Zoey and the furballs

A little bit of fun

2012-02-12T20:13:00.001-08:00

I"m back! After a crazy week getting ready to leave and an equally crazy week at a conference in Phoenix (Scottsdale) Arizona, I'm so happy to be home. I've had three whole days to get settled back in and I loved every one of them. Friday was my day to myself to get my house clean, take care of some errands and get things back in order. I didn't get any crafting done that day, but I did get a lot of baking done with a couple loaves of banana bread (thankfully hubby didn't toss the bananas while I was gone), homemade granola and some meatloaf and a whole week of meals planned in advance (love that!). Then Saturday, hubby and I spent a great day with my parents. Mom and I checked out the warehouse sale by Boxer and I spent a lot (!) of money on some great scrapbooking supplies. Then we had a great lunch and it was off to IKEA. I haven't been to the one they built near us and it was huge! Amazingly I restrained myself from buying all new furniture for my craft room, but I'm plotting (ha ha). Then today, I finally had some time to simply play in my room. I finished sewing on the buttons on a baby sweater I made a while back for a co-worker's new baby. Now that he's back from family leave, I can give it to him, but I needed a card. I found a super cute one for the Cameo.

I used all my scraps again and ran the white background through the Sizzix Big Kick with an embossing folder for a little more texture. Quick, easy and perfect to go with the little sweater.

Oh, and I just have to share this adorable shot of Smoke and Chewie that I snapped today. It's rare that they are so close on the same post. Well, I'm off to bed since it's back to the office tomorrow for another crazy, busy week. Hopefully it will also be very productive!

Quick card

2012-01-30T19:28:00.000-08:00

The vinyl on my cup is finally giving up so it's time for something new. Plus I still need to replace my sister's cup and I have a new phone cover that needs something. So I've been playing around with new designs to cut in vinyl, but I haven't found just the right thing yet.

Because I've spent so much time on that, I didn't have much time to do a sympathy card for a co-worker who recently lost a sibling. Fortunately, I was able to put together this quick card using one of my absolutely favorite DCWV stacks - La Creme. I didn't have the right length of sentiment stamp, so I simply printed it out on my word processing program. But the white cardstock didn't go with the creamy color of the background paper. No problem there, I just added some Distress Ink in Old Paper and it fit in perfectly. Now that it's done, I can go watch movies with the hubby.

Great Giveaway at Creating from the Heart

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

Melissa at Creating from the Heart is turning 40! To celebrate, she has fabulous blog candy over on her blog. Go wish her a happy birthday and let her know your favorite birthday present for a chance to win.

Sketch Inspiration - Mini Snow-cation!

2012-01-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

I have some exciting news! I'm sponsoring the prize over at Sketch Inspiration this week. I just love this site. I find so much inspiration there, so I was so happy to be able to show my support. So this week features a marvelous sketch that I really found inspiring. In fact, I had picked out my Echo Park paper from the Winter Park collection and my pictures of the furballs playing in the snow, but hadn't yet found the time to put the layout together. Then hubby and I took a three day camping trip to the coast where it snowed! By the time we got home, I knew the furballs pictures were out and the camping trip pictures were in. My absolute favorite picture right now is this one of Chewie and hubby napping together on the couch in the RV. Just too cute! I really had fun with this layout. I speckled paint on the stripped paper to bring it more in line with the speckling pattern in the other papers. I used my great Stampin' Up paper piercer to prepare the paper for hand-stitching with DMC floss. I made the title in the Silhouette Design Studio. The "Snow" is is cut in glitter paper (unfortunately that doesn't show well in the picture). The snowflakes are also cut out in glitter paper on the Cameo. The snowflakes were an image downloaded from Silhouette's Design Studio. Did you know that Echo Park has shapes that match some of their paper lines in there? I didn't until I found these and that just gave me one more reason to love the Silhouette and Echo Park (as if I even needed another reason). I just really love Echo Park paper! This Winter Park collection perfect for this time of year when we all get such great wintry pictures, well except DaisyMae Maus who lives in sunny Sandy Eggo, where it rarely, if ever, snows. But the paper also has some pages that would fit any time of year too. That's why I picked it for the prize for this week.

So, go on over to Sketch Inspiration and upload your take on the layout for a chance to win the entire Winter Park collection pack from Echo Park plus a bonus page of white glitter paper.
If you can't participate this week, stop by Sketch Inspiration any time you can. You'll always find an inspiring sketch and lots of inspiration in the gallery.

Sympathy Card

2012-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

It's time for another card for the "I feel the love" project. Unfortunately, this time it's a sympathy card and because of that, fewer people are participating. So please, take a moment and make a card to let this family know that people care. You can read more about it on Madison's blog here.

I found inspiration on an old sketch from Freshly Made Sketches found here. I have absolutely no idea who makes the paper since I pulled it out of a stack of miscellaneous paper from my scraps drawer and the butterflies are from the Silhouette Design Studio store. The sentiment stamp is from the Garden Flowers set from Inkadinkado and I used a flower stamp from that set to emboss around the sentiment as well.

Something fun and exciting is coming...

2012-01-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

To get ready for it, I decided to make a logo for my blog. I couldn't really think of a way to express both crafting and the cats, the cats won out. Plus, I have this great little collage of the cats that I've included whenever I've sent a card to a fellow crafter. So I decided to go with a button version of that and here it is: It took a little playing, but I finally was satisified. So I'm posting it on the side with information on how to grab it for yourself and stay tuned for fun news next weekend!

By the way, thankfully, Congress has announced that they have abandonded SOPA and PIPA. Yeah!

A world without blogs?

2012-01-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

I understand that there are things that need to be done to stop piracy (no, not the kind of piracy with eye patches, peg legs and parrots), but I cannot imagine my life without my blog or those of my friends in the blogsphere. Unfortunately that could be a reality if SOPA or PIPA passes.

I'm old enough to say I remember living in a time without the Internet, but I don't want to go back there. I know that my life has been enriched by it. I've met people I never would have met, have been able to share and learn so much about the things I love, and have developed better relationships with family that are spread far and wide. But that's in jeopardy now. I certainly don't want to have my right to free speech on my own blog censored nor do I want to miss out on what others may share. But that may just happen if we don't fight these bills.

If this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, then I issue you challenge. Take one week and spend it without posting on your blog. Don't read other people's blogs. Don't use Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Facebook, Myspace or any other search engine or social media site. See what it would really be like to go back in time. I'm sure when you're done, you'll realize just how important it is to ensure we still have free access to free speech.

Then, learn more about these bills and show your support in stopping them, check out Google.

Mojo Monday 224

2012-01-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

Whoo hoo! Back to paper crafting! I loved the new Mojo Monday sketch 224. It was the perfect starting point to getting back into playing with paper. As usual, I pulled out scraps from my bin. This time I used left over paper from making my mother-in-law's Christmas gift. Here's the weird part: I have no idea what the stack is called. See I made an album for the hubby using DCWV's Scrapbook Kit in a Stack called Love and Marriage. It's one I had in the drawer in my craft room that I must have bought some time past for some reason (likely because I've never done our wedding album). But, I decided it would be perfect for the project. When I was done, I liked it so much that I decided to do one for my mother-in-law. But I couldn't find that same stack at Michaels. All I could find was a different 8 by 8 kit from DCWV, so I made her album from that. But I cannot find it at all anywhere to include the name of the stack. Even though I bought it much later, it must have been an older stack. How weird is that?

Anyhow, all the paper except for the card base and the white scalloped circle and white flowers are from that DCWV stack. The card base is from my stash of Nekoosa Linen Text by Mohawk that I bought at Paper Zone (I am soooooo sad that they are going out of business). The white is from my scrap bin so who knows where it's from. The pink flower that makes the base of the flower is a Prima Marketing flower out of my Bucket of Blooms (man that thing is never ending!). The white and red are cut from the Asterisks die from Cuttlebug. I love the little black gem from Eye Candy.

But the best part is the little "thank you" circle cut on the Cameo. It's from the Silhouette store and I just cut off the little tag to make it fit my design. Unfortunately I didn't have a scalloped circle on the Silhouette, so I had to get a little creative. I did have a flower design I had downloaded earlier that was close to what I wanted, but I needed a solid design. So I used the "offset" feature on the flower design and played with the amount of the offset until I was happy with the scallop. I just love the Cameo. I learn more each day.

So there's lots of time left, why now play along with Mojo Monday and get your mojo on.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming..

2012-01-16T14:41:00.001-08:00

Since we had a long weekend for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, we decided to go camping. Because the forecasters mentioned the possibility of snow at lower elevations, we decided to head to the coast rather than the mountains. The perfect thing about needing to make a baby sweater is that it's much easier to pack the supplies when going camping than taking supplies to make cards or layouts. In fact, I was able to finish not one, but two sweaters over our three day trip. I found this quick and easy pattern on Lion Brand yarn's website and was able to use some yarn leftover from other projects. I must confess that I did not crochet the entire time. Mom and Dad came over to visit for a while and have a lovely lunch. After they left, I crocheted while we watched a DVD. Then, on Sunday, Matt and I hiked some of the trails (even in a little bit of falling snow) to the local brewery and back. Then while Matt and Chewie napped, I crocheted the second sweater.

I just had to get a picture of them napping in similar positions: But then it started snowing. No problem because we were toasty warm in the RV, but as you can see from the foot prints, I did have to run out to clean off the satellite dish. That was pretty cold on the feet, but worth it.

But I must confess I was a little nervous for the drive home. We rarely get snow so people drive like idiots in it. Plus the RV isn't the easiest to drive in the best of conditions and drivers rarely recognize that it will not stop on a dime or quickly get out of the way. But Matt's a great driver. Even though we saw several cars and trucks in the ditch, we made it home safely and I was able to get some great pictures. A little snow on the side of the road by the beach:

Some great waves:It snowed a bit while we were driving (have I mentioned that Matt's a great driver?)

But snow didn't keep people away from the casino (although it did make it a little hard to see):

We know that they plowed our side of the road and we did see this one heading toward the casino:

What's funny is that there was more snow at the beach than there was inland near our home, but it was still beautiful.

But I'm really happy to be safe at home with the RV unpacked and life back to normal, although it is still snowing outside, but it's not really sticking so I guess I have to get back to the grind tomorrow. Oh well. It was a lovely break.

Paper crafting interrupted

2012-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

Just as I was starting to get my groove back, here comes another interruption to my paper crafting. A co-worker's wife just had a baby boy and I don't have a single sweater ready. So I have to put aside my paper for a few days to crochet up a baby set. Hopefullly it won't take too long. See you in a few days!

Hmm...

2012-01-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

I've heard about other people losing posts before but it's never happened to me until now. Earlier this week, I lost one I had written and now I just lost another one. It's frustrating, but, oh well. So here's the card I made based upon Freshly Made Sketches sketch #17. While the sketch was very inspiring and I had all these wild ideas, I realized the card was for a man, so I had to keep it simple. So I did and kept it to just a stamp from Inkadinkado's All Occasions stamps, some random paper from my scrap bin and some crochet thread because I didn't have the right color of baker's twine...

But while I was looking for the picture of the card, I saw this great one of Chewie from our walk during our last camping trip that I just had to share.

Another card

2012-01-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

I so love the Cameo! I just can't stop playing with it. I really should be going to bed early and getting lots of rest. But I find myself drawn into my craft room to play instead. I just love this card I made the other night. It's probably already in the hands of the recipient - my "aunt" Sharon. I hope she loves it as much as I loved making it. All the paper is Sierra Paper Crafts, the button is a random one from Scrapbuck.com (love them!), and the stamp is again from the Inkadinkado's All Occasions stamp set that I picked up for a song on Scrapbuck.com.

Thank you card

2012-01-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

I have a cold. I've been fighting it but there's no doubt that it's taken root. Unfortunately it's just about wiped out my creativity gene, but yet I still want to play. Thank goodness for the cards in the Silhouette. They make it super easy to put together something cute even without a spark of creativity in my brain. I did make a few changes to this one. The card in the library is really a shaped card to match the mat, but I couldn't find a great sheet of plain paper to cut it from. So I used some card bases I had on hand instead. I added a little inking and switched out the button to a rhinestone because that was more what I was in the mood for. The sentiment is from that same Inkadinkado All Occasions stamp set. I just love that one.

Birthday Card

2012-01-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

I needed a masculine birthday card and found this perfect one in the Silhouette Design Studio. This one wasn't a perfect A-2 size, but with a little re-sizing, it fit the bill. It was a snap to cut out and put together. I used Sierra Paper Crafts paper purchased at Craft Warehouse and just one brad per card. Super simple.

New Layout - Our Happy Family in 2011

2012-01-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I made a 12 by 12 layout that I thought I had better give it a try before I get too rusty. The Sketch Inspiration sketch of the week was the perfect way to get back into the swing now that that the craziness of the holidays and such are over. I thought that starting by chronicling our family as it looked in 2011 was the perfect way to get started. Now purple and back wouldn't have been my first choice, but when I was looking for paper, I found this page in the Luxury Stack from DCWV and I just couldn't resist. The I decided I needed some flourishes so I looked through what was available on the Silhouette store and found two that I loved, along with this great "happy family" phrase. I wanted to add the year so I did a little welding (actually pretty easy to do on the software to turn the phrase into the one I wanted. Since the welding was so easy, I welded the flourishes onto some rectangles to frame my pictures. A few flowers, some Black Soot Distress ink, and a little Eye Candy bling and I was done.

One of Those Projects

2012-01-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

So often I make things as gifts for others that I can't share on the blog because, well, they would find out before I'm ready. One of "those" gifts last year was for my hubby for our anniversary. We are blessed that both our parents are still with us, but it's been a long, long time since we had good pictures taken of either set. I know better than to ask my mother because she would far rather be behind the camera than in front of it, but I thought I might be successful with his parents, and I was. I lucked out with a great Groupon for photos and sent my in-laws, with the caveat that I get the photos and they had to keep a surprise until our anniversary. Armed with great photos of them together, I tried to set up time to work on the book, but things seemed to conspire against me. A whole day of crafting to myself during a camping trip turned into a hot mess. The time had planned for myself during another crafting trip was interrupted too. Every time I tried to work on it my craft room, dear hubby seemed to wander in and I had to scramble to make sure everything was hidden. But, despite the interruptions and changes to my plans, I still managed to get it finished and it remained a surprise until our anniversary. But I still couldn't share it because my in-laws wanted to use the pictures at Christmas. But now, all the surprises are over and I wanted to share some of my favorites. The album is one that fits inside it's own box. I bought the whole thing (including all the paper and stuff inside) for only $6 at the CKC Convention a couple of years ago. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right project to come along, but the outside is pretty plain. I pulled out all my love, wedding and family stamps for this project and found that my favorite was a Heidi Swapp stamp of the word "love" that I picked up on clearance at Target in Minneapolis, MN several years ago on a work trip. I scanned the stamp for a page that I'll show you later and then decided to see if could cut it out of vinyl. I enlarged the image in SCAL and, sure enough, it cut pretty darn well with the Cricut. This shot is not my absolute favorite, but it's definitely close to it. They just look so happy together. I love the vellum on this one. I punched out the heart strip with my EK Success punch. Then I laid the punched strip over the vellum and traced the edges. I love the way the cut-outs show through the vellum on the final page. This next picture is probably one of the better shots of my father-in-law smiling.

The only thing different on the page was the hearts on the picture. I needed something in that corner to balance the picture and I just thought I would use a little white Staz-On ink, but that just didn't look right when it was done so I colored it in with red ink. It turned out perfect. It's unfortunate that this next picture turned out so dark because I really did love it, but unfortunately there wasn't much I could do to lighten it given the restrictions on the CD that the pictures came on. (After the fact I realized that I should have printed it, scanned it and then tried lightening the scanned version, but I didn't think of that at the time). But what I did love was the effect of the stitching and the chipboard flower. The stitching was a piece of cake to do using my Stampin' Up paper piercer. I had nice straight, perfectly placed holes to run my DMC floss through. The chipboard flower was easy to cut from a cereal box using SCAL. I love getting to recycle packaging in my scrapbooking. This next one is certainly not my favorite picture. But I love the "love" embellishment. I scanned the Heidi Swapp Love stamp, turned it into a SVG and using SCAL and my Cricut, I cut it out just a bit larger for a shadow effect. It's a fun technique.

Last but not least is this page, which is probably my favorite of all of them. First, I just love this picture. I think it's probably my favorite of all of them. But also because I love the background paper. I've read about this technique many times, but I had never tried it myself until this page. It's the technique where you stamp your own background, which I did using the Heidi Swapp Love stamp in Versamark then embossed with a clear embossing powder. It's quite subtle but very beautiful. A few Perfect Pearls in the shape of heart on the mat along with more clear embossing to finish it off.

Valentine's Day Card

2012-01-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

I was trolling the blogs today when I was truly inspired by a snowman Valentine's Day card that Michelle had on her blog, I Stamped That. Next thing I knew I was searching through the Silhouette library to see what snowmen were available. I pulled out some scraps from the album I made for my MIL using a DCWV love-themed kit for the red and pink paper. The rest were simply scraps from the bin. The font is CK Script. I still cannot get over the intricate cuts that the Cameo will make. I never would have tried those crazy skinny stick arms on the Cricut in that textured paper. It would have been a mess. Here it's so amazing!

Thank You #4

2012-01-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

I just love my new Cameo. I can't believe what a great job it does cutting, even little intricut cuts like the one on the lattice work on this card. Not a rip, tear or problem just as long as I set the paper and blade correctly, which is taking a little trial and error since I have some really heavy weight paper. But even better, I love this thank you card that I bought from the Silhouette store. It's adorable and was so easy to make. I whipped out three of them in a short period of time this morning using scraps from my bin, a little ribbon from Michaels and a brad from JoAnn's.

New Variation

2012-01-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

I loved the get well soon card from yesterday so much that I just had to make a variation for my thank you cards. I used all the same supplies from yesterday (scrap paper, Sizzix dies Vine, Swirly, ProvoCraft die, Asterisks, and Flower Clusters Sizzix embossing folder), but this time I used a purple Irock hot gem instead of the yellow Darice gem. I also didn't emboss the center rectangle. Instead I used a lovely stamp from Inkadinkado's Garden Flowers set. I just love this stamp set. It's so elegant. Right now you can pick it up for only $4 dollars (that's right $4) at Scrapbuck.

Get Well Soon Card

2012-01-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

My aunt had surgery last week that will require several weeks of recovery. So I thought I would send her a card to let her know I'm thinking of her. I found one that inspired me on splitcoaststampers and decided to make my own version. I'm still using scraps from my scrap bin so the paper is likely all DCWV cardstock, but I can't be sure. I had a lot left over from some projects I did for Christmas and this red, blue and green combination looked cheery on a yellow card base. I used a new Sizzix embossing folder called "Flower Clusters" for the large embossed area and the dotted folder from the Dot and Flowers set I've had for years for the smaller frame. I reused the Vine, Swirly Provo Craft die for the greenery and also the Asterisk set for the flower. It's wonderful how they can look so different just by the amount of layering. This time I cut two of the large asterisks for each flower and one of each of the smaller sizes. With the two large ones offset and then the smaller ones stacked offset on top, they made a nice full flower. I topped each flower with a yellow Darice gem. Then it was just a matter of stacking and gluing all the pieces together. I must admit this is one of my more favorite projects of late. It's quite elegant in person and just what I had in mind.

Thank You #2

2012-01-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

I received a number of new Sizzix folders for Christmas and decided to try out some of them for my next thank you card, however, I found that I was pulling out old ones I've had for a while and found to be tried and true. This fun thank you card was built with Coordinations Black Magic cardstock using the Thanks folder. I then added a flower built from the Vine, Swirly die (the only new one used in this project) along with both a large and small flower from the Asterisks dies from Provo Craft. I colored the larger flower with Coffee Shop Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and topped the whole thing off with a Darice stud using my IRock tool. It was quick and easy, but looks pretty cute in person.

1st Thank You Card

2012-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

I'm making progress. I found a great thank you card on Splitcoaststampers.com that I scraplifted into girlie colors. I finally used my "Jack's World" stamps from Cosmo Cricket but I did modify them. The "thank you" stamp has a lion on it, but I cut it off (gasp). Yes, I cut a stamp. I love the lion but I'll use the stamp more without it. I can still add the lion when it's appropriate, but I love the craziness of the letters of the thank you and they were perfect for this card made with scraps from my scrap bin.

Customizing my Cameo

2011-12-31T21:44:00.000-08:00

Wow, so the craziness of the holidays has finally past. The house is empty. All the guests have come and gone. My Christmas presents have been opened, set up or put away. I finally have time to do go back to my craft room and, yet, strangely today I just could not find my crafting mojo. I watched videos, tried to order a new cutting mat for my Cameo (but they are all sold out), read a few blogs, watched some chick flicks on Netflix, but could not seem to start the stack of thank you cards I need to finish up. But when I was reading Sandra's 365 Days of Cricut blog about her first Cameo project, I found the link to Monica Flores' blog Simply Cricuting. Now I've played with my Cameo for about two weeks now making etched glasses for co-workers and cutting out animals and other things for the nieces and nephew, but I haven't really had a lot of time to explore all it can do yet. So I love when others have tips, tricks and tutorials they can share and this one from Monica about personalizing the control panel on the Cameo really caught my attention. Even in my crafting funk, I just couldn't help but print and cut a panel to add some pizazz to my machine. What a great fun project. Maybe tomorrow I'll find more mojo to do some crafting. That is, after I've done my workout so I don't let down my team at work and eat the black-eyed peas that Lauren prepared for me so I would have good luck in 2012. I certainly hope it's better than 2011. So to all of you out there in the blogosphere, happy New Year!

My second cut...

2011-12-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

Also did not go so well due to human error, but boy was I excited with what I learned. I knew I was not going to be happy with just cutting out what Silhouette has available in their library. Sure they have a lot of fun looking designs and I know I'll enjoy using those, but since I have had Sure Cuts a Lot with my Cricut for a long time now, I've gotten used to being able to cut out whatever I can dream of (as long as it wasn't a perfect circle - Cricut just could not cut that). Lately, that's mostly been cutting out around stamps of the stamp sets I have so I don't have to fussy cut anymore. I have almost all of them scanned into my computer, which is nice for organization and knowing what I have, but also meant that they were handy to play with. I opened up my favorite stamp set (Meow Meow from Recollections) and found my favorite stamp: the one that looks like Chewie. I erased all the other stamps, traced the outline of Chewie, then printed it and cut it with the Cameo. Only problem: I somehow ended up with a stray cut line that decapitated the paper Chewie. Oops... You can see the extra cut just above the collar where I taped it together: On my second try, it came out much better. I colored it a little with my colored pencils and added a little rhinestone and now it's perfect for... well for something. I'll figure out what later, but boy am I loving this new machine.

My first cut...

2011-12-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

Well, not really, more like my third, but let me start at the beginning. Believe it or not, I've had my Silhouette Cameo for an entire week, but didn't take it out of the box until today. I forced myself to finish up a few projects and Christmas tasks I was working on before I would let myself get it out of the box because I knew once I had it set up, I would want to play. But now the big tasks are done. The wrapping is done. The meat is bought and Matt's already "test smoked" a bird. The cards are all mailed. A few have even come back - if you didn't get yours, here it is (Although the picture doesn't do it justice because the white is hand flocked paper to look like the fur on the suit, the black is shiny to look like patent leather and the the gold is shiny like a real gold buckle. The holly has texture, the stickles add that special bling and the sentiment is hand-stamped and hand colored.): But now that I'm ready for the holiday but for a little cooking and cleaning (neither of which I can do right now - there's no sense cleaning this house with the cats until the last minute), it was time to open the box. I barely had it out of the box and the cats were playing... with the box that is...

But first I had to figure where I was going to put it. Last night I found the inspiration. I cleaned out a cubby that held layout sketch books, kits and new frames and put my Expression in there so that I could have the prime spot for the Cameo. Only problem: the cord for the Cameo isn't that long and wouldn't reach my computer. So I flipped them and put the E back into it's old place and that worked perfectly (don't you love my kitty cover for the E? I'll have to design something for the Cameo to match): (Yes I am just a little too "label maker" happy. If it isn't used up immediately, it gets a label)... I loaded the software, watched the little video, read a bit of the manual and decided to try the "print and cut" feature first. It's one of the things that most intrigued me about the Cameo. I picked a stock butterfly picture already loaded in the software, printed it out my computer, loaded the Cameo and cut it out. Well, it went through the cut motions, but it didn't cut. Hmm... I checked a few things and tried it again. Still didn't cut. Finally I realized I didn't have the blade inserted all the way. Well duh... Third time was the charm. It cut beautifully, even on my cheap copier paper. The mat was a dream to work with compared to the pain in the @$$ ones from Cricut. At first I was worried because I didn't think about it being a new mat. I would never use thin copier paper with a new Cricut mat. I know I would get a ripped up mess that wasn't very usable and would be a pain in the rear to clean off the mat. But even the thin copier paper released like a charm off the Cameo mat (well except for the fact that I'm not very good with a spatula and used a little too much pressure since I'm used to fighting with the Cricut mats). I am absolutely stunned but how easy the mat was to work with and how nicely it released the image. Now I'm just curious to see how long the mat lasts. But, I am soooooo excited. I can't wait to learn more.

But first, I have to do some more reading on how to use it.

How I Found the Christmas Spirit

2011-12-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this regularly scheduled hiatus from blogging (while I try to maintain my sanity with all the craziness at work and the long, long list of to-do's for the holidays) to share with you how I found the Christmas spirit. I love Christmas, I really do, but let's all admit what every woman knows already... It's a whole lot of freakin' WORK. Add to that this is the busiest time of year for me at work, and you get one tired girl. The result of which is that I haven't really found the holiday spirit yet. Sure the lights up outside, but I haven't even wanted to put up the tree, but this afternoon I found the spirit.

You see, I took the day off work t0day to spend with my family in part to celebrate my Dad's birthday (yesterday - Happy Birthday again Dad!), even though we had a nice family dinner last night and all we did to spend time "together" was go to the casino where we all seem to go off to our own adventure. But, back to the point, so we get home from the casino and I have about two hours before the hubby will get home and a long list of errands to run: Michaels for some Armour Etch for some wine glasses for Lauren for Christmas, JoAnns for some Beacon's 3-in-1 glue for a project for a gift for someone to remain nameless, Petco for some kitty spray and shampoo for Zoey... Well you get the picture. I was planning to finish off at Kohl's.

Now I'm not a big Kohl's shopper, but I was flipping through the mail the other day (mostly junk) and found this coupon card for $10 off my purchase. I usually toss these, but then I remember Kohl's has toys. We have a toy drive at work and I thought $10 would go a long way toward a nice toy. So I pulled the coupon off and tucked it my purse. So that was where I planned to end up, but, honestly, when I was done with all the errands, I was really tired and running out of time, so I thought I would skip it. But then it seemed someone else had a different idea about how my evening would end. Turns out the traffic to the bridge was just awful so it seemed easier to go into downtown (where Kohl's is) to get on to the bridge. So I thought, well, since I have to go that way, I'll see if there's a good parking spot. If so, I'll stop. If not, I'll skip it and get on the bridge. Sure enough, the perfect spot in front of the door opened up. I pulled right in. That was my sign I was supposed to use the coupon.

I headed into the store and found the toy section. Holy moley, they had a bit sale and an additional percent off because it was a certain time of day. I picked up this remote control car at first and carried it around for the longest time, but it take 5 (5!) AAA batteries. Well, if you are hurting for money, batteries might be a bit of luxury, so I thought I better try to find something that doesn't require future contributions to continue to work.

There it was: a Barbie gift set. It was perfect for some little girl. I picked it up and walked to cash register. When all was said and done, the gift with $32.99 price (not that I would ever pay that), cost a mere $4.44. I was so excited to get such a great gift for so little money. Now my toy drive money will stretch so much farther this year. If the traffic hadn't been horrible, if the spot hadn't opened up, if I hadn't go that card in mail, none of this would have happened and some little girl wouldn't get the Barbie doll set (which I heard on the news is the most requested toy of this season by toy drives) she's been wishing for. If, if, if... That's when I realized that God was working through me today. I just paid attention to where He was pointing me to go even when I had already abandoned that path in my own mind. What a marvelous feeling.

S0 next time you go through your junk mail, don't toss the Kohl's coupon (thank you Kohls!). Maybe with a few extra dollars, you too will be able to make some child very happy on Christmas and find the spirit in yourself too.

Oh My... Cameo!

2011-11-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

My dear hubby is ever so sneaky. He's complained before that he can never surprise me because I know what he spends so if he tries to get me a gift, I know about it before he can even get home. But this year, he conspired with my mom to get me the best birthday present ever (well other than maybe the baby I've wanted for years now, but that's another story). So tonight, we went to dinner with my parents and sister and my mother passed a card over to hubby to sign. I thought that maybe they went in together on a gift. But no, really my mom and her dear friend Pat just did my husband a favor to make the card for the gift she bought for him to give me so I wouldn't see the charge on the debit card... A Silhouette Cameo.

I am so excited. I won't get it until later in December, but I don't care that I have to wait. I'm so looking forward to seeing what it can do. I've heard such good things and, in the last couple of days I realized that I need a better machine. The Cricut just can't cut the details I need.

Over the last two days I did a project just for me: an advent calendar. I've wanted one for so long but never bought/made one. When we were pouring over the ads for Black Friday, I saw that Craft Warehouse had this adorable tree calendar. Surprisingly they still had them by the time we got there (we shopped from 7:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday including trips to Michaels, JoAnns and Craft Warehouse). So on Sunday night, I covered the boxes and the tree holder. Then last night, I cut out the numbers and started adding them, but my Cricut just didn't cut this font cleanly. I'm not sure if I need a new blade or what, but I just could not make it cut well. Now I kind of wish I had waited, but with tomorrow being the 1st, I guess I made the right call even if the cuts aren't as precise as I would like.

So now I get a new toy and had a fabulous birthday. My sister bought me a lovely new Jim Shore cat and I got another one from DaisyMae Maus too. They are absolutely fabulous. Plus I received Walmart and Joann shopping cards and cash, but I have to wait to shop because I'm now on the family-imposed "shopping embargo" where I'm no longer allowed to buy anything for myself until after the holidays so I don't accidently buy what someone else is planning to get me. But that doesn't include calling the satellite company to have them come upgrade us to that whole home DVR thing so I can watch what I want in the craft room while hubby's watching in the family room. That might save me from more episodes of Decoded and that crazy show he watches where the redneck scientists try crazy stuff that gives my husband too many bad ideas of things he can try...

A whole lotta cans!

2011-11-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic day! A great, great, great end to the Chase with Tony Stewart winning the race to win the Chase.

But, even better, some very dear friends that I don't see often enough came over to craft for a while. They were making Christmas cards, but since I have mine done already, I thought I would work on this year's gifts for my co-workers. Fortunately none of them read my blog so I can share. Somewhere along the way I either lost two of the cans or maybe I didn't count right, but I need to run to the store to get to more and, of course, the candy to go them. But, yeah!, another project that's oh so close to being crossed off my list.

I also finished up a birthday present for my cousin and started another project, but, of course, those people read my blog, so I can't share.

A couple of quick cards

2011-11-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me knows that this time of year is absolutely crazy. Long hours at work. Lots of stress. Today to add to it, both the truck and our car had issues. The window in the back of the truck just does not want to close. Given the rain in the forecast, the truck had to go into the garage and we had to drive my car. But my car has been sitting the garage so long that the battery was drained. So needless to say, it was a sucky day. But tomorrow is my boss' birthday so I needed to make a quick card for her and I needed a thank you card for a co-worker who was kind enough to jump my car when it wouldn't start again because the battery hadn't charged long enough. Did I mention I have a killer headache on top of it all? So thankfully I had a couple of card bases ready for the occasion. Just add a few sentiments and I'm done. Now I'm off to bed. I can't hardly wait for January and life to return to normal.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

2011-10-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am sooooo excited to announce that my first wedding layout was selected as the winner of sketch #242 at Sketch Inspiration. My poor husband couldn't figure out what was going on. I had just finished breakfast and disappeared into the craft room as he started to watch Talladega and all of the sudden I was making all this ruckus. So, of course, I had to explain to him how exciting it is to be selected. He was really happy for me. I can't wait to see the cool prize pack from Scrappin' Sports and More.

Also how cute it is that he's been making a digital scrapbook of our cruise to Victoria with my parents and aunt and uncle a few years ago. He bought me the software a couple years ago but I've just never really been able to move to the digital side. I love playing with paper too much, but he's pretty good.

My first wedding layout

2011-10-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

So, this month, as you know, hubby and I celebrated our 7th anniversary and I'm hesitant to admit this, but (deep breath) I've never scrapbooked our wedding pictures. Sure I managed to get all the pictures in an album, but I haven't scrapbooked a single page yet even though my mother has finished an entire album about my wedding. Although I do have to point out that she's retired and I still work a full time job, but on the other hand, my parents have such an active social life I need a calendar just to keep up with them. But I've decided to let it all go. No more shameful hiding of my secret. It's out there. You know what? So what? I don't care. There, I said it. I have decided to let inspiration dictate what and when and if I scrapbook it.

Funny enough, just as I came to this conclusion, I became inspired to do my first by a memory that came back to me over the weekend. Saturday night, hubby and I were at the hockey game. We ended up sitting in this quiet section. I was looking down on the seats at the end of the ice and this memory popped into my head of the game years ago. I was sitting in that section I was looking at when I bought my white jersey back in high school. It made me smile thinking about how back then buying the jersey didn't seem like all that big of a deal (although it quickly became my favorite to wear), but in fact, it would eventually become my wedding "dress". I knew that night I would have to scrapbook that for my wedding album and the next night when I saw the sketch from Sketch Inspiration, I knew it was the one for that idea.

This time I chose to showcase a number of things that I don't usually do or take things one more step than I usually would. Lately, I've been pushing myself to move out of my comfort zone. First, this is the first time that I've printed my journaling directly onto the background paper. Yes, I know that I've had a fabulous 12 by 12 printer for nearly a year now, but I've spent so much time working on 8 by 8 pages, that I never got around to using the printer for what I wanted it for in the first time. Also, I've hand-stitched on layouts before, but I haven't added beads to that stitching on a layout until now.

I've used stamps and Stickles, but rarely do I use Stickles over the top of stamps (here I was inspired to try it because my ink was just not quite the right color):

Although I've inked edges quite a bit and do a little distressing, I've never quite gone so far as to distress and ink an entire large flower before (actually I really like how it turned out).

So I encourage you to join me and let go of that mindset that says "I have to scrap something" as if scrapping should ever be considered a chore or something on a to-do list. It's incredibly freeing. Scrap what you want to scrap when you want to scrap it. Then drag out your supplies and give them a try in a way you haven't done before and stop by Sketch Inspiration (or become a member) for a little inspiration of your own.

A card for Sarah

2011-10-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is Sarah's last week working with my husband. We're all happy that she's landed a receptionist position in the building, but sad that hubby has to replace her. People really like Sarah. She cute, bubbly and lovable. So I needed to make a card we could give her to let her know how happy we are for her. Fortunately, Freshly Made Sketches had a great sketch to draw inspiration from. A few scraps of DCWV paper from my scrap bin, a little embossing on the Sizzix, a bit of ribbon, a couple of Prima flowers and this great "eye candy" rhinestone and it was done. There's still a little time left. Just let this sketch spark your creativity and play along!

7 years

2011-10-15T12:13:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, hubby and I celebrated our seventh anniversary and my parents celebrated their 48th just a few days earlier. So as an anniversary gift for both of us, the four of us went to a hockey game on the Saturday night between their anniversary and ours, back to the scene of the crime as one might say. Well, not really because this game was in the Rose Garden, not Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, but it was as close as we could get.

I surprised both my parents and my husband with having anniversary wishes posted on the big screen (a big thank you to the Hawks for comping me the posting cost since we were the ones who got married on the ice). Hubby was actually surprised. He said he had thought about doing it but didn't know who to contact. (I do!) It was a fun addition to an otherwise wonderful game.

So on our actual anniversary, I gave him his card and he asked me to make a scrapbook page for it and he asked that I include one of the roses he gave me. So last weekend I tried my hand at drying a rose. I was really surprised how well it turned out and how easy it was to do. Just cover the flower with the drying powder and wait.

I also found the perfect shadow box, but the page design was a little elusive. I have a very clean and graphic style and I just didn't want to do the same thing all over again. I wanted to try some new things. I had this idea about making my own background paper using some Co'ordinations Black Magic paper I bought a while ago. So last night, I played around in SCAL and created a whole page of the number 7 (the number of years we've been married) in Old English Text for the font. I printed a test page using a sharpie and my Chomas Sharpie holder for the Cricut. When I had what I wanted, I switched out for the embossing tip and held my breath. It turned out perfectly. A bit of sanding later and a little use of a stylus to make some of the sevens stand out more than others and I was thrilled with my personalized background paper. It was so not my usual style but I love, love, love it.

But then I couldn't make the rest of the layout come together. I fussed with it until nearly 1 in the morning last night, gave up and went upstairs to watch the last two stories on Five that I DVR'd off Lifetime earlier in the week, hoping that creativity would come to me in the night. Well, that didn't happen, so I flipped through some sketch books (Page Maps and Page Maps 2, plus the Best of Becky Higgins Sketches) this morning but finally drew some inspiration from a sketch from Page Maps from July 2009. (I have just got to add that the best thing I ever did to inspire myself was to buy a plain old notebook and some page protectors and print pages of sketches that I like and put them in the notebook. I have all this inspiration in one convenient place. Wonderful! Although I need to get a bigger notebook now).

What really inspired me was the off kilter nature of the pictures, which I switch to landscape instead of portrait. Plus I didn't want to cover too much of my background so I ditched a lot of the background of the layout to leave more open space. In retrospect, it really looks nothing like the sketch that inspired me, but that's the point. I don't need to recreate something someone else has done, but simply take inspiration from them. But once I had all the pictures in place, it was really still missing something. I put it in the shadowbox and I just wasn't happy. It needed bling. Hubby looked at it and was suggesting things he thought would work to make it all come together. But I really knew it just needed some bling. But the swirly bling I had on hand was black or pearl. Neither would work. But then I remember that I bought the templates for the I-Rock bling. Perfect! I was going to get to do something else I haven't done before as I bought these but had never used them. I was a little hesitant, but once I got started it was so easy to use and it turned out that was exactly what it needed. I'm sure everything is going to have I-rock bling now that I know how easy the templates are to use.

Unfortunately, the glass of the shadowbox reflects too much that I had to take the picture with the door open, but you get the idea.

Birthdays! Presents!

2011-09-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to say happy birthday to my cousin Teresa. Also today my darling cat Zoey turns 18! Can you believe that -- 18! Pretty darn good for all that she's been through - first being born from a momma cat that had been abandoned in an apartment while pregnant then acute kidney failure from that horrible kitty food. But while they have the birthdays, I get the presents because I finally got to open my box from Basic Grey that I won from blog candy. Whoohoo! I love, love, love this magnetic mat. No more design "assistance" from the furballs if I leave a project in progress because now I can hold everything in place with the really strong magnets that came with the board. Plus I'm really excited to use these doilies and the paper pack. Hmmm, cards? layouts? We'll see. I have a feeling I'm going to have to make these presents last because any day now the family will issue their yearly edict's that I stop spending on myself since my anniversary, birthday and the holidays are coming and I'm known to ruin their gifts by buying it for myself first.

Scrapbook Expo

2011-09-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

I was so excited to go to Scrapbook Expo today. I had such a great time last year with my hubby's cousin Christie and her friends. Although this was a solo trip, I was so looking forward to shopping 'til I dropped. I look forward to this and the CKC each year to see new products, find some great buys and inspire me. So I excitedly printed my coupons and set off on my little adventure this morning. But it was sooooo small. There were hardly any vendors there. Honestly, I had shopped the whole vendor floor (twice) in an hour and a half, and that was not hurrying at all. But that didn't stop me from spending some money.

I found the usual: stamps, paper, embellishments, etc., but my favorite purchases this time were storage items. I stopped by Die Cut Dan's booth to buy some great storage for my Cricut cartridges. I had run out of room the shelf and was either looking at having to find a new location or some other solution. We gave my Mom some little boxes with inserts that hold cartridges for Christmas last year and I was thinking about going that route. But then I saw a different holder on the Internet that looked like the same style that the Cricut tools come in, but couldn't find it any store here to see if I would like it. But these little plastic cases were the perfect answer to my storage solution. Two of them held all my cartridges in less than half the space the boxes took up: Plus I think I can get another two cases on that shelf!

Then I found this stamp pad holder. I've been storing my stamp pads in a drawer and I find that I forget what I have and have to dig through the drawer to find the right one. This holder holds Stampin' Up pads perfectly and now I see my colors at a glance. It's perfect. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to put it.

Oh, and one last thing. That little green box to the right of the stamp pad holder I also picked up at Dan's booth. It holds my Stickles perfectly, although I really should have bought two of them. I didn't realize how many bottles of Stickles I had. Anyhow, while I was a little disappointed at how few vendors were there, that won't stop me from still going to check it out if they come back this way. After all, the smallest vendor floor is still better than no vendor floor. There's plenty to be happy about with my storage finds and I still have one more day to play in my craft room before I have to go back to work, I found out today that Tony Stewart won last weekend when we had no satellite to watch the race (stupid tree blocking the satellite), Hubby took me to dinner and a movie (Contagion - wait for the DVD - the big screen isn't necessary and it's not worth the big screen ticket price) and the Hawks won tonight and are undefeated so far! So, all in all, it was a pretty good day.

Argyle card

2011-09-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

Wow, what an amazing week! We just returned from part two of our vacation. This time we motored over to the coast and spent three nights at a lovely park over there we've never stayed at before. The weather was glorious, not too hot, not to cold. It was even nice enough to venture into the water to splash in the waves.

I had such a fabulous time. It's been a long time since I've laughed and splashed and played like that. It made me think of Cely from Creating in Carolina's love of the water, so I had to write her a little message in the sand.After all that play, I got a full day to spend crafting in the RV while Hubby played with the Wii. I can't believe how many cards I finished. It's also amazing how much of a mess I can make doing that:

Chewie didn't help much.

But that's okay, because I was having a hard enough time trying my hand at a handmade argyle pattern:

It was a heck of a lot harder than I thought it would be. Tomorrow I'm off to Scrapbook Expo to see what inspiration I can find.

Happy Birthday (and another birthday card)

2011-09-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

And first a word from our sponsor (well not really) I just want to take the time to say:

Happy Birthday Aunt Margie!

Okay, now on to today's project, which is a birthday card, but not the one I made for Aunt Margie, which can be seen here. I bought this stamp set called Garden Flowers by Inkadinkado. I don't know why but it doesn't look like the one on their website. What's odd is the picture there is missing the one stamp that caused me to buy the set: this beautiful, elegant flower (I'm not even 100% sure what type of flower it's supposed to be). But when I saw it on the picture on Scrapbuck.com, I decided I needed to get that stamp set. So when I started digging through my stamp sets looking for something for a birthday card for a girl, this one jumped out at me. I happily peeled it off the backing and went to work. I didn't need any kind of sketch to get me started, this one just fell in place. Unfortunately, there's been a theme lately of bad photography because the picture just doesn't really do the card justice. I added just a touch of Stickles to the flower and it really shines (ha ha) in real life, but I just couldn't really show that in my picture (also the brads don't look quite so wonky in real life - I swear I used a Stampin' Up paper piercing template so they really are evenly spaced and look quite a bit straighter in real life). Maybe this picture gives you a hint of the sparkle to the card. It's really funny, before the Stickles I thought it was an okay card. But just a little tracery of Stickles on the flower and I absolutely fell in love with the finished product and knew it was "just right." Isn't it funny how sometimes we just know when it's done and others we just know it's not?

Window card

2011-09-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

A week ago I came home early from work because I had a killer sinus migraine. I get them from time to time, particularly when the weather starts going through rapid changes (90 degrees to 60 degrees in two days). Most of the time, they are a pain (literally) but I can make it through work and then come home to sleep it off. So I thought I could make it through the whole day at work, but it quickly became quite clear that wasn't in the cards for me. At least not if I wanted to make it through the day with my dignity somewhat intact. So I hung in there until my meeting were over and then dear Hubby drove me home - have I mentioned before how fabulous it is that we work in the same building - and I took some decongestants and went to bed. Now the bad part is that I drift in and out of consciousness with these. I sleep for a little and then wake up for a little, but can't really move without making my head feel like it's going to explode. So while I waited for the meds to kick in, I started up an episode of Scrapbook Memories on the DVR. Now I've seen most of these so if I drift off, no problem. Also, with the DVR, who cares anyway, I can just rewind it. Which I did about five times that afternoon always waking up with the end credit music started. I would rewind the show and be out a few seconds later again (wouldn't it be nice if I could just turn the TV off? But no, I freak out if the TV isn't on). I don't remember much about the episode but I have had this crazy urge to make a window card ever since (not surprisingly I've since learned they did a window card on that episode). So here is my simple window card I made using two different Fiskars stamps that DaisyMae Maus sent me. The first is the tower of gift boxes that came with a stamp set to be used with Fiskars Push and Print Stamp Factory and the second is the birthday greetings that goes with the Fiskars Continuous Stamp Wheel. I then colored in the words "Happy Birthday" and "Enjoy" in pink (again my photography sucks because you can't really see that all that well in the picture) and used my Stampin' Up set to punch the little box of holes around the window. It was a pretty quick card to put together, but at least I've conquered that urge to make a window card and can move on to other things now.

Have you ever (anniversary card)...

2011-09-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

So have you ever bought a set of stamps for just one stamp in it? I confess. I do it all the time and this is a perfect example. I bought the "Heart Full of Love" set from Inkadinkado just for the two kitties together. Lately I've been major sucker for Inkadinkado stamps. Now the whole set is cute, but I just fell in love with the one stamp in it. It's so stinkin' cute! So I had to buy the set for that one stamp. When I got it, I just couldn't hardly wait to start playing with them. I have another anniversary card on my list so I thought I would make yet another card with the images set out in a grid, this time playing primarily with black, white and red. I was quite happy with the card when it was complete but I still have to say that the kitty block is far and away my favorite.

Meow birthday card

2011-09-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah! I'm back from a great long weekend camping with the dear Hubby and Chewie. We had a fantastic time. The weather was perfect. My parents came down on Friday, so while Dad and Hubby fished, Mom sorted her pictures from our Southern California trip two years ago and I made a couple of cards.

Here's a picture of Hubby and Dad coming up the river to the docks just beyond our site to check that us "girls" were okay. (Hubby's standing, Dad's sitting) By the way Aunt Margie, tell Uncle Gordon that Matt still loves the boat. He and our camping neighbor talked boats because the neighbor had an old Seaswirl that was also still in amazing shape. They are really great boats. Hubby and I fished together on Saturday. Well mostly I drove the boat - yes, I have a license to do so! Although we caught a few, mostly we threw them back, which secretly makes me very happy. I'm a catch and release kind of girl. The only drawback was that Hubby sat on a bee and it stung him on the ankle. Good thing he's not allergic!

But with all that fishing, I didn't get any card making done. Instead we ran to town afterward and got mixer for margaritas so we could have a relaxing evening with Hubby playing Metroid on Wii and I finally had some time to catch up on my Creating Keepsakes and Scrapbooks Etc. issues I hadn't finished reading. Chewie went crazy when Hubby was trying to top off my drink. I think she wanted her share! On Sunday, I started making cards when the phone rang and Hubby's parents said they were going to stop by. So I quickly finished a card. Chewie was a little upset at being left in the RV when we were chatting outside, so I took Chewie for a walk (yes, she walks a leash. She's pretty good too. I just have to be patient and walk at Chewie speed - which is painfully slow at times!) and then she was ready to nap so I could visit. So I guess you can tell that I'm totally in love with this spoiled rotten cat. Well honestly, I'm totally in love with all of our spoiled rotten cats, but Chewie's the only one who is happy to go camping with us (Tigger has decided he doesn't like to have his routine interrupted so we leave him home now).

So it's not surprising that I'm so in love with this stamp that looks like Chewie that I keep gravitating to it. I needed to make a card for my nephew's birthday and Paper Player's Clean and Simple Challenge was to make a card with an animal or plant on it, so I took that as another excuse to use my Chewie stamp (although I think Chewie thinks she's human, not an animal - but we won't tell her that). It's a quick and easy card, the only problem is my camera doesn't really pick up the coloring of the stamp (silver just doesn't really photograph well with my limited skills). I drew inspiration for the layout from flipping through some sketches in my notebook. I'm pretty sure this one came from Mojo Monday, but I couldn't tell you which one anymore because I looked at so many things in my old notebook for inspiration, I'm not 100% sure anymore.

Sketch N Stash Birthday Card

2011-09-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cheryl Ann First Cafe Expressions I found a great new sketch blog called Sketch N Stash. The current challenge is to use one of their existing sketches. I found that Sketch 22 was calling my name. I dug into my scrap bin for the paper, which I think is maybe from DCWV from a Spring stack from a few years ago. I found the eyelets in my embellishment bins. It's been an awfully long time since I've used eyelets. The stamp is a new one that came in the Fiskars Stamp Factory that DaisyMae Maus was kind enough to send my way.

Sassy Lil' Sketches - Sept. Week 1 Card

2011-09-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly but surely making it through my list of cards to make for upcoming events. It seems like work birthdays are always clustered together and I'm entering a new cluster. Fortunately, Sassy Lil' Sketches had a very inspiring sketch here. So dug into my scrap bin again, designed some "flames" in SCAL by creating a union of a triangle and ever so slightly offset circle and finally tried the rolled candles I've seen when trolling the blogs for ideas.

Biffle Day at the Races Shadow Box

2011-09-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

In July, hubby and I spent an enjoyable night at a dirt track not terribly far away (it certainly would have been more enjoyable if I had a cushion to sit on and blanket for when it got cold when the sun went down - I had no idea that the races would go so late or that the benches would be so hard!). The track doesn't look like much, but it had a big draw that night: NASCAR driver Greg Biffle.

He's never really been one of my favorites, but I didn't dislike him either. He was just okay. But it isn't very often that a driver makes it to our neck of the woods, so favorite or not, we came to see a NASCAR star and even paid extra to ensure that we would have the opportunity to get an autograph.

He may not have been one of my favorites when we got there, but he was quite a nice guy and I have to say that won me over. It didn't seem like he was just "going through the motions." He cracked a joke when I asked if I could get picture with him and my husband and generally just came across as a really nice guy. In my book, personality and manners are more important that money and looks (maybe that's because I don't have tons of the last two or maybe that's just because I realize they are both superficial - yeah, that's the one I'm going to go with).

So I've had this autographed card and some autographed tickets sitting on the edge of my craft table and a shadow box all picked out sitting on my craft room floor for quite some time. I've been carrying around the picture of him with hubby as a bookmark for weeks. But I've never gotten around to arranging the items in the box until Saturday night.

I was on a cleaning jag because, well, the house was freaking dirty. It's amazing how much work it is clean up after two adults and five cats. So after loads of laundry (which I'm proud to say is completely done with the dryer empty and the laundry room empty except for a few shirts hanging on the bar because I refuse to dry them in the dryer), vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, carting a dishwasher full of glasses down from the master bedroom, finally hanging the new artwork in our bedroom and the cross-stitch a client made for me years ago and the candle holders in the guest bedroom, well I'm sure you all get the picture, I plopped down exhausted in my craft room, where I listened to the hockey game (they lost - thankfully it's only pre-season) and watched a muted TV to see Tony and Jr. make the chase (Whoo-hoo!) and finally put together the shadowbox. I didn't want to put any adhesive on anything with a signature, but that was pretty much the only challenge (conquered by photo corners). I was too tired to be terribly creative. I just matted the photo of hubby and Greg and printed out a picture (taken on a Blackberry of all things) of the car that Biffle drove that night and called that good. Maybe some day, I'll jazz it up, but hubby was happy with it and that's all that really matters.

Scrapbuck Haul

2011-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Scrapbuck and saw this cute stamp set called Gem Stone Cats by Inkadinkado. I had not seen it before and certainly no store around here carries it (trust me, I own every cat thing that they do carry). So even though I've only purchased from them at scrapbooking shows, I decided to take advantage of their free shipping on orders $20 and over and did a little, well lot of, stamp purchasing since I couldn't believe how good their prices were. Then I was surprised at the prompt e-mail I received confirming my order and the follow-up e-mail for shipping/tracking. They really did ship in one day like they said they would. I'm always little leery of ordering online from a new company, but they delivered on their promises.

I was so excited to get this box the other night. So even though I was nursing a headache and should have just gone to bed, I had to open the box and this is what I found: and the whole reason I ordered: Gem Stone Cats!

Oh and a roll of foam "pop dot" type tape and a fun little acyclic stamp block that has a handle for easy stamping. I have one already but my mom saw it when they visited while we were camping a few weeks back and really liked it, so I ordered it for her. Now that I think about it, I should have ordered one for my sister and DaisyMaeMaus too. Hmm... maybe I'll give them a little time to re-stock and do some more shopping!

Freshly Made Sketches - Sketch 1

2011-09-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Linda's Stampin' Loft, I found this great new (and I do mean new) sketch blog called Freshly Made Sketches. I am so excited about this new blog because I love the "clean" idea it promotes. That is completely my style. So even though I'm so tired tonight, I just could not stop myself from making a card from this sketch, after unpacking my box o' goodies from Scrapbuck (I'll post on my haul tomorrow). Of course I had to use a stamp from one my new sets, but I cannot believe how quickly this card went together and again it was all scraps from my scrap bin.

I cannot wait for the next sketch. I'm so inspired.

A different type of card...

2011-09-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've never really branched out into different shapes of cards, but when I saw this video about a diamond-fold card on Creations with Christina, I thought I would give it try for a masculine birthday card for a co-worker. The nice thing was the "hidden" spaces were perfect for all of us to sign the card (plus it reminded me of those old folded doodads that we made in grade school - come on, you remember the ones where you had to pick a number and then pick a color and such and then it would reveal your fortune... Do kids even make those anymore...) Anyway, the card went together in a flash and is very simple. I didn't really add much bling or embellishment since it was my first try at this card, but I know it's not my last. Again, I used my scraps from my scrap bin of My Mind's Eye Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Boy paper. I'm not letting a single part of that paper go to waste.

Get well soon card

2011-09-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

I found out that someone I've known through work for several years had a heart attack this weekend followed by a quadruple bypass. They say that he'll be fine, but I thought I would make up a quick get well soon card to send to him. Rather than spending hours trolling the blogs for inspiration (since I've already spent a good portion of the evening doing that already), I decided to simply grab a page that I printed from the Mojo Monday 2009 sketchbook the other day and make a card based upon the first sketch I saw. Turns out it was the sketch from September 7, 2009 (how weird is it that I should pick the date closest to today?) and it was perfect for a male card. I pulled out my trusty scraps from My Mind's Eye Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Boy (have I mentioned how much I love, love, love this pad of paper) and put together is card in a really short period of time. It would have been even shorter but instead of making the banner with my scissors, I had to draw it in SCAL and cut it.

You're Purrfect card

2011-09-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

My absolute favorite stamp right now is from a Recollections set called Meow, Meow and it looks like our cat Chewie. So of course I had to make a cut file to go with the stamp. My test cut worked perfectly, but my stamping isn't very good. After coloring in Chewie, I trolled my bookmarks looking for a card that it would work with. I don't have a card in mind because Chewie doesn't go with the whole list of birthday cards I need to make, but I was going to make this card anyway. Then I found this sketch I had bookmarked on Scrappity Dappity Doo!, which is really from the Doodlebug Design blog post here. I decided it was perfect. So I cut a scalloped circle on my Cricut using a scallop from the BeaOriginal blog here. Then a little grosgrain ribbon and an heat embossed saying from a We R Memory Keepers stamp set called "You're Purrfect" and a piece of paper from my scraps and I was done.

Fun little kitty card

2011-09-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

During my coupon shopping spree on Saturday, I picked up an Inkadinkado stamp set I didn't have yet called Cats Galore. It has a number of inch square stamps and I immediately saw them laid out in a grid on a card. So, of course, that's what I did.

Unfortunately I didn't have a one-inch punch, which I realized I really needed to cut out the inch squares correctly. So it was off to Craft Warehouse to use my coupon to pick up the new punch, oh, and some new 12 x 12 Cricut mats that they have on sale for only $7.99 a pack. Armed with my new punch and Cherry Limeade from Sonic to beat the heat (honestly had no clue it was that hot out considering I needed socks to warm my toes in my craft room), I had fun coloring the kitties with my colored pencils. A little tape later and my card was complete.

Quick card for the I Feel the Love Project...

2011-09-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun again this morning turning another stamp set into one that I can cut out the shapes on Cricut and then stamp the images. It took less than an hour to do the entire set. But then I took a break from that (and from the marathon of BBQ Pitmasters that Matt is watching seeking some inspiration to use his new smoker) to whip up a card for Funky Card's September I Feel the Love Project. This is a great project and I encourage all of you out there to help out by making a Halloween card for these kids. The only caveat is not make it scary. So I had to stop and think: If Halloween isn't about scary, what it is about? Why, candy of course! So here's my card which I shamelessly scraplifted form Victoria Scraps who was following the sketch from Peachy Keen Challenge #58:

The paper is from Studio G. I bought this at JoAnn's a few weeks ago while out shopping with my mom and sister. We each bought a pack of the same paper. I found the coordinating ribbon at Walmart yesterday. I used the Stampin' Up Top Note die then embossed it with a Halloween folder I have from Sizzix. Then I embossed the word "Candy" from some little acrylic stamp set I bought (you know, those ones they sell for a $1 at the craft stores) and stamped and cut the Trick or Treat banner from a stamp set from Recollections I picked up at Michaels a few weeks ago. Fun stuff. Now I need to work on some birthday cards. There are sure a lot of them coming up.

But first I had better go fold the laundry since the dryer keeps buzzing. Why is it that it seems like I'm always doing laundry? Seriously, shouldn't there be some point where it's all done?

Sympathy Card Using Cut Files Made For My Acrylic Stamps

2011-09-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

A co-worker's father died this past week. While I have a stash of sympathy cards, I had bookmarked one on Michelle's I Stamped That blog a short while ago so I decided to scraplift it for a new card. I also used the card as an opportunity to try using my cricut to cut shapes to match my stamps. This is what I got:

While I'm not overly enamored with this card, I'm so excited about the flowers on it because I cut the shapes to outline a stamp set I own using my cricut (I only wish I was better at centering a stamp on a cut image). It was quite a challenge to come up with the cut pattern to match my stamps. If you try it, I would really recommend using a stamp with clean lines for your first try. The distressed stamp set I used was really challenging. After several attempts to figure out how to do it with this distressed flower stamp set, I finally found that scanning the carrier sheet for my pattern worked better than trying to stamp the image then scan it or trying to draw around the outline to make up for the distressed nature. Then I followed Creations with Christina's steps in Photoshop from this video, but found I had to do a little extra clean up due to the distressed nature of the stamps. But even then, the cutting lines were still a bit too jagged when I tried to import it into SCAL. So this evening I found that I could solve that problem by saving the Photoshop image as a bitmap then importing that into Inkscape. There I traced the bitmap to smooth the cutting lines as if I was trying to make a piecing file from an image. Once the bitmap was traced, then I could save the file and open the svg in SCAL. It took me several hours of trial and error, but eventually I had a SCAL file with cut files for all eleven flowers in my stamp set. Now that I've done what's likely to be the most challenging sets, I'm excited about the possibilities that this opens up.

Mojo Monday # 206 and Saturday adventures

2011-09-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I got in a baking frenzy to use up the zucchinis that are ripening in the garden.

Several hours later I had four, well, three and half loaves...

We started off today with a call from hubby's parents that they had found a smoker (the barbecue kind) at the garage sale across the street. Now hubby has had his eye on a smoker for a while now, so I knew he was interested. So after breakfast, we hopped in the truck to go down to pick it up and drop off a loaf of bread. While we were there, it just so happened that they had the cover for the bed of hubby's truck, another thing he's had his eye for a while but hadn't bought. So we got a deal on both them and he's happy as can be.

When we got home, I headed for my craft room. I have a list of cards I need to finish for upcoming birthdays and such, so tonight I sat down to get to work on them. This one was inspired by this week's Mojo Monday sketch. My co-worker is a big Betty Boop fan and I'm sure she's just going to love this card. The best part is I made it entirely from scraps of paper I found in my scrap bin.

A few Halloween cards

2011-09-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

Well last weekend in the RV was hot, hot, hot. Chewie did NOT get to go. I made the last minute call to leave her home because the weather forecast was a little daunting. The heat sapped a lot of energy so I didn't get nearly as much crafting done as I would have liked, but at least I justified packing as much stuff as I did (lol). Here are few of the cards I finished up using more paper from the DCWV Ghosts and Goblins mat stack:

Just a little project tonight - I Feel the Love

2011-08-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

By the time we got home from camping and finished unpacking, I didn't feel like doing much but I also needed to finish up my card for the I Feel the Love Project for August. I had an idea that I was working on but I couldn't quite bring it together, so I went a completely different direction. Madison had mentioned that Kate liked pink and rainbows, so I pulled out my Simply Charmed cartridge and glitter paper (what little girl doesn't love glitter?) along with some scraps and a piece of my new Cotton Candy Pop Tone paper I got in Paper Zone's great sale this past week. Add a couple of clear embossed butterflies using the Thinking of You set from Inkadinkado plus some Stickles and this is what I get:

I'm ready to go...

2011-08-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm all ready for our second try at a girls' camping weekend. The RV is packed and my craft stuff is ready to go in the truck tomorrow. This time I'm taking two days off work and boy can I use the break. I have worked extremely hard the last few days and have managed to actually clear a bunch of stuff off my desk. Whoo hoo! Between the hard work at work and the hard work at home, I'm sooooooo ready for a long weekend of crafting, TV, girl time and wine. I was just cleaning up the mess I had made of craft room when packing when Matt called that I had to come see this. Yes, that's our dear Chewie making it clear that the crafting stuff is not going anywhere unless she comes with! Really, I can't believe what an amazing job dear hubby did to get it all organized. Whoo hoo! This is going to be fun.

P.S. Just wanted to say a little prayer for all my blog and real world friends on the East Coast who were affected by today's earthquake. I hope you are all safe and sound. It was shocking because I didn't know anything about it (okay so I confess that when I'm at work, I'm pretty isolated and don't usually hear any world type events until the evening - in other words, I'm completely out of the grapevine and I like it that way). But I had an 11 a.m. conference call that's a nationwide call. The first thing everyone was asking was if everyone was okay, what the damage had been and how far away people had felt the aftershocks. (It's funny how close you can get to people when you have two or three conference calls together each week.) Most of the states were on the call and we were able to reassure ourselves that our motley crew was okay. But I know that it was pretty scary for a few of them because they aren't used to these. But then, I'm not either and I don't want to be... Anyhow, take care all you out there.

Mojo Monday #205

2011-08-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

We got some sad news today that one of Matt's cooks isn't doing well. He's been battling cancer for a while and had another surgery earlier this month. He had been home recovering but it turns out he took a turn for the worse at the end of the week. He's back in the hospital in an induced coma for a couple of days. So dear hubby asked me to make a card that people at the office could sign to let him and his family know we are thinking of him. But, I have a ton of things I need to do to get ready for our second try at a girls' camping trip this weekend. I saw this great heart card on Creations With Christina and designed a version on my Sure Cuts A Lot, but then it seemed way to girly. So I took my inspiration from Mojo Monday's sketch thinking I could whip out a card in no time flat and get on with my packing. Wrong! I couldn't find the right items, but finally settled on paper from Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Boy from My Mind's Eye and resorted to dying my own crochet thread with a combination of Perfect Pearls in Green Patina and some Stampin' Up Wild Wasabi ink to get just the right color. Then I had to play with my EK Success punches until I had the right combination. Anyhow, I ended up spending the whole evening playing in my craft room. I am so going to have to double time packing and shopping tomorrow to make it all work. But it will all be worth it when I'm sipping my wine, watching my TV and crafting to my heart's content.

Another Halloween card

2011-08-21T21:35:00.001-07:00

So after a few more hours canning today (and one minor cut on my thumb from the mandolin making typing this a little difficult - work tomorrow should be interesting...), we finished the beets and made a huge batch of corn salsa (yummy!). Then I got to sneak away to my craft room to catch up on some blogs and make another Halloween card. I used Mojo Monday, sketch 204, to inspire this super simple card from DCWV Ghost and Goblins mat stack.

The background paper is just plain cardstock stamped with the "cracked background" stamp from Rubber Stampede that I've had for a really long time. I used a little clear embossing powder. It really added something special to a card that otherwise looked like it was needing something. The little stars are the leftovers from an EK Success border punch. Funny how the "trash" can become something useful.

It all started with green beans and peaches...

2011-08-20T22:21:00.000-07:00

Canning just wasn't something we did in my family when I was growing up. But my husband's family did. His mom and her best friend, Leila, would get together. The kids would play and they would can. It sounds like it was a wonderful tradition. So when Matt and I married, I was introduced to the wonders of home canned foods. It all started with green beans and peaches. They tasted so much better than the ones we could buy at the store. So every year we can a few beans and maybe a little of something else too. A few beets here, a few tomatoes there, a couple of pears... So it wasn't surprising to get an e-mail from my mother-in-law earlier this week asking "Did we need beans?".

Well, yeah, we do. You see my sister also discovered how good the beans taste so I send a jar or two home with her from time to time. So we didn't have nearly enough in the pantry to last us through the next year. So, as I talked about in a previous post, we did a little canning earlier this week. Well, the problem with that was in looking for the recipe to can those, we found a couple other recipes that looked intriguing.

Then last night we got a voicemail, "do you need more beans? They need to be picked because they are starting to get big." Hmmm... more beans = pickled beans, which is one of the recipes that had caught our attention. So another trip down, another bucket of beans, another good dinner with the in-laws, during which they shared that they had gotten a great deal on corn and cucumbers at their farmer's market. So this morning we got up early and headed to the store to get a few more jars and a new pressure canner so my in-laws could have theirs back, then it was off to the blueberry patch to get a few more blueberries to last us the winter and to the farmer's market my in-laws go to because they had better deals and then to the store to pick up a few spices and such we needed.

Then we set to work canning, oh, and making 3 more trips to the store for things we forgot or ran out of... But in the end we had more "regular" green beans, more "regular" corn, kosher dill pickle spears, two different recipes of bread and butter pickles (also with the pickles cut two different ways), pickled green beans, and corn relish. We still have 20 pounds of beets to pickle tomorrow and I'm hoping to talk him into getting some more corn because I really want to try the corn salsa recipe (and we have all the ingredients for it except corn - really we do). Then we get a break from canning until the tomatoes ripen and pears and peaches come into season. But I have my eye on a brandied pear recipe I can't wait to try and there's one for carrot cake jam that I think sounds divine, but that can wait for much later. For now, I'll just savor the sight of rows of jars that we packed and processed today:

Oh and it can wait because I'M TIRED. But I also had a lot of fun. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that it was Matt and I working together side by side. We really do work together very well. I'm a very lucky girl to have such a great hubby. So now, I'm sitting here trying to get together the energy to climb upstairs and go to bed because I'm sure falling asleep at my craft room table will not be comfortable. But there's something very soothing about sitting here listening to jars "pop."

Fun card and crafting haul

2011-08-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

I needed a thank you card for a co-worker who took care of straightening out my registration problems at my conference last week. Well, I was sitting in my conference doodling when I found inspiration in the panels on wall behind the speaker. They were very symmetrical and interesting to look at. That doodling inspired this card. I found a couple of images of lilies on the web. I replicated the one several times and then cut them out. I left a little of the white photo paper as a border and then mounted them all on a piece of black card stock, leaving just a little space for a ribbon. The sentiment on the inside says "Thank you to someone who is one of a kind." A very simple card to make, but it was lots of fun. I also want to share with you some pictures of my haul from shopping with my Mom and sister on Sunday. I picked up all these stacks of paper at TJ Maxx where were looking for clear acrylic cups (found two purple ones!)

The next two pictures have a mixture of Jo-Ann's and Michaels items. But I really have to point out that everything on this next picture is sitting on top of my new trimmer. Yes, I had to buy a new trimmer because my beloved Making Memories trimmer finally gave up the ghost after nearly five years. It probably would still be humming along but I managed to bend the blade trying to cut something I never should have been trying to cut in the first place. Needless to say, the replacement blades aren't available (sold out), so I bought a new one. I got a great deal because Michaels hadn't taken down the sale tag from last week so they honored the sale price and let me use my 25% off my purchase coupon too. Whoo-hoo and a big thanks to my mom for asking them if they would honor the tag. By the way, they also honored the tag that showed that the Cricut cartridges were on sale too so I bought my Campin' Critters cartridge too.

Beans, corn, beets and pickles, oh my!

2011-08-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm oh so tired. I have pictures to upload of my crafting haul from last weekend, pictures of a couple of cards I've made and pictures I need to send to my cousin, but I'm just too tired to do it. It's canning season you see. So Monday after work we drove to my in-laws and picked beans. After enjoying a nice dinner with them, we didn't get home until late so it was straight to bed. Last night we came home and picked our own bean bushes then snapped and canned pints of beans, which should get us through to next year. Tonight we picked up some corn and pickling cucumbers (because I'm not sure mine are going to produce much of anything) after work and then came home to harvest about half of our beets. I also picked the blueberries (again - only one more picking I think). I finished cleaning the blueberries and bagged up the blueberries and raspberries I had frozen earlier on trays. Then it was skin the beets, cook the corn and prepare the jars. After a quick trip to two grocery stores for the dill I didn't have, we cooked up the pickling brine and filled the jars. Now I have a little bit of break while the pressure canner works on the corn and the water bath processes a batch of beets. I'm thinking we'll need to do some more corn and there will be a few more beets when the others finish growing. Sure I'm tired now, but it's all worth it when in January I'll be able to pull out good tasting veggies.

Mini-book and Halloween cards

2011-08-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't feel all that great today. In fact, I was almost sick this morning. So weird. So 9 episodes of Scrapbook Memories later (and I think I must have napped a bit because at one point I was shocked to see Cha-Ching on three feet away from me trying to see what was there - have I mentioned that he's horribly cross-eyed and I don't think he can see much?) I felt much better. So I tried out this little album I saw on the show. It's not completely done because I need to decorate it and add the photos. But I got the entire book built using some scrap cardboard from an old cereal box, some paper from the Travel Stack from DCWV, and a scrap of paper for the closure with a brad. From the outside, it doesn't look like much yet: But the inside is what's really fabulous. It too still need decorating and pictures, but the book is built. All the little pages fan out to hold lots of photos when the book is open.So then I pulled out the DCWV Ghost and Goblins Matstack that I found at JoAnn's the other day. They only had one left! I really wanted two so we drove almost an hour away to another large JoAnn's and they didn't have any other. I've been back to our Jo-Ann's and they are still sold out. Argh... But I started playing with it today. I had so much fun making card kits to send to my aunt and cousin in sunny San Diego, that I decided to do another set using this mat stack because it's so freakin' cute! I only got two sets finished today since I also had to finish all the laundry and make a loaf of zucchini bread too.

Well, that's probably it for this week. I have to take a little trip for work and since I'll only take a carry-on, I can't take my crafty stuff with me (well I'll have a cross stitch project along because it doesn't take much space) and I'll probably be so busy the entire time that I wouldn't have time anyway. Poor hubby has to stay home and take care of the furballs. But if he's good, I'll bring him back some great bread and maybe some chocolate (well, if that makes it through the whole plane ride back...).

Amazing day...

2011-08-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

I had been thinking for days about things that absolutely needed to be done today: pick the peas, pick the last of the raspberries, pick the blueberries, pick the zucchini (well, you get the picture). So this morning when I couldn't go back to sleep, I just got up. I went outside and it was glorious. The neighborhood was so still and the morning was cool, but not cold. It was really nice just being out there. It wasn't long before dear hubby came to join me and we made pretty quick work of the picking and a little weeding. Well, two hours worth. But we also watched the furballs having a ball running all over their yard. Smoke and Tigger did a little tree climbing, but we only got pictures of Tigger in the tree (don't worry, they are small trees, no kitty was harmed in the making of this blog post). Eventually they all tired and found their own places to rest for a bit. Chewie picked the top the rail on the deck.Smoke found his favorite hiding, ready to pounce "resting" place in the flowers under the deck:Cha-Ching was in his "no hoomans can get me here" and don't you dare get too close or I'll run resting place. I swear that cat is the most beautiful apple faced seal point but he is the least photogenic cat I've ever seen with Tigger running a close second. Eventually even ADHD kitty, err Tigger, decided it was time to rest too and found a comfy(?) place in the barkdust.While watching the furballs cavort, I finished picking the blueberries and said for about the 100th time that I was going to pull out the one blueberry bush that I don't think has grown an inch in five years and looks half-dead. Of course, I say this every year so I mentioned to dear hubby that I wanted to go get a new bush. He said we'd have to wait until next year when the stores will have them again, but I protested that Al's would have one and since we were planning a drive a little while later over to Silver Creek Falls, why not head that way afterward? He didn't seem to keen on the idea. Maybe it's that I also mentioned wanting to pull out "the beast" in the front yard and the peach tree that didn't have so much as a single peach this year...

Any how... a quick shower later, we piled into the truck and took off to tour the campground at Silver Creek Falls. It seems that we always camp at the same places every year so we've decided to look at some other options. This one is not too far away but is always booked solid. Now I know why. It's a really nice park. There's great walking and hiking trails. Many of the campsites are very private. I love it, oh and the falls are stunning too. Here's the north fall from a viewpoint during our drive: So we were driving on the backroads when I just could not believe my eyes. There were these entire fields of flowers. No, this is not photoshopped, this is an actual picture (well minus the big old sign that says private property and not to stop and no trespassing)... Honestly, I didn't pick a one and I really only stood on the edge of the road to get the picture of these bachelor buttons, African daisies and California poppies. So then we drove through Silverton and hubby pointed out where he went to grade school and floated milk carton boats down a drainage ditch in the summertime. Doesn't that sound like something every grade school boy would do? Now for my favorite part... We stopped to get Oktoberfest sausages. I love Oktoberfest. So sad that I won't get to go this year, but this is the next best thing...Then it was off to Woodburn! I didn't turn him off with all my talk of pulling out trees and vines and such. On the way, we saw another field of flowers. It wasn't quite as stunning as the first, but still quite remarkable. I often forget just how much we grow here in the valley until we go for a drive on the backroads. It really is stunning. So now we are back home and I'm going to try my hand at making a Kusudama flower, well right after I go eat the garlic chicken that hubby was cooking. Here's a shot of it browning in the skillet before he pops it in the oven. Yes, those are whole cloves of garlic and I have the most amazing just baked french bread to spread those on. Yummo!

No camping, but big fun anyhow

2011-07-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

So camping didn't happen after all. Despite leaving early for the weekend, it apparently wasn't early enough and every single camping spot in the 'non-reserved, first-come, first-served" portions of all three parks we went to were full. Well after getting over my disappointment (and unpacking the RV and truck), we "camped" at home. Now we've had wine, frozen lemonade, margaritas, more wine, smores and truckload of camping snacks, ate dinner out with the family on Friday night, watched 8 hours of Real Housewives, two hours of Intervention, four hours of Hell's Kitchen, two hours of Master Chef and three hours of Glee, shopped at Michael's, Craft Warehouse and Jo-Ann's, picked up gorgeous flower baskets at the nursery, saw Cowboys and Aliens, oh, and made a new cork board for my sister (something we couldn't have done camping since the one thing I didn't pack was my Cricut). It turned out so adorable that I just had to post photos even though she's concerned that someone will copy it so it won't be one of kind. Personally, I know it will be one of kind because even if someone else tries to make it, they won't pick the same paper, cut it at exactly the same dimensions or place the houses in exactly the same way. So we found an image on Google image that she liked, traced it in SCAL, then moved the window to a place that she liked better, then cut them out of two colors of glitter card stock, then found a font she liked and welded the words and cut them in SCAL on the Cricut. So then it was just a process of taking out the backing and glass from the frame, inserting the cork board and putting the backing back on the frame, then gluing down the cuts we made. So here's a shot of it all put together (we left the corner protectors on so that it will transport safely back to her house): She bought the paper at Craft Warehouse. She carefully picked out cute glitter paper and found some coordinating card stock for the words. What she didn't know was the card stock she carefully picked out for the bluish gray color on the back was Black Magic card stock by Coordinations. So when she pulled it out today, I explained to her what she had bought and that changed the title all around. Instead of being the solid blueish gray, we ran it through the Sizzix with Script Texture embossing folder then sanded over the raised texture to bring out the blue text. You can see some of that dimension in this close-up:

So I had forgotten to turn off the layer with the house in it when I cut the words and ended up with this extra house. We used it as a test for the texture. The house turned out so cute that I had to use it somewhere, so I made this simple little card using some scraps from my scrap bin of Orbit paper from the Cosmic paper line I got from the Paper Loft. I have no idea what the striped paper is called, but I'm pretty sure it's from the same line at the Paper Loft. I just used some plain paper I bought in a ream at Paper Zone called Nekoosa Linen to make the card base and also to cut with my Sizzix Bigz Top Note die. I used a little bit of Offray gros grain ribbon and some pop dots to finish it off. A simple little card, but it was loads of fun to make.

Anyhow, now I'm going to finish watching this last episode of Glee with her. She had never seen it before and now I have her totally hooked on it with just the first episode. I knew she would love it. I'll make a Gleek out of her yet.

Crafting, I mean camping here I come

2011-07-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

So I've just finished packing for my girls' night/camping trip. The RV is all packed with the essentials (TV, DVD, wine, margarita mix, kitty treats for Chewie, DVR with 10 episodes of Real Housewives of New Jersey, the end of Survivor from last season, and the start of Hell's Kitchen, a couple episodes of Intervention and other random things my sister with no TV will want to watch - love, love, love having satellite in the RV). Since I'm going early to stake out our site, the truck is packed with my crafting equipment. Only the essentials, you know. ;) Here's my carousel (much easier than trying to repack all my tools into a tote), my flowers, some ribbon, a cutting pad, paper, and lots more card bases:

Here is my fully organized scrap paper bin (oh and a new tent for my sister and a collapsible crate, just in case...) So here is my tote with stamps, ink pads, embellies, my ATG gun and reference books:

Hmm, do you think that's enough to keep me busy until the RV arrives a little later. By the way, love the new camera too (at least now that I figure out how to turn on the flash - ha ha). Well, I'm off to bed to get some sleep since I don't think I'll be getting much this weekend. I just hope it's not too hot, although I do have two fans packed. Hmmm, maybe I have overpacked just a tad...

Mojo Monday Sketch 200!

2011-07-24T18:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I was trolling the blogs, catching up on my reading, when I ended up on You Tube to watch a video posted on Creations with Christina's blog. One of the video choices following that one was this "black magic" technique shown here, which then led me to here. The technique looked easy to do and I actually had all the supplies so I gave it a try, going for something simple with this flower stamp. I use one main color of yellow and a slightly darker color in a few places. I added a little bit of white at the tips and a little bit of brown at the base of each petal and drew in the dark lines that give each petal it's distinct shape.
When I was done, I had this yellow flower, which seemed perfect to use on Mojo Monday's sketch this week (it's the 200th sketch - whoo hoo!). All the paper came from my scraps container, so apparently spending all last weekend cleaning, sorting and organizing my craft room paid off because I can actually find my scraps. This time, I actually do know where the paper came from. The solid orangy-yellow is from DCWV. The orange dotted paper is from My Mind's Eye All Twinkle, Twinkle Little Boy stack, the white and black are Georgia Pacific card stock. I used cinnamon Stickles to give the center of the flower a little bling. I have no idea where the flower stamp came from but the word "cherish" is from Stampin' Up's Warm Words collection.

Well, that's it for today. The day just flew by and now I had better get everything put away, finish that last load of laundry and get ready for work tomorrow. It may be a short week for me but that just means I have to pack a normal week's worth of work into a short period of time and will have to work hard the following week to get caught back up. Maybe that's why I never use my vacation time and always am trying to figure out how to use it before I lose it. But it will all be worth it since I'll have a long weekend to crank out some cards. Believe it or not, my stash is already starting to dwindle.

New camera and Greg Biffle (yes, the NASCAR driver)

2011-07-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, my trusty little purple point and shoot Kodak "purse" camera (you know, the kind you can just slip in your purse or your pocket and take with you anywhere) disappeared some months back. The last place I remember having it was in the RV on a winter-time trip. I remember it hanging on a hook on the wall directly over the garbage can. I haven't seen it since then and boy have I looked for it. I half wonder if it didn't fall into the garbage, but I think we would have noticed if that had happened. I've thought about replacing it and have looked at little cameras from time to time, but just never got around to it since I keep thinking the purple camera would turn up. Plus I keep thinking we have a great SLR, what do I need another camera for. Okay, so yeah, the SLR certainly wouldn't slip into a purse. Okay it would slip into one my purses but, honestly, so would half of the closet and I'm beginning to think that maybe the reason I'm shorter on one side is because my purse is compressing that side of my body... hmmm...

Well last night I realized exactly why I need to buy a new purse camera NOW. After work, my husband and I hopped in the truck and drove to this little dirt racetrack a few towns away because Greg Biffle, the NASCAR driver, was going to be there racing that night. We got there and he was signing autographs and all I had was the camera in my cell phone (also known as a piece of crap phone that I must replace since the little track ball no longer works unless I'm standing on one foot in a crouched position, touching my nose with one hand, and holding the phone in the other hand at precisely 47 degrees, or and it also must be a blue moon). So I took my pictures anyway, but vowed I was buying a replacement camera and a new phone as I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set the picture of the hubby and Biffle as my wallpaper without the use of the trackball.

So today we went out to do a little shopping (Michaels clearance Cricut cartridges and a display case for the freakishly expensive die cast car that Biffle signed for the hubby, Cash and Carry for Lighthouse Thai Peanut dressing that has no peanuts in it - don't understand that one but love the dressing and that's the only place I can find it, Craft Warehouse for the mat I forgot to buy for my Sew Easy and supplies for Christmas projects now that everyone and their brother is doing them on their blogs and making think about getting started on my cards and shopping, and then Costco for chicken sausage for next week's clambake over the open fire - yummmm!). So at Costco, hubby maneuvers the cart over the cameras and I finally decide on this little Olympus. It's not very expensive but it has good zoom and megapixels and the reviews on everything but Costco.com said it's a pretty decent camera for the money. I have to say that I had reservations about it and wasn't sure that we made the right choice considering that every single person on Costco.com said they took the camera back. But I knew I was buying a not so expensive camera and I don't expect it to take perfect pictures. I just need something that will take a decent photo, be small and light enough that I can carry it around with me in my purse, and cheap enough that if I lose it, I won't feel terribly guilty. Now that I've gotten to play with it, I think it's going to fit what I need.

So in this blog are pictures I have taken with both cameras (I bet you some of you were wondering what the pictures had to the do with the story, admit it...) when I was playing this afternoon to make sure my new camera was going to do the job I needed. Why don't you leave me a comment telling me which you think it which...?

P.S. The flowers are the ones that dear hubby bought me when I had that horrible, awful, no good, really bad day earlier this week and he went to the store to get french bread so I could work on the Creating Keepsakes one-hour challenge. Aren't they pretty?

Picking berries

2011-07-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

We got home tonight and took one look at the raspberries and knew we had to get to work. There was a second batch ready to be picked so we got them all picked, but still have one picking of them left. It was also time to pick the first of the blueberries and sugar snap peas. Everything else is coming along nicely, but isn't quite ready. It's so late this year because of all this crazy weather we're having.

The only bad thing about it is that by the time the picking was done and I visited some blogs, I didn't have much time left. So I used it making 10 more of those "Not available today" magnets I made a while back. Matt's boss saw them and asked if I would make them for all the other stores too. Fortunately I had saved the document and it didn't take long to churn out ten of them. Now I"m off to watch more of Monday night's TV that I still haven't finished (and this is Thursday! oh my)

Scrappy card - Whimsical Wednesday

2011-07-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight while catching up on the blogs, I read In Love with a Bug who was participating in the Whimsical Wednesday Challenge to design a card using scraps. Well, I just loved her design and I have a few scraps left over from DCWV's Nana's Kids stack, so I did a simple strip card. I designed a little bracket in SCAL to hold the Stampin' Up sentiment.

Well, that's it. I'm going to go catch up on my Monday night tv: the Closer, Rizzoli and Isles, Eureka, and Intervention...

Christmas in July

2011-07-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

So after a really awful, horrible, no good day at work today with people who just were not rational (I swear there must be a full moon lurking out there because all the lunatics called me today), I came home to find that a one-hour challenge was starting on Creating Keepsakes blog. Well, actually had started about 10 minutes before, but what the heck. The challenge was to make two Christmas cards using twine (don't have), buttons or stitching on each. Well so I knew I didn't have much to work with considering I'm a really crappy seamstress. However, I love one hour challenges, but I had a dilemma. I really had a craving for french bread, which required trip to the store. So one hour challenge or french bread? Hmmm....

So my dear, sweet husband who's very worried about my stress level hears me say that I have this craving for french bread and took off for the grocery store. He came home with flowers for me, red meat for him, and the freshest french bread I think I've had in years. Yes, a few dollar trip to the store was really, really expensive (Matt + meat counter = budget disaster), but oh so worth it.

In the meantime, I fought with the sewing machine requiring that I re-do the major part of one card, dug through my embellishments to find a star and some gift buttons, whipped together two (well, really two and three-quarters) cards in the one hour and uploaded them right at the buzzer.

What's really amazing about the whole thing is that it never would have happened if I hadn't spent the whole weekend (well the whole weekend minus raspberry picking on Saturday and a Harry Potter matinee on Sunday) to clean and re-organize my craft room. So when I started the challenge, I had a clean slate to work with, knew what I had and right where it would be. For instance, the lovely striped Christmas paper was in my scraps storage container in the "multi" drawer (the storage unit right under the desk in the bottom left corner of the picture below) and was able to use scraps for every single portion of these two cards. Of course, in the one hour I made a huge mess of my room again. Why is it that I can't craft neatly? But what I love is that my whole room went back together in less than 10 minutes. Wow, I am just loving the new organization. Oh, by the way Dad, your lottery ticket in sticking up in my carousel just behind Matt's picture. I hope it's the big winner!

Get Well Marley

2011-07-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

So one of the blogs that I follow is Madison's at Funky Cards. Madison has a lot of very interesting projects, but my favorite on-going project of hers has to be the "I Feel the Love" project. In this project, crafters make and send cards to a person who is facing a challenge. This month, it's Marley, an absolutely adorable three-year-old with a brain tumor. Since my brother-in-law ultimately lost his battle with a brain tumor, I felt especially moved by this small girl's fight. So I decided to send a card I made recently. The card was pretty straightforward:

But I added a little collage picture inside of Zoey and each of the "furballs" (as I tend to refer to all those who came after her):My experience has been that little kids tend to really like animals and I was hoping that there may be some power in prayer and fur for this little girl. I know it's always been powerful for me. Speaking of that, I think I need to go find a furball for hug...

Having a bit of fun...

2011-07-10T08:41:00.001-07:00

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! DMM - Do not read this blog post unless you want to see what's in the box coming this week. Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!

I had a bit of fun this week. Last Saturday, during our trip to Jo-Ann's (when I bought to the cork board), I also bought a paw print border punch by EK Success. I love, love, love this punch and already had one, but this one wasn't for me. When my cousin was here visiting a while ago, I took her to a card camp put on by a local Stampin' Up demonstrator. I used to go to them all the time, but they were pretty gossipy. It was pretty catty even though I didn't know any the people they were talking about, so it stopped being as much fun. Honestly, by then, I had learned most of the basics and discovered that YouTube and the blog world have enough crafters with instructions, pictures and (even better) videos, that I didn't need the card camps anymore.

But now my aunt has started card making and my cousin noted that she wished I lived closer so we could collaborate. Well, that's not going to happen because I'm happy where I am, but I can be a little long distance help. So I sent her links to some of my favorite layout websites and gave her other tips. Then I realized I could share some of my favorite tools. So at JoAnn's, I picked up my favorite paw print border punch. Then I sat down and put together several card samples to show them what could be done with the punch. I then wrote down specific instructions on how to re-create each of the cards.

I sent them packets with the paper they would need to create each card three more times and added the matching envelopes. I realized that I had a lot of tools that they probably don't have. Since many of the stamps I used are retired now, I stamped the images for them, but left it for them to cut out, except for one where I stamped on a bracket cut out from SCAL. I also tossed in the roll of ribbon used, rhinestones, brads and such necessary to finish the cards off. Each card was packed in a plastic bag with one finished sample card and the supplies to recreate it.

Oh, and I also tossed in a cup decal I had designed for my cousin, but never could find the the cup for. How is it that this town doesn't have a single straw cup left anywhere??? Seriously folks, a few months ago when I was looking for my first cup, I couldn't find it and my husband had to put out a bounty for it. Then the cups were everywhere. Now, when I'm out of cups and was looking for them again, they're gone! Oh well, I'm sending it to her unmounted because maybe she'll have better luck finding one. So that's in the box too.

I also wrote down a list of supplies that I wasn't sure they would have yet that would be helpful in making the cards. Yesterday, I hit both Michaels and Jo-Ann's because I had coupons and good sales and got the rest of the things I thought they might not have to finish off the cards. So I tossed in a glue pen, some stamp pads and pop-dots. I then topped the whole thing with some foam sheets. I recently learned a little trick to cut a piece of foam to put over brads, buttons, rhinestones or any other bumpy little thing when mailing the card. Unfortunately, I could only find them in a ginormous package that will probably last longer than I do, so I thought I would save them the headache and include some for their mailing.

Oh, and I can't help but share this picture of Smoke. I opened the window in my craft room yesterday to let some breeze in. Next thing I know, Smoke in peeking his nose up to the window from under my table. But there wasn't enough space for him to climb up under the table. So then he started peeking over the table and then up on the table and into the window sill. He's sat there for hours yesterday and now again this morning. I've got to say, there really isn't a good view. All I can see from my craft window is the RV pad on the side of the house. So I get a glimpse of raspberry plants (they are finally getting ripe) that are the start of the garden, the RV and Matt's old boat that he's finally fixing the axle on the trailer (part of the reason we got the new(er) boat a few years ago). It's not really an attractive view.

Mind you, the cats have a huge fenced in cat yard out back where they can go outside anytime they want. Matt's done a really great job of making it kitty proof so that they can't get out. The birds still fly in (silly birds) for them to hunt and there's plenty of room to run and wrestle and play. There are brick walkways and bushes to lay under (or in as Smoke likes to do). A pond to watch fish (and get a drink - ewwww!) and a cat nip plant in a cage that they can get to some leaves, but protects the plant enough to survive. It's pretty much a kitty wonderland. Yet, he's more interested in the window sills in my craft room, the gym, the guest bedroom and the living room. Of course they all face areas that the cat yard doesn't. I guess it's just his version of cat TV.

New cork board

2011-07-09T21:21:00.001-07:00

So the other day I was shopping at JoAnn's. Okay so I know that could have any one of many days, but this was last Saturday when the girls left the guys watching TV during the barbecue. We were checking out the new store when I found this package of square cork boards. It gave me an idea. So today I picked up a scrap booking frame at Michaels and found a piece of fabric left over from making my Expression cover. I covered the cork board in the fabric and put the frame together sans glass. Now I have a cute little cork board that matches my room. I plan to pin up things that inspire me.

"Berry" fun project

2011-07-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but my husband manages the cafe in the building I work in. I cannot express how grateful I am to him that he does so. He gave up his position of nearly 20 years so that we could have nearly inseparable lives carpooling to work together, enjoying my morning coffee break where I run downstairs to fill my cup, sharing lunch together most days, plus evenings, weekends, holidays and such. I know I'm very lucky because some spouses wouldn't sacrifice their careers or for other reasons don't get that much time with their spouses and, sadly, some wouldn't want that much time. But, we do.

But back to the reason I mentioned the cafe... From time to time, I've had to opportunity to use my crafting skills to help out. I've made vinyl lettering for the daily specials board, I crafted signs to the cover the menu boards on days he does "Breakfast all Day", designed little coins and a purse for them for a promotion and other little things like that. In addition to a daily special, there are seasonal specials. This season, there's a salad featuring whatever fruit is in season at the moment. Since the fruit changes based upon what's available, he asked me if I could cut out berries that he could post on the board to represent the current fruit featured in the salad. Well of course I could and I could do it tonight. It gave me the perfect excuse to spend the evening in my craft room where it's nice and cool compared to the 90 degrees outside (I know that's not hot to a lot of you, but it's TOO HOT for me!).

So tonight I cut out a strawberry that I found on The Lady Wolf's blog then laminated the cut with my Xyron using the laminate/magnet cartridge. Then I cut out around the strawberry. I looked for a blueberry, but couldn't find one, so I made my own SVG using some clip art I found and Inkscape. I don't think it turned out too bad. As a bonus, I made him a couple of signs he can put up over things that sell out or when the product otherwise isn't available. Right now he just tapes up one and I thought this would be a little nicer. It was kind of a fun project to work on tonight. Tomorrow, I think I'll work on raspberries since ours are just about starting to ripen so I'm sure that product is going to available soon for his seasonal salad.

Pazzles Inspiration Giveaway - Day 2

2011-07-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Check out was SVG Cuts is giving away to celebrate their new blog debuting on July 10: Pazzles Inspiration Giveaway - Day 2! I must admit I want it! So you can enter, but only I can win (mwah-ha-ha-ha!).

Cup crazy

2011-07-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is the last cup for a while. I've made four this weekend alone and gave my friend Glenda her Lakers emblem I made from a .jpeg on last week at the casino and then cut. Of course, I never could find a cup for it so she'll have to do that. Why is it that when you are looking for something the store never has it, but the minute you don't need that anymore, they are everywhere?

But I've been thinking about making one for my hubby ever since I ordered a big batch of vinyl off of Oh My Crafts. When I realized their mixed pack had yellow, orange and black, I knew there was a Tigger cup in Matt's future. You see, two years ago on August 1st, this little ball of fluff came bouncing down the freeway. We scooped him up, took him to the vet to be fixed up and he's been a part of the family ever since. He's a little skittery (well who wouldn't be after that kind of trauma) but he's a little love. Mostly though, he's really Matt's cat. He loves Matt and Matt loves him. So today I finally finished cutting out the bouncing Tigger from Mardenz and came up with the words "He's had us wrapped around his paw ever since he bounced into our lives" and cut them out in a circle. I learned a little while ago that if you have small cuts, it's best to put a clear overlay over them, so I cut that out of contact paper and covered the whole thing. Well, that's it for crafting today. The in-laws just invited us down for dinner so no more crafting. Good timing too, I just finished the laundry a few minutes ago. So happy Fourth everyone!

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July to all of you out there. I hope it's a safe and happy holiday for you all. We celebrated early this year so today will be a quiet day. Thank goodness because it's been a busy weekend already. We ducked out of work early enough to make it to the last matinee of Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon in 3d on Friday afternoon. Then it was home to cut out the mickey cup for Mom and make potato salad (it's always so much better tasting the next day!). My family was over for ribs that hubby finished off on the barbeque. They were amazing even if you aren't a rib fan. Then the girls took a quick trip to JoAnn's where I picked up another storage cart so I could get my project materials stored off my work space and give me more room to work. Then it was back for a Real Housewives of OC marathon with my sister. It was actually disappointing because pretty much all of the women have just gotten bitchy and self-absorbed. Then yesterday we finished helping my friend move her mom, I finished up my dad's Grumpy cup, had dinner with the parents and finally back to finish watching the last OC episode's with my sis. So today, it's nice that I get a quiet day to spend in my craft room and finishing up the laundry. I know it seems kind of backward, but I love having the busy part of the weekend at the beginning and finishing up with a quiet, slow day. I'll be enjoying this little bouquet picked from our yard and playing with some ideas I've been floating around for a while. So hopefully I'll be back with some projects I've finished later.

Cup art...

2011-07-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

I made my mom a Mickey Mouse cup but forgot to take a picture of it. I was looking for a Grumpy SVG but couldn't find one so I broke down and borrowed my Mom's Happily Ever After Cricut cartridge to make this one for my dad so they have nice cups to take on their trip. I almost didn't get a picture of this one, but I quickly snapped a picture on my phone before I handed it over at dinner tonight.

The one tool every papercrafter needs...

2011-06-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

It's starting to become quite a tradition to make a card on Friday night. I'm becoming addicted to watching Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday videos. The cards are always so cute and inspirational. Now usually I don't have the products she shows and today was no exception. I don't have the cute little ticket die or the stamps, so I made a ticket using Sure Cuts a Lot. Once I had the basic outline made, I copied it, shrunk, put the new image on it's own layer, and used the program to center the smaller one in the middle of the bigger one. I then drew the smaller outline using my Cri-kits pens and then cut the larger outline to get my "ticket." I chose the word from the "Warm Words" collection from Stampin' Up because I need a thank you card to send to a woman who provided us a lot of help in a recent project at work. I used the paper scraps from the birthday card for my mother-in-law last weekend, and some plain grosgrain ribbon I picked up at Dollar Tree. So, unlike how nice Christina's looked, mine still looked a little plain to me, which is odd because normally I really like a plain style. But this time, it needed something. So I added a mat with DCWV card stock, a little pierced line using my Stampin' Up paper piercer and added some Cotton Candy Stickles to the centers of the big flowers.

Now it looked better, but something just wasn't right, which brings me to the one tool every paper crafter needs: the Cricut Spatula. Now you may be thinking, really? I don't even have a Cricut. Or maybe, I have a Cricut but I rarely use the spatula. How can it be that important?

Well let me ask you this: Have you ever taped down a piece of paper on your project and realized it's not straight at all or you don't really like it there only to discover that the paper has adhered enough that you can't really move it? Okay so you all may be perfect, but it happens to me all the time. Like tonight on this card where I realized that what was wrong was the ribbon knot was too messy looking. Of course that meant I have to take up the paper. So I slipped the thin blade of the spatula under the paper and used the blade to separate the mat from the patterned paper. The tape sticks to the spatula and can easily be rubbed off the metal surface (you can still see a little on my spatula in the picture since I hadn't really cleaned it yet). It worked like a charm and I've done it probably hundreds of time now. Once they were apart, I tied the ribbon again to get a neater knot and then re-taped the paper with my ATG gun.

So that's it. Now I'm happy with it.

Rare sight - Zoey playing!

2011-06-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

At nearly 17 and 3/4 years of age, it's very rare to see Zoey playing. She has a pretty set routine of drinking water out of her cup in the bathroom, sleeping on the bed and coming downstairs usually only for dinner or when she wants some attention. For a while I really worried because she had lost so much weight and was arfing up food all over the place.

But lately, she's been more active. She's fought back instead of running away when she see another kitty. The other night she and Cha-Ching had a pretty good hissing match. But Zoey got back at him, I noticed last night she had arfed in his food dish! It's the first time she's arfed in a while and she's gained a little weight back. She finishes all her food again and, today, I caught her playing with catnip banana so I just had to grab some pictures.

Waiting impatiently...

2011-06-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

I am not a patient person. I accept this about myself. While I love the internet, I'm not an online shopping fan. I hate buying something and then having to wait for it to arrive. I want instant gratification! But sometimes online is the only way to go.

I've had this project idea percolating in my head for a while, well actually I've had several percolating there. Unfortunately, I can't find the supplies I need around town. Argh... so I broke down tonight and ordered online. It all started when I was helping Glenda move her mom in with her today. When we were done, there was no way I was going home to cook, not even if it was something as simple as a Hungry Girl recipe. So we called my parents to see if they were eating out and where so we could join them. While at dinner, my Mom and I started talking about ordering some things online, if I had finally ordered the vinyl that I've been talking about for a while and if I need her 40% off coupon for Craft Warehouse.

Well it got me thinking. It doesn't matter what coupon I have if the stores around me don't carry what I need, so I finally broke down and ordered the vinyl I want online. I found what I wanted at Oh My Crafts (who also happen to have a 10% off coupon right now - the code is summer10). I was going to order six sheets since they had it on sale for $9.99 for all six (what I would pay at full price for two sheets of Cricut vinyl), but then I realized that most of what I wanted was in a bundle of 20 sheets of pre-selected colors for only $14.99 (plus 10% off that - woo hoo!). They had such a great selection and a great price. Even though the shipping is a little spendy, it's still way cheaper than buying the Cricut vinyl even if I had a coupon (plus I'm not so happy with Provocraft over the whole Sure Cuts a Lot/Make the Cut issue so I love that I get my vinyl without having to support the company). But the problem is now I've got to wait a whole week for it to get here and that just isn't working for me. I'm all itchy to get started crafting RIGHT NOW!

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today this post is going up as we drive to the restaurant to share a meal with both my father and father-in-law. It's wonderful that I still have them both in my life and that they live close enough that we can spend time together all the time (like on Friday night when we called my mom and dad on the spur of the moment to see if they could have dinner with us). I know that I'm very lucky in that regard.

So today I want to share with you the father's day cards I made. I was trolling the blogs on Friday night when I came across a video posted on M y Creative Time about using punches on a card. Well, of course, I didn't have the right size of punch, sheer ribbon, a cute little charm or anything like that, but I did have my imagination. I cut the squares, the used my Sure Cuts a Lot program to cut a scalloped mat that I found on the DoodleLicious blog, then cut the charm out of the Fabulous Finds cartridge and stamped it with this stamp from the "It's All Good" set from Stampin' Up. The charm wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it gets the job done. I used regular ribbon instead of sheer. The best part about it is the whole thing is the paper. I had this little 6x6 Mini Deck from the Cosmo Cricket called Wanted that I won at a Cricut class at Craft Warehouse some time ago. The paper has these little cowboys on it. Since my father-in-law worked on a dairy, I thought it was perfect. The sentiment on the inside says "Happy Father's Day to a true cow-boy."

My dad's card was inspired by a post I found on the Paper Zone blog. It wasn't so much the twisted easel format, but the argyle design. I immediately thought back to this whole pack of paper I bought at CKC this year. I just LOVE argyle, especially this argyle paper from Fancy Pants called Recess in the All Fall line. I immediately thought of that paper for my card. So while I wasn't up to trying a twisted easel, I did get my inspiration from their project. I made a little square ribbon slide on Sure Cuts a Lot, used my Cri-Kit gel pens to write the sentiment (although it does look a little fuzzier than I would like. Then just matted the paper with some card stock from DCWV and made the card body with kraft paper from The Paper Company. At first the ribbon slide seemed a little too stark. It was a much brighter white than the argyle paper. So I used a waded up tissue with little Stampin' Up Old Olive ink to give it a little more color to match the bit of color in the argyle paper. You just can't really see that detail in this picture.

Then I still had to make a card for my mother-in-law's birthday tomorrow. I had just watched a video on a shutter card on You Tube and decided to give it a try. I turned out okay but I did learn that you need to use STIFF card stock for your base. I chose a textured card stock that wasn't very stiff after all that cutting and folding, so it makes the card a little difficult to close back up. I'm pretty sure this was a very old piece of DCWV because I found it loose in my paper cupboard when I was looking for patterned paper, but I don't know for certain. The [patterned paper was also a loose piece in with some others that I found when looking for a coordinating color for the original paper I had chosen, which I abandoned for this one. I liked the butterfly pattern on the other paper, but I couldn't find a coordinating paper that I liked. This one is a double sided paper and I thought both sides were perfect. I also learned that laying out the pieces with the card open doesn't work. I had them all arranged in a way I liked, glued them down and then closed the card and, eeeekkkkk, it looked terrible. I had all the same papers on the front of the card. So I did a double layer of patterned paper on a box on the front to give it a little mix. So if you try the card, don't glue down the paper until you've seen what it looks like closed too. So then I just stamped my front sentiment from the "Lots of Thoughts" stamp set from Stampin' Up and added my inside sentiment stamped from the Stampin' Up "Congrats" set.

I'm thinking that if I try this card again, I might try using pictures where all the yellow paper with the soft blue mats are (the ones you can't hardly see in this picture). These are all hidden when the card is closed but would be something that would be really nice to display for a while for the recipient.

Michele come get your flip-flops...

2011-06-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hmm... I can't believe that the weekend's over already. It seems like it's flown by. Certainly this rainy Sunday afternoon has. The kitties have napped but I've been busy. The laundry is done, the groceries are bought and stowed away, my thank you cards are written, the house cleaned and the floors vacuumed. I even found time to make some summer flip flops for around the house or out camping ( I was planning to break mine in by going to get a pedicure, but that plan evaporated when Matt did the grocery shopping with me and managed to buy $25.00 of cherries - I knew to be nervous when he gets around the meat counter but it never occurred to me that I had to worry in the produce aisle too).

These were super easy. Michaels had them on sale for a $1 and I just added some flowers I had in my scrapbooking stash, a large rhinestone and a bunch of Irock gems. Mine were a little more complicated because I had to dye the red flowers, but still, an easy project.

Thank you cards

2011-06-11T22:54:00.001-07:00

Even though I still have a few cards left in my stash, today I made a few specific thank you cards using some new techniques I either just learned or had never tried. Last night, when I was puttering in my scrapbooking room playing video games, surfing blogs and watching YouTube, I watched Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday video and was very inspired by the cute vintage newspaper card she made. Well, of course, I didn't have the newspaper stamp, the twine, the tiny tags die or stamp, but I figured I could still make it work. Hmmm... thinking about it now, that was a pretty strange assumption - I don't have anything she uses in the card except card stock and yet I still thought I could do it. Fortunately, I have Google. So I searched Google images to find a suitable newspaper image. I substituted embroidery thread for the twine. It isn't quite as cute, but it works:

A few months ago, I was shopping at Paper Zone and bought a little spray bottle of Tsukineko Sheer Shimmer Spritz in a shade called Sparkle. I've never really tried spraying on my layouts or cards but I've really liked when I've seen others using it or similar products. So the little spray bottle has languished in the top drawer of tool cart for probably about three months now. But today I decided it was time to give it a try. First I ran my background paper through the Sizzix with an embossing folder and then sprayed the background (I used my garbage can to contain the spray. It was surprisingly simply and dried quickly. I used some of my stash of flowers, some Irock gems and a little Offray ribbon to finish it off. Yeah for using my stash!

So after Christina's video ended, I started watching videos by 2stampis2b.com. I saw this wonderful video using embossing folders that left a void in the embossing so that you can stamp an image without having the texture where your image is. It's really hard to see, but in this picture, the card stock under the bunch of flowers is flat and all the rest has the texture from the embossing plate. It's a really amazing technique. The video demonstrating it is available here. I just had to try it. So I made my stamping void using a recycled part of an old box that held page protectors. It worked perfectly. Although next time I will probably make the void a little bit bigger. I then colored in the flowers with my Stampin' Up pens and sprayed the whole thing with Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle (and since that little bottle is running out quickly, I'm definitely going to try her spray that she shows how to make here). I then used Inkscape to make the ribbon slide and imported it into SCAL. I added the words "Thanks a bunch" and used my metallic Cri-kits pen to write it then cut it out. Then just layer the pieces and it was done. The picture shows the shimmer mist really well and the light really reflects off the writing much more in the picture. The shimmer mist is really much more subtle in person and the writing is in much starker contrast.

So now I just have to make a sympathy card and I can get back to my layouts. Oh, and I have to actually mail a whole bunch of cards that I'm behind in mailing out too... Oh well, better late than never I guess.

A little scrapbook therapy

2011-06-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

Work finally came around and turned out okay by week's end, but it was a rough, rough week. I think my bosses are afraid I'm going to look for another job. I think about it some times, but I really do love where I am even if sometimes I question the sanity of that.

My father-in-law is still in the hospital from his chest pains. We'll be heading down there shortly. But in the meantime, my friend's dad died this morning. He was in the hospital the week before last with kidney failure and fluid in his lungs. They thought he was on the mend and he went home to finish his recovery, but things took a turn for the worse and this morning, she and her daughter were called over there to find the police and fire truck. Her dad was gone. So I guess, all in all, my horrible week isn't so bad in comparison.

So last night I played in my scrapbook room for a little while. Mostly I watched You Tube videos on techniques and played Dr. Mario, but I did a little moving of paper too. But hubby was tired so I knocked off early to watch a movie with him (Duplicity - it was okay, a little slow but I liked the story). Then this morning I couldn't sleep so I got up and played some more in between loads of laundry and Chewie demanding attention. I finally finished this page based upon the Sketchy Thursday's sketch from last week.

It's funny how sometimes a page just all falls together quickly. Then there are others that seem such a struggle to put together and somehow never still look right. Lately, I'm having a lot of the latter.

But I did have fun with the flowers on this one. It's actually an EK Success border punch but I did a little snipping of my own to make separate flowers. In fact, there wasn't a lot to this one, considering how long it took to make. The background is Karen Foster Design paper called Zoo Life Collage. The polka dotted paper and orange papers are some I had left over other projects. I'm guessing it's probably DCWV, but am not sure. The little strip of green shimmer paper (left over from last year's Christmas card project) was distressed with some Tea Dye Distress Ink. The blue card stock I'm pretty sure is from Paperbilities and it's been hit with some Color Box white ink. I actually just realized that it's missing the border strip I made with the scalloped EK Success border punch that goes along the right side of the picture. There are some Irock gems for the center of the flowers and a Darice gem to dot the i in the title.

Boy am I behind

2011-06-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

I found all these great sketches to use as inspiration and I have them open in Windows on the bottom of my screen. Unfortunately, I haven't felt much like scrapping the last few days. We got a call that Matt's dad was in the ER with a heart episode on Monday so we left work early to go reassure ourselves that everything was fine (it is and he's home now), but by the time we left, I had developed a headache. So it was straight to bed when I got home. Then yesterday I still had the headache so I didn't feel like do much in the evening but going back to bed. Tonight my headache is finally starting to subside, but I'm still not quite up to be very creative. I just did a little to finish up this layout from the Sketchy Thursdays that they posted nearly two weeks ago!
I just have to point out there is some rare handwritten journalling. I really hate my messy handwriting so I rarely journal by hand. But for this layout, it just seemed like the right thing.

What a weekend!

2011-06-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

It's been such a fun weekend. Friday night, the hubby took me on a date to see Xmen: First Class. It was good, but it drug in some places. When I have time to start thinking about things about the movie, such as how Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick really do go together as a couple, and if January Jones was pregnant when they were filming this or that came after, you know that they didn't do quite a good enough job.

Then yesterday morning we got up at the time we normally get up for work (no sleeping in, boo), but that was to meet Mom and Dad for breakfast. Then hubby, Dad and I took the boat out fishing. It was about a twelve hour jaunt. They (because I drove the boat all day and hardly ever touched a pole, let alone had the privilege of reeling one in) caught as many as they threw back and we still reached our limit. Those fish are already on their way to the neighbor's smoker, but boy was I tired today.

And speaking of smoke, today I got to play in my craft room (after I cleaned it up) because it's close to the laundry room and I spent a good portion of the day working on the laundry. I've been working on the same page for nearly a week. I "finished" it, but it still doesn't look quite right. So I set it aside to work on another project I've had in mind for a while: replacing my old 20 bumper sticker that we bought at Fontana back in 2007. So it still says Tony Stewart, even though that hasn't been his number for quite some time now. Unfortunately when we went to the race in 2009, they didn't have a bumper sticker (or maybe it was they didn't have one I liked). Anyway, at the Creating Keepsakes Convention (back in February!!!!), I got the idea to cut my own out of vinyl. So today, I searched the Internet high and low for the Clarendon Italic font, which I'm pretty sure is the one for the 14. Well, the only places I could find it wanted over $20 for it. Sorry guys, I'm a cheapskate so that wasn't going to work. So I did a Google Image search and found this one I liked that had the 14 and his nickname Smoke at the bottom. I really liked and the image imported into SCAL beautifully. I was all ready to cut when I flipped back to it for a second and realized that it's a bumper sticker that they are selling now. Well, if I'm going to cut this thing myself, then I want it to be custom, not just something any old person could buy off the web.

So then I flipped over to Tony Stewart's web page and saw that the website had this cool image of the 14 in a circle with flames coming out either side. Now that was cool, but it was in a place where you only get to see it for about two seconds every 20 seconds or so, and you can't copy it. So I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture so I would have a reference point. I started building it myself: number 14 in white taken from first project, check, outline number in black, check, red circle outlined by white circle, check, circle sized so that the letters are just as big as the outline, check. Okay so now flames. Well, since I couldn't grab the image, I was going to have to come up with flames on my own. So back to Google Images. I found some I liked and played with them for a while, but it wasn't quite right. Then I found the half-circle of flames and immediately knew that my image wasn't going to look like the one on the web page, because these flames sparked a new image in my mind of the flames cupping the number. But even then, I knew that I needed something more on the flames. So I went back to the original image I had started with and grabbed the name Smoke and plopped it on top of the solid part of the flames, added a black outline to the name and knew it was perfect. Now this is no bumper sticker. It's my new, original, car tattoo:

A few cuts later, a little cleaning of the back window and on it went. Unfortunately, it was already starting to get dark outside, but I still think the picture came out pretty good.

So Happy Together

2011-05-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

I had been looking at this Sketch Inspirations layout #220 for days before I even started it and even then it took me two days to finish it. I even missed the deadline for the contest because I couldn't quite figure out how to make it all come together. But, at least I finally got it finished. The white, blue and pink cardstock is from DCWV Pastel Stack. The pink vertical paper is from DCVW Stack 5 and was scored on my score pad. The blue paper was run through my Sizzix with the Swirls folder. The circles and hearts were cut using Sure Cuts A Lot with my Cricut and the flower is from Imaginisce. The Joy photo turn and brads are from Joann's Essentials. The font is Bradley Hand ITC. The thread for the circle is from Prism.

Bird Watching

2011-05-24T19:28:00.001-07:00

I've got just a quick post today of a double page layout I worked on during a crop on National Scrapbooking Day. These are pictures taken at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego, California. It's a pretty simple layout using paper from the DCWV Animal Crackers stack and some plain cardstock from DCWV Safari cardstock for the matting. These pictures don't show that the birds on the left are raised with Zots pop dots for some dimension.

Tickled Pink?

2011-05-23T21:17:00.001-07:00

I'm still working on some of the challenges from Craft Warehouse's blog party this weekend. Tonight I finished a sketch challenge (you can still play along until Midnight on Tuesday) in which we had to interpret a sketch in our own way. I loved the sketch but for this layout it was going to work better rotated for what I had in mind.

The original sketch has the title running vertically along the right side of the page. I used cardstock from DCWV's Brights stack for the base, layering strips of paper from DCWV's Nana's Kids stack and a small piece of cardstock from a DCWV Pastel stack for my journalling tag. The journalling tag was cut out with the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, then layered with a fabric flower and small button. The title and two edge strips were cut from a page of white glitter paper from Creative Imaginations. I used two EK Success edge punches to make the half-flower and bracket glittered strips. The flamingo brads are from the Eyelet Outlet (love them) and the fabric flowers are from the Bazzill Collection from Imaginisce. I finished the title off with small Irock gems.

Finally finished...

2011-05-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

So ever since I saw the "Starbucks cup" on Connie's blog, I've been wanting to do one. Unfortunately, I could never find the requisite clear cup. Matt put out a bounty on one and a co-worker came through last week. Matt brought it home, but I never found time on my "vacation" (aka burning use-it-or-lose-it time) since I was too busy doing spring cleaning, shopping with the family, moving yard edging stones, having a girls' day, etc. I got a lot of pages done but never seemed to have time to do the cup. Basically, I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. But tonight after making the meal plan for the next two weeks, doing the grocery shopping, making faux egg foo young for dinner, finally finishing what seemed like an enormous amount of laundry and chasing a few furballs, I finally found the time to cut it out. It was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be much thanks to Connie's great pattern.

On another subject, I wanted to show you the progress that the catnip has made as a result of Matt's ingenious kitty proofing. The catnip has grown up outside of the cage and is thriving.

Scraplifted: Craft Warehouse's Scrapbooking Blog Party

2011-05-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

I was trolling through the blogs I follow looking for inspiration to continue working on our Southern California trip from 2009 when I came across the Scrapbooking Blog Party on Craft Warehouse's blog. The challenge was to scraplift from their design. Well that was right up my alley. So I dug through my stash of paper to find the background page from Sandylion called U Gimme Butterflies, the red paper from Creative Imaginations called Magic Stars, and the Mickey grid paper from the Mickey Paper Pad by EK Success. I added a hand brad and a rub on from Creative Imaginations along with my journalling. Because the paper combo was so busy, I decided to stop there.

Seeing Shamu and Matt's new project

2011-05-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

When I saw Sketch 115 at Got Sketch?, I immediately started thinking about an orca tail to replace the three vertical strips of paper. I old wish the papers had better contrast in this picture (or maybe that I had better photography skills). I used paper from Stack 5 by DCWV on plain cardstock from Sierra Pacific Crafts. For the bracket, I found a pattern at Doodlelicious Designs and added my own text and Stickles. The orca brad was from Creative Imaginations. I honestly don't recall who makes the flower. It was part of a pack I picked up at the Creative Keepsakes Convention earlier this year. I had the half flower left over from an earlier project and when I saw it in my flower bucket, I knew it was perfect.

Meanwhile, Matt's been working on a project of his own - re-vamping our old barbecue. It was originally a housewarming gift from my Mom's boss Vicki when I bought my 1st house nearly a decade ago. It's served us well, but it was time for a new burner and racks. Matt cleaned it up, installed the new burner and got it going again for a new summer of grilling. But then today he headed into the garage with the old rack. I couldn't help but find out why. Turns out he chopped it into pieces to fit the bottom of the grill so he can spread out the ceramic briquettes better for a more even temperature for cooking. Pretty smart guy. Personally I just enjoyed watching the sparks fly (and being grateful that he thought to wear eye protection).

Silly Seals layout and Smoke behaves

2011-05-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Shockingly, Smoke was the good one today. But maybe that was because he got the top spot on the kitty tower. But I couldn't resist snapping this picture of him with his pretty pink boa. Although he didn't seem to happy about it.

Meanwhile I finished my third layout of the day. Third! And the laundry's almost done too. It's been a productive day despite Chewie's demands for attention.

So this double page layout was inspired by a sketch in the February 2011 Pagemaps. I used cardstock from the DCWV Pastel stack and patterned paper from My Mind's Eye Delightful pad. The seals and scattered words and bubbles were from Creative Imaginations. The seal brads are from Eyelet Outlet.

Another SeaWorld layout and Chewie finally naps

2011-05-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

They posted the new Sketchy Thursdays layout. I wasn't really sure what to do with it until I looked at some the Design Team layouts and flipped through my trip photos. It was the round elements matching up with the roundness of an orca jumping that finally bridged the gap between sketch and layout for me.

I wanted to add the orcas jumping around the picture so I found some clip art. I used the same bowl to draw my circle and used my Stampin' Up! paper piercing template to make the holes for the stitching like I did on the SeaWorld Love layout earlier. The cardstock is DCWV from the Pastel and the Christmas stack from several years ago. I used another Creative Imaginations SeaWorld rub-on for the title. Chewie finally napped so I had time to stitch the circle.

But the peace and quiet didn't last long. She's back to wandering in and out of my craft room demanding attention every minute or so. I guess I don't need to have kids to know what it's like not to have a moment to myself. All I need is one small furry (spoiled rotten) princess.

Making a Splash

2011-05-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'm still recovering from my computer issue. I didn't even realize I had forgotten to re-install Office until I tried to open Word to do my journalling for this page. Wait a second... no Word. So out came the CD and soon I was on my way. This layout was much faster to put together, if you don't count the time installing Word, watching Black Swan and Bell, Book and Candle and trying to figure out just what Chewie wants. She's driving me crazy today meowing every few minutes.

I scraplifted the layout from Sketch Inspiration (it's sketch #209). The background paper is from My Mind's Eye Simply Delightful pad as is the circle and the flower and flourish I cut out from another page. The vanilla paper is from DCWV Pastel stack run through a Fiskars paper crimper and the scallop is cut out of DCWV Shimmer stack using a Martha Stewart edge punch. The title is from a Creative Imaginations Sea World rub-on packet.

Deceptively simple little layout

2011-05-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

If you've looked at any of my work, you probably have figured out that I'm a fan of simple little layouts. I like a lot of blank space. I'm not a huge fan of lots of embellishments (unless it's buying them and putting them away in drawers). So layout #202 on Sketch Inspiration really called out to me tonight. I thought it was a beautiful layout and one that I could finish quickly.

Well, one out of two isn't bad. This simple little layout took me nearly three hours! First, I couldn't find just the right paper. Then I found paper I liked, but I cut the square too small and I didn't have any more of that paper. I finally figured out how to correct my miscut, but then I had to go make dinner and find some aspirin. (Four hours of working out in the yard placing lawn edging = sunburn and sore muscles)

So dinner finished, I returned to the layout and fussed over the right size of circle. Then came the tedious hand stitching. But it's all worth it now that I look at the completed page and am much happier with it than the Meerkats. Thank you Sketch Inspiration!

Computer woes and Sketch Inspiration #220

2011-05-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I thought I would try the malware/virus program offered by Microsoft because my computer has been acting a little funny. Well little did I know that my computer would just stop working. After four hours of trying everything, I finally accepted that I just could not recover from this and would have to set the computer back to factory settings. So I lost everything but the computer is working just fine again.

Fortunately I had quite a bit of it backed up on my external hard drive and had backed up most of my pictures to internet storage as well. So mostly I only lost SVGs I had downloaded lately, some music, and my list of favorites. Thank goodness for the blogger feed so I still can find all my favorite blogs and I am so thankful that I bought a copy of SCAL 2 that came with the disks too so I was able to reinstall that. It was quite a pain last night to reinstall my programs, but on the positive side, I was also able to only install those that I actually use. The real moral of the story is routinely back up your computer!!!! It may be a pain in the rear but it is soooo worth it.

Yesterday I also used my Paper Zone gift card I won from their blog to buy the beginner's quilling set and tried my hand at quilling for the first time. I was shocked at how easy it was. So I made this flower to accent a page from our trip to the San Diego Zoo a couple of years ago. I got my inspiration from Sketch Inspiration layout #220:

Guest bedroom

2011-05-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

The guest bedroom is pretty much done now except for a couple of things. I have a desk that I need to refinish and I have to make some decisions about what do do for the wall art on the big wall. But at least the room is clean, put together and usable. Oh, and I'm not really happy with this artwork. It still needs something more because it looks awfully empty.

I also realized that Chewie kind of became my inspiration with the grey and white fur, pink collar and the black of pupils. Of course, the cats had to check it out. Tigger checked out under the bed.

Smoke and Chewie checked out the view. Oh, and the bed too:

All because of a Starbucks Cup

2011-05-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this post on the Cut by Connie website about making "Starbucks" cups and knew I just had to try it myself. Problem is, those darn clear acrylic tumblers are near impossible to find. I have been to every, and I do mean every, store in town and no one has the clear acrylic tumblers. My dear hubby found this bright blue one and I knew when I saw it that it would be perfect for my sister because this color with pink is one of her most frequently used color combos. But what to do on the cup? Certainly the Starbucks logo no longer made sense and then I got the idea to use a flamingo. Those who know her know how perfect this is:

Stayed home today

2011-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I shocked all my co-workers by staying home today. Last night I started developing an awful sore throat and it just got worse all night. Add in some body aches, a little chill and some sneezes and I knew I was getting sick. I didn't sleep well and I have an incredibly busy schedule over the next couple of weeks so I just can't afford to be sick. So I thought I would stay home today a rest since it was pretty much the only day I could. I just did a quick little bit of work this morning when I was alerting everyone that I wouldn't be in today and quick conference call in the mid-morning. Other than that, I didn't do any work.

But it didn't take long for me to remember why I rarely take a sick day. Daytime TV pretty much sucks. I watched some DVR'd stuff and I took a couple of pretty good naps, but I get bored pretty easily. It's the bad kind of sick too: not so sick that you only want to lay in bed and sleep all day but sick enough that you don't have energy to do much. So when I wasn't napping, I did wander into my craft room. A few minutes here and a few minutes there with naps in between and I managed to finish a canvas for artwork for the guest bedroom.

Since the picture above doesn't really show the berries, I took a closeup:

And here's the pillow sham I took the pattern from:
You see I had this idea of replicating the pattern on the comforter into art and give it a little dimension. I had painted the canvas the other day with the same gray that's on the walls. Then today I drew on the pattern, painted it in and added flock to the paint to give it some dimension. When it was dry, I adhered circles of the really tacky double-sided tape to be the "berries" and coated the tape in diamond dust. It didn't take very long but it turned out pretty good for a novice.

Even more shocking, my manicure from Tuesday night is still chipless. I'm impressed. But now, I'm going to pack my stuff for tomorrow and Saturday's "National Scrapbooking Day" crops and go to bed.