Collage Cards- Crate Style

A few weeks ago, I received an assignment, for the Crate Paper blog, to create a project using collage. I tend to think of my style as 'collage-ish' in a way, so I was excited to try out something new. The first thing that popped into my head was to do a shabby chic style collage. So I got to work. And here is what I came up with:

This is what I did to create the background. First, I tore/cut squares from Crate's Random collection. I used papers with whites, pinks,greys and blacks in them. I adhered them to cardstock, layering them over each other as I went.

Next, I got out my Gesso. I painted over the papers to whitewash them. I tried to keep it somewhat light so that the patterns and shades would still show through.

My next step was to cut the paper into 3 by 5 inch panels. I adhered them to white card bases and stitched the edges. Finally, I added a punched strip of paper and a doily to each. And I adhered lots of bits from the Random chipboard and sticker collections.

Here is a peek at each one individually.

I'm so glad that I stepped outside my comfort zone for these. They were a lot of fun to make!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day! :)



Awesome Giveaways!

There is still time to head over to the Emma's Paperie blog and win some AWESOME stuff.  Emma's 4th Birthday bash was Saturday. There were lots of projects and the best part.... great giveaways! The Grand Prize is a $100 Gift Certificate to the store. Cindy will be picking winners and announcing them tonight. So definitely head over and participate!!

 I have a fun card to share with you. I made it using Webster's Let's Celebrate line. I still find myself reaching for this one over and over because I just adore the colors so much!

To create the flower, use a 2" Gluber. Begin by adhering the yellow trim. Add it to the edge of the Gluber, with a bit of it hanging over the edge. Pleat it as you go along until the full outer circle is covered. Repeat with the blue trim and finish with the white.

I  hadn't used Glubers before, but I think I'm hooked now! Loved how easy it was to use.

I added the flower to the card and finished it off with some gems, a sparkler and a sentiment cut from the paper. Easy Peasy!

So head over and enjoy the events on the Emma's blog. Be sure to scroll all the way through. There are about three pages worth of fun!

Thanks for stopping by today. :)
Anabelle

Emma's Paperie 4th Birthday Bash!

I can hardly believe that Emma's Paperie has been in business for four years!! Time certainly does fly!
To celebrate the big even, Cindy is hosting a birthday bash tomorrow. There will be projects, challenges and treats all day long. Be sure to mark your calendars and stop by!

Speaking of Emma's, I have a couple of things to share with you today. First up is this card using lots of colorful American Crafts Garden Cafe goodies.

I just love those pinwheel flowers. This was based off of Sherry Wright's sketch. You can see it on the sidebar of the Emma's blog.

My next project uses a mix of Lily Bee and My Mind's Eye products. I love the colors on it!

I made a matching card and gift. This would have been perfect for Valentine's Day, but it can be used anytime of the year. :)

The little paint can holds some raspberry white chocolate kisses. They are AMAZING!  I painted the Jenni Bowlin chipboard hearts and then added diamond glaze to them. The look really pretty and shiny IRL.



I adhered the bow on the card to the back of the card. It makes it easy to open and it matches the bow on the paint can.

Well, that's about it for today. Be sure to check out the Emma's Blog all day tomorrow. She has lots of new CHA stuff in. I'm sure you'll love everything she has "in store." (No pun intended, LOL)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

Webster's 'In Love'

You gotta love long weekends! We had a really nice and relaxing one, filled with visits from Ryan's friends, trips to the movies, visiting family and just hanging out. The kinds of weekends I really love. Plus, now it's already Tuesday. Only a four day week and then it's the weekend again.

So, today I have a couple of projects that I did for CHA for Webster's. They both use the new In love line. The colors are really soft and beautiful on here. I love the motifs, too. And while it's called 'In Love' and can be used for wedding or love themed pages, it can be used for so much more than that!

This first one is of my friend Cheryl and me. We were bridesmaids in her sister's wedding.

I hadn't been in a bridesmaids dress for years! We had so much fun and really felt like princesses on that day. I cut the carriage from the paper and made the flowers using my Silhouette. I added lots of Sparklers, some new trim, new gems and a new Silhouette cameo.

This next page also uses 'In Love'. I used a photo of my friend and her hubby on their wedding day.

I love the birds on the top of the cake and decided to go with that as my theme. I used some new trim here and the mini Princess Petals were topped with new gems.

So, if you like what you see and would like a chance to win a Webster's paper collection of your choice, join in on the Webster's Challenge for the month. Check out this post on the WP blog for the details. Hope you'll play along!

That's it for today! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Happy Birthday, Kimber!!!

I am so excited to be part of Kimber Mc Gray's 4oth Birthday Blog Hop today!!! Happy Birthday, Kimber!!

Kimber has been an online friend for a long time now. I just adore her work, it's always so full of color and fun details. She's such an inspiration!

Here's a birthday card I created for her:






I used Webster's Sunday Picnic on here. The trims are also new WP and I cut the flowers with my Silhouette. The little tag is Elle's Studio and I attached it to a Webster's Pin.

I hope you'll take the chance to hop to all of the other cardmaker's blogs. You are definitely in for a big treat! From here, you get to go and visit one of my all time favorite scrappers - the talented Ronda Palazzari!!! (Check out the link for her new book while you are there. It's incredible!)

If you've just stumbled upon the blog hop, be sure to head back to the Jillibean Soup blog where you can start and hit all of the posts. I'm going to sit back with my coffee and be inspired. So many of my favorite cardmakers are included in the hop today.
Hope you are enjoying your day, Kimber!! And welcome to the 40's. They say 50 is the new 30, so we're only in our 20s now. Happy, Happy Birthday, my friend! :)

And, now, for the winner of my little giveaway. Random Iteger Generator picked:


Here are your random numbers:

34 Timestamp: 2012-02-18 12:10:10 UTC


So, that means my winner is Chenguna!!! Congrats! Email me your address so I can get your goodies out to you. :)

Thanks for stopping by today and enjoy the blog hop!

Red Velvet Brownies...

Do you know that I have a board totally dedicated to Red Velvet on Pinterest? I've got it bad! I don't indulge very often (aside from Red Velvet frozen yogurt at Berri Yummi - I do that far too often), but when I do, I go all out. And on Valentine's Day, it's a given. Last year we did cupcakes. This year....Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies. I can't even tell you how amazing they are. I'll link you up with the recipe at the end of this post. First, I have a fun page to share....



This was on the Crate blog for the Paper Heart feature. I can't even tell you how much I love this line. That yellow diagonal stripe paper is one of my all time faves!



I punched a strip of it with my circle punch and made little windows for some cute little chipboard bits.



The punched circles and more chipboard and sticker bits made a great frame for the pictures. Oh, and guess what my buddy is making?? You got it, Red Velvet cupcakes! These were our pics from Valentine's Day last year.

And now, the recipe.....




The image and following recipe are from www.sweetpeaskitchen.com
They are seriously the most amazing things ever! (No, I didn't eat half a tray of them on Valentine's Day!) Run to the kitchen and make them right now!

Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

Ingredients:

■1/2 cup butter
■2-oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
■1 cup sugar
■2 large eggs
■1 tsp vanilla extract
■1 1/2 tsp red food coloring
■2/3 cup all purpose flour
■1/4 tsp salt
■8-oz cream cheese, room temperature
■1/3 cup sugar
■1 large egg
■1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 350F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 8 inch metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up two sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends. (This will make it easy to remove the bars from the pan after they have baked.) Butter the parchment.
2.In a small, heatproof bowl, melt butter and chocolate together. Stir until combined and very smooth. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
3.In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and red food coloring. Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Add flour and salt and stir until just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain.
4.Pour into prepared pan and spread into an even layer.
5.To prepare cheesecake mixture, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in a medium bowl until smooth. Distribute the cheesecake mixture in 8 dollops over batter in the pan. Swirl in with a knife or spatula.
6.Bake for 35-40 minutes, until brownies and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cheesecake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned.
7.Let cool completely in pan on a cooling rack before lifting out the parchment paper to remove the brownies.

So, that's it for today. If you'd like to be entered for the giveaway I talked about in the post below, you can enter until midnight tonight - Thursday.

Be sure to stop back on Saturday morning, as something special will be going on and I will post the winner.

Have a great day!

Valentine's Day and a Giveaway!

Lots of excitement on the ol' blog today! First, my anniversary was yesterday and I got a gorgeous bouquet of roses. Just had to share that. :) Today, I'm excited that I am being featured on the Create Blog!! I was so thrilled when I received an email from Scrapbook Trends a couple of months ago asking me to be the 'Award Winning Style' designer for the February issue. Well, they are doing a little feature about me on the blog today to go along with the magazine segment. :)

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It's a big event in our house! I always make a filet mignon dinner and tasty dessert. And there are little treats for everyone. This is my page that is in the Award Winning Style article. I journaled about our dinner tradition. One of the things that I do each year is place a little gift on the dining room chairs for everyone. Ryan is always so excited and can't wait until dinner is ready so he can run in and get it. This one has lots of Prima on it.




Speaking of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a quick little project that I pulled together today. I was organizing my scraproom this weekend and took all of my washi tape out of their packaging so they could go into their new home - a vintage glass dish. Anyway, I felt bad throwing away the 'clamshell' packaging (just learned THAT new term at CHA, BTW) so I decided to reuse it to create these little goodies.



I made them for my team at work. See those little yummies inside? They are white chocolate and raspberry kisses. OMG....they are amazing. I had to go out and buy a second bag so I could hide it and snack on them! :)I used Fancy Pants papers for this.

So, now for the giveaway. Leave me a comment by Thursday, Feb. 16, telling me about your favorite Valentine's Day tradition. I'll choose one person and will send them the February issue of Scrapbook Trends along with some goodies of my choice.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

CHA Part 2: Friends and Food!

So, I'm finally back with a few more CHA photos. It's taken me forever to sit down and edit everything. This has been one of 'those' weeks. Things keep popping up that have prevented me from doing the things I really want to do.

As I said in the last post, spending time with Jess and Cindy was just wonderful! On Monday, we left the show early, stopped for a photo with the Goofy statue at our hotel and hit the mexican place in Downtown Disney for an early dinner. The margaritas were amazing and I had the best fish tacos ever!!! We hit California Adventure that evening. We love just walking around and hanging out together. And Jess was thrilled to go to the animation presentation (her favorite thing in the world) while Cindy and I did Soarin'.





On Tuesday, we did a lot of shopping. I can't wait for Emma's to start getting everything in. We also met up with lots of friends! Some new ones....



This is Stephanie (Arty Carty), my friend from the Nook. I was so glad we got to catch up. She is so sweet and I wish we'd had more time to hang out. Good thing we can do that on the board. :)

We also saw some old friends. I still feel so connected to my old Paper Salon teammates. We've gone our separate ways, in some cases, butsomehow, we are still close (Jess and Cindy and I were on PS together....)

Here we are with Kelly Purkey. She's adorable as ever....


And we stopped by Kim Hughes' booth several times. It was adorable and we are so happy for her that her line Paper Smooches is doing so well!



Tuesday afternoon, we went to Napoli in Downtown Disney. See these Pumpkin Ravioli with Brown Butter and Sage sauce? They were unbelievably awesome!!!



Are you seeing the food trends?? LOL Then, we hit the Magic Kingdom. It was great, but one of my favorite rides - Small World - was closed!!!! Luckily, I got to go on Thunder Mountain Railroad, my all time favorite. :)

On our last day, Wed., we finished our shopping and wrapped things up. We stopped for pics with Terri Anderson and Ashley Harris. Love those girls!!





Of couse, we had to cap the trip off with lunch at PF Changs and the Wall of Chocolate!!



It really is OK to eat if it's shared three ways. Hardly any calories at all! LOL!!!

So, as you can see, it was a fabulous trip!! :)

I'll leave you today with a card that I did recently.




I used some Crate Peppermint and Emma's Shoppe here. The Pinwheel is topped with an American Crafts flower.

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great day!

Back from CHA!!

Wow! What a great trip we had. Spending time with Jess and Cindy is always wonderful. We bought lots of new goodies for Emma's Paperie and spent lots of girl time together. Oh, and we ate a TON!! It's going to take me a few days to get back into the swing of things, but in the meantime I wanted to pop on and share a few projects and pictures.

First up, are some cards I made for the Crate booth. I used the two new lines - Pretty Party and Storyteller.






I used the papers, stickers, chipboard and new tags. The colors are so fun and I love the patterns. I have so many ideas for what I want to do with these lines.
While I was at CHA, I got to meet the creative force behind Crate, Lisa. I was so excited to see my projects in the booth. Here I am posing with my cards. Yeah, I'm a dork!



Here is one of my favorite photos from the trip. We went to the Cheesecake Factory with the Webster's girls on Monday night. We laughed so much and ate some fabulous food. I love this shot, even though the lighting was horrible.



Here I am with Brandin in the Webster's Booth. It looked amazing, as always!



And, standing outside of the booth...


We ran into the Paper Crafts girls a few times. Sadly, Cath wasn't there. But, Flat Cath WAS!!




I was so glad the show was back in Anaheim. We went to Disneyland and California Adventure in the evenings. I love this picture of the three of us.



You might not be able to tell from my pics, but, we did spend a lot of time in the booths, too. I have some pics from there and I'll try and get another post up this weekend. Of course, Crate and Webster's were among my faves, but I also adored My Mind's Eye, Echo Park, Studio Calico and the new Heidi Swapp! GCD had some really cute lines and so did October Afternoon. We bought lots of goodies and I can't wait until they come into the store.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!