Trim Flower

Here's a new card I recently created, after some experimenting lead to the flower on the card.  I really liked how it turned out and thought I would do a little tutorial for you on how I did it.  So if you are ready, here we go.

What you need is a circle punch, cardstock or chipboard, double-sided adhesive tape, fringe trim, and a brad or button.  Using the circle punch, cut a circle out of cardstock or chipboard.  I prefer chipboard as it gives more stability to the base.  Now cover the entire circle with the adhesive.  Starting at the outside out the circle start placing the trim around the circle.

Once you make it all the way around to where you started you keep going by moving the trim inwards.

Once you make it to the center of the circle, you are almost done. Looks pretty neat so far!

Now you just need to find a button or a brad to place in the middle and you are finished!

Aren't they the cutest?  You can use them on cards and layout or attach a clip/pin to the back and wear it as an accessory.  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and give these beauties a try!  Turst me you won't regret it!

Battled Past

Havana has a very battled past. There were many wars and revolutions that happen there. This picture is of Steve standing next to a wall that still had a canon ball embedded in it from the 1400's.

I wanted to mimic the brick pattern of the wall in my layout so I used one of Tim Holtz' texture fades that is of a distressed brick wall. I ran my paper through the Cuttlebug in this folder then sanded the raised parts and inked it all over to tone down the red a bit. I think it turned out awesome.

Private La Habana Tour

Ok, maybe I went a little overboard with the embellishments on this page but once I started I couldn't stop.  I had all these really cool travel related embellishments that I wanted to use so I just started clustering them all in the top right corner.  I did plan on putting a couple more but stop when I realized that the white mat was barely visible anymore!  Here's a neat tip for you.  Do you see the journalling spot on the bottom right?  It wasn't actually a journalling spot to start with.  It was actually a die cut of a compass.  Using my circle punch I cut out a circle of lined paper that I journalled on and then using that I covered up the middle of the compass.  Once adhered, I traced around the edge in black pen to tie it all together.  Neat idea eh!

Detour to the '54 Cadillac

These are some of my favorite photos of Steve and I in Cuba.  I just love the old cars there so when we made a pit stop on our way to Havana, we saw this old 1954 Cadillac that was in awesome condition and just had to have our photos taken.

Scuba Lunch Break

If there is one thing I hate more than blurry photos is dark photos.  I tried everything in my photoshop trick bag to get these photos to brighten up and they did improve drastically but as you can see they are still kind of dark.  I guess this is what you get when you allow some else to take the photos, as I was not there!  At something is better than nothing and I decided to scrapbook them anyway.

Diving the Bay of Pigs

Scuba diving pictures are always so much fun to scrapbook.  The subject matter always makes for some fun and creative themed layouts.  For this layout, I chose the Snorkel Collection from Cosmo Cricket as my background paper and then used some fun embellishments from Bella Blvd.

Our Room

I love to include any memorabilia I collect on our trips to my layouts.  This layout contains a piece of memorabilia that has a fun story behind it.  The little red change purse was given to me on my last day in Cuba from our cleaning lady.  It was a really cute gesture and I filed it away to use on my layout.  When I went to put it on my layout it was a little bulky so I opened it up thinking there might be some stuffing in it.  What I didn't expect to find was a crumpled up note.  I could tell it was just a portion of a note but because it was written in Spanish, I had no idea what it said and that had my curiosity peaked.  I took the note to work as one of my co-workers speaks Spanish so that she could ease my curiosity.   Now I am not going to say what was written as it was not PG but basically it was about a cheating girlfriend.  Now that's a piece of memorabilia with a memory attached to it.

On the Bus

A very quick layout about our bus ride into Varadero using mostly 4 x 6 photos.  I love quick layouts like this that allow me to capture the fun and then move on to the many more photos I have!  I also like this type of layout as it allows me to use up some scraps.

Brothers Are Sweet

This was a quick and easy layout I did with a photo of my brother and I while we were in Cuba.  I think it was so easy because of the perfectly matched patterned papers and elements from My Mind's Eye that I used.  That's one of the perks of sticking to one manufacturer's collection.  The most time consuming part was waiting for the paint that I used to tie in the aqua color of my shirt and the title letters to dry!

Settled In

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I am a scrapbook supply hoarder. I buy what I like, even if I don't have any pictures to use with it at that time. So what that means is that sometimes I take pictures knowing exactly which paper I am going to use. That is the case with this paper by Webster's Pages. When I saw it in the scrapbook store, I loved it and knew I would use it eventually. So when I went to Cuba I knew I had to get a picture of on of my favorite vacation tasks - unpacking! I really like how well the picture co-ordinated with the colors of the paper and I promise that part was not planned!

Foreign Student

My husband is currently working on his Master's Degree in Computer Information Systems and has been doing so for the last 2 years. It's a lot of work but in the end it will all be worth it! During that 2 years, he has worked on his Master's in 5 "foreign" countries (USA, Thailand, Taiwan, Cuba, and recently Jamaica). This picture was taken in Cuba while he was working on an assignment. I wanted to document the fact that this Master's has made him a Foreign Student in several countries. I think the layout turned out great and I love the play on words for the title.

Featured Artist

I am so excited to be a Featured Artist over at the Ideas for Scrapbookers blog today!  I created a great tutorial on how to make this acetate flower so head on over there (ideasforscrapbookers.blogspot.com) to check it out!

Edit: I know there has been some issues with Blogger this morning so please check back if the post hasn't appeared yet.

Have a great weekend!