Paper Bag Leaves!

Hello everyone & Happy Tuesday to you! I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I had a fabulous time in Delaware teaching Copic Classes---waving HI to all the lovely ladies who came out to take classes with me!  I also got to meet my pal Anary (artist of Gilli stamps here) who has been a sweet friend for awhile and my other good friend Cindy Echtinaw (owner of Stamping Scrapping)--we had a wonderful dinner and they were a HUGE help to me during the classes.  I wish they'd come to all my classes to help out (wink) and the fact that Cindy and her sweet hubby Kevin flew in from Michigan to help me and Anary was just the bomb!!  I have met so many beautiful people in this business and have been truly blessed with so many friends and a big thanks to you all---it really is a wonderful blessing!  And a special shout out to Carol, Paulette & Katie for my sweet handmade present--it's just beautiful!! 

And while we're on the subject of blessings let's discuss this some more.  Yes, I did watch Oprah yesterday--why?  Cuz' it was all about amazing animals and animal rescues!!  A charity near and dear to my heart!  And you know I'm a big sucker when it comes to animals ('cept maybe the slitherin' kind, lol)!  I work with some local animal rescues and I'm always trying to raise funds and help out to help reduce the euthanasia that occurs due to non-spaying and those who buy animals, abuse them and leave them out in the cold and even those who just can't afford to take care of them anymore!  The raffle funds from my Michigan classes went to a local rescue that physically takes animals from kill-shelters and finds home for them (Lost Dog & Cat Rescue)--these are people who don't get paid a lot but spend hours and hours helping these animals get food, love and new homes!  If more people were educated and cared enough we could reduce the amount of animals in shelters all over the Country!  So what did I do yesterday you ask (cuz' you know I did sumpin', lol)??  Yep, I adopted a baby elephant for our family from Africa, hee hee.  Her name is Sinya and she's an orphan elephant living at an Elephant Rescue called Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya!  They take in orphaned baby elephants and raise them until they can be released again in the wild--you really must read about it more.  For just $50 you can adopt and help out a baby elephant and get reports on your elephant---Riley was ecstatic and has said he will keep track of her each month and maybe one day we'll be able to do that safari in Africa and meet our baby elephant :)  I really do believe we can all give back in some way, big or small and I try to keep that in mind everyday I wake up---no matter BIG OR SMALL you CAN make a difference!!!

Me, Anary and Cindy at my Copic Class this weekend in DE!!

I'll have NewsBitz and Blog Candy Winner posted tomorrow :)

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Paper Bag Leaves!!

Since it's October that means it is time for a new Magnolia-licious Sketch Project Challenge!  Our hostess with the mostess is the sweetly talented Angie Hunt and she has challenged everyone to create a Fall/Halloween project using a brown paper bag.  There are lots of fun tutorials and ways to use paper bags online in crafty ways so use that imagination of yours and you can join in and find out more at the Magnolia-licious Highlites Blog HERE!

I had chosen my image way before I decided I'd use it for this project and I just had an idea rumbling in my head that wouldn't go away, lol! You know how you have an idea and you just HAVE to do it?  Well I tried to create a more useful paper bag project but sometimes I just let it go and did what the papers and embellies told me to do, lmbo!  So my project has fun parts of paper bag within it instead of being fully created with one--another way to incorporate stuff found in your home into your projects.  You can find lots of fun fall images at the Magnolia-licious Store HERE!

So I used this super cute NEW image from Magnolia-licious' Autumn 2010 Collection called "Tilda in Autumn Leaves"--I love this image (Diana is out of it right now but I'm sure she has TONS more on the way)! It reminds me of my childhood jumping in the piles of leaves my mom laboriously raked (she probably wanted to shoot me, hee hee) with not a care in the world.  Then my kids used to do the same at my parents when they were younger (they're too cool now-ha ha)!  I love the cute expression on her face.  I chose to make a fun easel card to showcase the image and decorations.  All my papers are last year's collection by My Minds Eye (Bloom & Grow) --I just love the mix of fun colors and patterns.

So one of the ways I used the paper bag was to punch my leaves out of it with my small leaf punches---my paper brown lunch bags are pretty thin, almost like thin vellum so it punched easily.  And I crinkled the punched leaves up good then inked them with orange & brown inks before adding them to my scrolls (yes my fave Marianne Designs dies).  After they were attached and dried I added some gold and copper Stickles to them to make them sparkle.  Bow was made with my Bow Easy :)

And yep she was colored with Copics of course, hee hee!  I used some YR's (YR18,YR12,YR01,YR00,YR0000/BG23,BG11,BG10).  The leaves were colored in multi fall colors (E08,E18,YR12,YR23,Y21,YR01,E31) and then added some Stickles to a few of them for more fun sparkle!!

For the final addition of paper bag pieces I used a large piece, crumpled it up and inked it and then layered it on top of my cardstock mats.  The sentiment is from a beautiful new set by Paper Trey Ink --I love the sentiment, it says "When I count my blessings, I count you twice"!  I cut it out with my Spellbinders die 'Fancy Tags'--I cut an extra one out of aqua cardstock to layer it upon.

I sure hope my project gave you a bit of sunshine and smiles for the day!!

Now you need to hop over to the Magnolia-licious Highlites Blog to see the rest of the DT's awesome projects and join in on the fun too!