Mystery Box Sale

Lauri at ScrapAttack Scrapbooking is having an awesome mystery box sale.. each box contains product from one company (Fancy Pants, Sassafrass Lass or Scenic Route). The price is awesome, and you get way more than what you pay for!

ScrapAttack is a challenge-heavy board. I have not been able to do very many, but man, talk about a great place for inspiration if you are stumped!

Brittany's Battle

Last night at the concert, Jason had dedicated his song "Livin' Our Love Song" to a girl named Brittany, saying for more information to go to brittanysbattle.org. As we were standing near the tour bus after the show, I noticed a "Britanny" decal on the bus, right near the door. So today I did, and found that Brittany was a young woman, only 19, who developed lung cancer. Brittany didn't smoke. Because she was young, cancer was not even thought about until it was too late.
Jason is the honorary chairman of the Brittany's Battle organization. I think it is awesome when a star dedicates not just their money, but also their time to helping out with things like this.

I was hoping to get a chance to sneak up to Waverly on Tuesday to catch another show, but it's a little far for this week. We are planning on going to the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion in August though, and will catch him again there. I am still hoping for an autograph - I have printed an 8x10 of one of the photos in the previous post, and it would be awesome to have it signed.

I almost have my atc's for the seasonal swap done.. they are turning out pretty well. Still have a few others to get done, but it's been a busy week. As soon as these are sent off, I'll have another Clear Scraps album to work on, as well as a few layouts - I want to do a couple of CHA layouts, as well as one from the concert last night.

Well, it's storming pretty bad, so I had probably better get offline.

JMC Concert

Took a break from everything tonight.. I was on call Thurs and Fri, and am on call Sun and Mon, so since I had Sat PM off, I got outta dodge for a little while. My friend Kolette and I went down to the Pike Co Fair in Bowling Green, MO because Jason Michael Carroll was playing. The best show. It was great. My god that man is energetic. He has an awesome voice, and a totally infectious smile.. it was so nice to see someone putting on a show that was having a great time doing it!

The only downside to it, was several of us were waiting near the tour bus, hoping he would come out and sign autographs. Every so often, a different band member would come outside - we were able to get their autographs, but they kept saying Jason would come out later. After John Anderson was done playing. blah. blah. blah. *2 hours* later, they come over and tell us - "He's already gone, he's at the hotel room." huh? So how can he come out later if he's not on the bus??

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad a Jason. I understand about things going wrong (tour buses breaking down.. having to find a new guitarist before the next show - On Tuesday)... but I don't understand why they would tell someone that Jason was going to come out when he wasn't even there! Geez, how hard is it to tell me the first 10 times I asked.. "Sorry, he's already gone" instead of saying "oh, yeah, he might come out after the show." Frustrating!

Here are a couple of pics...

10 Things I learned at CHA...

1. The easiest way to work with jump rings.. is to twist them open, and not to pull the edges apart.. Learned this at the Heidi Swapp booth, where we made a very cute jeweled dangle. It has quotes on a thicker acetate, as well as a little crown at the bottom. Fun!

2. Ali doesn't blend... Ali did some demo's at the Ranger booth, showing how she uses the alcohol inks. As people walked up to watch, she kept saying "We're just dropping! I don't do blending. If you want blending you have to come back when Tim is here!" Cracked me up. I was really pleased to see that she was using a Clear Scraps word book to demo on!

3. Grungeboard is moldable. If you heat it up, and bend it into a shape... once it cools down, it stays that way. Who knew?? {well, obviously TIM did, but I didn't!}

4. Speaking of Tim.. I also learned that if you slide your stamp on the ink pad, you can get the same look of a second generation stamped image, without wasting as much ink. Clever! Why didn't i think of that sooner??

5. Petaloo has some AWESOME flowers. Silly me didn't take any pictures {What was I thinking??} But they have some really awesome mulberry and other paper flowers, as well as some gorgeous embossed velvet flowers. Their wild roses are freaking amazing, and just beautiful! They also have some packages set up for Halloween, Christmas etc, in some really cool color combinations. (I think the Halloween ones are my favorite!) I am SO hoping to have some of these flowers in a design team kit.

6. The Paper Gator will work on Acrylic! How awesome! If you haven't seen the Paper Gator, it is a corner rounder that cuts a ton of papers at one time. And acrylic - I tried it on a Clear Scraps tag, and it was SO easy! I also tried the Zutter ones.. which are more portable, but to be honest, hurt my hand when punching the acrylic.

7. Prima donnas do exist. Can't really elaborate on that one.

8. Some people are crazy enough to stand in line for almost an hour for a bag and a CHANCE to win a prize {pleading the fifth on this one LOL}

9. Copic markers work REALLY WELL on the Clear Scraps acrylic. Yep, I carried acrylic tags with me to play with them. Not only do the copi markers work, but once dry, I was not able to scrape it off, even with my thumbnail! That makes these the best markers I have found for working on the acrylic. I also like how they are color coded so help with matching.

10. Sometimes the car that gets the best gas mileage isn't the new hybrid. Ok, so I learned this one AFTER CHA... I have a 14 year old Ford Escort. Which for the last 4 years, I have alternated between hating and calling the green lemon. But this weekend, this little car drove me to Chicago and back, and to Ames Iowa, and back, with no complaint. 1000 miles in 4 days, though one of those days it rested in a very nice parking garage. The best part? 39.67 MPG - this included all the driving I did in Chicago! I filled up south of the Des Plaines River because I didn't want to pay Chicago's gas prices. I didn't fill up again until I got back to West Quincy... 407 miles later! If I hadn't taken a wrong exit at Springfield {habit from taking that route to school for 4 years!}, I probably would have made it to Taylor, MO, and made 40mpg.

{This photo is the bridge that goes over the Des Plaines river.

Home... for the moment!

Well, I am home from CHA!! Will go into MUCH more detail later {since I need to get to bed because have to get up to leave for Des Moines in a few hours!}! OMG what an experience!




But for now...



My new favorite picture of me... :)

Last post before CHA!

Ok, ladies, I am off to CHA today, so this will be the last post before the show. Boy, in a way, I wish I was just going with a store and didn't have to work - from looking at the floor plan the place is SO huge, I don't know how even a store owner would get to see everything!

Janet asked me to do a last minute sample on another new shape - it is a Christmas Stocking! My friend AnnCaryl also received an album, so she made one as an album (and I will post pictures of it when I get back) and I did mine as a banner type Christmas decoration! The "in-between parts" are Christmas decorations that I picked up at Hobby Lobby! Paper is Basic Grey Figgy Puudding, Ink from StazOn, Ribbon from Offray.

{I apologize for the pictures in this post... they are dark (at least on my computer) so I will get better ones later!}

This is my "flair"... Jackie and Janet wanted us to make a shape that would help to showcase everything we do to the Clear Scraps acrylic. I had trouble putting it all on one shape, so this is what I came up with! I wanted to use on of Kelli's stamps, to help get her name out there a little bit too, so hopefully this will help!

This next album is one of the hardest I have done, and you will see why after the show when I post the whole thing. It is actually two albums - one is acrylic, and the other is chipboard. They are new Clear Scraps releases. Basically the album alternates the pages - acrylic cover, chipboard page, acrylic page etc. Each album comes with 5 pages, which gave me more pages to play with! {though to be honest, for this subject, was not nearly enough!}

I made this album not only to show off the new releases and how fun using acrylic can be, but also as a memorial for the flooding in Quincy in 2008. We were lucky this year - the levees didn't break. Not that most of Quincy has to worry about that, since it is built on the cliffs, but if you live across the river in Missouri, like I do, there was a LOT to worry about.

The reason this album was a little harder for me, was I want the embellishments on the acrylics to work for both chipboard pages they covered. Most of the acrylic pages do not really have much on them.. but it was the placement of everything that made it more interesting. The chipboard pages seem a little plain... but that let me put in a lot of little journaling factoids about the flood too. {Again, you'll see what I mean when I post the whole album.}

The last page is a thank you... to the 1400 National Guard members that came to help by filling sandbags, shoring up the levees, patrolling to make sure nobody broke them on purpose again, and just generally helping the local volunteers save the levees. I was lucky enough to be going to work just as they were leaving. So the picture isn't the best {since I was driving when I took them!} but to me... they mean so much...

So I hope you all have a good weekend... I will post pictures when I get back - both of CHA, and of my brother's wedding in Des Moines {on Sunday!}. I probably won't be back until Tuesday though, as Monday I plan on catching up on some much needed sleep!

I've been framed!!

I found a new board and place for beautiful ribbon kits, thanks to TanishaRenee, who posted a comment for the RAK. I posted my Clear Scraps Family fun and Army sneak peeks over there.. It is called Savvy N Sassy, and looks to be an awesome site for Ribbon Junkies!

Each day they pick something from the gallery as the pick of the day, and that person is "framed." Yesterday they picked my Family fun album, which thrills me!! Check here for the comments!

Here are some sample ribbon kits! I am thinking some would go great with the AMR kits! I love that they have sets to match Basic Grey papers (like the first one, Sweet Magnolia), and I love the way they showcase the ribbon! What a clever idea!

{All of the following images from the Savvy N Sassy website. These kits are Sweet Magnolia, Vintage Garden, and Floral Chic}

RAK WINNERS

And the winners are....!
(names were put into random.org to be chosen)

For the shapes:

Hi, Love your blog.I really don't have anything to add about technique for an acrylic album.I have never made one. I am conceren though as how to make them look right with the previous & post pages showing through. I'm afraid I would have a tendency to just cover easch page. I would love to try it.Thanks for offering thet RAK. LoriCricut MD - LoriBordelon


For the word album:

WoW AMAZING! Is all I can say at first. I would totally love to get the acrylic ablum because they are no where to be found around here. I have never played with them before but I do have a awesome idea of what I would love to make with one of them.This is such a wonderful, sweet, amazing gift you are giving away. Can't wait to see whom wins.Hugs:o) Jen bearsbelief@....


Congratulations ladies!!!

Send me your addresss to the prizes can be sent out!

Family fun Clear Scraps album

This album was made using the new ginormous shapes. I took several pieces (circle, funky heart, flower, bracket, and postage stamp) along with a 12x12 square page and cut them in half to make a (basically) 6x12 album. Putting the album together was so much fun.

FAMILY letters are Clear Scraps letters covered with paper.

Most papers and embellishments came from the AMR kit - Most papers are Pink Paislee, plus Bazzill cardstock, and some Fancy Pants thrown in.

I don't know why this one looks blue.. trick of the lighting I guess.

The letters were colored in with a galaxy marker.

Button is a Clear Scraps button covered with paper.

I ended up punching through the metal letter with my CropADile - how awesome is that?

County fair

The Lewis County Agricultural Fair is going on this week.. I am lucky enough that they actually have a scrapbook section (cards, too, though I didn't know that until it was too late!)

So I entered 4 photos {into the photography section}, 4 layouts, and 4 albums. Would have done more, but I have been too busy getting ready for CHA to make something for every entry.

The photographs didn't do anything this year. Disappointing, but not really surprising. They had tons of photos. And while I have a decent camera, I don't have a Photographer's camera.

The albums I entered were the ARMY one (didn't even place! I was surprised!) the Family fun album which I still need to post), my {infmaous} Rusty Pickle album, and a 6x6 album that just has favorite photos of my daughter (I entered my son's 6x6 album last year). There were 4 categories for books (which I think they combined into 2 because there were not very many entries), and the 6x6 won first place, the family fun 2nd, and the RP album 3rd. The albums that won best in show and reserve best in show were done by someone else - both 8x8 albums, with tons more pages and journaling than mine had. Kinda cute, but kinda blah (IMO). I really thought the Family fun album would have done better than it did.

For layouts, I entered "My Wish" and "Lazy River Ride" from the AMR Survivor challenge, my "Tulip Tree" layout from an AMR sketch challenge, and the "These are the things I love about you" layout I made for a sticker challenge on SAS. The latter two didn't do anything, but here is what the Survivor layouts did!




Pretty cool.

Prize money isn't much ($5 for each best in show) but there were no entry fees, and that will pay for my gas to get out there to drop them off and pick them up, so it's all good.

{This is the third year I have won the best in shows for layouts.}

Don't forget to sign up for the RAK (scroll down a couple of posts...)