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.