Card After and Before

I made a card for this challenge one of my friends on SCS has begun. It is a fun challenge, we pick a piece of designer paper and we all make a card from it. I have posted the first card I did back a few days. It was my turn so I picked this pretty brown and pink and aqua(?) paper that I had bought at Artist Oasis in a pack. It is by Paper Salon and I have to giggle every time I say salon because of that guy in the movie who kept pronouncing it sah -lon (sorta French accent) instead of suh-lon (make sense?). Anyway the first card is the final product. The second card is what I thought was fine until I uploaded it and all I could see was this big blank pink layer in the middle. Yuck! I just so happen (really!) to have sitting on my desk a strip of hearts that I had colored in earlier today with the same colors in the designer paper! Gasp! Perfect! So I cut it to fit and carefully slid it under the ribbon and it worked. It looks much better now :)

Bunny again

Isn't this adorable? Yet another card made with this image! I just think it is so sweet. I sent it to my BFF's daughter who also scrapbooks and I had some things hanging around that I wasn't using so I sent her a little "RAK" and this card. She loves bunny's have had several as pets so I thought she might like it. I see that blogspot is having an outage in three minutes so I will cut this short, any questions about colors or anything on this card please ask in the comments! I will respond :)

New Look!

I kind of shocked some of you by switching the look, sorry! I was thinking of it since in a week it will be my one year anniversary of blogging! Should I have a card blog candy giveaway? Or a product blog candy? Hmmmmm, I must do something! I love this new look. I love the ocean (don't most of us?) and this just seems so inviting. The only thing is the butterfly title I made doesn't fit anywhere. I put it on the bottom for now but I will have to think about it. It doesn't look good at the top because it sits over top of the cool looking background. I could make it transparent but then it still would float oddly on the background... oh well.

Here is one of the cards that I mentioned the other day. It is that new Stampin Up! set "A light unto my path". I just love it! Fits my new look!!! By coincidence though. I used that new iridescent ribbon and cord I got a few weeks ago. I can't get enough of it. I am using it on all my cards, even if it doesn't match perfectly just because of the glimmer and different colors is shows. That's also a charm I picked up at the LSS that says "believe". I ended up mounting on a dimensional since it kept facing backward. I am going to give it to my Bible study teacher, I don't think she reads my blog so hopefully it will be a surprise.

Thanks for looking as always and have a great day!

Scrapbook Layout

Today I am going to share a scrapbook layout. I made two more cards today so once I have them on my computer and cropped I will put them here. This is a very simple layout but I really like it. There seems to be enough print paper but not overwhelming. The words are printed from my computer onto the card stock and the rest are all rub-ons. That frog is hilarious! (remember to click on image to make it larger then hit the back button to come back here unless it opened in another window). Just Grandma giving JP his birthday presents and sharing a moment opening them with him. She loves to spoil him! That's what Grandmas are for. We gave him family presents at home and let him open just the gifts people brought at the party. I wish we could say don't bring gifts but it never works! He has enough stuff! But don't they all these days? I don't have the name of this paper but seems it might have been Laguna Boys or Laguna Girls??? If someone really needs it let me know and I will hunt it down!

Boho West Card

This is a card I made last week from the color scheme guide in the front of the catalog. I am going to make cards with all of the color schemes in the catalog eventually. Just for fun. The curve layout is from the catty too. I used my Creative Memories Wave cutter for it. Worked perfect! I also used my beloved nestabilities both scallop and plain circles on it. The stamps are Stampin Up! (except birthday wishes) the True Friend set and Baroque Motifs. The colors are pomegranate, cocoa, regal rose and chocolate chip. The color I didn't use was pretty in pink since I am out of it but I think it would look better than regal rose. IMHO :)

Scrappin' Thanksgiving

I never really know what to do about scrapbooking Thanksgiving. It is a hard event to take pictures of and journal about. I cook it every year as it is my favorite holiday to cook. My nephew and his wife and son used to come down from CT. every year for it but it is a tough time for them to come now with work and weather and traffic! Now that my in-laws live in this state they come over which also means we get to enjoy my mother-in-law's cornbread stuffing. She makes the best, bar-none, in the world! But really other than the huge mess to clean up - there isn't any other pictures or comments. We sit down and eat a yummy meal, eat too much dessert and feel miserable and that's about it. We look forward to that every year! So this is my scrapbook page on it. I tried this year to take pictures that convey the food aspect. Oh and by the way, the reason it is at the kitchen table - the dining room is my scraproom! LOL! Doesn't matter to us, to use a dining room once a year is a big waste of space in my opinion. Especially since I have so much stuff...

Tomorrow I will post a card or two. In case y'all are missing them ;)

First Swim Meet

This is one of the scrapbook pages I finished. I love it, it is kind of crazy but fits well with my little one's first swim meet. I used paper from a kit by A Page in Time Scrapbooks. I have belonged to that club for three years now, Amy chooses the best paper and makes the best layouts of all the monthly paper clubs I have seen. Of course that is my opinion :) I made the title and the journaling on my computer. By the way if you click on the scrapbook page image you can see it bigger, you have to hit your back button to come back here though (unless it opened in a new window). All the images I put on here can be seen bigger :)

He was so excited to be in a swim meet. He loves swimming so much! When he was 2 he jumped into the deep end of the pool and after my heart started beating again I jumped in after him and he surfaced the water with the world's biggest grin on his face! He never looked back, he naturally from the beginning was able to come to the surface, he just couldn't wade yet. I knew right then and there we were going to swimming lessons as soon as possible so he wouldn't drown himself! No fear! He is in swim clinic this Winter and will be on the team again this Summer and hopefully since he will be 6 coming up he will be able to be on year round teams come Fall. As long as he wants to go, I will bring him :)

More pages and cards tomorrow.

Back!

And I have many goodies to share this week with you! I took off a week from the computer because I did a time survey and I spent an average of 8-9 hours a day on it! That's way too much. I am home all day since I am raising my kids so in between picking them up, dropping them off, cooking, cleaning and running errands I just leave my computer on and go sit down at it in between. I thought I would give it a try of not being on it for a week, but I didn't totally do it. Bad, I know. I did check my email daily. I didn't however, spend any time on Splitcoast until today nor did I shop the scrapbooking and stamping sites :) Now I have to keep it up because it is so easy to sit down and not get up from this addictive little toy! Maybe I shouldn't keep it next to the kitchen...

OK now on to goodies! Some bunny Loves you! This card is a Happy Hopper stamp image created by Ellen Jareckie of House Mouse. My friend gave me two Happy Hopper stamps for Christmas (amongst other things!.) Stampabilities puts it on rubber and the name of this one is Love Bunny. I actually stamped and mounted the image a week ago and then later made the actual card. I used a red heart brad on the image and some rose brads to match the purely pomegranate mat. The background of the not quite navy is stamped with versamark using the canvas stamp by SU. The chocolate chip layer is embossed using the Cuttlebug. I shaped a gold wire into the heart charm that is hanging from the hemp twine that I got from the pinkhedgehog online store. That is the tab punch from SU that I put the sentiment on, the sentiment was printed with my computer. So that is the first one for this week! Tomorrow might be a scrapbook page or a card, I have both ready! Funny how much you can get done when you AREN'T on the computer!!!

TTFN

Ta Ta For Now, I will be back in a week with lots of (hopefully!) creative pretties to share! Also, February 6th will be my one year anniversary of this blog and I would like to think up something special for it. So I will be back. Have a good week!

Flap Fold Card

This is the card I mentioned yesterday. It is from Technique Junkies Newsletter (see link to right) and I think it is one of my all time favorite cards to make. It's just cool. Of course one of the reasons I like it so much is that I can use my favorite scrapbook papers and they are displayed in such a way that you actually get to see them and see a stamped image. A lot of times they are hiding behind the image. This is a get well card for a gal in one of my yahoo groups who had surgery this week. Just a RAK type thing. I used Basic Grey Phoebe Collection -Chinatown piece. I also had some ribbon I got as a freebie in something I purchased and it goes perfect with this! I love that ribbon and can't find out where to get it. It is striped with iridescent stripes that are so pretty. I also used my new set of Nestabilities, I knew I was going to love these! The outside and inside scallop circle and then the inside circle are made with them. Works great in my Cuttlebug and I didn't have to buy anything special to use them. I stamped the butterfly on white cardstock and then used the watercolor crayons and a waterbrush to color them. I then used Stickles which is where the cat laid and messed them up. I tried to fix it. They are kind of spread out weird but it's not bad. The other pictures are of the opening the first flap and the the second flap which is all the way open. A very Spring-like card for Winter but it actually fits out strange 70 degree weather!

Volcano!

Have I shown you the mural of the Volcano and Tsunami on my son's bedroom wall? I just love it, she did an awesome job painting it and it so fits my little one's obsession! I love how she had the wave break onto the door. He wanted the "pipes" to show which is the inside of the volcano. Also the paint has texture in it so the brown feels like sand paper.

I have not created much this week. Busy schedule. I started a college course and I have a good amount of homework/reading to do and I am trying to figure out how to time everything. I am cutting back on reading so many of the yahoo and such groups I am in for one. Eeek, that takes hours a day in itself to read! Then as you know I joined Jazzercise in hopes to exercise some and that cuts into the "my time" to stamp or scrap too. I have been working on a get well card all day (I work on it for 5 minutes at a time LOL!) and when I am done with writing this I will finish it and put it on my blog tomorrow. I used some Basic Grey paper for it, pretty! Oh and get this, after I put stickles on the card the cat laid on it! I had gotten up to go do dishes or something in the kitchen and she took advantage of that. Now I have to put them on again and fix it, ugh! Yep, she is your typical cat all us crafters have to live with! I shall post a picture of her here too :) Give you something to look at least. OH dear, what a messy desk LOL!

So anyway the card will be up tomorrow.

Scrapbookin'

Here are two of the scrapbook pages I finished last week. They are kind of plain and not up to par with what I see out there but it's the best I could do with them. OK, so I had made a goal of finishing one of my 50 some odd half-done scrapbook pages a day. I haven't done any in a week! Ugh! I did do a whole bunch in one day (New Years Day actually) and then haven't done it since. Now how am I going to finish this if I don't do it? LOL! Why is it so hard to do this? I enjoy it but the title and journaling is just so drudge work to me. I love cards because they are "done" - no thinking up a title or writing a story. However today I had about an hour and I got something badly needed done. I organized my cards! I now have 3 shoe box sized boxes full with them filed under Christmas, His Birthday, Her Birthday, Blank, etc. and I used my nice little Brother P-Touch label printer and printed labels on front of each box what was in it. Now when I need a card I can go right to it! I am a happy camper. I definitely have too many that are blank or hello type cards and not enough birthday. So organizing helped this too. I had bought a nice organizer but it is way too small and I surpassed it about a year ago, even with giving out cards!

I am so excited too, I pre-ordered the new Cuttlebug embossing folders that come out the end of this month! I can't wait, there are some great new ones! I just wish they would make the imprint a full 4.25 x 5.5. Maybe they will with the new ones. Off I go, dinner is coming out of the oven.

I joined a House Mouse Swap

It sounds fun. It is for the House Mouse stamp of the month, January through June. There are 6 people in each swap, each one of us are responsible to purchase a pre-assigned month's stamp. We stamp enough for everyone, send them out and then we all make cards from them and send them on to each other. So I got my first image and it's a cutie! You know my love for coffee and then for House Mouse too, the two combined are perfect! So here is what I made for the swap.

Well tomorrow I go back to Jazzercise. I joined last week, then got sick the next day with a cold (odd coincidence) and have had a head that feels like it is going to explode for several days now... so hopefully I can go without a box of Kleenex tomorrow! I hate that, I always get sick when I exercise! Everyone tells me it has nothing to do with it but when I sweat and get cold and can't warm up for hours like the other day, whatever is lurking in my system attacks. So I am trying to be positive and keep it up! Got to exercise (hate it) somehow and this is the only thing I halfway can stand doing. Wish me luck!