Four Year Old Princess

Happy Monday Everyone! I am so excited to show this layout to you. Like all of the layout I show you on Mondays this was inspired by a sketch from Liz over at The Scrappiest Blog. This weeks sketch was so much fun to create from. Though as I have said before I usually am not inspired by geometric shapes. I found this block style paper and got completely inspired. I was influenced by challenge from an online cyber crop over at Scrapparie.com. This challenge was to make your own patterned paper.
This is a photo of my sweet daughter licking the bottom of her candle from her birthday cake. Though the lighting in this photo is a bit off I love the photo itself. My daughter has been asking me to make her a pink page so I decided to do it monochromatic style with some influence from an Scrapbook News and Review publication call for May.

Journaling: (done in a pink Stampin' Up! marker)

Trinity is four years old. You call everything and everyone "Poppy" and you always have a "NooN" idea. You love to dance to Hawaiian music and practice rhythmic gymnastics. When in trouble you always give big hugs and kisses to get out of it. You are very expressive and have an explosive personality. You love to sing your own little made up songs. You zoom everywhere, my little social butterfly.

Ok so lets get rock'n on this description... it is going to be a long one!

Background: I started off with a white piece of 11 1/2" x 11 1/2" cardstock. Now I know it might be hard to believe but I did not have a light piece of pink patterned paper for this. So I created one. I know I said this was a monochromatic pink layout but ... hang in there here is what I did to create a pink bubble texture on this white cardstock. Note: Protect your counter and table by placing down a craft sheet or a protective table cloth.

1. I took a medium sized flat kitchen container about 9"x 7" and about 2" deep.
2. I added one cup of warm water
3. I added 1/2 a cup of liquid dish soap.

Yes yes I know ... you are thinking I am crazy on this one... stick with me here. I got this idea from a Crop Suey video. So you now have a dish with water so soapy you can wash dishes for a week. I then added several drops of red food dye.

4. Gently mix this in together.
5. I took a straw and blew into the water throughout the dish till they are about to over flow.

This created massive amounts of bubbles. Word of caution. Please ware eye protection...the bubbles pop and can get in your eyes. Once you have an almost overflowing dish of bubbles...

6. Take a paper towel and wipe it over the bubbles without touching the water at the bottom of the dish. This is to test the color of your water.
7. Let it dry. It will not take long and this will show you the true color of the water. Do not pop the bubbles on the paper towel either. Let them sit and pop on their own.
8. Add more color if you need too. Or water to lighten it. If you need to do this step test it again.

Once satisfied with the color then you will want to repeat steps 5 and 6 over and over (with the cardstock not the paper towel) till the paper is covered with the bubble texture. Try to add another color if you want to. Play around with this I loved it. I felt like my Mother was about to scold me not to blow bubbles in my soda, like when I was a kid. I even let my children play with this when I was done.

Taking a dark pink polka dot paper from Cosmo Cricket's Girl Friday line. I cut it into 4 - 1 1/2 " strips and punched one of the long sides with a Martha Stewart scalloped edge punch. I then adhered them to the back of my white bubble splattered cardstock. Making my finished edge 12" x 12". This also left me over 1/2 a sheet of the polka dot paper to use else where on the layout.

The next three layers were two DCWV (Die Cuts With a View) papers and one more of the bubble sheet. The back square layer (a medium pink) was cut at 9 1/2". The bubble square was cut at 9" both were then punched with a Martha Stewart edge punch. The block print patterned paper was cut at 7 3/4" and then gently inked with a pink. Center each layer on top of the other an place it off center and closer to the bottom of the large bubble background.

The Photo: This was printed as a 5"x7" and I cut it down to be a 5" square. I backed it with a square of the dark pink polka dot paper. Here is a tip. Knowing I wanted a punched edge only on one side I cut the height of the paper first. I had a piece 5 1/2" high by 12". I punched one of the 5 1/2" sides with my edge punch I used around the background paper. Then I measured and cut it square so I was left with a 5 1/2" square with one side punched. I did it this way because the edge punches cut off about 1/4" - 3/8". Punching first let me cut the width of this piece exactly the way I wanted it.

I embellished this photo with some glitter rub-ons on the corner. For one reason. My wonderful daughter had already stained her shirt and you could see it... so a rub on here and a rub on there. Tada! no more stain.

Embellishments: I used some glitter and bling pink flowers to be the main embellishment focus. I backed them with excess papers and cut them out. Then I also used a couple of Prima flowers to do back them also. I added some Prima bling and a some glitter rub-ons. As I was layering them up in the corner I decided to save a few of the small glitter flowers and one of the large ones to embellish the title.

The Title: The "FouR" was created with Colorbok chipboard covered with DCWV paper. I then glitter glued the different shades of pink in the patterned paper with pink and iridescent glitter glues by Studio G. I sanded the edges and colored it with a pink Stampin' Up! marker.
I stamped the "Year Old" in black on the excess bubble paper and colored it in with a Stampin' Up! marker and added iridescent glitter glue. I popped these up with pop dots.
I added the rub-ons thorough out the page and doodled on the flowers with my black fine point marker to tie in the black in the rub-ons and title a bit better.

I am all about making my own stuff I love how unique it makes my pages... either when I am making paper or creating my own embellishments.

Well thanks for hanging in there with me... phew! That was a long one. I hope you have the time to play with this extremely fun bubble technique! Let me know how it turns out!

I would love to know, in the spirit of creating my patterned paper it made me wonder if any of you have you ever created your own and if so how?

Swingin' In Style

Good Morning... or evening or what ever it is to you at this awful time of the day. I have been up all night ... by accident... scrapping and lost track of time. HEHE I do that way to much.

Here is my newest one of the kiddos. I have to admit though I am so far behind in my scrapping that this one is from 2006. These are some my mother took of the kids. *wave* hi MOM! She is a wonderful photographer for family shots though this day was just some candid at the park. I had to run to someones house for a bit and she snuck out her camera and went to town. I love these pics. My kids are swing freaks. No matter what they must hop on the swing if there is one in sight.

This LO was based on the Single page sketch contest over at Coordinate Collections. I cant wait till next weekend. They are hosting a cyper crop and it is my first one I want to attend. Not quite sure what to expect accept to get some layouts done... hehe. The theme is March Magic... so I need to go searching for some pics.

Journaling says:
"My babies love to swing! Tristan and Trinity took advantage of MeMaw and her soft heart getting her to push them for almost an hour."

Swingin' In Style Details:
Background: This is a DCWV paper from their spring stack it has the blue boarder and the yellow scalloped print all in one sheet. I took my orange iridescent glitter glue and went along the scalloped edge to give it some sparkle.

Top Left:
This is a wonderful cluster I just love the complimentary colors of the blue and orange. I have taken a coordinating floral paper and cut it to anchor the pictures from above. As if they were swinging from it. I put iridescent white glitter glue on the blue flowers in this pattern. I love making the cheaper paper look rich by adding glitter or chalk to it. This was backed with a off red/coral color cardstock.
The ribbon is the grosgrain and the orange glitter is a strip of paper from the coordinating boarder paper. Love that! I just added the orange glitter glue to that orange strip.
The journal box is a shape from the cricut. I just cut it out one size smaller for the yellow cardstock then for the coral patterned paper. I edged, doodled and wrote on the yellow cardstock with a light blue marker.
The flourishes are from the cricut also cut out of blue cardstock. I stamped them with versa mark and heat embossed them with a clear powder. I added a blue floral rub on and the little blue flowers I cut out of a boarder that was on the coordinating boarder paper.
The large flowers are prima and the brown and blue are cut with the cricut and each petal rolled around an ink pen.

Bottom Left:
The ribbon type coral color paper was cut from a coordinating paper and then I added glitter glue to the dark coral stripe along the top and bottom. I added some rub-ons to this cluster and the bird is from the cricut. I cut it and the wing out of brown cardstock, the floral paper from above and the blue cardstock used in the flourishes listed above. Then I took and layered the different elements of the bird together. I added rub-ons and the flowers are the same as above also. I have the location and the date journaled up the left of the pic of my daughter.

Bottom Right:
The matting of the large pic is brown cardstock stamped with versa mark ink and then punched with a scalloped heart boarder punch. I layered a yellow cardstock in there and topped it off with the coral scalloped strip I cut out from the coordinating boarder paper. I raised the photo with foam squares.
The title was from the cricut and was heat embossed just like the flourishes in the Top Left closeup. The Flower cluster here is a little different the bottom layers were part of the patterned paper I took the coral ribbon from. I added a bottom layer flower of a dark coral from that same sheet and cut the yellow petals out along the inside coral layer so I could raise and roll them up. The inside coral layer I glitter glued with the orange iridescent glue. Then it is topped off with a similar flower cluster as the others.

Thank you so much for viewing. Please leave me a message so I now if this is helpful or how you liked it. May your Wednesday be full of wonders.