Birthday Bash at If It's Groovy!!! Lasts until January 30th 11pm!

***UPDATE:  If It's Groovy is now on NING!  Go here to join If It's Groovy.ning.com.  Send me an e-mail if you have trouble getting on to the site: nataliescreations@sbcglobal.net*** 

In celebration of If It’s Groovy’s Birthday, I am hosting a challenge and the theme is: “Passing The Scrapping Torch”. For one randomly chosen winner, there will be a prize of really groovy scrapping papers and ephemera for your paper art addictions!

So here’s what you need to do to participate: Make a single or double page LO of any size you prefer in which two elements must be present; 1) Your LO must include embellishments made by a child or children of any age. This can include their school art or something they made at church, other groups, or a home project; and 2) Your LO must include one of the following – a) pictures of the school age scrapper(s) and you making the above mentioned embellishments, or b) pictures of the school age scrapper(s) and you doing an activity of some kind together.

I am confident that this challenge will become a fond memory page in your scrapping album somewhere! Make sure you check out my example to help you wrap your mind around how to go about this challenge!

And wait! I am hosting a bonus contest!!!! I am also having a Birthday on January 7th! Leave me a comment wishing me Happy Birthday or some other funny age related comment and be entered to win a beautiful jewelry set hand-designed and hand-assembled by yours truly! This contest will end January 31st as well! Happy Birthday to everyone who has a Birthday this January!!! To see more jewelry that I make visit my bead blog, Patriot Beads.

Have fun, and please tell all of your friends and post this challenge on your social networks and forums!!!

Natalie the Montuckygirl!

Please use the Mr. Linky tool below to submit your completed challenge projects only. I want to be able to come look at your LO and ooh and ahh!!

Make sure your include the URL for the blog or image gallery where your layout is and your name. If you do not have access to a URL of your layout, please e-mail it to nataliescreations@sbcglobal.net.

Remember, the challenge ends on January 31st so make sure you visit all the design team blogs. You can combine challenges, too! To find the rest of the challenges go to If It's Groovy. 

Here are the most recent participant's projects!!  Aren't they cute?

Jen T

Karen H.

Amy A.

Celina

Jessica J

Groovy Deb!

Christina H.















So in order of submission to the challenge there is:
1. Jen T
2. Karen H.
3. Amy
4. Celina
5. Jessica
6. Groovy Deb
7. Christina H
At 11 pm Jan 30th. PST I will be using Random.org to pick a winner from these numbers.  Good luck! You still have 3 hours left to send me your LO as of this update!
Okay,  I finally figured out how to get the image of random.org and here's our winner

Congratulations Jen T!  You have won the Passing The Torch challenge!!!!!
 and

Congratulations to Lauren! You have won my Birthday Wishes Contest!!!

A Grand Time!

When I go back to Montana in the summer.  We have a lot of celebrating to do.  My family has a lot of birthdays in June, July, and August.  My husband, daughter, and I went back in 2008 and my mom threw a Caribbean themed party.  It was right around her birthday, my nieces, and my parents' and brother's anniversaries!  Whew!

I used my Cricut Expression, Storybook Cartridge pages 66 and 68 for the marquess, butterfly from Gypsy Wanderings.  The words are cut from Gypsy Font (I believe).  I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the pink and blue cardstock.  I used Tim Hotlz to distress the embossing.  The little white flowers were on clearance at Michael's in the bridal section.  They have a pearly iridescent color. 

Anna - This is only a small fraction of the people that were at this party!!!!

A "Birth" Day LO complete with party decorations, cake, and a cute baby!

Hello,  I made this LO using my Cricut Expression, From My Kitchen cartridge page 62, and actual party confetti from my baby shower that my Mother In Law and Sister In Law held for me.  This layout is of the day Hannah was born.  I almost cried doing this layout.  I love these pictures of her.  She came out, the doctor laid her on my chest and she just looked like a porcelain doll.  She had these pink little lips and just blinked at me.  I remember saying, "Happy Birthday Hannah! I love you so much!"  So far, the best day of my life!

Niki-Ray, is that a great Birth-day or what?!!!!

Birthday Card with Balloons and Cupcake

I've got another fun Birthday Card.  I used my Cricut to cut out the card with the Don Juan card on pg 71.  I used the balloons from Stretch Your Imagination, page 60, and the cupcake is off From My Kitchen page 61. 
I used a piece transparency from Staples and the stamp is from SU!  The ink is Stayz On.  The inside stamp is from Hero Arts, sold at Michaels.

Janeen - I hope you like my delicious little cupcake!  Nikki - I would have saved you a balloon, but they all floated away! 

 

It's My Birthday and I'll Crop If I Want To!

If It's Groovy is having it's 1st Birthday in January!  I am so excited to be a part of this and I'll tell you why! There is going to be a whole week of online cropping and challenges!  Design Team Members from IIG, including me, are going to be hosting our own Groovy Birthday Bash Challenges in celebration of this awesome event.  There will be prizes!  You will want to make sure that you stop by my blog, (I'll let you know the dates very soon) complete my challenge and enter to win some vintage ephemera and groovy paper pieces that you can alter or add to layouts!
Please let all your friends know and post this announcement on any message boards or forums at your favorite hangouts!!!

I am also having a birthday, January 7th! Make sure you stop by my blog that day and leave me a comment to enter a contest to win a beautiful jewelry ensemble that I designed and assembled myself.  The ensemble is titled, "Have a Groovy Birthday!"  So on January 7th, have a piece of cake on me! You know, those nice pieces they sell over by your grocery store's bakery!  Hee Hee!  Just remember to check your face in the mirror so the family doesn't suspect anything!

My first Scrap Recipe Layout

I have decided to take a break from the current album I am working on(my husband's life up to before we met) to make a recipe scrapbook of holiday recipes I love. Here is the first page. I am also going to enter this little thing in the Just Buggin' Blog Hop Challenge.

Our Challenge for the Blog Hop is simple: Use any die cut on your project but you have to ALTER IT! That's right, don't just slap your plain old die cut on your project! Jazz it up a bit first. Your die cut can be from ANY die cut machine, it doesn't have to be a Cricut die cut.

I used my Craft ROBO to cut the words on this page. I had to cut the outline and glued four copies of each word over the outline to create a raised "chipboard" look.  I used a brownish metallic paper, so if you zoom in you can see the detail in it.  The leaves are from Michaels and I put glitter on the brown one.  I used autumn brads to keep the front attached to the back.  I went to allrecipes.com for the recipe.  The green tape ribbon is from Michaels.  The picture is downloaded from the allrecipes.com site.  For the edges I used black chalk from the Stampin Up! pastels and then glitter gel pen on the very edges.  For the paper behind the picture of the pie I tore handmade rose petal paper and chalked the edges.

For the inside of the recipe card/page I took a plain piece of printer paper and used Jim Holtz Distress Inks in "antique linen" and "vintage photo".  The edges were then curled and inked darker and then outlined with glitter pen.  The catchy phrase on the upper left is matted on a red shiny fiberous paper.  The pie was cut out using my Cricut Create with the From My Kitchen cartride and then I drew drizzles of glue and put on bronzy glitter for the caramel and used paper scraps for the pecans.  The whole project is mounted on a 6 x 6 piece of dark green textured cardstock.  The red cardstock was already round with scallops and I just cut it into quarters for the rest of the album.  The glue I used is by Scotch.  It is Quick-dry Adhesive and it is awesome.  It has a very small opening in the spout and makes it so easy to glue small items.  It really doesn't seem to alter the shape of the paper like other glues in how they make it all wrinkly and such. 

More pages to come.   Please let me know what you think of this one so far. 

Take Care, Natalie
You can start from the beginning of the blog hop here: www.scrapsketch.com

Blog Hop Challenge from All About Me and the Practical Scrapper

The Blog Hop Challenge at the All About Me blog is a combination twisty loop!  I had to make a layout describing what "Color" I am.  Then the twist was to Scrap Lift (new term for me!  At least it is legal in this sense! Ha!) one of the DT (Design Team) layouts.

For my layout I chose to Scrap Lift Mette Kallander's layout and use the color brown.

I also used this layout at The Practical Scrapper.  They challenge at their site was to use die cuts.  The letters and some of the embellishments are die cuts.

I did not have the brace/bracket template or paper, so I had to create one and trace with an exacto!  My aching finger....Anyway, I used metallic light brown and that reflected a lot of light in the picture making it hard to see the journaling which says

I am Brown-Digging in the dirt-Earthy-Planting seeds-Baking for my loved ones-Chocolate-Comforting their souls-Warmth in the home-Safety-You can trust me-Feeling the bark of trees-Woodsy-Nature's gentle hue-I am Brown

I used many different scraps of brown paper I had with different textures printed an embossed on them.  I also used Jim Holtz distressed ink in Vintage Photo.  I used various embellishments I had laying around and used my Cricut to cut out the daisies, the single brown slender leaf, and the title words.  I used a Jolee's guitar embellishment and colored the leaves with distress ink, too. I altered my photo using Photoshop Elements 7 with a sepia filter, a diffuse glow filter and adjusting the color to be a more chocolaty-brown.

Blog Hop Challenge From Scrap Sketch

Here is my layout for the Blog Hop Challenge from Scrap Sketch. 

I am finishing up a scrapbook about my husband's youth and I find this challenge was a great way to inspire me to find new ways to do layouts.  I felt my layouts were starting to get less exciting.  Most of the time I do picture matting and embellishments as well as journaling and a title.  Adding the sewn or ric rak look with the brackets was something I always wanted to try.  I really wanted to use my sewing machine but it is kaput at the moment and I will get it fixed soon.

I used Blue Canopy paper and embellishments from K and Company.  The two lower flowers were cut out with my Craft ROBO.  I had to create the notebook page as I didn't have any lying around.  I used Jim Holtz distress ink to jazz it up.  The butterfly stamp on the upper right is an EK Success and the other one is from Martha Stewart.  I cut out the title with my Craft ROBO and outlined it with gel pens.  The doily that the title is on was cut out with my Craft ROBO as well.  The whole project is outlined with the same distressed ink as the notebook page. 
Have a scrappy day!  That's an order!
Natalie

Happy Fall Card

I went to ScrapFIT and they have a 2009 Challenge Blog Owner Blog Hop.  So I signed up.  Their site's challenge is to make a "Happy Fall Card".  So here's mine. Hope ya like it!

I used a dingbat of a mother and child walking together and turned it into an image and then vectorized it.  Then I cut it out on my Craft ROBO.  Then I cut out Happy Fall on some really flimsy fall paper!  Good grief!  Well I chalked the silhouette and the outline of the title and then added gel pens with glitter and metallic specks to the edges of everything.  Can't you smell the sweet smell of the leaves as they start to ferment in the sun?  Mmmmmmm! 

This is what the inside of the card looks like.  I used the same autumn paper as the front and highlighted a leaf in each dominant color with Stampin Up! pens and used the gel pens to accent the edges.  The lower section has ribbon tape from Michaels and a felt leaf with a little blingy on it!  I live where there really aren't many trees and they certainly don't shed many leaves in the fall.  So included a pithy comment for my wonderful parents as they have many maple trees in their yard and two of them are so huge it is beyond comprehension to me!

This is a close up of the upper portion of the inside of the card.  I wanted the leaves to pop out and wetting certain papers with patterns can cause them to pop!

Here is the lower portion of the inside of the card.  I wrote the sentiment with a metallic gel pen.  I did use a pencil and a guide to make lines.  I am not one of those lucky people who is blessed with perfectly straight handwriting! 

I hope you enjoyed my card and if you have any questions or want a copy of the dingbat I used just let me know.

Thanks, Natalie