Counterfeit Kit- October

I'm back today with something new!

This month I decided to participate in the 'Counterfeit Kit Challenge' blog for October. I'm guessing more people will counterfeit the girly pink/green kit featured at Little Red Scrapbook. I decided to go against the flow and do the Halloween/October theme kit. Anyone who knows me knows Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays! :)

Here is the inspiration kit:

Here is my take on the kit! :)

 I didn't have anything from the sample kit except the Echo Park Happy Halloween Alpha Sticker sheet, so I used that as my starting point. :)

My kit includes:
5 sheets of patterned paper
3 solids from the inspiration kit (kraft, white, black)
3 diecut papers
2 alphabet sticker sheets
4 border strips
other miscellaneous embellishments! :)

Thanks for looking! Hopefully I did a good job on my first counterfeit kit! :) Can't wait to see what I create with it....

Bright Lights

Happy World Card Making Day everyone!

I didn't make a ton of cards today, but I did make some ;) I will show them at a later time though! I'm back with another layout! Did yet another layout using Echo Park's Happy Days. A couple weeks ago, when I purchased the Happy Days layout at my LSS, a nice lady who was cropping by the register, taps me on the shoulder and asks "excuse me, but what are you going to do with that?" And I responded, "Make cards, who knows? There are a lot of things you can do with it!" Truth is, I had no idea what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted it because it was Echo Park! So, since I purchased it, I had to justify it by attempting to stretch my stash and finding all kinds of things to do with it! Thus, you have today's layout. OH p.s. based on one of PageMaps September sketches!

I started with a cool speckled background paper by Recollections that I got at Michaels. (I kinda wish I would have just used plain though because I ended up covering all the pretty dots with the big gray paper. The gray paper is from DCWV's new Ghosts and Goblins cardstock stack. I dragged my Tim Holtz Distress inking tool around the edges in the color Black Soot. I wanted to give the paper an almost dirty street feeling. All of the other embelishments, stickers, and papers are from Happy Days. The New York glitter skyline is from Recollections. :) Here are a couple detail shots.

 

I just love that glitter sticker! It's so pretty in person.

Just love love love Echo Park's alphabets! I cut the tickets from the border strips.

The 'dirt' i tried to create in the large mat. 

Anyways, thanks for reading. I really appreciate your comments! :) tata for now! OH p.s. 5 days till I am in Disney World!!!

~ Jessie

Happy Days ;)

Two posts in one day! I used another sketch for this one. Dug up some older printed photos from March of my husband on his birthday. :) Now I have 3 pages worth in total from his little birthday celebration. You only turn 23 once, right? ;) This layout I like a lot, and again, dug for Echo Park's Happy Days! I'm proud of how much I have done with Happy Days so far. I usually use 'birthday' collections for birthdays, 'Easter' for Easter, etc. I'm really trying to stretch my supplies and I think I am doing good so far. Used one of the new PageMaps blog sketches for October for this one! (Why am I just now discovering the blog???) I really stretched myself this time, I flipped the sketch! :D

Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE bling, and usually add some to every layout. Thus I couldn't resist adding a little bling to the cake sticker I fussy cut from the sticker sheet. :) I tried to give the layout a more masculine feel, since all of my pages are usually pink and girly and glittery! ;) Trying to give hubby a bit of dignity since he lets me share his photos on the internets. <3

Thanks for looking! And thanks to my new followers and others for your lovely comments. you are all so encouraging as I work to get better in my designs!

Sketchy Thursdays

I just love sketches! They are helping me to work with limited photos to get a lot done this week while I am out of town housesitting with limited supplies. I've been trying really hard to use Happy Days. :) Here is my second attempt at a Sketchy Thursday's sketch. I really suck at photographing my layouts. I need to get something to prop them up properly, I tried using the natural light, no flash but I promise it doesn't look this bad in person. :(

Anyways, I took a lot of pictures in NY and only a few of them came out. So I had to tell a story with few pictures. :) Love the Happy Days number paper to emphasize the title!

Thanks for reading! :)

How Sweet it Is

Hello everyone! It's been a long time since I updated, but I have been very crafty lately! This week we have been housesitting and I've been making all kinds of crafts. I've completed 6 pages worth of layouts and started 2 mini holiday chipboard albums. I can't wait to share with you! However, today I only have one layout because I've been too lazy to take pictures.

This is my take on Sketchy Thursday's sketch. :)

I used a Kraft paper background, Echo Park's Happy Days collection, stamps, Smooch Spritz, and a Jolee's New York sticker.

Thanks for checking me out! :)

New Scrapbook Challenge!

Hello everyone, its really been awhile since I've had time to sit down and finish a project! Today I have a new layout to share. :) This layout was created for The Paper Variety blog's Birthday Celebration! This was for Challenge 2 which inspired us to use mostly our favorite paper crafting company in our project! Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Die Cuts with a View! ;) In this layout, I used predominately papers from their new stack: Ghosts and Goblins!

For this layout, I tried my hand at making paper flowers for the first time with the help of my new Martha Stewart scoreboard! It was difficult at first (wrangling that paper into shape!) but I think I will get better with more practice! Here are some more detail shots, I'm getting better at photographing pages, but I still need a lot of practice so be gentle please ;)

 

Overall, I love the dimension that the paper flowers bring to my page. I added little 'spider mix' buttons that I purchased at Jo Ann's throughout the layout, including the center of my flowers. I used a couple of DCWV matstacks from the new Ghost and Goblins collection to mat my photos, I really wanted to play off of the fun glittery purple mask that Nicole is wearing in the large photo. :) All of the journaling tags are also from the Ghost and Goblins stack, as is the little witch hat which I cut out from a tag. :) The background paper is from the stack as well, and I sprayed it with Pearl and Brown Smooch Spritz. Letters are black Thickers, and 'not even' is written with Echo Park Happy Halloween Collection letter stickers. :)

Thanks for reading, that's all for now!

Scrapbooking Supplies Haul!

I had a pretty busy day today, doing a bit of shopping and errand running. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Marylanders are finding themselves scrambling to the nearest grocery store to stock up on supplies (necessities: toilet paper, eggs, milk... HAHA) for the impending hurricane- Irene, which is set to make landfall this weekend. Today was rather rainy so instead of stocking up on those frivolous things, I stocked up on the real essentials- scrapbooking supplies! I made the journey to my favorite scrapbooking store, Great Scraps :) I hadn't been in a couple of weeks, and I had a few "essentials" I was looking to add to my stash. I will definitely "scrap happy!" this weekend while we are trapped inside by the hurricane!

My haul included some Disney papers, "Kraft" cardstock (why havn't I tried this before, I'm in LOVE!), and some lovely new papers from Echo Park Country Drive & Happy Days and Basic Gray Nordic Holiday. :)

I bought this kit, how lovely is it???!?! I don't know what I will use it for just yet, but I couldn't say no! Reminds me of one of my favorite restaurants, Johnny Rockets! <3 I was also hoping to get the Country Drive Kit (or any other Echo Park kit for that matter) but they were all sold out. I was able to find quite a bit of the Country Drive kit still in stock though, so I picked up all I could! My favorite was this sticker sheet:

So cute and lovely for lots of pictures, whether Spring or Summer or even lovey dovey pictures ;) Finally, I was really leaning towards the Basic Gray Nordic Holiday collection kit, but decided instead to just pick out two things for now:

Isn't the snowman paper adorable? I also picked up the nice red and navy blue alpha stickers... I'm seriously lacking good letter stickers in my stash so I'm slowly starting to add to my collection.

Tonight my bestie Nicole came over to scrapbook with me <3 I finished one layout using my new supplies, which I will hopefully post tomorrow! Until then, I will leave you wondering! Did you get any cool new supplies recently? Please share, can't wait to hear! :)

Tomorrow I guess I will go out and run more errands, as we will be stuck inside for some time after the weekend rolls in. I really hope the baby shower I'm supposed to attend on Saturday goes down! I'm really anxious to give Laura my gift I spent so much time making for her! :) I need to go to the grocery store and figure out what to bring to the potluck. I'm debating between mac & cheese in a crock pot or a tomato tray with mozzarella, olive oil, and fresh basil. hmmmmmm. Really been looking forward to the shower though, praying the weather holds out long enough for us to go!

Tata for now, a busy day tomorrow, so much to do! :)

Sweet Lolita - Otakon 2011

Another layout to share today! Didn't get much scrapbooking done today, I live on the East Coast and today we experienced a magnitude 5.9 earthquake. I must say it was one of the scariest things I've experienced! The house shook for what felt like a whole minute~ I was kinda frozen in my chair because I didn't know what to do! Just saw the whole house begin to shake and things started falling off the shelves.... my 40 gallon fish tank was shaking, and I was afraid that it was only seconds from bursting into 1000 pieces and flooding our tiny studio apartment! Thankfully, it only spilled quite a bit of water on the floor, and did not break. Lots of stuff fell, but thankfully nothing was broken.

Did you experience the earthquake? I would love to hear your stories! It sure was scary, I sure was "shaken up" for a couple hours afterwards. Praying for no bad aftershocks!

Anyways, onto the layout! This one is a layout from Otakon 2011, an Anime Convention in Baltimore which hosts over 20,000 attendees every year! This was our 4th year attending (my husband and I)- and I enjoy every minute of the action packed 3 day weekend! This year I made my own outfit, a Sweet Lolita, which is a form of Japanese street fashion, and an everyday form of fashion for many girls who live in Japan. There are several forms of lolita dress, the most popular being sweet, gothic, punk, and classic styles. Sweet Lolita basically includes lots of frills, petticoats, and girly patterns! My theme was cupcakes, so I chose papers from several collections to match my pink cupcake skirt. :) I love this girly layout with lots of sparkles and sweeties! :) Enjoy!

Supplies Used:
American Crafts Thickers Jewelry Box Glitter Letter Stickers
Jolee's Boutique Dimensional Stickers Cupcakes Repeat
Echo Park Pink/Grey Cardstock Be Mine Collection
Little Yellow Bicycle Cupcake Die Cut Paper
Best Creation Oriental Paper
Pressed Petals Yummy Assorted Paper Pack

Thanks for reading! Byeeee for now :)