Froggy Weather

I totally love this frog! I found the graphic online, printed him on colored cardstock, highlighted and shadowed to give him some depth and VOILA! A great embellishment in a matter of 3 minutes!

So, Yes, I am making page kids again in an effort to use up scraps. I love the look of this one and cant wait to use it for photos of the kids and the frog that lives in our yard.

There are quite a few photo mats and a couple of hidden journaling boxes. I also added this one, which I suppose could be a small photo mat, but I intend to use it for a Title box.

All paper was from an old DCWV stack, brads and ribbons from Stampin' Up stash. Luv it!

How I Paper Piece -Tutorial

My youngest daughter is SURE that she is royalty. There is no convincing her otherwise. I thought maybe she would figure it out in Kindergarten, but that just cemented the idea in her mind. So, since she is all Princess, all her album pages end up in the Princess theme. This Ariel The Little Mermaid pp is one of those.

How do you Paper Piece?
This is how I do...
I start with a coloring page.


This one was free online.



I figure out the overall background colors and cut multiple copies of the image into sections for those colors. This isnt the same as just cutting out the image... this is planning for stacking and overlap for gluing.



The easiest piece on this one is the rock. Notice that I didn't cut around her fins or the plants... I just cut out the entire rock. I traced with a pencil and cut out. I set the cut image on my cardstock and traced with a stylus (including the lines in the image). This gave me faint impressions to guide my coloring. I color with pencils... for the rock I used grays, browns, a hint of green and white.

When I traced the image with the stylus, I also traced her fins as a reference point for glueing.
I repeated this for the hair. One special thing I did on the hair, to ensure it looked like bangs, was to cut on the hair line with a razor knife. When put together and glued, the skin color will slide under the hair into proper place.
The skin section is next. I want to cut the largest section possible so I lumped all the skin together, marked with the stylus, cut and colored. I sliced this one with the razor knife too... to slide the bikini top under her arm. It takes a bit of extra effort, but gives a more realistic effect.
The final pieces are blue for her fins and bikini top.
When all the pieces are cut and colored, it is time to assemble. I prefer to use Zig 2-Way glue pens. I start with the biggest, most background pieces and build up to the top using my impressions from the stylus as a placement guide.

Now it can be embellished... and final shadowing (if forgotten when coloring) can be applied.

What do you think? How do YOU paper piece?
~Anne

Spring Flowers Layout

Confession: I haven't been too creative lately.
My focus has been on organizing, and while my obsession with stamping and scrapping is visible all over the things I have organized, it isn't the same as cardmaking or scrapbooking. So, in a effort to post something creative, I am posting a layout I did for a class I taught a couple years ago.

The focus of the class was envies and tags and was an intermediate level class. This layout includes 3 tiny vellum envelopes made from a Colluzle template and a library pocket (no template) all with (hidden journaling) tags in them. The letters were cut on my Sizzix with Girls are Weird Sizzlet alphas. The flowers and pots were hand-drawn and colored. The background paper was from CM and the cardstock was an unmarked scrap. The organdy ribbon is from Stampin Up.

The photos are of daffodils and hyacinths my husband had planted the fall before. They were beautiful, although they were tiny (6" to 7"). They have continued to come up every year... always tiny. =D They bust through the snow, bright green against the graying, melting snow, proving that life begins again each spring. This layout makes me smile each time I see it.

~Anne

Disney Princesses PP

Paper piecing is another of my loves. I love to play with paper and I love to color so it seems to be the natural progression of things! A few years ago I taught some online classes and these were the final outcome. Dont they look great? And they weren't as difficult as they may look! Stay tuned. I will try and get a tutorial up in the next few days.

~Anne