Bo Bunny

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

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

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

Beach layout

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

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

Quiet house again

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

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

Finally...

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

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

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

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

Camping

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

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

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

 

Going MIA for a few days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

Apologies to all!

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...

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!

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.

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!