Make Your Own - Special Effects

For this set of pages, I made a lot of my own things.  It started with the background paper.  I had a hard time finding paper I liked, to coordinate with the elements I planned to use, so I took a cream-colored cardstock, a natural sponge, and some brown ink.  Dabbing the ink here and there on the page with the sponge gave me a somewhat muddy look which reminded me of some of the surrounding countryside while tying the elements together better. 

Also, the outer thin brown borders on the first page are extra suede fabric from an expandable scrapbook I had on hand.  It was only about 8 inches long, but I was able to piece it so it looked pretty good.

The "Wai-O-Tapu" letters are printed from my computer and then covered with Crystal Lacquer before being cut out.  The letters on the other page are printed with their mats in one piece and cut by hand.  Finally, I chose to draw more attention to the brad arrows on the second page by matting them with scraps of brown cardstock which I carefully cut to shape.

Party Time Tuesday - 4th of July themed Card

This card was made for Party Time Tuesday's - PTT#22 - 4th of July Challenge.  The card is 3-dimensional with a diamond center.  Here's a side view:

The butterfly was cut with my Silhouette and hand-lettered to simulate ribbon stripes.  The "Celebrate" is a stamp from Hot Off the Press and pen-work finishes off the card. The basic card design was inspired by a blog hop posting here.

Title Tips Part 1 - Hand Written

There are a lot of fun ways to create titles for scrapbook pages.  One of the easiest is to letter the title by hand as I did with this page.  There are several challenges one runs into when hand lettering.  Here are some helpful hints:

• Lightly draw horizontal guide lines with a pencil.  These can be erased later, but help keep the letters straight and of a uniform size.
• Write the title before trimming to size.  This allows you to trim it after the fact for easy centering of the title.
• Use a paper punch to decorate the edges of the title block.

A Third Mini-Book!

Here's another mini-book, similar to the ones I've shown the last couple of weeks.  It was made for another of my dance teachers and showcases an Argentine Tango exhibition dance they did.  The focal on the cover is a Dazzles outline sticker backed with red and green colored papers and then glued to the front.  It really fits the theme well since she was holding a rose as she danced and tossed it to the floor at the end of the dance.

The black and silver background is another of those lovely hand-made papers I got at Costco.  Here are a couple of pictures of the inside:

These little books make such nice little gifts that are really cherished.