page!  I used my fingers to make sure that the brown paint mixture got into the nooks and crannies of the texture!  Then I brought out my heat tool again!!  The wood gate is from kaiser Kraft and I just used my black chalk to give it the wrought iron look!

I just LOVE LOVE LOVE this cluster of flowers!  All the flowers are from my flower stash, most of them are prima, but there are also some others from my stash I threw in there too!  I loved adding some gems to the middle of the flowers for that little sparkle!!  I also found some bling in my "bling bin" and cut them all apart and fit them in and around the cluster of flowers!  I think it adds a really nice touch!  All the tags and journaling are just pieces I cut out from random scraps I had in my scrap box!  I try to not waste anything!  To add just a little more texture, I paint on glossy accents here and there, to make things pop!!!

In this photo you can get a better view of how I got the brown paint mixture into all the nooks and crannies using my fingers!!  The Simple Things Is What I Love really speaks of who I am!  I  hope you enjoyed my journey on this journal page and that it will inspire you to just sit down and create!  I started in the middle and worked my way to the edges!  Take a jump and see where it takes you!!  So many of these tricks I plan on using on the wedding album, and what better place to try them out than in my art journal!

Have a safe and crafty January!!  We are in a deep freeze here in Indianapolis.  For those of you experiencing this extreme cold, stay safe and stay warm!  The wind chill is only -10 here right now, which is better then the -40 we had earlier!  Craft on my friends!!

Always,

Leslie