I'm back! Did ya miss me?

It's been a long time since my last post I know, but life has a funny way of..well.....getting in the way. Had to take some time off from some things I enjoyed like being on a design team, blogging and taking part in challenges. With two of my kids starting Pa Cyber Charter school they needed my full attention, and so did my house for that matter. If anyone has ever tried to home school your children then you get what I mean. VERY TIME CONSUMING!!

As part of my New Year's Resolutions I hope to keep up with my blog a bit more this year and bring tons of inspiration to you. I can't promise how often I'll post, but I will promise to post much more. Deal?

All is better now and I am very happy to say that I have been accepted onto The Outlawz Design Team!! If you haven't checked out this new challenge community please do! I feel very blessed to be given this opportunity to work with some awesomely talented ladies! A bunch of them I had the pleasure of working with before and I'm very excited to be reunited with them again :}

I am a designer for The Scrapbooking Group over at The Outlawz and below you will see my first project completed for the swirls and butterflies challenge. This was so much fun to do and who doesn't like to work with butterflies and swirls? I hope you find some inspiration from my layout and decide to hop on over to The Outlawz and give it a whirl! There are several other awesome challenges there too that just might tickle your fancy.


Sweet Little Thing

I used mostly Crate Paper's Restoration Collection paper. Fancy Pants chipboard flourish, American Crafts Dear Lizzy metal butterfly and metal rose brads, American Crafts rose ribbon, Tattered Angels antique key, The Stamps Of Life butterfly2build set for the two dimensional butterflies, Sassafras silhouette brad, floral flourish cut on my Silhouette.

I did a couple of little techniques on this layout that I wanted to share. On the big chipboard flourish I used both Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink in scattered sraw and Making Memories moss stain along the edges and then applied Tattered Angel's suede Glimmer Mist with a foam brush to even out the colors and give it a bit of sparkle too. Yummy! On the green floral die cut that sits on top of the large flourish I used a lighter green American Crafts Zing Embossing Powder. Once the powder was applied to whole die cut, I took a paint brush and brushed off just a little here and there so the darker base paper would show through in some places giving it some dimension. I stamped the butterflies with brown ink first and then stamped again with gold on top to give it more of an antique feel and I think it worked quite well.

Next up I hope to finish Finley's (my little girl that's not so little anymore) b-day invitations for a sleepover she will have soon. Her b-day was on January 13th and she turned 6, but we have her celebration later in the month or early the following month because of it being so close to Christmas. Hopefully I'll have those for you in the next few days. Until then.....TTFN!