What's new at The Loft - Episode 8

Welcome back!

As a reminder, The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having its first general meeting on February 23rd at the Milk & Honey Tea Room, 2092 Busch Blvd., Tampa, FL 33612. We are very happy to have Jill Haglund, CEO and Creative Director of Tweety Jill Publications as the speaker for our inaugural event. The meeting is from 7 - 8:30 PM and costs $5.00. There will door prizes, show & tell and much more. Anyone interested can reserve their spot by calling 813-404-5165 or by visiting http://www.tampabayscrapbookingguild.com/

To check out some of Jill Haglund's work please visit http://www.tweetyjill.com/.

ATC 3.6.5. Challenge

I’ve been so busy that I’m a little behind on posting the cards I've been doing for the challenge. Sorry about that.  The good news is that I’m still keeping up with making a card a day. My dilemma now though, is where to store all the cards I've made. Up until this point I have been storing them in an acid free photo box but now that I’ve filled that up I have to find something else. 7 Gypsies has an ATC system that reminds me of a rolodex tilted on its side, but I don't really want that .  Temporarily I just wanted some baseball card sleeve pages that fit into a three ring binder.  Strangely though these are a little hard to find around here. I’m not totally convinced these would work either since some of my cards use pop up dots and are thicker than a traditional baseball card, but I think it's worth a try.

The Experience so far

What I really love about making these cards is you can make them as simple or as difficult as you want.  I also like that the level of difficulty in making the card doesn't necessarily translate to a good card in my opinion.  Some of the simplest cards I've made are the ones I like the most.  Of course whether a card is good or not is a subjective argument when it comes to others who look at your work.  One may look at a card and love it, while another may hate it and that's ok. 

With that being said, I can honestly say I don't always like the cards I make.  I am usually my harshest critic and there have been a few cards that I would consider in the "do over" category.  These are cards that I wanted to do over because I just didn't like the way it turned out.  There is one in this post that I was tempted to actually make a "do over" but as my husband pointed out, this challenge isn't just about making a card everyday that has to be the best, it's about improving skills, learning new techniques and finding out what works and what doesn't.  Cards that are in the "do over" category are examples of what I think didn't work and from that I can take away new knowledge and understanding of the whys and hows, namely why it didn't work and how I could fix it.  This analyzing process has now carried over to the cards I do like. When I look at a card I like my first thoughts now become what elements do I like about this card, and why does it work?  My family has also become a great sounding board for constructive criticism.

But enough of my yammering let's move on to the cards ...


The card I created on 2/10 is called “Love”. I started this card by cutting out the background from a daily scrapbooking calendar, which included the word love. The candy hearts, small and large, were detail cut from another page of the calendar. The large heart was adhered to the red heart on the background with a pop up dot, and the smaller hearts were individually glued down as a border at the top. I ran the pink trim through my Xyron, and glued it down along the bottom edge of the card. I then used some tombow metal glue to adhere the brass XOXO to the card. C.R. 2.5

My card from 2/11 is called "The Maid of Orleans".  I was watching a rerun of a show I love called "Wire in the Blood" (originally aired on BBC) about a criminal psychologist who works with the police to catch serial killers with his uncanny ability to get into the minds of victims and the killers.  In the episode I was watching the killer was a religous fanatic and had delusions of divine influence to kill victims as a means of cleansing them of their sins.  Many comparisons in the episode were made to Joan of Arc. Bing! Somewhere a light bulb just clicked on, and I immediately went online in search of a picture.  This portrait I found online of Saint Joan inspired the rest of this simple concept.  I started by cutting a background from some purple diamond patterned paper, and then piece cut the portrait and adhered on top.  Next I printed out the french spelling of Joan of Arc's name, along with a nickname she was known by and glued it onto the card.  to me this is an example of a simple card that works.  C.R. 4.0.

My card from 2/12 is called "Sweep".  I love the winter Olympics because it's generally the only time I usually get to watch curling.  Growing up in the north, I used to think curling was a rather ridiculous sport, but then I watched a movie called "Men with Brooms" which made the sport look rather exciting.  Of course in movies, even something mundane can be made to look exciting, so when some real curling showed up on late night tv one night I decided to check it out and see if this sport could really be that exciting.  I won't lie, the real curling match wasn't as dramatic as the movie, but I did find myself getting into it.  Once I understood the rules I gained a real appreciation for the skill it takes, and the strategy involved.  The 2006 games in Torino, Italy turned me into a full fledged fan.  I even turned my husband into a fan. I was so excited for the opening of this Olympics' curling competition that I took off a 1/2 day from work on Tuesday so I could go home and watch.  Since curling is generally a sport that doesn't get primetime coverage (it generally gets a lot of overnight coverage) my DVR has been working overtime  But in getting back to my card depicting a sport I love, I'm sorry to say it turned out to be one of those cards showing what doesn't work.  What went wrong?  Simply enough rock candy Stickles on top of an ink jet photograph don't work well together. Instead of creating this glossy, ice kind of look, it just smeared the ink.  Lesson learned.  C.R. 1.0

My card from 2/13 is called "One in a million" and was very simply made by cutting the background from some cute Bisous PDQ paper, and then detail cut the flower from the reverse side and glued on top.  At the top I added the title cut from some Theresa Collins paper.  I love these double sided papers from PDQ because they are so versatile.  C.R. 4.0

For 2/14 card I obviously chose a Valentine's Day theme.  My card is called "To My Husband".  To make this card I started by spraying the background with scarlet Glimmer mist.  I then printed the personal sentiment in a fun, heart filled font on a piece of white cardstock and roughly cut it out a little smaller than the card size.  Next I took a distress tool to the edges of the cardstock.  I then sprayed the printed white cardstock with vintage pink Glimmer mist.  Once dry I colored in all the hearts on the words with a red Zig marker.  I then inked the edges of the cardstock with red brick Distress ink.  This was then glued on top of the card, and embellished with a gold heart button with the shank cut off.  A simple card to make and I'm happy to say my hubby loved it.  C.R. 4.0.

My card (sorry for the poor picture quality) from 2/15 is called "Twelfth Night" and was created

by cutting the background from some cute Jennie Bowlin ledger paper.  I then detail cut the image of the woman from a free collage sheet I found on the internet.  The image was in black and white so to give her some colored I added my Stencil Collection pastel chalks, and some Gelly Roll Star pens. Next I hand wrote the quote from Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night and then embellished with a red butterfly I cut from some Tweety Jill collage paper.   C.R 3.0



My card from 2/16 is called "Truly Adore You" (sorry, I'm not sure what happened to the bottom of the photograph) and was made by cutting the background from my daily scrapbook calendar and adherering it to the card.  I then detail cut the lady from my Tweety Jill collage pack and glued her onto the background.  Next I cut out the title from some labels to a scrapbook page by Teresa Collins.  Lastly I embellished with a few light pink self adhesive pearls.  C.R. 4.0




Update on Daughter #1's bedroom redecoration

After we finished painting the upper portion of the room, I had a lot of touch up to do.  I spent a few hours on Saturday doing that.  Sunday morning I went out to my Mom's and took her out for a Valentine's Day brunch and when I got home, hubby and I began the task of putting up the new wallpaper on the bottom half of the room. 

Since we got such a late start we were only able to get one wall completely done and part of another wall.  This was also due to some issues we were having with the new paper and the old paper we laid it on top of.  While putting the new paper on top of the old paper we noticed that in some places it was causing the old paper underneath to bubble, even though the previous paper had been smooth to the wall before we started.  This was driving us nuts because we thought we were doing something wrong in not being able to smooth out the new paper.  It was in our frustration that we pulled the new paper down and realized it was the paper underneath that was bubbling.  We tried to work out this problem several different ways but finally we gave into our frustration and just put a new piece of wallpaper on top of the old and decided to live with the bubbles.  Besides the bubbles we were bothered by the fact that the old paper underneath was showing through more than we expected.  However  since we were most likely going to be painting the new paper (color to be determined) we didn't stress it too much and moved on.

The paper we chose is a paintable paper that we got at Lowe's that looks like Wainscoting.  Here is a close up of the pattern.

This is pre-pasted paper and after we began putting it in the water to activate the paste we also noticed that the lines had turned almost brown.  We weren't happy with this either but as mentioned before we were goint to paint over it so it didn't really matter.  Once we finshed the putting up the small amount we had done, we decided to stop and wait until it everything dried to see how the paper looked.  After a few hours we went back up to check on the paper, and we were pleasantly surprised at how good it looked (below).  We are hoping to have the rest of the paper up this weekend.

I always look at redecoration projects in two parts, the work and the fun.  Work is the prep, painting & wallpaper, and the fun is new bedding, furniture, accessories.  The work is almost done, and then the fun can begin. Of course once this project is done then it's on to the kitchen. 

Well I'm off for now.  Feel free to leave your comments.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!