Little Stamp Ornaments Freebie tonight.

I'm just on a freebie roll! I was working away on my traditional book today when INSPIRATION hit me. I am working on last year's Christmas layout. I decided to make a free form Christmas tree out of a green yarn stitched onto the page. Then I wanted some sort of ornaments. I was looking around at my collection of odds and ends and I came upon some old Christmas postage stamps. Now what to frame them out with?? I found some little tiny paper stars that I'd picked up on eBay for a 4th of July page. I used some ModPodge (best stuff ever!) to decoupage the stamps onto some white cardstock and then the white and red stars onto them as frames. The only drawback was that I had a hard time framing out the best parts of the stamps with the star's shape, like on the stamps with Mary and baby Jesus, it's hard to get both into the center of the star. They dried very quickly, so I cut them out and to dress them up I wrapped a little bit of decorative wire around them. I also used the wire to "hang" them from the tree on the paper. I wish the layout was complete, I can't share it with you until it is!

In celebration of this wonderful idea, I've created basically the same thing for you, except that I warped the stars a little when I wanted to get a little more of the picture into the frame, and I made them with glitter. Oh, and just because I love you all so much, I made 4 Love stamp ornaments. These are made with scans of actual stamps, some are American and some are foreign.

To download the ornaments, please click here.

A fun idea for a page

I am trying very hard to catch up on my traditional books. I am working right now on last summer's trip to Nebraska. I had so many great pictures (I took pictures, both of my sisters took pictures and my niece took pictures), but only wanted to do 1 2-page layout, also, some of my sister's pictures were pixelated when I printed them. So I chose the best pictures and had to scrap the rest. But now that I'm almost done, I needed a space filler. The title of the page is simply "Nebraska" so I came up with the idea of using an outline of Nebraska as a frame for a picture collage. This is what I came up with:

I cropped the pictures tight and tried to get as many in as possible. Then I use simple white lines to outline them. I then used my photo editor's instant effect option to great an embossed look on the white lines and the black outline of the state. I really like it. I'll cut it out and mat it in paper matching the rest of the NE layout. I will post it when I finish.

Brainstorm of the century!!!

Okay, so as you all know, I'm a traditional scrapper as well as a digiscrapper. I'm pretty current on my girls' books, which are digital, but I've let myself get behind on my traditional book, the one I keep for myself. Right now I am working on a layout from last summer's 4th of July. I was really impressed with myself when I decided to try sewing my pictures onto their matting, and then I was really pleased when I tried adding some star shaped sequins. It all turned out so cute! Then I sewed large arcs onto the background, finishing each one off with a mix of sequin stars, hoping for a whole "fireworks" appearance. The next big idea was that I took 1 inch plastic letters to and added rhinestones in red, white and blue. Thank you tons to my friend, Raynette, who told me to go buy stickles to fill in the gaps. It turned out soooo cute! But I was stumped for what to add to the layout to give it a finished look. I considered the torn box from sparklers, but it didn't work for me. I then thought of using black cat fireworks to add a really authentic pop (pardon the pun) to the page, but I was honestly worried about the black powder in my book. I'm not super particular about acid-free, but I don't want my book to explode if it gets slammed shut! So tonight I realized, why not make my own fireworks?? Here's the result, what do you think??

I cut red paper into strips about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. Then I rolled them around a hemp cord "fuse" and finished it off with double-sided tape. I think they look great, here are the layout pages: