My Dad, My Hero (Swirlydoos/Helmar)

Well, this is my final project using the awesome June Swirlydoos "Antiquities" kit (featuring the Bo Bunny Weekend Market collection) - I just love all the fun sticker tags that coordinate with this kit!

This is my hubby and our first born. To this day... his daddy really is his hero. Can you believe I've had that Martha Stewart heart border punch since it arrived in my Christmas stocking and this is the first layout I've used it on? Shame on me! I put this layout together using Helmar Premium Craft Glue for the paper layers (all distressed with my Zutter distrezz-it-all).

I glued the Dusty Attic chipboard (from my shop) and gorgeous Kaisercraft flowers on with the Helmar 450 quick dry and the Acid free glue for the picture.

I used the Helmar foam ZapDots to give the titles some dimension.

My July Swirlydoos DT kit just arrived this week and gotta get cracking on it!

2Crafty Chipboard Design Team

I can share some exciting news... I've been invited to the 2Crafty Design Team!  Let me just say how very SWEET the owner Vanessa was with the invitation.  As you know I design for a couple of companies and we are often asked to design with a variety of sponsored products for cross-promotions including chipboard so... since I can't contribute as a full DT member she was willing to put me as a guest designer!  Now that's a "good egg".  A big thank you for making this work Vanessa (and Di - our DT Coordinator :)

Here is the AWESOME new DT line-up
(notice 2 Canucks on the team? hee, hee :)

Vicky Alberto – Canada (Guest Designer)

Linda Eggleton – Australia (Design Team Member)

Kelly Foster – USA (Design Team Member)

Marilia Lopes – Brazil (Design Team Member)

 Leonie Neal-Dawson – Australia (Design Team Member)

Elena Olinevich – Belarus (Design Team Member)

Keren Tamir - Canada (Design Team Member)

Chantal Vendenberg- Australia (Design Team Member)

RETURNING DT MEMBERS

Di Garling – Australia (Design Team Coordinator)

Fiona Johnson – Australia (Team Member)

Check out the 2Crafty Blog for all DT member blog links!

I couldn't resist placing a little order for my Etsy shop for some beautiful sentiment chipboard pieces and GORGEOUS swirl and lace-type chippy borders. They are on their way to me right now ladies!

NEW Dusty Attic Now Available!

I re-stocked my Etsy shop early this morning (http://www.etsy.com/shop/vickyalberto) with Dusty Attic chipboard. I had listed over 100 styles - including some of the newest pieces from the May release and the most popular items. In just a few hours my stock has drastically depleted. Since summer is typically a "low" scrappy season, I only brought in a few of each style.

More Dusty Attic to come in the Fall... and VERY soon I will be carrying 2Crafty chipboard too - double the scrappy pleasure! My shipment should arrive in a few weeks.

BTW - the new Dusty Attic releases are all mixed in my shop and not sure why because that's not how I loaded them (they are supposed to appear first) but Etsy scrambled them. This is the second time this has happened to me - maybe a setting I need to fix?

Garden Girl Layout (Meg's Garden/ Green Tara/ Helmar)

I had this cute close-up shot of my daughter as a toddler but hated the background so I fussy cut her out and created a garden scene for her to sit in. Oh where to start... I used a mix of papers beautiful floral papers from Meg's Garden (Garden of Blue Flowers and Le Belle Jardin and French Garden collections) and started to pile on chipboard, flowers, trim, a doily, pearl bling (yup basically the kitchen sink, LOL). I think I have nearly 25 Green Tara buds and flowers on this one!

Here is a close-up of my "garden" - purple gardenias, pink cherry blossoms, red rose buds and a beautiful large pink velvet rose.

The background was glued with a Helmar adhesive runner and all of the flowers and chipboard were glued with Helmar 450 quick dry glue - clear and acid free! This stuff is seriously a little miracle in a bottle, LOL. The butterfly is also raised using Helmar's Zapdots.

Helmar's June 15th Blog Hop

Welcome to the Helmar "Happy Fathers Day" Hop!

Today we are so excited to share with you a variety of fantastic masculine projects. We've put our Helmar arsenal to good use and want to share with you some inspiration for those last minute Fathers Day gifts.

If you have been following along, you should have hopped here from Cindy Royal's blog. If not, hop on back to the Helmar Blog and enjoy. Make sure to leave comments along the way, because we will have prizes up for grabs. And if the man in your life is super lucky, we may even send him a Helmar prize pack too.

My project today is something you can actually create with your kids - homemade tinted bath salts for HIM. Men like relaxing baths too! For this project I used my June Swirlydoos "antiquities" kit (featuring Bo Bunny products) and a recycled glass Kraft brand jam jar (plus some SUPER Helmar glue - see details below). BTW - I think this is the first project I've ever done without using flowers, LOL!

Close-up of the card glued together using Helmar's Craft and Hobby PVA Glue.

Close-up of the jar decor glued using Helmar's 450 Quick Dry glue.

Bath salt recipe (mix together very well):

2 cups epsom salts

1/2 cup coarse salt or sea salt

A few drops of food colouring (I used 3 drops of blue)

A few drops of essential oil (optional - for aromatherapy)

Thanks so much for stopping by. Now hop on over to Jess-Kinderstampo's blog where you are sure to find more Fathers Day inspiration. If you get lost along the way, below you will find the links for the order of the hop.

Helmar
Lisa Wilkinson
JJ Sobey
Cindy Royal
Vicky Alberto (ME!)
Jess-Kinderstampo
Cheryl Walker
Amy Lassiter
Rae Cooper
Jen Erickson
Katie Nolan Denham
Carisa Zglobicki
Michelle Wallace
Julie Tucker-Wolek
Erika Taylor

Anatomy of a Layout (Swirlydoos/Helmar)

Anatomy of a layout

(featuring Bo Bunny's "weekend market" collection)

Hi, I have done a step-by-step tutorial of a layout created with my June Swirlydoos "Antiquities" Kit and wonderful Helmar Glue. I have used "BB" in this tutorial to refer to Bo Bunny.

Step 1 - PREP THE BACKGROUND

Cut a jagged half inch strip off each side to the BB Antique (cream) paper, ink all the edges, and glue to the dark side (brown) of the BB Weekend market paper using Helmar's adhesive runner... BUT do not glue all the way to the edges. Next, make a small tear at the top right of the cream paper and ink the white edges revealed. Lastly, using a thin object (like a skewer) to curl back your tear and all 4 cream paper corners.

Step 2 - ADD THE LAYERS

Glue a BB cameo trinket at the bottom of the tear you made using Helmar 450 Quick Dry glue. Next, cut a 5"x 10.5" rectangle of burgundy paper (I used Simple Stories - red dot paper from the "Awesome" collection), and 4.5" x 8" rectangle of the cream BB Tapestry paper and then 3" x 10" rectangle of the BB Rulers paper (the backside has the black scroll design). Ink all the paper edges and glue as shown (burgundy first, orange second and cream last) using Helmar's adhesive runner.

Step 3 - CREATE A DIE CUT + ADD THE PHOTO

Either fussy cut the scroll design from the backside of the BB Stripe paper or (as I have done), use a previous collection BB die cut paper as a "stencil" and cut out a bracket shape from the patterned paper. Add a horizontal 5" x 7" picture to your layout (with a half inch cream border around the 3 sides) with Helmar Acid Free glue. Then, glue the bracket shape along the bottom of the picture too using the acid-free glue.

Step 4 - CREATE + ADD THE EMBELLISHMENTS

Make a big bow with wide copper ribbon and glue a cream flower (mine is Prima) in the middle with Helmar 450 Quick Dry glue. Glue your bow embellishment to the bottom left of the photo using the 450 glue too. Now, add some bling - I cut a Prima bling in half and added it to each bottom side of the photo. Lastly, add the title and you're done!

Please join Helmar on June 15th for a wonderful Father's Day celebration blog hop! See you back here on Friday!

Thinking of you card (Pion Design/ Helmar/ Green Tara)

Just a quick post today with a card made using the gorgeous new "Grandma's School Book" collection from Pion Design. I really love the beautiful softness of this summer collection! I used Helmar Craft and Hobby Glue for this project... and a little trim from Green Tara.

June Swirlyhues Challenge

Join us this month over at Swirlydoos while I host the June Swirlyhues Challenge!  Please note that you DO NOT NEED TO BE A SWIRLYDOOS KIT SUBSCRIBER to participate in this monthly color palette challenge.

Here is my example:

I rotated the optional inspiration sketch like this:

For full challenge details and more gorgeous inspiration from the DT, please visit the Swirlydoos Blog.

Swirlydoos June Kit Reveal Blog Hop

Welcome to Swirlydoos' Antiquities Kit Reveal
& Blog Hop Block Party!

If you came here from Rae's blog (scrappingfancy.blogspot.ca), then you are on the right track. If not, go back to Swirlydoos' blog (www.swirlydoos.blogspot.ca) and start from there. We have some amazing projects for you to see today and as a bonus we have a very special guest joining in the fun and offering a prize!

Let me start by saying that at first when I saw a dark kit I panicked a wee bit because pastels are my comfort zone... BUT the Bo Bunny (weekend market collection) papers and "Antiquities" kit embellishments are so gorgeous that once I started, I got 3 layouts done in just 4 days!!!

This is my pup (no longer with us now... but still in my heart). I pulled apart a large brown Prima flower to create 2 matching flowers. Only the title is from my stash on this layout.

Here is a close-up of the flowers in the add-on kit.

I used the kit sketch as inspiration for the layout above but it took on a life of its own.

This layout I made 100% with the main kit contents and you will find a step by step tutorial on the Swirlydoos Forum later today. Yes... that is me on my wedding day! The picture was taken on a cruise ship so that's why the "Titanic" backdrop. Had to have a few cheesy cruise pictures, LOL.

A little close up of the bow I made with the main kit ribbon and flower...

I used the June OUAS sketch (without using the birthday theme qualification portion for the challenge). I start my DT term with them in July :)

For this third page I used the Swirlyhues inspiration and sketch which will reveal on June 10th if you'd like to play along with this month's challenge. The photo is my dance instructor (middle) and her assistants. The bling and chipboard title is from my stash - and I altered the flowers.

Close-up of the pretties...

You have until midnight, eastern time, on Sunday, June 10th to complete the hop. Winners will be announced on the Swirlydoos Blog on June 11th. In order to qualify to win here is what you need to do:

1: Visit all of the blogs and leave a comment on each. This way we know you were there. Become a follower if you're not already.Take your time. There are REALLY beautiful things to see along the way.

2: Before you leave each blog, look for the “special” words and write it down. 

Once you have visited all the blogs and collected all the special words, they will create a sentence. 

3: Finally, go back to the Swirlydoos blog and leave a comment letting us know how much fun you had AND tell us the sentence that was created with all of the special words you collected.

My special word is : TO

The party continues over at Lisa's blog (what-a-beautiful-mess.blogspot.ca)

Have fun and thanks for participating!


Please note: that I have used Helmar's adhesive runner, acid free glue and 450 quick dry glue to create all of these projects.

New chipboard will be here in 2 weeks!

Jen at Dusty Attic has done it again - a new release! I just received notice that my chipboard shipment is in the mail and will be here in about 2 weeks... so after I unpack it all and load it into my Etsy shop it should be available for purchase around the 23rd or 24th of June (along with a generous re-stock of popular items :) Take a peek at just a few of the pretties coming in my order...

Cards in a Pinch (Meg's Garden/Green Tara/Helmar)

Meg's Garden papers make it so simple to pull together a few cards when you're in a pinch for time. The graphics literally do all the work for you and all you need is a few great embellishments. Here I have used gorgeous trims and flowers from Green Tara. I actually made these from concept to completion in 45 minutes. Since I live 20 minutes from a shopping mall, well... that's 2 cards made in the same time as driving there and back and standing in line to pay for cards. I'm sure the recipients will appreciate handmade cards more than store-bought ones too!

I cut one piece of paper to make these 2 cards. This first one is a more feminine in style, pulling out the cream in the paper and accenting with pearl beads and butterflies to compliment the pretty gardenias, cherry blossoms, cream and olive trim - that matched this paper so perfectly. I LOVE the new Green Tara lattice trims!

For my second card, I played up the black and green in the paper to be able to be able to give this to a man. Men like flowers too (my hubby gardens while I scrap, LOL!). These green cherry blossoms really pop against the vintage inspired paper and work well with the gold tones in the paper (that I also enhanced with some bling). This time I used the lattice trim in black.

This is the lovely sheet from the "Forget me Not" collection that I cut in half and then simply folded to create these 2 cards. This paper has a real hand-stamped look to it without any work or mess.

Meg's Garden has also released a "Forget Me Not 2" collection which is a perfect companion to the first collection released and I am working on a project with it right now.

This is the wonderful Helmar glue that holds all the pretties on the paper - acid free, sets clear and won't yellow!

Green Tara products used:
Cherry Blossoms Peach/Cream 
CODE: FLC22PeC
Cherry Blossoms 2 Tone Sea Green
CODE: FLC22SG
Gardenia Ivory
CODE: FDV054Iv5
20mm Self Adhesive Leaf Garland
CODE: RB796Gr
25mm Lattice 10m roll Black
CODE: RB6735BL
 25mm Lattice 10m roll Ivory
CODE: RB6735Iv

25mm Lattice Ivory
CODE: RB6735Iv

25mm Lattice Black
CODE: RB6735BL

Helmar's June Challenge and USTREAM classes

Look at the beautiful color palette design challenge (designed by Lydell Quin) that Helmar is having for June. Check out the Helmar blog for details and http://www.flickr.com/photos/helmarlive

Also, Helmar is now hosting USTREAM classes starting with...

Lisa Wilkenson Live USTREAM Class 10:30AM EST

Friday June 8th at 10:30am at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/helmar-live

Once Upon a Sketch DT

Wow what an exciting team this is to be on, I am in the company of so many friends and so much talent from around the world (not to mention working with Nadia's gorgeous sketches :)

NEW Design Team:
Jeni O'Connor -Administrator (Australia /Canada)
Georgia Heald - Guest Designer coordinator (Australia)
Patti Hamil - Sponsorship Administrator (USA)
Eila Sandberg (Sweden)
Efi Stamatelli (Greece)
Erin Blegen ( USA)
Romy Veul (The Netherlands)
Kelly Foster (USA)
Jolaine Frias (USA)
Vicky Alberto (Canada)
Luzma Bruna (Chile)
Mona Pendleton (USA)
Solange Marques (Brazil)
Anna Zaprzelska/Brises (Poland)
Evgenia Petzer (South Africa)
Renata Moni (Brazil)
Elena Stefanidou (Greece)
Melenia Agapides (Greece)
Cathy Cafun (Australia)
Tina Walker (USA)
Kim Jeffress (Australia)
Florence Teixeira - France
Helena Virpi (Italy)
Hilde Aaslund (Norway)
Kay Fatula (USA)
Camilla Ekman (Sweden)
Svetlana Austin (South Africa)

Check out the the OUAS blog!

Pion Design Release: Grandma's School Book

Look at what Pion Design JUST released... (and it's in the mail to me :) This beautiful collection is available in 12x12 and 6x6. Beautiful pastels for summer...

LAUGH card (Swirlydoos/Helmar)

Well, this is the last project I'll be revealing with the May Swirlydoos "So Chic" kit even though I still have loads of product left over from this kit after doing 3 layouts plus a journal and this card (LOADS left over!). But... it's soon already time for the June kit reveal! I used the fabulous Helmar adhesive runner and 450 quick dry glue for this card. BTW - Helmar just put together a new Video Design Team and will be hosting weekly USTREAM classes - so exciting!

A fairly simple card to brighten someone's day...

Acrylic Bead Headband (Helmar/Green Tara)

My daughter LOVES headbands so when Green Tara sent me a plain plastic headband to "dress-up", well I just couldn't resist creating another pretty headband for her. I immediately grabbed some of their beautiful pearl trim, an acrylic bead flower and a dragonfly. Helmar's strong holding 450 quick dry was just the right glue I needed for a long-lasting bond of all the pretty elements you see here. This glue really made the job fast and easy. You can't see where I glued either and it lets the acrylic beads really shine! Aren't these embellishments gorgeous?

I gave her the headband on the morning of her 4th birthday, she wore it all day long - full of smiles!

This glue is my brand new "go to" glue - clear, strong and acid FREE! Love this stuff!

Thanks for dropping by the blog today!

Live *Pion Design/Helmar*

I was so inspired by the new challenge site CSI (challenge #19 due tomorrow) to create this layout as Pion Design DT work (For Mother Collection) and my first project for Helmar Adhesives. I will also be teaching this layout on June 16th, complete with the large white handmade flower (a mix of a few of my flower tutorial techniques), chipboard techniques, gesso, sanding, chalking, and so much more! Class details will soon be posted next week at Paper and Lace (Strathmore, Alberta, Canada).

Well, this is my middle child at the ripe age of 5 years old. You see, he has an amazing sense of balance and he could actually skateboard and ride a 2-wheeled bike by his 4th birthday (self taught!!!). So... you can imagine how high the ramps are and what he does now 3 years later at 7 years old (scares the crap outta me!). Anyways, who says you can't put doilies and flowers and pearls on a boy layout? I created this with the intention of making a baby layout but these pictures just called to me. BTW - this layout style is GREAT for using up your precious scraps :)