Craft Room Upgrade Layout

For Week 21 of Project Life I knew I wanted to do a layout commemorating the work we've done on my craft room lately.  I had some video footage of our cat Chewie climbing the ladder we had in the room to replace the light fixture and a picture of another of our cats, Smoke, climbing the ladder that I wanted to include.  I saw this really great idea of using a QR code to access videos stored on YouTube that I thought I would give a try.  I simply uploaded my video to YouTube then fed the web address into a QR code generator program.  I then printed the QR Code it gave me onto paper (I used photo paper) and added it to my layout. Now all I have to do is open up my code reader app on my phone or iPad to watch Chewie climbing the ladder any time I want.  It was super easy to do so I'm pretty sure you are going to see a lot more QR Codes showing up in my layouts and in Project Life in the future.

For the layout, I was inspired by a sketch from the Sketch Savvy blog from April.  I used paper from the Basic Grey Fact line to match my Project Life layouts for the week since this page would be inserted into that part of my book.  I used the Eric Thickers for my title (I just got these at Michaels earlier this week and I was excited to use them).  The little tab above the middle picture and the chevrons on either side of the title were cut from files I bought for my cameo and I finished it off with some hand stitching across the bottom using some Hemptique baker's twine.  It was super easy to do because I was able to easily poke evenly spaced holes using my new Tim Holtz Ideology rule (that I also picked up at Michaels this week with a coupon so I could replace my beloved E K Success ruler that I've used so much that the markings are starting to disappear).  I wasn't completely happy with it but then I added a few Darice gems and it all just seemed to look right.

 

So here's what it looks like now that it's in the book:

Happy Birthday Rayna

My youngest niece turns 11 today, so I made her a sweet card to celebrate.  I took my inspiration from one of my favorite blog, Karen Thomas' Luv to Stamp.  Karen took a bit of a break from blogging and I'm so happy to see that she's back.  I love her style so much.

For this card, I used some paper I picked up from Paper Zone just before they went out of business (oh how I miss that store).  I cannot for the life of me remember the manufacturer, but I love it's flecked tones.  The pick paper is a Pop Tone that Paper Zone used to sell too.  The burgandy-ish (is that even a word?) color is from DCWV.  The ribbon I picked up on sale at Michaels quite some time ago.  The washi tape I bought there much more recently.  I'm pretty sure the heart tape is from Recollections and the pink tape is either from Queen and Co or Recollections.  The butterflies were cut on the Cameo using the Echo Park design and the shape is one that I bought from Silhouette and altered on the Cameo.  I embossed the smallest butterfly with an embossing folder from the "Phrases" set by Darice.  I think it's so wonderful that you would never know that the embossing on there is the beginning of the word "Thank."  The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set I bought at Michaels. I finished it off with a few Liquid Pearls and called it good.

Card from a Kit (and a glimpse into my craft room)

Happy Fourth of July!  Today I thought I would show you a little bit of my craft room as part of showing you what I did to a card from a kit I had in my stash.  I've picked up kits from time to time while shopping at the Creating Keepsakes Convention.  Now, if you've ever shopped at one of these like I have, you get home with all this stuff and it takes a bit of time to actually get around to using it.  Plus I signed up for a kit of the month club and the kits didn't come monthly, but rather pretty much all in a big lump.  So I had a stack of kits that I haven't played with.

I keep them stored in Iris containers purchased a Michaels.  (Yes, I'm just a little Dynamo label happy) I just grabbed one at random for this project. 

The kit had a project, a layout and a card.  The card was extremely plain with the card constructed using a printed paper embellished with another strip of striped paper, a circle and a slide mount with a vellum sentiment.  However, the sentiment wasn't one I would likely use.  So after looking at the card for a while, I decided that the somber colors would be perfect for a sympathy card.  I decided to make the card base out of plain cardstock and use the patterened paper as a mat.  I pulled out my vellum scraps from the other day.   My scraps are all kept in a 12 by 12 rolling cart slipped under the table in my craft room and are sorted by color: 

I wasn't sure how well it would stamp, but I decided to give it a try.  I was shocked at how well it did take a stamp (while some stamps are stored in this drawer, I also have two photo boxes with stamps and another drawer in another cart with others). 

I used my Basic Black ink from Stampin' Up  with another sentiment from the Garden Flowers set from Inkadinkado and it's hard to tell that it's not printed.  My ink is stored in a drawer and in a tower that I picked up at the Scrapbook Expo convention last year.  Each distress ink has it's own pad velcro'd to the bottom (I think I picked up that tip from Ermma at My Creative Time).   

Then I built the card as show in the kit, but added some pearls from scraps in my bling drawer (shown above with my stamps) and a few prima flowers from my big can of flowers. 

I finished off the flowers with a few Irock gems to finish it off.   My Irock is stored with the tools on my work surface and the gems are stored with my embellishments that I have stored in an Iris container meant for photos.

I was actually pretty happy with how the card turned out.  

So that's a glimpse into my craft room.  Yes, everything is always labelled and things all have their own place.  However, my work surface is usually a mess until I finish a project.  Then I usually clean it all back up so I can start the next project with a little order. 

So I wish you all a very happy and safe Fourth of July.  It will be a pretty quiet one here.  The furballs are not fireworks fans, so we usually stay home with them so they have someone to cuddle with when they get scared.  Honestly, that's about the best place to be anyhow.  We can see the big fireworks display from the picture window in our bedroom, so we have the best of all worlds. 

Thank You #4

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.

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

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?