Opal 10 - Wish

Here is the sketch for Opal 10 by Heather Conklin for Scrapbooksteals

Here is my page.

I didn't get a chance to have pictures printed this week so I had to work with what I had. My page is quite different than the sketch, but I love that I was still able to do the strips of paper in the background. Great sketch, Heather!

Buffet & Hutch makeover!

When we bought our current house, I knew I wanted a large-ish piece of furniture on one end of the dining room for storage and to display china. I started looking online and knew right away that I did not want to pay full retail for a new piece. I browsed through some online classifieds and found a few good candidates. Here is what we ended up with.

It had definitely been well used and was outdated. We debated between painting or re-staining it. I would have loved to paint it white & distress it a little, but I knew it would just get lost in the sea of white & light colours in our kitchen/dining room. So we decided it would be stained a dark brown to make it really stand out.
It does have the other drawer and a hutch, but my husband was already sanding them down by the time I got out to the garage to take pictures. You'll have to use your imagination for that one. One of the hutch doors had gold paint "criss-crosses" on the glass.

After!

 My husband sanded the top of the buffet and all the drawer & door fronts right down to the wood before re-staining it. The stain colour we picked was very dark, and I honestly thought I would have a very dark buffet & hutch when all was said and done. I was a little disappointed when I went out to take a peek after he started staining it. But I am glad that it turned out this way. I love the wood grain that now shows through on the top and front. I also love the accent of the darker colours on the edges and door accents.

He stained the whole thing and put a few coats of polyurethane on to finish it off. I used a razor blade to scrape the gold paint off the glass and we picked out some new hardware that went with the rest of our kitchen and dining room.

I love it!

Silhouette Advent Calendar

 I recently purchased the Silhouette Advent Calendar from Scrapbooksteals and have been busy making all the little boxes and drawers for it! Here is the finished product!

 For a list of the materials I used, see the bottom of this post.

 Here are some close-ups so you can see the details :)

Christmas is coming, and we are counting down the days!

Materials Used:

Paper

• Echo Park - Season's Greetings and Dots & Stripes Christmas
• Imaginisce - Cottage Christmas and Santa's Little Helper
• Authentique - Wonder
• Lily Bee Design - Christmas Town
• Kraft

Embellishments

• Echo Park - Dots & Stripes Christmas
• Imaginisce - Cottage Christmas, hot rocks and glam rocks
• Making Memories - Pearls, metal signage
• TPC Studio - dome stickers
• Basic Grey - Small Details stickers
• Twinery - twine
• Creatology - bells
• Ribbon & tulle - from my stash

Numbers & Letters

• American Crafts - Thickers
• Authentique - Petite Type circle stickers
• Cosmo Cricket - Tiny Type stickers
• Silhouette - heat transfer material
• Making Memories - metal signage

Ink

• Colorbox - Fluid Chalk Ink

And of course, my Silhouette SD to cut all the backgrounds, drawers, boxes, and some embellishments!

Opal #9 - No Title

Here is the sketch for Opal 9

Here's my page.

It's going in our wedding album so there is no title or journalling. I would go crazy trying to think of a new title for every page! :)

Opal #8 - Smile

Here is the sketch for Opal 8.

Here's my take on it.

This was a fun one to do. Great sketch, Kristy!

Opal #7 - All Things Easter

Here is the sketch for Opal #7

This sketch was a little intimidating. But in the end I couldn't narrow my pictures down and ended up adding two more! 

Here are my pages.

I'm happy with how they turned out!

MWM #26 - Finger Paintin' Fun!

I went back to MWM #26 for these pictures.
Here is the sketch

Here is my page.

I don't love how it turned out, but I've been staring at it for almost a week. It's time to move on.

Opal 5b - Trick {or} Treat!

Here is the second sketch that Cathryn did for ScrapbookSteals last week.

Here is my page.

Opal #6 - Garden Corn

Here is Kristy's great sketch for Opal #6

And here is my page

Opal 5a (#2) - Nice 'Stache (Woodgrain Mustache Challenge)

Some of my crafty friends recently started up a blog called Woodgrain Mustache. They issued a colour challenge last week to use these colours on a project:

I used the sketch for Opal 5a again.
I really love these sketches that Cathryn did!

 Here is my page!
I wasn't planning on focusing my page elements to go with the title of the "Woodgrain Mustache" blog, it just sorta happened :)

I had tried to hide what a dork I really am, but I guess it's all out in the open now! ;) Hehe. At least I have great company.

Accordion Flower Tutorial

Hi! Today my accordion flower tutorial is featured on the ScrapbookSteals blog.

If you want to learn how to make one, go check it out!

Click Here

Shopping!

Here is a sketch I found on Pinterest. It's from Scrapdelight (I'm pretty sure the site is all in Dutch, but I like the sketch!)

 And here is my page.

ETA: This layout was featured on Practical Scrappers Blog on 1/18/2012
in the category of Clustering on a layout
It can be found {here}

Pic-nic

Here is a simple page I did this morning. No sketch for this one.

Opal 5a - Endless Summer

Here is the sketch for Opal 5a, done by my friend Cathryn. She did an amazing job!

 

And here is my page.

I really strayed from the sketch, but I love how the page turned out. I used a lot of mists and chalks to colour the sun and water, and used my SewEasy for most of the stitching.
Thanks to my Summer ATC swap girls and Misty's blog posting on ScrapbookSteals today for a lot of the inspiration!

MCM #56

Here is the sketch for MCM #56

 And here is my card

MCM #53 & #54 - Happy Halloween!

Here is the sketch for MCM #53

My card for this sketch is the one on the right in the photo below.

There was no sketch for MCM #54, just a whole bunch of cute cards to take inspiration from!

I used Jennifer Blomquist's card for my inspiration for the card on the left.

Opal #4 - @ the Library

Here is the sketch for Opal #4

And here are my pages.

Yearly Updates

 I want to make sure I get a page done after each of K's (& future children's) birthdays that is a little update about them & what they are doing at that age.
Here are K's first two update pages:

Doing these two pages back to back made me realize just how much she has changed in the past year. It's crazy! I didn't realize she had gotten 10 new teeth in a year, or just how much more interested in everything around her she is.
 Again I used the same style of paper from Fine & Dandy as I did on my last MWM (2nd Haircut).
It was perfect for these pages, simple enough to let the pictures and journalling stand out, but not plain.

Circa 1946 - CE October Challegnge

Here is the sketch, I found it on Pinterest and cannot find a link to the actual page, but it is from Studio Calico. (Sorry, that is as big as it will go without getting pixel-y)

Here is my page. I was chosen to issue the CE challenge for October, it is to scrapbook something that is part of your history.

Sorry for all the editing on this one, it has a lot of personal details. I am going to start an album of stories of our grandparents, and since most of the pages will have single pictures, I decided to do it as an 8.5x11" album.

Opal #3 - Haircut

Here is the sketch for Opal #3

And here is my page "K's 1st 2nd Haricut"

I have had this paper (& several others like it) for a while now, and while I love it, I have had no clue what to do with it. My friend Cristine used some yesterday and she inspired me to use mine! This was probably the easiest page I have ever done! I have plans for at least one of the other papers like this now!

Opal #2 - Luau!

Here is the sketch for Opal #2

 And here is my page.

The smaller pink flowers are off the lei I'm wearing in the pictures. K broke it and I thought all the little flowers would be fun to use for crafts!

Fall Fun

This is a sketch from October 2011 PageMaps

And here is my page.
 

She had so much fun playing in the leaves this day, I'm glad I got some pictures of her.
This page was so simple to do, but I really love how it turned out. This was the first time I have fussy-cut out some shapes and popped them up on top of themselves (some apples in the top right) I am pretty sure there is a term for that but I don't know what it is. Can anyone help me out?! :)

**ETA** This page was featured on Practical Scrappers on October 19, 2011.
http://www.practicalscrappers.com/2011/10/autumn-layouts.html

It's the first time I have been featured, and I'm kind of excited about it! :)

Monkey Toes

I have a bunch of sketches pinned on one of my Pinterest boards, and I honestly love having so much inspiration in one place!
This is a sketch I have pinned from http://janaeubanksketch.blogspot.com/

 

Here is my page.

My Grandpa always called K "furball" because she had so much hair, and he said her toes were long like a monkey's. I love this picture of him holding her when she is less than a week old :)