Sneak Peek Of A New FotoBella Winter Scrapbook Layout.

Penny here today to give you a tiny sneak peek of the snow tubing layout I did for theFotoBella Online Scrapbook Store Design Team.  I used this paper from Carta-Bella-Merry-Christmas-Collection-Kit.

To see my finished layout be sure and check out the FotoBella Blog tomorrow! 

Till next time Happy Scrapping! Love Penny 

How to Make a Christmas Morning Layout.

Good morning crafter's Penny here today to show you how to make a Christmas layout featuring Christmas gift bikes. A some point in almost every child's life it's a dream to receive a bike Christmas morning and this is what this layout is about. It features both of my grand kid"s, Matthew and Madison when they received their big wheel bikes Christmas morning probably in 2008, or about that time.

I started by picking out my paper, and I loved that on this paper one of the Santa Claus images was riding a bike, so I thought that was perfect. Next I added a green cardstock background with some washi tape trim.

To glue my items in place I used the Best Glue Ever by ScraPerfect. It works great on just about any surface glass, fabric, paper, metal, plastic, etc. Just an all around great glue. 

Then I added my photos after I had matted them down on some Christmas red cardstock. 

Next I started adding some chipboard accessories. Since some of these items were really tiny I added the No Clog Writing Cap to my Best Glue Ever bottle.

Now my glue bottle looks like this and with the small pin like applicator I can now fully control exactly how much glue I want to put on these tiny items. It works beautifully. 

This worked really nice when I started to add the tiny holly leaves pictured below.

After adding more chipboard to the right side of my page I started working on my banner on the bottom of the page. 

 

I first cut out some matching red cardstock, then I applied the chipboard pieces to each cut out. To the top of each of the banners pieces I punched out tiny pin holes using a paper punch. This let me string the banner pieces together and form my banner shape. 

I used more thread than I needed because it kept fraying as I tried to insert it into each of the tiny holes, so make sure you do the same when measuring out your thread. Next came the bling dots, and attaching my banner with tiny brads.

To attach my buffalo plaid ribbon I also used the Best Glue Ever. 

 I decided to add a little bit more bling to it so I added bling around the outer edges of the green cardstock mat.

So here is my completed layout. Super easy and a memory I hope all of us will treasure forever. Til next time Happy Scrapping. Love Penny

Sneak Peek on a Santa Claus Mail Box I Made For FotoBella

Penny here today to give you a sneak peek on a new Christmas mailbox I made for Santa Claus letters, for the FotoBella Blog. I am proud to be on their design team. This project features supplies from the FotoBella Online Scrapbook Store. I used this Christmas kit from Carta-Bella-Merry-Christmas-Collection-Kit Side 1 to complete my project along with their matching embellishments.

Be sure and stop by there today to see the full tutorial of this project. Till next time Happy Scrapping. Love Penny 

How to Make Recycled Gifts for Christmas

Hello fellow crafter's Penny here today to show you how to recycle an old jewelry box with some beautiful Opalescence vinyl.

 So here is the jewelry box I started with. I forgot to take photos of the sides, and top, but they were stained worse than the bottom. In this photo I had already starting staining the top and side black.

Since the jewelry box was wrapped in a fabric, I used just plain old liquid black shoe polish to stain the box. 

In this photo I only had one coat of shoe polish on the box. It took several coats till I had the fabric as dark as I would like it to be. You will also notice two tears in the fabric.  I covered those with the vinyl flower cutouts. 

This was the final color of the box. 

As you can see the inside of the box was in perfect condition, but I had to be careful not to get too much polish around the edges so the stain didn't bleed in to the other areas. 

Now that my box was dry I started to pick out my Opal vinyls from Tape Technologies & Style Tech Craft. You can find more samples on their Facebook Page. 

So here are what the Opal vinyls look like prior to me cutting them. The color variation's are AMAZING! With so many colors changing on each sheet by just the angles of the light. 

This is Opal White #107

This is also White # 107

This is Opal Blue #108

This is Opal #109

The opalescence of this vinyl is SO strong that the following photo's are photo's of the EXACT SAME JEWELRY BOX WITH NO PHOTO COLOR EDITING! It's truly amazing! 

In this photo the dragon looks yellow and green. I used my die cut machine to cut the vinyl, it cut super easy. 

If you slightly tilt the box to the light you get purple and blue! 

Now you get purple, blue and red.

In this photo the dragon looks almost completely blue, 

I like how in this photo the dragon's tail looks like it's on fire. 

More tilting and we are back to red and purple! 

Now we are almost orange and yellow. Notice how strong the shine is on this vinyl! You can see the reflection of the colors on the mat cardstock.

Now we are back to yellow and green. 

This dragon looks almost totally green.  (Sorry for the blurry photo, but the color's are fantastic.)

Now we have a yellow dragon and orange flowers! FYI the center of the flowers and the dragon's eye were drawn on with a sharpie marker.

Now here is the jewelry box filled with jewelry! 

Back to blue and red again! 

Well I hope you enjoyed your time here today helping me play with this amazing vinyl, and upscalilng this jewelry box.  Til next time Happy Scrapping! Love Penny 

How to Safely Remove That Awful Adhesive Residue

Good morning crafter's Penny here today to show you how to safely remove sticky glue residue.

So this is how my paper looks now (top photo) but this is what it looked like BEFORE I sprayed it with the Best Cleaner Ever from ScraPerfect.

It was a sticky mess, and totally unusable. So I spray just a small amount of the cleaner on the paper, and let it sit for a few minutes, and presto CLEAN usable paper! This cleaner works on fabric, paper, and just about any surface you can imagine. It so far has cleaned everything I have tried it on. It's safe for your hands, stamps, the environment, and is non-toxic! All the things I require in anything that comes into my home.

Well I hope you give this a try and come to love this little cleaner as much as I do. To learn more about it you can check out this video. Till next time Happy Scrapping. Love Penny

How to Make a Beautiful Christmas Advent Calendar with Vinyl.

Good morning crafter's Penny here today to show you how to make a gorgeous Christmas advent calendar using vinyl, and a metal message board.  Normally these are made for children, however my mom has early forms of Alzheimer's disease so she has been losing track of how many day's it is till Christmas, so this project was made for her.

I started this project with just a plain message board, as seen here.  It has a metallic sheen to it so it didn't like my camera flash very much, sorry about that. 

Then I chose my quality vinyl's from Tape Technologies, and Style Tech Crafts.  I wanted this vinyl to have great color, and a luxurious feel so I chose the vinyl from their Luster collection. 

904 Red

906 Royal Blue (the blue photo here appears lighter than the true color) 

The below photo is a more accurate photo of the Royal Blue color. 

I also used a 885 Silver

The sheen on this vinyl is amazing and it's so soft to the touch! I used the above colors, although they have a large selection of other colors to chose from along with many other vinyl styles perfectly suited for whatever your needs are. You can find their color chart Here

So to start off my project I used my die cut machine to cut out the "Merry Christmas" title,

and then the Santa Claus.

Then I added the tree, and star.

This is how those elements looked like before I added the grid, and numbers.

The small green star located on the tree is movable, and has a magnet glued onto the back of it. In the photo below you can see the star located on the #6 day. The star is made from wood, and used to be a knob on a children's jewelry box. I simply painted it green, and red with a sharpie markers, and then glued the magnet to the back of it. 

 I also glued 4 magnets to the back of the message board so that it could be hung from my refrigerator. (Thanks Rhonda for the magnets they work great!) Super easy project mostly made from things I already had laying about the house. I hope you had fun today following along, and until next time Happy Scrapping. Love Penny