Thank You #2

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.

7 years

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.

No camping, but big fun anyhow

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.