Birthday Wishes

Hello hello Beary Sweet friends! It's Monday and the day I get to tell you about my boring weekend ring in  the new week here with my favorite crafty ladies. I'm being a big tease today and showing you a birthday card. Why, you ask? Because we're celebrating our 1st birthday starting tomorrow, and the party goes on all month long! You're going to love it!

I've used Echo Park's "For The Record" papers and embellishments. The "Noteworthy" top is from the Noteworthy 12x12 paper, chock full of a fabulous assortment of smaller embellishment pieces. I cut the typewriter sticker close to the design (leaving the backing on) and inked the edges to give it a little dimension (and hide the white backing paper).

I used Cuttlebug "Script" and "Dots" embossing folders and inked all around the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink. The "Happy Birthday" strip was printed on my computer in a cool type font.

Card Recipe

• Paper: Bazzill Basics (50% off!) Black and Vanilla; Echo Park's For the Record - Vintage Linen, Picket Fence, Newsprint
• Medium: Ranger Distress Ink in Walnut Stain
• Embellishments: Typewriter from the For The Record Elements Stickers sheet; lace and brads from stash
• Adhesive: Scor-Tape; Fabri-Tac; Glue Dots
• Tools: Scor-Pal; Ranger Blending Tool; Cuttlebug embossing folders

One more piece of news: Our Guest Designer call is going on for one more week! Please go here for all the details. There is still plenty of time to make a project based on our sketch, so get crafty for your chance to join us for a 3-month Guest Designer term!

Cheers,
Susan

Sparkly Snow and Happy Kids=

NO WINTER BLUES HERE!

While I may be wistfully longing for the warm sand and sunshine that I showed you in my layout last week, my kids are loving the winter snow and are not the least bit blue about it! Unless you count the tips of their noses, which may truly have been a little blue after playing outside for two days last weekend at my grandparents cabin.


My layout uses the Midnight Frost line of paper from Bo Bunny. If you haven't checked out these papers, you need to! The colors are soooooooo pretty-- navy blue, turquoise, deep purple and even a little green thrown in. And I love the Bo Bunny Combo sticker sheets-- I have used both snowflakes and letters from the same sticker sheet on the layout. As I have an entire pile of pictures from last weekend and really wanted to squeeze as many onto this layout as I could-- so I used a simple layout that lines up 12 photos of about the same size.


To add something "Sparkly" I got out my Stickles and added some glitter to both the edges of my snowflake stickers and the edges of some of the designer papers. I have used both Silver and Turquoise Stickles.



As I was tracing around the small details of these snowflakes, I remembered again why I love Stickles so much. They are so easy to use! The glitter comes out smoothly and evenly, allowing even me to trace around fine lines without making a mess!

I added Stickles to my title also-- using the dark blue letters from the Bo Bunny combo sheet and completely covering them with Turquoise Stickles. I love how this turned out-- it's the perfect look of glitter without all the mess-- I hate it when all the glitter falls off!

I made my SNOW title by using a Marvy Uchida snow pen-- this is so cool. It writes almost like a paint marker and doesn't look like much in the beginning:

Then you use a heat tool and go over the writing until it puffs up like snow!


Here's a side view to show the dimension:



Making snow letters was so fun! And just a couple of things I learned--
*thicker is better, if you write too thin to begin with, it doesn't puff enough, so pour it on
*be careful with the heat gun, you can scorch the snow and it will turn black
*if you do scorch it (yes, I did!) or if it's not thick enough, just add more & do it again
*it says to let ink dry before heating for a more uniform effect, but I got a more natural snow look by heating it when it was wet

That's it for my Winter Blues, now I really want to see yours! You have just a few more days to join our Winter Blues Challenge, it might be snowy where you are and a great weekend to stay in and create!! Plus we are still looking for some Guest Designers and would love to have you enter our Guest Designer Challenge, check out all the details here and Good Luck!

Chasing Away The Winter Blues With Flowers

I can tell you that I have the Winter Blues especially after getting more snow Sunday night into Monday luckly we only got about 2", but every day is one day closer to Spring and I can't wait. What do you get with spring? Flowers!!

I just love flowers and now that I have learned to make these flowers by the awesome and tallented Anna from More Paper Than Shoe's in her Ustream Classes it's chasing the Winter Blues away.
When I made my first flower with her a couple of Saturday night's ago I knew I needed to come up with a really cool project to show them off and I came up with this 8x8 shadow box.

Here is my picture with out the box.

Have you had a chance to use some of the German Glass Glitter? I really wish the pictures showed just how pretty this is but that's part of the Winter Blues is lack of sun. But I took some plain white hat pins and dipped them in some of the Craft Tac Glue from Meyers the makers for the German Glass Glitter and rolled then in the Glitter and made them really sparkley. Watch out I don't think anything will be safe now it's all getting Glittered.

I added lots of pretty Pearls to my Sizzix Branch with Leaves Die and to my Butterfly Punch from Martha Stewart.

These flowers are just so pretty and a big thanks again to Anna for being a great teacher. You must go stalk her on her BLOG and see all her awesome flowers. My big flower is made with paper from Graphic 45 from there Springtime Collection as well as all my background paper. My flowers were made with the Tattered Florals Die from Tim Holtz and all the flowers and my mat were Inked with Colorbox Ink.

Who else do you see stuck in the flowers is a Tear Bear made with an Acrylic Paper Piecing Pattern and made with some of the Super Thick White Mulberry Paper. My pretty little corner flourishes are from Recollections. One of my background mats are cut out with one of the new Grand Nestabilities, Grand Labels One from Spellbinders.

Now you only have about a week to enter our Winter Blues Challenge so lets see what you can make and enter your card ---HERE---

Don't forget about our

Guest DT Call

You still have time to enter and get all the details on our store blog ---HERE---

Make sure you go like us on Facebook

we have lots of fun over there with sneak peeks, fun contests and giveaways and don't forget us Beary Scrap Girls me and Kimm are there all the time bouncing around and the other girls like to pop over there to.

Thanks so much for looking.

~Patricia~

Shimmer and Shine those Winter Blues Away

Hi, it Gini here ready to share another way to beat thoseIwinter blues! Flowers and springtime colors and lots of sparkle- yay!

I made a never-ending card (which is so fun- it just keeps opening, and opening and opening!) If you have never made one of these, there is a great video tutorial at Creations by Christie. I used the Graphic 45 Once Upon A Springtime paper, tons of vintage German Glass Glitter, and stamps from Heartfelt Creations - all things that I love!

Here is what the front of the card looks like...



And then you open it and see this view....




And then this view...


And finally this one - after this is goes back to the beginning.


This card would have been pretty, but when I added all of the German Glass Glitter, it became a wow card!

I know some of you are wondering what adhesive to use with this glitter.... You can use all kinds of different things, but, you will get different effects. I experimented a little with some of the glues that I had around the studio and thought I would share what I found.

Fabri-tac glue: one of my favorite glues - It will work with this glitter, but doesn't give you much control. That could be good if you wanted a random type effect.



Flower Soft glue (or Aleene's tacky glue): This gives you a rather 3-d effect as the glue dries without spreading out. You can't really get fine detail effects, but if you want chunky, with lots of dimension, this is great.


Scor-tape: This is easy and quick with no drying time. Perfect if you want very uniform borders. You can also get sheets of Scor-tape, and cut with your die-cut machines to make a very glittery embellishment.


Art Glitter Glue Dries Clear (there is also a dries white version) with the fine metal tip applicator: This is a much runnier glue, which allows you to use the metal tip that will dispense the finest lines of glue that you can imagine. This will let you take a stamped image , and trace around the areas that you would like to highlight and add your glitter.


Another great thing that I've found when using this glitter is that it's not as messy - there is no static cling to the glass, so it goes right back in it's container when I'm finished. And the sparkle does not even compare to your normal plastic glitter. Once you try this, you will end up wanting it in every color (I think I have almost all of them now!)

Remember, you still have about a week and a half to get your entries in for our Guest Designers!

Baby It's Cold Outside

Hello dear friends and happy Monday! This week the Beary Scrappy Gals are continuing to show samples using our current challenge theme. We're adding a little extra, too!

Winter Blues with Sparkle

Lately I've been focusing on embellishments that match the paper line. On my last two cards I used elements cut out from the 12x12 papers. For this card I looked no further than the wonderfully coordinating embellishment packs made for Bo Bunny's Midnight Frost line. 

This was a quick card - everything fell into place at lighting speed. With these fabulous chipboard embellishments I was able to add my sparkle (with a little extra thanks to Stickles on the swoosh) easily. Both the blue ribbon and white lace are Midnight Frost Wraps - see the sparkle on the lace? Yea, it came like that! Yay!

On the inside I plan to use a sentiment along the lines of "Baby it's cold outside... let's snuggle". Hmm, sounds kind of silly when I write it out... any suggestions on better wording?

I used Crystal Stickles on the swooshes to enhance their sparkliness. They were already this green-y color but I kicked it up a notch. No enhancement necessary on the "Brr" - it's great as is!

The base card stock is Bazzill Basics - have you seen that all Bazzill is on clearance? 50% to move it all out and make room for new and exciting STUFF!

Don't forget we still have our Guest Designer Call going on through March 5th. We know you're all busy making projects using our GD sketch and we can't wait to see 'em!

Cheers,
Susan

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Runaway to the Islands. . .

. . . And beat those Winter Blues!!!!

I have to admit, I am utterly, completely, totally sick of winter and can't wait for it to be spring so I thought I'd use my project this week to spread a little of the sunshine I found on vacation to the Bahamas earlier this month -- this layout is sending rays directly to all of you out there!

The base of my layout is Doodlebug Chenille Crushed Velvet Cardstock-- a new paper for me and one that is currently an awesome price at our Beary Scrap Store. This paper is so cool, a really nice weight to work with and I love the velvet feel. I chose to use a plain white piece but then brushed over the velvet embossing with teal blue chalk to give it just a touch of color.

The designer papers I used are from the Echo Park Little Girl collection-- perfect bright colors for bringing a little sunshine to your projects. I also used some of the border and diecut stickers from that collection-- I absolutely love the Echo Park sticker sheets that come with their collections, they contain SO many pieces and are really versatile. I even used a scalloped tag from one of the sheets that originally said "tea for two" and just put my "February" letters over the original writing. I love being able to use up all the supplies that come with a kit or collection and sometimes they may not fit any of my projects, so it's good to just be creative and alter things to what I need!

I hope a little sunshine comes your way this weekend and that you have time to do your own Winter Blues project to enter in our current Beary Sweet Challenge. Remember, it can reflect winter or how you escape those winter blues-- however you want to take it! Enter your project before Feb. 28th 11:59 EST for your chance to win!

BSC #19 Winners!

Want to be a Beary Sweet guest designer? Check out all the details HERE!

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We want to extend a huge "Thank You!" to everyone who played along with our sketch challenge! We absolutely loved visiting your blogs. Thanks so much for your support!

Our winner of the $20 gift voucher to The Beary Scrap is...

#1: Carisa

Congratulations Carisa! Please email Kimm and she'll set you up with a voucher to go shoppin'!

We would also like to congratulate our Beary Sweet Top 3:

#3 - Gosia S.
#16 - Mindy Baxter
#17 - Agnieszka

Ladies - thank you so much for joining us! Please take our  New for 2011 Top 3 badge from our sidebar for your fabulous blogs!

Need help putting the Top 3 blinkie on your blog? Simply highlight all of the text below the adorable Top 3 bear and right-click to copy; go to your blog's design page and add an html gadget - right click to paste the text in the box.

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We hope everyone checks out our Beary Sweet Challenge #20 "Winter Blues" - it's going on now through February 28. You could win a $20 gift voucher just like Carisa!

Cheers,
Susan, Gini, Patricia, Jamie and Kimm

Winter Blues at The Beary Scrap

Our new challenge at
The Beary Scrap is the

Winter Blues

You can use this any way you want use it as a winter theme card or a blue card or how the Winter Blue's make you feel. I choose to go with the color blue.

This was a custom order card for Valentines Day and I love how this came out. The background paper is from My Mind's Eye from the Fine and Dandy Paper Collection. I cut my paper out with Spellbinders Grand Nestabilties Labels 1 and inked with Colorbox Ink. My bear head and hands are a Beary Sweet Acrylic Pattern and made with  Ginger Brown Mulberry Paper. My bears outfits are patterns from Little Scraps of Heaven. When the order for this was place it was request that I use a Civil War Bear kneeling and I ask Tricia if she could make a pattern for me like that and with in a few hours she made this one for me. I love it. I added Pearls and Stickles to the outfits. I also added a mulberry flower and dollies from my stash.

Lets see what the Winter Blues help you create and enter your card ---HERE---

Don't forget you can be a Guest Designer for us and get all the details on our store blog ---HERE---

Are you on Facebook we are and have lots of fun and give-aways there so why don't you go like us.

Thanks for looking.

~Patricia~



Beary Sweet Challenge #20: Winter Blues

**Please scroll down for Gini's beautiful "Winter Blues" challenge sample!**

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Welcome to our Beary Sweet Challenge #20

The design team sends out BIG thanks to everyone who joined our BSC #19 - we are so thrilled to see each and every one of you! We'll announce winners on Thursday, February 17th. Thank you!

It's the 15th of the month, which means it's time for a new challenge. Whoo hoo! This time we're challenging you to share a project using the theme...

Winter Blues

What? Winter blues - but it's almost spring, right? Ok, so show us a project inspired by the term "winter blues" or by "winter" or "blue", or even what you do to get yourself out of the winter blues. It's wide open!

This challenge runs through February 28th at 11:59pm EDT. The prize winner will be chosen by random.org and will be announced along with our "Beary Sweet Top 3" on March 3rd.

The random winner will receive a $20 voucher for The Beary Scrap. How cool is that?

Here are the "rules" to play - PLEASE READ:

• Become a follower if you aren't already (don't forget this one - it's disqualified a few folks already!);
• Link your blog post (not your blog "home page") or your online gallery submission with our Linky tool below;
• Link back to this challenge posting on your blog;
• Please, only ONE (1) entry per person. In fairness to all players, if you enter this challenge more than once all second, third, etc. entries will be deleted without notice. Links to projects/cards posted before February 15th will not be eligible for the prize draw.

Additional information:

• Feel free to combine with other challenges;
• All NEW project types (cards, scrapbook layouts, etc.) are welcome;
• International crafters are invited to join, too!

Thanks for playing along with our challenges - we really appreciate you!

Cheers and smooches,

Susan, Gini, Patricia, Jamie and Kimm

Beat Those Winter Blues!

Hi, Gini here and it's time for a new challenge theme at the Beary Scrap, and we chose Winter Blues. Your project can be wintery, or blue, or how you escape your winter blues... however you would like to interpret the theme.

I decided to use the Bo Bunny Midnight Frost papers (and gorgeous trim) - but decided I would use these papers for blue skies rather than a winter chill! So I added some stamped images from Unity stamps - and colored with copics. It's really fun sometimes to use your copics on designer papers rather than white paper. I inked the edges of my paper with Distress Ink and the Ranger Blending Tool (I love this little tool, and keep one of the pads for each color of Distress Ink in a divided craft box). I added a couple of Kaiser Craft Pearls to set off my Bo Bunny Wraps. I love keeping a great stash of the pearls on hand, in all colors. You know how us Southern girls are about our pearls!

Please don't forget to enter your sketch for the Beary Scrap Guest DT call. This is such a fun group and we would love for you to be a part! Check out the details here.

Fairy Wings

Hello hello! I hope you had a great weekend and have a lovely Monday. It's February 14th, and a TV ad says Valentine's Day is a "day to celebrate us". I'd like to take a minute to celebrate *you*, our readers and challenge participants and Beary Scrap store customers. Thanks so much for visiting us everyday to have a peek at our newest challenge inspiration. Thank you for playing in our challenges and shopping in "our" store. Kimm, Gini, Patricia, Jamie and I dearly love being on this team and creating for you. We appreciate every comment here and the lively discussions at our Facebook page. Really, you are very much a part of us. Let's celebrate! ::happy dance::

{big virtual hugs}

Speaking of us, have you seen our Guest Designer call? It's going on through March 5; we are looking for 4 Guest Designers - come check it out!

On to my sketch sample. Today is the last day to enter the sketch challenge. Yes, I am the caboose!

This is made almost entirely from Graphic 45's Once Upon A Springtime. I edged the layers with Distress Walnut Stain ink using the Ranger Blending Tool. I added Stickles to edges, the center image and the flower centers. Kaisercraft pearls are up in the corner and finish off the flower centers. I cut the pink flowers from a sheet found in the 8x8 paper pad (the leftovers from the layer between the solid card stock and the green flower design).

I used the same edge rounding technique found in a tutorial here; this time the rounding is done mostly on the front of the image instead of  the back. 

Here you can see the Stickles on the fairy and butterfly wings, as well as the flowers and egg. For the wings, I just swept the Stickles applicator out to create delicate lines. It's OK if you put too much on - just wipe of *quickly* and try again. 

I really like the versatility of this paper - there are pages with postcard designs like I've used above as well as a 12x12 sheet chock full of card stock embellishments. The papers, both in full-size and an 8x8 pad are stunning. I'm sure I'll be cutting and layering fairies and butterflies (and even a frog prince!) on another card soon.

Card Recipe

• Paper: Graphic 45 Once Upon A Springtime 8x8 paper pad; Bazzill Basics in Ivy
• Medium: Distress Ink in Walnut Stain; Stickles in Star Dust, Lime Green and Frosted Lace (on the egg)
• Embellishments: Flowers cut from Graphic 45 paper; Kaisercraft Pearls in Snow; ribbon and pearl sprigs from stash
• Adhesives: Scor-Tape; Glue Dots; Fabri-Tac
• Tools: Scor-Pal; Cutterbee scissors

Thanks for visiting today! There's still a wee bit of time to get crafty with our sketch challenge. Gini will be here tomorrow with a sample for our new challenge which will also be announced tomorrow.  Come check out our Guest Designer call - we are looking for all talent levels!

Cheers,
Susan

Jamie's Sketch + Fabric

Are you feeling that long winter stretch yet? Cabin fever? Sick of the snow, cold and ice? Well that definitely must be what I am feeling-- it's been a week of sub-zero temperatures here in Idaho and so when I started looking for pictures to use this week, I was immediately drawn to these sunny photos taken last July in the old mining town of Virginia City, Montana. What I wouldn't give to put myself write into that sunny day, exploring a town in the mountains in a beautiful part of the country! Oh well, summer is going to come again someday!

I used these pictures on my Sketch + Fabric-- the element the DT has added this week. I was really excited to use fabric on a layout, this is a trend I am seeing a lot of on websites, blogs, magazines and in stores. So I raided my stash (my fabric stash takes up only one drawer into my entire craft room of scrapbook supplies!) and found this lovely green & brown piece to pair with Basic Grey Origins paper.

I tore the edges of my fabric to give it a frayed look though I have to warn you that this does not leave straight edges or a perfect rectangle-- so if you are a perfectionist who loves straight lines, tearing the fabric may not be for you. Then I machine stitched it onto my background of Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock and the Origins Designer Paper (which is a great price right now at The Beary Scrap store!). Stitching the fabric was trickier than I thought it would be-- I didn't adhere it before I started sewing and sew it slipped a little bit as I went-- next time I would definitely put it down with some Fabric-tac or Alene's Tacky Glue. But now I know!

Here's a close up of the fabric and stitching:


This was a great challenge for me and I will definitely be using fabric again-- I love how it turned out with a slightly softer feel to the page, which I think accents the lazy feeling of the summer pictures.

I hope you are working on your own version of our sketch-- make sure to enter it in our Beary Sweet Challenge before 11:59 EST on Feb. 14th for your chance to win. And stay warm, wherever you are!

The Beary Scrap's Sketch Challenge and GDT Call

With all this snow we have been having my crafting time is real limited but I always find time to get my design team projects done and this week we continue with our Sketch Challenge plus the design team has to add fabric to our projects. Now I know what I wanted to do but it was just how, now don't ask me how I did this because it took me over and hour just to make my fabric dress for my Tear Bear but I really like how it came out. I used Graphic 45 for my background paper.

I used an Acrylic Tear Bear Pattern and Mulberry Paper to make my bear and Inked the edges with Colorbox Ink. Added some Pearls and Mulberry Flowers. I also used some miscellaneous buttons and lace from my stash.

I added some Stickles to her dress.

Here is a reminder of our Sketch Challenge. You can enter ---HERE---

Don't forget you have till March 5th to enter to be one of 4 Guest Designers for The Beary Scrap. All you have to do is follow this Sketch below and enter it on our Store Blog ---HERE---

Thanks so much for looking.
~Patricia~

Owl have you felt lately?

Hi, it's Tuesday, so by now you have probably figured out it's Gini! For a new take on the Beary Scrap sketch, I decided to try something whimsical. The papers from My Mind's Eye Fine and Dandy are certainly whimsical. So that was my starting point. I also used the Fine and Dandy stamp set to stamp my stuffed owl and the embossed cloud.

For my fabric, I cut a piece of felt using my Spellbinders. I have found if you are cutting fabric, you will get a much cleaner cut by adding a piece of paper between the die and the fabric - it gives you a little more "tooth".

Don't forget about our Guest DT call! I know we are going to get so many fabulous entries!

Love Birds Get Sketchy!

Hello hello! It's another Monday and you know what that means! I get to kick off another week of fabulously inspiring samples of our current Beary Sweet Sketch Challenge... if I do say so myself.

As I write this Sunday night I am distracted by a football game. Well, to be honest  I couldn't care less about the game but I do love watching the adverts. So far Doritos has done quite well.  The Chevy truck "Timmy fell down the well" ad had us in stitches and I just enjoyed the Coke ad featuring border guards.

So, this week the design team is continuing with the BSC #19 sketch, and we're adding "plus fabric" to our  projects as a little twist.

I used the delicious My Mind's Eye Portobello Road collection. All four layers of paper are different designs within the line, and the birds are cut from the Love Birds paper. My fabric bunting is made from upholstery fabric I used for my family room pillows. I finished the edge with a scrap of seam binding and then sewed the blue crocheted lace from the "Party Trims" accessory pack (after I separated it from the crepe paper). To be honest, it was labor-intensive.

Card Recipe

• Paper: Bazzill Basics in Truffle; My Mind's Eye Lost & Found, Portobello Road Collection - Looking Glass, Flannel, First Class (front & back), Love Birds
• Medium: Ranger Distress Inks in Walnut
• Embellishments: Portobello Road Party Trims, You & Me Buttons, Buddies Decorative Brads; Ivory crocheted lace, seam binding and fabric from stash
• Adhesives: Scor-Tape; 1/2" Glue Dots; silicone
• Tools: Scor-Pal; Cutter Bee scissors

Important reminders: Our Guest Designer Call is going on now through March 5! We are choosing 4 guest designers to serve 3-month terms. Go to this post on our store blog for all the details! 

Also, the current sketch challenge is open through February 14. Go here all the details. See you there!

Cheers,
Susan