Another Jenni Bowlin Sneak

There's going to be a midmonth gallery reveal for November's Jenni Bowlin Kit on the 10th right here: Jenni Bowlin DT gallery

As a guest DT member, I made some midmonth layouts and one of them has turned out to be a fave of mine. It came together so easily and is a mix of squares and butterflies and jewels and gingham. So cool how all that stuff went together on one layout. The pics on it are of ds #2 and he saw the layout sitting on my desk. A conversation followed:

ds: Nice layout!

me: Oh, the one on the desk? It's cute, isn't it?

ds: Yea. What happened?

me: Huh? It's from the kit I got in the mail.

ds: What happened?

me: (ignoring him at this point because I just don't understand what he's saying and he's a teenager and I don't understand 99% of what he says anyway).

ds: I said, what happened?

me: (OK, now I'll bite) What do you mean, "what happened?"

ds: I used to be so cute. What happened?

awwwww jeepers! He knows he's adorable - he just likes to do that to me . . .

here's a sneak:

Have a great day! See ya' over at JBS Mercantile on the 10th!

Jenni Bowlin!

 Over the summer I took Jenni's Big Picture class - it was great - and she had a little contest with the students where the winner would get tons of JBS product and a guest designer spot for her kit club. Couldn't believe I won!  Here's the link for the announcement and one layout - OK - ds wanted that one posted up front and center. Wonder why?

The design team for Jenni's kit club is so talented: Doris Sander, Becky Novacek, Lisa Dickinson, Ranjini Malhotra, Keisha Campbell, Michelle McCord, Dina Wakley, and Amanda Johnson.

Knock the socks off your feet scrapbookers! Bookmark this site, and check out the gallery upload at the end of every month. They often have midmonth reveals, too. Let's just ignore the fact that I'll be there this month. Oh dear! Talk about feeling out of place!

Cindy Glistrap won 2nd place. You must check out her blog. Yikes. So unique and talented.


Jenni has a way with colors - there is no doubt. And I LOVE that in every kit there are exclusive papers and products in there. Stuff you can't buy anywhere. AND, you've got to see the new papers that Jenni's teamed up with Core'dinations to produce. There's some in the kit and I've never seen anything like them. This stuff is different, it's cool, it's fun to play with, and I can't wait to get the whole line of it.  You can see a preview here. And of course, the kit gallery reveal will show some too!

So, I've given you a lot of links, but no pics.  So (i hope this is OK) . . . I'll give a peek at one of the layouts I've done so far from the kit:

Thanks for stopping by - back to playing with my Jenni Bowlin stuff! - betsy

I Don't Love Halloween, but I LOVE the AC Halloween Line!

Halloween is my LEAST favorite holiday - I LOVE autumn, just can't get into Halloween. But this AC Halloween line of paper is sooo cool - it's not just for Halloween!

The stripes are from the AC Halloween line.

The black/white dot is AC Halloween.

The stripes and background blue are AC Halloween.

All the patterned paper here is AC Halloween.

Loving this stuff.  Thanks for stopping by! - betsy

I Finally Did It!

There was an awesome layout that I saw years ago - I think it might have been by Teresa Olier, but I can't find it anywhere now. She did this wicked cool technique with fonts. I never tried - just filed it away in the old memory bank. Then I came across this very similar add online:

Then, the class Fun With Type with Kelly Purkey inspired us to use fonts this week - so I gave it a shot.

OK - for all you digi girls out there, I know this is easy.  But I didn't think I was going to be able to figure it out.

Here's my layout:

(American crafts patterned paper, Jenni Bowlin rubon butterfly)

What I did was create a digi brush out of my typed words "sandy hands".

Just in case you'd like to know how to do it (in PSE):

1. create a new document with transparent background

2. type your word(s) in your desired font

3. click on the rectangular marquee tool and draw a rectangle around your word(s)

4. edit > define brush from selection

5. a window will pop up asking you to name your brush > OK

6. your word(s) is now a brush that you can 'stamp' all you like.

7. you can stamp it heavily like in the middle of my title and can change the colors just as you would with any brush. I gave a final white stamp in the middle of my heavy stamping in my layout.

am I the only one who never knew how to do this?

thanks for stopping by! - betsy

BHG Scrap Lab Challenge and Snowflake templates

My favorite scrap mag has always been BHG Scrapbooks, etc. Can you tell from the current issue stickies I have hanging from the top of mine?

Yes, those stickies are for real! My favorite column in the mag is the Scrap Lab, where they give the same supplies to 4 scrapbookers and you see the 4 different projects they've created.  I've always wanted to try this, so I posted this as a challenge on Scrapbook.com.

Here's what the magazine gave their 4 scrapbookers:

Jennifer Perks, Renee Villalobos-Campa, Erikia Ghumm, and Patricia Anderson all did an incredible job - you've GOT to check out that column!

Check out the challenge - there will be a little RAK at the end. Since we all can't start with the exact same supplies, there are some guidelines as to what supplies we are to use.  Very similar to the article:

*3 sheets of patterned paper in any fall color
*a clear overlay, clear film, or clear embellies
*leaf embellishment
*you can add any basics you want (cardstock,alpha letters, brads, etc)

Here's what I gave myself to use for the challenge.

I'm using a leaf punch because there's not a single leaf embellie in my scrapspace anywhere! Really?! Strange, but true!

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And here's another Studio Hillary layout. This time, I used Hillary's awesome Snowflake Templates.  LOVE these . . . and winter's comin' !

just a simple one:

thanks for stopping by! - betsy

I'm Not Really a Digi Scrapper . . .

or am I?!!! These new templates: Studio Hillary - Inspired by . . . Mondrian on Scrapbookgraphics.com are so great that I couldn't help but go completely digi with them. No hybrid here - total digi.

I went really simple and stuck to the whole essence of the Mondrian artwork.

Here are Hillary's templates:

And here are two of my layouts:

 

I don't have a huge supply of digi elements and papers, so I used my color picker in PSE and picked colors right from my photos for each of the colored blocks in the template.

Other supplies include Kate Pertiet brushes from Designerdigitals.com

These templates are ADDICTING!!!!!

Thanks so much for visiting! - betsy

With Help from my Little Green Cricut

For our last challenge in the BPS Jenni Bowlin class, we were asked to use the catalogs or websites for Anthropologie or J. Crew as inspiration.

I loved the set up of the Anthropologie website pages:

Loved the photos with the distressed tags under them.  I was going to do a very literal lift of this, but got a little distracted . . . but here's my layout:

I was having so much trouble with creating an interesting background - then I pulled out my Cricut and used the Mini Monograms cartridge to create a bunch of scalloped circles in different sizes. Put some under vellum and some on top.  Thank you little green bug!

All patterned paper is Jenni Bowlin Studios - LOVE this line.  Buttons and sequins are flea market stuff! The smallest scallop is a punch.

And don't forget the Cricut Promotion running NOW:

Be sure to check out the latest Cricut Promotion, The Great Gypsy Escape! Purchase one of 4 new Cricut catridges for a chance to win a new Gyspy (handheld design studio for Cricut), $2,000 travel vouchers and even a $30,000 trip to one of 5 fabulous locations!

thanks for stopping by - have a great week! - betsy