Challenge Yourself

Yes, today is a challenge from the Challenge Yourself blog.  This challenge is to use snowflakes but the twist on this one is that we must use a photo of ourselves. Now this was a tough one for me, because I knew the exact photo that I wanted to use but for the life of me I couldn't find it anywhere. So I set my darling daughter to searching her photos for it but she couldn't find it among her photos either.  I know that I have it somewhere because I have already scrapped it once. It was the only photo I had of me playing in the snow with my grandchildren, So, I had to fall back on another photo.

To create this layout I used some very old stash papers by Bo Bunny from their Winter Joy collection. I love this collection because it isn't the normal Christmas colours. I used a snowflake punch (unknown) to punch some snowflakes from the paper, a Martha Stewart punch to punch a lace edge, and a Sizzix die to cut a circle from the same paper collection. A KaiserCraft wooden sleigh covered with Stickles, some Forever in Time frames, a bit of cheeseclothe and some Nuvo drops completed the layout. This is the layout I came up with.
This layout was also created for a sketch challenge at Scrap, Paper, Scissors.

Thanks for stopping by, please leave a comment to let me know you were here.

Jackie

Merry Christmas

It was a very exciting day for me.  Last month I had my regular visit with my eye doctor who told me I had the start of Macular Degeneration in my right eye and that was why I was unable to see anything when I looked directly at it.  He made an appointment for me with the eye specialist and I saw him today.  Good news and bad news, I don't have macular degeneration which is wonderful news because that can't be cured.  The bad news is that I have a hole in my retina and a fairly large one at that and it is right in the center of my eye. The good news is that it can be repaired with surgery, the bad news is that I have no idea how long I am going to have to wait for it. So I am going to be sitting here waiting for the phone call.

Now I have been trying for over a year to figure out how to download the photos from my cell phone to my computer.  According to everyone, it should be easy peasy, just plug it into my computer and then just download them but darn if it would work for me and I tried just about everything.  Today I took the phone to my dealer to see if he could figure it out, he is pretty good and he is so patient with me every time I go to see him about anything.  Well he couldn't figure it out and believe me he tried. Well I really wanted this to work because I have discovered that my cell phone actually takes much lovelier photos of my layouts than my so very expensive Canon does.  This is because with my cell phone I can shoot the picture from the top of my desk where I have the lovely Ott lighting and with my Canon I have to shoot from farther away because I don't have the Macro lens. Well when I got home I took that baby and I started playing with it, I played with settings, I moved things, turned things on that were turned off and I turned things off that were turned on, I locked that thing up so solid a couple of times that I had to do a reset on it.  However, I finally found a spot that said "backing up your data to another device".. OMG a haha moment!!  Within ten minutes I had all my photos transferred over to my computer without any more problems. Only if we would learn to read first!!!


Today I created another challenge for Scrap Paper Scissors. The challenge was simple, to use some fussy cutting or die cuts.  Well, I don't have much paper that I can do any fussy cutting on and I don't have any Christmas dies at all so I was stuck going to the Silhouette store and getting some cut files from them.  Of course they have lots and lots to choose from so there wasn't much trouble finding one to go with my chosen layout.

I started with paper from Craftsmart's Evergreen Cabin, paper pad. Now when I first started scrapping forever ago, I bought the ever needed spindle of wacky edged scissors which I never use, so I decided to pull a pair of those and cut the edge of the paper I was going to use for the second layer.  Then I distressed it pulling the little circles toward the center of the page.  A bit of Distress ink to match the layout was in order, so I sprayed a bit of water on it to tone it down a bit. Next I used a Martha Stewart edge punch on my photo mat and one of the paper layers.  I used a Heidi Swapp edge distresser to distress all my edges.
I tucked a bits and pieces of cheesecloth and burlap between the paper layers for some interest. I also layered some cardboard between my patterned paper for dimension. The clocks and gear chipboard pieces are from Creative Embellishments. After coating the gears with a coat of Gesso I then embossed them with black sparkle embossing powder from Ranger.  I added some white circles using a medicine cup and gesso.  The stitches were added using a stitch stamp from Gel a Tins (I don't know if they are still in business, I have to check that out) To finish the layout of, I used some red Nuvo pearls.

Now I also completed two more challenges for the 12 days of Christmas at Creative Inspiration.. only one more to go there!
Day 4 was to use stamp and die set.. Well I just had the die no stamp so I had to go with what I had.

Day 9 The challenge required us to create a layout using tags. I managed to use two tags on this layout.

Thanks for stopping by, please leave a comment letting me know you were here.
Jackie