I've been framed!!

Savvy N Sassy chooses a project to frame each day - and today's pick was my Christmas Inchies! Which surprised me a little, I didn't think inchies would be chosen for this kind of thing, but they are cute and sparkly, and who can resist an inchie?

These inchies were made out of grungeboard (gotta love precut grungeboard!) the red color is a RoseArt glitter marker. The background stamp is from an inchie set by InkaDinkaDo. Gems are MS, and I highlighted the flourishes with my Sakura Stardust pen. The tree brads were pre-glittered and from Paper Studio.

Here is a sneak from a new layout - I can't post it here yet, as it will be the next Sketch challenge at AMR

but here is a smidgen...

Cricut Gypsy

Win a Cricut Gypsy

Check out the Cartridge Helper website for information on how you can win a Cricut Gypsy!
(they also have tons of information on the Cricut machines and cartridges, including previews!)

I am so glad to see there is a new Paper Doll cartridge out!
Check this out!! PREVIEW

A sad day

Today was a sad day for us. Today we lost a kitty friend.

Potsy was my son's cat. A client brought me two tiny kittens on emergency one Sunday, after their mother {who was a stray} had been hit by a car. They needed bottle feeding. The black one was super noisy, and quickly acquired the name Ralph the Mouth {though we later realized she was a girl and renamed her Rachel}. So the little orange bob-tailed one became Potsy {who, if you don't remember, was Ralph's best friend on Happy Days}. They were so tiny when they came to live with us. I took this picture once they were old enough to eat kitten food - they both fit into the bowl at the same time.

He was so accomodating, even as a young kitten. All he wanted was to be held. He was a funny little fuzzy thing, and he made us laugh.

This is Potsy's first encounter with Hannah, who was a bottle lamb. He was not quite sure what to think about her. But it was so funny to watch them trying to figure each other out.

Potsy was always a little odd though. He liked to sleep in the strangest places. I caught this first picture of him and Rachel - sleeping in my shoes.

Not a strange place, but still one of my favorite pictures {sleeping on the couch with Rhi}

I don't know what he was thinking when this happened. Yep, he is sleeping on top of the food bowls. How is that comfortable?

He got along pretty well with Tabby, and they tried sharing the kitty bed. They didn't quite fit.

As I'm taking the photos, he crawls out.. but can only get so far before he falls asleep again. {Somedays, you just can't get too far from the bed...}

The egg basket? Really? Amazingly enough, he didn't break one egg.

He really liked the new couch when we got it. This was one of his favorite places to sleep.

As soon as he was big enough, he chose Patrick as his person. It never ceased to amaze me how much that cat loved that boy. They were always together, and if you wanted to find one, you looked for the other.

He slept on Patrick's bed, would seek him out whenever he wanted anything, and if Patrick was watching TV, Potsy was right there with him. He would often "help" Patrick with his school work.

Over the last week and a half, Potsy has been doing worse, having trouble breathing, and losing a lot of weight. His chest started to fill up with fluid - which is never a good thing, and usually not something that is treatable - at least not with any great success. So we made the decision to put him to sleep. We buried him next to his sister, in our little pet cemetary, so they could be together again.

{these last two pictures were taken on Memorial Day, when we had the bonfire. He was fascinated by the fire, and when the childen started dancing around it, he danced with them}

Farewell, my friend. We will miss you.

Pick/Star of the Day!

I made this card the other day - It was actually a challenge for a board I refuse to mention because I am MAD MAD MAD at several very rude people from there - but I digress...

This is a Halloween card I made, and it has been chosen for the Pick of the Day for 9/20 on Serendipity, and Star for a Day for 9/21 on Scrap Attack

I started with a DCWV square 5.5x5.5 card, which I have had forever. I used my large pinking deco scissors to do the edging. Was a little bit of a challenge, because it didn't want to cut through both layers at the same time, and I wanted everything to match up. Edges were inked with Tim's Black Soot Distress Ink. The lovely web at the top, is from a roll of self adhesive flocked lace from WRMK, which I found at Hobby Lobby (and I actually paid full price for - it wasn't bad, about $3, but I don't pay for ANYTHING full price at HL anymore!). The spider is a foam glitter sticker, which I bought for inchies, and the web line is simply drawn with my Zig pen.
Happy was done with Heidi Grace rubons, and Halloween is from the Basic Grey Eerie stamp set. I was going to add tiny gems to the web lace, but I forgot, and thought it turned out pretty well anyway. So I will save that for another project.

I used the left over webbing that was trimmed off the card on these inchies. They are for a swap on Swap Addicts Anonymous. The base is made from precut grungeboard squares, which I colored with an orange glitter pen. Added the web and the spider and voila. Halloween inchies. I actually wish the spiders were a different color though LOL they would show up better!



I also finished up the ATCs for the All Moments Remembered September Crop, for which the theme was.. hmn, can you guess?? FALL. I found the fall stamp in my stash and knew I wanted to use that, the rest of is just designed itself today. The brown paper with the words is from a scrap pack - edges were inked. Actually, each of the squares and the base was inked too, and the base and orange square were edge distressed. The leaf on the orange square was colored with a crayola colored pencil - which is pretty cool - it is a blend of three different colors (red, yellow, and brown) and blends itself nicely! The yellow square was stamped with part of a tree image from an InkDinkaDo stamp. The red squares were placed into my new embossing folder from QuicKutz. I love adding gems to the places the diamonds meet up.. well this folder is called Diamonds and Dots, and has a circle at just the right place! So they were embossed, sanded, and inked, and then the little metal dots (from Joann's) were added. Everything was layered, the orange squares put up on popdots, and the leaves added under the corners. They are not what I had originally thought up for cards, but I'm pretty happy with them.

Have to get more inchies done this week - still have the rest of the holidays and seasons to do. And birthday. I think there are 13 groups - I have 3 done so far. But that's another post.

And (as I realize I have mentioned all my scrappy boards except one...) don't forget to check out Savvy N Sassy's ribbon Kits! This is the September kit - isn't it beautiful?! I love that Rhea took the picture outside, I just love the way it looks!

Blog Candy!

Check out this blog giveaway on Michelleo's blog!!

http://donkeysmiles.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post.html

I can't believe how many things she has in there already.. including 11 stamp sets!!!

Photo Shoot

Nicole had posted a photo challenge on AMR - Take 3 photos of the same person from 3 different angles.. so that's what got things started.

DD and I went outside - near our little pet cemetary, we have a huge uprooted old tree stump, which is great for sitting on. So I thought that would be a nice place to be outside and get some photos.

Well, of course, the MOMENT we get out there and get started, the cats have to come over and see what we are doing. Felicia came over first and had to worm her way into Rhi's arms, and I got tired of trying to crop her out.. so we just went with it. Then we heard meowing off in the woods, and here comes Warlock, who has to take a turn. {Warlock is the striped tabby in the above photo}

So here are the three challenge photos.

The last one is BY FAR my favorite - I took it by standing on top of the stump and looking down at them. {I think she looks a bit like Hermione Granger in this photo}

Once we had these pictures, I was done, because I wanted to come in and post them, but Rhi wanted to do more {have to LOVE having a willing model for photos!!}

Felicia decided she would come with us. And after a bit of coaxing from Rhi, so did Warlock.

Our next prop was Jones. I love this truck.. makes a great backdrop for photos, and has lovely wide fenders that are just the right size for the kids to sit on!

Didn't get too many pictures before Felicia jumped up there wanting to get involved LOL

The next prop was my brother's old wooden trailer, which sits by the road. We live on a pretty quiet gravel road, which is very nice. And, again, of course, the cats had to come and "help". I love this picture - Warlock was trying to get Rhi to pet him.

I really like this photo too.

Our last prop of the day was Henry, the '53 Ford tractor. Unfortunately, Henry wasn't in a great spot, and I didn't feel like moving him, so this was all we got.

No words necessary...

Why I hate khaki, a cool find, and AMR Fall Crop!

So... when I'm working, I usually wear scrubs, but if I don't, I wear khaki pants. That's the uniform. And mostly, it's ok, except that um, blood shows up awfully well, as does dog hair.. so it really doesn't make sense to me (and why I tend to wear scrubs). But I was reminded again tonight why I really hate wearing khaki.



I stopped at WalMart on my way home {Can you see where this is going already??} to get a new shower curtain, and wanted to pick up a new Twilight CD {since I lost mine when I went to Kansas City GRUMBLE}. Anyway, so I'm standing there, looking at the new release cd's, minding my own business, and this lady comes up to me and says "Excuse me, do you work here?"



{blink}



Uh, yeah, I'm wearing khakis and a blue t-shirt, but I am NOT wearing one of those lovely bright blue vests with WAL MART written on them... No name tag, and gosh, I am carrying a purse. Do I really LOOK like I work here?!?



No, I didn't say all that, but I did laugh {MOSTLY to myself!} and said No, in a I-can't-believe-you-just-asked-me-that tone of voice {not mean or mad, mind you!} sheesh. I hate that.



Stopped at the thrift store before work today, mainly to pick up a couple of vintaging looking paper packs (for 50c each!) which my friend had told me about. Looked around a bit, and also found a pair of jeans for DD (for $1) and an American History text book (for a whopping 50c). Kinda wandered around just looking around. Found a leather jacket that is just awesome - the leather is supple, nicely worn in, and very comfortable. Looks a lot like this jacket, except it has a zipper instead of the buttons.

{photo from www.kaboodle.com}

Now, the jacket in this photo lists for 79.99-110.00. Wanna know how much I paid for mine??

5 bucks.

Yeah, I know. How cool is that?? I really like it. I have always wanted a leather jacket.

Also, AMR is having the September Crop this weekend! Everything will be listed HERE. There will be challenges, games, and a rockin' bingo game - those are ALWAYS a lot of fun!! The theme is Fall, but not all challenges will have a fall theme. Come by and check it out!!

fairytale princess

Did this layout for the Sketch This challenge on Serendipity. The papers are from the Rustic DCWV stack {one of my favorites - so much so that I had to go back the next day and get another stack!}

{Sketch posted by Liz on Serendipity}

The photo on this layout was taken last summer when we went up to the Old Thresher's Reunion in Mt. Pleasant Iowa. We went for the Jason Michael Carroll concert, but left early enough in the day that we could walk around and see the reunion. It is a fabulous place, and they have all kinds of museums and exhibits of old style farm and country equipment. They have a steam run carousel (which DD and I rode), and tractor pulls with antique tractors.

They also have a village at one end of the place, and that is where this photo was taken. We were walking around and looking at things, and she kept asking "where's Jason?!" It was funny.

The title for the layout came from the t-shirt - it is a JMC concert tee, which I had picked up for her at the Bowling Green concert. And since this was her first JMC concert, she had to wear the t-shirt. {Fairytale princess is a reference to Jason's "Livin' Our Love Song" song}

The background paper is one of my favorites - I love the flourishes in the corners, and thought it would work well with the sketch. I added the glitteriness with my Sakura Stardust pen - adds the glitter, but no ink color. It is awesome for highlighting things, and I use it all the time {I will need to find a new source for them since my LSS closed.. } The smaller pieces of papers were all scraps, and edges were inked with both Brushed Corduroy and Vintage Photo.

The tags are actually only tag tops, and are the rest of the pieces I had leftover from the Technique Swap. Waste not, want not, right? The stamps are a princess/cinderella set that I think is done by Image Tree.

The flowers were made from scraps from the Rustic stack - each flower is made up of 2 large flowers and 1 small flower. Edges were inked, and they were put together with glue dots. The leaves were done with a Martha Stewart punch out of some shimmery green paper I got in a scrap pack.

The title letters are thickers fabric letters, which were perfect because of their shape. But a little too bright pink for me, so I inked over them with Tim's Tattered Rose distress ink, and it made them just the right color.

The butterflies were stamped a few months ago, when I needed stamped images for the LSSS contest, and were done on scraps of patterned paper. The stamp is from Pink Paislee, and is one of my favorite butterfly stamps. I love how the patterend paper adds just a touch of color to the butterflies.

This layout was Framed as the pick of the day on Savvy and Sassy!!

My journal

Here is the journal I did for the Dear Diary challenge on Serendipity! I chose this journal because it is small enough if I want to carry it with me, and each page has a space at the top for the date {and I always think I'll remember what day things happen... and later.. well, not so much - I always forget!}

Yeah, it was inspired by the layout I just made - I loved the way the rubons looked! The purple paper is from the DCWV Rustic Stack {one of my FAVORITE stacks! I have already had to go back and get a second one!} and is pre-glittered. I took the cover off the journal and put the paper on, then put the journal back together before adding everything else. The holes were a pain - my square hole punch was too short to reach before the paper was glued down {and covering the holes from both sides} and just enough not the right shape to make punching the holes a pain. Got it done eventually though. I added the chandelier because we get extra points for them on the team challenge, and was bummed that it came out crooked {I tried to move it, but it was already stuck down in places and would NOT have come off nicely for repositioning, so I just left it where it was}. The flourish rubons are from Basic Grey {yeah, have I mentioned how much I'm into flourishes lately?} The swirl gems are from Prima, and partial pieces {I tend to cut up the big swirls.. they seem too extravagent to use all at once!} "Thoughts" is Making Memories rubons, my favorite font {which, of course, I can't find locally anymore.} The flower is another of the Imaginesce flowers with another silver button in the center.

Then there is the butterfly. Which SO did not turn out how I imagined it. How come things never turn out the way they look in your head?!

The butterfly is grungeboard, and I tried to ink it a la Tim, using his cute little tools and distress inks. I wanted it purple and don't have a purple ink pad, so I thought ok, if I bled blue and red, that will give me purple.

Yeah.

Not.

Colored it over a couple of times before I got something passable as almost purple, and thought - oh, I have Purple Perfect Pearls {say that 5 times fast!}, I can use that, make it glittery AND purple, and it'll look great.

Again.

Not.

Actually it probably would have looked ok at that point, but I got the bright idea of stamping over it with the french script stamp - which I could use the gold perfect pearls on to highlight it - it's a look I really like. Only... yeah, when Tim says to heat fix the ink before applying new stuff... yeah, definitely recommend that. {Rolling my eyes here} What I got was a gold butterfly sans words. ugh.

So I wiped that all off and it turned into a dullish browish purplish goldish thing. I thought about pitching it, but I have problems with that {especially when it is a precious piece of grungeboard!}, so I thought I'd use a glitter pen to outline the edges and do the body. The first choice was purple. Ick. stamped that off onto my paper mat, and went for silver. That worked a little better. Only I still wanted some shimmer to it, so I tried to glimmer mist it a little.

{Word of advice... Do the glimmer misting BEFORE outlining with a silver glitter pen. Works much better that way!}

Let it dry {somewhat} and added it on. I do actually like it - it is sorta purple, and shimmery {as are my fingers.. and my table.. and my desk...}, not that you can really tell that from the photo.
But colorwise, I think it really goes well with the paper... too bad it wouldn't look that way if I tried to do it on purpose!!! LOL

Wicked cool

I posted the JMC layout on my boards, and it was chosen as the Pick of the Day on Serendipity today!! Hooray!

Tonight I am going to work on a journal/book for the Daily Diary challenge. Here is Kristin's description of the challenge

We are going to start Dear Diary all over and have some fun making you think about your eveyday life and scrapbooking about it ....like you were a teenager again and making journal entries about how things affect you and what is going on in your world ....so lets get started ...i am going to try and make this not toooo hard or time consuming ....you can pick any size you want to scrap ...just find a scrapbooking notebook in your stash or you can make it 12x12 pages...whatever you want (I bought an 8 1/2 x 11 spiral scrapbooking notebook) ...this first week we are going to be decorating the cover to put all your pages in .....so get out your supplies and start creating ....

I think I'm going to use a journal just for the journaling parts, and that way I can still create 12x12 layouts for my albums {and just use the journaling from the journal}. One of the reasons I want to do this challenge is that I still have some hesitations and reservations about journaling {as you can see, there is NO journaling on the JMC page!}

Here is Susan's album - I LOVE her Hitchiker's references!! {and please.. don't tell me if you don't know what that means.. that would be soooo depressing... !}

Come and join us on Serendipity if you would like to play along!!

Wicked

So... what would I get if I combined three of my favorite things?? (those things being scrapbooking, JMC and Twilight of course...)

Ok, so I admit it, I have been a wee bit {read: WAY} obsessive about Jason Michael Carroll lately. I can't help it. The man is amazing. He has a fabulous, sexy voice. He sings awesome songs, some of which I can really relate to, and some of which are just plain fun. And "Alyssa", which makes me cry, but has helped so many people. He is a great showman, and so much fun to see in concert {which is why I have gone to see him FIVE times - not as many as some, I know, but it's put 1400 miles on my car, and more than 1200 photos on my computer!} He tries to make sure every fan in the audience has a great time. I can't stop listening to his music - so much so that even my mom {who lives with me} and my kids now know the words to most of his songs. My friends don't help much - one of the gals on the AMR board wondered if I would come to her county fair since he was playing.. and I would, except that it's in Pennsylvania!! {Oh, yeah, and I have to work LOL}

I had done a couple of layouts previously, but what really got me started on my JMC scrapbook album was a challenge during the LSSS contest. It was easy - I had a ton of photos that weren't the best quality (as I didn't have a decent camera at the time), and the challenge was to use 3 photos and song lyrics on the layouts, plus a couple of other requirements. I had recently found the DCWV RockStar album at Big Lots, of all places, and I already had the Rock Star paper stack {and had used it for a JMC layout before}. So it was a natural choice to use those photos and Jason's lyrics for those layouts. And that started the ball rolling.

Unfortunately, his lyrics are finite at this point {as he has only released two albums!} and I took most of those 1200 photos at this summer's concerts. And since I have a better camera, there are more really good photos that I want to scrap. So, since I had some time to kill between running some errands and going to work the other day, I stopped at the public library to see if they had last week's copy of Country Weekly, which has an article about Jason's new video for "Hurry Home" {which I missed finding on the news stand}. Well, they didn't, unfortunately, but they had two magazine holders full of CW magazine. So I sat in the library with the time I had, looking for pictures, articles, fan letters, whatever.. and found a bit. {Granted it would have been easier to have a periodicals catalogue or something like that... I just did it the old fashioned way.. one page at a time!}. Made some color copies on the copy machine {wonderful thing, copying in color - looks almost like the actual magazine page!}.

So what has all of that got to do with Twilight? Really nothing - but one of the magazines had this photo in the table of contents: {And I apologize, I didn't think to write down who the photographer was because I was making a photo copy, but there is no credit on the pages I copied!}

And I did a doubletake, because MAN..... this is not the sweet, fun, laughing Jason I usually see.. this Jason is DARK. This Jason is exactly how I would picture him if he was a vampire. {Incidentally, have you seen how sharp his canines are? hmmmmm.....}. This Jason is brooding and sardonic and feral. Not EVIL, but definitely not someone you want to cross paths with in a dark alley in the middle of the night, especially if you are doing something he doesn't approve of. I have been drawn to this picture ever since I found it. I seriously think this is my favorite Jason picture. The creative writer in me is itching to write something about the character I see in my head when I look at this picture. Haven't fleshed out that character and his history enough to start writing about him, but I did get a layout made.

I wanted something fairly simple, and found a pack of white flourishy rubons from Basic Grey, Glitz gems, AC chandelier rubon. Needed something velvety, wanted something black, but I found this flower by Imaginesce {in the Bazzill collection, which I have had FOREVER} and the color was PERFECT. Had a little trouble with a center until I found a set of silver buttons - the design of which is very smiliar to the necklace he is wearing. This layout is actually an 8x8, and now hangs in a Clear Scraps acrylic page display, hung with a leather strip. I'll do a 12x12 page later, when I scrap the article, but this one wanted to be made now.

{the black clip is not part of the layout, it is just holding it up so I could take a picture}

Star for the Day, and the Croppy Cat Spotlight!

A good day over at ScrapAttack!!

The Jonas Bros ATCs in the previous post were chosen for the Star for the Day! They were so much fun to make - I love the masking and the flourishes and all the different stamps. So I'm glad they were chosen

ScrapAttack also has a ton of challenges, one of which is the Croppy Cat Challenge. Each month a member is chosen to be in the spotlight, and the challenge is to scraplift something from their gallery. It's an honor to be chosen, and in a way, makes me feel like I have "made it", if you know what I mean.

Check out the board HERE and my SAS gallery HERE