Paper Art

This is a fun paper art thing I made into a regular 8,5 x 11" frame.  I was inspired by this awesome creation by Leann, who was very nice to help me understand how she made hers!  She says she will soon be having this published so if I figure out where, I will add a reference.

I used paper as a base since I didn't have a canvas.  It is made of 2.25" punched circles, folded into squares and glued on the base sheet.  I measured the middle of the sheet and then marked 45-degree lines so that I could get all the pieces angled correctly and that showed me where to stamp and gold-emboss the decorative bits in the corners. 

Once the circles were glued on I was able to make/find a collection of little embellishments to increase the 3-D-ness of it.  The supplies are primarily Stampin' Up! and Basic Grey (from this prize, actually).  Pretty, pretty.

I like it the finished effect.  Right now I have it in my living room, but I think I may hang it on the wall in the craft area, on the logic that beautiful paper always inspires me!

Scrapbook Layout: Your Smile is the Key to my Heart

Here is a scrapbook layout featuring Sammy and his smile!

I have been wanting to do a layout to focus on Sammy's smile - how engaging it is and what a charmer he can be!  Then I found I was able to use the just-the-face images in Picasa's facial recognition to find all the perfect photos.  It was great because Picasa makes a thumbnail of the face for you to confirm the facial recognition and by selecting those thumbnails and using the collage feature I could print a bunch of small images without having to find, crop and collage the images myself.  It made it soooo much faster!

This beautiful color combination and a lot of the embellishments came from Cheryl's great Scrapbook Class, where I always learn something cool!  Here (on the right) is the design we made in class.  It is designed to have several large photos in a grid pattern but since I had just done some grids and I had a bunch of teeny photos, I had to mix it up.  Which was ok because I like to mix it up anyway! :) 

The original title was "Key to my Heart" but I really wanted the "Smile" aspect so I added some elements from a very old embellishment pack with a matching stamp, epoxy sticker, and chipboard piece.  The journaling is a little letter to Sammy that I wrote and then cut into strips to match the strip-y page design.  I also added some extra hearts to fit the wind-blown design and inserted one extra color (I can't seem to help myself, I almost always find myself adding one extra color after the page is almost done!), the bright pinky-orange (Calypso Coral by Stampin' Up). 

 

And you notice that I couldn't resist the counter-example photos - three little frowny faces by Sammy in the bottom right of the layout.  Those are "so Sammy" too!!