Cuttlebug Baby

I've been playing around with my Cuttlebug a little bit. I've only recently starting purchasing the "cool" toys, so I still have limited tools to work with. I have a few stamp sets and some stamps I've picked up here and there - mostly the Michaels $1 ones. I have a very long list of sets I want to add to my collection, but for now, I'm working with what I have. Also, there are several of the punches I really want - like the scalloped circles and squares. I've been hunting a Giga scallop circle for some time now, with no luck. So again, I'm working with what I do have until I can build up my arsenal! ;o)

So, I made a couple of baby cards with using the swirl embossing folder, a little baby feet stamp by Stamp craft, and some misc. ribbon. They are extremely simple, but I think they turned out cute.

Belated Father's Day Card

I didn't post this around Father's Day because my Dad was out of the country and we didn't get to celebrate until July 4. And yes, I realize that is was almost 2 weeks ago that I gave it to him and I'm just now getting around to posting it! Hey - I'm trying to get back on track!


All TLC products except the brads. (I think they are MM)

I think I have my mojo back! I've been in a creative mood, so the plan is to have something new posted at LEAST 4 days a week. More if I can manage it!!!

It's like Christmas in July!!!

I've been having so much fun the past few days! I've gotten so many new "toys" it's truly like Christmas!

First, I received an awesome box from Michele. I won her blog candy!!! This came on Wednesday - right after I came home from vacation, and I had so much fun digging through it all. It had lots of great things! I only sign up for blog candy that I really want, and now I've been totally blessed winning two different ones! Awesome! Thanks Michelle!

And then there was my shopping spree. My Dad gave me a very generous birthday check, and I had SO MUCH FUN spending it!! It is always tempting to spend my money on the kids and other things, but this time, I spent EVERY PENNY on stuff for ME! And I don't even feel guilty!

I got the two top things that were on my "list". A Crop-A-Dile and a Cuttlebug!!!!! I've been drooling over the Cuttlebug ever since I first heard about it!

Here are a couple of pictures of all my goodies:



Um, can you tell I like buttons? LOL! Those were 50 cents a package, so I got quite a few!

I also got a Crop-A-Dile, but didn't take a pic of it. (I got a pink one, of course!)

I also won two auctions for SU! stamp sets. Happy Harmony came in the mail a couple days ago, and Alphabet Soup will be here Monday or Tuesday.

PLUS I won a little challenge at Paper Petal Memories, and have a prize on the way as well - can't wait to see what it is!

So yes, I'm having LOTS of fun with all my new goodies. Now hopefully, I'll have lots of time to play!

Looks Like Spring

Back in January, I ordered my very first Stampin Up! stamps, and I couldn't wait to ink them up. But I actually haven't used them as much as I thought I would have by now. Shame on me!

I pulled out the Looks Like Spring set and put it to use. I had used the big flower and one of the background stamps, but the others were feeling neglected.

So I put them to use on this birthday card I made for Kelly - my cousin-in-law!



It's hard to tell in the picture, but I stamped the large flower in brown and then in pink and cut them both out. The brown layer is behind the pink layer. Then I stamped the smaller one in brown and added it to the top with a brad.

For the three small flowers, I used the LLS punch and punched them first in solid pink cardstock, and then punched the stamped flowers and layered them with brads as well. I LOVE that punch - I wish they made one for the larger flower!

This was the first time I used two background stamps together, and I actually found it a little challenging to get them lined up just right, but I'm pleased with the final outcome.

The sentiment is from the Sincere Salutations set and the ribbon is from Michaels' $1 bin.

Back in the Saddle!

OK - I'm back from our little vacation. We were gone for 8 days, so obviously I haven't had much of a chance to work on anything! But I'm back now, and getting back into the swing of things, and it's time to get really busy creating. I have so many things I want and need to work on!

So, I'm officially back in the saddle, and I plan to be updating more regularly again!

Today I worked on invitations for my neighbor's daughter's birthday party. She is turning 13 and having a pretty large party. She had gone to a specialty type store to pick out some invitations and was a bit shocked at what they were going to cost.
So my neighbor called me and asked what it would take to make them. I told her to send Allison over and we could look at some stuff, she could decide what she wanted, and I'd be glad to help her make them.

So that's what we did. She made a choice on a style of invite yesterday. This morning I took her shopping to pick out papers and ribbon. I think she had a lot of fun picking the stuff out.

Then we came back to my house to get busy. I cut the paper for her, and showed her what to do, and she did the paper and ribbon for most of the invites herself before she had to go to another friend's party. So I finished them up for her. They are simple, but cute. And she was extremely happy with them.

What was really cool was to see how proud of them she was. Most 13 yr. old girls can't say they had a part of creating their own invites. She was talking on the phone to one of her friends and she was telling her that she was working on the invitations, and how cute they were. Yeah - she was quite proud. She even told me these were way cuter than the really expensive ones at the store!

So, here they are - she couldn't decide which paper she liked better for the top, so she decided to do half with the pink and half with the orange, and switch up the ribbon. The party stamp is from one of the $1 Studio G sets from Michaels. Then I just used a pink Zig writer to make the dots around the edge.





They turned out cute, don'tcha think? We made 30 of these in about 3 hours - not too bad!

Happy Independence Day!

Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July celebration.

We are headed to my parents' house to celebrate, and we will be having a late celebration of Father's Day and my birthday as well. It's going to be a good time!

We will be out of town for the next 8 days, so I won't be able to post anything while we are gone. I'll be back the end of next week with something new to post.

For now, in honor of the holiday, I thought I'd post a card. I actually made this one last year, but you haven't seen it, so it's new to you! :o)


Pretty simple card - torn cardstock; I printed the sentiment on vellum and attached with buttons by Dress it Up. I don't remember exactly where it came from, but it was something I had downloaded from a website.

Well, I'm outta here - "see" you all soon!

Favorite Summer Activity

I started an All About Me (AAM) book a while back. At first, I couldn't imagine why I would do this - it seemed a little vain to me. But "everyone else was doing it" and it peaked my interest. So I started trying to figure out what the big deal was.

I came to the conclusion that it wasn't vain at all. When I'm gone, my kids and grand kids and generations beyond will have my scrapbooks to look at. They will be able to tell I loved my family and I had so much fun creating pages about them.

But what will those books tell them about me - the one behind the creating?

Not Much.

And that's what I decided, at least for me, is what and AAM book is for.

At Paper Petal Memories, we have a special thread that is for these albums. Linda, (the moderator) provides prompts for pages to complete in our AAM albums. There are some that don't totally appeal to me, just not things I find that I want included in my book. But that is the beauty - it is mine, and I can decide what to include.

Well, the latest prompt was, "What is your favorite summer activity?" I liked this one and decided to work on it.

My AAM album is 8.5x11 - the first time I've worked with this size, and I've been quite happy I've chosen this size. If felt my typically 12x12 was just too large for this and the smaller 8x8 that I like to do sometimes, I felt wasn't quite large enough.

Anyway, here's the LO I came up with. And thought most of my AAM LO's are only 1 page, I turned this one into 2.



All products are Top Line Creations, except for the brads (Making Memories) and the vellum that includes my journaling.

(It looks a little dark in the photo, but it really isn't that dark.)

Baby Mine

I SCRAPBOOKED!!!!! I actually made myself sit down and play for a bit! I'm sooooo happy!

I got 2 2-page layouts done. But I thought I'd spread it out just a little, so I'm only sharing one today. I'll be back tomorrow with the other one.

These pictures are from January 2005. I've been wanting to scrap them for quite sometime, but wasn't sure what direction to go with. I finally decided to quit thinking about it so much and just do it. So here's the result.



I have no idea why each side photographed completely differently, but I just didn't feel like going back and doing it again.

I used my color wheel to help decide the colors. I knew I wanted a black background, and I knew I wanted the red. But I needed a third color, and the pale purple in her outfit just wasn't cutting it. A dark purple came up, which I had not even considered, and I really liked it. I don't know why it appears blue on my screen though - trust me, it is dark purple.

I wanted to keep it pretty simple, with minimal embellishing since I really wanted the focus to be the photos.

I printed the journaling using Blackladder font. I used a quote for the first part, that I found on the internet some time back. I don't remember where I found it. It reads:
As I gaze upon my daughter's face, I think to myself...Never have I seen an angel fly so low.
My beautiful baby girl...words will never be able to express how much I love you!

I used miscellaneous cardstock, MM brads and Heidi Swapp chipboard hearts. The title is from one of the DCWV vellum quote stack books.

Father's Day Card

I can't believe I *STILL* haven't really had any creating time! I am making it a priority to get something done this week!

My Cousin-in-law came over on Saturday to get some help with a scrapbook she's putting together. We had a blast and I had so much fun helping her! I felt my creative juices beginning to flow again, so now I'm REALLY itching to create!

Now I'm just trying to decide whether to stay up late and work on something or go to bed and get up early to get started. Decisions....decisions!!!

I did have time to make a Father's Day card for my FIL. And if you knew him, you'd know why this card was perfect for him. Nothing fancy, but very suited to him.

I found the image online and created a paper piecing from it, and added a little detail with a Zig pen. I mounted it on a lighter cardstock and trimmed it, so it wouldn't blend into the background so much. I printed the sentiment, tore and inked it. Then just added a couple brads. The background paper is by Provo Craft and the cardstock is misc. pieces from my scrap drawer. Once I found the image I wanted to use, this went together very quickly.

My Dad was in China on Father's Day, and we haven't been able to get together to celebrate yet. We will do that next week, so I won't be able to post his until after that.

I promise I will be posting again this week...stay tuned!

Graduation Card

OK, I have been in a very dry spell the past couple weeks, and my fingers are aching to get messy! I NEED to create something, and SOON! There are just so many other things that have needed to be done, that it's taking all my creative mojo!

So, I'm sharing a card I made a couple weeks ago for a cousin who was graduating.

This card isn't fancy or anything - it was for a boy, so I couldn't get cutesy or froo-froo. What made me smile about this card was the colors.

I received the graduation invitation and decided to use the school colors as my inspiration. I was tickled pink when I discovered I had the same exact purple colored paper that was on the invitation!

The second color was gold, and I had just enough of that in my scrap pile to work. I did have to run out and buy some gold embossing powder - I knew I wanted the image embossed in gold!

I only had one graduation stamp to work with, and I even looked for one when I went to get the ep, but couldn't find one. So I worked with what I had.

I found matching purple and gold embroidery thread and thought that worked just right. Then I added a gold brad with a little bit of the thread for the tassel. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

And when Steven turned the card over, he was surprise to see my stamp on the back. He said he was expecting to see a Hallmark symbol. I'll take that as a compliment!



It doesn't look like I will have much time this weekend to do any creating either, but hopefully next week - we'll see!

Cousins

I did a LO today! I haven't had a chance to create anything all week, even though I hoped to. It was just one of "those" weeks, and I had other things going on and honestly just wasn't in the mood to create. But that all changed today.

I was in a 5-supply kit swap at PPM in which we each sent to another 'player' the following:

1 sheet solid cardstock
2 sheets double sided pp
1 lettering ( either rub-ons, stickers, etc)
1 type of embellishment ( a yard of ribbon, buttons,stickers,etc)
The challenge, when we received our kit, was to create a LO using ONLY those supplies.
This was a bit of a challenge for me. It was very tempting to just add something else from my stash....but I played by the rules.

This is what I received:

I Loved these papers! I believe they are by Wild Asparagus. (I know the letters are.)

I wasn't feeling quite as creative as I had hoped, so the first thing I did was find a sketch that I'd like to work with for inspiration. I chose one from here. It is the last sketch - the one that has an example LO following it.

Then I started looking through pictures to decide what to use. I chose pictures from last weekend of my kids with their cousin. I planned to print them in black and white because I figured I'd never find pictures to compliment the colors in the papers. But I forgot to switch them before printing, and to my surprise, the colors in the photos actually went well with the papers!
So, this is what I came up with:

And I have to say, I was quite happy with it until I wrote the info in on the bottom. My white Signo pen didn't seem to like the textured paper, and I'm really wishing I had just used a black pen. It just doesn't look right to me, but oh well...not much I can do about it now! And it just shows that I'm human and make mistakes!

There are a lot of buttons, but that's the only embellishment I could use, so I used them! I really wanted to cheat and add a flower until I remembered recently seeing others making flowers out of paper, so I used the patterned papers to do just that. (Since the paper was double sided, I actually had 4 patterns to work with, but only used 3.) Oh, and this picture doesn't do justice to the colors in these papers - they are so pretty in person!

This was a little 'out of the box' for me, but I had a lot of fun! And at least I got something done this week!

More Sympathy

Just quick post - so very busy right now! I'm hoping to have lots of time next week to be creative. We'll see! I have so many things I need to work on! Here are 3 more quick and super-simple sympathy cards I made. All using the Close as a Memory set from Stampin' Up. I won't be around this weekend, but hopefully I'll be back in full swing next week. See ya then!

I Won!!!

I WON BLOG CANDY!! Woo Hoo!! I meant to post this earlier, but I just keep forgetting. But I won this AWESOME blog candy from Heidi at Sweet Somethings. If you haven't checked out her blog, be sure to do so, she is very talented! And look at the wonderfully sweet goodies I won!


I snagged the picture from her blog, since she had already taken a great one, and I already opened my stuff before I remembered to take one! (Hope you don't mind Heidi!) Be on the lookout for these goodies in upcoming projects!

Sympathy Cards

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in over a week! I've been pretty busy, and just haven't taken the time this past week to post here. Sorry!

Today is our son's 13th Birthday, and our 15th Anniversary, and we are trying to decide what we really want to do today. So I thought I'd jump on here and post a couple cards before we go so no one thinks I've fallen off the planet!

I made these sympathy cards for the charity event I mentioned earlier. They are pretty simple and basic. I used the Close as a Memory stamp set from Stampin' Up. I think the rest is pretty self explanatory.

Bella Cards

Recently we had an image challenge at Paper Petal Memories. The hostess picks a stamp set and stamps the images and mails them to all the players. The players create a card (or whatever else they wish) using the images. We then email the finished product(s) to the hostess and she posts them all under her name in the gallery so no one knows whose is who's. Then everyone has a chance to vote on their favorite. This round was using some of the Bella images.

I had never had a chance to play with any of these before, but now they are definitely on my list of stamps I want! They are so much fun to work with. I created three cards. I am only posting 2 of them here, because I'm not at all happy with the way the 3rd one came out.


This is the first one I made. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. I really love the pink and black. I colored the image with SU! watercolor pencils. I used black SU! Stazon ink to make the brads black, as I didn't have any black ones on hand. The sentiment is from one of the $1 Studio G sets from Michael's.



And this is the second one.
First, I have to say that I was HEAVILY inspired by this card by Julie Buhler at Paper Pleasing Ideas. I am beyond pleased with how this turned out. AND even more pleased that this was the WINNING CARD!!! That's right - I won!! What does the winner get? All the other entries from the other participants. It's really just a fun little contest. Chip asked, so do you win money? And I had to disappoint him and tell him no, but I win the HONOR of knowing people liked something I made! Yeah - he was just as proud as I was - HA!
He's waiting for the day that I start making some money doing what I love. Cuz it sure does cost a lot!

Oh - again, I used a Studio G stamp, and that circle is raised up on foam tape. The blue ribbon came off a gift I received recently. It was the perfect color blue! And I colored the images with the watercolor pencils.