♥ All You Need is Love ♥

I was asked by Peggy at PaperWorks Co to be a Guest Designer for this month and since I love the stamps she carries I just had to say yes (the fact that she's so nice doesn't hurt either)!  


Here is my first project for the month using The First Date stamp from one of my favorite collections, the Little Loud Freckle Love Collection.  All of the Little Loud stamps are "retired" and currently on sale for 40% off! 

I used some of my leftover BoBunny papers from last year and paired them up with Pink Pirouette Cardstock.  After stamping the sentiment (which comes with the image stamp) I colored over the "love" with a pink copic marker and added a rhinestone for the o.  I also added a few rhinestones to the designer paper and some stickles to the flowers and the hearts on the girl because you can never have enough bling. 

As a side note, I can't believe I have been away from my blog for so long!  The last few months have been crazy busy for us and here I thought that by taking a break from Design Teams I would free up a bit of time but still get the chance to craft.....Well, unfortunately for me, "no commitments" translated to basically no crafting and the "free time" I gained was instead filled up with guests, all kinds of meetings, dr/ortho/dentist visits, school events/parties, getting ready for the holidays, and the major one.....trying to clean out the kids rooms and organize all their outgrown toys so we can get rid of them.  That is really hard for me ~ I still picture them playing with these things and it makes me sad that they are growing up so fast.  I think the hardest was the Little People sets ~ they all loved playing with these and would make a whole town in one of our downstairs rooms with all the sets.  I am still not completely done with sorting all these sets yet.  Most of them are retired so it makes locating a picture of the complete set online a bit more difficult especially when you don't remember the name of the set.  We also celebrated Ashley's 8th birthday on December 30th ~ where does the time go? 


Have a great day and thanks for visiting :)

Recipe ~ all items SU unless indicated
Stamps: The First Date  - Little Loud Freckle Love Collection (Paperworks)
Ink/Coloring: Memento Tuxedo Black; Copics
Paper:Pink Pirouette; Gina K Luxury White; DP - BoBunny
Embellishments: Sickles (Stardust); Ribbon (May Arts); Flowers (Prima); Rhinestones (Michael's)
Tools: Nesties (Petite and Petite Scallop Ovals, Circle and Petite Scallop Circle); Border Punches (Martha Stewart)

Christmas Wish

Back again to share a card I did earlier tonight while the kids were in the craft room drawing pictures, working on homework, and making something for Grandpa.  I decided to follow this weeks sketch over at Club Anya & Friends and I am also using The Greeting Farm challenge of tying something other than ribbon (linen thread).  Now I just need to decide which of the two to enter.  Since Christmas will be here before I know it, I decided to add to my meager stack of Christmas cards.  I took a picture of this card two different ways.  One with a tag, one without.....which way do you like it better?

Here is the sketch that I followed:

This was actually a pretty quick card to put together (especially since I had colored the image the other day) and that is a good thing....sometimes you need a break from those 2+ hour cards.



I would like to enter this in the following challenges:
Creative Inspirations - "Glitter, Glamour, Girlie"
Little Red Wagon- "Use the color Red"
One Stitch at a Time - "Winter Wonderland"
Whoopsie Daisy - "It's Christmas"
Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - "Use Glitter"
Crafty Cardmakers - "Embossing"
Pollycraft- "Doodling"
Meljen's - Use 3 different shapes (Recangle, Oval, Snowflake)
A Crafty Little Place - "Red, White and Green"
A Spoon Full of Sugar - "Snow or Snowflakes"
Scrap Creations - "Christmas"
Charisma Cardz - "Winter Love"
C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - "Dry Embossing"
Crafty Catz - Spots and Stripes (my DP has blocks of spots and blocks of stripes))
Easy Craft Projects - "Red"
Crafty Calendar - "Winter" optional extra - snowflakes
Stamp and Create - "Tis the Season"
Catch the Bug - "Anything Goes" 
Oh Alice - "Use a ticket"
One Stop Craft Challenge - "Embossing"


Recipe ~ all items SU unless indicated
Stamps: Xmas Sweeties (The Greeting Farm)
Ink/Coloring: Memento Tuxedo Black; Copics (E00, E01, E11, R20, E35, E37, E57, R22, R24,, R27, R29); Marvy Silver Metallic Pen; Inksentials White Gel Pen
Paper: Riding Hood Red, Old Olive; Gina K Luxury White; DP - DCWV (older Christmas stack)
Embellishments: Sickles (Stardust); Button; Linen Thread; Tag (Tim Holtz)
Tools: Nesties (Petite and Petite Scallop Ovals, Snowflakes); Border Punch (EK Success); Cuttlebug Embossing Folder (Polka Dots)


Have a wonderful day! 

Girly Notebook

I have a little bit of time toay, so thought I would share an altered notebook I made for one of my daughters.  I think the images in this newer Anya set are perfect for tween girls and can definitely see my daughter reaching for this set when making cards for her friends.

One thing I learned when making this, is that it really is very time consuming (at least it was for me) to take the covers off the spiral, put the DP on the covers (both inside and out), punch the holes and then put them back on the spiral.  Note to self....leave the spiral area DP free.......or maybe I just need a binding machine and then I don't have to worry about it ;)

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:
Creative Inspirations - "Glitter, Glamour, Girlie"
Ooh La La Creations - "Remember, Remember"
The Crafty Pad - "At least one circle (hope the circle pearls count) and 2 ribbons"
Stamptacular - I picked Carolyn's Recipe book, but since I don't have an appropriate book to alter for this (or a binding machine to make one) I chose a notebook instead
Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - "Use Glitter"

Crafty Sentiments - "Make a Gift"
Meljen's - Use 3 different shapes (Recangle, Scalloped Oval, Flower)
Raise the Bar - "Let's See Those Curves" (scalloped oval, word window punch, border punch, flowers, ric-rac trim)
Copic Creations - "Browns" - hair and boots 


Now, I did have my recipe written down, but I'm afraid I may have accidently thrown it away, so I am going by memory here..... 


Recipe ~ all items SU unless indicated
Stamps: Lounge Time Anya & Sentiment (The Greeting Farm)
Ink/Coloring: Memento Tuxedo Black; Copics (E00, E01, E11, R20......and others)
Paper: Cool Caribbean; Gina K Luxury White; DP -We R Memory Keepers
Embellishments: Ric Rac trim; Organdy Ribbon (Offray); Flowers (Prima); Pearls-colored with copics (Recollections); Sickles (Stardust)
Tools: Scallop Oval Punch; Word Window Punch; Border Punch (Martha Stewart); Notebook (Michael's)



Have a wonderful day! 

Destination Imagination and some Unity projects

On Thursday all 4 of my kids tried out for Destination Imagination (DI) at their school.  Ashley and Trevor are in the Rising Star age level and performed a poem the three of us worked on together about DI.  Alicia and Tyler are at the regular DI level and performed a skit about recycling that they wrote themselves. 

Ashley and Trevor made a Rising Star team and I am their co-coach.  I've never coached a DI team before so I'm not sure what I'm in for, but I know we will have a fun time (and I know quite a few of the coaches from last year, so I'm sure they will help me along the way).  

Now the older two, Alicia and Tyler, won't find out until Friday the 12th if they made a team or not.....that is such a long wait for me that I can't even begin to imagine how it feels to them!  Alicia was on a team last year that placed 1st in Regionals and 3rd at State, and would be absolutely heartbroken if she didn't make it on a team this year.  She was sad when DI was over for the year and has been counting the days until she could do this again.  Tyler has not been on a team before, but after watching his sisters last year, he had his heart set on this and I know he would be really hurt if he didn't make a team.  I do believe that they both have something special to offer and hope the judges saw that as well.  So now it's a waiting game and all I can do is hope and pray that they both make it!


Last month I finally got my first Unity Stamps.  They have been on my wish list for quite some time, but I'm sure you know how it is....a wish list a mile long with papers, stamps, embossing folders, nesties, punches, embellishments and more, but unfortunately no money tree to go along with it.  But, waiting turned out to be a good thing for me because I picked up on some awesome "Deals of the Day".

Here are a few of the fall themed cards I did:

This card is one of my favorites ~ and although not a fall card, I did incorporate fall colors.  I used one of the sayings in "The Artist in You" set:

This one is a mini card using the "Trick or Treat Peeps" Set:

These two use the "Harvest of Memories" set:

Note:  This is my attempt at a one layer card (I still don't like doing these!)

This one uses the 12/09 KOTM:

I have oh, about 18 more cards to get up yet....sooner or later they will be here ;)

Have a great day!

Happy Halloween!

Wow...long time no post.  I can't believe how fast this month has gone by.  Yesterday the kids went trick-or-treating and the weather was fantastic!  We had a rummage sale the 21st - 23rd at my Brother's house, so I spent a lot of time getting ready for that in addition to all the other running around we had to do for the kids.  I went on two field trips this month ~ to the Pumpkin farm with Trevor's class and then to a Quarry and park with Tyler's class ~ love being able to do this with them.  I helped out in Trevor's class when they made silly hats and also helped out at my kids' class parties this month.  The school had their annual Fall Fest, and we all had a great time there.  I was lucky to be the winning bidder on a framed picture of all the kids/teachers in the school (they are outside forming an A B for the school name) ~ since it is the last year all 4 of my kids will be there, I thought it was a good picture to have.  I also did quite a bit of card making...I completed all 23 of Unity's World Card Making Day challenges, but just haven't gotten around to sharing them yet, but I will be soon.

Now onto fall....I wanted to get two cards done today for Amy R's challenge because she is giving away a fabulous prize...an ATG gun!  So far, I have only managed to do one since I had to help Ashley make a Santa puppet for her book report....which basically means I had to make a puppet ;) and I've been helping the kids prepare for their D.I. tryouts.
 

I used CC Designs images along with one of Amy's sentiments from the Autumn Sentiments set.  I picked up this paper last year from my LSS for fall projects but never got around to using it until now.  Since the image panel is so large, I just added a few buttons along with some bakers twine and then to add a little bit of interest paper pierced some sections. 

Have a great day!
 

This is Hot Stuff....

Very early this morning I entered one notebook in The Greeting Farm's Altered Notebook Contest which happened to show my Girls Rock altered notebook as a sample ~ that was definitely a nice surprise. Well, I thought I may have a better chance of winning if I did another notebook as well (good thing I got my Scor-Tape in the mail yesterday), so I got to work and came up with this one:
I really love how this one turned out! In case you haven't noticed, I even pulled out my hoarded 12x12 designer paper from The Greeting Farm. I used two different sets....In the Spotlight and Roll Call.

Both the inside front and back covers have pockets on the page.
Here is the inside cover:
And the back inside cover:
And finally the back cover:
I would also like to enter the following challenges:
Catch the Bug - "Anything Goes"
The Sweet Stop - "Sketch"
Stamp Scrap & Doodle - "Anything Goes"
Aly's Sunday Challenge - "At least 2 DP and at least 2 buttons"
Cowgirls - "Anything Goes"
Stamptacular - "Layer it On"
Crafty Cardmakers - "No square cards" - can make anything as long as it isnt' square
PollyCraft - "Gotta Go Digi" - digi paper and digi sentiment
Peachy Keen -"October as inspiration" - I used colors that remind me of the fall
For Fun - "Use something you bought and haven't used" - TGF stamps, TGF paper, Basic Grey Butons, Composition Notebook
Nutty Nutshells - "Use stripes"
Penny's - "Circles"
Southern Girls - "4 layers of Patterned Paper"
Charisma Cardz - "Autumn Colors"
Crafty Sentiments - "Autumn Colors"
Moving Along with the Times - "Anything But a Card"
Inky Impressions - "Anything Goes"
Stampin for the Weekend - "Use the colors of autumn to inspire you"
Color Me Copic - "Coloring Clothes with Copics"

Have a great day!

Recipe ~ all items SU unless indicated
Stamps: In The Spotlight, Roll Call (The Greeting Farm)
Ink/Coloring: Memento Tuxedo Black; Colorbox Chalk Ink (Bisque & Blush Rose); Copics (E00, E01, E11, R20, E28, Y32, E31, E33, E04, E07, E08, E09, YG63, YG67)
Paper: Natural's Ivory; Gina K Luxury White; DP - The Greeting Farm
Embellishments: Stitched Ribbon and Grosgrain Ribbon; Flowers (Prima); Buttons (Basic Grey); Linen Thread
Tools: Border Punch (EK Success); Composition Notebook

High Hopes Challenge

Just a quick posting to get this entered into High Hopes sketch challenge this week. I'll be back later to update this.....