New Years Eve!

Wow the last day of 2011 - can you believe how fast the year has gone by! I arrived back home yesterday afternoon after having a wonderful Christmas with my kids and grandchildren. It's always so much fun to watch the young ones open up all of their gifts - and boy did they have a lot of gifts to open. I think they had about 4 Christmas's in one day. First the grandchildren were at their Mum's house Christmas Eve to open up presents Christmas morning. Then they were off to  my son's (their Dad) to open up presents there. After that my daughter picked them up to bring them to her house to open presents with us and then we dropped them back off at  my son's to open presents with their Grandad and his wife when they came over for dinner! I don't ever remember having that many gift openings when were kids, lol.

My daughter and her Dad and I went to my sisters place for a very yummy Christmas dinner of ham and all the fixings - I love it when someone else does the cooking, it always taste's better then mine, even if it had been just a piece of toast, lol.

On Dec 27th we had everyone to my daughters place for a huge turkey dinner and lots of yummy desserts. I think there was about 16 of us and my daughter did all the cooking, even making a couple of yummy pies with the crusts right from scratch - she definitely doesn't get that from me, lol! It was so great to visit with friends and family, some that I hadn't seen in over 6 years!

Tonight my DH and I are off to our friends place for a house party - hopefully we will last to actually ring in the New Year - it's funny how priorities change as we get older. I hope that everyone has an awesome and safe New Years Eve and a wonderful 2012!

Happy New Years Everyone!! 

Merry Christmas!!

Well here we are, Christmas Eve 2011 - where does the time go!! When you're a kid the time just seems to go by so slowly, but boy when you become older it just flies by! I've come down to the mainland to have Christmas with my kids. I'm looking forward to watching them all opening their gifts as I didn't get to spend Christmas with them last year.

Last night we got together with old friends for their annual Christmas get together. It was so great seeing everyone. We've all being doing this since all of our kids were little ones and now all our kids are grown and it's so great that all the kids still come to the party. Usually at their age they all have their own friends and things to do. It was so nice to hear from one of our friends son (who is now 6'5") that he looks forward to this get together every year. We managed to get a big group shot of everyone together so it will be great to scrapbook that photo.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas filled with lots of love and happiness and spending time with family and friends and a healthy and happy New Year to all! I hope Santa is good to everyone!! 

Enjoy your holidays!!

Four more sleeps!!

Wow can you believe it's only 4 more days until Christmas - well I guess that's technically 3 days since it's the 21st of December already, lol. I'm off this afternoon to fly down to visit with my kids over the holidays which I'm really looking forward to. I'll be doing a lot of visiting with friends while I'm down there so that will be fun as I haven't seen some of them for a few years.

I did manage to get one more quick layout done the other day to take down with me of  my friends cute little granddaughter with Santa Claus. I used some of Websters "Sweet Season" line of Christmas papers from last year mixed with some from this years "Waiting For" line. I cut the Christmas balls out from one of the papers to spell out the Santa title and popped them up with foam and added some gold ribbon and bows to them. Also died some more of the white flowers I have with Rangers ink, in cranberry, and then when I put them all together I outlined the petals again like I did for the other layout with Stickles glitter and some white puffy paint for the center. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

 

Cute Christmas village

I just love this cute little village I made using my Cricut machine and an SVG file I bought from SVG Cuts. You can see the village  on their website here: Gingerbread Chalet  It's suppose to be made with brown papers etc to look like gingerbread but I wanted to make it with this yummy winter paper from Bo Bunny's line last year, "Snowy Serenade". You can cut this out on your Cricut machine using the "Make the Cut" program or "Sure Cuts a Lot" and it's really very easy to put together. You can take the roof off of the houses if you get those little electric/battery operated tea light candles and put them inside they look adorable all lit up. Anyway here is how it turned out - don't you just love the blues in this paper! TFL & I hope you'll check this out on SVG Cuts website, they have lots of really cute files to purchase.

More Websters

Had to play some more with the goodies in my Websters "Home for the Holidays" kit! There is so much stuff in this great kit, I  think I'll have winter and Christmas layouts coming out of my ears, lol. The layout I've done below is using another photo of my friends cute little granddaughter. The main paper is Websters "waiting for: reindeer cottage". I took a duplicate piece of paper and cut out the corner "cottage" and "Santa" in the air balloon and popped them up with foam. On the right bottom corner I cut out another piece from a different paper and popped that up with foam and cut out the deer from one of the  other papers and popped that up with another piece of foam. I did some distressing and punch work on the layers under the photo. On the bottom of the photo I did some more fussy cutting from one of the 6 x 6 sheets of paper to get this corner piece of flowers that I popped up with foam again. For the poinsettia I had some plain white flowers and used some Ranger's ink, in cranberry, to dye the flowers. Once they had dried and I put them together I took some "crystal" stickles and out lined the petals and then used some white puffy paint for the center of the flower. For the snow on the roof of the cottage I used some of the trim from Websters Holiday Trim. It kind of had a white glittery netting with this white knit on the bottom of it so I just cut the netting away and then used it for the snow on the roof. So here is the finished product:

 I think it turned out pretty cute. Tomorrow I will be posting my little Christmas village I've been working on, it's super cute! Well I'm off to bed, I hope everyone has a great week! TFL!

Sketch contest

Happy Wednesday everyone. Just a reminder that the big sketch contest is still going on over at "My Creative Scrapbook" sketch blog. Pam is again offering another awesome prize to be won filled with so  many goodies, I hope you'll all have a chance to join in. Here is a copy of this  months sketch:

Yesterday I received my "Home for the Holidays" kit from Websters Pages and couldn't wait to dive into all the Websters goodies, so I decided I'd use some of the papers etc for my entry into the big contest. The photo's I used are of my granddaughter that I took while we were helping my sister out at a craft fair last month. We decided to take a little break and go outside and do a bit of a photo shoot with all of the fall leaves that were on the ground!

These yummy papers are from Websters Your Life Beautiful "Waiting For" collection. I did some distressing on each layer using my distress tool and some Tim Holtz Distress inks in "Brushed Corduroy". The Websters "Bloomers" in green went perfect with the papers for this layout. I had some lime green chipboard letters that I used for the "Fall" in my title but I took some crumpled plastic wrap and patted it onto the distress ink pad then just sort of stamp it all over the chipboard to give a bit of a distressed look. I used some of the Websters "Story Teller" alphabet stickers that came in the kit for the rest of the title. The red and green buttons I added were from my stash. I apologize for the photo, it's a little on the blurry side. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek and I hope you get a chance to stop by and enter the contest too!

The never ending card...

The video below is just a short one to show off the cute "Never Ending" card that I made at a class at our LSS. You can find a number of tutorials on You Tube for these cards but I found that this one by Dawn seemed to be the easiest to follow. I hope you'll try it out, here's the link:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAVAzDtcdw0

Almost forgot....

I took a card class on Wednesday night at our local scrapbook store and I  just wanted to post some pics of the cards we made. I really like this first one, it was so simple but turned out really cute - you just have to bare with the fact that for some reason in my photo it looks like the white card stock is kind of dirty, but it's not in real life, so it must just be my camera. It's sort of hard to tell in the photo but the  little light bulbs are popped up with foam and underneath we've used one of those finger dobber's to dob some of the same color ink and  then kind of feathered it around to make it look like the bulb is glowing. My pen line for the lights wire is kind of not that good as my fingers being so numb from my MS they don't always go where I want them to, lol. Anyway, I think it's kind of cute, so here you go! ;-)

I really liked this second card we did using some holly die-cuts cut from different shades of green, some with glossy accents, and some with green and gold glitter. Some of the  holly I've popped up with foam. We just kind of glued the holly down in different spots around in a circle and then used some red stickles to make the berries. On the white background paper we used some Distress inks in "weathered wood" and "pine needles" and depending how much of each you used gave each card a little bit different look. I sent this one to my in-laws as I just thought it came out so pretty.

We did make another card which I'm sure some of you have heard of before - it's called the "never ending card". This card is just so cool how you can keep opening it with every flip of the paper. I'm going to try and take a video of it to show you how it opens (Not how to make it, but I will post a link to a tutorial on how to do them). I'll try and do this tomorrow if I can get my camera video to work. Well I'm off to make a few more Christmas cards and then hopefully I'll be done for this year at least. Have a great weekend everyone!

Memory Boxes all done!

Yeah, I got them all done!! I was beginning to think I wouldn't get these done in time for next Christmas, never mind this Christmas, lol. Once I got going on these I had a lot of  fun making them and am quite pleased how they turned out. This first one here is the one I did for my Grandson using the Bo Bunny "Back to Backs" paper. I thought these papers would work for a boy box. I did have plans on wanting to get like a tiny little car to glue to the top of the box but all the ones that I found were metal and I figured after opening and closing the box a few times it would probably fall off and take some of the paper along with it, so I opted for using feathers and some die cut chipboard gears instead. So here is how it turned out.

 This next pretty one is for my son's girlfriends daughter (she's a little younger than my granddaughter). For this one I used these pretty pink papers from Teresa Collins "Posh" collection of papers. I used some tiny Prima rose buds and one of Prima's pretty roses with the glassy glitter on it. The other two pink ones and the black and pink one I made myself using Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flowers tutorial. You will see a link to Gabi's blog under my list of fav blogs I go to if you would like to make some of these. They are really simple to make and come out looking very pretty! I did take all of the hardware off of these boxes before putting any of the paper on them, which amazingly went very well putting it back on - the usually never happens for me, lol. The boxes I picked up at our local Dollar Store for $2.00 each so this makes very cute, in-expensive gifts. So here's the last one, I hope you like it!

 I hope you liked these and maybe give you a little inspiration to make your own. Remember I love to hear any comments you have! TFL!

I'm back!

Well I actually arrived back home last Monday but I've been busy out in the yard since it hasn't been raining. I did managed to get my outside lights up and I cleaned up some of the branches and stuff that had gotten all over the yard after we had that big windstorm a couple of weeks ago. I still need to clean up the rest of the leaves that are now off the trees. Hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow.

 I've been procrastinating for a number of weeks here to do some memory boxes for my grandchildren for Christmas. Had the boxes sitting here but for some reason just couldn't get in the  mood to get started on them. So I'm happy to say I finally got started on them - yeah! I'm very pleased at how this first one turned out for my granddaughter, I think it looks so pretty. The papers I've used on this box are from Kaisercraft's "Bonjour" collection. I really like the soft colors of these papers and I really liked how my flower cluster worked out. For some reason I usually have a hard time with my flower clusters - no idea why.

I also just finished a box for my grandson tonight but I'm waiting until tomorrow to take a photo of it in the daylight. So I'll post a photo of that one tomorrow. Anyway here is my granddaughters memory box..I hope you like it!

 

Good Morning!

Well I got an early start to my day today since I am flying down to the mainland this afternoon. I'm helping my sister out at a craft fair on Saturday (I'm going to take some of my cards down with me to sell in the craft fair too) and then on Monday I'm flying down to visit my BFF in Portland. We've been friends since we were in grade 3, which is about 50 years - holy cow that's a long time, boy do I feel old now, lol. This will be fun since it's the American Thanksgiving next week so it will be great to actually be together for Thanksgiving.

I had a little bit of time last night so I made another tri-fold card again. I used this gorgeous Bo Bunny paper from their "Snowy Serenade" collection from last year. I just love this paper with it's beautiful blues and glitter!  The little snowman I drew in my Paint Shop Pro program, my version of a stamp I  had seen on the internet. I'm just getting into a bit of stamping now so what I use to do when I saw a cute stamp was to draw it in my PSP program. Saves a lot of money that way, lol.  I added some puffy paint to the snowman's hat. I think it turned out quite cute. Well thanks so much for stopping by and I hope everyone has a great week!

 

Cards on the go now...

Yes, I finally managed to get my bum in gear and started making some Christmas cards. I'm really trying hard not to buy new paper as I have quite a lot still left over from last year but it's so hard as there are so many gorgeous new papers and embellishments out this year. I think I need to win the lottery, lol.

This first card I made features this cute little pixie from Charmed Cards & Crafts - isn't she adorable? The papers are from my Dec 2010 LE kit from My Creative Scrapbook. I printed out two of the pixies and popped the second one up with foam dots. I used puffy paint on her dress and boots and then stickles glitter on her wings and dress. I also used some white puffy paint all around the edges of the card.

This second one I used this pretty red glitter poinsettia paper I had in my stash. I used some silver metallic Prism paper for my card base. I used a corner punch to cut out the corners of the red glitter paper and then used some red stickles dotted into each of these corners. I cut one of the poinsettia's out of the paper and then cut all the petals apart and then pieced it back together on a square of the background paper. I stamped the sentiment on another piece of the silver paper and embossed it with red embossing powder.

I decided to try making another tri-fold card for my next one since I hadn't done one for quite awhile. I was having a bit of brain fade for some reason when I started out doing the folding for the card but eventually it all came together, lol. The poinsettia that I used I drew in my Paint Shop Pro program, printing out two and cutting one out and popping up with foam dots and then I used some stickles glitter to outline the petals of the flower.

On this next card i used this cute little ice skating snowman that I also drew in my PSP program. I think he was a stamp that I saw somewhere on the internet and so I drew him instead of buying the stamp, lol. I used puffy paint on his hat and mittens and did the same thing of popping up a second snowman with pop dots. I think he's a cute little guy don't you?

These next two cards I decided to make swing cards, I always think they're so cute. On the blue one I cut the sentiment out on my Cricut machine. The brown one features another little graphic I drew in my PSP program and cut out one to pop up with foam again. Thanks so much for having a peek at my cards and I would love to hear any of your comments! I hope everyone has a great week!

Another Monday almost over

And it's a short week this week - Yeah! It's "Remembrance Day" here in Canada and here in BC it's a statutory holiday on Friday so we can pay our respects to all of our men and women who have given their lives and those that continue to serve our country. I know there will be many things going on in every city both here in Canada and in the US and I hope everyone can participate in one way or another, even if just a minute of silence  in our own homes. We owe so much to all of these  men and women and they all deserve our respect and admiration. So to all of these men and women, thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Okay, I'm getting myself all teary eyed here. I did another Halloween layout yesterday on some of the photo's I took at our friends Halloween party we went to the Saturday before Halloween. There were so many great costumes it was hard to pick which ones to use for the layout. I decided I did want at least a photo that my DH and I were in - so that took up two photos and then I settled on 3 other photos. So in the layout I'd be the one on the left in the red M&M candy costume, which I made myself by the way, *smile*. My DH is the one in the Pirate costume on the top right. Don't you just love our friend in the Bumble Bee costume - it was so funny watching him walking around with this bucket stuck to his butt with a big stinger sticking out of it - it makes me laugh every time I think of it.

The haunted house and the spooky tree and the "Spooky" title was all cut out with my Cricut machine using the "Happy Hauntings" cartridge. The pumpkin and raven are from the Making Memories "Spellbound" 192 piece embellishment box. The fence and other embellishments I had in my stash. The background paper is from My Mind's Eye Boo! To You! collection "Fright Night" paper. Thanks so much for looking and I hope everyone has a great week!

Halloween layout

It took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to scrap these photos. I wanted a more fun type of layout since the kids costumes were not really scary costumes. After playing around with different papers from my stash I finally settled on three main pieces - the green  one from Bo Bunnies "Vicki B" collection, the black polka dot one is from Making Memories"Spellbound" collection along with most of the embellishments from the same collection and the last piece is from Imaginisce "Hallowwhimsy" collection.

I matted the photos with some of my own paper from my Fall/Halloween digital kit that I sell on eBay and my website and the little witch on the right paper is one from my same kit. The spider webs and title were cut out on my Cricut machine using the "Happy Haunting" cartridge. I popped the little bats and the black crow up with some foam dots to give it that 3D look. I made some flowers to go on the layout but then decided it wasn't really a flower type of layout. I still think it's missing something but I can quite decide what. I'm sure something will come to me after I look at it for awhile, lol.

I still have one more Halloween layout to do to scrap pics from the adult Halloween party we went to, there was some pretty good costumes at this one - wait till you see our friend in his bumble bee costume he made - it's so funny! Don't forget you can click on the photos to see a bigger version of the layout and then just hit your back button to return to see page. TFL and have a great weekend!

 

Happy Wednesday all!

Well I got on a bit of a roll yesterday and managed to get two layouts done. I had these beautiful papers from Bo Bunnies "Forever Fall" collection of papers and as soon as I saw them I knew I had the perfect photos to use with them.I'm sure everyone has seen this line of papers by now but if you haven't you really have to pop over to the Bo Bunny website and check them out - they are to die for!! LOL

This first layout is using a photo of my son and his girlfriend taken in their backyard a couple of weeks ago. I just thought the photo was so pretty with all the leaves on the ground and the trees with the leaves all changing color. The background paper is from this Forever Fall Collection, it's double sided and is called "Dusk". The paper was just so pretty I didn't want to cover it up to much so I cut out one of the pieces of the cut outs double sided paper and used that to sort of mat the photo. Before matting the photo I used the piece to trace out another piece of paper the same shape from the red side of the double sided "Dot" paper and then used it behind the matted photo but off set it to the right and up a bit.

I also used one of the journal tags from the cut out sheet and used that behind the two other pieces. I cut out my Title word "Fall" on my Cricut machine and then used some foam dots to pop the letters up off the page. I used some rub on letters that I had  in my stash on the journal tag and spelled out "In Love" so I had a bit of a double play on the word Fall. While digging through my stash for something else I came across this pretty laser cut gate from Dusty Attic and thought it would look quite pretty with the whole layout.

For my handmade flowers I used some brown and some teal blue (to match the background paper) Bazzill paper. I used Gabrielle's water distress flower tutorial which you can find here on Gabi's Blog: Water Distressed Flower Tutorial I remembered I had these other tiny teal rose buds from Prima in my stash and they matched perfectly with the teal I used on my flowers. The flourish is one of Prima's "Say it in Crystals" flourishes, I didn't want to use the whole thing so I just cut a piece off of it and it fit perfect in the left bottom corner. So here's how it all came out:

For this next one of the kids visit to the pumpkin patch I used the Bo Bunny double sided "Bouquet" paper. It was also so pretty I didn't want to cover it all up so I matted the photo in brown and then cut a couple of different lengths of paper from the "Dot" paper using both the red side and the dots. I used the "Perfect Pumpkin" cut out  and then used my Cricut machine to cut out the other part of the title "Finding". I decided to distress all the paper edges but instead of using a brown ink I used one of my small "Versa" ink pads called "Mountain Lake" which was almost the same (maybe a bit darker) color as the blue in the paper. I think it turned out good as it just sort of gave the layout a little something else to draw out the blue in the paper.

I made some more flowers using Gabi's tutorial again, only this time I made them in brown with orange centers. On these flowers I added some "Aqua" stickles glitter to the edges of the petals of these flowers. I used some more of the pretty little Prima rose buds again in this flower cluster. I also added some pretty orange stain ribbon which I tied into a bow and with the long tails I kind of weaved them through the flowers. My leaves are some that I drew in my Paint Shop Pro program and sell in my Fall/Halloween digital scrapbook kit which I sell on my website here: Scrappers Heaven  The little felt pumpkin is from the Making Memories "Spellbound" 192 piece Halloween Embellishment Kit. I have this kit on sale for $5.99 on the website also.

I apologize for the photo on this layout as it got really sunny this afternoon when I was taking the photo so there's a lot of shadow on the photo (not that I'm going to complain when we get sunshine at this time of the year, lol). Well I'm off to scrap some more Halloween photos. Thanks for stopping by and have a great evening!

Happy November 1st!!

Seems I'm a little lazy in my blog posting these days. I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween yesterday and hopefully all of your little ghosts and goblins are not bouncing off the walls with to much sugar today, lol. We only had about 17 kids last night, which is just a few more than last year. Halloween has sure changed from when we were kids, I remember going out with my sisters and our friends and the streets would be so fall of trick or treaters it was crazy! I guess the parents tend to take the kids to parties and the mall rather than going door to door, plus we live in a bit older neighborhood so I guess the kids have all grown up now. Oh well I guess I'll just be forced to eat all those goodies myself, lol.

I have done a couple of layouts and a card since the last time I posted. This first one is a card I did using up some more of the Pink Paislee "Butterfly" collection that came  in the MCS May LE Kit. I saw this saying somewhere on the internet and I thought it would be perfect for an all occasion card. Used a bit of Gesso on the bottom and did some distressing. Added some pretty lace and pink pearls and of course a beautiful Prima flower.

This next layout is showing off one of my fish I caught when my DH and I went out fishing in July. I thought these Websters papers from one of the MCS LE kits I had would be perfect for this layout. I did a bit of fussy cutting of the papers and added some foam dots to pop up some of the goodies on the layout. I was actually quite pleased with it once I was all done. Don't you just love these fabric flowers from this Websters line, I just think they are so cute.

We had a challenge for October over at MCS to do stitching on our layouts - machine or by hand. I've just started to do this a bit on my layouts these days so I thought this would be a great time to start doing it more. I did this double page layout with some photos of my daughter and her boyfriend when they took my grandchildren (my son's kids) to Disneyland back in August. I did some machine stitching on the corners of the layout and then hand stitched a flourish down on the bottom right. The paper pieced Mickey Mouse and Tinkerbell were cut using my cricut machine and the Micky Mouse font cartridge and the Tinkerbell & Friends cartridges I have in my collection. I didn't do any distressing on this layout as I wanted a bit more clean type layout. I also hand made my flowers following Gabrielle Pollacco's water distressed flower tutorial. I also cut out the title using my cricut machine.

This last layout I did last night using a photo of my granddaughter (1st on the left) and her friends going to their first ever school dance (she's in grade 7). I'm feeling pretty old looking at this as it just seems like my son was that age not long ago and now he's 31! This old age thing sucks, lol. I used the Making Memories "Spellbound" collection from a few years ago that I had in my stash and this was also my entry into the big Fall contest that is going on over at the MCS Sketch Blog. I just turned the sketch sideways to accommodate my horizontal photo. You can get a lot of layouts done with this Spellbound kit and I still have a few of them plus the embellishments from the same collection over on my website here:  Scrappers Heaven and they're on for a really good price, so pop over and check it out! So here's the layout, I hope you like it and please, I love to hear any comments you have, so feel free to leave some love! :-) Have a great week everyone!

Half way through...

Wow can you believe it's already October 16th? Where did the time go to? I haven't even finished scrapping my summer photos and soon we'll be doing Halloween layouts! The weather has cooled down quite a bit, at least in the evening. We're in a nice stretch of sunny weather right now which is great as I'm trying to get my gardens all cleaned out for the winter - which I'm about half way through so far. Plus we're also trying to dig out the side of our yard to put in some more parking so we can get our camper and boat onto more level ground to make it easier to get the camper on and off the pick up truck. It's suppose to stay sunny until at least next Friday so we'll keep our fingers crossed, after all this is BC and the weather can change in 5 minutes, lol.

In bertween all this I have managed to do a couple more layouts and a card. This first layout and card were made using the May Limited Edition kit from My Creative Scrapbook. I just love this Pink Paislee "Butterfly Garden" collection with it's pretty papers and die cuts, pop up clear butterflies and rub-ons. It's just so versatile. This is a photo of my daughter giving her friend "attitude" when she was taking her picture last year. I just thought it was a funny one do to a layout with. I kept the layout fairly simple, added some pretty Prima flowers that came in the kit and the green satin ribbon from the kit  which I stitched down the middle and then pulled the stitching to get it to gather up. Did some distressing on the papers and added my title and here is how it turned out.

On this card I used the same Pink Paislee papers that I distressed and layered. I used one of the rub-ons for the angel/fairy in the top right corner and a pretty Prima flower. I found this saying somewhere on the web and I thought it would be great for an all occasion  card, so I printed that out using my Paint Shop Pro program. I had this pretty white lace in my stash which I added and then put some pretty pink pearls across it and up in the right corner by the fairy and then added a bit of gesso to the bottom which I used some Tim Holtz tattered rose distress  ink on after the gesso dried. I was pleased with the way it turned out - I'd love to hear your comments on any of my work!

I did this last layout of a [photo of one of my fish I caught in the summer when my DH and I were out fishing. I've really only fished on a lake before as my parents had a cottage on the Okanagon Lake in the interior of BC which is where we spent our summers. I would go out fishing with my Dad for Kokanee (a small land locked salmon) which were not really that big. So now that we've moved up here to Campbell River on Vancouver Island and we have our own boat I get to go out fishing on the ocean. I haven't fished for salmon yet but we go jigging for Cod , halibut etc. and since I like white fish this works out great for fish and chips, lol. This is one of the biggest fish I had ever caught (which is really no where near the size that my DH and step-daughter have caught) but to me it was big and it gave us a good dinner of fish and chips that night, so I was quite happy, lol.

I thought these Websters "Spring Market" collection of papers from MCS March LE kit would go perfect with my photo. I did some fussy cutting of the flowers in the left bottom corner, the "fresh fish" sign and the Farmers Market sign and popped them up with foam for a 3D look. I took some of the blue ribbon from the kit and pleated that using some tape and added a small satin flower from the kit and then this pretty fabric flower from Websters and the chipboard buttons from the same collection. So here is how it turned out. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek at my work. I hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all of my Canadian friends I'd like to wish you all a "Happy Thanksgiving" this weekend and remember - Don't eat to much turkey or there will be no room for Pumpkin pie, lol.

I decided I should start using up some more of my left over kits from MCS, this is from their LE kit in Oct 2010. You can get so many layouts done with each of the kits, Pam definitely does not scrimp on the kits you get! This is photo of my grand children going back for their first day of school this year. These are papers from Webster's "Your Life Beautiful" paper line last year. I cut out the letters for the word "School" and the owl, backpack, globe and school from the "Learn Your ABC's paper and popped them up with foam. the layers I've cut from the "Learn Your ABC's", "A Sweet Stop" and "Playtime". Also used some of the trim from this line and the stickers. Of course I just had to add some pretty flowers from Prima! Other than the fact that my photo is a little blurry and there's a big white spot in the photo from my flash I think the layout turned out not to bad. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek, have a great weekend!

An aniversary!!

So 13 years ago today that I had my surgery for my breast cancer and I'm still going strong! I can't believe it's been that long ago already. I've had a few other types of cancer in those 13 years but those were all good after surgeries so this was the big one and I'm very happy today.

I did manage to get another layout done that I started yesterday. This was based off of the August sketch from My Creative Scrapbook, which you can see below. I did a lot of machine stitching on the layers here because the colors are so soft I thought they would stand out a bit more. You'll have to ignore the spot on the photo from my camera flash. The papers are some more from The Scrap Cake, I did a little bit of fussy cutting of some of the circle and flowers from the paper. The butterfly I made myself cutting up one of my white flowers so that I had two pieces, each with two petals on them. I colored them blue using my Tim Holtz "Blue Jean" distress ink pad then glued the two pieces together in the middle and for the body I actually cut the stem off of one of my tiny folded satin roses, so the bigger part of the stem was the body then the thin part I bent to make the antennas. I then used some of my stickles glitter "Eucalyptus" color and outlined the wings and put a couple of strips down the middle of each petal. It doesn't look as good in the picture as it does in real life - oh well I'll blame my camera, lol. Of course the flowers are from Prima and the red rose chippy is from one of my scrap  kits from MCS. The title was cut on my Cricut machine. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and having a peek and remember I always love to hear your comments! Have a great week!

Two whole days in a row....

Yup, it's like it finally decided to be summer. Yesterday and today was gorgeous, warm and sunny so I managed to get out in the yard and start doing some clean up and even managed to get the lawn mowed. Let's hope that's the last mowing of the year, lol.

So I started this layout yesterday and finally got it finished tonight. I love this photo of my grandson when we were at the beach when the grand kids were visiting this summer. I used the beautiful Bo Bunny "Timepiece" collection for this layout, I think it works great for boy/masculine pages. 

I did a lot of distressing and layering on this layout. After I placed the bow and the Prima flowers on the page I took some of Tim Holtz negative tape and wove it through the flowers. I made the paper accordion flower out of some of the paper. The gears I drew in Paint Shop Pro, then I turned them into a SVG file so I could cut it on my cricut machine. I cut it using some chipboard and using my deep cut blade to cut the chipboard. I then painted them with "Vintage Photo" crackle paint and once they were dry I inked the  edges. Thanks so much for stopping by and having a peek.

New Sketch at MCS

Well it's time for a new sketch at the My Creative Scrapbook new sketch blog that you can find here: http://mycreativesketches.blogspot.com/  Remember Pam always gives fantastic prizes away so add your version of the sketch and you never know you could end up with a great prize. I know I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might win, lol! Here is the sketch to use for this months contest.

Here is my version of the sketch. These are some cute papers I found at one of our local Scrapbook stores from the Stamping Station which I thought would go great with the blue in the photos. This is my daughter and my grandson (my son's boy) at Disneyland this summer being silly for the camera, lol. I tried something a little bit different on here and did some inking on two of the papers just to sort of make the layers stand out more - not sure if I quite created the effect I was going for but it doesn't look to bad, lol. I cut the leaves and the letters out on my Cricut machine and also made the yellow and patterned paper flowers using a flower shape from my Cricut machine. The other three flowers were ones I had in my stash from the dollar store. The bling and the butterfly are from Prima. I hope you will all give this sketch challenge a try. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek at mine! Have a great weekend!

Where did the time go!

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I updated my blog. It's been kind of busy what with the grand kids up visiting and then we were off camping for a week. We also got a new member of the family when we got back from camping - a little 8 week old ginger kitten, which we named Hunter (named after one of my DH's favorite authors Hunter S. Thompson) - our other two cats are not impressed, lol. The weather finally decided to actually be summer weather and it turned out really hot which was just in time for our friends wedding which was on Sept 3rd and then this past weekend our other friends daughter got married. So it turned out to be a very busy and expensive month so far, lol. I'm really looking forward to this weekend of not having to do anything!

In between all this stuff I have managed to get a few layouts and cards done. My Creative Scrapbook has started a new "Sketch" blog which can be found here: http://mycreativesketches.blogspot.com/. And as usual Pam (the owner) is giving away some awesome prizes so be sure to check it out!  Below is the first sketch on the blog and then my take on the sketch using a photo of my son and his girlfriend taken at one of the beaches in Vancouver.

This next layout took a bit of time. I took my grandchildren to this Farm in Black Creek, BC while they were visiting this summer. This is a gorgeous farm right on the ocean that they will take you on tours during the summer. I did a lot of distressing and stitching on these pages. I haven't done a two page layout for so long it kind of took me awhile trying different things out until I was happy with it. The feathers with the flowers are actually from the Emu in one of the photos. The chicken, barn, wagon wheel and cow are ones that I have drawn myself and that I sell in my "Farm" digital kit on my website and on eBay. I've popped them up with foam for a 3D look. Remember you can click on any of the images for a larger view and then just hit the back button to return to this page.

The My Creative Scrapbook forum's August challenge was to create a layout using some of your packaging that your scrapbook items come in. This was a fun challenge but due to being so busy during August and the first week or so of September I didn't even get a chance to work on it until a few days ago. I decided to use some more of my May LE Kit from MCS that had all these great papers and embellishments from Pink Paislee's "Butterfly Collection" and gorgeous Prima flowers. This is a photo of my daughter and her boyfriend that was taken while they were visiting in Victoria, BC this past July. The packaging items I used in this layout was the card stock with the small little flowers on it, right behind the photo is from some Prima flowers and just to the right of that the white doilie printed on clear plastic is also from some Prima flower packaging. The last item I used was the top of the packaging of the Butterfly Collection of charms that has the bow on it. Isn't it amazing how you can become "green" for the environment when you are scrapbooking! Anyway below is the layout I made for the challenge.

The last thing I have to show you is a card I made using the same Pink Paislee Butterfly Collection of papers. One of the sheets of paper, the "Botanical Garden", had different pieces of the collection all on the one sheet and since this piece with the bird and birdcage on it was a longer piece I thought it would be perfect  for one of those tall slim cards - which I've never made before. I just love this line of papers, they are so pretty and just seem to fit perfect for almost any layout, card or altered item! I played around with this for quite awhile because the piece was so pretty I hated to put anything on top of it - I really have a bad habit of doing that with pretty papers, lol. I distressed and inked the two larger pieces of the paper and put them together. for the two smaller pieces on the front of the card I finally settled on one of the other pieces from the same sheet of paper which had the same colors  in it and had a white outline of some leaves on one side that I liked and was pale pink on the other side so I just cut it in half and used the pink side for my sentiment. The sentiment is one from Tim Holtz line of stamps, which I have, but I didn't think the "shabby" font of the stamp would look right for the card so I used my Paint Shop Pro program to print out the sentiment on the paper instead. I distressed and inked those two pieces and attached them to the larger ones. I then added some lace to the bottom of the card and then attached these all to my base card stock for the card.

After getting the card basically together I decided it needed a little something so I took some Gesso and mixed in a little bit of iridescent medium to it. I let it dry a little so it would be thicker to paint on and be a bit more sturdy to use (if that makes sense, lol). I painted some of the top left corner where I was going to place my flowers but made it a bit larger than the area the flowers would take up. Then I painted a bit lighter coat around the edges of the pink paper where the sentiment is and then let these two areas dry. After these were dry I stuck the flowers I had chosen onto the card and also some pretty pale pink self adhesive pearls onto the opposite corner and added a little white 3D butterfly that I inked with some pink ink to match the paper and viola the card was done. I'm really happy at the way it turned out.

I  hope you like the layouts and card I did and I'd love to hear any comments you have. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek at my work.

Bo Bunny

Don't you just love the Bo Bunny "Barefoot & Bliss" collection of papers? As soon as I saw them I knew they would be perfect for scrapping pics of the grand kids when they came up to visit since we are always at the beach when they are here. I was finally able to get a bit of time on Sunday to start playing with these papers. They're almost to nice to cut up - I have that problem when I have pretty papers I just hate to start cutting them, lol.

These are some photos of the grand kids when we took them out on their first ever fishing trip. My grandson was the first one to catch a small greenling. A couple of minutes later my granddaughter got a bite, as she brought it up to the boat my DH saw  that it was a mud shark - the look on her face was priceless when we told her it was a shark. My DH handed her his cell phone so she could call her Dad and tell him, she was so excited. It ended up that she caught three mud sharks (which we threw back in), then a couple of greenling. My grandson ended up catching a mud shark and a couple of greenling. We had a great dinner of fish & chips the next day!

The background paper I used for this layout is actually from Bo Bunny's  "Paradise" collection.  I matted my photos with some green bazzill paper to match the green in the papers. I fussy cut the waves out of the Barefoot & Bliss paper and popped them up with foam for the 3D look and then I cut the seagulls out from the same sheet of paper and just glued those down in the top left corner. I don't know if the little fish are from this same Bo Bunny collection but I had seen them on another layout somewhere on the net and thought they were so cute so I drew one in my Paint Shop Pro program and then turned it into an SVG file to cut out on my cricut machine. I just got a deep cut housing for  my Cricut so I cut the three different size fish out of chipboard and then cut the same ones out of some of the blue paper from this collection and glued them on the chipboard and popped them up with foam on the layout. I took some blue chipboard letters that I had in my stash and sanded them down and then added some green crackle paint to them for the "Fish" title. To finish the layout off I made a tag out of the same papers and did my journaling on that and then tucked it in behind one of the photos. I was quite pleased at  how it turned out, now I'm hoping I have enough paper left over to either do a few beach themed cards or another layout with them. Thanks so much for stopping by and having a peek and I'd love to hear any comments you'd like to leave. Have a great week!

Beach layout

Well yesterday was spent cleaning my house up after the grand kids visit -it should stay a bit cleaner longer than it does while they are here, lol. I got my butt in gear pretty early this morning and did all my running around doing errands done by about 10:30am.  It's amazing how much you can accomplish so early in the day!

So this afternoon has been some "me" time and I was able to get a layout done of the kids at the beach looking for sea treasures. My grandson found this big purple starfish - he wanted to bring it home but I told him it was still alive and that would be mean to the poor thing. I found these pretty beach papers from Creative Imaginations at my LSS, I thought they were so pretty and would be perfect for this layout. I did a lot of distressing on all of the papers. I got the fish net from a fish netting place in Steveston on the mainland, cost me about a dollar for a piece that's almost 12" x 36" and the little fence I got at a small craft store in the same area on the mainland, it's about a foot long so I just cut off a small piece of it to use and the shells are some we found at the beach. I took some glossy accents and poured a thick coat over the bottom of my grandson's photo and then poured some craft sand I had over it and let it dry - it didn't come out exactly as I wanted but still doesn't look to bad, lol. I also took a duplicate piece of paper and did some fussy cutting on the top left corner and popped it up with foam for a 3D look. If you'd like to see a larger version just click on the photo and hit your back button to return to this page. TFL 

Quiet house again

Wow, I can't believe it's August 11th already. We've been so busy with the grand kids visiting I haven't had time to even update my blog here. We were up bright and early this morning to do the 2 hour drive down island to Nanaimo to meet the ferry back over to the mainland. The kids Mum came over as a walk on passenger and I passed them off to her and they just got right back on the ferry and headed home. Needless to say I have tons of photos to scrap now, so that should keep me pretty busy for a while. Now the house seems so quiet. I guess tomorrow I can start a  major clean up of the house as it wasn't any use doing it while the kids were here, lol.

I also got an email today from Scrapbook News and Review magazine to let me know they were publishing a couple more of my cards in their issue that comes out on August 14th. The cards are my "Love U" card I made with the May LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook and my "Love" swing card made with some pretty papers from Stampin' Up. I think this is my fourth time being published in their magazine so I am feeling pretty happy about that. Well I guess I better go and get dinner started here. I hope everyone has been having a great summer so far! Thanks for stopping by!

Finally...

Summer has arrived here on the West Coast of BC - it's about time! It was a gorgeous day today so the grand kids and I hopped in the car and drove down to Courtney (about 40 klms away) to fill my truck up with cheap gas. Thanks to a new Costco with a gas station opening up in Courtney there is a big price war going on with the gas stations. Managed to get gas at 99¢ instead of $1.26 a liter. It was worth the drive, it only cost me just under $60 to fill up instead of $100 - works for me!

After we did that we stopped on the way home at the Pitch & Putt and had a round of golf with the kids. My grand daughter was the grand champion, even getting 3 hole in ones - me, well I didn't do so great, lol. The weather was nice and sunny so we soaked up some good old vitamin D.

Last night I managed to get some of the photos that I've been taking of the kids while they've been here scrapped. Every year during the July 1st (Canada Day) celebrations here in Campbell River there is a big "Shoreline Arts Carving Contest". There are all different classes from Novice to Expert. All the contestants get a log to carve, which they start carving out using a chain saw and then end up with smaller tools for the fine details. Let me tell you over the years that I have lived here I have seen some awesome work by these people! The carvers are all sponsored by a business in town and after the competition the business gets to have the beautiful carving outside the doors of the business. These ones in these photos  are a few of the carvings from the Novice class that were still down at the shoreline.

Well the weather is suppose to be absolutely gorgeous for the next week or so - suppose to be up to 27 Celsius every day, so I think we'll be spending a lot of time at the beach. I  hope everyone has been having a great week and TFL! 

Camping

Well this has been a busy week. We had a great time camping with my son and friends last weekend and of course I have lots of photos to scrap now. My grandchildren came back with us to visit for three weeks and we've been busy going to the lake and the ocean beaches. I did manage to get a scrap page done in between all of our running around.

I had this really cute paper from Imaginisce's "Happy Camper" collection that I thought would go perfect  with these photos of my grandson making and eating smores. I was finally able to use my Cricut cartridge "Camp Out" to cut out the cute camp fire for this layout. I also used a couple of my graphics from my "Great  Outdoors" digital scrapbook kit, the campsite "This Way" sign and the "outhouse" which I popped up with foam for a 3D look. I used one of  my Prima vines and some Prima flowers to finish the layout.

Now I'm off to print of some more of my camping photos so I can hopefully squeeze in some more "me" time to scrap. Thanks for popping by and I hope you all have a great weekend!