..Raydns Shadow Box....

Last night ,I finished Raydns shadow box for his room, I had started it quite a while ago but never got around to completing it. They are a bit addicting I must say, I wanted to add more gadgets to it but I finally ran out of room. I must have rearranged the picture's about a hundred times, I originally wanted to have a single picture in the top middle and 2 pictures on the 2 bottom corners but I wanted to add some flowers in the middle and they didn't look right going in the down direction, so it ended up this way....up so all the ribbon and clumped flowers were around the same square. If that just made any sense at all. For my embellishments I used all silver (the keyhole, brads, key, clock, clip and paper clip)  instead of brass to match the handle.

 I used the Stella and Rose line from BoBunny, the oranges fit perfectly with the leaves and Raydns jacket in the pictures.  I used the Rangers Distress Stains for the wooden bird cage and bird. Amazing product, the applicator is a dabber which allows you to paint and blend it on. Very cool. I used the colours  antique linen, wild honey and of course walnut stain (walnut stain is my favourite distress ink too). The stains match the distress inks perfectly. Lately I have been addicted to alcohol inks and colour wash and now I think I found my newest addiction.

 I borrowed the bottom left section from Roxanne, she just had a shadow box featured on the cover of "Simply Homemade" for Scrapbook Trends Magazine. You should check it out, it is absolutely amazing....so, super talented. Roxanne used words that stood out on a alphabet piece of paper,and seeing this paper in the Stella Rose collection, I wanted to do the same. It makes the paper stand out a tad more, I used 8-18-9, Raydns birthday. Very cool idea Roxanne!! Hope you don't mind :)

 As you can see I used some gadgets and such from Tim Holtz, 7 Gypsy's and Maya Road. My favourite are the little bottles with the corks. Inside them I have music paper (left over from a class of Roxanne's, last February), the paper is VERY old, I think 100 years old or something like that. The paper would rip while I was rolling it. The only thing I wished I did diferently was used my border punch that had a bunch of little circles to match this paper instead of the one I used. (I bought it after I had this one punched and then had no more paper left. I love to use border punches in my layouts, I now finally own 3).

Designed and created by Rhonda Witzke

I know I have used this quote numerous times in past layouts. "Between the innocence of babyhood and the dignity of manhood, we find a delightful creature of a boy" but it is my favourite.....and the writing matched the background paper. The flowers I made using Timm Holts Tattered flowers die cut....looking on blogs this die cut is actually used LOTS and you can make so many variations using the flowers. I coloured the flowers with dabs of mushroom alcohol ink and sprayed them with espresso color wash. I was originally going to use butterscotch  color wash but I forget to pick it up at Urban...and that's why I went there, hehehe.  I then used the Stella Rose accessory brads to match.
It was a nice change to work on a shadow box and not a layout, if you have a chance you should try it....its super, super fun!!!

....Raydn: Happy Spring....

Happy spring everyone! Its starting to feel like spring again yesterday after that last snowfall we had last week. Gross!!! All the kids in the neighbourhood were so disappointed to wake up to snow especially after all the fun we have been having outside lately. We were all super sad to see all our sidewalk chalk disappear but never less very happy to have more puddles to splash in again. I'm sure that will not be the last time that are going to see snow, especially here in Edmonton...even though it wouldn't hurt my feeling if we didn't. The best thing about spring/summer weather in our neighbourhood is that we have big court parties. This weekend we are having one (suppose to be + 11) which involves deep frying chicken wings, lots of food, beverages and a fire which the whole neighbourhood  participates in. So much fun!!! All the kids have a blast! We live in a very, very social neighbourhood and it rocks!!!

This picture was taken before the last snowfall, Raydn has been so excited that he gets to wear his rubber boots outside. It must be a boy thing because he wants to wear them ALL the time, even in the house! With this layout, I just wanted to keep it simple!! I didn't add much detail at all. I just added a touch of stitching on the corners of the picture and actually sprayed the paper with the Color wash colour "bottle" from the outside in. Color wash is my new favourite product!!! I love it but I have learned to wear gloves, I didn't like having pink nails last week!! I used the Stella Rose line from BoBunny, love this paper the colours are absolutely amazing and I though the blues were perfect for Raydns rubber boots and puddles too of course. The one thing I love about this paper is the texture of it and its very thick, its very forgiving if you want to move your paper once it taped down. I rearranged this layout a week after it had already been put together. Very forgiving, even the glue dots on the back of the buttons.

I am currently working on a shadowbox using the Stella Rose line but with the oranges. I am super excited about this project because my die cut"tattered florals" by Tim Holtz just arrived and I can't wait to use it! . I am also using the color wash "butterscotch" on the flowers which matches perfectly!!!!  (Roxanne used it on her flowers in the last class: Memories"). I am having so much fun with this project!! I can't wait to show it.

Created and designed by Rhonda Witzke

The Best Day Ever.....

After working with the new products in Roxannes class at Urban, I had to buy some of the color wash and experiment with it myself. I used the paper line from Glitz....beautiful paper!! I don't know why but lately I am really drawn to pink..which is really odd because as a kid I HATED it but that's probably because my mom always dressed me in it. For the paper flowers I randomly dropped cranberry and rose alcohol inks onto the pedals and then sprayed them with espresso color wash. They turned out super cool but by mistake. I originally was going to use the alcohol inks but it looked to bold. I wanted to see what the color wash would look like so I sprayed it on that flower (I was going to toss it anyways) but when it dried it looked so cool...the color wash didn't take on some parts of the alcohol ink and it lightly absorbed into the white...all I can say is I loved how it turned out.
I also used the same process with my ribbon as the flowers. For anyone who has ever used alcohol inks on acrylic you know how it looks when it is applied???..very bold.. and you can remove it by just using windex and start over???? Well by mixing the ink with color wash that doesn't happen...the coming off part I mean but on gel. My gel finger nails are BRIGHTLY coloured  red and blotchy. Yikes!!! Yup...I have been scrapbooking!!! and my next appointment isn't for two weeks :s 
I also got to use my cuddlebug, I embossed the paper matts with handwriting (it just added that little touch)..love, love, love it!!!! 
I got to do this one page layout while my great little boy slept for 4 hours today.....he must have known that mommy had the scrapbook bug  :) but after we went outside and played for 2 hours with the neighbour kids....and of course went puddle jumping.

These pictures were of Raydns first stampede in Medicine Hat. We went on the carousal, went to the petting zoo and watched the diving dogs. While we were there it poured then turned out to be the nicest, hottest day. A great first experience to have with his Grandma. I altered the pictures in Picnik, I loved how they tured out!!

Designed and created by Rhonda Witzke.

Memories...

Can you believe it? Spring is here (lets hope)!!!! Put away the touques, mittens and winter jackets....lets hope mother nature doesn't make me a liar now! I can't even begin to explain how wonderful it has been to be able to play outside again. This weekend especially; we had Raydns  play-date (11 kids) in our front driveway with all the summer toys (chalk, bikes, quad, games and bubbles) , it was amazing!! Raydn had such a great time. I learned in the last week  though that my little man is a little puddle jumper...and a pro I must say. He was soaked head to toe because he would sit in the puddles..needless to say his outside attire now consists of rain pants, rubber boots and a rain jacket. What a kid!

On Thursday night I also had the "Year in Review Class" for March with the lovely Roxanne.  I must say the layout was amazing and there were some really cool techniques. We used Rangers color wash and boy oh boy is it a messy product. Ya stained fingers...not really great for the gel nails ;) Color wash reminds me of glimmer mist but without the glitter and it is more concentrated in colour. Such an amazing product though, we sprayed it on the corners of the paper and also on all the flowers. It gave the flowers a antiqued look, depending on how close you spray it, you could have concentrated areas or just by spraying water makes the colour bleed and lighter. When it dries it looks amazing. No 2 flowers looked the same. We also used a product called Mya Resist which was pretty cool. With this product you draw it on your paper, let it dry then spray over it (in this case we used color wash). After your paper is dry you rub off the mya resist and viola...you have the design in the colour of the paper below...pretty neat stuff!!
It just amazes me to how Roxanne comes up with these neat ideas.....pretty talented lady!!

Did you notice that these pictures weren't of Raydn....lol. There is a first for everything! These pictures were taken at Pierce lake and a lake way up North in the Canadian Shield (I can't remember the name of it though). Such a great feeling to sit on the fishing boat and watch the sunset....breathtaking!! The bottom picture (below) was of my first shore lunch...another great memory...ahhhh the taste of summer!

Below is the color wash sprayed over the mya resist. Very cool look!

Designed and created by Roxanne Olsen

Put together by Rhonda Witzke