National Scrapbook Day Wrap-up (Part 1)

As many of you know, Saturday was National Scrapbook Day.  Lots of people celebrate by going somewhere to celebrate, but I prefer to stay home and do online crops.  Each year, my goal is to finish all of the challenges at scrapbook.com and as many of the Fiskateer challenges as I can.  It is always a blast!  

I completed all six timed challenges at scrapbook.com (there's also weeklong one I haven't done yet), sixteen Fiskateer challenges (not all of those required making something).  I'm ordinarily a very slow scrapper, so that level of output is pretty amazing.  

Today I'm going to share three of the four layouts I made for scrapbook.com challenges.  Each of the layout challenges lasted two hours.  Since it takes a significant amount of time to scan, stitch, upload and link, I allowed myself no more than 1 hr 15 minutes for each layout.  

The "There's No Place Like Home" challenge asked us to make a layout about our home.  Because I've scrapped our house before, I chose to scrap our city and what makes it special.  As you can see, I went really simple for this layout and dedicated most of my 75 minutes to the journaling.  

 

The "Mask it and Mist it" challenge required (obviously) a mask and some mist.  I started with a sheet of white cardstock, then chose adhesive chipboard letters for the title.  I misted over the whole thing with four different colors.  I removed the chipboard and saved it for a future use.  While it was drying, I drafted my journaling.  I don't always plan my journaling ahead of time, but I wanted it to fit the space properly and I couldn't do anything while it was drying anyway.  Fortunately, it only took a few minutes.  I added the pictures and cut a cardstock flag for the date and I was done, under an hour. 

 

The "Sketch It" challenge asked us to make a layout using this sketch by Kels.

This was by far the hardest challenge for me.  They'd told us ahead of time to have three 3x5 photos, but mine were vertical instead of horizontal.  Normally I'd rotate the sketch, but it looked weird that way.  So I trimmed down my photos and squeezed in a banner to house my title.  I tried a few things with the circles before settling on a tone-on-tone design.  Everything else was too bold or busy for my taste, and it competed with the pictures.  In the end, I love how this turned out.

 

Tomorrow I'll share the card challenges from National Scrapbook Day!

Glass Flamework

I've always wanted to try glassblowing.  In fact, it was the very first thing I put on my list of 40 Things.  I did some research and found classes not too far away, but the price was prohibitive.  Further research led me to an affordable alternative- glass flamework.

I didn't really have any concept of what I'd be doing or making when I showed up for the class.  We were each given a key, a toolkit, a vial of blue goo, six steel rods, and black and ivory glass rods.  We were to pick four additional glass rods (two translucent and two opaque) from a large display of colors. I chose opaque orange and yellow, translucent blue and green.

 

The first step was to dip each of the steel mandrels into the blue goo, which I learned was bead release.

 

After a safety orientation, our instructor Adi Braeman demonstrated the steps to make a basic round bead.  As with most things, it looked much easier than it actually was!  After we each made one round bead, we moved on to other techniques, like pulling a stringer, decorating with dots, and shaping the beads.  Here I am, working on my 3rd bead.  

 

This bead was made from ivory, orange and green glass.  Part of the challenge of beadmaking is that the colors at 1600° F do not necessarily look the same as they will at room temperature.

 

During the 3.5 hour class, we each made 6 beads.  Somehow, it had not occurred to me that molten glass would not cool enough to take home that evening.  Instead, we had to put each of our (literally) red-hot beads into a kiln set at 961° F.  The computer would gradually bring the kiln down to room temperature overnight, and we could pick up our beads the following day.  It was very frustrating to leave at the end of the class without knowing what my beads looked like.

 

When I picked them up the next day, I was so excited to finally see them.  Definitely beginner's work, but super cool nonetheless.

 

I think this one turned out the best.  It has a good shape and decent dots.  It came off the mandrel easily.  (Four of the six didn't come off until Steve muscled them off with pliers.  One cracked in the process.)  

This is my second favorite.  It's the red-hot one in the picture above.  I love the colors, but it's not quite even and I slopped quite a bit of extra glass on the right-hand side of the mandrel.  I'm going to try filing that off.

This is my third favorite.  It didn't turn out anything like I expected.  I thought I was adding just a touch of opaque ivory and translucent green on top of the translucent turquoise, but obviously I was wrong.  The colors were all really similar when it was red-hot.  

This class was incredibly fun... everything I'd hoped it would be and more.  This is exactly what I was hoping when I started 40 Things.  Goal #21 accomplished!

Behind the Scenes

I can't tell you how many times I've dug through my paper supply, found the perfect paper, but not had quite enough of it to do what I'd hoped.  Check out this layout: 

I had exactly two sheets of the background cardstock and nothing else on hand that was quite what I wanted.  Yet, I really wanted to back my title and make journaling strips from that same cardstock.  My solution was to cut out a chunk of the cardstock that would be hidden behind the photos.  

I do this ALL the time.  Probably half of my layouts have visible chunks missing from them if you look at the backside.  Fortunately, this is hidden in the album!  

Here's another example.  The finished layout looks like this:

I didn't have enough of the creamy cardstock to make a complete circle, nor did I have enough of the green patterned paper to back the photo strip.  Here's what the layout looked like before I adhered everything.  As you can see, I only used tiny strips of patterned paper behind the photo strip, and the 'circle' is actually two pieces that were *barely* big enough to fit behind the photos.

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this!  Anyone else have clever solutions to the problem of not-quite-enough paper?

Sunset Art

In the process of compiling my list of 40 Things I've always wanted to do, I spent a lot of time digging through my files. Along the way, I rediscovered some of my favorite art projects from my teaching days. One of my absolute favorites is Sunset Art.  

Trevor was very excited to try Sunset Art. Here's what he made:

And here is the one I made:

Materials needed: Watercolor paper, watercolor paints, paintbrush, brown and black construction paper, scissors, and glue. It also helps to have photos of sunsets.

Begin by looking at pictures of sunsets. Observe that sunsets can have a wide variety of colors and that the warmest colors (yellow, orange, red) are near the horizon. Notice that the colors flow into each other and that the bands of color are horizontal, not vertical.

Use watercolors to paint yellows, oranges, reds, blues and purples onto the watercolor paper.

While the paint is drying, cut out the silhouette of an animal from black construction paper. Older children can do this on their own, while younger children might need a tracer. Trevor used a tracer of a zebra and then carefully cut it out.

Next, cut a thin strip of black paper. Cut a strip of brown paper that is slightly wider than the black paper. Layer the black paper on top of the brown to create a sense of distance. Finally, glue these papers to the dry background paper, then glue the animal in the foreground.

Here are two more examples of Sunset Art, made many years ago by 5th grade students who were gracious enough to let me keep their work as examples for future classes. I wish I'd taken pictures of some of the other students' work, as their artwork was as unique as they were. Aren't these stunning?

by Vincent

by Alex

I'd love to do this as an annual art project for Trevor and me, just like it used to be an annual project I taught to my students. It will be really fun seeing Trevor's skills progress over the years.

Playing with Paint

Here's the second layout I made for Nancy's family. The pictures are from their May 2011 trip to Moab, Utah.  

I wanted the design to be stark, much like the landscape in the photos. I love the way the red rocks look against the blue sky, so I chose that for my color palette. I poured some Americana 'Georgia Clay' acrylic paint into my Frisbee. Then I got out the old toothbrush I keep in the craftroom.

I dipped the toothbrush into the paint, then ran my thumb across the bristles to splatter paint onto plain tan paper. I let a few accent drips fall, then used the toothbrush to paint the chipboard title and date stickers. What fun to play with paint!