Happy Hump Day

Well here we are almost into 2011, where does the time go to!? I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. We had a pretty quiet one since none of the kids were with us. We had a nice sleep in and then my hubby made us Eggs Benny for breakfast - yummy, I could eat those everyday! We had a couple of gifts from my sister to open as we didn't buy anything for each other as we booked a trip to Las Vegas on January 9th for 5 days. After phoning all the family and wishing them Merry Christmas and finding out what Santa had left for all of them we just relaxed all day and for dinner we cooked up a big feast of crab (that our friends caught about a week ago) and some lobster. Wasn't your traditional turkey dinner but it sure was good!

I did manage to get a few scrap pages done, finally using some more of the MCS November LE Kit. This first one is of my granddaughter taken back in May 2004 when she was three. I love this photo of her. I took it into my Paint Shop Pro program and gave it a soft focus effect and a double glass frame.

This next one was photos taken a few weeks ago when we were out celebrating my stepdaughters 19th birthday. I used the MCS November LE kit for this layout also. TFL!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season and lots of love and creativity in 2011!

2 more shopping days.....

So I've been painting our en suite this afternoon. This has only taken since the summer to finally doing this. We had a leak in our shower, that was leaking down into our dining room one floor below. Luckily the back of the shower has a free wall behind it so we were able to cut out the wall and fix the leak. We replaced the back of the wall, but between mudding and sanding we've been on slow mode, lol. We decided since we were going to have to paint the one small wall we fixed we may as well paint the whole thing in a new color, so I picked out a nice light kind of wine color which would pick up the same color in the wallpaper that we have on one wall. I did manage to get two coats of paint on half of it, so I should be able to finish the other half tomorrow. I think it will look nice once it's all done.

I finally finished my friends wedding invitations last night. She was so happy with them, which makes me very happy. I do think that they turned out pretty good if I do say so myself, lol. So last night I was actually able to get another layout done. This is my 3 year old great nephew Jackson. My nephew (his Dad) was in the hospital Halloween weekend with a kidney stone and just got out on the Sunday. On the Monday morning his wife noticed that Jackson was kind of stumbling when he walked and wasn't really talking properly so they took him to a walk in clinic, who advised them to take him straight to emergency. Once they got him to emergency they immediately sent by ambulance to Children's Hospital. It turned out that he had had a stroke, I didn't even know a 3 year old could have a stroke. The doctors told them if he even lived through the night that he would be severely brain damaged. Every day he got a bit better, totally amazing the doctors and after about 3 weeks they sent him home and  now you would not even know that he was so sick. The doctors have said he still may have a few learning problems but they won't be able to tell until he is older. Hence, the title "An Early Christmas Miracle".  TFL and have a great day tomorrow!

 

3 more shopping days....

Wow can you believe it's only 3 more days until Christmas, boy that went up fast! I hope everyone is ready and all the shopping is done. My DH and I decided not to buy gifts for each other this year and instead we are going to go to Las Vegas on Jan 8th until the 14th. It should be fun, we haven't really gone anywhere (except camping) since we went to Cancun 5 years ago before we moved up here to Campbell River.

I am a little sad that my kids and grandchildren are not able to make it up here for Christmas :-(  I was hoping to go down for a few days this week to see them but unfortunately that didn't work out, so this will really be my first year without them. Maybe Santa will surprise me and drop them off on my front door on Christmas Day.

I have finally got to play with my November kit from MCS - pretty slow since I just received my December kit yesterday, lol. I did the layout below of my nephew and his wife at their wedding back in 2006 with the Basic Grey papers from their Curio line of papers that were in this kit. I must say Pam really spoilt us with all the wonderful goodies in this kit! The Prima flowers are to die for! Thanks for looking and if I don't get back in here before Christmas I hope Santa is good to everyone!

My version of the 12 Tags of Christmas

As promised earlier here are my 12 Days of Christmas tags. Day "1" - Rickety House.

As soon as I saw Tim's Day 1 I thought "Okay I haven't even started and I have to quit already? I didn't have any of these Tim Holtz dies so what to do, hmmmm. I can't remember if I had talked about the program "Make  the Cut" where you can basically take any of your own graphics, once you have turned them into an SVG file, and cut them on your cricut machine using any cartridge you had in your Cricut. Since my DH was nice enough to buy me this program for my birthday at the beginning of Dec I figured this would be a great opportunity to try it out.

So I printed out the rickety house, the picket fence and the fir tree from the web and traced them and then scanned them into my Paint Shop Pro program. I then made them into a png file which I could  take into a program called "Inkscape" (which is a free download program) to turn it into an SVG file so I could cut them with my Cricut machine using "Make the Cut". Since I don't have the deep cutting blade for my Cricut machine I printed out duplicate copies (3) on cardstock and glued them together so they were more like chipboard/grunge board.

Since I didn't have the "notebook texture fade" embossing folder what I did for the house was to run it through my cutter but instead of using a blade I used my stylus to embossing lines across the house from top to bottom making them about ¼" apart. So now it looked somewhat like Tim's rickety house after I used my blending tool and some Vintage Photo Distress ink.

I made my little wreath out of a white pipe cleaner which I dyed with some "Meadow" Rangers ink. Not quite as cute as Tim's but you have to work with what you got, lol. I was actually quite pleased with the way this tag turned out.

"Day 2"

Well if you checked out Tim's Day 2 tag I'm sure you must have thought his idea of your own custom ink pad was so clever. I didn't have any of the "cut & dry felt" so I just stamped and embossed my holly stamp the old fashioned way, lol. Since I didn't have Tim's fancy flourish stamp I download a copy of the stamp and then copy and pasted it onto a scan of my tag and then printed it out onto my tag (after a lot of playing around with taping the tag onto a regular piece of letter size paper at the right spot, lol). I didn't have a large "Happy Holidays" stamp so I used one of my other Tim Holtz stamps and embossed it with red. The bird I cut on my Cricut using the "Joy of the Season" cartridge and some pretty silver cardstock that I had left over from my friend's wedding invitations I'm making and of course cut 2 more so I could glue them together so they were a bit more like chipboard. The pearl embellishments were some earrings I bought from the dollar store - I can find so many goodies at the dollar store for using with my scrapbooking!

"Day 3"

So for Day 3 since I didn't have the text stamp and tree stamp that Tim uses I did the same as I did for the stamp from "Day 2" and downloaded a copy of the stamps  into Paint Shop Pro then printed them onto my tag. I was very pleased with the way they turned out. I do have Tim's (oh look at me here, calling him Tim like we're best friends - I wish, lol) "Caged Bird" die - yeah me! I also didn't have any of the "tissue tape" but I did have this pretty lace rosette that I made using one of tutorials from MCS that almost looked the same. I didn't have the seasonal stickers so I downloaded and printed out a vintage tag from the internet. Lace is from my stash that I died with Rangers ink and the tinsel is out of from Christmas decoration box - a little bigger put I trimmed it up a bit. So what do you think so far? They don't look to bad.

"Day 4"

The Santa  stamp I didn't have so I downloaded a copy from the net and then printed it off onto my tag after I colored it in my Paint Shop Pro program and printed the word Mistletoe onto the bottom. I drew up the ticket stub myself in PSP - saved a blank copy so I could use it for other projects.. The lace with the beads I had in my stash as well as the bling and the pearls are dollar store earrings again - love that dollar store, lol!

"Day 5"

So here's my Day 5 version which I did the same as Day 4 and printed Santa onto the card. I didn't have any metal numbers so I painted some pink chipboard ones with white fabric paint to give it a bit of dimension. I had a Merry Christmas stamp but as you can see it's quite a bit smaller than the one Tim uses, that's one part of this tag I'm not really liking. 

I drew up the green cardstock shape in my PSP program and then turned it into an SVG file to cut on my Cricut using the "Make the Cut" program. I'm still not to sure how the company that makes this program are able to do it as I would think that Cricut would not be pleased about it. I must do some research on this. 

"Day 6"

This tag was another one that I was quite pleased at  how it turned out. The flourish stamp and the tall trees I downloaded into my PSP program, did my coloring and then printed onto my tag. I also downloaded a copy of the deer die cut into PSP and turned it into a PNG file, which I then imported into "Inkscape" and made an SVG file and cut it on my Cricut using the Make the Cut progoram again. I duplicated it a few times so I could glue the cuts outs together to get a chipboard look. I used some blue shiny type cardstock for this reindeer and before I glued them together I took one of them and ran it through my Big Shot using a snowflake embossing folder I had, then used some distress ink over the embossed flakes to have them stand out. 

I braided some pretty green ribbon I had to make the wreath on the reindeer's neck. As I said earlier I didn't have any of the tissue tape so I printed out a line of musical notes onto regular paper and then did a bit of folding and gluing to get the same effect as what Tim had done on his tag. I stamped the Happy Holidays onto card stock and embossed it and then used some distress ink on it and popped it up with some foam. Used a metal "wish" tag that I had in my stash and attached it to the ribbon. Onto day 7...

"Day 7"

 

You can obviously tell that I don't have the "wood grain" embossing folder so I used a Cuttlebug holly one that I had. I used a few different colored distress ink on the tag to highlight the embossed hollies. 

For my poinsettia i used some flowers from my stash. These were from a big bag of white flowers that I bought from a scrap store on the mainland when I was down visiting one time. They're great because there is all different sizes in the bag and you can color them any color you want to match up with your paper colors etc. One of my best investments I made! I think it was Rangers "cranberry" ink that I used on these ones. The leaves are from my stash. The flourish was another of the Tim Holtz dies that I didn't have so I traced it and turned it into an SVG file to cut in the "Make the Cut" program - I'm really loving this program! 

I used some more of the silver shiny paper that I had for this flourish and cut out duplicates so I could glue them together for a chipboard look. The letters I cut out on my Cricut using Cricut's "Base Camp" cartridge. I painted over them with stickles glitter as well as outlining the petals and leaves of the flower.

"Day 8"

This tag doesn't look terrible, but I don't think it looks that great either Again, I didn't have the Santa and reindeer mask so I took a copy of it and traced and scanned it into PSP, then into Inkscape to turn it into an SVG file and cut it out on my Cricut using "Make the Cut" again, only this time I used a transparency to make my own mask. The only thing I didn't like on here was that I had used a lighter shade of red first on the Santa and reindeer and then when I went to use my "Fired Brick" the color didn't really come out right - oh well, live and learn I guess. I used one of my own flourish stamps on this tag and a couple of metal corners I had in my stash.

So I did the same thing with the houses as for previous shapes and cut it with "Make the Cut". I used some dark teal cardstock for the houses then painted over them with glossy accents and for the snow on the houses I used puffy paint. I didn't have a metal clock so I stamped one onto cardstock and cut it out and used one of Tim Holtz game spinners I had.

"Day 9"

Are you getting bored of listening to all of this yet? Only a few more to go, lol. For the musical note stamp I did the same as before and downloaded and printed it on my tag as well as some plain cardstock for the rosette. I've never made one of these rosettes before and was surprised to find out how easy it was, I was quite pleased at how  mine turned out. I used some buttons from my stash for the center of the rosette as well as for the three on the side. I didn't have any of the Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls so I sprayed my rosette with some Shimmery mist that I had.

I cut the letters on my Cricut. I must say I've never used the "glossy accents" over top of letters before but I really like the look and depth it gives to the letters.  I'll be trying this a lot more often I can see. As before the pearls are earrings from the dollar store.

"Day 10"

I love the look of this tag using the plastic packaging materials and embossing it - how does Tim Holtz come up with these really cool things he does? I would never have thought about that in a million years! I cut the Santa using the "Make the Cut" program again and made a couple of extra's to glue together for a chipboard look and then one to cut up for his hat, nose and arms. I didn't have the washers to use with the brads and I also just noticed I forgot to add the metal tag to the tie at the top - oh well I can add that in later, lol.

"Day 11"

This tag didn't turn out to bad except that my embossing of the snowflakes on the side didn't turn out quite right, I used the "Make the Cut" again for the fir tree and used puffy paint on the branches for the snow. Luckily I had some of Tim's bookplates for this tag, I love those bookplates! I made up the tag saying in my PSP program and printed and cut it to fit the bookplate.

"Day 12"

Woohoo, we made it to Day 12 and hopefully you didn't die from to much boredom, lol. Of course I had to draw my own ornament in Paint Shop Pro and turn it into an SVG file since I didn't have this die cut of Tim's, The little pine cones and fir tree branch are from my stash of goodies I had when I use to make dried and silk flower arrangements. The calendar I printed out  from a copy I took of one of Tim's stamps and then used some distress ink on it to give it that vintage look. The metal corners I had in my stash.

So that's it, my version of Tim Holtz 12 Days of Christmas tags. If you would like to see some other versions of these stamps you can see some that my friend Paulien made on her blog here: http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/

 Thanks so much for stopping by and I would love to hear your comments on my tags. Have a great weekend!

Tim Holtz 12 Days of Christmas Tags

Well I'm sure if you're like most scrappers you probably love Tim Holtz 12 Days of Christmas Tags. If you haven't seen them before you can start at "Day 1" of his tags here: Tim Holtz Blog. Every year he never ceases to amaze me with all the wonderful ideas he comes up with and great ways to use your scrapping and card making products that you probably never would have thought of - he is beyond talented, I absolutely adore him! 

Anyway, this year I decided to try do all of his tags and I am so excited to say that I managed to get them all done - yeah me! LOL. As I wasn't sure what items I would be needing or improvising on for each of his tags I didn't do them in the order that he did so I didn't want to put the ones I had done, up on my blog, until I had finished them all so as not to confuse you. I will be putting these up on my blog later this evening so if you have any comments (good or bad) I'd love to hear them. I will try and give you a run down on each one as it's posted so you will know what I did to hopefully achieve a look to the tags similar to Tim's. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will stop by later and check them out!

17 more days......

Wow hard to belive there is just a little over two weeks until Christmas! I have all of my shopping finished and wrapped -yeah me! Got my tree up and decorated last night. I usually put up my big huge tree in out living room but the kids are not able to make it up here for Christmas this year (so sad :-( ) so I went out and bought a smaller tree this year to put up. It's got the lights already in it which is great as that is the only thing I hate about putting the tree up is putting the lights on it. Since this one is  much smaller I've put it up in our familyroom by our wall unit. It's cute, just a smaller version of our other tree. I've posted some pictures below. The first one is our big tree from last year. The second one is the smaller version I put up last night.

I've been busy making wedding invitations for my friends wedding next September. They have family and friends from New Zealand that they are inviting so she wanted to send those ones out now just to give everyone time to be able to plan if they will be able to come to Canada for the wedding. I really like how they turned out and my friends is so happy with the cards. Here are a couple of samples of the outside and inside of the card. I hope everyone is having a great week, TFL!

Only a month late..

Well I finally sat down to do a layout of my grand kids Halloween pics. The only problem was I was having scrappers block, didn't have any idea how I would do this page. Then I thought I should try my new Cricut Cartridge "Halloween Haunting". I was having so much fun playing with the cartridge and all the cool things I could cut out I sort of forgot the photo until the end. But when I put it all together it looked not to bad - not one of my best layouts but I just love all the cool embellies I was able to cut with my Cricut. I know when my grand kids see it they will love it, they always like me to cut things out for them on my Cricut when their visiting so they'll love these being on their layout.

If you like these Cricut cutouts you shouold head on over to my website, Scrappers Heaven, and check out the prices on the Cricut Cartridges - $40 to $50 and if  you don't see what you want just email me and I'll bring it in for you! Right now I think I have about 3 of the Happy Haunting cartridges left. This is such a cool cartridge you can even cut out 3D objects with it - like a haunted house which looks so cool - your kids would love decorating your house for Halloween with all these cool 3D objects!

Well here's my layout, thanks for looking and don't forget - only 24 more days till Christmas!