Kute Kids

What a wonderful Monday! I love Mondays lately because I get to share with you all the wonderful scrappiness that is going on at The Scrappiest Blog. Liz's sketches are just so wonderful to work with. I love how they challenge me to arrange something I may not have thought of. Like this new one, Kute Kids. Yet I love it. I am very excited to share it with you all today.
These are pretty recent pics of my kids for a change...hehe... I am so far behind in my scrapping. They were taken this January back home in Missouri by my dear Brother-in-law, Lance. He takes such wonderful pics and it was so great to see him work with the kids.
My stubborn son had made up his mind that day not to smile. This is one of my son Lance worked is magic with and got a grin. My darling daughter however, thought Lace was so funny that she could not stop laughing... I have to agree with her. Seeing Lance put a stuffed kitty on his head was pretty funny. Well enough of our experience... though it has wonderful memories for us, let me begin with the scrappiness!
Details:

Top Right: Here is a close up of one of the harder parts of this layout for me. The journal box! As many of you know I do not really like to have journal boxes on my layouts. Don't get me wrong I love to have the story included. I just prefer to do hidden journaling or a incorporate the jorunaling into the design. So according to the sketch I should have a circular journal box... well I kinda do... hehe. I love how I deiced to do this. The only problem with journaling all around the circle edge is that the flower cluster in the center had to be a freestanding one. I also love to draw my flower clusters out to extend with flourishes and such around the edge of the photos or to bring your eye around the page. This one posed a challenge for me because I could not cover up the journaling. For the flowers I added in some chipboard and some small primas. The large flower was actually a poinsettia from Christmas last year and I trimmed down the petals to be curved. I added some bling and wedding pearls to the cluster and it was complete. The title here was fun to do. I am getting into the "play" on words and I love using the K for Cute also. This is how my son would have spelled it at this age. I doodled a bit on the title background just to fill it in... too much white. I also added the small flower. The K is a chipboard element I inked red and added red glitter glue to it. I then edged it in silver from my Zig pen.
Bottom Left:
I really just wanted to show a couple of things here on this photo. First off I wanted to let you know the flower patterned paper is actually vellum as well as the circle patterned paper under the large flower cluster within the journal circle. I love the edge around this page. In order to punch from corner to corner on the inside of a boarder like this you need to create four strips of paper. I used 1" strips. After you have your strips in hand you need to cut one corner of each with a 45 degree angle. This will create the mitered look when you get them put together. Then punch from the inside of the mitered corner down along the edge. If you start from the same spot on each strip you will get the same corner every time. When you tack these down you want to leave the angled corner loose a bit so you can tuck the next side strip under that edge. Once you have the next side strip in place you can then go back and tack down the miter. I took my silver Zig pen along the scallops and the angle in each corner.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of heaven for me. I love my kids so much. They are such sweet hearts.

Here is my card I made from the scraps. I hope you enjoy it too.
It is a tri-fold off centered and the sentiment is raised up with pop dots to allow the white lace punched boarder to fit under the red lace punched boarder to keep itself closed. I used all the scraps from this LO and I love the end result.
I had some stamping fun creating a black boarder along the white inside of this red card... let me show you.

I then colored in the roses in the stamp red and edged it all with a silver Zig pen like on the front. Thanks for enjoying this card with me.

UPDATE 3/31:
Per request here is a detailed step by step on this card...

1. Cut with your trimmer:

a. colored cardstock (red) into these pieces: 1 – 5 ½”x 8 ½”, 1 – 6 ½”x 1” set aside

b. white cardstock into these pieces: 1- 5 ½”x 1”, 1- 4 ½”x 3 ¼ “, 1 – 2 ¼”x 1” set aside

c. black piece of cardstock into this size: 1 – 2 ½” x 1 ¼” set aside

d. stripe patterned paper (you want vertical stripes) into this piece: 1- width 5 ¼” x height 2 ¾”

e. floral pattern paper into this piece: 1 – 5 ¼”x 1”

f. white 3/8”grosgrain ribbon into a 6” strip

g. red ½”patterned ribbon into a 6” strip

h. black ½”satin ribbon into two 6” strips

2. Punches:

a. 5 flowers out of your colored (red) cardstock

b. a boarder along the 1 – 5 ½”x 1” piece of colored (red) cardstock

c. 5 different flowers out of your white cardstock

d. a boarder along the 1 – 5 ½”x 1” piece of white cardstock

3. Cover the red flowers with glitter glue and set safely aside to dry

4. Take a metallic marker and edge the design of your boarder punch on both the colored (red) cardstock and the white cardstock punched pieces. Cleaning Tip: If you do this on a piece of scratch paper clean up will be a breeze.

5. Placing your large piece of red cardstock vertically. Fold a crease 1 ¼” up from the bottom then one down 3” from the top. They should meet in the middle.

6. Place adhesive on the back of your stripe paper. Place it in the center of the top 3” of your card. You should have a 1/8” boarder on all sides. Make sure the stripes are vertical. Outline it with a fine point silver metallic pen.

7. Place adhesive on the back of your floral piece and place it in the center of the bottom of your card on the 1 ¼” folded section. You should have a 1/8” boarder on all sides. Outline it with a fine point silver metallic pen.

8. Place adhesive on the back of the white and red ribbons. Adhere them to the card about the middle of the top flap, leaving about ¼” between them.

9. Adhere the punched white strip of cardstock to the inside of the bottom flap, allowing the full design to show from the exterior of the card, above the bottom flap.

10. Place adhesive on the back of the black satin ribbon strips and adhere it to the inside of the bottom flap next to the punched white cardstock strip. Line it up with the bottom of the white cardstock. Adhere the second black ribbon to the front of the bottom flap over the flower patterned paper strip, aligning vertically in the center.

11. Take your smallest piece of white cardstock and stamp your greeting on it in red ink then adhere this piece to the black piece of cardstock. Outline the white cardstock with a fine point silver metallic pen and repeat this on the edge of the black piece also.

12. Cut your strip of boarder punched red cardstock into 2 - 2 ½” strips. Design Tip: try to center the pattern within this size, you have 1 ½” extra to play with and discard excess. Adhere these strips to the top and bottom of your sentiment layers you put together in #11, behind the black cardstock. Design tip: for a nice look try having less of the punch show from behind the top of the sentiment piece. Do not adjust the bottom, it must all show on the bottom for functionality.

13. To adhere to the card use raised foam squares to pop this off the card. Functional Tip: Make sure the bottom of the red punched edge is low enough to slightly over lap the punched white cardstock edge when the card is closed.

14. Stamp the edge of the large white cardstock piece with a leafy patterned stamp in black ink. If there is a flower in the pattern color it with a red marker. Stamp the desired interior sentiment in red ink, let dry. Adhere this into the center of the inside back of the card. Outline the white cardstock with a fine point silver metallic pen, let dry.

15. In the meantime assemble the five flower clusters for the front bottom of the card. Take a black brad and put it through the center of the red glittered flower. Add the white flower behind the red. Close the brad and use tacky tape to adhere it to the center of the front bottom flap of the card. Repeat this for the other four. Design Tip: Place the first one in the center the next two on the outer sides and add the reaming two between those three. This will help you with your centering and aligning.

16. Trim ribbon snugly to the edge of the card. Tip: lightly apply Fray Check to the area of the ribbon needing to be trimmed allow to dry, and then trim.

Thanks for looking and happy scrapping.

~ Grace ~