The star in the bottom left corner is actually made from clear acrylic...I simply glued a piece of patterned paper onto the back using zip dry and stuck a button in the middle and now it has some great dimension!
And as if that wasn't wonderful enough, I woke up this morning and realized there was nowhere I had to be for a change. I headed straigh back to the table, and had another layout finished before noon...bam! (it's for the September newsletter that's not even out yet, so shhhh! This is totally on the sly!)
My Photosmart is almost out of ink, so the color is a little jacked up in the photos...but you get the idea. I stuck them down with removable tape, so as long as I get over and get a new ink cartridge sometime today, I should be able to swap them out without much trouble.
In other real life news, I've been so completely, insanely, barely-have-time-to-sneeze busy. I gotta tell ya, now that I'm not working anymore, I sure am working a lot! Creative Imaginations has got me coming in to help them get ready for Scrapfest, so I've been packing kits and running errands. The week leading up to a big event like this just always gets a little nuts...so many last minute things to remember! In between that and babysitting a bit for my brother, I am helping Melissa unpack and shelve the gazillion boxes she's been getting in at the Scrapbook Garden from CHA! In a nutshell, I'll just say that *somebody* went a little nuts witht the Ranger and American Crafts...*cough-coughmelissacough-cough*
And when I do finally get home at the end of the day, I have been desperately trying to find time to design a new class for September, but so far I've just been too pooped! And the coming weeks aren't looking any less hectic....lots on the agenda work wise. Maybe if I drink enough coffee, I'll grow another pair of arms. Stranger things have happened, right?
I spent the afternoon with this little peanut today, and though we had a little play time, he must have had a busy weekend growing, because he was pretty pooped out and slept most of the day. I actually found myself wishing I had my SD4U September Zach's Life kit with me to help pass the time! But soon enough I found myself home and at the scraproom table, and I was able to finish both of these:
There is butterfly patterned paper, die cut butterflies, and even an acrylic butterfly stamp from Autumn Leaves! The teal and coral color combination is exciting and a little different, and the the finishing touches encourage lots of attention to detail. Here are a few layouts I've made with it so far: 
I think I've had the most fun deciding how to embellish the different butterflies! For this one, I cut one of the larger butterflies from the patterned paper. With an embossing pen, I traced and colored in the spots on the butterfly that I wanted to sparkle, then sprinkled some glittery embossing powder on and heat set it. And as a bonus, it turns out the embossing pen turned the paper a little blue underneath the clear powder...I love those kind of *mistakes*!
These butterflies were made from the Autumn Leaves stamp in the kit. I stamped these guys onto some white cardstock using teal ink. When it was dry, I simply traced the lines with my Sakura Clear Star gel pen for a subtle shimmer, and added a couple of rhinestones along the body. I attached them to the page with a dab of glue behind the body only, and bent the wings upward so the could *flutter* around the page.
Ok, I may have gon a little glitter crazy with this one, but the technique is fun! I took one of the diecut butterflies and cut out each of the upper wings. I covered them with diamond stickles and set them aside to dry. With another diecut butterfly, I covered the bottom set of wings with a coral ultrafine glitter using a glue pen. When that was dry, I simply glued the separate set of wings on top of the original set of wings using just a line of glue on the inner edges so the wings could pop up off the page. I added some fruit punch stickles to add polka dots to the upper wings, and a couple of rhinestones along the bottom set of wings.
