Monday, December 19, 2011

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!

Sunday, December 04, 2011

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!