Celebrating One of My Favorite Things with Practical Scrappers

I will let you in on a little secret.  Today is my birthday.  Yippee!!!  And what better way to celebrate than by showing you one of my very favorite things to do on a layout.  What is it?  Can you guess?  It's machine stitching!  And PRACTICAL SCRAPPERS chose today, of all days, to do a post on machine-stitched layouts.  Coincidence?  I think not!  So, of course, I contributed with this layout, on which I machine stitched just about anything that could possibly move.  And the little pieces (like the diamond-shaped pieces of paper) that I was too lazy were too little to be easily stitched - I just doodled around those edges so they would look stitched, too.

To get started, I used a wonderful sketch by the very talented Amaryllis found over at SCRAP THAT, a kit club where my bestie, ALISSA, is a design team member.  Papers are from Pink Paislee's Prairie Hill Collection, and my shaped papers were cut out using my Silhouette.  The picture you see?  It is one of my second daughter's engagement photos that I am totally in love with!  Let me warn you, there are about 50 more pictures from her engagement shoot that I am also "totally in love with" so you will be seeing quite a few more!  So gird your loins! (ha! - I love using that phrase)

I love the pops of color this cluster of flower adds.  They are by Basic Grey, but I thought they worked quite well with this layout.

Machine sewing across chipboard alphas is a great look, I think.  Don't be afraid, your sewing machine should be able to handle it quite easily as long as you go slowly.

I love adding a zig zag stitch as a way of defining my border near the edges of my layout.  Smaller pieces of paper use a simple straight stitch - sometimes once around and sometimes twice around the paper - almost always deliberately NOT straight, because I like the "messy" look it provides.  You can see that my small diamond shapes have doodling in brown marker that matches the thread I used in my machine stitching.  Even my photo has a zig zag stitch going across it as an accent (and to hold my twine in place).

Layers + stitching = LOVE!!!

That's all for today.  Now, I am off to have breakfast with my oldest "babies" but, before I go, I wanted to leave my birthday wish for YOU.  Celebrate life.  Celebrate it every day.  Document it.  LIVE it.  Enjoy the beauty and the wonder and the excitement (and even the uncertainty) that is each new day.  I love you all and look forward to spending my next year with you!

Hugs and Kisses!

Lori Whitlock End of School Projects

It is the last week of school in our neck of the woods, and that means making little gifts for favorite teachers and besties.  As always, Lori Whitlock makes that process easy - in fact, the hardest part is having to make a decision as to which cutting files to use - never a simple task when she has so many wonderful designs to choose from!

I chose to make small flower arrangements as well as little purses and boxes to hold treats and gift cards.

I fell in love with these small SCALLOPED EDGE PURSES as soon as I saw them in Lori's STORE.  The purse is cut as one piece, with fold lines that make it a snap to assemble.  Of course, I used ECHO PARK'S Hello Summer Collection (designed by Lori), which I thought to be quite fitting for end-of-school gifts!  To decorate this purse, I used Lori's Star tickets and Pinwheel files (which I L-O-V-E and plan to use again this summer!).



I made this purse a little over an inch larger than the original design so that it would be large enough to hold gift cards, which always seem to be a hit.

The original size purse looks like this, and I used it to hold some yummy skittles.  To decorate it, I used a brad from the Hello Summer Collection, a butterfly from the sticker sheet that comes with the paper pack (I just added a small pop dot behind it), and a flower banner from Lori's files.

The vases of flowers have Lori's cutting files used to decorate the small mason jars (Hello Sunshine Phrase, Dragonfly, Scalloped Oval), and her shapes are also glued to small bamboo skewers and inserted in the bouquets (Pinwheel, Sun, Bird Flourish).  The "Sweet Box" is actually designed to hold Snickers bars, and the file includes an optional wrapper to go around the candy bar.  I decorated mine with Lori's "You're Sweet" phrase and left off the "you're" on my project.  I also used the little star shapes left over from my star tickets to decorate the front.  

 

Because it is already so hot here in sunny Texas, I decided not to use chocolate.  Instead, I simply filled my box with more Skittles.  I don't think I will get any complaints!



That's it for today, but be sure to stay tuned as Lori and the gang (me, too!) will be having another blog hop to kick off the summer in just a couple of weeks!  Details to come!