Swedish Heart

Did you ever make a woven Swedish Heart for your Christmas tree?  They are perfect little pockets to hold tiny treats or messages of love for someone special:

My husband and I like to drink a little champagne on our wedding anniversary (tomorrow!) and I wanted a little something to decorate the bottle.   I decided to try my hand at making a woven heart using my Spellbinders Classic Scalloped Hearts dies and some felt: 

And I made a simple little card to insert in the pocket:

  

I just love this detail:

I think this would be very sweet for Valentine's Day, too! 

Exploding Box

It is no secret I love to make exploding boxes.  I actually find myself making them as a 3D card...or a card/gift combo.  Here is one I made for my husband - our 21st Wedding Anniversary is this week!

 

When you take the lid off, the 4 sides open out and this is what you see:

  Each side of the box has a pocket.  They are decorated very similarly, but the sentiments are different.  They are from Quick Quotes and are printed on vellum.  I cut them with the Classic Squares dies from Spellbinders and backed them with a lightly patterned paper before mounting them on Fleur De Lis Squares - also cut with Spellbinder dies. Here are three of them - I somehow forgot to take a close up shot of the fourth!

        

The little chipboard tags are also from Quick Quotes.  I applied some adhesive to the back of each tag to hold them in place, then tied them up with some Maraschino baker's twine from the Twinery.  Inside the pockets are simple tags to which I will add pictures and some notes/memories of our years together. 

Here is the second layer with pockets for more photos, memories and maybe a gift card to a nice restaurant!  This time the tags inside the pocket are cut and embossed with  Spellbinders Classic Scalloped Squares and Classic Squares.  The embossing on these tags create a rich, elegant and finished detail to this project.

All of the paper and ribbons I used to create and decorate this box are from Quick Quotes. The papers are from the Paint It Black line.  The rose in the center of the box is from my previous tutorial and is cut from felt with the Spellbinders Blossom One die.

Spellbinders Design Team Final Round!

Just a quick post to let you know the amazing news...I made it through to the final round! Spellbinders will be assigning a project and sending me some dies to use...I can hardly wait to see what arrives!  Wish me luck!

All of the other finalists are very talented - I have visited their blogs - and they are from all over the world!

Marisa Job	Santa Clarita, CA
Astrid Maclean	Edinburgh, Scotland
Sylvia Blum	Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany
Lesley Langdon	Ontario Canada
Michelle Woerner	Aloha, OR
Darsie Bruno	Elmira, NY
Tina McDonald	New Brunswick Canada
Christine Emberson	England
Kim Nath	Valencia, PA
Heidi Van Laar	Trout Lake, WA
Windy Robinson	Loveland, OH
Kathy Roney	Corona, CA
Iwona Palamountain	Australia
Katie Piotrowski	Prue, OK
Susie Bentz	Centreville, VA  (that's me!!)
Teresa Horner	Covina, CA
Shanna Vineyard	Madison, MS
Theresa Momber	Redding, CA
Debbie Seyer	Arnold, MO
Yvonne  van de Grijp	Netherlands
Ashley Harris	Peoria, AZ
Trina McClune	Auckland, New Zealand
Tonya Dirk	Portland, OR
Judy Hayes	Tracy, MN
Angela Ploegman	Bettendorf, IA
Monika Martinsen	Sodertalje, Sweden

Congratulations and Good Luck to everyone!

Susie  ;)

Every Second is Precious

I created this layout in memory of my nephew, Johnny Hoover:

The journaling tag is hidden behind the photo.

I used a swivel clasp from Tim Holtz to connect it to the pocket watch:

I used Spellbinders dies to cut and emboss the pocket watch...

 ...and the fancy tag in the bottom right of the page.

I cut these last two elements with Copper Engraving Art board from Royal Langnickel, which I picked up from the local craft store.  I love the effect you get with just a light sanding!

I placed 84 individual crystals on the die cut clock face using my indispensable Embellie Gellie from ScraPerfect!  The letters were cut on my Cricut using Stone Script.  I embossed them and then gilded them with  Perfect Pearls.

ScraPerfect:  Embellie Gellie, The Best Glue Ever

BoBunny:  Paper

Jolee’s:  Rhinestones

Spellbinders:  Shapabilities Timeless Heritage and Fancy Tags One

Ranger Ink: Perfect Pearls, Tim Holtz Collage Texture Fade, Swivel Clasps

Cricut:  Stone Script

Royal Langnickel:  Copper Engraving Art 

A Purr-fect Halloween...

...in January?  Really?  Really!  I have told you before that I am not, and never have been, a chronological scrapper.  I work on whatever inspires me at the moment.  It does tend to be in sync with the season because those are the papers and products that are available, but sometimes I flip through a collection of project packets I put together for crops - paper, pictures, and embellishments - and find something there that gets the creative juices flowing!

Truth be told, I was working on a submission for the Spellbinders 2012 Design Team Call.  I am very excited (and more than a little shocked)  to have been selected as one of 40 "creative souls" to move on to the second round. They are all such talented paper crafters/artists it is humbling to be in their company - Good luck to everyone!

This layout is one that I did not submit, however, I am very happy with how it turned out so I wanted to share.  I decided I wanted to use more pictures - MC was so cute and had such fun that year and the pictures really do tell the story - so this ended up morphing into a 2 page layout:

You probably remember that I am a big fan of hidden journaling, so there is a pull-out tag behind the large picture on the far right.  I love being able to cut, emboss and stencil with Spellbinders' dies. I used chalk on the Jack O'Lanterns and then actually traced around each die on black cardstock to create a mat.

The papers are from My Mind's Eye.  The glitter is Martha Stewart's Fire Opal.  The Spellbinder Dies I used are listed (and linked!) below!
Labels Four
Jack O'Lanterns
Fleur de Lis Accents
Fleur de Lis Rectangles

Thanks for stopping by!