Winter Wonderland

Do have blogger friends that inspire you?  I count myself so blessed because I have many, many people in blogland that not only inspire me, but who I look forward to "visiting" and "talking" with.  Many of you don't even know how much you inspire me day after day, and how much I admire your work!

One of my blog friends, Jamie, is one of the many people that I love to visit.  Her blog is A Happy Scrappy Place, and I promise that you will love her work!  One of the several reasons I love her work is because she creates with clean lines.  She designs for Teresa Collins, and I've been watching over the months on how she combines paper from the different lines.  I took some of that inspiration and combined it with a sketch from Liz Qualman.  Liz is another person that amazes me, so for me to combine all this into one page was really a true joy!

These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago when we had our first true snowfall for the winter.  Kind of late in the season, but it was a beautiful day for picture taking!  It had rained right before the snowfall, so the trees ended up with ice on the branches under the snow.  I used a couple of sheets of Teresa Collins Christmas Home for this page because the black/grey/white mix was perfect the photos.

Close To My Heart products used that can be found on my website:
5571 Grey Wool Cardstock
1386 Black Cardstock
1385 White Daisy Cardstock
Z1686 Cricut Art Philosophy Cartridge
D1480 Snowflakes Stamp Set (winter wonderland sentiment)
A1111 A Tulip Stamp Set (stitch)
Z1335 Licorice Gems

Together

Every time I use one of Liz Qualman's sketches , I have to tell you again how much I love her work!  She inspires me to bring my pages to another level and to create in a way I may not.  This week her suggestion was to try color blocking with her sketch.  Please visit her HERE to see her example.  You will love it!

These are pictures taken at our bonfire last October.  The top photo is my sister Patti's family, and the bottom photo is my husband's twin brother's family.  I took Liz's sketch pretty literally so pretty much everything that was suggested.  The paper and stickease are Olivia, and they are retired.  But isn't it so pretty for these photos?  Let me tell you how I made the banner.  I used the Banners Dimensional Elements and covered them with paper.  So easy to do because I used the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge to cut the perfect sized banners.  Then I punched holes and weaved Sunset baker's twine through the holes.  I LOVE that we now sell 8 colors of baker's twine!  I cut the tickets with my cartridge, too, and then stamped them with last November's stamp of the month, Cherish the Day.  I also added a few buttons from our Sunset Mini Medleys.


I think you should try this sketch.  It was so much fun and it showcased my pictures perfectly!

Sometimes You Just Have to Scrap It...

I saw this picture of my great-nephew on Facebook, and I had to make sure that I stopped everything to scrap it!  My niece does such a wonderful job of capturing smiles and faces with her kids.  I just love to scrap them!  I've had a Liz Qualman's sketch for this week sitting on my desk, so I used that for this picture.

This is retired paper from CTMH (Stardust), but I am really glad that I had a couple Level 1 layouts left!  The colors are perfect for this picture.  Liz had sewing in her sketch, so I actually hand sewed!  (I know - don't fall over or anything - it's a rare thing from me!)  I used the CTMH ruler to mark my lines and then grabbed the embroidery floss to sew.  If you like this paper and these accessories, be sure to check out Studio J.  You can still use this one over there!

I have been in kind of a creative slump lately searching all over the house for my missing mojo.  Do you ever have those days?  So I was really glad for the inspiration I found in this picture, paper, and sketch!

Twig

Just a short post tonight. I wanted to share this month's sketch challenge at Little Yellow Bicycle.  This sketch was created by Liz Qualman:

Liz always creates such nice sketches that are fun to work with.  Here's what I came up with:

I created this layout using the Twig collection.  That chipboard twig is so cute!  It actually came with five circles hanging off of it, but I took it apart a bit in order for the words to match the layout.  This is one of our favorite places to walk.  It's so gorgeous and lush.  Considering we are expecting 8-12 inches of snow tomorrow (UGH), it's nice to have these lovely green pictures to scrap!