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!