Caring Hearts Card Drive

Click here to get the details for my Giveaway that ends Friday, October 25th!

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Happy Thursday All! Every year I try to participate in a card drive that a few different kind hearted card makers host each year. It's called the Caring Hearts Card Drive and you can find details at Ling's Design Studio. It's a great cause, sending holiday cheer to the elderly in nursing homes.

This Post Needed a Title.... and a Giveaway!

*** I forgot to add a title to this post, sorry if anyone had any trouble linking to this post!

Hello All, can you believe it's Thursday already??? (For that matter, can you believe its almost the middle of October?!?!?!!?!) Where does the time go?!? I just thought I would pop in and share a project that I whipped up a few weeks ago for my new sister-in-law (my brother's wife). She is in the midst of student teaching, so I thought that she might enjoy some office cute office supplies to stay organized. She really loves canning, so I thought I would use a Dear Lizzy paper from a 6x6 pad I picked up a couple of weeks ago. I also used some old Amy Tangerine papers  from a 6x6 pad a dear friend sent me a year or so ago and Dear Lizzy Fifth and Frolic paper pad, as well as some labels from Heidi Swapp and some October Afternoon Butterfly and small doily stickers. I finished off the projects with some white Basic Grey mini alphas, Q&Co rhinestones and pearls and My Mind's Eye Cut and Paste enamel dots. I used some small flowers that my cousin sent me to finish off the clothespin magnets I made. So that the paper would not peel off the magnets, I used some Modge Podge Acrylic spray to finish them off.

(If you stick with the pics to the bottom, I'm sharing a small giveaway!)

I also wanted to do a small giveaway. I put together a small kit for making Christmas tags and a small card making kit. For a chance to win, become a follower and let me know in the comments and for a second chance blog about the giveaway and put a comment with a link to the post. The giveaway will be open until October 25th and I will post a winner on the following Monday, October 28! I will be picking two winners, one for the Christmas tag set and one for the card kit!

Clothespin Magnets

Happy Monday All. Hope everyone is having a great start to the week. It is rather chilly and dreary here, but its actually a nice break from the heat wave we had for the last few weeks.

Today, I thought I'd share a quick project that I whipped up several weeks ago. I intended to put them up in my etsy shop, but I just haven't had the chance to do it yet. A few months ago, I picked up some really cheap embellishments on clearance at Michaels. Since I had a bunch of the same or very similar little fabric brads, I thought I would whip up a couple sets of clothespin magnets. 

For this project, I just used some clothespins from a 100 pack that I got at Walmart, some embellies from Michaels, a hot glue gun, some homemade modge podge, patterned paper, and a heavy duty magnet roll that I got a couple years ago at Ace Hardware (These rolls have lasted me quite a while. I'm  still on my first roll I think.).

Since I will be putting these up in my shop, I wanted to create a cute chipboard shape to package them with, so I ran a very thin sheet of chipboard through my Cuttlebug machine with a Spellbinders die and then cut it in half with my paper trimmer.

Photoless Scrapbooking

Today I thought I would share some layouts I made using only memorabilia I saved from different events. While I love scrapbooking pictures, sometimes I don't always remember to take pictures, and sometimes I like to let the memorabilia be the focus of a layout.  The layouts I am sharing today were created using Allison Kreft's "Everyday Eclectic" collection from Echo Park and Crate Paper's "The Pier" collection. I also used Thickers, letter stickers from the dollar aisle at Target, enamel dots from My Mind's Eye "Cute & Paste" collection, rhinestones from Hobby Lobby, Jillibean ephemera and Studio Calico camera wood venires. Enjoy! 

Bad, Bad Blogger....

I have just been the worst blogger ever this summer!  But, fear not, I shall be sharing some pictures today of some scrapping I've been working on for my own albums. I am a little weird in my scrapping routine. Every 4 years or so, I get the bug and then scrap through ever piece of memorabilia I'd saved in that 4 year period of time. Well, this year I think it was working on my mom's enormous scrapping effort that had me kicked in to scrapping mode for so many months that I just couldn't kick out of it, so I started delving in to my own photos and memorabilia.

Unlike my mother's albums, which I did in 12 x 12, I did these in 8 1/2 x 11. It's just easier for me to store, and it is so much cheaper than the 12x12s. I simply get fashion binders from places like walmart and a 50 pack of page protectors. I actually get quite a bit of life out of my papers this way as well, since I end up with such large scraps that I can often get multiple layouts out of a couple of 12x12 pieces of patterned paper.

Anyhoo, I have been sharing these pictures on Facebook and I've had some interest in seeing the pictures on the blog, so I thought I would start sharing. I will only be sharing my own photos though, not those of my friends and their kiddos as I don't have their permission to share those with the whole world. :)

I will not post ALL of them today, but for the next couple of weeks I will try to share my very favorites. While some of my pictures are scrapped with all papers and embellies from a single line, most of them are a combination of all kinds of supplies, both old and new. I don't really store anything by collection, just simply go through my supplies and pull out what coordinates. I have been really using my stash up this year. I had 270 12x12 layouts from my mom's albums and I have filled up 2 entire 1 1/2 inch binders full of 8 1/2 x 11 layouts of my own!

This first picture is one of my sister and I, using recollections card stock, echo park 3x4 journaling card, thickets, letter stickers from the dollar aisle, and papers from a 2012 Echo Park collection by Allison Kreft called "Everyday Eclectic." I absolutely love this line and may have to pick up another collection pack the next time I go out of town to a place that has a Hobby Lobby!

The rest of the layouts are from Hubby and my honeymoon 5 years ago! These layouts use a combination of collections and embellishments. I really love trying to coordinate as much as I can between different lines and designers.

Hope that you are all staying cool in this crazy heat wave!

Coloring with Alcohol Ink Markers

Hello friends. This has been a year that has been completely unplanned in every way. While did not have a job until this summer, somehow the year still filled with craziness, some wonderful times of fellowship with friends and some sad and trying times as well.... That isn't what this post is about, but I thought I'd share why I've been a little more quiet on the blog front this year. What times I have taken to craft, I've tried to just focus on the crafting and the art of it all rather than worry about having blog posts to share. I have shared some photos on Facebook and eventually I'll get through all of my pictures and post some favorites of what I've been working on.

Tonight, I thought I would share a birthday card that I made for my mother-in-law. My dear cousin, Christy (from Christy Gets Crafty blog) has passed on many beautiful stamps over the years, and lately, as I have been slowly building up my supply of Spectrum Noir alcohol ink markers, I've tried to make more of an effort to practice coloring. Alcohol inks are great for getting detailed, more professional looking images colored. Unlike a lot of other types of ink markers its hard to get fine details, like shading to come through, but with alcohol inks, you can blend varying levels of color with one another to really enhance the details of the image.

On this card, I used shades of Golden Brown, Gray Blue, Turquoise Blue, and the Three lightest flesh tones. I'm still learning how to find the right angles to shade images, but I was quite happy with how this card turned out. I kept it pretty simple with other embellishments on the card, choosing to let the image shine. 

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend. Hubby and I will be getting away for a couple days for some rest and I will not be taking my laptop with me. We are going to take some time to re-charge as we head in to a busy fall and winter season!

Hello Friends!

Wow, well it's been a few weeks. I've been a very bad blogger this year and especially this summer. There has been quite a bit going on. In June we went to Florida (Hubby had a business trip that I tagged along for) and then Michigan for my brother-in-law's wedding, then Georgia in July to say goodbye to my mom's best friend who died suddenly from cancer and who was like an Aunt to me and then to Erie last weekend for my brother's wedding. Oh, and I got a job that I started two weeks ago!It's been rough getting used to working on reduced medications, I've had some really bad days this summer with all of the things going on and I would greatly appreciate prayers. 

I haven't been doing much crafting, but I have done a little. I did several scrapbook layouts for our own albums. I shared several pictures of these on Facebook, but, since the layouts have pictures of friends and their children, I really don't want to share them in an open forum. I did however create a few notepad holders with a place for a pen/pencil.

I am really pleased with how much of my stash I have been able to use this year, between my mom's scrapbooks, my scrapbooks, and the various other projects I've done. I've used over 1/2 (probably closer to 2/3) of my stash of patterned papers. I found a couple of ladies on youtube who were always talking about how they just made themselves cut in to their papers and play with layouts and projects to combat their desire to just hold on to all the pretty paper and not do anything with it. Their videos gave me quite a bit encouragement to take that approach. Now, I just grab some coordinating papers and start cutting things down to size and layering until I find a design that works and it's really been working for me. Now I can look at the pretty papers in albums with memorabilia and pictures that are dear to me. :)

To make these holders, I simply measured the size of the the notepad and then marked off the paper where I wanted to score lines to be able to fold up the papers properly. I used my Martha Stewart score board to score the edges. I used an 8 1/2 x 11 paper for the base, and so I placed the paper on the score board so that the long edge was up against the top of the board. I then scored the paper at 3 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 4 1/2 inches, and then 8 inches. I then got out my paper trimmer and cut off the excess 3 inches of paper that I would not need. I then flipped the paper and measured the length of the paper pad and then cut off the excess width of the paper at 6 inches I believe (The measuresments will be different, depending on what size the notepads are. I always just get out my ruler and take the measurements of the notepads I am using and then add about 1/4 of an inch to each measurement because I've found that it looks nicer.) I then cut lines across the center between the 4 and 4 1/2 inch score lines and then after folding up the other score lines and adhering the card stock base together, popped out the two sections where I cut the lines to have something to slide a pen in with the notepad. 

(Those are really horrid directions, if anyone is interested, I could do a step-by-step with pictures of each step. You don't actually need a score board for this. It could be done by marking off with a ruler and then simply folding the paper at the lines and then use scissors to cut off the excess paper.)

For the first notepad holder, I used basic blue cardstock from Michaels, and layered it with a My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad. I believe that the flowers are old ones from Prima, and the gold pearl is from Queen & Co. The sentiment is made of Thickers and the pen is from a giant pack of Fiskars gel pens that my MIL bought me a couple of Christmases ago. The punched designs are from a EKSuccess border punch that I got at TJMaxx for like 4 dollars last summer. I really like how EKSuccess makes their punches. They are very durable, and the flatten out so that you can store multiple punches on top of one another.

For the second paper pad, I used primarily things from my stash. The pink woodgrain washi tape is from Darice and I also used thickets, as well as some old ribbon and patterned paper. The card stock is from a basic color card stock pack from Michaels. I used the same process to create all of these notepad holders. The washi tape is actually to make a mistake I made in cutting out the section to hold the pen. It doesn't look exactly what I intended, but I think that it still looks nice.

The last one is my very favorite. I absolutely love the stamp set (Studio G stamp set that was only $.75 at Michaels, score!). I stamped out the images and sentiment on basic card stock from Michaels with Bahama Breeze blue memento ink and some Studio G blue rhinestones and fussy cut the images. I used a 1 1/2 inch circle punch from Fiskars to punch out the sentiment. The patterned paper is from Crate Paper's "The Pier" 6x6 paper pad. I absolutely love that paper and can't wait to create something else with it. Right now though I like some of the papers so much that I don't actually want to cut in to it! :) In my experimenting with different ways to make these holders, I discovered that two cut outs on the side works much better than just the one, but I got the pen to stay with a little velcro. From now on though, I will be using the method I used from the above holders.

 

PS - Sorry for the novel. LOL. I need to get back into a schedule of posting instead of one ginormous post every few weeks!