BBTB2; Easter Boxes, Bags or Baskets, Oh My!

Happy Monday.

There’s a new challenge on the BBTB2 website. It is Easter Boxes, Bags or Baskets - Oh My! or any kind of 3D item.

I made this cute container for the challenge.

The container is the nut cup from the Tags, Bags, Boxes & More cartridge and the cute chick is from the Simply Charmed cartridge. The nut cup was cut at 5 3/4 and the chick at 2 1/4. The overall size of the cup is a little under 3”. Perfect for a few treats!

Now it’s your turn...click on over to the Bitten By The Bug 2 site to add your Easter project! Please be sure to let us know how you used your Cricut and what cut you used. Other than that...have fun!

TGIF; Thankful Friday #123

WHAT A WEEK! This week I’m thankful for random activities. I have completed six scrapbook layouts, three YouTube videos, danced to Kids Bop with my granddaughter, created a base for my Junk Journal signatures, instructed a Paint Night, virtually visited the Monterey Aquarium, cleared part of my pantry, and worked on a 2,000 piece puzzle.

I’ve done more this week than I’ll ever do in a month! We just heard that our Shelter In Place has extended to May 1st. What will we accomplish and/or learn during this time? Hmmm...

I’m thankful that I actually like my family! LOL

And that hubby had to “army crawl” in Walmart to find the last pack of TP (under the shelf).

Stay healthy my friends! If you’re not already, subscribe to my YouTube channel and/or check back here often for lots of new posts!

SG 6x6 Layout

This two page layout was made by using the Scrapbook Generation 6x6 Layout Class. I purchased this class awhile ago and only used it one other time. The idea is to basically use your 6x6 pads but of course you could use 12x12 or any size paper and cut it down.

For this two page spread, I only used two 6x6 pieces of patterned papers. This paper is from CTMH. The embellishments I pulled from my Sticker Book are from Basic Grey. These are really old but coordinated so good with the color of these patterned papers.

The alphabet stamps are from SU! Had them forever!

I also made a YouTube video of this process.

The layout is an April Month In Review layout. I love to do this because some things don’t necessarily need to have a whole layout but just a reminder that these things happened. These photos are from a night out for a friend’s birthday, clicking glasses to celebrate the news of a new baby, photo booth photo at my cousin’s wedding and a photo of my mom & niece at her softball game.

If you’re not already, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

WOYWW #564

Good day everyone and happy WOYWW! I posted last week but forgot to link it on Stamping Ground site. DUH? My desk is looking pretty clear right now. I’m not sure why since I’ve been busy! I completed six scrapbook layouts, some Junk Journal pages and today I’m using the Cricut to embellish the cap and leggings for my granddaughter.

It’s only Day 3 of the Shelter in Place and I’m a little stir crazy. I am working remotely from home but there’s only so much you can do during the day.

I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy during this crazy scary uncertain interesting time.

Luckily Social Distancing does affect WOYWW!

Junk Journal; Who Loves You

We are in a Shelter in Place state now and I’m spending a lot of time in the Command Center. With schools closed, we need to keep LeAnna busy so we are planning on doing a family Paint Nite. I started searching Pinterest and YouTube and came up with some that I thought would work for all the different ages and artistic levels.

I tried this out in my Junk Journal before trying to “teach” it on a canvas. I had to look for a two page spread that was white or at least mostly white. This was the only one!

Check out my YouTube video:

I went to Pinterest and searched for “How To Draw an Owl” and found this from easylinedrawing.com. So simple and easy even for someone who CANNOT draw. LOL

Acrylic Paints Used:
Royal Violet
Bright Yellow
Brown Oxide
Caramel Candy
Black & White
All Apple Barrel paints from Walmart

When I painted the white, I was really disappointed that it wasn’t white as it was on the original painting, but then I realized I really liked the teal since it gave the moon craters and more dimension!

Updated picture with white paint splatters

So fun!

TGIF; Thankful Friday #122

Hi there! Even though this is a Thankful Friday post, it’s actually Saturday. As you know, it’s been crazy these past weeks and for the unforeseen future...at least for the next month. Our state is basically in a Shelter In Place quarantine right now and it’s a little scary.

We are all home now except for DS1 and DS2 but I’m guessing that’s only a matter of time. Toilet paper is scarce and so is pretty much everything else. We’re good though. Our pantry, freezer and refrigerator are stocked.

I’m going to use this time to work on more creative projects. Hope to film more YouTube videos and work on a T-shirt quilt hubby’s been asking for.

How about you? Are you ok; staying safe and healthy?

Through all this, I’m still thankful. Thankful to our school district for sending a lot of useful information to calm us during the time, thankful that my beautiful granddaughter got Star Reader this week and thankful that our family is coming together to think “outside the box” to entertain ourselves.

I snapshot this from my nephew and hope to do this daily:

WOYWW #562

It’s good to know with all the closures, shut downs and shelter in place going on around us, the WOYWW is still here. We’ll always have our work desks to share with others.

Here’s my desk this morning:

I’m so excited because I ordered cards from my original art and they came in yesterday afternoon. My only regret is that they come standard in matte finish but I didn’t realize it. I like them in glossy. I plan to take lots of photos and add them to my Etsy store soon.

Have a great week amongst all the chaos. Stay safe and healthy and don’t forget to click on over to Stamping Ground to link up your own work area.

Scrapbooking Disney

On Saturday, my granddaughter puts up this sign as her attempt to keep us safe during the coronavirus period:

Now, normally on a Saturday, I'm just super lazy, but we all chose which chore we wanted and spent a good part of the morning cleaning! Nothing wrong with a good scrub down.

The rest of the day was filled with t.v. gameshows and scrapbooking.

I am still working on my 2019 scrapbook and right now I'm scrapping our Disneyland trip.

I completed this page awhile ago but I knew it needed something. Unfortunately, the background paper was so busy but I also didn't want to hide much of it since it was a Cars themed paper. 

I just took a second look and started adding some stickers, Washi tape and our Fast Pass tickets. I really like the addition of the white cardstock for journaling.

These were the only Cars embellishments at my local scrapbooking store and I completely forgot that we bought this Cars Washi tape from The Dollar Tree years ago. I finally got to use it!

I love the final page!

BBTB2 Spring Equinox Challenge & Collaboration

Hello and welcome to our latest challenge at the Bitten By The Bug 2 site... Spring Equinox. 

The planet marks a seasonal change in the coming week depending on where you live on this planet you may or may not be seeing the signs of Spring bud.  Wherever in the world you are we encourage you to create a spring inspired project.  And now for a twist...we have collaborated with  Double Trouble Paper Crafting Challenge Blog for this challenge.  Therefore, we are opening up the normal golden rule to use a Cricut machine.  So for this challenge only, you can use any electronic die cutting machine, manual die cutting machine or punch.  They have several layers to their challenge and I have shared their post below and encourage you to play along with one, two or all three of the layers of this challenge.  

Here is Double Trouble's post:

WELCOME to Challenge #52

Let the Troubles Begin 

"Die-lirious and Punchy"

THING 1:  Trouble Maker

says, "I'm feeling Die-lirious and Punchy!  Include at least one Spring item on your project made with  punches, dies, cutting machines and even fussy-cutting (i.e. hand punches, die cutting machines, Cricut, Silhouette, Scan & Cut, scissors, etc).    

You can stop here...

OR, you can choose to use Twisted Sister's Optional Twist below. 

THING 3:  Twisted Sister

says, "Winter is behind us and Spring is just around the corner what many believe to be the best season of them all!  Hope I'm not bugging you; but it's time to put some sweetness in our projects and why not include a bee, the makers of honey, or their honeycombs.    

This is an OPTIONAL TWIST but you will be awarded an additional chance in Double Trouble's random draw if you include this twist in your project.

THING 2:  Double Dare

says, "Bitten By the Bug is a challenge that usually requires cuts from your Cricut machine, however, we were able to CUT a Die'al." 
For this challenge Bitten By the Bug is accepting the use of hand punches, die cutting machines, but NO fussy-cutting! Besides using a Cricut you are free to use Silhouette, Brother Scan and Cut or other similar devices. Be sure to tell us in your blog post what you used.  

So, if you have used a Spring theme and at least one cut from any of these machines, you can click on Bitten By the Bug "Spring Equinox" Challenge and enter your project.  You don't need to use Twisted Sister's optional twist to enter and you will still earn an additional chance at the Double Trouble Random Draw.

My project:

I opted not to go with the Optional Twist and created the title to this Spring layout.  This “egg-cellent” title is a Miss Kate Cuttable's design. I used glaze on top of the dyed eggs to give it some dimension.

I found this dyed egg background paper on a Trash to Treasure pile at a crop. It’s an old one, but perfect for these photos. I cut it down to 11.5x11.5 before adhering to the cardstock base. The pink paper was cut down to 9x9. That pink paper was also found in the Trash to Treasure pile.

The layout wasn’t full of embellishments, but it didn’t need it. The colorful egg patterned paper and the cute title was all it needed!

Your turn, link your project to both the challenge sites BBTB2 and Double Trouble!

TGIF; Thankful Friday #121

Friday! Whew, it was a tough week with Day Light Savings Time. But that means Mother Nature is preparing for baseball season!

I'm thankful this week for my son (DS3). He's coaching the JV baseball team for our town's high school and walking in his father's steps. I love hearing them talk about players, strategies, plays and everything in between. It's great to listen to them together. A son respecting his father and vice versa, it doesn't get much better than that!

And I have to share this cute photo of my granddaughter - she's ready to play!

What are you thankful for this week? Leave a comment and share what you are thankful for.

March Stencil Challenge

I decided to join another challenge this month. This one is on the STAMPlorations Blog. I’m joining the March stencil challenge. Basically to create a project - any project - as long as you use a stencil.

I’ve used two stencils on this Junk Journal page. The sunbeam stencil and punchinella circles stencil. It’s been a long time that I used one of these Julie Nutting paper doll stamps. I sure do love playing with paper dolls!

I started with this page and scraped some yellow acrylic paint all over it.

Then, I used the sunbeam stencil with white acrylic paint.

This is a beach ball sunbeam stencil so I used more paint with an old credit card and extended the beams to the paper edges.

I found the quote on Pinterest and used a black paint pen to write it. I scraped blue & teal paints for the cutie to sit on and used another stencil to add the red highlights.

To complete the page, I scribbled all over with a regular pencil.

Make sure you click on over to the STAMPlorations Blog to see the other entries and link your own creation using a stencil!

WOYWW #562 & Word of The Year 2020

Happy WOYWW! Today is Wednesday and I get to show off my desk along with all the other deskers on the Stamping Ground blog. Click on over to take a peek!

I'm not sharing my desk today but one of my newest Junk Journal spreads.

At the beginning of the year, you hear/read all about people selecting a word to guide their year whether it's a goal or mantra or muse or whatever. I’ve never really given that a thought before since I'm usually all over the place. But with my goal this year to send at least one handmade card a week, I decided to select a word...CONNECT.

When playing in my Junk Journal this weekend and some inspiration from my daughter, I made this page:

A close up:

I adhered these KENO slips (yes, I keep everything) to the page before adding teal, blue, and fuchsia acrylic paint to cover the page.

Then I used multiple paint pens to write the word “connect” all over. Once I was happy with the coverage, I embellished some of the words with dots, lines, shadows, etc. It’s such a fun page!

What about you? Do you pick a work for your year? If you do, let me know in the comments.

All About That Base

I took a class at my LSS to create the base for a mini-album. I gotta tell ya, it was amazing! I'm so glad I was able to take it because I learned a lot and I know I'm going to make many more of these.

It was hard taking photos of a black on black album but I hope you can see how cool it is.

We made the cover, the spine and all the interactive pages for it. The album can hold 60+ photos.

I can't wait to complete the album with pattern papers, photos and embellishments!

If you're in Central CA or nearby, I highly recommend this class by Katie at Katie's World. She makes fabulous album kits and page kits. Check her out!

Sketch-N-Scrap Layout; March

I haven’t posted in any challenges (other than my DT projects) in a long time. I love working with sketches and decided to use the March single page layout sketch at Sketch N Scrap.

Here’s the sketch:

I had a hard time with the title, but settled on this quick and simple one.

I used my Cricut for the Mickey image and the rest were stickers and die cuts from Simple Stories. I love all the paper layering!

Here are some close ups:

Be sure to click on over to Sketch N Scrap for the challenge.