Monthly Archives: June 2014

Creative Blog Tour

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It is always fun to meet new people, make new friends, and find out what people are doing! That’s exactly what the Creative Blog Tour is all about! This is an ongoing blog hop. I’m not sure who first started it, but has been fun visiting new blogs, meeting new creative people, seeing their creations, and hearing about their process. Last week, Lisa Harris, from MyKreativePursuits.com was kind enough to tag me in her blog post. Be sure to check out her blog and meet her if you haven’t already!

At the end of this post I’m tagging other people. Since this blog tour was set up to allow readers to get to know a little more about the bloggers, we were given a list of four questions to answer. So here we go:

1. What am I working on?

School Theme LayoutLately I’ve been working on a series showing how easy it is to do digital scrapbooking with Studio J free, online software from Close to My Heart! It is perfect for anyone who thought they couldn’t learn to do digital scrapbooking, or even for someone who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time learning a software program! Here is a recent video showing how easy it is to make this 2 page layout! Here are also some other layouts using Studio J.

take heart ideas square logoMost recently, I am in the middle of an unexpected project, like I am so often! In the midst of of applying to a design team, as a group, we decided that since it was a new endeavor, we would create a new website and blog. I ended up sharing the back end of building a website with one of my online business friends. There was some basic artwork needed for the website, and I worked on that as well. You can often find me doing techie things along with my more creative projects. This particular site is a challenge site, where there will be creative challenges and winners! It will be launching on July 2nd, and I’ll post the info and link then! So stay tuned.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

This is a difficult question because I find it hard to identify with a single genre. I love creating in general, and don’t like to box myself into a single type of work. Some people may feel like that makes me a jack of all trades and master of none. I can live with that, because I thrive on learning and expanding my knowledge and skills. Even within some of my projects, you’ll find variety. For instance, I do paper scrapbooking as well as digital. In card making I may create in paper and embellishments, or I may do a hybrid version combining digital with paper and embellishments. I’m not sure anyone could identify my art journaling, because it has variety as well! Mixed media – well that’s mixed, too!

Here is a sampling of some of my projects. You can click on the images, they are linked back to the posts they were in. I’m happy to say I have a better camera now, and hope my photography skills will soon improve your view of my work!

sunbonnet girl

Mixed media with paint and paper piecing.

Anchor-3

Mixed media home decor using maps.

Land of the Free

Mixed media with image transfer and masking.

Artful Adventures Kristie Sloan Always Happy Scrapbook Layout

Digital scrapbooking.

kristiesloan_20130716_vintage-seaside

Art journal page with image transfer.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

The main reason I started my website was to really urge others to give new techniques or products a try! You never know what you may really enjoy doing! Often you’ll find me telling a crazy story about myself or my family, because that’s life and who we are! People tend to take themselves too seriously! Lighten up, have some fun. Life can be too short and we should enjoy the special people around us. I firmly believe we should also take time for the creative things we want to do, or our creative soul just withers away and a part of us dies. People who spend time on whatever their creative hearts desire tend to be a little happier. I like to be happy and have fun! How about you?

4. How does your writing/creating process work?

When scrapbooking, it usually is a story that starts a page; or a photo or group of photos which I really want to get on a page and tell the story. Other creative aspects are much more free flowing in the way they come about. Inspiration can come from a color scheme, phrase, word, photo or something random. Inspiration is everywhere!

Now, I’d like you to meet these crafty bloggers and visit them on their websites:

Kelli Panique is creator of Use It Scrapbooking. Her mission is to motivate scrappers to use all the fun products they purchase! Kelli made her first scrapbook at age 14 in a magnetic album with hand drawn rainbow bubble letters for titles. She has been hoarding  collecting crafty supplies ever since. Her style (and handwriting) has improved since then and she enjoys teaching others how to get the most out of their scrapbooking supplies while telling their stories. Kelli has taught at local scrapbook stores and now is teaching scrapbooking techniques on her YouTube channel. You can find Kelli at www.UseItScrapbooking.com. 

Debbie O’Neal is the creator of Scrap Me Quick Designs and is passionate about die cut machine crafting. She shares die cut tips and techniques to inspire your own creativity and expand your die cut machine knowledge. She has been a contributor to the online die cut magazine, Die Cut Crazy; and those of us who know Debbie like to call her the Queen of Die Cutting! Visit Debbie at www.ScrapMeQuickDesigns.com

Thanks for visiting!

KS

 

School Theme Scrapbook Layout

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Although this site is about much more than scrapbooking, I do talk about it often! If you come to my site for other ideas, I hope you will see the value in the variety of things offered here. My hope is that you find things that inspire you or prompt you to want to try something new. Even if you don’t scrapbook, you can find something about a scrapbook layout that may inspire you in other ways. For instance:

  • You may look at a color scheme in a new way and use it in your next creation.
  • A layout may give you an idea for a smaller version to translate to a card layout.
  • The embellishments may remind you of stamps you could use in a new way.
  • The combination of papers, embellishments, quotes or word art may spark an idea for a mixed media or art journal page.

It’s all about the journey and having FUN! So if you see several posts about one thing or another, I urge to check back, because we’ll be on to something else soon.

Here is a 2-page layout with a back to school theme. You could even use this as a beginning and end of the school year layout, or anything in between. It was created with Studio J, using:

      • Kit: (School/Friends) Class Act
      • Pattern: (4-photo) Backstage
      • Kit Mix: 6

School Theme Layout
Join us for Studio J Live! to see pages done right before your eyes! Here is how this page was created.

Get started on your own digital layouts now!

Until next time!
KS

Teacher Gift and Project Perseverance

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Have you ever wanted to create something for a gift and thought it was going to be easy, only to find it didn’t work out quite the way you envisioned? Today is the last day of school for kids in our district, and I thought I’d create a special gift for my grandson’s teacher. It all started with something I saw online. I wish I had an idea of whose work was my inspiration, because her items were gorgeous! She had used an electronic cutting machine and cut word art from vinyl and placed it on wood she had painted black. This description just isn’t going to do her work justice, so I’ll just stop now!

Everyone raved about how personal and appreciative a teacher would be with a gift of this nature. I decided I would make do with things I had on hand. So my plan was:

  1. Paint a 12×12″ canvas black
  2. Cut a word art file to use as a stencil
  3. Paint the word art in white

Simple, right? That was the idea.

After I had envisioned how great this would be, I went down and grabbed out a 12×12 canvas, and was thinking how great it was that I had everything I needed right in my craft room. I reach for one of my new tubes of heavy body acrylic paint so that I can quickly get a good coat of paint on my background. There is no black! Seriously? I looked around to find another black, and decide it’s worth a 2 mile trip to go get the paint I want. I got to the craft store and found the paint I wanted was sale! Score! I walked out with one tube of paint and a package of sawtooth picture hangers to use on the project.

Back at home, I quickly covered the canvas with the paint. It went on like a dream, covering easily. At that point I decided it was too hot in my craft room and had to move the fan, because I needed the outlet to plug in my Cameo electronic cutter. While looking for a plug on the other side of the room, I leaned over the table, supporting myself with my hand on top of….. wait for it…. my freshly painted canvas! (Now if I would have thought fast enough, I could have made a handprint on something to use later.) Baby wipes are standard issue in my craft area, and I cleaned up nicely and hurried to fix my canvas. Whew, crisis averted.

I started my cut file and cut out of a 12×12″ sheet of card stock. Thank goodness for scrapbooking and having plenty of card stock! Oh it was beautiful when it was cut! I carefully worked and worked to remove the letters so that I would end up with a stencil. As I began looking at it, I realized that letters like A, R, P, 0, etc. needed to have little parts added back in so that the whole letter wasn’t just a solid blob of white when it was painted. Great, now how was I going to get those to just lay there and be able to stencil? Aha, I decided to use a glue pen that if I let dry first, it would make them removable, like a sticky note! I glued tiny parts of those letters and let them dry.

Finally, I was ready to start painting the stencil using heavy body acrylic to keep oozing at bay. I put it on top of the canvas, and then painstakingly inserted the little sections of the insides of the letters. I began gently dabbing in the white paint so that it wouldn’t ooze under the stencil. Some of the insides of the letters came up with pouncing my brush. Okay, I could use black paint and go back in and create the middles of letters. As I continued, I was very careful about keeping those little critters down.

The moment of truth came as I gently pulled up the stencil. Oh no! It was a mess. With all the care I had given to gently tapping in my color, it still was a mess around almost every letter. I just looked at it in disappointment. On the bright side, the white paint over the black looked like I wanted it, not took opaque. That way it had a bit of the current “chalkboard” look to the lettering. Not to be deterred from this great plan for a gift, I persevered.

Next I took out a tiny little brush and I went around every stinkin’ letter with black paint to clean up the edges! Project saved.

teacher word art canvas

Even though things didn’t work out like I had anticipated, I didn’t give up! I’m glad I didn’t, because in the end, it is a perfectly imperfect piece!

 

I bet you have a great “How I Saved My Project” story or two, and good for you! If you are the kind of person whose projects go off without any problems, hats off to you! Otherwise feel free to share a story with us! I’m sure I’m not alone with my clumsy crafting!

KS