Practical Scrappers - Stamping Challenge!

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers is to use stamps on a project. I freely admit to being a stamp collector....I love stamps and use them a lot on cards, but for some reason I seldom use them on scrapbook pages. This week I challenged myself to use stamps on a layout.



I wanted to use white Thickers for the title on this page, but they looked a little too plain. I had a border stamp of tiny little flowers (from Stampin' Up) so I used some pink dye ink and just inked three of the flowers at one end of the stamp, and then randomly stamped some flowers on the Thickers. Here's a closeup of the stamped alphas:


Be sure to check out all the DT projects this week @ Practical Scrappers. And be sure to check out the changes coming on October 1st, when we switch to a magazine-style site with lots of projects, articles, and challenges!

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #29 - Stitching

This week's challenge @ Fantabulous Cricut is in honor of National Sewing Month - use stitching on your page. Sewing on a page is great way to add texture and color to a page and it's quick & easy, too. I started sewing as a little girl, making Barbie clothes, and went on to garment sewing and quilting, but now most of the time my machine gets used to sew on scrapbook pages, LOL!

On this page, I used some variegated thread and a zigzag stitch to add a border to the left side of my page, and stitch through the black diecut letters in my title. I changed to black thread and a straight stitch to finish the border around my page.



I used Alphalicious for the title word, Accent Essentials for the 2.5" circle, and Cursive 101 for the paint brushes, cut at 3.5". I wanted the word "art" to be the same width as my matted photo, so I used the "fit to length" feature on the Expression and entered 4.25" as my length - the machine made the calculation to 2.5" for the letters. The "fit to length" feature is one of my favorite things about the Expression!

BTW, the cute girl in the photos is my youngest niece, who had her 2nd grade art project featured in the Best in Show art exhibit at her school last year. Isn't her paper mache mask awesome? Both my nieces love arts and crafts - maybe they'll turn out to be scrapbookers, too!

Of course you don't have to use machine sewing for this week's challenge - you can use hand stitching, stitch stamps or rubons, or pen stitching. Hope you join in the challenge - we'd love to see your work on Fantabulous Cricut!

Blog Hop prize winner!

I used a random number generator to pick the winner from all the posts on my blog from the Fantabulous Cricut blog hop last week, and the winner is......Raven B! Congrats!

Don't forget to check the Fantabulous Cricut blog today to see if you are one of the three winners there.....and all the individual DT members should be posting their winners today also.

Thanks to everyone who participated - I loved seeing all the great projects and getting lots of ideas on using buttons!

Practical Scrappers - Ribbon Challenge!

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers was to use ribbon. I tried to think of a different way to use ribbon, because I tend to just use it just for bows and knots. For this card I tried ribbon weaving, using several different black ribbons to weave the background for this Halloween card. I started by laying the vertical ribbon strips down on a padded pressing mat and pinning them at the top, and then wove the horizontal strips across, pushing them together to keep a tight weave. I slid a piece of black cardstock underneath and stitched around the edges, through the cardstock to hold the ribbons together.

The pumpkins are from the "Pumpkin Magic" digital stamp from Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps. Digital stamps are easy to resize, so you can get different looks out of the same digital stamp. On the larger stamp, the eyes, nose and mouth were cut out and then the pumpkin was mounted to yellow cardstock with foam mounting squares to get a little dimension.


I hope you join us for this week's challenge at Practical Scrappers! We'd love to see your ribbon projects!

September 14th Sassy Lil Card Sketch

Here's this month's card sketch from Sassy Lil Sketches. It's a great one for using some fun sentiment stamps or rubons.


Here's my card. I used some BoBunny papers and some American Crafts rubons for the sentiments.


I hope you can join us for this week's challenge at Sassy Lil Sketches - we'd love to see your cards!

Practical Scrappers Challenge - It's Button Time!

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers is to use buttons. This is a great challenge for me, because I have a huge stash of buttons and love to use them on my pages.

For this challenge I raided my button jar for a whole lot of white buttons - 22 to be exact! I used fine point Sharpie markers in red, yellow and green to make little dotted flowers on each button, then I strung the buttons onto some white crochet thread and layered them on top of a green border punched strip for the bottom border on my page. There was one button left over, so I used that as a flower center on my title block. Sharpie markers, Bic MarkIt pens, Copic markers and Slick Writers are all great for adding color or accents to light colored buttons.


Here's a closeup of some of the buttons, so you can see the little dotted flowers. I'm no artist, so this is as good as I get at drawing flowers :)



Hope you join us in this week's challenge! You could win a prize from our wonderful September sponsor - Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps!

It's a Fantabulous Cricut Crawl !

Welcome to Brenda's Scrappy Blog and the second "Fantabulous Cricut Crawl"...Fantabulous Cricut's version of a blog hop!

If you've come from visiting Candace's blog, you're in the right place! If you've just happened across my blog and would like to play along with our Fantabulous Cricut Crawl, start HERE.

In honor of Back To School time, we're calling our second Fantabulous Cricut Crawl "Button Up For School"...each design team member will be featuring a button (or buttons)and a Cricut cut somewhere on their project! Make sure to check out each DT member's blog for some awesome inspiration! There will be prizes along the way at our DT members' blogs, AND there will be a grand prize up for grabs at FCCB for one participant that submits a project meeting the the "Button Up For School" challenge criteria! Sound like fun, right?

For my project, I raided my parents' photo albums for a picture of myself on my first day of Kindergarten, way back in 1961 (yikes!). I used Design Studio to make the apple in a circle diecut, using Doodlecharms and Mini Monograms. The circle was at 3" and I just sized the apple to fit inside. The scallop circle is from Mini Monograms, cut at 3.5". I used foam adhesive squares on the apple circle to raise it a little above the scallop, then I adhered one brown, one green, and several red buttons underneath to fill in the apple image. I added a little tag from Tags, Bags, Boxes & More, and a chipboard "K" for kindergarten. Filling in the negative space from a diecut image is a great way to use up smaller buttons and add a little dimension to your page!


Now for the really good stuff - prizes! I'm offering a prize package of some Thickers and an assortment of buttons (of course!). All you have to do is leave a comment on my blog, telling me your favorite way to use buttons on your scrapbook pages or cards. I'll pick a random winner and announce it next Monday!

And for the really, really good stuff - corporate a button on your own "Button Up For School" project. Make sure to include a Cricut cut somewhere on your project! Link your project to the Fantabulous Cricut blog for a chance at our grand prize!

Next stop...Angi's blog! Go see what she has in store for you today... And when you're done, make sure to link up your project to FCCB's Fantabulous Cricut Crawl post to be entered into the contest!


Happy Crawling!

Practical Scrappers Challenge - White/Color Core Cardstock

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers is to use either white core or color core cardstock. We were also given a chance to work with some digital stamps from this month's sponsor, Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps.

For this first card, I used the "Cabin in the Woods" image, and some C'oredinations white core cardstock. I printed the image twice on plain white cardstock and then again on dark green and brown cardstock. I used one of white images as base, and cut the chimney and bushes from the other, and colored them with markers. I used the images printed on green and brown cardstock to cut out the trees and the cabin, and then sanded the cardstock so the white core would show through. This type of paper piecing with stamps is so much fun!


For the second card, I used the "Daisy Days" image, and more C'oredinations cardstock, only using colored core instead of white core cardstock. The image was printed on white cardstock and colored with Copic and Bic markers. The red scallop frame was cut with my Cricut, and embossed with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, and then sanded so the lighter color red core shows up. The base cardstock is a little different - black with a blue core. This was embossed with the Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes folder and then sanded so the blue core shows through; it made me think of denim, like in the girls overalls in the digital image.


We'd love to have you join in this week's challenge at Practical Scrappers! Robyn's Fetish is giving away five digital images to the winner of this week's challenge, so join in for a chance to win!