Purple toned snow

I admit it. I'm jealous of all my friends who've had snow, especially when a good portion of them live just across the Chesapeake Bay. All I want to is throw a snowball and make a snowman in December. Just once.

I made this layout expressing my yearning for the magic rain that falls from the sky using MSA's December Art Social (which you can grab for $1.99 with the awesome coupon).



Two things to note about this page:

1) Look at those purple tones I managed to use.
2) I grabbed a screen shot of our forecast for the week and used it here.

I let the paper and the screen shot dictate the design. The paper allowed for an obvious foreground and background and it made sense to me to use the screen shot as part of the scene. I used a blending mode (luminance I think) to get it to match the paper. The deer worked perfectly in the design and I built on the sweet curved line their antlers make by using the snowflakes.

This may be my trick for using purple in 2014: lean hard on things other than color.

In the end, I really like the page. I think it's cool to preserve the week's weather while expressing my dissatisfaction with it. It's going to be 60+ degrees today, which is 5 days before Christmas. When did I move to the Southern Hemisphere? Oh well. The day after I created this page, I woke up to this:

It melted by 10 am, but I'm glad I was able to see it. Asked and answered, right?

♥ Carrie

Pinterest: Not everything is a good idea

I love Pinterest and if you know me you know that random fact. Love it. Need to figure dinner? Pinterest. Need a gift idea? Pinterest. Want to know how to do something? Pinterest. It's the path of least resistance where I can find what I need quickly.

Pinterest has a dark side. All those photos of perfection can be demoralizing, of course, but what I'm taking about is how quickly impractical and bad ideas can spread. And some of those pins are downright dangerous DIYs. After seeing yet another pin that made think someone was gonna get themselves killed, I decided it was time to write this post.

I'm starting with the impractical. What do I think an impractical pin is? A pin that looks great in theory, might even be easy to make and proudly display in your home. But when it comes time to get back into the doldrums of daily life, that really neat crafty pin quickly becomes a big, crafty pain in the rump.

What a charming chandelier for your bathroom. Let me be clear: bathroom chandelier. Whomever made this either has staff to clean their home, gets paid to come up with crafts that are pinworthy, or doesn't actually have a bathroom. Also, they have never cleaned a chandelier in any other room where less mess happens. It's an arduous task to clean one. So, yes, pretty, practical, absolutely not.

A penny floor, huh? It's neat and creative. What's it like to mop? What happens when my kid runs through the house at thirty miles per hour in his socks? What happens when I drop a glass and it shatters? What if my house is struck by lightning? Doesn't copper conduct electricity? Frankly, that floor scares me. Thanks, but I'll deal with my linoleum for now.

This mason jar project may be somewhere between impractical and dangerous, unless you are using those electronic tea lights. Firstly, have you ever put tea light in a mason jar? Most tea lights leave a nice black coating of soot around the flame inside the jar. Secondly, if you note the angle of the photo it's probably taken that way because a tea light in a mason jar doesn't make much actual light (or any tea for that matter). I learned this when our power went out in September. I had mason jars and tea lights. I went with votive candles instead. And I don't know how flammable glitter and glue are, but I don't want to find out. How do you clean that DIY? You don't. You throw the jars away when they are icky.  

I am not wasting my time, money and energy on any DIY that I can't easily clean (and will have to throw away 6 months from now cause of the eww) and that possibly has hidden dangers. 

Now for the pins I think are not just impractical, but could possibly harm your home, someone in your home, or worse. I wouldn't make these projects for my enemies even.

Here you are taking Post-It tabs in pretty colors and affixing it to some sort of glass globe over some sort of light (whose wattage is probably 10 or 15). When I was a child, I learned that light bulbs created heat. I learned that glass around a light bulb absorbs heat. I learned not to put flammable things near heat because they catch fire. I also learned that things that were sticky contained some sort of chemical compound that was most likely flammable. What could go wrong when you've created this trendy light? Oh, surely nothing that has to do with the laws of physics. It was on Pinterest, so it's perfectly safe.  

This is an incredibly popular pin that I see in my feed over and over again. I want to SCREAM every single time I see it. The creator of this hack probably failed science... or should have. Rule number one of living in a home where electrical current is present: Do NOT put anything between a plug and a socket. NEVER EVER do this. I would hope you understand why. Actually, the only time you should ever do anything with electricity is when you are a certified electrician. Wanna hang a cell phone holder near the outlet? Get some sort of device that allows you to do so... like a hook that attaches to the wall... otherwise, one day you will find out what happens to your phone when it touches fire.

The best thing to do in a emergency is to not set stuff on fire. In a pinch, a candle, in safe spot in an appropriate and secure place is less than ideal. (Do you have any idea how many fires are started by candles during emergencies? Too many.) Wax does burn, but there's a reason we don't set it on fire and use a wick instead. Have you ever seen a wax fire? For one, it's stinky. Really stinky. It also burns much hotter than a flame on a wick. If you drop this crayon, say good-bye to stuff you like. And the mess that burning crayons would cause if you happened to do it without setting yourself on fire? Not worth it.

Pinterest if full of good ideas, but that doesn't mean bad ideas are absent. Pin responsibly. And remember: pretty doesn't always equal good. Sometimes pretty can be downright deadly.

♥ Carrie

Gingerbread & Snow

I am super jealous of everyone with snow. Please send me some... or just some snowballs will do. Thanks. :)

The one great things about doing a Photo a Day is that there are always interesting photos to scrap. I have already used two of last weeks photos to get two pages done:

This first one is using Jaimee's December Storyteller 2013 (which she's giving away to her newsletter subscribers, so check here for details). The paper has such nice texture and lighting that mimics the lighting in the photo, which was a happy accident.  

I'd like to say I kept the page simple, but really I just didn't use a lot of embellishments. (not that I ever use a lot) Even though it looks simple, there's a lot of texture and contrast. And when you don't use a lot of ingredients on page, you have to really understand how those few elements work together and what function they serve on the page.

The next page is my homage to anticipation using bits from the December Storyteller and Artsy Papers Volume 1:




I put the title right on the photo because that vellum ampersand reminded me of an ever so fine dusting of snow. I used the sequins to build a faux shelf to hold up the photo and used the thread to solidify that idea while giving myself a place (and reason) to put the tag with my journaling.

Tip: I am in love with date stamps. Earlier this year, since I couldn't find the ones I wanted in the stores, I made my own contact sheet of stamped months, days and years. It was simple to do- I used the font MS Mincho and created a vector layer for each month, day and year. After typing out each month, day (01- 31), and year I wanted, I converted them all to raster layers then useing the smudge brush and eraser tool, made each one looking stamped. I made the background layer transparent, merged visible and saved as png file. Now I just lasso what I need and go.

That's all from me. (please send snow)

♥ Carrie

December Photo a Day: Holiday Song Edition

We've dusted off the Photo a Day prompts and you're welcome to play along on the forum. I've been busy, but managed to get the first seven prompts done. I cheated and took them out of order... thank goodness that's allowed!

1. Pretty Paper (coming soon)

2. Baby It’s Cold Outside



Or it's cold inside. He hates to wear clothes, but I took away his blanket to wash... and haven't washed it yet. (bad mom)


3. A Marshmallow World



I call Butters a marshmallow because he's white, fluffy and cylindrical. The cats commandeered the garland before I could hang it. It's now their nest of cuteness. What's better than a decorated marshmallow? One that absolutely melts into you when he's feeling affectionate.

4. Frosty the Snowman



We have a set of 3 snowman ornaments that seem to be a papa, mama and baby. This is the baby snowman. I can't remember which mom gave the set to us, only that one of them did.  These glass ornaments have to hang high on the tree because James the cat is tall and slowly taking off the ornaments on the bottom half of the tree.

5. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year



Yeah, he totally loves Christmas. I still can't get over his new found merriness.

6. Do You Hear What I Hear



This guy is motion activated and pretty much drives us all crazy, including the cats who attack him. For some reason I still keep it on. It might just be because it's kinda funny to watch everyone jump when he starts talking.

7. Winter Wonderland



It snowed! Big, fat, flakes of pure winter awesome. Too bad it turned into slushy, icky, icy nastiness later in the day. Now I have to live vicariously through my friends who actually have snow... lots of snow. Maybe my snow loving neighbor and I need to rent a snow machine one of these days. I'd say we'd do a snow dance, but the last time we did that, we had a blizzard and 3 feet of snow and no mail for weeks.

That wraps things up nicely. Hope you enjoyed my photos. Perhaps you'll stop by and play a long with us!!

♥ Carrie

Christmas Exploded

First, I want to say that I thought today was Friday, but alas it's Saturday. I don't know how I lost a day, but I did. Perhaps it was because I've been busy doing scrappy, cleany, holiday stuff all week? That or I'm finally losing my mind.

Moving on...

December is in full swing around digi land. The stores and galleries are all a buzz with holiday wonder. I've been festive myself between the kits I've collected, CT work and Your December Story (which I believe you can still register for if you like, but not for much longer). I thought I'd take a moment to share some pretties and you'll notice that I'm kinda in love with gold lately:

First is my homage to my gnomes. This page was my first ever Gallery Standout on the GSO blog. Yay gnomes. Pixels and Co. was our Featured Sponsor last month at MSA, so I got to test drive some product. I fell in love with Creashen's Tomte kit because no one has done gnomes thanks to Elf on the Shelf, which a total rip-off on the ancient gnome thing. My gnome could kick your elf's tail.



Then came (sorta) my page for GIS: Same Print Mixing. I used some photo outtakes to tell the story of our yearly kid-photo-op. It's a tradition and one of the rare times my kid lets me take a lot of snapshots of him. It was a challenge using stripes because I'm not a huge pattern paper (or even paper) user. I like to push the limits, so I found this great golden stripe in my stash and paired it with a diagonal charcoal paper. I also got out the super old alpha I love. You can read my thoughts about working with same prints HERE.




Still with me? Good. Another tree page. Jaimee's contribution to the Dec BYOC included some amazing freaking papers, but no elements besides tape (with the paper), an alpha and tags. I challenged myself to stick (mostly) to her BYOC products. The blue tape is from Merry & Bright. Here's the result:



Really, my hubby kept telling me the fake tree needed to settle before we put lights on it. Gotta love brain damage! It can be hilarious at times.

On now to MSA's yearly holiday kit, Holiday Hoopla: Merry & Bright, which is helpful in stretching the stash and the budget. It's only $5 so if you want it, go get it!  Once it's gone, it's gone for good. The kit has a great mix of artsy and traditional elements and papers, along with a ton of alphas. It's huge a versatile and general enough for daily winter scrapping. Also, I love those lights and the felt ornament. This is another tree page. I have thing for Christmas trees:



Last one, I promise! This was created from Lesson 2 of Your December Story. My son has really been into the holidays like never before, so I'm relishing every moment. Since he's an Asperger's kid, normally the upheaval Christmas didn't interest him prior to this year. Forget watching Christmas movies, baking cookies and decorating the tree. He had to bribed or lost interest after 15 minutes because his obsessive interest du jour was calling. Other than presents, he didn't want to participate. Also, the idea of an Santa always watching him caused him great anxiety. The idea is really creepy when you think literally like my son.

For whatever reason, my kiddo is filled with the holiday spirit this year and he STILL believes in Santa, despite the lack of evidence and naysayers. He also is interested in the traditions and stories of Christmas in our family. He practically decorated our tree this year himself! This page is about that belief and I will do a more in-depth page of text to accompany it later:




This may be one of my favorite pages ever. He's such a cutie in this photo. I need to look at it this page next he tells me I suck.

I'm done now. You deserve to get a prize for reading, but you're not gonna. But, here, have a cyber high five: **HIGH FIVE**

♥ Carrie