Playing with my friends

So a couple of weeks ago I hit upon a sale for cricut cartridges, buy 1 get one free. And anyone who knows me, knows I love a great sale! So I bought the Give a hoot cartridge and the Sesame Street Friends cartridge. I'm planning a little something with the Sesame Street guys for Owen's upcoming birthday. How cute are these guys?? I cut them all out with scraps and layered them up. After I glued them I modgepodged them for a bit more durablity. Owen loves them!

Elmo has taken a bit of a beating cause Owen likes to make him dance and sing the Elmo's World song. La la la, la la la...Elmo's world!

And for Cookie Monster he keeps going "cookie!" "um num num na"

Ernie is his personal favorite. He was actually mine too when I was little. How cool is that? Ernie was the first Street character's name that Owen learned to say.

This little cutie is Abby Caddabby. So cute cause one of my dayhome boys asked me where Ethan was! He figures where there's and Abby there should be an Ethan too.

And finally Bert and Big Bird, course Owen always says "quack quack" for Big Bird. Too funny! There are still a bunch of characters that I haven't done yet but these are the ones that I tried first. I'm planning on some big ones for Owen's birthday. Should be fun!

stocking up on cards

It never fails. I have an important event like an anniversary or birthday and I'm scrambling at the last minute to make a card. Then a couple of months ago I saw that my friend Anna had a fabulous idea and created a card organizer for her completed cards. So I happily ordered myself a 3rd photo organizer and I'm using it to organize and hold all my finished cards! So I've been busily making more to stock up. This card was made using a 6x6 basic grey paper pad, I added an acrylic stamp from Autumn Leaves and the sentiment is an Ali Edwards stamp from Technique Tuesday. This stamp has been used a ton in my scrapbooking so I figured to pull it out for my cardmaking.
I can't remember where I got this stamped butterfly image, must have been an image swap I was in. I paired it with my SU! embossing folder and watercolor pencils & blender pen. The sentiment is also an Ali Edward's stamp.
This pattern paper is from SU! and is so beautiful. I added a birthday stamp and kept it pretty simple. I used some Bazzill bling for the background.
This whole card was made with Stampin' Up! products and punches with the exception of the Bazzill bling and the "be you" stamp (Ali Edwards Tech. Tues.)
I had gotten these cute little die cut cards free last year from SU! and I'm finally using them. I think that I'm going to make a whole set of these to give away.
Notice the paper again? Love the color combo and the designs!
I've had this "grow" canvas tag in my stash and I've been struggling to find a good use for it. Well it worked for this card. The canvas tag is from Prima. This stamp was a hostess gift from a SU! book party that I hosted. I used watercolor pencils and a blender pen. I also dug through my stamps and found this piece of Heidi Swapp invisibles that I had inked with ranger colorwash (cranberry)

Finding some time to be creative

Just playing around with some simple paper and stamps is like fresh rain for this tired mom :) A quick little post while dh barbeques some kabobs and we get ready to eat. So loving this new tree stamp set from Stampin' Up! its by far one of my favorite!

I was thrilled to get part 1 of my Stampin' Up! order, with some new pretty paper to play with straight from the clearance section, I fell in love with the grey, white, green and baja breeze color combo! So happy they are bringing baja breeze back!!

I used the new sizzix embosslitz butterfly die (it embosses and cuts all in one step!) So worth the money cause it has so many sizes of butterflies.

Just using up some scraps. Totally need some new sentiment stamps :)

Digging around in my scrap box I came across this paper. I remember using it for a special layout about me and my kids. How could I not use it again?

Just freshening things up a bit

After the weather this past weekend I felt the need to freshen up the ol' blog. Hoping to get some time to play with some paper and stamps this weekend :)

So I dusted off the ol' stamps...

and a made a few cards! It felt so good to just play! This card was made with Stampin' Up! inks, butterfly stamp, cardstock and their scalloped punch, the pattern paper is October Afternoon. I'm a sucker for red & pink combos!

I got to play with my new sizzlets embossing/die cut butterfly from Stampin' Up! its so cute!! I used Bella Blvd. pattern paper, Jillibean Soup ribbon, SU! stamp, Prima pearls and my cuttlebug embossing folder.

This was a fun card to do, got to play with some coloring and my blender pen. I used SU! cardstock and stamps, Basic Grey pattern paper and ribbon from my mom's stash :) I wonder if my dh knows I hardly ever use the sewing machine that he got for me on fabric?

This was just a cute, simple card using SU! sweet pea felt flowers. The white scallop circle was made with my spellbinders and the cardstock and stamps are SU!

I got to play with some of the new style of SU! stamps, the acrylics (the monkey) and they are so great! I love that I can place them way better than my old wood mounted stamps. Inside this card is a birthday sentiment.

This card was made with a Unity stamp, my favorite I think. I also used SU! new salebration border punch. Very cute!

One of my few non-Stampin' Up! stamps (I have a personal connection with my rep, she's my sister in law) I think this stamp is from Stampendous, but I used a cuttlebug embossing folder and prima pearls.

I had to have this beautiful paper from My Mind's Eye but I thought if I used it in a scrapbook you wouldn't get the full yumminess of the flock. You can't see the sentiment well but it says happiness always.

This was another fun card to do. I made a mistake with the butterfly and colored it a really wonky color that could have potentially wrecked the card but I quickly did another one and put a pop dot underneath and volia! mistake no longer :)

I was inspired to use up some scraps that I had kicking around. The embossed swirls were done on a glossy sheet with some ranger alcohol inks, I trimmed it up and colorblocked the patters. I stamped the cherry blossoms with a stamp from Inkadinkado (I think).

This was also another quick card (my favorite kind!) I used some scraps from the Basic Grey Archaic line, the SU! punch and one of my favorite new tree stamps.

Some scrapbooking to share

I was able to get some scrapbooking done this past weekend at our local crop. A big thanks to everyone who came to have fun! This layout was done for another layout race at scrapshotz messageboard. I had so much fun playing with these bright bold papers. All the papers are by Cherry Arte.

I recieved my March kit from the Memory Workshop and I had so much fun with these papers from Pink Paislee.

Playing with my gypsy, I used the label from the Songbird cartridge (my favorite so far!) and made it as big as I could. Love how it turned out :)

Same kit, but I added some pearls from the Prima e. collection. I dug out a stamp that I've had for ages and embellished it with some kiwi smooch, very fun stuff!

I ended up dropping a sticker on the right corner of the bottom photo and when I try to peel it up it left a whole lotta yucky behind. So I embellished with some fun word stickers. Accidents are oppunities to embellish ;)

This was made with a kit from Just Cre8. I had fun with the bold colors and design from the WRMK papers, I added some scribblez vinyl butterflies and some chipboard flowers and jilliebean soup journalling spots. Makes for a fun easy page.

Another one from the Memory Workshop kit, I used my new Stampin' Up sellabration punch and a few pearls. I sure put my cricut and my gyspy to work this weekend. Love love love the fact that I can weld the letters together now. Makes placement so much easier.

Another Just Cre8 kit, I really love using kits to pack for crops. I packed up 4 kits with matching photos, a few extra sheets of basic color cardstock, a tool kit and my cricut with my gypsy. My bag wasn't bursting with supplies but I was able to get 7 layouts done (I finished the others when I got home)

Surprisingly a double page layout! I had too many photos for just one so I did a double :)

This was one of my favorites from the weekend. Look! I stamped a title! And its actually straight! Thank goodness for acylic stamps.

This was a quick one, done in only 25 minutes. I kept it simple, using vinyl and stamps for the title, added a sheer ticket journalling spot from Maya Road and voila! An easy peasy page.

It was so good to get away for a bit to get some scrapbooking done. Friday night was the scrapbooking class I taught. I had a lot of fun and I think that everyone else did too. I was so impressed that we got 5 layouts done with some ladies finished 6. It was awesome! Looking forward to the next class :)

Life so far...

So this past December Becky Higgins came out with this new scrapbooking concept called Project Life (www.beckyhiggins.com/projectlife/) I was intrigued. But I waited too long to order the kit from Becky so I ended up having to wait until a Canadian distributer came around. So despite the fact that I wanted to start at the begining of January I only got my kit mid March.

I didn't let that stop me. After I recieved my kit I put the contents together and started the process of updating it. It very handy for me to have my photos organized by date on my computer. I just printed 7 at a time and worked my way through the weeks. I'm caught up to this week as of Sunday. It was a bit of a job but I'm happy I did it. Even though I'm not a chronological scrapbooker I really enjoyed my Dec. Daily this is just a bigger project. I really don't think that it will take away from my regular scrapbooking everyday moments but it takes some of the pressure off to do all those events that happen but I don't like scrapbooking. Its kind of like a snapshot of life for me that I will develop more into stories and pages for my regular scrapbooking.

Some sneek peeks

Scrapbooking time has been very scarce lately. I've been busy with paperwork and just a bunch of stuff. Here are some sneeks of a class that I'm teaching at a crop next Friday.

This was the only layout that I've done for my own enjoyment. It was for a challenge over at scrapshotz.com I'm so excited to get back into teaching again!

Totally making good use of my Martha Stewart punches. Say what you want they are awesome tools!

I got a chance to work with some Heidi Swapp invisibles which are pretty cool.

Don't you just love my daughter's spelling? She's mixing up English and French spelling rules and throwing in a few of her own lol!

breathing in and out

Its been one of those weeks of needing to remind myself to breath in and breath out. Looking forward to a bit of a break in a few days as I haven't had one for a couple weeks again.No scrapbooking to share today, hopefully soon. I've joined a Trash your Stash challenge and my challenge to myself is to complete 45 layouts by the end of April. Good thing that I'm heading to 2 crops before the deadline :)