Thursday, September 1, 2016

SIWAS 2016 09/September Challenge/BLOG HOP 1999 by Prince


Scrap it With a Song (SIWAS) has a special BLOG HOP this month!

Since we are a music inspired challenge blog, each of us chose a song from Prince or David Bowie repertoire and made a project inspired by that song.
 
See the list below. Look at each designer's project AND leave her a bit of kind feedback in the comments section of her post. Remember to click on through to every designer on the list. The list is repeated on everyone's page, so you shouldn't get lost along the way! After you've visited and commented on each blog, just don't forget to leave a comment on the SIWAS page for a chance to win a pretty awesome prize! 


Blog hop list: PLEASE CHECK ALL THE LINKS/THANKS ;)

back to SIWAS to leave the final comment
  • one random winner who comments on each of our designers' posts post will receive a gift card of €7 kindly donated by our sponsor Avec les mains 
  • BUT wait - another special prize is waiting for you! choose any of the song used by our DT members and make any kind of paper project inspired by that song, make a post and link back to this post. Then link up your entry in the linky tool at top right of the blog. A random draw entry will win... 
this month all these great goodies kindly donated by our DT member Astrid

Remember that you can make more than one project by choosing different songs: just make a separate post and leave a separate comment for each of your entries. Each entry puts your name in the drawing.

Thanks for hopping along with us! We hope you will have fun and be inspired.

We can't wait to see all your amazing projects! 
The hop will be running all the month, so you have until September 30th 11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time to comment and/or get your entries in!
~~~
 HI CRAFTY NATION, Melody, SIWAS design team member here with my project for the SEPTEMBER BLOG HOP challenge...Hope you enjoy and have fun visiting each member's page to see how the song they chose inspired their creativity!
PARTY-like it's 1999
This layout was inspired by the late, great artist Prince. His song 1999 was a favorite of mine during my high school years and I chose the title 'party' to label this glittery page. Three cards were watercolored and thanks to the white on white embossing (Close To My Heart), feathers, criss-cross and heart patterns were revealed after applying spritz and watercolor. I had really been wanting to try this technique and absolutely love how they turned out.

The four corners have brads (also notice the white arrow brads on the glitter silver cutout arrow) which actually help hold everything down. ((not sure this happens to any of you, but glitter pages don't hold the sticky well...HINT, I used a filing board and scrubbed away the glitter and put a glue dot down to assist in adhering these cards to the glitter page!)) 

I picked up some of the water colors using like colored paper and created a slight diagonal underlay-ment with torn edges, also with a bit of washi tape to draw focus to the picture of my girl who loves to try new styling techniques and so happened to put rhinestone gems on her lips-definitely a PARTY going on!!

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

SIWAS 2016 08/August Challenge Better When I'm Dancing by Mehgan Trainor

I chose this song for my pop song for the design team because I like the beat and have always enjoyed the Peanuts cartoon. My inspiration came from my daughter who absolutely loves to dance. Her desire for her senior pictures was to have a pose with her first car, a 1970 Chrysler, that she called Daisy! A shout out goes to photographer, CJ, who went all over with us to get some great shots that I used in a digital layout for the yearbook.

SIWAS 2016 07/July Challenge 7 Years by Lucas Graham_Catching Up 2

For July, the SIWAS challenge was the song, 7 Years by Lucas Graham, which made me think of my children when they were younger and now that they have grown (the youngest is 18), I can say 'what a blessing it is to be their mom.' The captions state 'my inspiration' and 'the future.' The paper is American Crafts/PLAY jump rope, various brads and paper flowers, finishing the layout off with embellishments from Close To My Heart. I especially love the shiny, metallic copper color!

SIWAS 2016 06/June Challenge Staring At The Sun by Mika_Catching Up 1

The SIWAS challenge for June is the pop song Staring at the Sun by Mika. My hubby and I were able to get away to the mountains for an extended get-away with some friends. The super nice part was being able to ride the motorcycles while in the Ruidoso and Cloudcroft area.
The paper is from Close To My Heart and I really like the way this layout worked out...free-styling! I wanted muted colors and tones and one of the ways I achieved this was with overlays, many with gold print designs and inspirational wording. I also added a compass stamp, inked with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Pumice Stone. A couple other features are ribbons and a glitter sticky arrow. This is one of my favorites so far!!

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

SIWAS 2016 05/May Challenge Best Day of My Life by American Authors

Scrap It With A Song May challenge pop song - Best Day of My Life by The American Authors

The polka dot paper with silver glitter accent was the whole reason behind this paper selection and I just had to use it somewhere! Most of the other paper is from Basic Grey Periphery pack and it was perfect for the additional challenge collaboration. I especially like the four different brads used on the corners of the mom/daughter pic. I threw in some washi tape from the Tim Holtz ideology Passport collection. BEST DAY are glittered print Thicker letters. Most everything was inked on the edges and I added some sparkles glitter on the script at the bottom of the background paper to continue to draw the eyes through the overall layout. I really liked this dual project. I plan on 'decorating' with it at the graduation celebrations over the next two weekends.

///copied from SIWAS post/// - This May, our daughter will be a high school GRADUATE as well as graduating from our local junior college. So proud! It's definitely a BEST DAY, inspired from the pop song 'Best Day of My Life' plus in collaboration with ChallengeYOUrself mood board #29, I went with the soothing colors of green and blue and added some flower embellishments. I especially like the peacock feather stamp that went well with this layout. The small pic is of me and 'baby' girl when we were both about 18 months old (30 years difference) and on a few other occasions. So happy for her to begin the next part of her journey. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 24, 2016

SIWAS 2016 04/April Challenge Circle of Life by Elton John

Wow! If time doesn't seem like it isn't flying by, I am not sure what planet you are living on!! I guess I am pretty in tune to time going by fast because our baby girl is about to graduate from high school in May and there is plenty going on around here.

That being said, my design for the Scrap It With A Song aka SIWAS challenge for April is complete and even my grandbabies are verifying that time is runnin' by at a quick rate of speed (ZOOM) and we have grandchild number six here and that's how we spent part of our spring break.
Meeting sweet baby boy Asher and of course, we think he is t-o-t-a-l-l-y adorbs!

So basically this layout was an inspiration from Laura Whitaker design layout sketch (see my not so great pic BELOW of how I interpreted it), -me definitely taking some liberties regarding placement. The SIWAS pop song challenge was Elton John's Circle of Life. And trust me, the Disney Lion King DVD was played generously, make that over-generously, in our home while our 5 children grew up, so this well-known song resonates with me for sure. AND how easy it was to envision our young and little grandsons being the perfect example of a Circle of Life scrapbook page!

The paper that started it all was a black background with the white chevron line pattern (purchased from Tuesday Morning, 25 pages of double-sided pink with white scallop design on reverse <'perfect for a granddaughter page'> by American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Plus One). I'm into chevrons, so picking up on that I continued with that play on most of the entire design, using the color scheme plus red and grey. The die cut was Tim Holtz Alterations Chevron and the scraps from those cuts were ran through the Xyron create a sticker tool, and used as accents throughout. I already had the heart cut-outs and perfect to include since hearts are demonstrative of the title #GRANDSONLOVE - a hashtag I also use on my Instagram & FB posts. The letters are chipboard white with silver lines from Thickers (purchased at Tuesday Morning, also Amy Tangerine). I used a variety of washi tape as well. The polaroid style mini prints are of big brothers to the new baby/top left, the youngest tribe member/center, and cousin/bottom right, all with a stick-on trim element in red to accentuate each photo. The pics were from my phone during our visit-so to get a quick print out, I used my phone app and sent wirelessly to the Instax Printer (love this technology age we live in)! Hope you enjoy!
What would be your Circle of Life inspiration?

Friday, March 18, 2016

SIWAS 2016 03/March Challenge Angels by Robbie Williams


To all my fellow blog land people, good day!
I'd like to share with you, the March challenge from SIWAS. The Scrap It With A Song challenge of the month was inspired by the Robbie Williams' song Angels. In the song there is a verse that says "life won't break me". I designed this digital layout for my daughter's dance program book. She had experienced a very difficult year after losing a very close friend to cancer and I am proud of how she composed herself during this time in her life.

<<Never Give Up! forever in our hearts-we love you Tori>> 

I scanned in two components after using the Tim Holtz Alterations Picture Wheel and Filmstrip Frames dies. Then, using Photoshop layers, I placed various pics (photo creds: angela-nicole, cj, joni & matt) in the frame slots of the picture wheel and filmstrip to create a unique, personalized advertisement, DANCER 'shout-out' page.

Happy crafting to all the creatives out there!

SIWAS 2016 01&02/January & February Challenge Honeymoon & Hello

My First Layout with the Scrap It With A Song Design Team

Yikes! This was for the January challenge for Scrap It With A Song (SIWAS), Honeymoon by Lana del Rey. Continue reading below to see February's challenge also (I have been slacking on the blog posts, sorry).  Both months' pages complete a full 2-page layout.


The song Honeymoon made me want to scrap pictures of when my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. He totally surprised me with a much-anticipated, first-ever 'honeymoon' getaway to Dallas and then to Maryland. When we got married, 28 years ago, we went to our cozy little apartment and hubby got his crew car ready for work and I helped pack his lunch-tuna and boiled eggs. The hubs has always been a faithful and diligent provider and worker to keep our family of seven taken care of.  I so admire him for his strong work ethic and realize that he has been a shining example for our children to look up to. I guess he wanted to really do a good, cool thing for our 25 years of marriage and he planned a getaway that was tailored to my likes and desires. We began by a run to a jewelry store prior to catching a plane to Dallas. I gave him the new wedding band in the picture and he is holding the James Avery charm bracelet he had ordered for me for you special silver celebration of marriage. 
Next was a football game and a visit to the Fort Worth Stockyards with friends-good times! Then hubby really out-did himself when he arranged for us to go to CANTON! Oh my goodness-sake!! If you know me, you know that I was in heaven for I have a deep love for all things chippy, vintage and 'the hunt' which is necessary to find those cool unique things. I could have camped out there for days, but he had a couple other things up his sleeve! We caught a plane to Maryland where his brother set us up royally in a hotel room and treated us to some Peruvian food and site-seeing, but the best of all were the two events my man had arranged for us to attend. One evening we went to My Fair Lady and the next was The Nutcracker.  
Loved, loved our special time together and what a wonderful trip!! That was three years ago and I had yet to document our trip. The SIWAS challenge of the month motivated me to put creative process into play and I am pleased to show two pages (one for January and the next for February-below) from that weekend.  I used some foil papers I picked up at Hobby Lobby. On the first page layout, I went with the feather background and implemented some winter-y snowflakes because our anniversary is at the beginning of December.

February's challenge pop song was "Hello" by Adele. I continued honoring our anniversary trip by making a second full page layout that showed pics from the events I shared above.


Obviously, dear hubby is tolerant of pics that I want to snap to document our time together, and sometimes I'll even get him smiling! I guess he thought it was a bit much to get a pic next to the life-size nutcracker... The other pic is of us in the elevator, going to the play. I chose to use the song inspiration 'hello' to caption our pictures (kinda along the lines of 'hello, big nutcracker')! I took inspiration from the design layout during a crop I attended where we were to use a Laura Whitaker full page format. Washi tape and spiral gold & silver brads add a little extra special bling. 'Hello' is a Thickers product from Tuesday Morning and the stitched circle/dot banner was a clearance item from Hobby Lobby. Thanks for taking time to get through my CATCH UP post. Happy crafting to all the creatives out there!!

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Grandson's Birthday Invite_most recent work

I spent this morning working on this birthday invitation for our cutie-patootie grandson, Maddox.
My daughter in law asked me to help her with the invitation and it was a joy and pleasure to do so. The birthday invite for Maddox was made completely as a digital document so his mommy can print them and send them out in the mail. This was my first time to use Adobe Photoshop Elements solely for a project. I typically use Photoshop and Illustrator (both programs are on an older and super slow computer), but over the holidays, I took a 10-day trial period (find it here: http://www.naods.com/ ) to become familiar with PE and learned a lot!  So much so that I ordered the new version (14) and installed it on our iMac.

What I absolutely adore about the birthday invitation above is that we stayed on the theme that we used for his baby shower...Mustaches!  Below is a (not so great) snapshot of Maddox's Baby Shower Invite, each handmade / paper-crafted using a mustache paper punch, mustache washi tape, and ribbon threaded thru the top (you learn to put certain embellishments that enhance but LAY FLAT and are not TOO BULKY because postage for that kind of pretty stuff starts costing $$$ due to the envelopes having to be manually ran through at the post office) yes, I learned the hard way on their first son's baby shower invitation that had a bow -tied and attached at the top of the invitation!

How Fun! (note: I blur out personal info before posting here...it was done purposefully!)
This is the link where I downloaded the chalkboard background a good two years or so ago. Let me mention that it is F-R-E-E! However, please respect usage limitations. This site has hi-res chalkboard backgrounds available for a minimal fee. Look around, there's some good stuff at this site (see if you find the Kombucha infographic, it's freakin' A M A Z I N G. I need to learn how to make that stuff-I hear it's good for you. Also, there is a tutorial on converting handwriting using an app called Adobe Shape into vector shapes-although it seems you must have a Creative Cloud subscription...hmm.
AND, here is my 'stache.
This is the mustache I was working with for the birthday invite. The graphic was used twice in the first pic above. I changed the color to black #000000 and resized.
Impressions by Melody / graphic design / event styling / all things funky
It's a jpeg and if you use it, give some credit back here, please & thank you... I call it the curious mustache 2! The 'stache lives on!!