Aaaahhhhh! Sweet nothing...

I just love when I have a day when I don't have to do anything.  After all the stress lately, it was wonderful to have a day that wasn't planned out the last second, crammed with more than should reasonably done in day or tense because of what needs to be done.  Instead, I slept in until the sun woke me up, ran a couple of errands that needed to be done, and then came home to sit in my craft room for most of the afternoon.  I watched cheesy Lifetime true crime movies (love those), read my favorite blogs, watched the latest Glitter Girl video, cuddled furballs and played with paper scraplifting some of the cutest cards I had pinned on Pinterest.  Then hubby and I took a drive to get some corn for canning tomorrow and picked apples.  I don't think I've ever picked apples in an orchard like that before and I had a fabulous time doing so while listening the Winterhawks win in pre-season play.

So now as this wonderful day comes to a close with Zoey sitting beside me as I type this, I'm ever so grateful for a day to just be and to have two more days to spend with dear hubby before the craziness begins all over again.  My wish for all of you out there is that you have a day to just be.

So now, here is my favorite scraplift of the day... a whale of a good card from Karen Thomas at Luv to Stamp.  When I saw this card, I just knew I had to make it my own.  All the paper is from my scrap bin (I swear that thing is bottomless).  I also tried a new technique for me:  I used my bone folder to scrape the paper of the little banner to break down the fibers so that it became very pliable.  That let me roll it up and give it a little wave of its own.  The Thank You sentiment is from Inkadinkado's Collaged Expressions set.  The cute little whale and sun were Echo Park designs I found in the Silhouette Design Studio.  The sun was a journalling spot, but with removing just a couple of layers, it became just the perfect sun to finish out my card.  I used my favorite Sizzix folder (Divine Swirls) to give some texture to the clouds that I finished off with just a little Distress Ink.  I couldn't believe how many steps it took to cut out everything for this deceptively simple looking card, but, boy, was it worth it! 

Making it my own

Last weekend I watched as my car drove away without me forever.  Yep, it's all over.  My first brand new car is no longer mine after 10 years of it being my baby.  But I know it was the right decision to sell it and buy my Mom's car.  While my car was perfect when I was young and single, Mom's car is a better fit for us now.  But I've been struggling with finding a new normal with the new car.  Even though we've been driving it for nearly a month now, it still feels like "Mom's car."  I've been thinking about what I need to do to make it feel more like my own.  Hubby suggested that I cut another of the Tony Stewart design I had made for the other car, but that just doesn't feel right for this car.  I've been thinking about it for a long time now and sitting at the Winterhawks' game last night when I looked up at the electronic board circling the arena.  

It had the Hawk eyes logo all the way around and it suddenly hit me that the eyes would be a good car "tattoo."  It just seemed right.  So tonight I looked online and discovered that the Hawks don't sell anything even remotely close (nor can I get a replacement license plate holder for the one that broke or a t-shirt as the Western Conference Champions - sigh).  So I found a picture of the eyes and made my own.  While I'm pretty happy with how the eyes turned out, I'm still not sure it's quite right.  But, for now, I'm just going to live with it and see how it feels.

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.