The snow finally found us

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...

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...

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

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".

 

The leaves just keep falling........

Okay so I know all the stupid leaves have to come off the trees but you would think they could do it all in one day. Last week I raked up all the leaves in the front yard from our cherry trees, which filled up at least two huge paper recycling bags. Then 2 days later I had to do it all over again. Then I decided to cut back our laurel hedge in the backyard, which I believe I mentioned the other day. So by the time I finished doing that and cutting up all the branches and raking up all those leaves I had 16 huge paper recycling bags for the recycling pick up yesterday. So of course it decided to be windy and raining again yesterday but we we woke up to beautiful blue skies this morning. And what else, more stupid leaves on the front lawn again. So off I go again this afternoon and raked up the rest of those leaves and then I had to pick out all the ones from the flower bed in front of the veranda - which is a pain in the butt because the people who owned the house before us have all those nice little white rocks in the garden. They look nice but it takes for ever to pick the leaves out of it because you can't rake it because of the rocks - grrrr. So now there are only a few leaves left on one of the trees, one more big wind and the rest should be down, thank goodness cause I'm beginning to really hate raking leaves - who invented trees with leaves that have to fall off every year any how, lol. 

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, which is a stat holiday here in BC - so there will be a parade tomorrow morning to pay our respects to all of those who have died serving our country and all of those who still do serve this great country of Canada and of course our US neighbors to the south as well as veterans everywhere. In the early afternoon we head to the Legion where everyone gathers to raise our glasses to the Vets and enjoy the music.

We usually stay there most of the afternoon but tomorrow I am flying down to the mainland (Vancouver - actually Richmond is where I will be) to visit my kids and grandchildren and on Saturday I am helping my sister out at the craft fair I spoke about a few days ago. I am going to be selling my cards that I have been making so I hope to get a few more done this evening to take with me as well as a couple of my pre-made scrapbook pages and my digital scrapbook kits.

I did mange to make another quick card last night, using my Tim Holtz Santa stamp which I've posted below. Well I better get going if I want to get any cards done tonight. Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and please don't forget to pay your respects to all of the veterans tomorrow.

Card being published

Very excited again. I just got an e,mail from Scrapbook news and Review to say they are publishing one of my cards in their December issue. Wow, two  months in a row getting published is so cool! When I was looking around their online magazine last week when the new issue came out with my 3 scrap pages in it I noticed they has a call for cards based on a sketch they posted so I decided to send one in and they actually picked it. I have posted a copy of it below - I will have to take it down from my blog while the December issue is out and then I can put it back up on the blog.

I've also done a couple of  more cards which I've posted below. One is with one of the cute fairyies from Charmed Cards & Crafts - I just love their pixies/fairies, they're so cute. The other one I used one of my Tim Holtz stamps from his "Mini Holidays" collection. I love the vintage Santa for cards and doing his "12 Tags of Christmas" tags. Thanks for looking and I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Busy few days this week

The weather here in Campbell River has been so nice the past few days, sunny and about 16 degrees (that's 62 F, for those of you in the US). I got out and raked up all the leaves in the front yard from our cherry trees. Then I got all industrious and mowed the backyard which sucked up all the leaves back there, I'm pretty sure that's the last mowing in for this year that we'll get. Made my DH all happy as he's been working 12 hour days all week. so would not have been able to get it done. 

Then since I was on such  roll I started cutting back our laurel hedge in the back yard, which pretty much added another 5 feet to the side of the yard it runs down. I managed to finish off the whole thing yesterday so I was quite pleased with myself. Of course my poor back is paying for it now - this old thing really sucks, lol.

In between all of this I managed to get a few more cards done. Trying to stock up before I go down to the mainland next week to help my sister out in her craft fair she is going in on Nov 13th. My sister makes these beautiful beach/ocean pictures in shadow box frames. When ever she comes up or if I'm at the beach with my grandchildren we collect up shells, seaweed and any other little treasures from the beach and she mounts them all in these shadow boxes. They are so pretty and they sell pretty fast at the craft fairs. I will have to get her to send me a photo of a few of them and I can post them for everyone to see.

Anyway back to my cards. This first one I just finished today and I'm so pleased at how pretty it turned out. I must thank Paulien from MCS for this idea on using the puffy paint on the outer edges of the cards, it looks so pretty and adds such dimension to the cards, especially when you're doing Christmas cards. So thank you Paulien and I hope you don't mind me scrap lifting your idea - or is that card lifting, lol.You can visit Paulien's blog and see more of her beautiful work here:

http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/

This paper is from the Christmas Magic line from Fancy Pants last year. I distressed the edges and then cut out a couple of the ornaments and popped them up with foam and then completed them by adding a bow to each and then the gold ribbon hanging down to the bow.

These next two cards are made with this cute little fairy/pixie from "Charmed Cards and Crafts". Isn't she adorable?I made two cards with her, I printed out duplicates of her and colored in her wings, dress and boot trim and headband with stickles glitter and then popped her up with foam for the 3D look.

These next three cards I made with some of my own graphics that I drew in my  PSP program, this pretty poinsettia and ice skating snowman. On the pointsettia I duplicated the graphic and then outlined all the leaves with stickles glitter and used red stickles on the end of little shoots and popped it up with foam. For the snowman I used puffy paint on his hat and gloves trim and also popped him up with foam. These graphics are ones that I sell in my Digital scrapbook kits from my website here: Scrappers Heaven


I hope you enjoyed looking at my cards, I know I had fun making them. Have a great rest of the week everyone!

Happy Halloween!

I know it's Halloween today but I'm trying to get ready for Christmas already, lol. Boy I didn't realize I had so much Christmas paper in my stash until I pulled it out yesterday. I'm thinking I could be making cards till the cows come home - or at least until Santa arrives, lol. The little hedgehog is one that I drew in my Paint Shop Pro program, fashioned after one of the Penny Black stamps - I'm not  great stamper so this works better for me - plus it saves me a few dollars not having to buy the stamp, lol. I used some puffy paint on the tree branches and on his hat trim and popped him up with foam for the 3D look.

The other card is more of a vintage shabby/chic look using some Tim Holtz stamps and embossing powder. I just love all the Tim Holtz stamps etc., this year I hope to finish off my "Twellve Tags" of Christmas following Tim's tutorials. I did a lot of disdtressing on thisone and am quite pleased at how it turned out as I really didn't have a layout in mind for this one, I just kind of made it up as I went along.

I hope everyone has a safe Halloween tonight and the kiddies get lots of goodies! TFL

Very excited....

I got an email yesterday from Scrapbook News and Review, http://www.scrapbooknewsandreview.com/, to let me know they have chosen three of my layouts to be published in their online magazine which comes out on October 31st. The layouts they've chosen are:

The Eyes are Windows to the Soul - posted on my Blog May 22, 2010

Urban Angel - posted on my blog April 5, 2010 and

Chic! - posted on my blog April 2, 2010

I've had to take the layouts down from my blog while this issue of the online magazine is up, but I can reload them on the blog again in December. I feel very honored to have these layouts published, especially three in the same issue! So I h ope everyone will stop by the magazine when the new issue is posted October 31st, after 8pm. Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Love, love , love these papers....

Bo Bunny's "Winter Joy" line of paper is so nice. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to make some Christmas cards with it. It's so nice that all of these companies are coming up with so many different papers for winter instead of the traditional red & greens.

My next one of the winter lines that Bo Bunny has that I want to play with is "Midnight Frost" - it's beautiful, for all those gorgeous winter photo's that you take, this is definitely one to use! You can see this line on Bo Bunny's website here: http://www.bobunny.com/midnightfrostcollection.html

So these are a few of the cards I made today with the "Winter Joy" line. The snowman I drew and colored in my Paint Shop Pro program. I used puffy paint on trim of his hat and then stickles glitter on his scarf. I popped him up with foam on all of the cards for a 3D look. TFL

New Scrap Kit....

Got my October limited Edition kit from MCS on Friday so I finally got to play with it last night.These Websters papers from their Wonderfall line are awesome - I'm going to be having fun scrapping pages with these for sure.I'm quite pleased at how my first layout with these papers turned out. This is our daughter and her friend at Hyde Park Fountain in Sydney, Australia. TFL and hope everyone has a great week!

 

Another quick layout

Just trying to caught on on my scrap pages for our daughters Australia trip she is was on- she's back now but still on the mainland at her Mum's place. She should be back up here in another week or so, I think she's still trying to get back onto BC time as it was 19 hours ahead of us for her in Australia. We are looking forward to her coming home her in Campbell River.

This layout is for a sketch challenge at MCS. This is Justine and h er two friends while they were in Sydney sight seeing at the Sydney Opera House. TFL and have a great day!

Happy Friday!

Another week has flown by - why is it when your a kid the days just drag by, then suddenly you get older and the years fly by. Aahh, to be a kid again!

Well I've been playing more with the My Creative Scrapbook Limited  Edition kit. Did this layout of my daughter for a challenge at MCS. We had to do a layout using flowers we had made ourselves. I think my flowers came out pretty good. I followed one of the DT members, Gabi's, tutorials. Gabi always has great tuts, you should check out her blog here: http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.com/

Anyways here it is, TFL!

Photo's of myself....

I don't know about the rest of you scrappers but I am always the one taking the photo's, very rare that I'm actually in the photo's. I noticed the same thing when we got our video camera years ago. I had tons of videos of the kids and family gatherings etc but none of them had me in them, just my voice. 

I've never considered myself very photogenic, so I always hate having my picture taken, but since starting to scrapbook I've realized that I really need to force myself to let people take my picture. So when I'm no longer on this earth and my family goes through all of the scrapbooks, not only can they read all my thoughts on their photo's and what was going  on but they will actually be able to see photo's of me too. It would kind of defeat the purpose of doing my scrapbooks for my family if they didn't include all of the family  in them. This is a lot easier since the invention of the digital camera and timers. I can actually play around taking photo's of myself until I finally get a decent one and then erase all the others, which believe me are a lot of terrible pictures, lol.

So along these lines we had a challenge over at My Creative Scrapbook to "Scrap the Scrapper". Since I had already used one of the few photo's of myself that I liked when I did my scrap page celebrating my 12 years of being caner free. So, now what to do? I finally remembered I had one other photo of myself that my husband had taken about seven years ago (see that shows you how often I let people take my photo, lol) that I actually liked. Now the big problem, I had to search through all of my CD's with my photo's on them to see if I could find it. Well it took me a while but I did finally find it, thank goodness. So the layout below is what I came up with for the challenge, using this photo. *Note to self - take some more up to date photo's of myself. 

Angel Eyes

Well we have lots of challenges going on at MCS. So between cleaning up the gardens for winter and cleaning the house I actually did manage to get one layout done. This one was a color challenge and I played around with it a lot before I was finally happy with the finished layout. This is another one of the photo's of my daughter that  her friend took one day this past year. Her friend wants to become a photographer and after seeing all these beautiful photo's of my daughter I think she's going to make an awesome photographer. So here is my entry for this challenge, TFL!

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope all the Canadians out there had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We had a really nice Thanksgiving and the weather was beautiful. Of course we all ate way to much turkey as usual. It was just nice to sit around with family and friends and enjoy a great meal and talk about what was going on with everyone.

Amazingly enough I actually managed to doing some scrapping today. We have a great contest going on over at My Creative Scrapbook so I decided to scrap these great pictures of my step daughter and her friend a top of Blue Mountain in Sydney, Australia - apparently this is the highest mountain in Australia. I made the pearl flourishes with some of the pearl strand from my MCS Limited Edition Kit and also some of the pretty Prima roses. I made the larger flower following my friend Gabi's Water Distressed Blooms tutorial and added one of the pretty Prima roses for the center. I also added some stickles glitter to all the flower petals. I used my Cricut Design Studio to weld all my letters together for the title and then cut them out with my Cricut. TFL!

Still playing

Wow, I can't believe how many layouts I'm getting done with this LE Kit from My Creative Scrapbook and I still ave tons of goodies yet to use. This is another layout using this kit, I think this is my fourth one using the kit. Anyway this is my step daughter and her friend at the aquarium in Sydney, Australia last month. I scrap lifted my friend Gabi's (one of the DT members at MCS) "so focused" layout that she did with the kit. I love Gabi's work, it is always so beautiful. You can see more of her work on her blog here: http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.com/ Thanks for looking!

12 years..

I didn't realize that a week had gone by without posting. The weather here has been super nice and warm (21 Celsius), so I've been busy working out in the yard. I've been cleaning out all the flower beds and trimming hedges back, mowing lawns, very busy, of course my poor back has been paying for all of this hard work, lol. I figured I better get this all done as its suppose to start raining again tomorrow and who knows when it will stop.

We were suppose to go camping tomorrow, just an overnight thing at one of the lakes around here. But I'm thinking that most likely won't happen if it's raining. I'd much rather be in my house if its raining, lol.

It's  only taken me about three days to do this layout below. On Oct 2nd I celebrated my 12 years since my surgery for breast cancer so I decided I should scrap a page about this event. I've used some more of the papers from my MCS Limited Edition scrap kit. So this is what I came up with, I hope you like it and thanks for taking a peek! 

 

Gorgeous weather still...

The weather has been so nice these past few days, it's almost like summer again with temperature being 20 to 23 Celsius each day. So nice to have warm weather to do all of this gardening that needs to be done before it gets colder and rainy, like our normal Fall weather. So far it's coming along nicely. 

I have been able to do a bit of scrapping the last couple of evenings so I was able to finish another layout with items from the Limited Edition Kit from MCS. This is a photo I took of my son and his kids back in June of 2003, in our pool that we had at our house in Richmond on the mainland, Scott was only about 6 months old here and Mikayla was 3yrs old. I look at my grandchildren now and look at this photo and I can't believe how fast time has gone by, seems like just yesterday that the kids were this small. TFL!

A few more layouts

Well one thing when it's a rainy weekend it gives you time to scrapbook. My first one I did was another one for the pet challenge layout at MCS. This is our youngest cat Lucky. He's like the perfect Halloween cat, when he sits in the window sill looking out at the world he has such a regal pose. In the one picture here he's sitting in my office and looking out at all the snow coming down outside last winter. He looks like he's looking at me and saying "Mum, make it stop", lol.

This next one is my granddaughter, Mikayla, from when they were visiting and we were camping. She was trying to keep her hair out of her face so she put a pony tail in it but put it on the very top of her head so she looked like she had a tree growing out of her head. She kept calling it her crazy hairdo, lol. 

I used a paper doily on this layout but did not dye it or anything, I just left it white. Then I cut a pink circle the size of the center of the doily and stamped it here and there with a flourish stamp. The pink flowers I believe are Prima ones that I had in my stash and in the center I glued a ribbon flower that I had made awhile ago. The other pink flower on the bottom right is another one of my tissue flowers. Did some punching and used some Rangers ink to dye the lace. I was actually pleased out how it turned out.

I figured I would use up some of the left over paper from this layout to make a card. I used this cute outline from Charmed Cards & Crafts which I took into my Paint Shop Pro program and colored. I just love this cute sleeping fairy and use her quite often in my cards. I did a lot of stitching with my sewing machine on this and the inside of the card uses the same papers but is left blank for your own personal message. I also outlined her wings and flower head band with Stickles glitter.

 This next one is one of my favorite pictures of my granddaughter, Mikayla, when she was 3 years old. She loved to wear hats and she was showing off her newest one to me that day. I just started receiving scrap kits from MCS and this was my first layout using these beautiful papers from Prima's "Annalee" collection. I don't think that Prima could ever come out with anything that people didn't just love..their flowers, paper, flourishes - I want them all! LOL

Well the weather is suppose to be nice for the next 3 or 4 days so I'll be out doing my garden trying to get everything cleaned up before winter decides to set in, so no time for scrapping at least until the evening if I'm not to tired. I hope everyone is having a great week so far. TFL!