Muddy Boots and Happy Hearts

Every month Debbi over at CSI : Color, Stories, Inspiration has been putting together a "Cold Case". These cases are designed to help you resurrect some of the older product that you have floating around in your stash of goodies. This case is an optional one, but this month I decided to try to tackle it.

Here's the Case File and a closer look at the inspiration photo from this Cold Case. The scene from our whimsical April Cold Case is by Marie Desbons.

Here's a few Product Clues to help get you started :

Find older papers that match the colors
I don’t know about you, but I have a ton of bicycle embellishments and I’d love the opportunity to use them.
Use some of your old butterfly accents.
Remember when swirls were all the rage? Use them.
Surely you have a ton of flowers. Use them. Or use an old floral print.
Here’s an old brand to use: K&Co.
Use corrugated paper.
Use older stamps you haven’t ever used or haven’t used in a while.
Magic number is 27—grab the 27th paper or embellishment pack (or something else) in your stash and start there.
Use a die you haven’t ever used or haven’t used in a while.
Use layered embellishments, e.g., Jolee’s stickers.


And some design ideas to help you create :

Fussy cut an old floral paper and use them in a new way.
Stamp in the background.
Put something upside down for a touch of whimsy.
Create a frame for your page using embellishments.
Create a little basket or envelope or pocket and tuck some of your embellishments in there.
Embellish fussy cut flowers with brads or beads or gems, etc.
Embellish a cut file with flowers or fussy-cut flowers or other shapes.

And here's what I created :

So this page is 12x24, and I made it for a fellow scrapbooker turned professional photographer. She is also Mom to these three littles, and doesn't have a lot of time for crafty goodness right now. I loved these photos when I saw them on Facebook, so I asked her if I could use them for this layout since the colours reminded me of the colours in the inspiration photo. She said YES!! and I was so happy to be able to create this for her.

Here's how I solved this case :

I didn't use any of the product clues, because none of the product on this layout is old. In fact all of the product here is from the last 2 Vicki Boutin releases. She is definitely one of my favorite designers and her last 2 releases have been so much fun! I did use the "Stamp in the background" design clue prompt though.

The following things about the photo also inspired this layout :

the 3 birds in the photo inspired the birds on the layout
the spokes on the wheel inspired the stamping
the circles inspired the dot paper

Here's some closeups of this page :

This is the left hand bottom corner. Here you can see the stenciled texture paste I made the background with. This is also the oops on this layout. Others have said that the colour within the newest VB stencils had come off onto their projects, but I wasn't quite sure that I believed them. Well, they were right and the green of the stencil came off. However, the colour actually matched my paper choices quite well and I decided to not redo the stenciling. To make this cluster, I cut the chipboard piece and arrow in half. I added a piece from another chipboard on top, and placed the arrow on either side of this. A little heart sticker and final chipboard circle completed the look here.

Here's the top left corner. I'd seen others using the banner sticker and ephemera pieces, but I don't really use them much myself. However, I really like how they turned out here. I'll probably do this again! I also really loved the bird stickers that came with the VB Kaleidoscope collection - they are so cute and colourful! Some heart stickers and a chipboard camera gave just the right finishing touch.

A closer look at my title work. In order to make it look like I wanted it too, I had to pop up the letter "t". I really love the way this turned out!

A closer look at the journaling. Here also you can see the stamping in the background from the design clues. I love how the enamel dots finish off the stamped circles perfectly.

And finally, a closer look at my favorite bird of the collection! At first I didn't think that he would work because of all the purple, but then I noticed that one of the girls has purple boots, so then he fit just right!

Thanks for popping by and checking out my page today, I can't wait to see what you create with this case!

Loved (Period).

I'm back again with the first case file from CSI : Color, Stories, Inspiration for April. It's starting to feel a bit more like spring every day here in Ontario, and I'm glad for it. Winters are long and dark here, and I am SO VERY READY for more sunshine and warmer, longer days.

Let's take a look at Case #278!!

Here's the Freestyle Case Prompts:

And the Tradtional Case File and Clues:

EVIDENCE

Solid cardstock
Map print
Circle patterns
Globe
Plane, other travel accents
Robots
Key
Triangles, circle
Lightbulb
Eyeglasses/ sunglasses
Google eyes
Buttons
Flair
Geotag
Clouds
Negative shapes
Drip something
Embellishments that relate to technology or science
Create an interactive/ moving element

TESTIMONY

Topic: Document something related to technology.
Prompt Idea: Google “random word generator” and use one of those to spark an idea.
Presentation: Use a circular journaling spot.
Writing Format: Create a bulleted list.
Inspiration Words: travel, advance, key


THE SCHEME (RGB Codes)

208197.169 – beige
188.74.133 – a purple between magenta and mulberry
99.173.156 – turquoise
252.254.253 – white
58.55.50 - black


And here's what I made with it!

Recently my oldest daughter and her boyfriend broke up, so I made this page for her as an encouragement while she works through her grief about it. Breaking up is really hard to do, and I feel terrible that there's not much I can do to help her as she walks through it.

Here's how I solved this case:

COLOURS

All of the colours are there.

EVIDENCE

Solid cardstock
Circle patterns (pink solid paper under the photo)
Triangles, circles
Buttons
Flair
Drip something (black and blue drips on the right side of the page)
Create an interactive/moving element (my journaling spots)

TESTIMONY

The PRESENTATION prompt helped this time, however my spots are NOT circular, just the pull outs are.

Journaling

One of my spots is a tag which says:

You are brave, fearless, bold and strong

And the other is a quote which reads:

no one is going to love you exactly as you imagine.
no one is ever going to read your mind and take every star from the sky at the perfect time and hand it to you.
no one is going to show up at your door on a horse, with a shoe you lost.

do you understand?

that’s why you have to love yourself enough, so that any other love just adds more candles to the cake you’ve already iced.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

Here's some closeups of my page:

This is the background BEFORE I added all the pretty stuff to it. I LOVE how it turned out! I apologize for the terrible cell phone photo. I have got to remember to take pictures while I'm creating!

Here's the steps I used to create this :

First, I made the black and teal blue watercolour drips. After they dried I then used a heart stencil to dry brush teal blue art crayon. Then I laid another script stencil on top of the heart stencil and dry brushed the black art crayon over that. After that, I flicked some black, magenta, and teal blue watercolour over the whole thing. All of the art crayon, and stencils from these steps are from Vicki Boutin. As a final step, I grabbed a third stencil, and used my palette knife to push some texture paste through it. Those 2 products are from Tim Holtz.

From the bottom of the layout looking up.

A closer look at the top right corner.

Revealing the hidden journaling spots!!

And a closer look at the card with the quote. I used a clear enamel dot on the black tab as a play on the word "period" for the title of the page.

And finally, a closer look at the bottom right hand side of the page.

This month, we have nine generous 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. 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!!