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!

6 comments:

Anna-Karin said...

Gorgeous layouts everyone! Love the frosty feelings and all those blue shades.

It was so sad to post the last blog post that I missed checking the posting date, so at first it ended up further down in the blog. Sorry about that!

Hugs to all! It has been so much fun being on this team with all of you and I got so much inspiration. Going to miss it so very much!

Elizabeth Joy said...

I am so sad that this will be the last challenge! Have really enjoyed being a part of the team here for many years.
I am also sad that for whatever reason, my computer will not allow me to post my layout to the blog once again. It was a really great challenge!
Thanks for all the great inspiration ladies! Going to miss you! e

Shaunery said...

I need a tissue... such bittersweet! Love the challenge and looking forward to jumping in.. Love the inspiration layouts, they're awesome!

KindleLover said...

PLEASE leave the challenges up! I have been using the ones from the archives because they are all so great, and because I have a lot of supplies and a lot of layouts to catch up on. These challenges break the rut of "just another winter page" for example. I enjoy applying the challenges chronologically, even though I may not be scrapping in order, just to challenge myself further. I have loved the layouts I've created, and I'd been planning on making my participation one of my resolutions :(
Oh well. I will look forward to new challenges in the future, but in the meantime I am going to start challenging scrappers on my blog. It will fit right in with my 2012 DeStash project for paper. Yeah!

EFI said...

Huge congratulations Katerina!!! Your layout is absolutely stunning!!! Thanks for the inspiration ladies!!! Best wishes for the holidays!

Anonymous said...

I'm so sad this is the last challenge. I never posted or linked my layouts, but I loved these challenges & they really helped me use supplies I forgot I even owned. Thank you so much!