Joy of Sets--Harvest Time!

Welcome to the Joy of Sets monthly blog hop! So happy to have you hopping along with us checking out all of our “Harvest Time” themed projects! This month I knew I wanted to create a scrapbook page. We have some beautiful wheat sheaves dies that I knew I wanted to incorporate.

I started with a base of Crushed Curry because I saw that color represented in the field in front of us and I accented our photo with Seaside Spray because I picked up that tone in the sky. While our outfits have grey, I also feel that Seaside Spray has a grey undertone to the blue. I don’t always match my pages to the colors in my photos but it worked out so beautifully this time.

This picture was taken about 4 years ago and my kids have just changed so much! I can hardly believe it and I am so thankful that I have made memory keeping a priority in my life.

I took the theme of “Harvest Time” literally as I added the word right into my main title. The term harvest immediately made me think of wheat sheaves and I wanted to highlight them on my page in the Crushed Curry and golden tones.

The Gather Together stamp set was a perfect fit for my design as it has a wheat sheaves image in the set and a cute little pumpkin.

The die cut wheat sheaves are from the Autumn Essentials dies. I have really gotten my value out of this die set. If you go back through some of my posts you will see how many times I have utilized it.

I cut the word “harvest” using the Playful Alphabet dies (another MUST HAVE) out of Soft Suede card stock and stamped them with the little collection of ‘spots’ that was also in the Gather Together stamp set. And of course I used the Foam Adhesive sheets with my letters. The word also pops because it is partially layered on a strip of DSP from the In Color 6x6 stack.

The log slice image is from the classic Rooted in Nature stamp set found in the annual catalogue. I cut it by hand. The words ‘happy’ and ‘blessings’ are from the Country Home stamp set, they are a part of single stamp that says “Happy Harvest Blessings”.

The pumpkin is stamped in Grey Granite and coloured with our water color pencils in Pumpkin Pie and Old Olive. I wanted the pumpkins to be subtle which is why I coloured them with the water color pencils.

My photo is also layered on a large piece of DSP from the Taste of Good DSP stack. I LOVE this paper, I would definitely recommend investing in it.

The sentiment “So glad to have you in my life” is from the Gather Together stamp set. I finished off the page with a few Gold Glitter Enamel Dots!

I really love how this page turned out. It has all the feels of fall and harvest and when I look at the photo I have so many wonderful memories of having these pictures taken with my In Laws. And I especially love my youngest sons hand on his chest as he had a piece of gum in his pocket he was allowed to have after the pictures. Haha. I love that he is making sure its still there!

I hope you enjoy all of the projects that everyone shares this month!

You can keep going NEXT to see the fabulous Angie Mackenzie!

Create with Connie and Mary--Fall Essentials!

Welcome friends! It is officially FALL and the most gorgeous season of all. While I LOVE summer, the sunshine and heat, bbq’s and all the fun stuff, I do truly love the beauty of fall. The changing colors of the leaves, the crispy touch to the air, pumpkins and sweater weather! And I find fall one of the greatest themes to design and stamp with. There are so many techniques to creating leaves and so many fantastic products to create amazing projects like this fall sampler!

Our blog hop theme this week is Fall Essentials—so creating a sampler was a great way to include many of my favourite fall things on one project!

Have you ever tried to create a sampler? There are so many possibilities! However, the easiest way to begin is to just use 3x3 squares and decorate them as you desire. It is like creating mini card fronts.

I started with a 12x12 base of Early Espresso and layered a piece of Whisper White over top. I used DSP from the Poinsettia …..and In Good Taste and then squares in many of our neutrals—Crumb Cake, Sahara Sand, Soft Suede, Early Espresso and some regals—Pumpkin Pie and Cajun Craze.

I leaned into two of my favourite fall stamp sets Love of Leaves and Gather Together. I stole the world ‘Autumn’ from the Autumn Greetings stamp set along with the cute little leaf clusters under the word FALL.

Here is a fun tip to try with the leaf dies from the Gathered Leaves dies. This dies cut and emboss at the same time so if you take the die and press it into your ink pad before placing it on your paper and running it through the Stamp Cut and Emboss Machine it will also transfer the ink onto the paper giving you leaf a really cool two tone effect!

I love how Stampin’ Up! has so many embellishments to choose from to help bring our projects to life. The Gold Hoops Embellishments are perfect to add a little flair. I loved adding a little gold bow onto the leaf above using the thread from the Forever Greenery Trim Combo Pack.

The Elegant Faceted Gems are the perfect touch to the square below with the pumpkins.

I really encourage you to give creating a Sampler a try. Its a wonderful way to showcase a lot of products and I love having one for every season to display in my craft room. They also make amazing gifts for those who love a handmade project.

I know the other girls have some amazing things to share with you! I can’t wait to see what their ‘autumn essentials’ are! You can visit Mellisa by going BACK and check out Connie by going NEXT.

Have a wonderful Saturday!

Create with Connie and Mary--Welcome Fall!

I believe the first official day of fall is September 21st, so we are almost there officially! Unofficially, I think as soon as September ONE hits we are bringing out blanket scarves, drinking our Pumpkin Spice Lattes and crafting with all things fall colors and pumpkins! At least that is what I am doing as there has been a definite chill in the air, especially on those early morning school drop offs!

That is why this weeks theme is Welcome Fall! I hope you don’t mind but I am on a scrapbooking ROLL so be prepared to see another page layout this week from me!

Out of all the seasons, crafting and home decorating for Fall and Halloween, are my absolute favourites! I especially love making layouts because there are just so many awesome ways to stamp and cut out leaves. This page looks so crisp with the white background and the medley of leaves, pumpkins. leaves and wheat sheaves.

For the color palette I cut or stamped leaves out in Crushed Curry, Soft Suede, Crumb Cake, Old Olive with Mossy Meadow edges, Cajun Craze with Merry Merlot edges, Crushed Curry with Merry Merlot edges, Terracotta Tile and of course, Pumpkin Pie.

We have so many fantastic options for fall creating! I used the Love of Leaves Bundle, Gather Together Bundle and the Autumn Essentials dies from the Handmade for You catalogue. I did sneak in one retired leaf too as I just can’t part with it…can you see it?

Notice that big leaf on the left? I cut it from the Festive Felt and then spritzed it with a mix of Crushed Curry and rubbing alcohol. I quick blast with my heat tool and it was dry.

I wanted to create sort of a fun boarder running underneath my pictures with all my favourite fall images, leaves, pumpkins and wheat sheaves. When I was mixing two colors together, like on the green leaves, I stamped in Old Olive first and then used a finger dauber in Mossy Meadow around the edges. I used the same technique with the Cajun Craze, Crushed Curry and Merry Merlot leaves. And I want to give a shout out to Merry Merlot, its definitely getting a good work out in my craft room as it is perfect leaf tone!

I added in a little splatter with Crushed Curry ink and my Water Painter across the background of both pages. I love the feel it gave, softening up the crisp white a bit.

This page had so many highlights with the leaves and pumpkins that I found it didn’t need much in the way of embellishments. I bit of Bumblebee Gingham ribbon and some Gilded Gems were all I added to this page.

I like to create little focal points on my pages, I often say “Its all in the details”, which is reflected here with the ‘friendship’ and ‘So glad to have you in my life’ areas. I used the same maple leaf on each, with a gem, and twine to create continuity between the pages.

I hope you have enjoyed my fall pages! I will probably have more to share with you over the coming weeks so make sure you check back! And if you are in Canada and need to shop for any supplies you can follow the link on the side bar to my store!

If you are starting here on our blog hop you can go BACK to see what Melissa has designed for us this week and NEXT to see what Connie has created for us! Thank you for hopping by!

Around the World on Wednesday--Tag Team!

Hello Friends! Welcome to another Around the World On Wednesday, we are so happy to have you hopping along with us as we explore TAG TEAM projects! I immediately knew that I could take a card design and great some other projects with similar elements.

I have been doing some Mystery Card designs with my team lately as a way for us to create together even though we can’t be together! So this was a design I came up with for our last team meeting.

The strip of DSP is from the Plaid Tidings collection and my card stock colors are Smokey Slate, Soft Suede, Whisper White and Crushed Curry.

The large maple leaf is stamped in Pumpkin Pie and then I took my Water Painter and brought the ink from the edges inside for some easy breezy colouring. You can find this image in the Gather Together which is a returning favorite in the Handmade for You catty. You will need to do this step immediately after stamping. Since I had ink on the brush I flicked it across the back ground for a little spray of color.

Happy Fall Y’all is from the stamp set Banner Year along with the little tiny leaf. I added in some Linen Thread, Bubble Bee Gingham ribbon and the Champagne Rhinestones.

So this card was the first element of my ‘Tag Team’ idea…sometime cards are the best jumping off point!

I knew that I could take the card elements and create some tags to use on some treats that I wanted to give away! I stamped the leaf in same way, colouring in the image so it felt a little more solid. I kept the sentiment in its original form, on my card I broke it into two lines using the Soft Suede marker, and I punched it out with the Classic Label punch.

I used a different ribbon as I am really embracing the USE IT UP mantra! I kept the Champagne Rhinestones and a couple banners from the Plaid Tidings DSP.

I really hope you enjoyed my take on TAG TEAM, I can’t to see what the rest of the team has came up with. You can hop forward to see what Tricia Butt’s has created for us!

Create with Connie & Mary--Thinking of Fall!

I will admit, as much as I don’t want it to be so, there is a little fall chill in the evening air! I am so blessed to live in a part of the world where we experience 4 distinct seasons. I love summer so much, but the beauty of fall is just spectacular here in Alberta. I love when all the leaves start to change and that is what influenced the design of my scrapbook page for this weeks theme—Thinking of Fall!

I love this photo of my two friends Donna and Karina. For the past several years we have worked together to offer 3 large group events each year called Creative Day Getaway, to local demonstrators and stampers. We are hosting our 20th event this September so I thought featuring them on this page was perfect!

I used a really fun and easy watercoloring technique to create these leaves! Something similar was shared on the Stampin’ Up! Instagram page recently as well. I love how our Stampin’ community shares and inspires each other!

I chose the colors Cajun Craze, Rich Razzleberry, Merry Merlot and Pumpkin Pie. You will need a piece of water color paper, the large Water Painter Brush (I used the same one moving from light ink to dark ink), a Stampin’ Spritzer and the Stitched Leaves Dies.

Start by spritzing the water color paper with water and starts adding in your color. It may look a little weird but after you spritzer it one more time at the end and either let dry or use your heat tool it blends all the colors together. Cut out your desired leaf shapes for your project.

I also wanted to play off of the grey tone in the Plaid Tidings DSP with the photo mat and some grey leaves. The photo mat has little leaves stamped on it in Smoky Slate ink to coordinate with the paper. The stamp set I used is Banner Year, don’t overlook it at the back of the Handmade for You catalogue! pg 65! It has tons of potential!

I used the old school Rock’n Roll technique on my grey leaves. Stamp them in Smoky Slate and then ‘roll’ the edges in Basic Grey Ink.

I also pulled in the large maple leaf image from the Gather Together stamp set for some background stamping. And I love the stitched look of the leaves so I decided to use the Hippo & Friends dies to cut out the sentiment with a stitched detail.

When I am creating scrapbook pages I find the magic is all in the details. Adding in different threads, textures, embellishments, layering stamps and colors. This little corner is a perfect example!

If you are in Canada and want to recreate this page you can order all the supplies from my online store! Just click below to head right there!

Thanks for hopping along with us this week as we are wrapping up August and heading into September. You can go back to see what Melissa has made if you are just joining in here or continuing hopping forward to see what Connie has designed! See you next week!