Club Scrap Blog Hop - Botanicals

Happy Spring and welcome to the April edition of the Club Scrap blog hop!  This month, we are getting crafty with the Botanicals collection and I'm so in love with the pastel and spring-y feel to this kit!

If you traveled here from Tiare's blog, then you are following the hop!  If you've lost your way or just want to see all the links in one place, head over to the Club Scrap blog to see a list of all the talented bloggers participating today.

I got a lot of use out of this kit this month - check out my Artist team mood board post and the Greetings to Go post for more ideas on how to use this kit!  I wanted to finish off the month my working on one of my goals of replenishing my card stash, and I really wanted to do something fun with the adorable wood veneers that were included in this month's Deluxe kit.

It turned out to be a pretty simple card, but I was able to incorporate patterned paper, elements from the cutaparts, and altered wood veneers to create an everyday, any occasion card.  (And I love those kinds of cards - perfect for birthdays, anniversaries, or just to say hi!)

I layers all of my paper elements together and I applied Amethyst ink to the edges of the sentiment cutapart to help it stand out.

I altered the wood veneer pieces by applying a generous amount of embossing ink to once side and sprinkling embossing powder on each piece.  Then I melted the embossing powder using my heat gun to create some unique embellishments for my card.

I love the way these pieces turned out - the embossing powder gave the wood flowers a shiny, enameled finish to them, and the color is much brighter than I would have achieved using only inks or mists.

I hope you try this embossing technique when you get a chance - it's quick, easy, and the results are fantastic!

Thank you so much for stopping by this month!  Head on over to Tricia's blog to see what amazing project she has up her sleeve.  Stop back in next month when we're gettin' down with The Blues!

Club Scrap Botanicals Mood Board Challenge

Welcome back for this month's Club Scrap Artist Team challenge!  In April, we were working with the Botanicals collection and one of my favorite sources of inspiration - Pinterest!  The Artist team and Club Scrap created a mood board to gather all sorts of pins to get our creative minds going.

Since there were so many amazing pins to chose from, I was having a hard time narrowing it down to just one, so I picked three!  The best way I thought I could incorporate three pieces of inspiration into one project was to create a pocket scrapbooking page, and I love the results.

One of my scrappy goals this year is to get my childhood pictures into albums, and I thought this style of scrapping was perfect for this - there are a lot of odd sized photos in my collection, and the pockets allow me to slip these in without cropping too many - I still get nervous about cutting into pictures when they are the only copy!

The first pin I was inspired by was this one - I loved the combination of the circles and the gold images.  I used one of the starburst bloom images from the Borders and Backgrounds UMs and Topaz ink to create the background, then inked the solid image with Versamark and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder.  This created a cute 3x4 card that went along with my springtime pictures.

The cutaparts included in the Deluxe kit worked perfectly for this type of page too - the journaling card you see there is already 3x4, so I was able to journal my memories and slip it right in!

The next pin I wanted to recreate was this one - I loved those splatters!  I recreated the splatters using Fuchsia and Carnation inks and stamped the solid image with India Black ink.  The addition of another cutapart using my Tiny Attacher finishes this card off.

The embellishments included in the Deluxe kit were perfect for these types of pages - the wood veneer pieces, bronze flowers, and jeweled brads are a little bit dimensional, but still fit perfectly into the pockets.

Finally, this pin lead me to create the handcut card on the right - I used the stencil included in the Lite kit and traced the image with pencil, then used a knife and mat to cut out the negative space.  I love cards like these in my pocket scrapbooking pages - it gives it such interest!

If you like this page, head over to the Club Scrap blog to see how the rest of the Artist team used the mood board and this kit to create their projects!  Thanks for stopping by!