Jul 30, 2010

Beware... Loooooong blog post ahead :)

So, I have a ton of things to share and catch up on--bear with me :)

First up on the agenda....SRM Stickers is hosting a July challenge to create Clean and Simple cards with stickers. I gravitate towards the clean and simple style in my layouts, so I definitely wanted to give the clean and simple cards a go. Unfortunately, I don't currently have any SRM stickers in my stash (must change that ASAP ha ha!!), but I do have some American Crafts remarks stickers that work perfect for cards. The first two are New Baby cards.


And here I have a simple birthday card:
Isn't that Creative Charms little slice of cake the cutest?? The cool thing about using stickers to make clean and simple cards is that it is fast business and I was able to do all three of those in one evening. But I think my favorite was the simplest of all, this thank you:


Next up? Up the Street is hosting a challenge to scrap a 3 photo summer layout. I am loving using a few wallet sized photos with a larger photo these days. So here is my take on the challenge:

Next up is this week's ScrapTiffany challenge, which was a fun one--use Black and White photos. I love black and white photos, but the truth is I dont use them all that often. Why? Because my kids have THE most gorgeous blue eyes. Seriously everywhere we go people tell us how stunning they are. But I do like to use black and white for MY photos ;) So here is my take:

I used Bella Blvd papers, chipboard and stickers for this one. I love the muted colors on the Kraft cardstock.
Go on over to Scrap Tiffany to check out the other fabulous Black and White photo projects.

Did I already share that I won the Elle's Studio July challenge? Another summer layout using an Elle's Studio journaling card:


My layout was posted on Elle's blog HERE and I was randomly chosen to win more Elle's goodies!!

And, there was a challenge over on the My Little Bit Of Whimsy blog. It was a sketch challenge. You can see the sketch HERE and the participants take on the sketch HERE.  Here is mine:

Since there were 4 participants, Stephanie (owner of MLBOW) decided to make us all winners!! So keep an eye on the MLBOW blog because I think there will be a new challenge soon!

AND.....the latest Cards Blog Challenge was to use kites on a card. Here is mine:
Finally, some of my pages and cards were in Chicago for CHA!!! Moxxie had an ice cream social and decorated the tables with their designers projects. Check this out:

Do you see my Little Miss there? So exciting! Moxxie will be sharing more on their blog and next week I will share what I sent. And here's to hoping I can be there myself next time ;)

Thank you so much for making it all the way through this lengthy post. Have a great weekend!!

Jul 25, 2010

Bo Bunny, ScrapTiffany, Cards etc...

Bo Bunny has a fun card sketch on their blog this week. Here is the sketch:

I made two cards based on this sketch. For this one I used Bo Bunny Double Dot cardstock, ribbon and patterned papers (and some American Crafts Thickers for the greeting).
And this one has more Bo Bunny Double Dot cardstock and Ribbon (love the stuff), patterned paper and cute chipboard sticker (I love how it is already decorated with bling!) and some Making Memories mini alphas.
There are still a few days to post cards for this challenge if you love Bo Bunny and want to give it a whirl.


In other news, the second half of the Scrap Tiffany reveal was posted on Friday. This week's challenge was to use brads and eyelets. I don't know about you, but I have several containers of brads and eyelets that I can't bring myself to get rid of and yet I never seem to use. So, this was a good excuse to pull them out.
I went with a bubble layout and used the brads to mimic the bubbles and the dots in the American Crafts patterned paper.
Go on over to Scrap Tiffany to check out the other designers takes on this fun challenge.

And... I have this card on the Cards blog.
I love Echo Park's pinwheels. :) Speaking of Echo Park...I received my Life is Good collection prize in the mail and can't wait to play!!

Wow, there are more cards than layout in this post! I think that is a first for me :)

Well, I hope everyone is having a great weekend. We had a fun day with friends yesterday, so today is our mellow out at home day. Happy Sunday :)


Jul 17, 2010

Beating the Heat

It has been HOT. Really hot. It was up to 117 yesterday! And for those of you who like to say, "a dry heat isn't as bad", I say, you havent suffered through 117. Once you get over 110, hot is hot. To make matters worse, it really isn't a dry heat right now because we are in the middle of the "Monsoon" season. Lots of humidity. It hasn't rained yet, but even when it does, it doesn't really cool down. Basically we are sweaty and yucky and crabby. So we do what all the east coasters do during the worst of winter. We hunker down and stay inside. We watch movies, play games. And I scrapbook ;)

To begin with, the ScrapTiffany reveal (part II) for the monochromatic challenge was posted on Friday. For anyone not familiar with the term, monochromatic means using one color. Different shades of that color are fine. Here is my take on the challenge:

Lots of blue to go along with Little Miss's eyes and shirt.

For fun, I did this one:
Lots of Pebbles here, including that blue ribbon. I love these Pebbles spools of ribbon. The border was punched with one of my new Kreaxions punches.


I got some good news on Facebook yesterday too. I was one of the winners of the Echo Park Walk in the Park Challenge!! I think the prize is their new line! I am so excited to get my hands on it!! Here is one layout I made with Walk in the Park using a Stephanie Howell sketch:


And I told you I was behind on my thank yous, right? So here are a few more using A Walk in the Park:



I guess that is enough for now. We are watching Wall E and eating ice cream. The air conditioner is pumping, so all is right with the world :) Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Jul 13, 2010

A little bit of this and that

Hope you all had fabulous weekends. We had a three day one with the Mom and Me class on Friday. On Saturday I took Little Miss to her friend's birthday party at a local art studio (right up her alley!). Then dashed home to "pack" for a Late Nighter crop with my awesome scrappy buddy who gave me twelve, yes count them 12 cupcakes from Sprinkles for my birthday! If you have a Sprinkles near you, they are definitely worth checking out. I think my favorite flavor was the Black and White. Anyway, I say I "packed" for the crop because you can't really call shoving everything into bins and taking it all packing. But we got there and I even got a few things done.

I did this layout:

with My Little Shoebox's All a Flutter for last week's challenge and it can be seen on their blog HERE. Which means I get another entry into the $200 giveaway (keeping my fingers crossed for that one).  It has been a while since I made some rolled roses so...

I also had a layout show up on the Scrapbook Trends Blog HERE. It is one of the layouts I did with my 3 Scrappy Boys July Trio kit. For another layout I had cut a large 10" circle with my new Kreaxions circle cutter. So for this layout, I used the negative space from the cut out circle.
  

I am WAY behind in thank you notes, so I got a bit more of the Pebbles Treehouse line to make these cards:





Their chipboard, patterned paper and ribbon compliment each other so well and those little sentiment squares make the quickest and cutest cards!

Finally, I have a sneak peek of the layout for this week's ScrapTiffany challenge (which is a monochromatic project).

Half of the designers projects are already posted HERE. Mine will be up on Friday. Have a great week!

Jul 9, 2010

Friday Frenzy

This week has gone by in a blur, mainly because Little Miss has not slept well and came down with some icky stomach bug. So of course none of us slept well. She was better today so we were off to our Mom and Me Scrapbook class. Our last hurrah since the next one is scheduled after she starts kindergarten.

Today was part two of the ScrapTiffany reveal. This week's challenge was self portrait. Here is my layout using bits and pieces of Echo Park's A Walk in the Park.
I love this new line and can't wait to see everything Echo Park has coming out in July. Go on over to ScrapTiffany to check out the other self portrait projects.

I've been crazy busy working on some things that I won't be able to share for a while, but I'll be back soon. Until then...have a great weekend! 

Jul 5, 2010

My oh My Monday

So glad it is a three day weekend because this one flew by so fast! We were super busy. Saturday I went to the gym for step and a lift class. Grocery shopping for lots of fruits and veggies. Home for lunch. After naptime we went over to the zero depth pool. Home for dinner. Baked patriotic cookies.

Watched a movie. Got up early on Sunday and saw a 8:50am showing of Toys Story 3. (Loved it). Had lunch, nap, then dinner. Drove to see fireworks. We parked and sat in the back of the minivan rather than brave the crowds.

This is the only shot I got. I had brought my tripod and camera, but unfortunately the place we parked near cancelled their show! So we had to tear across town to another display. We parked on the side of the road, got kicked out by a police officer and ended up in a parking lot....exactly where we did NOT want to be. And I did not get to use the tripod.  It took us about 1/2 hour just to get out of there. We got home late and everyone is a bit tired and crabby today. Fortunately it will be an extra short week since Scott took Friday off so Little Miss and I could have one more Mom and Me Scrapbook class before she starts kindergarten. Hope you all had a fabulous Fourth of July Weekend.

I do have some more 3 Scrappy Boys projects to share from designing with the July Trio kit.






There are several design team kit challenges in the forum HERE. The more challenges you participate in, the more chances you have to win a random drawing for a monthly RAK. I will be blogging over there too. Stop by the 3SB blog this week and say hi.

I'll be back on Friday with my ScrapTiffany challenge. The team is so large now that the reveal will be done 1/2 on Monday and 1/2 on Friday. The challenge is Self Portraits this week. I used the new Echo Park Walk in the Park line for mine and I can't wait to share! Have a great week!