Sunday, September 28, 2008

Beautiful Girl

June posted a challenge on AMR, as part of the September Photo of the Day challenge. The challenge was this: use 1 piece of cardstock, 1 piece of patterned paper, one non-scrappy item, and 3-5 eyelets. Embellishments must be made from the patterned paper. Chipboard could be used only if it was covered with the patterned paper. NO ribbons, NO minibrads, NO acrylic.. nothing else.

I chose these papers:

The patterned paper is from the My Mind's Eye Out & About shortstack with glitter. I cut out the glittered part, first with scissors, then with a craft knife. Applied pop dots to the back, then set it aside. {Not sure I would want to do this much cutwork again.. it took an hour or more just for that!}
Tore off the corner of the remaining PP scrap and inked it with StazOn Timber Brown ink. Once I decided where I wanted it and the photo to go, I marked on the cardstock, and cut a scrap out of the center. This is what I used for the letters. Once this was done the PP, photo, and cutwork were applied to the cardstock {which came out of my stash, so I am not sure which company it belongs to}.

Letters were stamped with StazOn and Techinique Tuesday's Eiffel Tower letters {I really really want to get the lowercase set}. Letters were cut out and edge distressed, and attached to the LO with pop dots.

The photo corner was made by punching first chipboard, then the patterned paper with the EK Success corner punch. The pieces put together, the edges were inked, and then the corner was adhered to the photo.

Holes were made for the eyelets using the Big Bite, but I had trouble lining them up afterwards, so I had to use my old eyelet tools. {LOL. Took me a while to find that little hammer, I haven't used it for so long.}

My something non-scrappy is the flower - it was originally a hair tie. I attached it with a bunch of glue dots.

{Incidentally, this is one of my favorite photos of Rhi.. I love the way she is peeking up from behind her flyaway hair.}






Saturday, September 27, 2008

Finalist?!


I received an email tonight to let me know that the little butterfly birthday box that I made for the CSI contest... made it as a finalist! Wahoo!


Not bad for not having any cardstock, eh?


This little box was actually fun to make (once I figured out what I wanted to do!) I can easily see these being used for trinket boxes or place settings. Would make a fun little gift box too.


Voting starts at the CSI Website on Oct 13th.


Wow, how exciting... even if I don't win, just being a finalist is a great accomplishment!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Wowsers!

Pink Paislee is one of my favorite lines lately. I love the patterns, the diecut papers, the stamps.
Check out this album by Katie Watson on the Pink Paislee blog. Oh. My. Gosh! The album is FABULOUS!

Please make sure to go to the blog and check out the rest of the photos.. this album is just beautiful!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Clear Scraps Design Team and Blog updates!

Clear Scraps is pleased to announce their new Design Team!!

The Clear Scraps DT is now International, too, which is SO exciting!

Here is the list

Cathy Schellenberg- DT Coordinator
Laura McCollough
Julie Howard
Sally Lynn MacDonald
Tina Albertson
Tracy A. Weinzapfel Burgos
Maria Burke
Amy Solovay
Elisa Kammerdiener
Tonya Dirk
Kathy Northup
Hilde Janbroers
Irene Tan
Sherry Steveson

I am going to work on adding everyone's blogs to my site, please make sure to visit them and see what great projects they have done!

I am sad that Lisa and Nicole will be leaving us, but will leave their blogs up anyway, because I think their work is awesome.

Clear Scraps also has a new blog - Please make sure to update your links!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

The Accidental Demon Slayer, and a tough challenge

I just finished this new book, The Accidental Demon Slayer by Angie Fox. It is such a great book - one of those that I didn't want to put down until it was done!
She has a little quiz thing to find out what your Biker Witch name... Mine was Skullcap Sue Fancy Pants. {great name for a scrapper, eh?}
Had an interesting last few days. Janet asked me if I would do a challenge for the store. Sure, I said. Ok, can you get it done by Friday. Yeah, no problem. Heh. Wrong on that count..

The challenge was to use 2 baggies of supplied items. The only additional things you could use were on a very short list. My problem is they wanted Prism cardstock. Well, guess what. There is NO prism cardstock in NE MO. Or across the river in IL. And I had no time to order any online. Ok. So my good friend AnnCaryl, who was going to be in Columbia, offered to check there for Prism cardstock. Nope. No such luck. As I said, there is no Prism cardstock in NE Mo.

So I'm left with this:
Inside the evidence bag was THIS:

The squares are 2x2, double sided. Otherwise, that's it. Can't add any other embellishments, can only use what's in these two bags, adhesive and cardstock. Any project using anything else would be immediately disqualified.

So last night after watching America's Got Talent, I sat at my desk and stared at this stuff. What the heck was I going to do? I had already played around with the butterflies.

I thought I wanted to make something dimensional. So I thought of making a box. Ok, that might be possible. Played around with it. Until I came up with this :

Closeup of the butterflies:

Photo of the inside of the box.


Just for size comparison, I took a photo of the Happy Birthday box next to the Wedding box I made for Jaime last year.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

More blog candy!


Check out these cards! How fun!




To enter the RAK, leave a comment on the blog!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

More blog candy

Check out this blog candy! What a fun giveaway!

A Touch of Grace

Blog Candy


Suzanne Dean at Scrap Bitz is giving away some blog candy! I love this stamp, it is DARLING! And how fun to have a chance to win the whole package. {all photos are from Suzanne's blog}





Her post:

Onto better stuff--I have BLOG CANDY to post today! Yahoo!! The very lovely and generous Katharina Frei (owner of Whiff of Joy) gave everyone on the DT a different stamp to offer up for candy this month and since I'm pretty darn close to 20,000 hits I'm celebrating that too!!! I will have links all month long to my WOJ DT sistah's blogs when they have their candy up for grabs for ya too! My stamp is from the Guardian Angels series by Elisabeth Bell called "Melinda Hugging Heart"--isn't she a doll! The "candy" includes:
-1 unmounted Whiff of Joy "Melinda Hugging Heart" stamp
-6x6 Basic Grey "Stella Ruby" dp pad (lovee this paper--my bella sistah sent me some and its so elegant)
-1 roll of pink/polka dotted ribbon
-1 bottle of pink Stickles
-1 pkg of Prima flowers
-1 pkg of rhinestone/jewels
To win all you have to do is post a link onto your blog about the "Whiff of Joy candy" to mine (if you don't have a blog, dontcha worry about it, enter anyway) and answer the following question:
"What is your favorite movie of all time and why?" Cuz' ya know I like to know stuff about everyone--lol!! I will announce the winner on Friday afternoon (9/12) so your entries and links need to be in by this Thursday evening at 11 pm (EST)--okay!!

So what is my favorite movie?? Gosh, I don't know that I can pick just one!

Titanic would definitely have to be one of them.. I love the scope of this movie, and even though I cry every time I see it, I love it.

The Lord of the Rings series Wow. Have been a HUGE fan of the books for a LONG time. And I thought these movies were AWESOME

A Knight's Tale Kinda silly (read: inaccurate), but this is one of my favorite Heath Ledger movies {the other being The Patriot}. I do not know yet if I will be able to watch him in Batman.

Harry Potter series What can I say? I love Harry Potter. Another book series I have been a huge fan of, I can't wait til the new movies come out!

Twister If I need a movie, and can't decide what else to watch, I usually will put this one in. Not entirely sure what it is about this movie, but I love it.

The Princess Bride What can I say? It's one of my favorites. And one of the ones I love to quote. "He didn't fall? INCONCEIVABLE!" "You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means."

Enough for now, I suppose LOL

I am excited to see what the new Twilight movie will bring... the previews look pretty accurate to the book, and I hope it is. This is one I want to see in the theatre (and I'm not one that goes often).

Wedding Exploding box

I made this box as a wedding present for a gal I work with. Her wedding colors were black, white, and dark red. Jaime is something of an untraditional gal, and a New Yorker, so I wanted to do something a little differe for a gift.
I love the lace on the sides of the cover. I threaded the velvet ribbon through it and tied it on the corner. It's a little hard to see, but there is a wedding charm hanging from the ribbon. The little red piece says Just Married.
The flowers and leaves were cut with the Cricut (Walk in My Garden cartridge) and some punched using Punch Bunch floral punches. Flowers were inked and petals were folder to add texture. This was a lot of fun to do, but my fingers were a little cramped by the end of it!
This is the inside of the cover - I couldn't just leave it blank. Metal photo corners, Happily ever after charm. This is one of my favorite photos from the wedding.
Here is a look at the inside after the cover is taken off. The flowers in the center are paper rosebuds
Middle pages
Back pages

She loved it, I'm happy to say... and this month they are celebrating their one year anniversary.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Jenn and Chris challenges

Participated in the AMR crop tonight.. though I wasn't feeling well for a good part of it (darn headaches). but I wrote down all the challenges anyway, since we have until monday at noon to complete them

Chris's 7pm Challenge was to use circles on a layout - at least 5. Jenn's Challenge was to use an imperfect photo. As I was going through my pictures, I came across one of my favorite photos from Patrick's Black Belt Test last December. It is definitely an imperfect photo - since he is sparring, and moving really fast, most of him is a blur. But it really shows the action, so I like it.

I used Scenic Route papers, stickers and punchouts, plus ribbons (all Offray, I think), Clear Scraps acrylic buttons, and Memories Complete circle stickers. Also Chocolate CTMH ink, CM circle punches, pop dots, and a ZIG millennium pen.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Studio G Stamp holder

I admit it, I am ADDICTED to those cute little studio G stamps. {which makes me really grateful to the girls at AMR, who feed my habit by picking up sets at Michaels and AC Moore, since we don't have them around here!} Storage though has been a bit challenging. I used to keep them sorted by theme along with the embellishments, but it was hard to know what I had. So after someone asked me how many of them I had, I collected them all and sorted them by series {and found at least a dozen duplicates!}



So I was wandering through TJ Maxx, where I had previously found some awesome We R Memory Keepers ribbon and metal alphabets, and came across the cutest little towel rack. It was intended to hold hand towels in a larger bathroom than mine, where you actually have enough counter space to put things on. For me, though, it is PERFECT for my stamps. I have each series on a book ring. The rings attach easily onto the towel rack, and it is pretty easy to find stamps with it. So far it has 8 rings on it, and will hopefully have more if I can get my hands on more of those stamps! LOL.


Here is a sneak peak of my alphabet atcs - my letter was Q. I made 30 of these babies. Man, my hand was cramping trying to cut out all those goofy crowns! But it was worth it. I am really please with how they turned out.

Letter sets are from Technique Tuesday, crown stamps from Inque Boutique, papers DCWV Once Upon a Time stack, and the glitter is from the LOVELY sakura pen that Anne Marie sent me as a RAK. {I LOVE LOVE LOVE that pen!!! The ink is clear - so all you see is the glitter!!!}

Jason Reeves interview

Jason was on TV guide for an interview and performance.

I am so glad he has been signed to a label, and has an album coming out. It will be out on the 9th, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.


{Ok, I can't figure out how to just add the video, so here is a link to it!}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7VyXOJ_kHA

A cool GREEN album

Recycling is definitely the rage lately, and my friend Jessica is exceptional abouting GREEN scrapping.. Look what she made this album out of!



Oh, yeah, and I'm mentioned there too LOL.

I am excited about the crop at AMR this weekend! I will miss some of it, because I have to work, but it will be a ton of fun! Challenges galore! You have to be a member to get onto the board, but it's such a cool place, why wouldn't you want to be a member?!?! Oh, yeah, and Stacey has an awesome store too, and the best customer service.

I'm anxiously awaiting my September Kit - Did you know you could win a kit, for free?! Check out these blogs!

Vee's Blog
http://creativeblessing.blogspot.com/

Christine's blog
http://retrospection.typepad.com/my_weblog/

These kits have sold out every month, and Heather and Stacey have great things planned for the rest of the year, so if you want a kit in October, you better sign up fast!! (I can't wait to see the October kit!! Halloween is my favorite holiday!)

Monday, September 1, 2008

Star of the Day

I posted my Clear Scraps projects in a couple of galleries.... and the Don't Forget memo board was chosen as the Star of the Day over at Scrap Attack Scrapbooking. WOOHOO!

Each day Wendi chooses a new item from the gallery to showcase all the incredible talent on the board. I was very pleased to see one of my projects chosen.

Thanks Wendi!