Ahhh...Sweet Love

If you thought the obligatory 2-month picture was cuteness overload...Check out my precious tot when she was just a teensy tiny one-month old 💗

Oh man, putting these into my scrapbook bring back so many memories!  At this stage of the game we were still trying to get her up to 10 pounds even though she's been a voracious eater her whole damn life.  😆

This was also the stage of her life where we all still thought she would be a red-head...but that story is for another day!  

Below is the entire LO:

I LOOOOOOVVVVE a good vintage LO.  These papers were beyond fun to use and I loved the elements that came with this kit!

Below you can see where I used some lace under chipboard and a flower cluster.  As I still have a complete drawer full of lace, I really should incorporate this more often, but we all know me and my empty promises to use up my spare scraps! 

Even though I was going more vintage with this LO, I couldn't help myself with my flowers and I used some springtime colors as well!  💗

As (almost) always, I love some good texture and this LO was no exception.  A little bit of pink modeling paste and a stencil added a nice backdrop.  Then I layered some vintage "postcards" to complete the effect.

There you have it!  One of these days, I'll look back on all these and remember the sweet days when my angel slept all day.  In the meantime, I'm off to the back porch to pick up the play food and grill accessories that are leftover from the plastic picnic my toddler cooked for me today! (Plastic picnic food is DELICIOUS, by the way!)

xoxoxo,

mel

 

A Box Full of Sweet Love

Last year I embarked on a few explosion boxes to highlight the first few months of my precious daughter's life.  This was especially important for us since on of her grandmother's lives so far away!

Below you can see the top side of her completed box. I went with a very clear "purple" theme here 😂

While the papers, elements, etc. came from a past Tres Jolie Kit Club kit, the box was straight from Scrapbook.com and purchased right after watching one of their Thursday Lives.  I purchased both the white and the craft boxes (this is the craft box.)

On the lid and the outside "walls" I used plenty of texture paste and gel medium to make the box strong.  I know how much I love to use heavy embellishments and I didn't want the box to fall apart.  Although I didn't use many of them, the explosion boxes come with several additional envelopes, pockets, etc. that can be used inside the box.  For the purpose of this project I just wanted to fit as many photos front as center as I could.

Below you can see the outside "walls" and the lid.  I used my Cricut to cut most of the paper pieces to cut down on time.  A bit of distressing and a lot of ink later, the final result was exactly what I wanted! 😍

Final result below.  For the explosion panels inside I used much smaller pieces of paper so that more of the craft background would show through.  The box in the middle is one of the extra pieces that came with the explosion box.  Since Grammy lives so far away, we sent her a "little rock from Little Rock" inside the little box 💜

 

And there you have it!  (Ignore the top of my feet in the picture above!)  My GoPro recently lived it's last day, so once I get a new camera system I'll put together of video of how easily this all comes together!  Until then, thanks for checking this out!

xoxo,

Mel

An Obligatory 2 Month Pic!

It's hard to believe that I took this photo almost exactly a year ago!  Spoiler alert! For all the photos I took this first year of A's life...I only managed to catch about 7 or 8 months on this cute little butterfly mat.  And at least 1/2 of those were NOT taken on the actual "month" date.  🤷

Oh well, at least I have a few of them taken and at some point I will get them scrapped or put into her baby book (also a consistent work of art in progress!)

Below is a lovely, sweet layout of my teeny, tiny, TWO month-old baby...(back when she was teensy weensy!)

Above you can see where I used some ATC sized cards, and did the standard "distress and ink the edges."  I love getting to use "other" colors of ink when I ink edges.  Meaning, I love the vintage look of using neutrals and browns (think TH Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, etc.) but I also love color matching and I did that here with some green tones!

Below is a close up some flowers and chip board.  Again, with the chipboard I used an array of green colors.  I really love how the chipboard turned out and how it compliments the flowers!

I also distressed the edges of the frame for the photo and used some of the greens to color them as well.  A few stickers and sentiments to decorate the frame and VOILA!

Along the way I have gathered at three packages of these bubbly/bauble embellishments so expect to keep seeing them for the foreseeable future 🤣🤣  But they are super cute and elegant and fit in perfectly with this LO!

There ya have it!  A mere 12 months later I'm finally getting this one posted! (And let's be fair...I didn't get around to scrapping it until the summer at least!)

Thanks for looking around!

xoxo,

Mel

 

Prom Night!!!

But probably not the prom you're thinking of!  Every year one of my professional organizations hosts a conference...and just about every other year we get to dress up for the banquet (spoiler alert, this year has a '90s theme!) Last year at just about 2 1/2 months post partum we had KK (my mother) come up and watch A so we could dress up and go have some fun!  And now I'm finally getting around to preserving that memory! 🥰

Here is the full LO:

Since I'm still getting back into the groove of crafting on a regular basis, my kits are all over the place but I am still 100% sure this is a Tres Jolie Kit Club kit. I love how their kits have chipboard in almost every single kit.  One of my 2026 goals is to do more with chipboard.  As I'm getting caught up on A's baby book I'm finding myself using lots of chipboard, so if anyone has any ideas or techniques, HMU because I'd love to try them! :) 

This time around I used gesso, some pink metallic paint, a little bit of embossing powder and some metallic flakes on the chipboard! For the base, I started with a stencil and some pink paste to build a textured background on the paper and layered the chipboard over that.  I cut some phrases from papers in the kit and distressed and inked the edges.  I really didn't feel like the background screamed "Prom Party" enough so I used a few Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays to add some color splatters.

For the finishing touches, I added a few elements, some flowers and a bit of glass glitter and more metallic flakes

As you can see from the phrase above, "It's a beautiful day" and it truly was then and is today!  Thanks for checking out my page today!

xoxo,

Mel

 

Painting Stars!

From the very first one I did (years ago) to the present time, altered paint brushes have continued to be one of my favorite things to make.  I don't know how to accurately describe the joy I get from painting a paintbrush.  It's just entirely too much fun.  Luckily for me, my sister in love LOVES them and uses the ones I make for her to decorate her office space! This time around (albeit a few months back) I called and asked her what color she wanted her next paint brush to be and her answer was...

TEAL!

Also one of my favorite colors (but really which color isn't one of my favorite colors?), I was soooo excited to get to work on this for her!  See the finished product below:

For this project I had a Tres Jolie Kit Club kit that had come with a paint brush and a few paper mache stars.  I love working with these stars on mixed media and altered off the page projects because they add an extra dimension that you just can't always have with paper projects.  I didn't even fully coat these with gesso because I wanted to allow the stain and color to take on some of the craft color of the paper mache product.  Below you can see where I used a combination of purple and teal hues to color the star, and purple, teal, and yellow hues to paint the bristles of the brush.  I used a mix of paint and dye to achieve the overall effect I was looking for and I pretty well think I nailed it!  I splattered a plain white flower with some of the leftover paint and added some Beautiful Beads and smaller flowers.  

Below you can see where I used the other star on the handle of the paintbrush.  I also had some chipboard with a star and gear motif, so I hosed it down with gesso and used the same paint/dye scheme on it.  I also added some copper and black (with gold specks) embossing powder for an extra layer of texture!

Different angle of the paintbrush handle and the chipboard.  I used the loop that was already on the paper mache star as the hanger for this project instead of using the hole in paintbrush.  A few more Beautiful Beads and a few extra flowers in purple and teal hues added an extra touch of flair.

All in all, this was a super fun project to complete and one of the last ones I completed before pregnancy exhaustion completely took over my life.  The good news (best news, actually) is that the baby is finally here and I can begin to catch up on crafting and posting!  Cheers to the new chapter and the new year!

xoxo,

Mel

 

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

So...I made this LO quite some time ago.  I remember when I opened this kit that although I loved the colors I wasn't sure I'd find a way to scrap with them.  Then I went to a party to celebrate a friend of mine's promotion.  The picture is one of her sisters and myself, but as soon as I stepped foot inside the party I realized that this kit was ABSOLUTELY getting put to use.  (Side note...I have also "managed" to scrap a few more events with the awesome bright colors used in this kit!)

Here is the LO:

One of the first things I realized when I sat down to work on this project was that I have an abundance of turquoise and teal color items in my craft space.  Including the sparkly teal texture paste you can see on the picture above (and below) and the teal Beautiful Beads you can see on the picture below.  Yellow is also one of my favorite colors so I was definitely able to put some more of my paint/spray/stain/etc. to use on this LO.  In the photo below you can see where I used plenty of color and texture on chipboard pieces that complimented the color palette of the papers and flowers included in the kit.

Below are a few more closeups of the teal texture paste, Beautiful Beads, and chipboard.  I LOVED how the texture paste matched the papers in this kit!  It was absolutely perfect and I got to use up some of my stash!

More chipboard and a little closeup of some of the flowers:

Finally, because you can "never" use "too many" flowers, I used these bright sprays and some "Color Them Yourself" flowers from 49 and Market to add even MORE color to this LO.  I also used all three of these sprays to make "paint splatters" on the background and on all my chipboard pieces.

So there you have it!  Bright colors and fun to post on a week that's been mostly cold-ish and gray!

P.S. (Some of these colors are getting used in the baby's room too!!!💓)

xoxo,

Mel

 

Some Saturday Fun (On a Tuesday)

So...I'm way behind on posting pictures of things I've made (shocker), but in my defense, I've been making something pretty cool for the last few months!  Baby Girl will be here in December.  I'm loving this stage of my life, but I've got to get all these "me" projects finished so I can focus on scrapbooking the next 18 years or so of my daughter's life!  Anyway, I have a few Tres Jolie Kit Club kits laying around from the first trimester days (when I was too sick to make much of anything) and the second trimester days (where I just enjoyed getting to enjoy life again!) so I've started creating some things.  Baby book is (obviously) in the making also so stay tuned for that.  In the meantime, in addition to all the kits I have laying around I also have a stack of photos that I've already printed...and a list of photos that need to be printed.  Guess I better get on the ball over the next couple of months!

Below...a picture of me and my beloved bird, Pistachio.  Pistachio has since gone to live with my sweet friend C who treats her like the princess parakeet she is! 😆😍  I was channeling alot of the great Melissa Larson (or trying to anyway) with this LO, but may have gone a little off course (it happens.)

At any rate...the LO:

Below is a little close up of some of my glitter work.  I was trying to swirl some glitter around using modge podge...lesson learned is that chunky glitter does not like delicate swirls, but I actually like how the glitter turned out.  I also layered some flower pieces below my flower clusters to add a little extra depth.

Somehow I have acquired a significant collection of these Prima memory hardware items pictured below.  They come in 3 packs and I feel like I use them often...yet I seem to have a never ending supply of these cute little dome-like embellishments (1st world problems, for sure.)  I also layered some additional flowers and decorated most of my flowers with some Beautiful Beads from ReneaBouquets.

Another item I'm finding that I have an abundance of...pink sprays and stains.  So...even though I'm having a baby girl, I'm definitely trying to make a dent in my pink stash.  I covered most of the base paper with some stenciled designs and used those backdrops to experiment with a little color.  To the left of the "Sweet Life" button is a spot where I used a pale pink spray over some Lindy's Stamp Gang Magical powder.  Stay tuned for even more color experimentation! 😍💗

And there you have it!  Just a quick catch up.  Hopefully I can get a few more of these great scrapbook pages posted here and get my desk cleared so I can start decorating that baby book!  💞

xoxoxo,

Mel

 

Happy (Late) Valentine's Day!

Happy (late) Valentine's Day!  I couldn't help but post something about my Valentine!  He's the sweetest, kindest, toughest dude I know...and he's pretty photogenic as well!  I made this LO using the January Tres Jolie Kit Club scrapbook kit.  The kit was super sweet and cute with tons of little shabby chic items it!  Here is the LO:

I did quite a bit of paper layering and used a paper doily make a shabby-licious backdrop for my photo.  Most of the Tres Jolie kits come with some amazing chipboard.  Below you can see where I distressed and used tons of embossing powder, glitter and white paint to create a vintage look on the chipboard.  Some of the flowers included in the kit had white edging around the petals and I really wanted to play off that with my chipboard. I also added some metal embellishments that I had laying around.  I used some antiquing and crackle paste on those to tie the whole look together.   

Below is a close up of another flower cluster and a closer look at the chipboard.  I used some leftover chipboard "leaves" behind my flowers to add some pizzazz to the LO.

Finally, you can see here where I inked the edges of some of the background papers.  I also added a Renea Bouquets dragonfly (because I just love all of her butterflies and dragonflies!)  There is a little bit of lace layered behind some ephemera and paper layers as well as another flower cluster.

Thanks for looking!  I hope everyone has an amazing week!

xoxoxo,

Mel

 

Good [Fall] Times

Here we are again...New Year...Same Me...Finally posting a LO from a picture I took the week of Thanksgiving...but who are we kidding?  This is what I've come to expect of me.  So much has happened in the first few weeks of 2024.  New puppy, two surgeries, I've been sick (of course), minor snow-pocalypse here in the south, etc.  But at least I had some time to craft last weekend and here is the result:

Over the week of Thanksgiving we had a few of Mr. Handsome's kiddos visit and the selfie/Snap princess herself wanted to snap a few selfies with me.  Great news for my crafting addiction hobby because I had some awesome fall colored stuff to use up in my ongoing effort to reduce the amount of craft supplies I have.  (Something tells me that this effort will never be complete)

Below you can see where I used some layered chipboard from Tres Jolie Kit Club.  The majority of items used on this LO were from a previous Tres Jolie scrapbook kit, but I honestly can't remember if the layered pine cones below were part of the kit I used.  To decorate the chipboard I used a combination of Lumiere paint (Metallic Rust and Halo Pink Gold) and some Tres Jolie crackle texture paste (copper). The pieces layer together so I made sure to use a few colors on the bottom piece that would stand out when I attached the top layer.

Below you can see a flower cluster with a few "extras."  In order to blend all the colors from the background papers, the flowers and the flowers I chose from my stash I splattered most of the LO, including the flower clusters, with some Heidi Swapp Color Shine spray in Peach.  I also dabbed lots of the the Halo Pink Gold paint around the LO and on the flowers for some added texture.

My other flower cluster, decorated in a similar fashion to the one above, along with some cheesecloth (best invention ever) and a few leaf and greenery pieces that were just hanging out on a random table in the craft room.  What were they intended to be used for?  We will never know, but they ended up on this project so we'll just stick with that plan! 😂

I also used a Tres Jolie chipboard frame around/on the photo.  The frame was much smaller than the picture, but there was a ton of "dead space" at the top of the photo, so I used that opportunity to use more flowers from my stash.  (By the way...if you're following I've been "trying to use more flowers from my stash" for 6 months now and the stash is not getting any smaller 😕)

So there you have it, first post of 2024, only a few weeks late, but again...are any of us really that surprised?  I'm pretty sure I'm done being sick for awhile...definitely done with surgery for awhile...and since it's the south we shouldn't see snow again for quite some time...so maybe this time will be different and I'll begin to post more often!  Till then...

xoxoxo

Mel

 

Live Simply

Who'd have thunk it?  Here we are at the end of the year and I've been crafting away and not posting a single thing!  But that's going to change (who am I kidding?  I know I'll get busy again soon, but I promise I'm going to try again!)  I was really excited to get some fall kits in, but then I realized that I would need to take some fall-ish pictures to use them with...so instead I made this pretty little LO using a picture of me and Hotty McHotterson from back in May!

Here is the LO:

As I try to do with LOs of the two us, I tried to make it feel a little less "girly" by using a stencil and some black crackle paste.  Also...fun (and unrelated) fact I have 5 unopened tubes of black gesso...so let's try to use that up over the next couple of months shall we?

The kit I used to make this LO was definitely a Tres Jolie Kit Club scrapbook kit...month unknown.  I kinda thought it was recent since it was near my workspace, but a quick review of the blog doesn't show anything that's looking familiar here.  However, the kit came with some great ephemera and cut out pieces.  Below you can see how I used some of the cutouts (window, butterflies and foliage) to make a layered background to place my flowers on!

Below is a closeup of some flowers I had from my stash along with a compass from my stash.  I added some Renea Bouquets Beautiful Beads to some of the flowers.

Another closeup of some flowers and ephemera layering.  I also used a Renea Bouquets blue butterfly.

Below you can see where I used the black crackle paste.  I layered it on very thick and I loved how thick and deep the cracks turned out.  I also did some texture work on the Tres Jolie chipboard piece and placed it below my photo and added some flowers and Beautiful Beads.

There ya have it!  Now let's see if I can be consistent for more than a month! 😆 Not likely with the holidays coming up...but we shall see! 

xoxo,

Mel

 

Cousins

It's been a crazy busy month...and even though I've been making plenty of fun things...I've been completely lazy about posting/blogging about them!  I've been doing a ton of resin work making items for the shop, and while I'm getting ready to blog about some of them, most of them are still curing and I'm working on making sure our inventory is high enough for our grand opening in the next few weeks, so that's taking a little bit of time away from posting everything.

In the meantime, I did move over to my scrapbook desk to work on this cute little LO.  This is a picture of several of my nieces and nephews right around the time school started this year.  I also have another LO on my desk now so that both the momma's can each have a memento of this day!  

Here it is:

This was made using the Tres Jolie Kit Club September kit and I really loved the nostalgia that the papers brought to me.  It was very vintage with lots of little "old school" flower and garden type designs.  However, the papers also had quite a bit metallic elements to them and I really like how that modernized the look of the papers just a bit.  

Below you can see one of my flower clusters.  Since I am still trying diligently to whittle down my flower collection, I was able to supplement the beautiful flowers from the kit with several flowers from my stash...and I'll do so on the matching LO as well!  😍

The kit came with some black chipboard from the Tres Jolie store and I altered the chipboard using a mix of white paint, Tim Holtz metallic stains, and a light pink embossing powder from Lindy's Stamp Gang.  I was a little surprised, but pleasantly pleased when I saw how pale the pink embossing powder turned out at the end.  But it matched the background paper perfectly so I'll take it!  You can also see some of the modeling paste I stenciled on to the background using a very delicate flowery stencil!

And that's it, a pretty basic LO, but still lots of tiny elements and, of course, featuring some of my favorite people!  😍

Till next time!

xoxo, 

Mel

 

Shabby Chic Dream Catcher

Hey, y'all!  I'm still getting settled into the new house, but since the craft room is really the most put together spot so far, I keep taking breaks from the rest of the house to go make new things!  I'm also still going through several craft kits that I've had lying around for far too long!  I know most of the stuff from this project came from a (relatively) recent Tres Jolie kit, but I'm not sure which month.  The kit came with an embroidery hoop and I immediately had the idea to layer lots of cheesecloth inside the hoop and see how easily it would hold medium.  

Years ago I saw someone make a tutorial where they made a texture similar to canvas using cheesecloth and either gel medium or gesso (or both) so I drew most of my inspiration from the project from that long-lost seen many moons ago tutorial.

Anyway...here is what the finished project looked like:

I "measured" out some cheesecloth and made sure it was big enough to fit into my hoop.  I wanted plenty of overlap so I could make the edges look a little "wispy".  After I got everything locked into the hoop I went to town with gesso, crackle paste and other textures until I got plenty of texture on my background.  I used a few sprays, stains and paints from stash and then started decorating around my texture.  Below you can see where I used a stencil and some texture paste, as well as a few flowers and some microbead.

I'd had this butterfly from Renea Bouquets sitting around for awhile and even though it was a lighter shade of blue than the rest of what I was working with, it fit nicely.  As you can see, the layers of cheesecloth held microbeads outside the hoop even where there wasn't a thick layer of medium for them to sit on (nice surprise for me! 😍)

I added a Renea Bouquets beautiful board and some more flowers on the other side of the hoop.

And of course, even more flowers, microbeads and spritzes of color! 

Overall I was really pleased with how this turned out, but (as always) I want to go buy more embroidery hoops now.  I'm going to be patient though...I really feel like as I continue to unpack boxes a hoop or two will show its pretty little face! 😂

Thanks for looking!

xoxo,

Mel