Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Ms. Brightside Award

WOW! What a wonderful surprise this morning when I opened my email. My super sweet firend Kristina has honored me with a blog award! YAY! I've never gotten an award before. This is SO totally cool! THANKS KRISTINA!
In receiving this award, I am supposed to list ten things that make me happy, five pieces of trivia about myself, and then pass the award along to five fellow bloggers.

TEN THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

1. My salvation through Jesus Christ
2. The life God has blessed me with
3. My awesome husband
4. My beautful, smart, talented daughter
5. My friends and family
6. My 11 year old labbie dog, Gwennie
7. CHOCOLATE!
8. Music
9. Being able to make someone else happy
10. and . . . scrappin', of course!

FIVE TRIVIA FACTS ABOUT ME

1. I'm a genealogy buff with a whole file cabinet full of research on me and my husbands families.
2. I'm an avid reader and can devour a 400 page paperback in a matter of hours.
3. I'm an only child of a twin and have one daughter. My Dad's twin has one child a son who has one son. I think that's so funny--and wierd.
4. I love to talk to people but I'm a little bashful. I'm not usually the conversation starter, but I WILL talk your ears off if you get me started.
5. I love to sing. I'm more comfortable in a group than flying solo, but I do both, mostly at church.

I would defintely like to pass this back to Kristina because she has been one of the brightest spots in my blogging/YouTube experience. She'll be my official #6. Thank you Kristina for being my friend.
So here are the people I'm going to pass the award along to. Each and everyone has inspired me in someway, whether craftwise, encouragement, or both. Blessings on you all!
Silvia at Crafty Sil
Carlene at PinkScrapper99

Have a great day!
Tracy

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Some More Tags

Everythings turning GREEN!

We have a friend upstate who is a beekeeper, and he has been bringing his bees down here for a few years now. Huge bee condos that hum constantly and house the most delicious honey. I decided to go out yesterday and snap a few pictures of the beautiful blossoms on our pear trees and I captured some of his little honeymakers at work. Aren't God's creations amazingly beautiful!


I promised to post a couple more tags so here they are.





The first tag is done using the same Glimmer Mist technique I used on the Water Lily tag. I used a Papertrey Ink stamp for the flowers, some of my vines, and a butterfly sticker. The flowers and leaves were painted with Glimmer Mist and double layered with pop dots.

The second tag is done on watercolor paper. I used distress inks to color it and stamped the lace image with Versamark for a resist emboss. I added one of my handmade flowers, some leaves that I hand cut, and one of my dryer sheet butterflys. The flower was Glimmer Misted. Hope you like them.

A big welcome and thank you to all my new followers! I appreciate all of you.

Have a blessed day,

Tracy



Friday, March 19, 2010

Water Lily Beaded Tag

Hey Everybody!


Here are the closeups of the tag I did in my latest YouTube video. I'll be posting a couple of other tags using this technique shortly.


I've really appreciate the comments that some of you have left and I want to thank those of you who have recommended my channel or blog to others.






Have a great weekend!
Tracy

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Funny Story About My 100th YouTube Subscriber

When I started making videos for YouTube I had no great expectations that I would have any great response to my videos. I only started scrapbooking about two years ago and my first mini was made in November 2009. I'm still a newbie in a lot of ways. Part of being a newbie though is getting to surf YouTube learning from all the talented ladies who share their creations and how to make them. I LOVE to learn!


Anyway, to my surprise my subscriber count started to climb. My husband would laugh when he'd hear the e-mail dinger go off. "What number are you on now? hee hee" He totally does NOT get the scrapbooking thing but he DOES get that I DO. The number continued to climb and as it got nearer to 100 I begin to think that I needed to do something special for whoever my 100th subscriber was. Nothing flamboyant. I'm not able to buy like some of the ladies are. The counter climbed into the nineties before I could wrap my brain around what I was going to give the winner. My husband and I had to go visit some friends last Tuesday night and before we left the house that crazy counter was on 99! I was so excited thinking--"Maybe when we come back I'll have my 100th subscriber!" A couple of hours later we came home and sure enough I had a new subscriber, but . . . it wasn't just any subscriber. It was scrapaholic100! What are the chances! That was too darned funny!


I want each and every person who has subscribed to my YouTube channel AND those who have subscribed to my blog to know how much I appreciate you. My close friends are not scrapbookers so I have been able to find an outlet through both YouTube and my blog where I can enjoy your art and share mine with people who love this craft. I still have a lot to learn about blogging and YouTubing and social networking period. I have a confession. I've never even done a live chat! Aren't I sad? ;) Aahh, I digress--my point was to give you ALL a great big THANK YOU!


So . . . my winners name is Veronica and below is a picture of the little goodie package I'm sending her. I hope she likes it and can put it to use.


Hope you all have a blessed week.

Tracy

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Birthday Mini

Hey Everybody! Well . . we have finally gotten a little warm spring-like weather down here on the Gulf Coast--LOTS of rain too, but I'm not complaining. If God says we need it, then we need it. LOL
Here are some photos from my lastest mini. You can check out the video for it on my YouTube channel. I just wanted to post some close ups on here in case anybody wanted to see the details on some of the pages better.
I'm a very meticulous crafter so it takes me forever to complete a mini. Now that this one's done I have a tag and an ATC swap to make projects for before I start another mini. My husband says I need to practice moderation but that's really hard to do when you love to craft like I do. I can't blame him though. I don't have a craft room so my stuff is ALWAYS all over the kitchen table, counter, chairs, computer desk . . . well you get the picture.
Hope you like the mini.
Blessings,
Tracy

















Tuesday, March 2, 2010

A Little Spring Decor

Well, we still aren't seeing too much sign of springs arrival here, but I wanted to share a little home decor project that I made a while back. I found this paper at my local scrapbooking store (Hey Jen!) and I fell in love with it. The papers are from the Cottage Collection by Scrap Within Reach (http://www.scrapwithinreach.com/).

Jen has had this displayed at her store for a while , but I'm ready to do a little spring decorating, so I brought it home. I'll have to make her something else to put out.

Anyway, it's a really simple project. The back panels are made of coordinating paper by Bazzill. I was in a "new techniques" phase so I tried something I'd learned on each panel. Let's take a look and I'll tell you about them. You can click on the photos for close up full screen views.
Each dp panel was stitched around with my sewing machine before it was adhered to the back panel. The butterfly is glimmer misted. Like I said, I made this a while back so at that time Glimmer Mist was a "new" thing to me. The leaves were stamped and embossed, then inked in the resist embossing technique. The green flowers are Primas folded into quarters.

The cream and green flowers were made using a technique that simulates flocking. Basically you drag your paper repeatedly over the edge of something (I used my counter) until your paper starts to separate in half. You then peel the two halves apart and you have two pieces that have a rough fuzzy "flock-like" texture. I glimmer misted them and added some buttons. The leaves under the blue flower have been painted with crackle paint for texture.

The blue and brown flower was made by cutting out one of the images from the dp. I then cut slits in the center and ends of the petals and wrapped the ribbon through the slits. The huge button are made from dp cutouts also. I punched out several layers of the backing cardstock and adhered them together to make a button. I didn't have my Cropadile at the time, so I punched the center holes with a regular hand punch and tied some twine through them. They're also covered with Glossy Accents. The bird image was cut out and then inked, stamped on, and glimmer misted.



The letters were made using a technique I discovered on Teresa Manchas' blog (http://scrapthis-catz.blogspot.com/). She makes some of the most beautiful layouts and I love to scraplift her ideas. I cut the light blue center letters out with my Cricut. This technique works best with thicker cardstock. You basically take an Exacto knife and scrape it along the side of the letters to rough them up a bit. After you do this to the center letter, you adhere it to your next layer and cut around it with scissors. Then you repeat the rough up, adhere to the next layer, cut it out and rough its edges up. They are really neat looking. You can find her tutorial with photos on how to do this on her blog.


Hope this brought a little spring into your day!


I'm working on a mini, but it's giving me fits. I'm supposed to be making it for my best friend's sister. She's not really a scrapper and into all the tags and pockets things, so I need to make hers more geared toward photo layouts (she LOVED her sister's Garden Mini), but I WANT to make all those tags and pockets. LOL So . . . I just may have to make two!

Have a great day!

Blessings,

Tracy