Clever, clever Christian Book Distributers.....

A few weeks ago I wasn't feeling well and was up in the middle of the night, laying in our spare room so I wouldn't keep my hubby up, when I got an email from the cbd.com with a flyer for a massive sale. Well, I decided to click on over just to see what they had and when I did, I discovered that they had started selling ebooks.... and had several that were FREE! Well, I couldn't resist and downloaded like 10 free books... all book 1 in different series by various authors.

CBD, I don't know who thought up that strategy, but kudos to you. You officially got me hooked on like 4 of the series and I haven't even finished reading all of the ones I downloaded. Now I am going to have to go hunt up the rest of the books in the series to see what happens to them.

What do the Gators and my brother-in-law have in common?

Hah, you'll never guess, so I'll just tell you, my brother-in-law LOVES the color orange. As in would probably dress in orange from top to bottom each and every day if he thought he could get away with it. His love of orange is very great and so he really wanted it incorporated into his recent wedding with the blue and green colors that his bride wanted. They went very well together and the wedding was lovely, but let me tell you - it was NOT easy to find a patterned paper that incorporated all three of those colors for their wedding card. 

I could have gone the traditional route of white and black for the card, but I really wanted to make it personalized to their colors. I went through every paper pad I had and what do you know, I had a single sheet of 6x6 paper from an old Basic Gray PB&J paper pad given to me by my cousin that fit the bill. 

I also decided to use a cute stamp from an Inkadinkado valentines set, with two birdies kissing in a bird cage instead of using one of my more traditional wedding stamp sets. The sentiment was from a Hampton Arts clear stamp set I believe.  I used Bahama Breeze blue ink from Memento and used a paper trimmer and a rounded corner punch to cut out and layer the image and a small circle punch and scallop punch to cut out and layer the sentiment.

The plain card stock was just Michael's store brand, Recollections. The ribbon was from a variety pack from Hobby Lobby and the rhinestones were from a Studio G pack I got at Walmart (or possibly the dollar aisle at Michaels - they sell them in both places and I often purchase them from either place, depending on who has them in stock).

And I am Done!

If you happen to be a friend of mine on Facebook, you probably know that I finally finished the scrapbooking project for my mom and few weeks ago. I gave them to her earlier this month and am so happy to be done with the project, especially now that I will be starting a new job in a week. I still want to do a process post, sharing how I organized everything and how I decided to separate the layouts into albums, but for now I thought I'd share a few more photos with you. Most of these layouts are pictures of my church family growing up.

In Georgia

Good Morning All from the state of Georgia. I am here with my parents visiting my mom's life long best friend. She's known me my entire life and is like family. She is very, very sick and if you could hold her, her family and my parents up in prayers during this difficult time, I am sure that they would greatly appreciate it.

I'm sitting in the breakfast area of our hotel right now while my parents sleep and I thought I'd share some of the scrapbook pictures of the various weddings my family has been to over the years. For the most part, I used supplies that either matched or coordinated with the colors of each wedding. In the first set of wedding pictures, I was a miniature bride (my brother was the miniature groom).... Let me tell you, that barrette/ fake veil I was wearing was not cool. I almost got in trouble because I wouldn't stop tearing it out of my hair, lol. :)

Enjoy!

A Quick Card

Today, I thought that I would share a card that I made for a graduation last month.

I used a similar layout to graduation cars I have made in the past, but used some soft blue patterned papers from DCWV, as well as a paper doily, some aqua colored rhinestones and some card stock embossed butterflies. I used Bahama Breeze blue Memento dew drop ink for the sentiment and cut out the sentiment with the Label One Spellbinders die set with my Cuttlebug. 

I usually don't buy small packs of embellishments like butterflies, but Joann's was having a clearance sale and the package was only like 70 cents. I have already used up the package between the scrapbooking project I was working on for my mom and various cards that I needed last month! The paper I have had for a little over a year and I got the pad from my cousin. The doily is from a pack I got at a local dollar store about 3 years ago. I actually just used up my last doily on the scrapbooking project so I will have to stop at Dollar Tree and see if they have any in stock to re-supply my stash.

But back to the card. I really love how this card turned out. It is so soft and feminine, which I think matched the recipient perfectly. :)

My Sketchbook

Oh wow, I almost started typing "Happy Monday" when I realized that it was, in fact, Tuesday. This is probably because we got up at 4:30 yesterday morning to return home to VA after visiting MI for my  brother-in-law's wedding. I passed out on the plane and then again for about two hours when we finally got home, so all in all, yesterday was a bit of a blur!

Anyhow, I thought I would share with you how I capture ideas for all things creative, whether it be card layouts, scrapbook layouts, changes I want to make on the blog or things I want to do about the house. I bought a sketchbook from the Bargain aisle at Barnes & Noble and decorated it with some Dear Lizzy thickers and washi tape. In the sketchbook, I keep sketches ;) as well as printouts of scrapbook layouts that I printed out from the computer.

I don't really have any organization to the book; I kinda just doodle or tape ideas as they come or as I find them. (which is weird, as I am incredibly organized usually, but in this case, I found I could be more creative if I wasn't worried about making sure that I had everything sectioned out and organized in a system.) Now, an artist I am not, but I don't really worry about that. I just put the ideas down on paper, and even though the pictures are not perfect, I know what I meant when I drew it, so it works for me.

So, are there any ways that you keep your creative ideas? I'd love to hear about it!

More Layouts to Share

Hello All, I hope that you are all enjoying better weather than we have been having the last two days. Rain, rain, rain! Anyhoo, I just thought that I would post some more layouts for the scrapbook project I have been working on. I am finally seeing the end of the tunnel. Only one more vacation to scrapbook, pictures of our church family growing up, and a few miscellaneous pictures that slipped through the cracks when I originally organized all of the photos at the beginning of this project.