Mother's Day Scrap-O-Dex

I want to wish all the Mothers out there a VERY Happy Mother's Day!!!

Teehee, now a moment of rudeness to my own Mom (sorry, Mom!) but you can't see this until you get it! So go away! Love you though! :)

Obviously, this Scrap-O-Dex is something I made for my Mother in honor of the holiday. While this did take a lot of time, it was all using simple techniques. I've already mentioned the flower texturizing technique in my earlier post with the matching house box for this SOD. The rest is simply lots and lots of Stickles! Of course, the Scrap-O-Dex is from Zsiage. The patterned papers, again, are Zsiage's Starr Brites II collection (designed by Jen Starr). All the chipboard shapes interspersed throughout are from one sheet of Zsiage Chippies (also by Jen). Several of the shapes I actually cut in half to make the fit the space better (which used a lot less too!) There are a lot of leftover shapes as well to use on other projects. The flowers are from Prima and, again, punched from Zsiage papers (the punches are from EK and Carl). The Stickles from Ranger (I used orange and pink). The quote stickers (all from one sheet!) are from Cloud 9, and the pen I used to outline on each page is from Sakura. The Magic Mesh, of course, is from Magic Mesh.

I actually worked on this in layers. First I completed the Scrap-O-Dex itself. I covered the front and back with Magic Mesh and then added the Stickled letters and then the flowers. Then I covered all the chipboard pages with patterned papers and trimmed them. I picked out the chipboard shapes to use and covered half with orange and half with pink and set them to dry while I created all the flowers. I did a lot of those flowers over the space of a few days - usually while watching TV, lol! Then I picked out all my pictures and trimmed them down to an appropriate size. Then I began assembling! For each page, I simply cut a piece of paper big enough to fit the quote I was using and slip behind part of my picture. No measuring. Just left them random! After attaching the paper, quote and picture, I then edged the paper with a black pen just to be sure it stuck out nicely against the background. I would have inked them all had I thought of it before attaching the first one but since I did, I had to go ahead and make do and follow through the rest the same way. Once all the pages were done to that point, I determined placement in the Scrap-O-Dex and put them in. Then, working from the back to the front, I began layering and adding flowers and the Stickled chipboard pieces. It's much easier to visualize and make everything tie together (for me at least) working this way. I do the same with acrylic albums just so I can see where I should be working and what will show through from page to page. It helps to see where there are gaps and where things might be bunched up too much as a whole and in sections.

SOD Gift Box - Mother's Day

Zsiage's Scrap-O-Dex's come in these cute little gable boxes. So far I had been going the simple, straightforward route in decorating mine, but my fellow design team members at Zsiage have come up with some absolutely amazing things being more creative. Soooo, I decided to try something beyond just covering one in paper and adding a few embellishments to it.

I made a Scrap-O-Dex (which I'll share tomorrow!) for Mother's Day for my mom. Since I had used the Starr Brites Series II papers on it, I went with the same for the box to put it in. Then I decided I wanted to make it into a little house (kind of a spin-off of my birdhouse theme, lol!).

I did a quick covering of the whole bottom part, then cut off the top section and trimmed some of the excess flaps off. Then I glued the top handle flaps inside out to each other and covered them with paper to create a roof. To get the side sections (the triangles) on and solidify the structure of the roof, I ended up just using plain old tape. It got covered with the flowers in the front and since it's clear, doesn't show too much in the back either. I cut a slit and slipped a folded over piece of paper through it to make the chimney.

Then came the fun part - decorating my house! The Dutch Garden paper from this collection has all these wonderful swirly flowery pieces - I just went to town with my Xacto knife and made them into bushes. All the windows and door were simple shapes, with slivers of paper to make the separate window sections and a punch to mimic a door handle.

I punched tons and tons of these little flowers in two sizes and just kept adding them everywhere, like the bushes were flowering. I gave the flowers texture by first wrapping them face up over various things I had handy - pen caps, etc. - to crimp the petals themselves. Then I put them face up on a mousepad and used an embosser to swirl around in the middle, flattening that back down and creating the final shape.