Missing My Friend

So today's Learn Something New Every Day post made think about things that used to be part of my daily life but aren't anymore.  The absolutely first thing that came to mind is my friendship with Val.  We used to talk nearly every day.  Now we're lucky if we talk four or five times a year.  She's busy with school, work, family, church and her other friends. I understand that, but it doesn't mean that it hurts any less that I feel like I don't have a place in her life anymore.  So today's journal entry was about losing that close friendship we used to have and I made a page to go with it. 

I pulled out a collection pack that I bought at the sidewalk sale at Craft Warehouse this summer.  It's Crate Paper's Paper Heart Collection.  It's a pretty lovey-dovey set that I actually bought to scrapbook some of our wedding pictures with, but there's a couple of papers in there that I just love that are a bit more neural, like this background page, which I absolutely adore.

I love, love, love the sayings in the Echo Park collections.  They always just seem to be perfect.  The only problem was that the color of this saying was all wrong for my layout.  So I printed the print and cut design out from my Silhouette Studio, scanned it and opened it in Photoshop.  I then filled the text with colors that went with my layout and cut it out again.  The only problem was the white cardstock I had printed it on was too white.  So I used a little Old Paper Distress Ink to age it a little.  Now it was the absolute perfect embellishment. 

I added some Recollections pearls that were part of my stocking stuffers this year (thanks Mom!), some Prima and Imaginesce flowers and Darice bling.  The little tickets are from a border strip in the Crate Paper collection and the heart is from my new stamp set from Inkadinkado called Hearts.  I finished it off with some Thickers letters (my new obsession) and some rub on letters I found in my stash.  The top flower has an extra little eyelet tucked behind the gem because it's the pull tab for my hidden journalling. 

I had today off and used the day to try the smoker out by myself for the first time to smoke a couple of piece of pork that we had left over from buying meat at Costco.  Pretty dismal failure although Hubby saved the day when he got home.  But my attempt at dinner was much better.  I found a lovely crock pot recipe for Cashew Chicken on Pinterest posted by Six Sisters' Stuff.  I changed it up a little by doubling the sauce.  Then just a little before we were ready to eat, I dumped in a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies.  It was wonderful, although next time I think I'll triple the sauce.

Then we finally sliced the apple pie we made yesterday after canning apple pie filling from the apples we picked in the afternoon.  Yum!

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. 

Mojo Monday 224

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.

A card for Sarah

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!