July’s Paper GCT

Our July Paper Guest CT: killarney_rose , got to work with the K&Company Abrianna line. And she did an awesome job with it!

My name is Kim and I am honored to have been chosen as GCT for July! I was so excited when I received the offer all I could do was point as I handed the lap top to my husband, LOL! He's like 'WHAT!' LOL! I'm just speechless. My wonderful husband Larry and I celebrate our Silver Anniversary in August. We have two children Lynn who is working on her Masters of Agriculture Education at Texas A&M Univ. and James who is working on his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at University of Houston. Larry and I are self-employed with two businesses. Larry manages our Oilfield Business and I manage Flying J&L Ranch. I have my dream job as a farmer! I am surrounded by cattle, horses, donkeys, dogs, chickens, a cat and an abundance of wildlife. There is always something to take a picture of at the ranch. It’s hard to choose between my boys (bulls) or calves as my favorite subjects. The rest of the family always teases me saying I turn the bulls into Momma’s boys and I really do. I’m getting to old to play their games. A large portion of my addiction to scraping is devoted to everyday life on the ranch or when we are at a show with the cattle.

I can not even begin to express my thanks for allowing me to be GCT to Angela, the Creative Team and to ACOT. I thought the excitement over the line I would get to work with was going to just bust out everywhere. When I was able to choose from three K&Co. lines I thought…. Yep, I was speechless. I am a huge fan of K&Co. embellishments and not so much the paper. In fact I've only purchased 4 or 5 papers in almost five years of scrapping. I narrowed it to two pretty quick and decided to sleep on it. I had a vision when asked to be GCT to see if I could show diversity in whatever I was able to scrap with. Of the two lines the colors of one was much more appealing to my comfort zone, but I couldn't find the diversity. The other bright, bold and totally out of my comfort zone. And what did I go with….the challenge of being totally out of my comfort zone. So much so out of my comfort zone I tossed it aside for two full days when it arrived. Then made myself work with it. Once I started I just couldn't wait to do more with the line. Abrianna is exactly what it looks like bold, pretty and bright. The diversity in the line is unbelievable. One can scrap any photo with this line. It can be a heritage, child's, pet, boy's, girls….and the list can go on and on. It truly has been one of the very best experiences to use this line in my scrapping! I took my desire to challenge myself one step further with this line in two areas. I could only use cardstock as an accent. And I wanted to make my own flowers which is so very hot right now. And again Abrianna is perfect to make your own flowers with the large choice of colors in the line. I had so much fun working on the handmade flowers! I hope you'll take a closer look at this fabulous line to add to your stash. I've found I want more of Abrianna!!! I know I will always be taking a closer look at K&Co. with a new set of enthusiasm for their products!

My side of the family loves Japanese dishes and sushi so it seemed perfect to host Lynn's graduation dinner at Haiku Restaurant in College Station. You can see glistening lights in the trees so I chose to pull the bling to match. I wanted to use a very hot technique right now so I made the decision to hand make my flowers. I wanted them just slightly different since no two flowers ever look exactly the same. I used twine to make the stem and carefully stitched the twine to the layout so the curly q's would stay in place. Then added a sprinkling of flowers and a butterfly to add more dimension. I used two of the Embossed stickers as sub titles, one nestled among the flower and the upper right corner next to the rubons. This one says 'Special Moments.' It is a special moment when Larry doesn't complain about his picture being taken. Lynn has made my mother, Granny, laugh. And big little brother has that classic James look. I think he was more interested in the chef cooking his dinner as the steam rises in front of him from the grill. For me I think the papers I chose and the of making my own flowers deeply reflects the love and care it took to see our daughter reach a very special goal in her life. Gig 'em Lynn! I'd like to thank Oct Afternoon Blog for the inspiration on the flowers.

The end of May I found a stamp at ACOT that perfectly fit a very special gift I received for Mother's Day last year. I fell hook line and sinker as soon as I saw this cow at a Texas Longhorn Sale a week before Mother's Day. Purple just seemed to fit, the touch of orange absolutely perfect! Add some pink for the cow and blue for her bull calf. A touch of glimmer glam to the photos mats and a little curling to the corners and I have the dimension I was searching for without it being too drastic. I took the 'Picture Perfect' sticker, attached to a piece of cardstock, fussy cut it out and used some pop dots to lift it off the page. And the stamp is just perfect as she will live up to her name, Scaredy Cat. I love how the stamp was presented in the package and chose to use it this way for the title.

The versatility of Abrianna shines with working on a heritage layout! The portrait of my mother taken just before she turned two in October 1935. This photo must have been an incredible portrait when new. I had a slight confusing moment when starting this layout. I stood up from my table and realized her eyes were following me. I'd never had that happen in my scrapping before when determining orientation of the photo. With my heritage photos I like them to shine for what they are and represent to me. So keep it simple is the way I love to scrap them. I put this one together so quickly. A little punching and fussy cutting enabled my handmade flowers as my border to be made in minutes. A little hand stitching gave me the elegance I wanted in my eyes. My favorite layout using Abrianna! I have to do more heritage work with my leftovers if my daughter's threat to abscond with everything will take a while to materialize!