Challenge #187 - Frosty the Snowman (Dec 19 - Jan 1)

Happy Monday, HMITM players! It is with deep sadness that I am about to make this announcement. Due to the dwindling participation over the last year or so, we have decided to put HMITM to bed. (I'm not yet prepared to say that we are completely retiring this long-time, inspiring challenge because I am hoping that some day in the future, we might be able to revive it.) I played in this challenge for a long time before being invited to join the design team, and it's been a part of my scrappy routine for many years. I will miss the HMITM challenges and seeing all the wonderful and diverse interpretations from my teammates and our players.

Debbi

And now, onto our last challenge...

Anna-Karin here with the last challenge. At first I wrote, 'the last challenge of the year', but then I realised I had to change it to 'the last challenge. SO sad!

Since it is December and winter in the Northern Hemisphere, I thought we would do a frosty and wintery challenge. Here it is:

- Do a winter or Christmas themed layout
- Depict snow on your layout (here are a few examples: snowflakes, torn white paper hills, dry embossing, organza, paint, vellum etc.)
- Use glitter
- At least three shades of blue (but you can use other colors too)
- Something shiny or transparent

I hope you like it and we hope you have a bit of time over in this busy time of the year to play along.


Our guest designer for this challenge is Katerina Laiopoulou.

Thank you for joining us Katerina! Here's some info about her,in her own words:

'My name is Katerina Laiopoulou, I am 35 years old and I live in Athens, Greece.
Scrapbooking is a way to express myself! I started making layouts in 2008, but guest books monopolised my interest the last 3 years.

I don't limit myself to one style, but I love colours, flowers and butterflies! I love to experiment with new techniques and I am fond of fussy cutting, it relaxes me.

I love blogging too. You can see my work here. It would be all greek to you (LOL, sorry for that), but you can use the google translator. I have a passion for the greek language :-)

I ‘ve been a guest designer for Get Creative and Scrapbookers in Greece. I am so happy to be sharing these LO’s with you and be among all these talented ladies!

Thank you all!!!'

And Katerina wrote this about her layout: Snow is everywhere on this LO and that’s because I love snow! I tried to create a landscape, a small village lost in the mountains on a winter snowy day. I torn white and shades of blue paper to create the mountain hills, cut those little houses, add glitter on the roofs and snowflakes everywhere! I used a photo of me, which was taken on the way to Kalvryta ski center, where you can find lots of fresh snow, enjoy yourself and see the fabulous mountain view!



Anna-Karin: I am so sad that this is the last HMITM challenge (at least for now). I am going to miss it so much, both doing the challenges and seeing what everyone else comes up with. I knew I wanted to use these winter photos of the two cousins. Quite many shades of blue were used on the layout. I love clear elements and cut off a third of the patterned paper and replaced it with a transparency (I placed the layout on white cardstock when I photographed it, the right hand part is transparent IRL). The transparency was stamped and ghost letters were used for the title. Rub-ons were also used. Snowflakes were white embossed all over the patterned paper, then it was misted with Perfect Pearls and water and finally a flourish was stamped with Chipped Sapphire. Snowflakes were die cut from watercolour paper, canvas, vellum and aluminium tape. They were coloured with Distress Stains and misted with Perfect Pearls. Some were coated with Stickles for glitter. Extra snow was added in the form of dry embossed torn strips of vellum, Stickles was added to the top. The journaling is on a tag behind the top photo and is about how much fun they had together on this cold day.

Elizabeth:   I am so sad that this is our last challenge. I have had so much fun designing with this fun team of ladies. Will definitely miss it. This was a fun challenge to end on, Anna-Karin. Love working with blues, and shimmer and glitter just add to the fun. I must admit, I am not a 'dirty' scrapbooker, so the thought of actually sprinkling glitter onto the layout in some form or fashion just about gives me hives, so I stuck with the great letter stickers and embellishments to make it shine. (I did do glitter on a layout once, and the whole scrapbook has been sprinkled with the pixie dust over the years. :P)

 

Debbi T: This was such a fun and inspiring challenge, Anna-Karin! I love all the elements of the challenge--they all worked so beautifully together. I combined this challenge with the current challenge over at The Color Room (the blues in their palette worked perfectly with the HMITM challenge). I was being a bit lazy and used glittery letters and stickers and paper, but at the last minute, I felt like that was cheating, so I broke out the Stickles and added some glitter to my punched border. For my transparent element, I was delighted to use some old vellum that's been in my stash for about a decade!

Janet M - Loved this challenge and it was a perfect one to get another page done for a book I'm working on for pictures of our old house for my husband. These were a couple of our horses which always posed for pictures much better than the kids or the dog would.

For my snow I embossed a piece of velum that I tore and I punched out a piece of mulberry paper from a really old stash. For the something shiny or transparent - I used one over the picture and then stitched it with the sewing machine and the letters for the word day. Adding glitter, sparkles and etc is pretty easy when you have a snow picture.

I'm very sad that this is the last layout for HMITM- it's been the most inspiring place I've designed for, it's made me reach outside my normal ideas, giving me some fantastic challenges and inspired me when I have seen what everyone else creates with the same challenge. Moving on to other things will keep us all busy and I may just have to go back and re inspire and challenge myself with doing some of the old challenges again.




To play, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Challenge 186 - Celebrate Wacky December

I have a source for wacky holidays that I share with my students, and I consulted my wacky holiday calendar for December and found out:

December is Bingo's Birthday Month.
It's also Rising Star Month.
And it's National Tie Month.
The first week of December is Cookie Cutter Week.
December 5 is Bathtub Party Day!

So...I challenge you to use:
* A bingo card (if you don't have these in your stash, just google "bingo card" under Google Images, and you'll find a gazillion).
* Use something that you can tie--ribbons, twine, raffia, etc.
* Use at least 5 stars.
* Use punches or cutters or a shape templates.
* Use your imagination and whatever product you want to create "bubbles" on your page.

Aren't you glad I didn't choose National Gazpacho Day? :)

Debbi Tehrani:

I haven't been around for a while because we sold our house and moved to a new one. It's good to be back and scrapping again! I just recently started playing over at The Color Room, and I thought it would be fun to use this week's palette and sketch for my HMITM page. My husband loves the cheesy touristy photo ops, and I'm doing a whole album about that called Poser. This page is going into that book.

(Unfortunately I'd had my camera battery charger packed and my battery died just in time to take a picture of my layout. I therefore had to use my iPad to take a photo--not the best picture, but you'll get the idea of my layout):

Anna-Karin: Such a fun combination of items to use for this challenge!! Instead of using a bingo card, I stamped a bingo card repeatedly on the background. I tied twine to the tags and used a whole bunch of stars die cut from the same paper as the tags. For the tags I pulled out my very old Accu-Cut EZ2Cut templates and I used a punch for the reinforcer circles. Finally, I used bubble wrap and red paint to stamp bubbles on the page. Thank you so much for this fun challenge Debbi!

Janet M- What a fun and creative challenge this one is- I finally got my sewing machine unpacked and got to use it on my layout.
My five stars are on the bingo card and the ornaments, the bubbles are the clear buttons and they are tied into the layout. I also added a few snowflake stars with my stamp and embossing powder. I used a border punch for that part of the challenge.
Cute combination of stash to use this time and it really did have me searching for the elements - I loved it.

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Challenge #184 winner

A big thank you to those who played in our Mix It Up challenge! We hope you had fun using all those different patterned papers.

The winner is Kelly with her layout Happy Holidays with the Storeys. Kelly used the different papers in such a great way and the black and white plus red colour combo brought all the papers together so nicely. Fabulous Christmas tree. Here's her layout:



Congrats Kelly!!

Our current challenge is just below this post. It is a great challenge, hope you can play along.

#185 Thankful (November 21 - December 4)

Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, but American Thanksgiving is celebrated this week.

I would like you to do a layout about thankfulness. (any aspect)

plus...
3 foam embellishments
4 colors of cardstock
5 buttons
6 stickers (non-alphabet)

I hope you will take some time over the next two weeks and reflect on the things you are thankful for and make a layout about it :) We would love to see what you create. There is a link at the end of the post. Thanks for stopping by the blog!


First, here's the layout from our guest designer this month, Shaunery Wharton:

Shaunery: This was a fun challenge!! As with all of my HMITM attempts/entries, I always challenge my self to dive into my scrap box first. So here's the breakdown for everyone!

3 foam embellishments ~ oh did I even OWN foam?? After much digging and rooting around my stash, my cupboards and garage, I found a stack of foam "mats" meant for some kids craft project. I took two and ran them thru my die machine and created the flourishes. Those I embellished with Liquid Pearls. The third piece I painted over in white gesso (nothing STICKS to foam!) Then I stamped a favorite image once the paint was dry with my Chalk Ink in Lime Pastel. I then fussy cut and adhered.

4 colours of cardstock ~ into the scrapbox and found these four scraps of Bazzil. I took three strips in each colour and ran thru three different border punches. Then I layered and built up a faux "embossed" background paper with them.

5 buttons ~ actually forgot them in my original layout and caught just before uploading. Went thru the stash and found 'em! Re-photographed and uploaded properly!

6 stickers ~ (non alpha's) so my non-alpha submissive stickers are two border stickers, layered on each other. Two mini hot-air balloons, and two altered vellum sticker hearts. My "Thankful For" are made from labeling tape. I wasn't sure so...

I tucked a little tag in and listed a few things I'm thankful for.. my husband, my children, my fabulous circle of crafty scrappy friends (who won't say a single word about me spelling "Thankful" completely WRONG, TWICE) and for the "release" scrapping and crafting provides me. It was very nice working on this layout after a total crap evening after some volunteer time. Focusing on WHAT I am thankful for, setting the ickiness aside and forgetting about those who made me feel rotten that evening. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to do this challenge and for a place to set "life" aside and focus on what's important.

Janet M - What a great challenge and what a hard one to tell about being thankful for, I have too many choices , which is a good thing. I choose a picture of my four youngest grandchildren to scrap which I realized I had scrapped before but since I do books for the families, I often use the same picture.

My foam pieces are the & signs, brackets and the ice cream cone. The stickers are the banners, critters and the cupcake.

Thanks for the great challenge - I always like to write down the things that I am thankful for.



Anna-Karin: I always enjoy doing layouts about things to be thankful about. I used photos of the little one and me and a bunch of stickers about gratitude. At first I didn’t know what stickers to use, since I hardly have any stickers. I love the 7Gypsies word and quote stickers, so I decided to use those. The big title sticker was adhered to cardstock, die cut with an On the Edge die and inked a bit with Distress Inks. The remaining 5 stickers came from the same and another set of stickers. For the cardstock, I used four colours Kraft core. The four pieces were die cut into 8 hearts and I used different embossing folders for each one. The only foam embellishments I have did not at all fit with the colours of the layout, so instead I die cut three birds from brown craft foam. Buttons are always an easy thing to add (and I have a whole drawer full). Thank you for this wonderful challenge Elizabeth!

Elizabeth: So I did kindof cheat on my own challenge. :P When I was making the challenge I think I was thinking of felt instead of foam, so my butterflies are sortof felt-like but they are stuffed a little so I think there must be some foam inside. :) I had fun using cardstock instead of my usual patterned papers. I never tire of using browns and blues together, and yellow rounded it out nicely. I used a bunch of random stickers from my stash, which is always a good thing.



Fi - Again a little late with this one, things have been hectic this year as school wraps up not too mention as weekend away for me. I miss read foam embellishments for felt and for some reason I left my buttons at home so I had to make do with what I did have on hand.

3 foam embellishments - I didn't have any of these with me so I used foam dots and covered them with glitter
4 colors of cardstock - pink, orange, raspberry and white
5 buttons - I only had one of these in my stash so I used stickers and stitched them so that they resembled buttons.
6 stickers (non-alphabet)- at least I did have these with me.

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Challenge #183 winner

A big thank you for playing along with us in our guest Amy's 'Gifts' challenge!

The winner is Tory with her layout Kitten Love. We love the kitten paw prints, the glitter doodling and the sweet bouquet of flowers tied with baker's twine. Here's her layout:

Congrats Tory!

(Kelly, I tried to comment on your layout, but Blogger wouldn't allow me. Your layout is stunning! I looked for your email, because I always feel bad about not being able to comment, but couldn't find it.)

Our current challenge is below this post. We hope you will join us!

Challenge #184 - Mix it Up (Nov 7 - Nov 20)

Janet here with challenge #184. Remember the rule in fashion - don't wear stripes and plaids together. Well we're breaking that rule in this challenge. Stripes , plaids, dots and flowers. Squares, circles, stars and prints. Mix it up anyway you want to but you need to use at least eight different patterns in this layout and because we want to keep it even more fun, a holiday photo from any holiday. Because this is going to be a happy mixture, the word 'happy' should feature someplace in the layout or title.
We don't want the papers to match the holiday though, that's a no-no!

So here's the challenge:
- Eight different patterns, none to match the holiday
- The word 'happy'
- Any holiday picture and embellishments. ( Embellishments can match the holiday)

We are so happy to have Shaunery Wharton join us as guest designer this month! She does such fabulous work, always with lots of wonderful details. The layout she created for this challenge is absolutely gorgeous. Have a look at her blog to see more of her work. Thank you so much Shaunery!

Here she is:

Bio: I am a stay at home mom to three crazy children. When my oldest was born, I discovered scrap booking only a month later. It was like, this craft was created just for me! I save and keep everything. I've evolved quite a bit since 1994 (yep, nearly 18 years of scrapping) and love the constant change and growth of the industry. I especially enjoy incorporating challenges in my layouts. Sketch's, color, recipes...you name it. These sites continually help me stretch and grow. They have also provided a source of friendships, I've met so many wonderful people via the net over the last two years.

Shaunery: I was so honored to be asked to play at HMITM as a guest designer. I rearranged my whole schedule to get the layout challenge finished but I still was a tad late. But I HAD to play! I do not normally scrap a lot of holiday pages, with the exception of Halloween. So this was intriguing and inspirational. I chose my eight patterns from my scrap box. Orange and brown seemed to be the predominate colors..taking my cue I starting building and layering. The "garland" at the top of my page is inspired by the bead garland my MIL hangs on her mantel each year, I knew I wanted to recreate it. The "matting" of pattern on white, was inspired by my df Jenny who likes to mat w/ black. To bring attention to the Christmas Holiday theme, I used metal Christmas embellishments and my favorite Tim Holtz Santa stamp. If you'd like to see close ups and see my product list, please visit my blog, http://www.shaunerysblog.blogspot.com/.

Many thanks to the crew at HMITM, I'm so tickled that you invited me to play along! Thanks so much!

Janet - I'll probably look at this layout years from now and wonder why I have sailboats and Halloween eyes on a Christmas layout and I can't imagine what someone else may wonder. I had fun creating my own challenge and even though this isn't the best picture it sure captures the search of looking for Santa after he leaves our house Christmas morning.

I based my layout of a Page Maps sketch, I didn't want the different patterned papers to take over the layout so I did keep the areas on them smaller. Talk about using up some old stash I think the Jolee's stickers on this were about the first time they made the embellished ones - and true to the challenges here to use things up the whole package went on the layout.



I had a little fun with this challenge and got two more done, one is of my granddaughter and her first snowman, I used all summer and spring papers on it. The second one is my other daughter's dog Stella dressed up for Halloween using different patterned papers with flowers, plaids and birds.




Anna-Karin: I enjoyed mixing different patterns and used lots of different ones on my layout. I used grey, black, blue and red papers and cut them into tags of two sizes. The tags were distressed a bit and then stitched to the page to form borders at the top and the bottom. They were also embellished with a bit of subtle stamping (so subtle, it is hard to see on the photo). I used a fun photo of me and my sister and the tip of the tail of the dog fleeing the scene of a Christmas photo shoot which didn't go as planned. The title translates ‘Happy?’ Thank you for this awesome challenge Janet!




 Fi - I decided to Challenge myself by doing a card.  I used eight prints from Basic Grey and Webster Scraps and included a the following prints:  music notes, woodgrain, spots, stripes, flowers, swirls, geometric and a general print.  I used the title happy for my card and although the papers are quite Chrismasy I have used it as Birthday card.  Anyway I hope you like my card, its not easy using 8 prints on one card.  Check out my blog for more details.  Great challenge Janet!!!

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Challenge #180, #181 and #182 winners

We are so very sorry that we totally missed to post the winner for challenge #180 (Home Sweet Home) and challenge #181 (Johnny Appleseed).

The winner for challenge #180 is Amy, with her fabulous layout 'Priceless':



Congrats Amy!! The little house is so cute and your French doors being covered in the kids' art.


The winner for challenge #181 is Shaunery with this fabulous layout:



Congrats Shaunery! So many fun details and the chalkboard background is so cool.

The winner for challenge #182 (Beautiful Autumn) is Katerina with her wonderful autumn layout:



Congrats Katerina! The dry embossed cardstock looks wonderful and so do all those leaves.

Thanks for playing everyone! The currect challenge is just below this post, we hope you will join us.

(A little note on comments, at the moment Blogger is not allowing me (not sure about everyone else) to comment on blogs where the comment section is not a pop-up. As a result, I haven't been able to comment on several layouts. I am sorry about that. Hopefully it will be sorted out soon.)

Challenge #183 Gifts (October 24 - November 6)

For this week's challenge we invited AmyC, our awesome guest Designer, to challenge us with a challenge. This is what she came up with...

Today is the day before my daughter's birthday and we just celebrated her sister's birthday nine days ago. Having their birthdays so close together always gets me thinking about... gifts! I would like you to scrap about your best/greatest gift(s). These gifts can be actual gifts you were given for an occasion or they can be the blessings in your life. You can scrap about one gift or multiple gifts. You can make a top 5 or top ten list if you want! The requirements are based on my kids ages and the date.

Frame your page with an edge of background paper, a doodled/stitched border or a frame!
Use at least one stamp/digital brush/rub-on
3 ribbons/strings
6 circles
8 brads or buttons
10 flowers
2 elements that bleed off the page
4 crocheted or felt accents

Thank you AmyC for the awesome challenge!


AmyC: After I started formulating the challenge, I realized I wanted to scrap about being involved in Operation Christmas Child last year. My children learned the very valuable lesson that the greatest gift is actually the blessing of giving to others.Now, let's get to the nuts and bolts. I framed my paper with a thin peek of background paper. I used 3 different digital brushes/stamps behind my clusters. I have 2 strings and one ribbon. My six circles are 3 paper circles and 3 rub-on circles. All my brads/buttons are in the center of my flowers. I chose to bleed two of my paper circles off the page and my crocheted/felt elements are some of my flowers! I think that got it all!




Elizabeth: I love a fresh challenge and this one fit the bill! I liked the different techniques, like having elements bleed off the page and framing the whole layout.

I consider my marriage of 15 years to my amazing husband to be a 'gift', so I decided to do a layout with a picture of us together at a wedding this summer (not sure why we look so jaundiced in this picture :P poor lighting conditions i suppose, we didn't use any fake tanning lotion or anything.)

I pulled out an ancient ghost frame to put around the picture and then cascaded lots of different flowers in a diagonal line across the page (with several flowers cut off at the frames edge). I usually have a tough time with ribbon, but this awesome ribbon from My Mind's Eye with the birds on it was a pleasure to work with! For the circles, I emphasized the circles in the background patterned paper by punching six different holes in the middle of the designs.

Thanks for the awesome challenge Amy!

Janet M - What a challenge this was and it stretched me in some good way to use some things I don't usually. I had fun creating it. When I think of blessing it always comes to my family being first on my list. This photo was one from a couple of Christmases ago. We're not even complete a few people had already left that day. My crochet/felt items are the flowers and the little camera in the corner. The elements that bleed off are some rub-ons and the banner string. The circles , flowers, brads and the frame are all pretty easy to see.

It's a great challenge - I hope to see some more creations from some of the players this week.




Anna-Karin: When I looked through a pile of photos, I came across these two photos of two handmade gifts from my sisters. These are some of my most special gifts and I am happy to have done a layout about them. The layout was framed with machine stitching and I used a whole bunch of stamps. Six different circle stamps were used to stamp a tone-on-tone background. I ended up using more than six circles, because it looked a bit empty with just six. Two of the circles bleed off the page. Eight green buttons were stitched randomly on the background. The three strings were braided and stapled to the page. I didn’t want to include big flowers, so instead I took a small flower stamp and stamped it ten times on the patterned paper. I used two felt arrows and die cut a heart and a swirl from felt. The title translates 'Best Gifts'. Thank you so much for this fun challenge Amy!! I enjoyed picking out the different items to use.


To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Challenge #182 - Beautiful Autumn (Oct 10 - Oct 23)

Hi everyone!

Anna-Karin here with challenge #182. October is such a beautiful autumn month. One of the things I love about autumn is all the textures you find in nature during this time of the year: all the leaves and the different colours, everything being made more apparent by the clear air. Few things are more beautiful than the reflection of autumn trees in a calm lake.

For this challenge, I would like you to use:

- Leaves in some form (embellishments, patterned paper etc.)
- Paint, ink or mist to add a bit of texture to your page
- Distressed edges
- Something orange
- 10 jewels, pearls or beads (for the date)
- 10 ribbons (also for the date)

We are thrilled to have AmyC join us this month as our guest designer! She has been a faithful contributor to the past HMITM challenges and we love seeing her awesome digi designs that incorporate our wacky list of criteria :)
Here she is:

Bio: My name is Amy and I live in a very small town in western North Carolina. I have been married to a great guy for 14 years and we have three wonderful children (Will-8, Anna-turning 6 and Katie-turning 3). I am a Physical Therapist and, although I love my work, I have a longing to be a SAHM. My children are, of course, the main focus of my scrapbooking. I think it is so important to perserve our memories! I began scrapbooking 7 years ago just before my son turned one. Three years ago I discovered digital scrapping and I am almost exclusively digital now. I do try to occassionally go back and scrap my old pictures, and I love it when I remember a traditional element that I can use on a digital page!

I am excited to be the guest designer at HMITM because I love the challenges here! I know "stash" is a little different in the digi world, but, believe me, I still have an enormous stash and it makes me feel good to use something I haven't used in a while or at all!

Amy: I knew as soon as I read the challenge that I wanted to use it to scrap about our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. I used several "somethings orange," because it is one of my favorite colors. I have 10 ribbon pieces peeping out from opposite sides of the large green mat. I have 2 jewels in the orange flowers and 8 scattered jewels on the lower left portion of the layout. The distressed edges show up several times and I used a "scatter" with glitter paint and mist along the middle of the layout under the pictures.

Anna-Karin: I had fun creating texture and playing around with leaves on this page. The title translates ‘Autumn Leaves’. The background is watercolour paper, which was first sponged with paint through a tree stencil. I used a really old leaf stencil and applied gesso with an old plastic card, resulting in dimensional leaves. Then the background was coloured with Distress Stains, water and a bit of Perfect Pearls. I also used leaves stamped on alcohol inked glossy cardstock. At first I had no idea of what to do with 10 ribbons, but then I got the idea of cutting 10 green scraps of ribbon into small scraps and using them as grass. The 10 jewels were used in the title and on the trees.



Elizabeth: This was a great challenge. I loved all the distressing elements that were added to the challenge. I used ink on the title block and distressed the edges of the journaling block. I have a tough time with ribbon usually, but i managed to stick some behind my journaling block and under my title paper. Thanks for the challenge Anna-Karin!




Janet M- This challenge was a great one for me , I love taking pictures of the trees in the fall. I've been doing a book of our house before we leave it so this was a good one to add to it. I loved that one of the colors in it was orange which had me go outside the normal color I would use, but as always when I do that I'm the happiest with the results.

I got all the elements in except the paint or mist I'm creating in Florida and I just don't have those supplies with me so I substituted ink for that part. I sure do have a ribbon supply though so it's always good to use some of those up.

Journaling is: Every year I feel so blessed to live where I do and get to experience the wonder of autumn, this year taking the pictures has so much more meaning.It's the walks in the yard, the colors in the trees. I'm going to miss living here next year . I know I can come back anytime I want to with the college horticulture program here but I sure can't come out at 6 AM in my pj's and enjoy the quiet..

Thanks for the great challenge Anna-Karin, it's a really creative and fun one.


 


 Fi - I joined this Challenge with the Pencilines Sketch.  The pictures I have used are a series I am doing of my trip to Sydney a few years ago, I just loved watching how fast everything and everyone seems to move along in this fast paced city.  I was able to get all the elements requested in, I have inked my envelope, distressed the paper edges, ribbon in 10 pieces and the bling is 8 gems on my balloon and two pieces of border bling to make the total. Oh and leaves are in the paper and the transparency.  Thanks Anna-Karin for this fun challenge.  Hope to see more play along this week.

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

Sept 26 Johnny Appleseed Challenge

It's Johnny Appleseed day and while nobody else may be excited about it I am. My children are descendants of Johnny Appleseed so we have books, counted cross stitch pictures, etc. about him.

Our challenge this time is going to do a layout using apples in it. So it can be a recipe page, layout about fall or anything that uses apples. Since apples come in three colors I want the colors of the layout to have red, yellow and green in them.
3 apples
3 red,
3 yellow, and
3 green embellishments - ( buttons, brads, twine)

Have fun creating.


Here's what Susan, our guest designer, did for her second project this month.

I made a shadow box by three gypsies. Used Bo Bunny and My Minds Eye and Basic Grey. Apple brads and various embellishments that I had in my stash. I also inked all the paper edges with chestnut roan chalk ink.




Janet M - I enjoyed this challenge and choose a picture to do a page that I'll put in my recipe book of pages of family recipes, fun times together and pictures of things we have made.

I used three apples cut from my Cricut cartridge , three different ribbons, three colors of Thickers and pp. I used brads and bling in multiples of the three colors also. I enjoyed the fun I had with the colors in this.

Anna-Karin: Since I had never heard about Johnny Appleseed, I had to look him up. Interesting character and how fun that he is family of yours Janet. Loved the challenge! I did my layout about Anton’s love of fruit (the title translates ‘Fruit-o-maniac’), apples being the number one favourite (although he is eating papaya on the photos). I found some journaling cards that worked well for the challenge and the layout came together quickly. I used three stamped apples, one in each colour, and the same with the three buttons, brads and twine. Thanks for the fun challenge and history lesson Janet!

Debbi T: I'm a teacher, so I get a school portrait taken every year, and I never know what to do with them. I decided this challenge was the perfect opportunity to document my apple-a-day ritual, which I plan to add to my weight-loss album. It just so happened that the October Work in Progress kit that I needed to work with had a paper with an apple pattern from the Crate Paper Farmhouse collection, so I used the WIP to make my page. This was such a fun and clever challenge, Janet!

My hidden journaling reads: During the school year, I eat an apple a day. Every day, I bring an apple in my lunch. My favorite is apple is the honeycrisp. My apple-a-day habit started when I began Weight Watchers. I bring a knife and cut my apple into small slices so I can take a long time eating it. I usually bring a frozen Weight Watchers Smart One or a Lean Cuisine, which gets eaten pretty fast, and then I cut my apple and enjoy it for the rest of my lunch time. (School portrait - Fall 2011)

Elizabeth: Fun challenge Janet! I decided to do it about Brock's first time eating, and our oldest child helping to feed him. Had to dig around for some apple embellishments, but I eventually found some in the lace cardstock and I cut some out of some patterned paper. Do circles count as embellishments? Well, I think I have lots of yellow, green and red on here anyhow ;). Thanks for the challenge!

Fi: Okay a bit of a tricky one, how to use apples...hmmmmm Anyway I went with another school class shot as I really couldn't associate apples with anything else and didn't have time to whip up an Apple Pie...lol I used some Simple Stories paper and thought this challenge can me the perfect opportunity to use my Quickutz Die's for some reason I needed these dies but had never had the opportunity to use them. lol

So I used the red, green and yellow papers, I die cut 3 apples and also 3 apples cores since we were working in lots of 3s, my embellishments are 3 paper clips 3 brads in each of the 3 colours, 3 butterflies and 3 acetate school themed pieces. I have hidden journalling paper clipped up the top which just reads who some of the kids are that I was friends with.

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create!

School's In Winner ... Shaunery!

Congrats Shaunery, for being chosen as this week's winner with your school choir layout.

Loved the ruffled ribbon and the great shades of primary colours. They go beautifully together. The paperclip stickers are great here, super job!

Thanks for playing along everyone, your layouts were awesome!

(For some reason, Blogger does not always let me comment on people's blogs, but I do try to leave comments on everyone's layout.)

Challenge 180 - Home Sweet Home {September 12 - September 25}

Happy Monday! Debbi here. We're in the process of buying a new house (our street address will be 4936), so for this challenge, let's make a layout using...

• topic: your home (could be your whole house, a specific room, your yard, etc.)
• a house embellishment (could be prefabricated or handmade)
• choose a room in your house and use the colors as the basis for your layout
• 4 rub-ons
• 9 buttons and/or brads
• 3 labels or tags
• 6 patterned papers

Our guest designer this month is Susan, and we are so happy to have her wonderful layouts to share with you!

Here is a little about Susan, in her own words... My name is Susan Thormahlen and I am from Northwest Indiana. I am married to a wonderful man and have 2 children and 1 grandchild. I am also a CDA dental assistant and am the office manager of a dental office here in my hometown. I have been scrapbooking for 3 years and have truly fell in love with all aspects of it. I like traditional, digital and hybrid but traditional is my favorite. Because I am fairly new to the craft of scrapbooking, I have not been on any design teams or have been published yet. I will have my first scrapbook page published this November in GingerScrapStreetMagazines in the article It's Not Easy Being Green. This is also my first invitation to be a guest designer.

I based the colors of this challenge on our bedroom which is a buttery cream/yellow with dark blue accents. The nine buttons that I used, I broke up and used them like a mosaic. I used Sure Cuts Alot svg graphics for the house and the window frame. I also used the Socket font for my lettering. For my 6 patterned papers I used Chatterbox. I made my three tags and used them as smoke clouds coming from the chimney. The rub-on "home is where the heart is" is from K&Company.

Debbi Tehrani - I chose my dining room for the color scheme of my page (here's a picture of my dining room):

As I said above, we're in the process of having a new house built. By now it's already built and they're working on the inside, but we've been driving up every week and photographing the progress. This was the first set of pictures I took--when it was just a hole in the ground. It was so surprising because for the longest time we'd drive up there and nothing was going on, and on this particular Sunday, when we saw it, the first thing that came out of my mouth was "We have a hole!" I used birdhouse images, which are houses, right? I'm on a mission to use some old stash. Those daisies were cut out of a REALLY old K&Co paper. They're pretty and glittery. And those birdhouses are from some ancient paper from back when I started scrapbooking over a decade ago--hoarding comes in handy sometimes!

Janet M.

This challenge was so much fun and since we are in the process of building our new house I had a hard time deciding which photo to use then one of the landscapers dropped off a new set of aerial pictures and it was an easy decision. The colors are based on some of my room colors which I have used greens and blues quite a bit. The birds also tie in with the theme of my art glass in the doors and one of the bathrooms. I used the Cricut cartridge Songbird for the word and the tag and I actually used a pagemaps sketch for the design.

I've been traveling a lot so my layouts are suffering on getting done but the card collection I have is growing - I used this challenge to make a card for my daughter that is doing some work on the inside and outside of her house.

Every single thing in the challenge got into the card- there's a rub-on sun under the button, some of the brads are on the car wheels, the trees are cut from different lines and the tags are under the flower. Fun way to challenge myself.

Anna-Karin: I loved this challenge Debbi! Instead of scrapping about our present home, I made the layout about my first home and wrote 5 pages of journaling (tucked behind the layout). I am so happy to have documented my memories. I also used the colour scheme of the house for the layout – seventyish green, orange, brown and yellow. The patterns and embellishments were also chosen to fit with the theme (felt, raffia, woodgrain, owls, flower brads, chipboard accents etc.). The dry embossed cardstock looks very similar to the wallpaper in one of the bedrooms. The house was cut from a piece of patterned paper and embellished further with ribbon, mica windows, and rub-ons. I was happy to use some rub-ons and an old pack of flower brads. The gate, key and key hole were painted with silver paint.


To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below! We can't wait to see what you create