Itchin' & Scratchin': February 2019

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

You Are Pulchritudinous

Hello again on yet another snowy, wintery day here in Southern Ontario! We are under a Winter Storm warning again and it looks like a nasty one. All of the buses were cancelled in my area again, I think we are on Snow Day 9 or 10 since January now? I've lost count honestly. If this keeps up, tomorrow might be another one!

Let's talk about something nicer - CSI has a new "Cold Case" up! A Cold Case is something new we started last month and it's meant to be a bonus challenge for those who want to try to resurrect some of their old stash. You don’t have to only use old stuff, but try to make your older stuff prominent.

I'll admit it for this case, I didn't really use much of anything that was "old", except for the title rubons and stickers & a few Basic Grey buttons that I've had in my stash for a while now. But I just LOVED the inspiration photo so let's get into Case #274.

Here's the Freestyle Prompts :

And a closer look at the inspiration image, which comes from Claudia Tremblay.

I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this photo!! Isn't she beautiful??

Since there's no "tradtional" clue sets or colour scheme to go along with this image, here's some more prompts to help you get started :

PRODUCTS

Find older papers that match the palette.
Find older papers that have a winter theme.
Use buttons—lots of them.
Use ribbons.
Dig out some of those old flowers and use them.
Remember when owls were a trend? Surely you have some in your stash—use one! Sassafras Lass used to have them on their papers. Use some old Sass paper, even some without owls.
Use the older Webster’s Pages papers with the floral designs.
Use feathers.
Use mulberry paper.
18 is the magic number—grab the 18th paper or embellishment pack (or something else) in your stash and start there.

DESIGN

Grab some of your mixed media stuff you haven’t ever used (or haven’t used in a while) and use it on the background.
Use a stencil you haven’t used and add paint to your texture paste.
Create a wreath as the base of your design.
Use a red floral paper on the bottom half of your page.
Stamp in the background.

And here's what I created with this case:

This is my oldest daughter and I wanted to create something for her this time around. But I have no recent pictures of her, so I went snooping on her Facebook and Instagram and stole these ones. On the largest picture, I noticed that her boyfriend used the title word in describing her, so I decided to use it as the title of the page.

Here's how I solved the case:

COLOURS

From the image I chose to use the following colours :

Green (from the leaves in her hair)
Red (well, it turned out more pink in the end, from her dress)
White (from the owl)
Yellow (from her buttons)
Black (a good neutral)
Peach (from the top of the skyline)

PRODUCT

Buttons
Flowers
Feathers

DESIGN

I recently started trying out some more mixed media on my pages and started there with this idea. I follow Vicki Boutin and one of her design team members Nathalie is very inspiring. She made a layout called "Reason to Smile" which I love, and she made a process video explaining how she made her layout. So, I watched the video while I was making this layout, pausing it after she explained each step so I didn't miss anything.

Here's the video :

Doesn't Nathalie make amazing art?

As always, here's a closer look at my layout :

I spent quite a bit of time fussy cutting these flowers out of my patterned papers - one from Vicki Boutins Field Notes, and the other from Pinkfresh - Holiday Vibes collection. The Pinkfresh paper came in my SCT Sampler December 2018 kit. There's also a diecut or two from Vicki Boutins collection in there. Then I added LOTS of pop dots, a few yellow feathers and some petals from one burgundy paper flower. I wish I could say that there was a method here, but I really just kept adding until it looked right. Since I'm fussy, this took me quite a bit of time, plus I may or may not have walked away in frustration a time or two..... In the end, I LOVE how this came out. The buttons, ribbon, enamel dots and tiny Martha Stewart plastic flowers finished this corner perfectly.

Friday, February 1, 2019

(Hello, my name is) Soup - erman!!!!

Well I can officially say that I survived the #2019PolarVortex!!

This was the view from my bedroom yesterday (2019/01/31).

My area was hit by a winter storm that essentially shut down the city and surrounding area. For the last two weeks, I've been having snow days at home more than I've been driving my school bus.

But now, it's February!! And a new month brings new inspiration from Color, Stories, Inspiration!

Let's take a look at Case #272.

Here's the Freestyle Case Prompts :

And the Tradtitional Case File and Clues :

EVIDENCE (Embellishment or Element Inspiration)

plaid
stripes
dots
distressed patterns, e.g., BasicGrey
border
trees, leaves
winter elements
woodland creatures, birds, or other animals
mushrooms or other vegetables
string
fringe
mist/splatters
metal
wood
cut file

TESTIMONY (Journaling Ideas)

Topic: Document something about winter
Prompt Idea: Choose a February Question.
Presentation: Create a little book to hold your journaling.
Writing Format: Write your story in the form of a haiku.
Inspiration Words: up, cozy, nourish

THE SCHEME (RGB CODES)

187.203.202 – blueish gray
244.227.171 – yellow, somewhere in between cream and flax
156.46.33 – brick red
254.254.252 – white
161.164.121 – green—in between a khaki green and olive

And here's what I made with it :

This is my son whom, ever since he was small, has LOVED soup. Like really loved it. When he was small he used to say the word "soup" in such a cute little boy, sing song way, that I looked forward to soup days just to hear him say it. When I saw the soup bowl in the photo I took the opportunity to document this fun thing about my boy.

Here's how I solved this case:

COLOURS

All of the colours are there, but I've added in an extra shade of yellow, mostly because I liked the way it looked. Also, there was some orange and brown in the ribbon & embellishments I chose, and I've added a neutral kraft as the "border" for my layout.

EVIDENCE

Stripes
Dots
Border
Leaves
Woodland creatures
Mushrooms
String
Metal
Wood

TESTIMONY

I used the INSPIRATION WORD prompt this time. The word "Nourish" helped inspire this page.

Journaling

you love soup. like I mean really, really love soup.
all kinds of soup, but mostly homemade.
when you were small i loved listening to you say the word soup - it was so sweet in your little boy sing song voice.
when you went to high school & you came home for lunch, you would have soup - so often, in fact, that i would keep cans of it on hand, just for you.

photo : March 2008
journaling : Jan 2019

Here's some closeups of my page:

I loved this little squirrel & he was just about the right colours! The piece was originally bigger, with the words "time for giving" on it so I cut it in half and rounded the corners. It made the perfect place to add my diecut mushrooms and leaves.

Here's a closer look at my title work. This came about in trying to use up some of my letters stash. In fact, the "A" isn't actually an "A" at all! It's a "D" that I cut down to make the "A" for the word. The "O" and the "N" are capitals because that's all that I had left in the pack, but I think that it makes the title fun! When I first set it down, I was just going to use a little dot to separate the 2 parts of the word but then I remembered a page that I made that had silverware on it, so I found it and stole the spoon for this page! The string clue inspired the little twine bow, and the little fox satisfies 2 clues - woodland creatures, and metal.

This little corner was created because I felt that there was too much white space in that corner, but I couldn't find anything in my stash that made sense to put there. So I tucked a small square or red behind the white, folded it over and glued it, and topped it off with the heart circle. I think it's cute and it really breaks up the white.

Here's a closer look at my journaling.

As in the past, we will continue to have many wonderful sponsors! This month, we have six generous sponsors, but we will be adding more as we acquire more sponsors. Click HERE to read more about our sponsors and the prizes they are donating. Winners will be selected randomly from all of our players, with a few exceptions where sponsors have asked us to choose from certain geographic regions.

We've moved our sharing over to Facebook! And new for this month, there's going to be separate albums for each Case, making inspiration even easier to find! Head on over to our CSI Scrapbook Challenge Page for more details and to participate!

Thanks for popping by today - I can't wait to see what you've created!!