Scrappers Heaven

Lazy Sunday

2012-01-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Well it's one of those drizzly, cloudy days that you really don't even want to get out of bed for, lol. My MS has really been acting up this past week and the fatigue is quite bad.I didn't even get out of bed yesterday until about 10 am and then I had to go lay down at noon and fell asleep for a good 2 hours. By the time a did a few things and got dinner made and eaten I was back in bed at 7:30pm last night and didn't get up this morning until 9am. Now it's only about 2:15 pm and I could really head back to bed - I hate it when this fatigue takes over and it usually means that something bigger is going to happen with the MS. I've already been having stupid vertigo if I move to fast and really don't need anything else happening. Oh well, can't do much about it I guess. :-(

I did manage to get another layout done of my friends cute little great niece that I took when I was down in Portland visiting this past November. She is just such a cutie I couldn't resist doing another layout of her. She was just so cute playing in this upside down wicker table and some plastic containers - who needs fancy toys when you have all that, lol! I used some of my left overs from the March 2011 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook featuring Websters "Spring Market" collection. I did some layering and distressing and took a duplicate piece of the paper and did some fussy cutting of the signs etc in the bottom left corner and of the vellum in the top right corner. The banner I made using some of the cross grain ribbon from the kit and the Websters Storyteller Alpha stickers - these alpha stickers are great, they come in so many colors and fonts that you can use them with any layouts your doing! The little bouquet of flowers and the fabric pink and white one are from Prima and were included in this kit. I hope you like the layout and thanks for stopping by!

Websters New Paper Pads

2012-01-26T13:11:00.000-08:00

Have you been over to Websters blog and seen their new "Paper Pads"? PETITE PAPER PADS are back in all of their new lines! That's right, they've got the same gorgeous designs you see in 12x12 form all sized down to 6x6... The 6x6 papers give you a great assortment so you get more than one collection per pad. Take a look at this one, SUNDAY PICNIC and EVERYDAY POETRY:

And the other one has three lines in it, GAME ON, PALM BEACH and IN LOVE:

Gorgeous, right?

But that's not all. Because these scaled down versions of their papers are so popular, they've decided to create a brand new product this year, PERFECT MOTIFS.

This 18 page paperpad is LOADED with motifs from ALL FIVE COLLECTIONS! a NEW Product from Websters. If you'd like to read more about it you can check out the Websters Pages blog today! Websters Blog. I don't know about all of you but I'm thinking I need to win the lottery so I can buy all of the awesome new paper lines the manufacturer's are releasing for CHA! Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Trying to use my stash...

2012-01-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

I'm trying really hard not to buy any new papers until I use up more of my stash. I figure if I want to buy some of the new lines that are coming out at CHA next month I better get rid of some of the stuff I have already - you know how us scrappers love to hoard papers, lol. So far I'm not doing to badly at using stuff up. Pam at My Creative Scrapbooks just packs her kits with so many goodies you can get so many layouts done with each kit and still have leftovers, which, if your joining a kit club is a good thing to know!

This first one I've done her is a photo of a friend of mine and myself that was taken at another friend's place on New Years Eve. She is such a great person and we always laugh when we get together, one of our things we always tell our other friends is that "For a couple of old broads, we don't look to bad!", lol. These papers are from the January 2011 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. When I pulled out my piece of green background paper that I wanted to use for this layout I realized that my paper was short about and inch and a half so I thought I was pretty sneaky and got three other sheets of left over paper from the kit and punched them and laid them down on top of each other at the top of the layout to cover up the shortage - sometimes my brain actually works, lol. I did some fussy cutting of the flowers from one of the other sheets of paper from the kit for the bottom two corners and popped them up with foam. Included in this kit was this great package from Pink Paislee called "Artisan Elements" - they look like white chipboard but they have more of a plastic/rubber type feel to them and you can distress them, mist them, paint them and pretty much anything else you'd like to do with them. There are four corner pieces and then about 8 other circle shapes going from large to small - they are very cool looking. I decided I just want to leave mine white and I use that one to frame my photo. I did a bit of layering with the other papers from the kit and then used these pretty brown and red Prima flowers. Remember if you click on the photo you can see a larger view of the photo.

This next layout I've used a photo of myself and My friend's cute little great niece, Lucy, that I finally got to meet when I was down visiting in Portland. She was so cute when she was leaving to go home she was waving to us and saying "Bye Gramma's". I think because her real Gramma (my friends sister) and my friend and I are all blonde she figures anyone older with blonde hair is a Gramma, so funny. I used the Feb 2011 LE kit for this layout - I've still got some left over even after doing this one, lol. I just love this collection "Once Upon a Springtime" from Graphic45! I just love all the cute little fairies in this collection so I did a lot of fussy cutting of the fairies from the paper plus the flowers. I did some layering and distressing and added Prima flowers that came in the kit as well as some I had in my stash. The white flowers I made but for the centers I used some tiny Prima rose buds that I had in my stash. I also added a little bit of white picket fencing that I had in my stash. It really took me about two days of playing around with this layout before I was finally happy enough with it to start gluing and taping things down. So here is how it turned out, hope you like it and remember I love to hear your comments! TFL!

Pion Design's Giveaway!

2012-01-22T19:49:00.000-08:00

Fridday, Jan 21st was Pion Designs 1 year blog anniversary and they would like to celebrate with some wonderful blog candy! Here is what you need to do to have the chance to win the entire collection of From My Heart ll and From My Heart ll 6×6 is…

•become a subscriber to there blog (under “Follow Us” in the sidebar)
•write about their blog candy on your blog with their logo and link back to Pion Design
•last but not least, write a comment to on their blog post and tell them your favorite collection from Pion Design.

The winner will be announced 14th of February, on Valentines Day.

Good luck!

On a roll!

2012-01-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

I was in a bit of a scrapbooking slump for a few days. I kept looking at the photos I wanted to scrap and it seemed nothing was coming to me in the way of layouts. Finally after going to my LSS and finding these pretty Bo Bunny Christmas papers my brain actually got back into the swing of things, lol. This first layout I used the Bo Bunny Christmas papers mixed with some things I had left over from the Dec 2010 LE kit from My Creative Scrapbook. We have been having a yearly Christmas Eve gathering at our friends place since our kids were all babies. The kids are now 19 - 22 years of age but everyone still gets together even though some of us have moved and have other things going on. So it was great to be able to get together with everyone when I was down for Christmas - even some of the kids still come as they say they look forward to it every year.

This next layout I used a mix of different Websters winter papers. I did a lot of layering, distressing and popping things up with foam dots on this one, I was quite pleased at how it turned out. This is my daughter's silly dog looking up at the mantel because he wanted some more doggie treats out of his stocking, lol.

On this next layout I used vellum and papers from Websters "Wonderfall" collection. They really went perfect with the photo since I was down visiting my girlfriend in Portland for Thanksgiving this past November. I did some fussy cutting and popping things up with foam dots on this layout. I made the white flowers with the peach centers myself, not that you can really tell very well in this photo the the centers are peach colored. My girlfriend and I have been friends since we were in grade three. I had started out putting the number 40 on this page until my ex-husband reminded me that it's been 50 years - how the heck I got so old I don't know, lol.

This next layout of my grandson and the one after were done following the January sketch over at My Creative Scrapbook Sketch Blog. I made the organza flower myself, it doesn't look perfect but I figured it wasn't to bad for my first attempt at one, lol. My grandson got Nerf dart gun for Christmas so of course the first thing he did was stick the darts all over his face, lol - he does love to make people laugh!

This next layout is of a photo of my girlfriend and I and her sisters going out to celebrate my birthday and one of her sisters birthdays while I was down visiting. I used some papers and goodies I had left over from my April 2010 LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. This just goes to show you how many layouts you can get done with these awesome kits that Pam puts together! I used some Rangers Ink, Stream, to dye the paper doily and since I had all this ink still on my non-stick craft mat I decided to dye some plain card stock with it to cut out my title with my Cricut. I made the pink flowers with the brown centers myself.

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

Big Sketch Contest

2012-01-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

My Creative Scrapbook hosted a 3 month long sketch contest at their sketch blog (you can find it here: My Creative Sketches) in which they supplied a sketch and everyone was to create a layout based on that sketch.The contest was October through December...and as usual Pam has given away the most awesome prizes! The sketches and the layouts I did based on these sketches are below.

Sketch #3:

My layout:

Sketch #2:

For my layout I turned the sketch on it's side:

Sketch #1:

My layout for this sketch is being published in "Scrapbook News and Review's" January issue so I am unable to show it here until Feb 15th, so I will post it then but I needed to get these all up

on my blog here so I could enter the final phase of this big sketch contest.

Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment, I love to read them all - good or bad!

I've fallen in Love!

2012-01-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

No, not with another man - one is enough, lol. It's Bo Bunny's beautiful "Snowfall" collection....I love, love, love this line - even more than last years "Snowy Serenade" line. With all it's pretty glitter and snowflakes and shades of blues and browns, it's just so yummy! And of course I'm dying to get some pretty snowfall photos to scrap with it, but so far we haven't had any snow yet this winter - what the heck is that!? I know we don't get as much snow here on the West Coast of Canada as they do back east but we usually get at least one or two days by now. Even in Alberta they are having unusually warmer weather than normal. The good thing about Bo Bunny papers, I find, is that you can pretty much use any of their lines for any type of photo. So I sat looking at a photo of my daughter and I taken in front of her Christmas tree and the photo just didn't go with the usual red & green colors of Christmas paper. Then I noticed the blue walls behind the tree and it hit me - I can use this beautiful Bo Bunny Snowfall papers! Yay!

Since there were browns in the photo I wanted to make sure I used the papers with browns in them also. I wanted to use, for the main background paper, the "Snowfall-Chill" paper but I decided to cut the sides of the paper that surrounded the pretty glitter framed section and then use the "Wintertime" piece behind the cut out "Chill" paper. Now sometimes it takes me awhile to catch on to things but I finally decided that I should do what other scrappers do and cut out the center of the "Wintertime" paper that would not be seen behind the "Chill" piece. What a great idea, why waste all this pretty paper that isn't going to be seen by anyone! I was then able to use the blue & white side of this cut out piece as one of my layers behind the photo.

So I used a piece of the Wintertime cut out and a piece of the "Snowdrift-Stripe" paper to layer behind the photo. I distressed the edges using my distress tool and then inked the edges with some blue ink that I had. I had a really pretty piece of blue with white polka dot ribbon that my granddaughter had given me for Christmas, so I took that and folded it and gave it a tail at either end and placed the edge of it just under the stripped paper. I then used this very pretty white sheer flower from Prima along with the pretty blue handmade flowers I made using my friend Paulien Van Den Bosch's tutorial to put in the left hand corner of the photo. I added a couple of white satin leaves and white satin rosebuds to the cluster. Added a blue glitter snowflake to the layout and added my title and there it was - my first layout with this beautiful paper line and no snow in the photo at all!

I decided I would scrap another Christmas photo with this same pretty Bo Bunny paper using this cute photo of my granddaughter with her new hat on that she had got for Christmas. Looking at the photo I thought she looked like she was all ready to hit the ski slopes - hence my title "Snow Ready". For this layout I took a piece of the brown "Cabin" paper which had this really pretty blue glitter snowflake in one corner and I cut around the snowflake and then cut the snowflake in half. I used that piece along with the two sides of the "Wintertime" paper and the "stripe" paper to layer under the photo and I matted the photo with a piece of the blue side of the "Drift" paper.

I decided I would make some water distressed flowers to embellish my layout using my friend Gabi's tutorial that you can find here: Water Distress Tutorial These flowers are so simple to make and really look awesome when they are finished. I wanted to use both blue and brown for the flowers but I wanted each flower to have the two colors in it. So I made some blue ones with brown centers and brown ones with blue centers. After the flowers were dry I took some glossy accents and with a small paint brush just randomly wiped some of the glossy accents on the petals and then dipped the roses in some "Diamond Dust". I was quite pleased at how they turned out. I've added a closeup of the flowers so you can see them a bit better. I added a bit of white picket fence to the layout, a small piece of Queen & Company's felt fusion, a small white 3D butterfly and a blue glitter snowflake that I had in my stash. The title I cut out with my Cricut and overlapped them a bit to fit into the glitter frame on the paper. You'll have to bare with the photo on the layout, my flash seems to make the photo look all grainy. Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear any comments you have on my layouts!

Happy New Year Everyone!

2012-01-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year. We went to a couple of house parties and even managed to make it past midnight, lol. It's always great to ring in the New Year with good friends!

So I even managed to get one of the Christmas photo's scrapped today. This is s photo of my grandchildren looking very serious for some reason. lol. I used a mix of Bo Bunny's "A gift of love" papers and Websters papers on this layout. I finally got smart after listening to other scrappers on how they save some of their papers when layering and only cut the holly paper so it fit around the paper in front instead of having all this wasted paper behind the other paper. It takes me awhile but eventually I catch on, lol.

For my poinsettia I took some of my white flowers and dyed them with some Rangers ink, in cranberry, and them layered them, used a white brad for the center and outlined the petals with stickles glitter. I also used some red stickles for the holly on the right corner of the photo. I cut out the Santa in the air balloon from the Websters papers and then popped it up with foam for the 3D look. I think it turned out not to badly, I just wish the photo was a bit better quality. Well thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone is enjoying the first few days of 2012!

New Years Eve!

2011-12-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

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!!

2011-12-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

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!!

2011-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-12-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

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....

2011-12-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-12-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-12-04T23:47:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-11-13T23:55:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-07T22:58:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-11-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

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!!

2011-11-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-10-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

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!!

2011-10-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

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....

2011-09-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-09-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-08-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

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!

Going MIA for a few days

2011-07-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

We're off tomorrow morning to meet up with my son and grandchildren and his girlfriend and her two little ones and my sons friend and his wife and little one to camp for the weekend. Where we are going to is only about 40 minutes away at a place called Miracle Beach which has a beautiful long sandy beach.

I'm very excited as this is going to be my son's first real visit up here since we moved to Vancouver Island 5 years ago. He use to come up this way when making deliveries for Ikea, but that was usually arriving late in the evening and crashing for the night and then taking off the next morning to make all his deliveries down the island. I always have my grandchildren up here for three or four weeks in the summer but my son's usually to busy working (being a single Dad can be tough sometimes). We come home on Sunday and the grand kids will come back with us. So I'm pretty sure I'll have lots of photos to scrap when I get home. Have a great weekend everyone!

Another great tutorial

2011-07-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is but I always seem to go in spurts of making different things. Sometimes I'll doing nothing but layouts and the next thing I'm doing nothing but cards. Oh well, as long as I'm keeping busy, that's all that counts, lol. I made this card following another of my friend, Paulien's great tutorials. Paulien's tutorials are always great to follow as she has tons of pictures and very detailed directions so that even a beginner paper crafter can follow them! You can find this tutorial at Swirlydoos here: http://www.swirlydoos.com/sd_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?106343

The paper I've used here is from the May 2011 kit from My creative Scrapbook which just happened to be the same papers that Paulien used from one of the Swirlydoos kits - how convenient is that, lol! I did have to do a little but of substitution on the flowers and instead of using the Rock Candy Crackle paint I used Stickles glitter as I thought the Stickles showed up better on the small butterfly than the crackle paint. Now all I have to do is make an envelope to fit the card and I'm all set! I do hope you pop over to Swirlydoos and check this great tutorial out. TFL and have a great day!

Swing card

2011-07-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

So I decided to try making one of these cute little swing cards that I found a tutorial for on Split Coast Stampers. I think this one turned out pretty good. I love the look of them when they are standing up. The only thing with these cards is that you don't have a lot of room for writing your own little message on them but I suppose you could do that on the very back of the card. It is nice to be able to send someone something different instead of your usual type card.

I used this pretty paper again from Stampin Up, I love this paper - I may have to go back and pick up a couple of more sheets of it. I used one of my Martha Stewart punches for the edge papers. I cut out the "Love" and butterfly on my Cricut machine and added a bit of ribbon and a bow to finish it off. Thanks for taking a look and I hope everyone has a great week!

Another step card

2011-07-16T23:43:00.000-07:00

Okay so I think I'm going to get addicted to making these step cards, I just really think they turn out so cute. Although this is only the second one I've made, I can see many more of these in my future, lol. I made this one for some friends who were so nice to lend me one of their trucks the other week while mine was in getting fixed. I think that's why I love living here in a small town compared to living in Vancouver/Richmond on the mainland. Here everyone is always there to help you out no matter what it is you're doing, you don't even have to ask them. We only moved here almost six years ago and we have made so many wonderful friends - love, love, love the small town atmosphere!

Anyways, back to my card, lol. The little hedgehog on here I drew myself in my Paint Shop Pro program. He's my version of the Penny Black hedgehog stamps. I couldn't afford to buy all these stamps so I decided I would just draw my own and I think he turned out kind of cute. I think these papers that I've used are from Stamp-in-Up, I really liked the colors in them when I saw them. I used my Spellbinders Nestabilities to cut and emboss the ovals with my Big Shot. I used one of my Martha Stewart punches for my side pieces and the "Thanks" I cut out on my Cricut machine. Oh and the little flower is one of Prima's. Well thanks so much for taking a peek!

Getting published

2011-07-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

I just received an email from Scrapbook News and Review to let me know that they are publishing two more of my cards in their issue that comes out on Sunday. I'm very excited, this will be my fourth time published in their online magazine, which is so cool. It's very exciting when you're a crafter of any sort and find that people really like what you have made, it just makes it all worth while. The cards are my "Once Upon a Springtime" fairy card and my "Fun in the Sun" paper piecing card, which for some reason I forgot to post that one here on my blog. After the August issue comes out I can re-post both of the cards here on my blog.

I'm also very happy to report that my DH liked his card and his new motorcycle helmet that I got for him - Yeah! My in-laws were in town so the four of us all went out to this really nice Chinese smorgasbord that we have here in town, which is one of my DH's favorite places to go to. Of course after all that food all we could do is come home and flake out in front of the TV, lol. Well I'm off to bed - have a great weekend all!

A new card

2011-07-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

It's my husbands birthday tomorrow (the big 47 - I can't even remember 47 it was so long ago, lol) so I have been racking my brain, trying to get some inspiration for a card for him. I was surfing through Split Coast Stampers website and came across a tutorial on making a step card. I really like these type of cards, I just think they look really cool when they are opened. So now I had the type of card decided on and just needed to find some masculine type paper and I came across some really nice ones from "Crate Paper". One was from their Static collection called "gravity" and the other from their Taylor collection called "Play Time". Although they were from different collections their colors matched perfectly.

The next thing I wanted to do was something a little more than just your standard "Happy Birthday" and since I had bought him a new helmet for his Harley I kind of wanted to somehow base it around motorcycles. I was trying to find some kind of saying like "Harley riders don't get old they just...." but I couldn't think of anything to finish the sentence off. After poking around the internet I found someone talking about how some people think they are to old to ride a motorcycle but this person thought they got old because they quit riding. I thought that would be perfect, I just switched the wording around to suit what I wanted and so I came up with "Harley riders don't get to old to ride, they get old because they quit riding!" For my sentiment on the inside of the card I said "To someone I know who will never grow old - Happy Birthday Sexy!"

For the motorcycle on the front of the card I went searching the internet for a silhouette of one. I finally found one I liked except that it had a girl riding it, so I took it into my Paint Shop Pro program and cut the girl out of it and then I saved it as a .png file which I then took into my "Inkscape" program and turned it into an .svg file and cut it out on my Cricut Machine and attached it to the front of the card with foam to pop it up for a 3D look. I think it turned out not to bad, so I hope he likes it and his new helmet! I've posted a photo below, if you click on the image it will show you a larger picture, then just hit your back button to return to this page. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Happy Tuesday

2011-07-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

Well I've been busy recovering my in-laws cushions from their trailer. The people who owned it before must have really been into cows because all of the cushions were covered in this black & white cow pattern fleece. They even had the lamp shades in the same material - not really my in-laws style - can't say as I blame them, lol. Anyway I decided after breaking numerous finger nails trying to get the new covers on the very dense foam I should take a break and have some "me" time.

I decided to follow along with my friend Paulien's new July tag that she has up on her blog, which you can find here: http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/
I had to do a bit of substituting as I didn't have all of the needed items, such as a chandelier stamp, script stamp and I used one of my pretty Prima butterflies rather than make my own (I know lazy).

The first thing I had to do was to find a .png file(a graphic with a transparent background) of a chandelier to use in place of the stamp that Paulien used. Once I found that I was able to use my Paint Shop Pro program to print the graphic onto my tag. I also didn't have a nice lacy border stamp like Paulien used but I did have one with little butterflies so I used that instead. For my script stamp I used one of my rub-ons, which doesn't look to bad. I really do need to get a script stamp as I found that doing different projects it would be really good one to have.

For my misting on the card I didn't have any of the Distress re-inkers so I used some of my Rangers "stream" ink and mixed that up with water and sprayed that onto the tag. I didn't have any of the Pearl-ex micro powder to add to the spray to give it some shimmer but I had just some Lumin Arte "Radiant Rain" shimmering mist and applied that over top of the blue mist after I had heat set it. It is hard to see how it shimmers in the photo below but if you click on the photo you are able to see a bigger photo of the tag and see how it shimmers.

The next thing I had to do was to figure out what to use in place of silver metallic paint to mix with my iridescent medium. I remembered I had some Rangers Silver ink so I mixed that with the iridescent medium to paint on my doily. It didn't come out quite as silvery than if I had used metallic paint but it looked not bad.

When I first started scrapping I always thought I had to use the exact same products as was in the tutorials I followed. I soon found that it could be quite expensive to keep buying things I might not ever use again. Now I realize that the idea of a tutorial is to give you the basic techniques so that you can then put your own spin on things! So I hope by giving you some of my steps for this tag that it will get your own ideas flowing when following tutorials. Anyway here is my take on Paulien's tag, hope you like it. TFL and thanks for another great tag Paulien!

Prize Giveaway!

2011-07-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

Yeah Friday is here!! I've got a few things to show you today. The first is news about a prize giveaway at my friend Gabi's blog, which you can find here: http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.com/ Gabi is giving away a great prize pack full of all of her favorite scrapping goodies. A photo of the prize pack is below this post. So pop on over to Gabi's blog and leave a comment and you never know - you might be the lucky one to win this great prize!

The other thing to show you is my layout that I did for the "Pages in Time" interactive Blog Hop. I don't know if any of you followed it last week or not - it ran June 30th to July 6th. The idea of the blog hop was to go to each of the listed blogs and the girls were sharing with you different ways to spice up your scrap layouts. It was really fun seeing all the different techniques used. At the end of the hop what you had to do was follow the sketch they gave you and incorporate at least 5 of the techniques that the girls shared into your layout. So below is my take on the layout, a photo of my son taken this past weekend while he was camping with friends. The techniques/things I used in my layout were: Distressing, matting with doodling on it, scalloped border punches, my own hand made bling using stickles glitter, title "Life - Enjoy", journaling "Cultas Lake, July 2011", and flowers. Thanks for all the inspiration ladies and thank you all for stopping by my blog and having a peek. Don't forget to hop on over to Gabi's blog at a chance at winning her prize!

An altered project

2011-07-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that it has been so long since I updated my blog. I guess I got a little busy visiting with friends etc on our "Canada Day" (July 1st) long weekend this past weekend. This week has been so warm and sunny I wanted to spend it outside doing some yard work and soak up some of that good old vitamin D!

I did this altered toilet paper dispenser a couple of weeks ago but I forgot to take a photo of it before I sent it back to my sister so I had to wait for her to take a photo of it and send it to me. So this was a gift that my sister received from someone a number of years ago, she just had it as a decoration in her bathroom. It was getting so old that the picture on it was getting all faded and yellow looking. I decided to give it a makeover. This is the before photo so you can see how it looked.

I painted the whole thing with white paint and after it dried I painted it with Rangers Rock Candy Distress Crackle paint, not that you can really see the crackle effect in this photo. I used Prima Flora fairy paper for the background and then used Graphic 45 "Once Upon a Springtime" collection papers cutting out the fairies and flowers etc popping them up with foam for a 3D look. I used stickles glitter on the fairies & butterflies wings. Also cut out the two butterflies with my Cricut and covered them with stickles glitter also and used pop dots down the centers so I could fold the butterflies wings up. I'm quite pleased at how it turned out. TFL!

Beautiful day in paradise!

2011-06-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

Well we're having another gorgeous sunny summer day here in Campbell River today - now if it would just stay around for a few days that would be even better. I tell you this spring and now the beginning of summer have just been crazy. Here it is July 1st at the end of this week and we are still having a few days where we need to wear a jacket.According to the "experts" El Nina that we are having is suppose to be over by the end of June and all across Canada is suppose to get and unusually hot summer - okay, it can start anytime now! Just to show you how weird it's been our local ski mountain, Mount Washington (here on Vancouver Island), had the biggest snow pack in the world (for ski hills) of over 700 cms. So instead of opening up for their usual summer sports of mountain biking etc. they are opening up for more skiing on July 1st! Isn't that crazy? Oh well, lol.

This past week I wasn't having a very good week. I had to take my vehicle in to get fixed last Wednesday - which was suppose to be ready on Thursday but now it won't be ready until Tuesday as they had to fix a number of other things - "Oh joy, more money to spend"! On Wednesday afternoon my MS decided to start acting up again and I was having major problems with vertigo again. I couldn't even lift my head off of my pillow for two days without feeling like I was going to throw up or fall over - not a fun feeling. So I guess it was a good time to take my vehicle in to get fixed as I couldn't drive anyway, lol. It's settled down a lot now, I just have to not look up to much or move to fast and it seems to be more in the morning when I first get up.

Before the vertigo happened I did get started on a new layout of my son and his new girlfriend. This layout was made from following Delaina's (My Creative Scrapbook) video tutorial which you can find here: http://www.mycreativescrapbook.blogspot.com/. I was quite happy at how it turned out. My scrapping style has really changed since joining the "My Creative Scrapbook" group, the ladies have really got me to thinking more "outside" the box when I scrap and when I look back at my layouts I did when I first started scrapping I just think how "un-exciting" (if that's a word) they are compared to now. So let me know what you think of this layout - I love to hear any comments - good or bad!

I also managed to get a quick all occasion card done using up some more of my Feb LE kit which is below. I used a duplicate paper to cut out the fairy and chick to pop up with foam for a 3D look and also used some stickles glitter on the fairy and butterfly wings. TFL and have a great week!

Websters Pages

2011-06-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

Check out all the fun here at "InspireMe" this week celebrating Websters new paper lines!

Apologies to all!

2011-06-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

As a Canadian and a former Vancouver person I can not believe how embarrassed I am over the riot in Vancouver last night after the Stanley Cup hockey game. Watching what unfolded on the TV last night after the game just seems so surreal. I felt like I did watching the news of the Twin Towers being hit - I could not believe it. Everyone we know and people we don't know are so shocked over this and are so totally pissed off (pardon my language here) at the people who went into Downtown Vancouver last night to purposely start these riots.

These were not "Hockey Fans" nor were they regular Vancouver citizens! We are all disgusted at these people and we all want them caught and brought to justice over this. To these few people who started this - You have put a black mark on Vancouver that the world will not easily forget and if you think any of us are proud of you for this, think again! With all of the street camera's, news camera's and regular everyday people with their cell phone camera's getting shots of all of you idiots, you'll be caught. People have already put up Facebook pages, websites so we can post your photos for the police and anyone who recognizes anyone in these photos are coming forward to the police and giving them your names.

It would not have mattered if the Canucks had won the Stanley Cup, these riots would have started anyway. Police found people who had come into Downtown Vancouver with Molotov cocktails in there back packs. Normal people do not carry something like this to a huge gathering of people unless they planned on starting something. Watching you idiots on the TV smiling and laughing and acting so proud of yourselves for what was happening made me sick and embarrassed. So lets see how much you laugh and smile when the police come knocking at your door. Yea you are real heroes - NOT!

To the rest of Canada and the world we apologize to everyone for what they witnessed last night and want them to know that is not what the real Vancouver and it's citizens are about!

Another Brooke layout...

2011-06-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well you must be getting bored with all these photos of my friends little granddaughter, Brooke, but every photo they take of her is just so adorable I can't help but scrap it. lol. On this layout I used some of my leftovers from the October LE kit from MCS, I just love all these butterflies. These papers are from DCWV and are just so pretty. When I laid my photo down on the papers I didn't want to cover up the big butterfly on the paper on the bottom right corner of the photo so I cut out around the butterflies wing so I could slip the photo underneath it. Then I decided to do the same with the smaller butterfly on the background paper on the left side of the photo. I also cut out some of the small butterflies from the paper strip I used with all the butterflies on it and then just taped them down the middle so I could fold up their wings for a 3D look and staggered them up the paper on the right side of the photo. The 3D butterfly sticker is also from DCWV and of course the flowers are from Prima and are from the May LE Kit from MCS.

I am quite pleased at how the layout turned out but what is funny is the photo I used on this layout is totally different from the one I started with - funny how that happens sometimes. Well now I'm off to do a layout with the photo I originally started with, lol. Thanks for stopping by and having a peak at my layouts and cards!

Challenge winner!

2011-06-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

Well what a nice surprise tonight. I was over at My Creative Scrapbook's message board this evening checking all the new posts and found out that my layout below of my sons friends little girl bouncing on the trampoline won the "May Sketch" challenge. There were so many gorgeous entries into this challenge that it means so much to me to have had the honor of my layout winning this challenge. So excited, I can't wait to receive my prize pack from Pam! So here is a copy of the layout that I made for this challenge. TFL!

What a difference a week makes.

2011-06-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

So the Canucks were up 2 games to nothing and they go to Boston and lost the next two games - not just lost but lost badly. So disappointing, I felt so bad for our goalie, Luongo, losing that first one in Boston 8 zip - where was the defense? Oh check me out, like I really understand the game, lol. But here they are back in Vancouver and played game five and Luongo gets a shutout - I guess being in their hometown, with the hometown crowd cheering them on really works a lot of magic. Let's hope when they go back to Boston for game six they can take some of that magic with them! Okay so enough about that, let's get back to scrapping, lol.

I did manage in between gardening to get some cards made. The first two I made with the goodies from the May LE Kit from MCS and the last one I used the February LE Kit from MCS. It was my sisters birthday this week so the birthday card was for her. I love making cards and layouts that people love getting. My sister sent me an email to let me know she had received the card and thought it was so beautiful, that just made my day! The other two cards I may put on my website or eBay to sell, I haven't decided which yet. I've posted the cards below and I would love to here your comments on what you think of them.

On this third card I took some duplicate paper and cut the fairy and the frog out and popped them up with foam for a 3D look. Then I took one of the tags from this same paper line and did some fussy cutting on some of the flowers and added them to left bottom corner popped up with foam.

So my friend Paulien Van den Bosch has her June tag up on her blog now so I figured I would actually do the tag before the end of June, unlike when I did the May tag, lol. I really love the ideas that Paulien comes up with for her tags, they really look great when they are all done. So below is my version of her tag. Once again, thank you Paulien for another great tag tutorial!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great weekend!

Woohoo...

2011-06-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

I just found out that my "Happy Anniversary" card is being published in the June issue of Scrapbook News & Review! This is my third time in this online magazine so I was pretty excited to receive this email. My next goal is to get one of my layouts or cards published in a paper magazine! I guess I just have to keep sending things in and one day maybe!

So did everyone watch the Saturday night play off game between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks? It was a pretty awesome game! We were at a friends place for their annual Spring Fling lawn curling party. They had the TV going so we were all running in and out of the house between our games to see how the hockey game was going. There sure was a lot of happy faces and jumping up and down when Vancouver got that winning goal! So I guess tonight the game is in Boston so I sure hope the Canucks keep this up.

Well I'm off to do some more gardening as summer has finally shown up here on the West Coast and who knows how long it will stay for, lol. Hope everyone has a great week.

Canucks take the first game!

2011-06-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

So this is a first me actually watching a hockey game and caring, lol. I'm not a big hockey fan normally but this is different....the Canucks made it to the Stanley Cup and it is so exciting, even for me! Everyone in BC is Canuck crazy right now, heck everyone in Canada! Everyone has Canuck flags flying from houses and cars and wearing their Canuck jerseys - people even have their babies in Canuck Jerseys, lol. So it was a pretty exciting game, thought for sure it was going into overtime but thank goodness it didn't, just way to stressful, lol. So 1 game down - 3 more to go. Well most people in Vancouver are hoping that it goes to 5 games that way the Canucks would be winning in their own hometown - but I'm pretty sure that no one would be made if they won it in four games, lol. So on to game two and keeping my fingers crossed.

So I was actually doing something while I was watching the game. When I was checking out Paulien Van Den Bosch's blog the other day looking for her tutorial on the May tag that I posted yesterday I found she had another great tutorial for some handmade flowers using "Baby "Wipes". Yup, you heard right - Baby Wipes. These looked so pretty I just had to try making some.

I started the process of making them the other day. I used my Rangers Ink color "Stream" to dye my baby wipe, which had to dry overnight. Then yesterday I added the "Gesso" to the one side of the baby wipe and let that dry overnight. So tonight while watching the game I cut out all my petals and added the puffy paint to them. I didn't make my own stamens as Paulien did in her tutorial because I already had these white ones, you see in the photo, in my stash - so I saved myself a step, lol. I made my petals a couple of different sizes and I think they didn't turn out to bad. You can click on the picture for a larger view. Now I'm going to have to try making them in some different colors. So stop by Paulien's blog here: http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/ and try making some yourself.

So thank you for a great tutorial Paulien and thank you for stopping by and please leave a comment and let me know what you think! Have a great week all!

Better late than never!

2011-05-31T00:29:00.000-07:00

So it's the last day of May tomorrow and I just finished a "May" tag today - yes I'm a slow poke, I admit it, lol. I do have a little bit of an excuse....I didn't have all of the needed supplies to do this tag, namely "Gesso" and some "Iridescent Medium". I had to wait until I went down to the mainland (Vancouver) so I could go to Micheal's and pick these up. Our LLS carry a lot of supplies but unfortunately not these two items.

Anyway, I really wanted to do this tag that my friend Paulien Van den Bosch had on her blog, which you can find here: http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/2011/05/may-tag.html. I just thought it was so pretty.

I had to improvise on a few things while doing this tag. I didn't have a stamp with leaves on it so I used one of my Christmas holly stamps. I also don't have a lot of stamps so I used one of my Tim Holtz stamps "Live the Life you've Imagined" as I've always liked this saying on the stamp. I didn't have any of the small little calenders so I drew my own up in Paint Shop Pro and added the sepia toning on it using the PSP effects, then printed it out and distressed the edges and used one of my small versa colored stamps from "Tsukineko" called "Pine Cone" and ink the edges of the calendar. You also have to bare with me as my stamping technique is not that great yet, lol.

I've never used gesso or the iridescent medium before but I found I really like the effects these products have on paper crafts so I think I'll be using this a lot more in my layouts and tags. I want to thank Paulien for this great tutorial and for helping me to realize there are new and interesting ways to add effects to your projects using these products. TFL!

New layout

2011-05-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

Good morning bloggers! This is my latest layout I did this past weekend of another of my friends sweet little granddaughter Brooke. I just love the expression on her face in this photo.

I used the May LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook for this layout. There's just so many beautiful papers and goodies in this kit and they are all so perfect for doing layouts for sweet little photos like this one. I did some distressing on the papers that I layered with and also tried out this really cool way of doing lacing for scrap layouts. This is a tutorial from Natasha of "Moments of Tranquility" blog for twisted lacing, it's very easy to do and really has such a cool look to it when it's done. You can find her tutorial here: http://mymomentsoftranquility.blogspot.com/2010/08/twisted-lacing-tutorial.html

The papers used from this kit are from Pink Paislee's Butterfly Garden collection, along with their matching die cuts and the clear pops Butterflies from the same collection. I also used some of Prima's flowers: Regent Collection "Rathbone" and their Sugar Blooms Collection "Fairy" as well as a few that I had in my stash. You can never have enough Prima flowers I always say. *Smile* The lace also came from the May kit which I colored using some Tim Holtz Distress ink "Peeled Paint". The title I cut out with my Cricut machine. Thanks so much for stopping by, I'd love to hear your comments!

A quick layout

2011-05-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

I just had to scrap this cute photo I took of our friends little girl while we were out visiting them at the campsite. She looked so cute with her goodies in her hands and her bucket on her head like it was suppose to be there, lol. These are some paper I had in my stash from My Minds Eye "Wild Berries" line. The background paper is actually red in this layout but in my photo it looks more orange - poor lighting I guess. TFL!

Happy Hump Day

2011-05-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

I finally got my May LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook yesterday. There were just so many beautiful papers and embellishments, gorgeous Prima Flowers and ribbons just didn't know where to start. I knew I wanted to scrap this adorable photo I took of my friend's little granddaughter, Brooke, when I was down visiting. But what papers to use - they were all so pretty! I played around a bit and finally settled on what papers to use but then I had to figure out how to place them all. I had most of it laid out last night (but nothing stuck down yet) and finally decided to go to bed as I figured by morning it might all look better with a refreshed mind. When I looked at it again this morning it all seemed to come together quite well.

I did a lot of distressing on the different layers before taping it all down. I just adore this "Butterfly Garden" collection of paper from Pink Paislee - it just seems to call out to be distressed and used on wonderful sweet photos like this one I've used and for vintage photo's - well enough said there! Love, love love it! This kit also comes with this great package of matching die cuts with everything from birds & butterflies to bingo numbers and vintage phonographs. I can see a lot of cards being made with this collection!

There were also these gorgeous big blooms and rose buds from Prima that came with the kit and I just put them into a big cluster in the right hand corner from the photo and then k ind of looped some of the pretty brown organza ribbon from the kit in between them all. With the die cut butterflies I folded them in half and then just put glue dot down the center so the would pop off the page more. I also used the Alphas that came with the kit and are from the same Pink Paislee paper line. They didn't stand out as well as I wanted so I took my fine tip black sharpie and went around each of the letters to make them stand out more. Now it wasn't until I was downloading the photo of my layout off of my camera when I realized I had totally laid the "a" in the title backwards and since I had already gone around all the letters with my sharpie I couldn't change it - so just pretend like you don't see that boo-boo okay, lol. After I was all done I was quite pleased with how it turned out. I hope you like it and thanks so much for stopping by!

Quick Card

2011-05-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

(This card was published in Volume #4, Issue #6 of Scrapbook News and Review which debuted on Sunday, June 12, 2011)

Just a quick card I made up the other day using the April LE kit from MCS. Did a little distressing on this one using some blue ink to match the blue in the paper. Also dyed one of my paper doilies with rangers ink lightened up with water to match the blue of the pop up sticker I used. Used some tiny Prima roses and a few pink pearls and a couple of stamps that I had for the "Happy Anniversary" on the card. TFL!

Spring is finally here!!

2011-05-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

Well it's only two months late, lol. The weather here on the Island is beautiful - finally! I've actually been able to get outside and garden. Today I even managed to wear shorts - the glare from my pasty white legs nearly blinded me mind you, lol. We even managed to get our lawn mowed, even got the weed eater out and went around everything with that and shock of shocks we even got our hedge all trimmed. It's suppose to be even hotter tomorrow and the rest of the weekend is looking good, which is a good thing since it is our Victoria Day long weekend this weekend. I think we should have a BBQ and celebrate!

Since it's been so nice this week I haven't been able to get a lot of scrapping done as I was out working in the yard and soaking up all that vitamin D. I did manage to get one layout done for the May sketch challenge at MCS. I used some more of the April LE Kit from MCS. I just love this Madeline Paper Collection from Prima. I thought the colors worked great with these photos of my son's friends little girl bouncing on the trampoline as the greens in the paper picked up the green in her t-shirt that she was wearing.

I did some distressing on some of the papers and then did some fussy cutting of the "Rosalee" paper cutting out some of the pretty blooms that were in it to add to my flower cluster. I popped them up with foam dots and then added a vine that I had received in an earlier kit. It's kind of hard to see in the photo but I got some Rangers ink, I think it was Watermelon that I used and with a fin tip paint brush added some pink to the centers of the blue flowers in the vine to sort of match up with the pink that was in some of the blooms I had cut out of the paper. I also added a couple of small roses from Prima's Sugar Blooms collection to the cluster. I got one of my white paper doilies and colored it with Rangers "Stream" colored ink. The foam letters are from Pink Paislee and the smaller "Ready" and "Set" were cut out on my Cricut.

Well I better get off to bed. Thanks for stopping by!

Time flies by...

2011-05-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well that week sure went by quick. I had my yearly check up with my Neurologist last Monday which didn't go to badly except that I started having a bit of vertigo while I was down on the mainland so she wanted me to just keep her informed in case it got worse. Thank goodness it didn't and only lasted a day or two. Other than that I had a great visit with the kids and got to see our friends new little one, Brooke. What a cutie she is and I was so happy that she liked the scrapbook I did for her. I told her she could carry it on or if she wasn't into scrapping herself I would keep doing some pages for her to add to it which she seemed quite happy about it.

Anyway here are three more of the pages I managed to finish before I went to see her. The first one is of Brooke and her Daddy. I used some of the papers from the March LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. I did a lot of fussy cutting on one of the papers to lay over and pop up with foam on the other identical paper from the kit.

This next layout I used papers and embellishments from the April LE Kit from MCS. Isn't this picture of her with the hat on just the cutest!

With this next layout as soon as I saw the photo all I could think of was how precious it was, hence the title. I used papers from Scrap Cake's "Spring Awakening" line of paper and embellishments. I saw a layout that my friend Gerry Van Gent had made with these papers and I just had to order some of them, they're so pretty. You can find Gerry's blog here: http://gerryscrafts.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will leave some comments. Hope everyone has a great week!

Wow, two in one day!

2011-05-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've just been a busy beaver today. I decided I'm going to try and get a scrapbook started for my friends daughter (the one I did the layout for yesterday) on their little baby Brooke. Since I'm going down to the mainland on Sunday I want to try and finish as many pages as I can before I go so I can give it to her while I'm down there. The quality of the photo's is not that good because I'm just downloading them from her Facebook page but hopefully she won't notice to much.

This first one is obviously photos of her tummy at different stages in the pregnancy. I used the November LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook for this one. I thought the die cut from this kit was perfect since it already said "grow" on the paper, lol. The flowers of course are from Prima as and the trim is from Websters as is the paper line - Your Life Beautiful (Wonder Fall). I just love Websters paper collections, they are all so pretty!

The second one of course are her Ultra sound photos of the baby at 19 weeks and then again at 30 weeks, which is also when they found out they were have a little girl. This is done using the March LE Kit from MCS which is full of more great papers from Webster - Your Life Beautiful (Spring Market). The flowers are from Prima and the rhinestone flourish is also Prima which I cut off of a bigger flourish and then inked it with Rangers "Meadow" ink. I just love that you can use Rangers Ink on so many different things so you are always able to match up the colors from your papers. Don't forget if you want to see a bigger view of the layout just click on the photo. TFL!

Where is my head?

2011-05-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

I swear I'd forget if it wasn't attached to my neck, lol. I was so busy trying to show off my cards I totally forgot to put up this page I just finished this afternoon. These are photos of my friend's granddaughter. We use to work together, lived next door to each other and our girls were born just 3 weeks apart and were inseparable in their younger years. Since the baby has been born the girls are getting close again, which makes my friend and I very happy. As soon as I saw these photos I thought I must scrap them, they were so cute. This is also my entry for the May sketch challenge at "Once Upon a Sketch". I'm very excited as I have to go to the mainland on the weekend to see my Neurologist at the MS clinic on Monday, so I'll be staying down for the week to visit with the kids and so I'm going to get to see the baby in person - yeah! TFL

A couple of cards

2011-05-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

I haven't made a lot of cards lately so with Mother's Day coming up and our friends 25th Wedding Anniversary I managed to get back into the card making mode. This first one is for our friends anniversary this past weekend. There was a big surprise party for them on Saturday, it was so fun and great to see a couple who are still so happy together. Inside sentiment reads" "Two lives, two hearts joined together in friendship, united forever in love. Happy 25th Anniversary!" For some reason my camera is not taking very good photos today, it looks a lot prettier in person.

This next one is for my MIL for Mothers Day. My MIL is such a great person, love her like she is my own Mum, so I really hope she likes it. Both of these cards were made with the April Limited Edition Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. You can click on any of the photos to see a larger view, just hit your back button to return to this page. TFL!

Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

Wow, I just turned the news on to hear that the US was finally able to track down and kill this horrible man. I can't believe it took almost 10 years to find him and carry this mission out. I am so happy for our US neighbors and maybe now the families of the people who were killed on Sept 11, 2001 can finally have some closure of this terrible day in their lives.

Thanks go out to the men who carried out this mission! God Bless you all!

Beginning a new month

2011-05-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Well as it says it's a new month - the 1st of May and the weather is finally starting to feel like spring. Mind you it's suppose to rain again tomorrow - it's like the weather Gods are just trying to tease us by giving us a few sunny days, then turn around and it's icky again. It just doesn't feel like a normal spring with all this cool weather. I even heard on the news that in the Prairies they had like 50 cms of snow last night - that's crazy. Oh well, not much we can do about it. I guess if the weather is going to be icky it's a good excuse to stay in and scrap, lol.

This is my latest project. I bought this Tim Holtz configurations box on eBay and was playing with it all last weekend adding things to it that either have a meaning to me or I just thought looked cool, lol. Hanging on the top right are my Dad's Canadian Air Force dog tags (not sure what the little key was for but when I found these amongst my Dad's things it was on the chain too). In the top box on the right is a watch that my Dad gave my Mum when they got engaged (she always told us that she needed a watch more than an engagement ring so that is what she asked Dad to give her instead). Beside that box is a (real) dog tag from our dog Jo-Jo that we had as kids and in the box is an old dog ornament I found at an antique store. The clock face and game spinner is from Tim Holtz. The next box has a tiny vintage container of cuticle ointment, an old copper ring that I had and you can't see the thimble very well in this photo but I've attached a tiny angel on a unicorn pin that my favorite cousin gave me a number of years ago. The box below that has a little miniature wash tub and wash board that I found at a thrift store. To the right of that is a little wooden carving of seagulls sitting on log/poles that had been attached to a birdhouse my friends Mum gave me that got blown down in a wind storm and broken but I managed to salvage this little piece off of it and a little shell from the beach. Next one to the right has a tiny antique bottle that I put some beads into and my cancer pin. The next one is just a little bird I had so I got some dried grass and moss from the garden and made a little nest for him to sit in. The section below that is a cool little antique shoe ornament I found at a thrift store and a very old photo of my family taken when I was about 13 months old and one of my Dads service pins from the air force. To the left of that is a bobbin from my old sewing machine and a pin i had, behind the gold pin is another pin that I had from doing one of the MS Walks to raise money. Right below that is a really old pack of stick matches I found at the antique store. The brass key is from Tim Holtz. The bottom box on the left has another bobbin from my old sewing machine, another o f my old thimbles and a real of lace from my stash. Next box a miniature metal paddle wheeler I found at the thrift store and next to that a miniature metal water jug and of course the legs are from Tim Holtz. Anyways I'm happy with how it turned out, not as good as some of the ones of seen other people do but still not bad, lol. You can click on the picture below to see a bigger view of the box.

If you have any comments I'd love to hear them! Thanks for stopping by and don't forget if you're Canadian remember to vote tomorrow in our Federal election! Have a great week!

Easter weekend

2011-04-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

Nice long weekend coming up. It's Good Friday tomorrow and here in Canada that's a stat holiday and some companies and businesses take Easter Monday off too. Unfortunately for my dh he has to work both Friday and Saturday - but at least he gets paid overtime for it and does have Monday off so that's good.

The weather has been so nice here this week. It's about time spring showed up! I've been busy doing all the gardens and also managed to get my back hedge trimmed back. So the poor recycling guys will be earning their pay when they pick up all the garden clippings on Tuesday, lol.

I did manage to get some scrapping in this evening and got to play with the April LE kit from MCS which is so pretty. Full of Prima papers and flowers and who doesn't like Prima! These papers are from Prima's "Madeline" collection. This layout below is another photo of my Mum taken in 1946. I can see why my Dad wanted to marry her, I think she's a pretty good looking lady! I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend and TFL!

A few of the layouts I've been working on...

2011-04-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

So I managed to get a couple more old photos done for my Heritage album I'm working on for my kids. This first one is a photo I found that my Mum must have given to my Dad when he left to go back to Canada and she had to wait for all her paper work to go through before she could follow him. You can't see it in the photo but just at the bottom corner by the pink bow it says "To Smokey, All My Love, Olive". Smokey was my Dad's nickname he got in the Air Force and it stuck with him through life. The only people who called him John was his parents and brothers and sisters. You'll be able to see why he was given the nickname in the layout below of my Dad (on the left) and his buddy from the Air Force.

These next few layouts were made with the March Limited Edition Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. It's funny as these papers from Websters would not have been papers that I would have picked out myself to buy but after seeing what the Design Team came up with I'm thinking a little differently now. You can have a lot of fun using these papers for different projects and having your titles do a little bit of a play on words - such as the first one saying "Preserving History" and you have all of these fruit preserves etc as your embellishments. This is a photo of myself at 13 months old - boy was that a looonnnggg time ago - you almost expect to see dinosaurs in the photos, LOL.

This next layout is my son and his Dad, using some more of these Websters papers - see you really can use these for so many different types of layouts. For this butterfly sticker from the kit I put it on clear acetate and then cut around it and folded it up and just used a pop dot down the center to stick it to the paper, so now you can have his wings popping off the paper. I started to do the little butterfly trail with just a fine tip pen but then I decided to stitch it instead - unfortunately you can still see a bit of my pen marks but what can you do, lol.

On the layout below I did a little bit of play on words for the title again. This is my Grandson (my son's boy) and my daughter at a hockey skills competition for the major league hockey players. I did a bit of fussy cutting from an identical piece of this Websters paper for the top right and bottom left of the paper and popped it up with foam pop dots to give a 3D look to it. Well thanks for stopping by and having a peek at my layouts. I'd love to hear any comments you have - good or bad.

Where did the month go?

2011-04-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

Okay so I've obviously been slacking off on updating my blog. Well I did have my daughter and my grandchildren up visiting so that kept me busy for a few weeks. I've also been playing with my kits from MCS and I managed to get my birdhouse that I bought all decorated finally and I think it turned out quite cute - if I do say so myself, lol. Here are a couple of photos.

This one is a bit more close up so you can see my fairy, which I painted with stickles glitter and some of the fussy cut flowers at the back. I just love these Once Upon a Springtime line from Graphic 45!

Well I still have some other layout that I've done that I need to post here but first I need to get them off my camera. So TFL and I'll be back to post the others in a bit.

I Cherish This Time

2011-03-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well I managed to get another layout done using the Feb LE Kit from MCS. It amazes me how many layouts you can do with each of these kits. For the photo in this layout I took it into my Paint Shop Pro program and did a soft focus effect on the photo. It looks really nice but for some reason in this photo of the layout it just seems to make it look like the photo is blurry - it isn't really blurry when you see it in person, lol.

I love this Prima vine that came with the kit and trying to figure out what layout I could use it on and I thought it went perfect with this one. I have a real bad habit sometimes of having beautiful papers and embellishments that I think are so pretty I hate to use them or cut them up to add to layouts. Why I do this I have no idea as it seems so silly to have these things just sitting in my storage not being used when they could add so much to the layouts. I know, a little weird isn't it? LOL

This photo is of my granddaughter and I when I went over to the mainland last summer to bring them back up to our place for their usual 3 week visit we have in the summer with them every year. We have a lot of fun when they are visiting, we usually go camping for a week out of that time and the other couple of weeks we spend going to the lake everyday or down to the ocean beach collecting sea treasures that wash up on shore or seeing how many little crabs the kids can catch. Of course they are always disappointed when I tell them they have to let them go before we go home, lol. Anyways, here's the layout. TFL and have a great weekend!

Another one for the Heritage album

2011-03-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

I love the Feb LE kit from MCS so much so I did another layout for my heritage album using this paper. These are a couple of photos of my sisters and I when we were kids living in Alert Bay, BC. This paper was so pretty I really didn't want to cover it up very much so what I did was scanned the paper (only because I didn't have two sheets of this one) and then I did a bunch of fussy cutting of the two bottom corners and popped them up with foam for a 3D look, I also did the two fairies at the top of the page and the bird with the ribbon and popped them up with foam also. Then I took some pretty peach colored ribbon I had and sort of followed the ribbon on the paper. It still needed a little something else so I used some Stickles glitter to do all the fairies wings. We had these really pretty peach ribbon roses in the kit so I placed a few around the bottom of the layout and also used some of the pretty leaf ribbon around the bottom of the layout. I'm really quite pleased at how it turned out, what do you think? Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will leave some love!

What a great day yesterday!

2011-03-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

Well the good news fairies must have been shining down on me yesterday. After getting my exciting email from the magazine in the morning I decided to go poking around our local thrift/antique shops in town. I was so happy I found this really cool bird cage (not antique, more of a decorative one) that I can alter and decorate. Also found some cool little things that I can use in one of those Tim Holtz configuration boxes that I want to do and also a really old camera from about 1940 or so to just have in my scrap room for decoration. I was so happy coming in the house with all my little treasures I found and walked into my kitchen and found this beautiful bouquet of roses from my DH. He must have popped in for a quick sandwich between deliveries. Such a nice surprise - I love things like this that are just for no reason, that are just because. Anyway thought I would show them off to you.

Excited

2011-03-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

Just got an email this morning that my latest layout (shown below) that I did on my Mum & Dad's photo is going to be published in the UK's "Scrapbook Magazine" in their "Letters" section. I feel very honored even if it is only the "Letters" page. I think they liked the story behind the layout of my Mum being an English War Bride. Wish my parents were here to see this!

Well I have tons of "real life" stuff to get done (that always interrupts my scrapping life, lol) but I wanted to pop in and share this with you. Have a great day!

Beginning of a new week

2011-03-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

Another Monday almost over and March is half over - where does the time go? Well today I finally managed to get some scrappy play time with my Feb LE kit from MCS. This kit is beautiful with all of the Graphic 45 Once upon a Springtime collection - cute little fairies, flowers, tags and of course no kit would be complete with out some gorgeous Prima flowers

The name of these papers went just perfect with this photo of my Mum and Dad when they were dating. My Dad was in the Canadian Airforce during the war and my Grandparents owned a pub in England which is where my Dad met my Mum which was in spring of 1946. They only dated for 3 months and my Dad was getting sent back to Canada and he proposed to my Mum and she said yes and they were married on June 3, 1946. My Dad left to go back to Canada and my Mum followed a month later. I've never seen 2 people more in love than the two of them, if my Mum hadn't passed away from cancer at age 61 they would have still been together. At least I know they are together now and that makes me happy. Oh dear, getting myself all teary eyed here, sorry. I really liked the way this layout turned out. TFL

Heritage album

2011-03-12T20:23:00.000-08:00

Well I finally got back to doing a few layouts of old family photos for my heritage album that I am doing for my kids. I started this album about 4 years ago, not long after I got into scrapping. I can't believe how much my style has changed - gone from super boring ('cause I had no idea how to scrap) to scrapping some pretty cool looking layouts. I owe a lot of this improvement to all of the wonderful ladies at MCS and others with the layouts and tutorials they share on their blogs.

Anyway here are a couple of the new layouts I did for this album and then one of my daughter for a layout challenge at MCS for March. The first layout are photos of my Dad ranging from age 4 to 20 and the second layout is a photo of my Granny (my Dad's Mum). I hope you like them, I'd love to hear your comments!

Prima's new product Pick for March

2011-03-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Wow, have you been over to Prima's blog this month yet? You really do need to see these beautiful new Prima goodies, they are gorgeous! Prima's Product Picks for March are filled with lots of lucky leprechaun greens! Who knew green could look so GOOD!

Just look at these gorgeous NEW products:

Butterflies
Arco Iris Flowers
Deshire Flowers
Lovely Leaves
Delightful Day Flowers
Raffia Flowers
Champagne Roses
Crystal and Lace borders
Trinkets
Cabachon Flowers
Lace
and DeSoie Flowers

You can find the Prima Blog here, just click on this link: Prima Blog
Prima is also having a give away on their blog so check it out!

Here's a peek at these goodies.

I have got a couple of new layouts done which I will post later. Thanks for stopping by!

Finally some play time...

2011-03-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

It's so nice to work in an organized scrap room for change. I finally managed to get some scrappy time and get two new layouts down which seemed to go a lot easier knowing where things are in my room. I'm still using product from my November Limited Edition kit from MCS and still have lots of goodies left to use for other layouts.

This first layout was done using Basic Grey's Curio line of papers. I did a lot of distressing on all the layers - I really like Basic Grey papers for this, they just always seem perfect for the distressed look when doing a layout. These are my grandchildren and they had been at a friend's birthday party where they had face painting before they went for this ride - which explains why they have stuff all over their faces, so it's not some strange disease they have, lol.

This next one is a photo of my daughter when we were up at Mount Washington, here on Vancouver Island, for Christmas back in December of 2007. As soon as I saw this photo I knew it would be perfect for these Bo Bunny "Snowy Serenade" papers I had from last year. Bo Bunny has a new line for this year called "Midnight Frost" that is along these same lines with the blue colors - I just love these papers, they are so great for winter layouts.TFL and I hope everyone is having a great week!

Scrap Room all finished...

2011-03-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

Wow, it seems like forever since I've actually scrapped any pictures as we've been working on installing new laminate flooring and painting etc. I so happy it's finally all done so I can actually get back to scrapping. I love the new color and flooring. I got a great deal from Michael's on two 6 cube shelving units at 40% off. I also used some Cricut Vinyl for the first time to do sayings and words on the walls and I must say I really like that stuff and will be using it a lot more often. Anyways here are a few photos of what the room looks like now. TFL

Been MIA for a bit...

2011-02-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

Got a phone call from my daughter last week, she wasn't feeling well and wanted me to come over to the mainland for her. So I'm still here, I haven't been doing much for her, I think it was just a "I'm sick and want my Mum" thing. It's always nice to know your babies still need you, even if they are grown up (well she's still only 19 but a grownup just the same).

Unfortunately last Saturday morning my DH phoned and he had just received a phone call from one of our friends here on the mainland about another of his very good friends had passed away that morning. Such sad news, as this friend was one of my DH's best friends since elementary school. He had been fighting cancer for the past 2 years and we all thought he was doing really well but apparently he had learned just before Christmas that the cancer had returned and they only gave him a few more months. No one new about this and so we were all quite shaken when we heard he had passed away. Apparently he was taken into emergency during the middle of the night as he was having problems breathing and passed away by 9:30 am.

This man was one of the nicest and most fun loving people you could ever meet. His family was the most important thing to him and he loved his music. He and his wife married very young and have two beautiful grown children in their early 20's. Dave was only 45 and I just can't even imagine what his wife Barb and the kids are going through right now. When things like this happen it sure does make you realize what is important in your life. My DH is flying in on Friday morning so we can go to the service for our friend and then we will drive home together.

I can never understand why it is that there are so many terrible people in this world and nothing bad ever happens to them. Then there is this beautiful, loving person that everyone admires and loves and would never do anything even remotely bad and has everything to live for and they are taken from us far to soon. I've decided it is because God wants to surround himself with nice, caring, loving people not the horrible ones. So I believe that saying that "Only the Good die Young". So thank you for listening to me and to our friend....

Dave, I feel privileged that I got to know you and am able to call you my friend. You will forever be remembered for your fun loving spirit and your love for your family and your love of music. I know you are up there now watching the greatest concert ever with those rock legends who have passed before you. You are a wonderful person and this world is a better place for having you in it and you will be loved and missed by everyone who has known you! R.I.P. Dave, we love you!!

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-15T00:22:00.000-08:00

Wow I can't believe it's Valentines Day already. I hope everyone got spoilt by their significant other. I know I did by my DH. Not only is it Valentines Day but it's also our anniversary - so my gift was brand new laminate flooring in my scrap room. I'm sure everyone is thinking "Well that's not very romantic." but to me it's the best present he could have given me. I spent most of last week clearing out all of my stuff in my scrap room and tearing out old carpeting. On Saturday my hubby and a couple of friends put all the laminate in - it looks soooo nice, I just love it! So yesterday (Sunday) I started painting my room and finished it off today. The only thing I have left to do is paint all the trim and get that put back on, then I can start moving all my stuff back in and getting it organized. Right now I have my computer desk and computer back in the room but it's sitting in the middle of the room so I could get around it to paint the walls. I can't wait until it's all done. I'll take pictures and post them when it's all finished.

I just realized that it's already past midnight so this post will show as Feb 15th instead of Feb 14th - so I'm a few minutes late with my Valentine wishes to everyone. I hope everyone has a great week!

Pretty layouts....

2011-02-03T23:24:00.000-08:00

What do you think of my new blog layout? I think it's so pretty and I have to thank Ingrid of Cute Blog Layouts for this beautiful design. If you're a blogger you really do have to pop on over to her blog and check out all of her pretty layouts. You can find her blog here:Cute Blog Layouts

I've been having a crazy week for some reason. Well not really crazy, I just seem to have been running around a lot but didn't really get anything done. I think I've just been still trying to organize my scrap room and now we are thinking we might pull out the carpet and put laminate flooring down. I think that would be a lot better since I always seem to be dropping things on the floor like glue and stuff which really does not do a lot for carpeting. So I've just been going around to different places checking out pricing etc.

I did actually manage to get a layout done in between all of this running around. These are photo's of my DH that I took when we went to the Gun/Firing range when we were in Las Vegas. I really do not like guns but I told him I would come and take photo's. What is it with men and guns, I guess they really are still just little boys at heart. Oh well as long as they are not in my house then I'm fine with that. I've been trying to use up papers that I have had around for awhile, these papers I think I've had at least a couple of years. I always have a problem doing masculine layouts but this one didn't turn out to bad. TFL and have a great weekend!

The Titanic

2011-01-31T00:03:00.000-08:00

Got to do another layout in my nice newly organized scrap room. This is the Titanic exhibit we saw in Las Vegas. We were not allowed to take photo's in the exhibit so I printed these off from the web. The photo of the big huge piece is part of Titanic's hull. This thing was huge, I can't remember the exact weight that this piece was but it was something like 20 tons. They give you a boarding pass each as you go in with a real passengers name on it and a little story of how they came to be on the Titanic. It was so weird going through and seeing all the photos of the people and their stories and pieces of their jewelry, clothing, luggage, and different pieces of the ship, like things from the ballroom, dinner sets - it almost sent shivers up your back. At the end of the exhibit they have plaques with all the peoples names on it, split into Passengers, Staff and Crew, one plaque was survivors and the other was people who died and you can see if the person from your boarding pass survived or not. My DH & I were very happy to find that our two people had survived. TFL

Re-arranging my scrap space....

2011-01-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased with myself today. I was poking around one of our local thrift stores yesterday and found a great corner desk for my scrapbook room for only $26. It doesn't have any drawers or shelves but that's okay because it's high enough to put some of my stack-able drawers under it. So of course now I had to re-arrange things in my scrap room. So while doing that I have to clean at the same time (I tell you dust can show up in the weirdest places, lol). It's amazing how much crap you collect in a short time. You know, little notes to yourself, little scraps of paper you'll probably never use - some things that you don't even know what the heck they are or even how they got into the room.

Now I can actually see my scrap table and I'm able to have my sewing machine up on the table all ready to use, instead of having to drag it up off the floor and set it all up. I even have room for if I want to have a friend over to scrap with. I still have lots of things to go through on one side of my room that has my bookshelf and drawers right now. Once I get it all cleaned up and things thrown away that I don't need anymore I'd like to get the room all painted a nice bright blue color and paint my bookshelf white. I did see this great 9 cube shelving unit at Walmart the other day that was only $49 that I'd like to get for more storage. I think I need another ribbon holder as I seem to have collected a lot of ribbon. The ribbon holder I have now my brother-in-law made me after I was telling him about one I'd seen on the internet and it works great. Also I think some peg board painted white would be good for hanging my scissors and tools on. Anyway, here are a couple of photo's I took of my room. TFL and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Happy Wednesday!

2011-01-26T22:58:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone has been having a good week so far. I wasn't doing to bad until this dumb sinus cold showed up. I swear if I blow my nose anymore it's going to fall off of my face, lol. My poor right eye was watering so bad yesterday and during the night that I woke up this morning with one puffy eye - that just made me look ever so attractive this morning. Oh well, life goes on, it's a cold you just have to deal with it, lol.

This morning I had fun going on a Bo Bunny blog hop. The designers had some awesome work that they shared with everyone. Bo Bunny has some great paper lines and the ladies showed it off with all of their great layouts and albums. I love going on blog hops, you meet some great people and they all give you such great inspiration. You can probably still get in on the hop and there are some great prizes so just "hop" on over to the Bo Bunny Blog!

I got a couple more layouts done in between blog hopping. This first one was done using the great December Limited Edition kit from MCS. This is a photo of my DH and his daughter when she was up visiting before Christmas for her birthday. I just love this LE kit, so many beautiful papers and Prima flowers and vines - and who doesn't love Prima!

This next one is for the January Sketch Challenge at MCS. These were some photo's we took at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Las Vegas. Some of these figures were so real looking it was kind of creepy, lol. The papers are from the November LE kit from MCS. I took a white paper doily and inked it with some Rangers ink and threaded some mint green ribbon through it and then cut another 5½" circle from one of the other papers and put that into the center of the doily. The title is actually a business card from the museum. The little green pearls are some from my stash that I got from the Dollar Store. I'd love to hear your comments on my layouts if you pass through. Thanks for looking!

Been busy painting

2011-01-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

Well I've been busy the last few days painting the front foyer in our house. We bought this house 5 years ago and all of the colors were pretty neutral. We painted our ensuite just before Christmas in a beautiful deep wine color. It just looked so nice I wanted to spend all my time in there. I decided the rest of the house looked so boring that I needed to do some more painting. I picked out this nice dark sort of navy blue color and wow, what a difference it made. It just looks so warm and inviting now and really sets off the oak stair case. I've posted a couple of pictures below.

I think I'm going to work on my craft room next. Maybe I can actually get it organized enough that I can find everything, lol.

Before I started doing the painting I did finally manage to finish off a layout that I started before we went to Las Vegas. I used some more goodies from the Dec LE Kit from MCS - and I still have lots left. This is a photo of these little snowmen that I've had for about 22 years. My son's school was selling them as a fundraiser and I thought their little faces were so cute I just had to buy them. Every year when I pull them out of the Christmas decorations to display they make me smile. I think because it reminds me of when my son was little - I still can't believe he's going to be 31 in March. When did I get so old, lol. Anyway here's the layout I did. TFL!

I'm so excited!!

2011-01-17T22:41:00.000-08:00

I had to come back in here and post this fabulous news! Bo Bunny has put out their new collection which you just have to see - It is so beautiful! Check it out on their blog here: http://bobunny.blogspot.com/2011/01/introducing-our-new-paper-lines.html
The most exciting thing about this line is it was named after my friend from MCS, Gabrielle Pollacco! I'm sure that most of you know Gabrielle and her beautiful scrapbooking style and once you see this line you will see everything Gabrielle in it. I just can't tell you how excited I am for her and this totally awesome honor of having this paper line named after her. You can find more info on how this came about on Gabi's blog that you can find here:
http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.com/

Gabi I am so, so happy for you!!

Home again.....

2011-01-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

We got back from our Las Vegas trip the other day. We had a great time - didn't come home with money but then who goes to Vegas thinking they'll come home rich, lol. We saw some good shows. We went to the "Titanic" exhibit at the Luxor hotel which was great. To see all of this real stuff and read personal stories as to why the different passengers came to be on board the Titanic was so cool - I would definitely tell people if you are in Las Vegas you should see this one for sure!

We also went to the "Madame Tussauds Wax Museum". Wow, these figures just look so real, it's amazing. Of course I took lots of photo's in there to scrapbook. *S* I haven't got a chance to download my photos yet but once I do I'll be very busy scrapping them all. Well I'm off to go catch up on posts at MCS, thanks for stopping by.

Amazing...

2011-01-06T20:57:00.000-08:00

I actually got another layout done today, maybe I'm on a role. Oh better not say anything more in case I lose my mojo, lol. Since we didn't have any kids with us this Christmas (so sad) and a turkey is a little big for two of us we decided that since we had this fresh crab our friends caught a day before and a couple of frozen lobster tails in the freezer, we would cook up that instead. Well my DH cooked them all up in the wok with some awesome sauce he made and they were sooooo good! Not a traditional Christmas dinner but a very yummy one! We had taken a picture of it all cooking up so I figured I should scrap it so here's what I came up with. I used some more of the papers and goodies from the December LE kit from MCS and still have lots left. Thanks for looking and I'd love to hear any comments you'd like to leave.

The week's almost over!

2011-01-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Only three more days and we're off to Las Vegas - woohoo! We were thinking that it was going to be good to get away from the cold here for a few days but apparently it's not that much warmer in Vegas and the other day they had 2 inches of snow - we definitely don't want snow while we're there. It's been very cold down south, even in Yuma, Arizona where my in-laws go every winter (Canadian Snowbirds) the pipes on the outside of their 5th wheel were frozen - now that it's just to weird! I just checked the weather for Vegas today and apparently it's back up to 52 F, and it's sunny so that's a bit better.

I got another layout done with some of the papers from the MCS Dec LE kit. We had a challenge at MCS to do stamping on a layout. On mine below I used some drywall tape and stamped it with green distress ink and then stamped that on my background paper. Used one of my corner stamps in two of the corners and a buttefly stamp for one corner and used some brown distress ink to stamp two of my dandelion puff ball stamps. You can't really see that well in this photo but I used one of my flourish stamps and some off white ink to stamp flourishes on the brown paper.

My daughter took these photos of my two grandchildren when she was babysitting them for my son. I thought they were so funny when she sent them to me because they looked sooo serious in the one photo and then so crazy in the other, lol. Well thanks for looking and have a great rest of your work week!

New Year, new layouts...

2011-01-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

Here we are the 3rd of January 2011. Another year has flown by again.Hopefully this will be a wonderful year filled with lots of creativity. I did manage to get a couple of layouts done this past couple of days. This first one is a photo of my two sisters and I (in the middle) taken about 1955 - gee I'm old! I used the November LE kit from MCS. There was a whole lot of fussy cutting for this one but I found I still wanted to add some other flowers to it and then I remembered I had a stem of silk flowers that I had bought at Micheals that looked almost the same as these on the paper. Of course I had to cut the plastic stems off and stick them back together with glue dots but I think they matched pretty good, lol.

The next layout is a photo of my two grandchildren. I used the December LE kit for this one. I used a cutter file I made for the holly leaves and cut them on my Cricut machine and also cut the title using my Cricut machine. The little gold petals/leaves are from my stash of stuff when I use to make dried floral arrangements. I used stickles for the berries as well as outlining parts of the title and also outlined the angel with stickles. TFL

Happy Hump Day

2010-12-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-12-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

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

2 more shopping days.....

2010-12-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

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....

2010-12-21T15:14:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-17T00:57:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

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......

2010-12-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

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..

2010-12-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

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!

The snow finally found us

2010-11-29T23:58:00.000-08:00

I guess that will teach me for laughing when everyone else got it, lol. Last week on Wednesday night it finally started snowing here. The only problem was though is that because it had been so cold (-6 Celsius) as soon as the snow hit the roads it just turned into a big sheet of ice, which was not good for anyone driving in it. It snowed all night so I thought when we woke up on Thursday morning we would have at least 4 or 5 inches but there wasn't that much in the morning, maybe an inch or so. It kept snowing all day so by dinner time there was about 4 inches. I didn't go out of the house all day. Even my DH came home from work just before noon because there was no way with the weather that it would be dangerous loading and unloading big machines to the job sites plus the city was closing a number of roads because they were to steep to try to drive up them safely. It worked great for me because I didn't have to shovel the driveway, my DH did it. Anyways about 7:30 in the evening the temperature really started to warm up and the snow turned to rain, so by Friday morning it was just a slushy mess on the roads and now it's all gone - thank goodness!

One thing about being stuck in the house I was able to make a few more Christmas cards which I've posted down below. Two of them feature my own mouse drawn hedgehog, One of them is ice skating, the other is looking up at the big star in the sky. The other two feature a couple of the cute fairies from Charmed Cards & and Crafts. I used a lot of puffy paint and stickles glitter on the cards and used foam to pop up the hedgehogs and fairies for that 3D look. I think they turned out quite cute. Thanks for stopping by and having a peek at my cards. Hope everyone has a great week!

Brrrrrr, I think winter is here...

2010-11-23T00:06:00.000-08:00

So last Friday we got a bit of snow coming down and according to the weatherman we were suppose to get all this snow overnight. We woke up Saturday to no snow at all - yeah! Then last night there were all these snow and wind warnings for Vancouver Island. So we wake up this morning to no snow at all, just beautiful blue sunny skies but it was windy and very cold - about minus 2 Celsius. So while I'm making dinner I turn the news on and they are showing how the rest of Vancouver Island were having major snow and wind storm all day. Closing schools for today and tomorrow and a lot of businesses closing. Even just down the highway from us in Courtney, which is only like 45 klms from us had major amounts of snow. That was just to weird but I was happy we didn't get any of the storms the rest of the Island and the mainland were getting, It's suppose to be sunny here again tomorrow but very cold, about -6 Celsius and with the windchill factor it will bwe more like -18. I'm thinking that staying in bed under all of the covers with my matress heator on will be high on the agenda for me tomorrow, lol.

I did manage to get a quick card done today using some Bo Bunny papers from last year that I had. This one features my own little mouse drawn hedgehog. I used puffy paint on his hat trim and also around the whole card and popped the hedgehog up with foam for that 3D look. I think it turned out not to bad - what do you think? Well thanks for stopping by and having a peek at my work. I hope everyone has a great week and bundle up for the cold weather!

Happy to be home...

2010-11-19T00:14:00.000-08:00

I was happy to be home and in my own cozy bed this past Monday. I like going to the mainland to see all the family but I sure don't miss the crazy, busy place Richmond has become. Every time I go there is a new building or old ones torn down, the people are always rushing around like there is a big race going on.

The craft fair wasn't to bad, but sales were down from the past few years. After talking to a number of other crafters everyone agreed that things were much slower. People just are not spending money the way they use to. I guess everyone is on a tight budget what with so many people out of work etc.

I did mange to finish another layout tonight, finally. I had the slows or something. This was a layout for the "Big Sketch" contest going on over at My Creative Scrapbook. I even managed to use some more of my October LE Kit from MCS. This is a couple of photos that my son took of my grandchildren when he took them to downtown Vancouver for dinner at Kobe's. That is one of those Japanese restaurants were they cook your food up in front of you, I wish we had one of those here in Campbell River because their food is always so yummy! You can't really tell in this photo that well but I took a duplicate piece of the background paper and cut out the two bottom corners and then used foam to pop them up on the layout. The flowers I made myself and the "bling" at the bottom of the page was some clear ones I had in my stash and I took some of my Rangers ink to color them to match the layout. I'm quite happy with the way the layout turned out. TFL and I hope everyone has had a great week!

A few quick cards

2010-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

A big thank you to all of our fallen soldiers, Veterans and those who continue to serve our country!

Just a few quick cards I finished last night.

I got my sister to send me a photo of one of her pictures she makes to sell in the craft fair. She calls these "Sea Sites".