Practical Scrappers - Scrapping our Valentine's Stash Blog Hop

Welcome to the Practical Scrappers Blog Hop 

where we are Scrapping our Stash.

If you are looking for the Samantha Walker Blog Hop - scroll down a couple posts!

This month we are focusing on scrapping our Valentine's stash, or at least stash that has to do with love.  I never realized how much Valentine's stash I had until I started working on this project!  We are thrilled to have Kiwi Lane Designs sponsoring this month!  

Kiwi Lane Designs creates templates that help take the frustration out of scrapbooking!  And one lucky winner today will get a border set and an accessory set from Kiwi Lane.  We are big fans of Kiwi Lane Designs and in fact have several members of our design team who either currently or in the past have been a part of their design team!  Details on how you can win this prize are available at Practical Scrappers - and details on how you can win a prize from me are at the bottom of this post!

Practical Scrappers Blog Hop List

Practical Scrappers 

Krissy Clark

Christine Meyer ****You Are Here***
Kim Ryden ****Head Here Next***
Patty Selah
Charity Hotrum

Lissa Mitchell
Jennifer Haggerty
Alison Day

Bobbi Smith

Michelle Johns
Kerri Yarus

Cathy Harper

Nicole Laha
Lanette Erickson

Majken Pullin

Erin Morehouse

Lisa Peeples
Claude Campeau
Wendy Coffman
Lee-Anne Thornton

Now on to my Project!

I used an old Valentine's line from American Crafts along with some goodies from SRM Stickers and Bella Blvd.  I bought this American Crafts line after Valentine's last year with the intention of using it for magazine submissions for this year, but time fell short - so I got to use it for just plain old fun instead!  One of my favorite things to do with layouts is to use a grouping of photos that aren't necessarily from the exact same moment in time but show the kids personalities coming thru.  For this one I did one of each of my kiddos!  Can you guess which one is the family clown????  

Supplies Used:

Patterned Paper: American Crafts

Die Cuts: American Crafts

Stickers: Bella Blvd, SRM Stickers

As a thanks for stopping by today I have a giveaway!

I am giving away some pieces from this same line as well as some other coordinating goodies!

To enter you can do any of the following for up to 2 entries:

1) Become a follower here thru the follower button

2) Become a fan on my facebook page

Make sure to leave me a comment here or on facebook so I know what you did! 

I will announce a winner on Monday! 

Now hop on over to Kim's blog and see what she has to share!

Using Food Coloring

This month we did Food Coloring for our Frugal Finds on Practical Scrappers.  I was a total skeptic but Kerri and Erin wanted to do it.  Trusting their brilliance, I agreed to give it a whirl.  They came up with amazing stuff...you should check it out!  I made a marbled paper for mine using the technique described here.

  I've been itching to use the Glitz Design Rub On that made the music background.  The other thing I did on this that was new is that I rolled up a piece of brown paper and used it for my little accent underneath the sentiment.  It adds a different look to things just by using a little piece of scratch paper.

I've really come to love this regular feature on Practical Scrappers.  Even when it completely takes me out of my comfort zone.  It's fun to work with a medium that is not the norm!

Supplies Used: Glitz Design Rub On, Bazill Cardstock, Close to My Heart Sentiment, The Twinery Bakers Twine, Martha Stewart Punch, Sizzix Die

Two oldies but goodies

Practical Scrappers is celebrating our 2nd Anniversary.  In honor of that I asked each designer to pick their two favorite projects that they have made for Practical Scrappers. Kerri counted up that she had 147 projects to choose from, I'm sure mine is that or higher so  I decided to go way way way back to projects from the first few months of Practical Scrappers.  Although my style has evolved some since I made these, I still think they are fun!  It's kinda fun to see how much my style has changed since 2009 :)  I hope you'll join in on some of the fun this week!

In honor of being named a Lucky Girl Crafts Team Member

I thought it would be a good time to rerun some of my projects that I made from their kits.  But first a little info:  Lucky Girl Crafts is owned by Jessica, a designer also on Practical Scrappers who's been with me since day one.  One reason she started Lucky Girl Crafts is because she lives far away from a local scrapbook store (sounds familiar huh!).  She was finding that getting her hands on great scrapbooking products and combinations that she liked to work with was a challenge and knew her area friends felt the same way.  So she started putting together these great kits and has taken off with them!  She does a great job of providing a variety of products from different companies and in a range of styles.  Her kits don't confine you to a specific style but open up several different ways you can go with the kit.  

All of these projects are over 6 months old...I have never brought back anything before, it's kinda fun to see how I've grown some!

This is actually one of my all time favorite layouts - totally (at the time) out of my normal style...it awakened something in my creativity that needed to be brought out!

Hee hee look at all that snow :)

 This kit was awesome because it included both cutesy papers as you see here and some shabby chic style papers that you saw earlier.  It also included a lot of great romantic trims.  And no I didn't cover up this poor girls head with trim, it's just the angle :)

This is an old one that I did over a year ago...thought it'd be fun to show how my style has changed a bit.

Weekend Contest at Practical Scrappers

This is my take for the sketch contest on Practical Scrappers this weekend. Obviously I'm not entering the contest-but wanted to complete the sketch anyway! I am not good with sketches-Ang and I sat there a little dumbfounded last night as we both tried to complete this. It definitely made us think outside our normal box!

Dat's A

One of Lucy's favorite things to do is identify animals in books. She always says "Dat's a...." This week the challenge at Practical Scrappers was to use punches. I used punches to make all the different animals. It was a lot of fun to play and see what I could come up with. I am proud to say that Lucy could identify every one of them--so I must've done alright!