Alma's Sewing Room Tag - Scraps of Darkness Tag Trade

I have a quick share with you today - a Tag I created for my scrappy friend Karen (aka Lost Coast Scrapper) for this month's Tag Trade in the Scraps of Darkness/Scraps of Elegance Forum. I decided to create a very soft, pretty Tag this time around and used the beautiful Alma's Sewing Room collection by Pion Design.

I started out with a Prima Doll Tag as a base and did a little masking with some white molding paste and a Prima Doily mask (though this ended up barely visible after all the layers/embellishments). I pleated a strip of old sewing pattern paper and added it to the bottom of the tag, along with a bit of Tim Holtz measuring tape Tissue tape and some white lace. I then fussy-cut various elements from the Alma's Sewing Room papers, machine stitched some of them and then layered them on the large tag base.

As embellishments, I added some Prima flowers, wooden buttons and some cute wooden spools that I wrapped with black/white thread.

Thanks for the visit to my blog - I hope you'll stop by the SOD/SOE forum and play along with our next Tag Trade or ATC Swap - they're SO much fun!

Precious Moments - The Final Challenge at The Paper Mixing Bowl

I'm sad to say that this May's challenge will be the final challenge at The Paper Mixing Bowl. We've been doing challenges for a little over a year now and I just haven't seen the participation increase to any extent. Due to other DT commitments (and my desire to have some sort of personal life beyond scrapping), I just cannot justify the time for something that isn't generating significant interest or participation.

I want to thank everyone who has played along with our challenges - I hope they have inspired you just a bit.

To my wonderful Design Team - as you already know, my decision to end The Paper Mixing Bowl was extremely difficult because you have all been so wonderful and inspiring. Please accept my sincere gratitude and appreciation for all you have done for the PMB!

In May, we celebrate Mother's Day - so this month's recipe challenge had a 'mother' theme. I chose to scrap a photo of myself with my son when he was just three-days old. I've used gorgeous Pion Designs papers for this layout. 

Here is the recipe card for the May challenge:

I found these colours hard to find in my stash - they aren't my usual colour palette at all - but I loved the soft tones of the Pion papers and was able to bring in some of each colour in the papers and flowers. I started out by splattering the base page with watered-down acrylic paint in Antique White - it worked as a tone-on-tone witht the paper, so doesn't show well in the photos but is visible in real life. I have trouble with 'hearts' - I don't love using them - so I altered the sketch and just did some layering of papers in place of the heart design. I machine-stitched each of the layered papers (with the exception of the tags). I used a light teal pearl flourish (ZVA creative) and pearl-centred flowers to bring in the pearl element of the recipe. 

The title is a chipboard title by Imaginarium Designs - I've used it plain on this layout as I thought the plain chipboard looked so lovely with the soft colours and brown tones in the papers.

 I fussy cut butterflies from the Pion papers and layered them to create the 3D butterflies. I added a large frayed bow to the large fussy-cut tag that I used as the mat for the picture. I love how the bow frames the top of picture and how the frayed edges tie in with the stitching.

 I also fussy cut some tags from the Pion papers, layered them and added some frayed cotton to the end to tie in with the stitching and the bow on the layout.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope you'll pop by The Paper Mixing Bowl blog to play along with our final challenge and say goodbye!

Cherish - The Paper Mixing Bowl Challenge #1

Welcome to my first reveal for The Paper Mixing Bowl Challenge Blog! I love participating in challenges and I am so excited to be kicking off my very own challenge blog with some great scrappy friends. I hope you enjoy this month's challenge and will hop on over to The Paper Mixing Bowl blog and play along! For my layout for this challenge, I scrapped one of my absolute favourite photos of my son....isn't he just the cutest baby ever?!?!?

Here is the recipe card for the challenge:

I have used the "main ingredient" - dark chocolate coloured paper - as the background page and in the flowers, paper ruffle and layering under the photo. I followed my sketch (i.e. the "measurements") fairly closely and I managed to use all six "utensils" on the layout too.  I used a combination of Pion Design, Fancy Pants Designs and My Mind's Eye papers for this layout. I've done lots of layering (in squares) and distressed the edges of all the papers. I also stitched a couple of the layers for a little extra detail. The title is a chipboard word by Dusty Attic that I treated with Distress Stain in Stormy Sky and Distress Stickles in Clear Rock Candy. The corner embellishments on the photo are also Dusty Attic and were treated with Distress Ink in Walnut Stain and Ranger Crackle Accents.

All the flowers for this layout are handmade and are based on a couple of tutorials you can find at Vicky Alberto's blog Simply Paper.

I also handmade the paper ruffle and added lace and a strip of distressed floral paper to complete the horizontal border on the layout. I think I might put together a quick tutorial of how I made this since I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

For my journalling, I used torn journal paper (or a close approximation using scrapbook paper) for a little handwritten letter to my son, which says: I love you more than the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky. You are my baby boy and I will cherish you always. I added some twine loops from the floral/journalling cluster to link the title and journalling visually.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog today! 

Materials Used:

Patterened Papers: Pion Design "Studio of Memories" Collection - Ornament, Anemone, Borders and Cut-out Sheet; My Mind's Eye "Lost and Found" Collection - Market St. Love Demure Paper, "29th St. Market" Collection - Mama's Curtain/Brunette Paper; Fancy Pants Designs "Lilac House" Collection - Weeping Willow and English Garden; Mulberry Paper (white flower); Dusty Attic Mini Corner #2 and Mini Word "Cherish"; Distress Ink in Walnut Stain; Distress Stain in Stormy Sky; Distress Stickles in Clear Rock Candy; Ranger Crackle Accents; Recollections Brads; Twine, Lace and Burlap leaves from stash; Glue Dots Memory Book and Mini; Memory Tape Runner XL; Terrifically Tacky Tape.