My Creative Affaire...

Welcome to Day 5

of the Graphic 45 and Want2Scrap™   Blog Hop.  Design Teams from both companies have joined forces to bring you an amazing week-long Blog Hop August 8th -12th. The week has been filled with fabulous designs that are sure to have inspired all!  If you have missed any of the previous days projects be sure to head on over to either the Graphic 45 blog or the Want2Scrap blog for the links to some amazing projects.  All you need to do is click on the links to be transported to one of the featured design team member's blog where you will see the full reveal of each craft project.

What would a blog hop be without prizes?  Yes, both Graphic 45 and Want2Scrap™ will be giving away a $25.00 prize on two of the blogs and on each company's Facebook page.  That's a total of four chances to win in one week! Wow! The prizes will be hidden on the Graphic 45 blog and the Want2Scrap blog so be sure to visit both blogs and leave a comment to increase your chances of winning.  For Facebook, they will be picking a winner from all of the comments made during the week-long Blog Hop. Sound fun? Lets get started with today's projects and designers.

 
For my Blog Hop project I decided to use one of the beautiful chipboard albums from Want2Scrap and one of my favorite collections from Graphic 45 - Steampunk Debutante.  Several years ago I had taken some photos of my Niece and I was waiting for the perfect papers to construct a mini album from the photo shoot.  The wait was worth it once I saw the photos with the Steampunk Debutante papers.

 
I changed most of the inside pages of the album to my own custom designs.  On the left side of my blog I have created an album "Steampunk Debutante Mini Album" where I have loaded all my step by step photos and written instructions for this complete projects.  Please feel free to print off the photos and instructions if you are interested in trying some of these techniques at home.  All the techniques I have used in this project can easily be adapted to any of the Graphic 45 paper collections.

 

I am excited to be sharing the last day of the blog hop with the following super talented designers - be sure to check out their projects and leave them a comment for your chance to win.

Want2Scrap:Karen Taylor - http://creativeyearnings.blogspot.com/
Want2Scrap:Lori Craig - http://loricraig.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/
Graphic 45:  Robin Shakoor - http://robinshakoor.blogspot.com

Thank you so much for stopping by today, thanks for your comments and good luck with your chance to win some great prizes.  Lynette

P.S. After months of preparation, on Monday August 15, 2011 I will have a link on my blog to my brand new online storefront (a place where you will be able to purchase many of my exclusive designs in kit-form)

Holiday Inspirations

I can't believe it's August - where did July go?  Sorry it has been so long since my last post.  The last half of June and all of July was taken up with moving back to Boston from Australia and creating, creating and more creating.  I had two fun workshops to design and teach in my local area in June and then it was time to work on all those CHA projects.  CHA is a crazy time of the year but it's also a super fun time of the year.  Oh how I love to have those brand new products in my hands, my mind goes into overtime!!  This year I had fun working with all the new Graphic 45 collections, ABC Primer, Christmas Emporium and The Magic of Oz.  Each collection is very different but they are all amazing.  Over the next few weeks I will be posting photos and some tutorials of nearly all the projects I created (a few were picked up for publication so I can't show those but I will let you know when they are out in print).

The first project I  would like to share with you is a Christmas Emporium Wall Art piece.  Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know how much I love to create wall art.  For me, wall art is a great way to showcase a paper collection and I absolutely love to display them in my home or to give to someone special as a gift (as I have already done with this piece).  A piece like this can be displayed year after year.

 
When creating a piece of wall art, I always choose the frame first and then make enough panels to fit within the frame.  For this piece, I bought the frame and then I cut my own mat and bought an additional frame on clearance to use the moulding from to fit around the edges of the mat.  I simply measured all four sides and then with a tiny saw trimmed down the moulding so it would fit.  I then glued the moulding down with a hot glue gun. 

 

Each of the layers in the wall art have a piece of chipboard between them to give the papers extra body and then each layer is adhered together with foam mounting tape for dimension.  Once I had cut all my layers using the scalloped rectangle nestabilies from Spellbinders, I then chose my decorative pieces for each panel.  Once all the panels were complete, I went back and gave them all special touches with pearls, stickles for some sparkle and extra cut pieces of holly etc.

After placing the panels into the frame, I adhered two chipboard flourishes from Imaginarium Designs which I had painted with Gold Metallic paint to the mat with foam mounting tape.  The little black tag that reads "Christmas Emporium" was cut from the Chipboard Tag packaging and was also adhered with foam mounting tape.

 

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Next week I will have another exciting project and a blog hop with Want 2 Scrap.  Details to come on Monday. 

Have a great weekend, Lynette