Hello, Blogland!

I can't believe life is interupting my blog and craft time! How rude. I promise I will post more regularly this week, so I hope you will stop by :) Tomorrow is October 1st, can you believe it? Happy Fall, y'all!

Phunky Phresh Phlower

I was inspired to try this from Lauren and Nathalia. There is a crafter named Melanie who wrote a tutorial. Melanie's tutorial is here:http://2jills.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=3946

I did not have 18" of ribbon, just 12", so I changed mine a little from the tutorial. This was my first attempt. The primas are from 3 different manufacturers as are the ribbons. But the cardstock is Bazzill and the sentiment is SU! stamp and ink (chocolate chip.) My "envelope" is an acrylic box.

Give it a try, and link your creations to my comments. I'd love to see what you came up with!

Mass producing Halloween cards

I used up all of my "Nightmare Before Christmas" stickers (which feels rewarding) and I used more of the Making Memories papers, ribbons and the four metal charms that came in the Halloween kit. I like the ric rac, but I really love the striped ribbon that came in the kit that I used on the larger cards. The cards are packaged and ready to go to the coffee shops...

Stick With It! Part 2

I'm still excited about using my sticker stash! I bought a Making Memories Halloween kit over a year ago (yes, I used my 40% off coupon), and recently purchased some EK Success "Nightmare before Christmas" stickers (I would not normally buy, but they were 50% off!) I pulled these out Sunday night since I need to make lots of Halloween cards, and they just stared back at me. Monday morning in the shower this simple layout popped in my head. Yea me! Now what cards can I create with the rest of the stickers...

2004 Completed

Here is our traditional family get together at my grandparents' house for Christmas Eve to exchange gifts with my aunt and cousin. The far left pictures are of Julia and below that me with Kathryn. The other two children belong to my cousin. Lance (can you believe that red hair?) and his sister (and our Goddaughter) Shelby. The picture on the right is of all of us; my parents, grandparents, aunt, cousins, and my family of four.

Lauren's bonus card challenge at Scrapdragon

I am posting twice in one day, but this is for a challenge at Scrapdragon:http://thescrapdragons.blogspot.com/2007/09/bonus-card-challenge.html
Go check out Lauren's dragon card. It is wonderfully whimsical!

November 2004

My last post was of 2004...I just realized I said they were of 2005. Oh well. Here are the girls on Thanksgiving Day at my parents' house. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I LOVE the turkey, stuffing, sauerkraut, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes,...all YUMMY! And of course being with my grandparents :)

Done is better than perfect...

The girls started pre-school in September 2005 at 27 months old. They attended Augusta pre-school on Mondays and Wednesdays and Round Hill pre-school on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. The left page is their first day of school for Augusta School, and the right page is the next day (first day at Round Hill). I used a Sizzix font for the titles and a vellum quote about the first day of school I had in my stash:)

For the October 2005 layout I used these paper frames and dp also from my stash. I never thought I would use either of these (they were given to me for attending a crop) because I didn't particularly like either. I never thought I would put them together! It seemed to work okay with my pics and done is better than perfect.

Stick With It!

I scrapbooked September 2004 and I'm using more stickers! This was a class at the Memories store. I usually don't like cutesy stuff, but this cute I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! And in my totally unbiased and objective opinion, I don't mean just the bathing beauties in the pictures. I think these bugs are adorable. These pictures remind me of the girls ritualistically and methodically climbed from one part of the kiddie pool and into another section. Over and over and over. I know those of you with "auties" know what I mean :)

Sticker Shock!

I pulled out my "Autumn" folder and pulled out my fall papers, stickers, and other tidbits that have been unused for the past 4 years... here are my creations:

(Above) The halloween cards contain MM stckers, EK Success stickers, and Doodlebug stickers.

The third card tags, "hello friend", and flower are stickers. I used dimensionals under the flowerand the real button.

(Left card) I took two pumpkin stickers, stuck one slightly on top of the other, stuck the bird sticker (for Lauren!) on top, and put dimensionals underneath. The "buttons" are also 3 stickers high for added dimension! All of the tags in each picture are also stickers (Bo Bunny).

(Above card) I stamped and embossed in white the SU! Baroque Motif background stamp. It matches really well with two of those little squares on the sticker tag!

I am entering all of these in the current Caardvarks challenge. This was a blast!!! I can't wait to get back in my craft room and look for more stickers. Thanks, Caardvarks, for the motivation and helping my use my stash! The coffee shops are going to need me to re-stock soon, and these cards will certainly help in that effort :)

July 2003 & August 2004 Look how they've grown!

Here are Julia & Kathryn featured again with their friend Morgan (also in Feb 2004 layout). The left page is a day at our neighborhood pool taken the previous summer. I actually created this two page spread a year (or so) ago, and now that I finally scrapbooked previous months of 2004, I have "caught up" to it. You probably think I am a huge KI fan since I used this line of papers (different color schemes) in February 2004 layout and April 2004 layout. I do like KI, and when I saw these particular papers, especially the circles, they were screaming, "Pool pics!!!" I had to use them. For February & April, those were papers/kits in my stash that coordinated with the girls' outfits. Gotta use my stash...one day maybe, just maybe, the crate of kits will be empty...are you ROTFLOL?

Price tags

Remember when I was contacted by Kim, store owner of Madisonbelle (a boutique in historic Leesburg)? These are some of the tags she ordered from me. (She also ordered the "happy fall" tags from a previous post.) Between preparing these for Kim and school starting this week I have been absent from card making and my blog. I'll bet some of you had calls in to missing persons; I am alive and well and dying to make some cards. (Isn't that a funny sentence?) I hope I can enter the Caardvarks challenge "Sticker Shock." My favorites so far are the cards Lauren made (...all the GOOD blog names were taken...) http://llaurenb.blogspot.com/. I entered the Caardvarks Micro Bead challenge on Sunday. There were not very many entries compared to previous challenges, but there were some GREAT cards. Check out the gallery: http://s167.photobucket.com/albums/u142/caardvarks/Micro%206%20Beads/

Caardvarks MicroChallenge: Beads

I did not see this challenge until this afternoon, and I thought no way would I pull something together. But I managed this simply designed card. I stamped the daisy, painted it, and glued Microbeads to it (for a micro & bead challenge; get it? okay, it's late...bad humor allowed, right?) I pulled a scrap of green Bazzill, used my QK revolution tag die, cut a piece of DCWV yellow cs, and used a DCWV rub-on stack "friends". Ta-da! Unfortunately, this is the best picture I could manage inside at night. My card base and daisy color is washed out in my picture.