... like a snowball rolling down a hill

The momentum is building like a snowball rolling down a hill so I got a few things done within the past week or so.  Several more are a work in progress but not done just yet.

Here are the latest creations.

Sister Card # 2 - The scan is really bad; the colors are much softer IRL and are closer to a soft blue/tealish color.  The snowflakes are glisteny (yea... that's not in Merriam-Webster, I know) and the edge of the word block is all shiny.  The outside reads "Winters must be cold for those with no warm memories."  On the inside, I wrote "Thanks for the warmth."

 Products used:  all PP:  Heidi Grace; cardstock:  Recollections; 

punches:  Martha Stewart (snowflake) & EK Success (label);  

fonts:  deadly english & calibri; pen: Sakura Gelly Roll.

ink:  ColorBox robin's egg & Maya mist Iridescent Pearl.

Next up are a few pages I did for page kits for the LSS.

A Day With The Girls...  I'm actually anxious to get this one back after it's done being needed at the store.  I have several more embellishments, a subtitle and (dare I say it!?) journaling to add.  The scan is awful because I was in a hurry and hadn't loaded the good scanning software I have on my new computer (which I've had for nearly a year; goes to show how much I've been scanning in the past year.  oy.) These pictures were taken celebrating our friend, Beth.  Bittersweet day for all of us she left behind in PA.  Sniff.  (Sorry for the tiny photo... these 2-pagers are hard to fit on here.)  I was glad to hear that the kits sold out in 2 days.  Whew... no need for the panic attack. 

Products used:  All PP & diecut:  My Mind's Eye; 

punches:  Martha Stewart & EK Success; 

alphabet:  American Crafts; ink: ColorBox creamy brown

True Love... I actually made this one up last year for a page kit but for stupid procrastinating reasons (who ME?!), I never got the photo printed & the kits up to the store.  And since it's all Valentinesy (Merriam-Webster is going to shut me down), I just held onto it til now.  I plan to frame this one and give it to my sister, Terry.   

Products used:  no clue since I did this a year ago.  

I'm pretty sure the PP is from several different manufacturers and 

I know I used the AccuCut machine for the scallop border, 

artisan shape and scallop square.  I'm pretty sure I used the Slice for the tag.  

I know the brown cardstock is Bo Bunny & the alphabet is American Crafts.  

And I know that's my awesome sister & brother-in-law.    :0)

Big weekend of crafting ahead of me and lots to prepare for so I'll be posting more over the weekend.  Thanks for stopping by... 

And thanks for all the support & encouragement after being blogless for so long.  It gave me a lot of extra bounce in my step last week!

A New Year, A New Self-Challenge

Two Year Anniversary!!  Sadly... two years since I last posted here.  Ack!

But I'm back and have challenged myself to something new this year in order to get back into the swing of things, stay motivated and spread the love.  Just as for all of you, family is everything.  I would do anything I could for my brothers & sisters and they've gone way beyond for me in more ways than you could imagine.  My sisters are always doing little things for me and it's never ending.  So, this year, I decided to make a commitment to put my crafty talents to work and mail each of them a card every week for the entire year.  That's it, no requirements, no boundaries, nothing.  I think they'll like seeing something in the mail that isn't a bill or catalog (well, okay, we're catalog lovers), a sales ad (okay, we like those, too) or something sent to their alter ego "Resident".  I call them "Sister Cards". I'm looking forward to when they realize that one will be arriving every week.  :0)

To help me keep track of things, I'm scanning all of them so that hopefully I won't repeat a quote or sentiment (I can't begin to guarantee they all won't start looking alike, though!).  I'll share here each week.  As luck would have it, I've been slapped with a nasty flu/cold/virus/whatever that nearly everyone else has.  I got it on December 29th and I'm still not feeling great.  So, I started out the year a bit behind.  So, even though this is week 2, I'm just posting week 1 now...

The outside.  I used Scenic Route papers on Kraft cardstock, some jute a flower and a custom brad I made from pages torn from an old book.  Since I was using a Winnie-the-Pooh quote on the inside, I found appropriate text for the flower center.  :0)

The inside... My sisters are always people I can "be sure of" and that's why I chose this quote.

I thought this would be a good way to start the year!

The Little Things

This is a mini book that I've been working on for several months. It was made with the intention of teaching it at the various conventions this year (CKC, GASC, Scrapbook Expo). I knew it had to 1) be relatively simple, 2) easy enough to be mostly completed within an hour and 3) thrifty because of the pricing structure at CKCs. So, I chose the Kaiser multi-dimensional book & bling and the Making Memories green Paperie papers & embellishments. The toughest part was coming up with a theme; it has to be generic enough that it can be made into a lot of different things & appeal to a lot of people. So, I settled on "The Little Things"... which really does have a wide span of opportunity. For the sample, I chose to focus mine on the little things around my kitchen that I love. So... here it is...

Since it has a lot of journaling (gasp! I know... what got into me!?!?), I'm showing what the outside looks like when it's all closed and then the subsequent images are the scans of each page. The journaling was sloppy (& crooked) because I was a bit behind schedule and had to get it done.

I had suggested to Sarah that she contact MM & Kaiser to see if they be able to get us a better deal on the supplies. I just had to get the thing done in order for her to send them pictures of it. So, last weekend, I asked her if she wanted to take it to CHA so she could show them in person and she definitely wanted to do that. So, she took it with her and last night she presented it to the girl (don't remember her name) at MM who runs their VIP program and apparently she loved it. She even mentioned the possibility of supplying the paper & embellishments at cost. YAY! Sarah still has to work out more details and of course, find out if Kaiser can provide the books (and hopefully at a discount) and then we'll be good to go! YAY. That was a bright spot in the day yesterday.

Catching Up

Oops! I've not been very good at keeping up postings of the one-a-day January challenge. I knew going into this that I'd not be able to scrap every day but my goal is/was 31 pages. I doubt I'll make that but we'll see if maybe I can get at least 20. Here are some I've completed since my last post...



This is my friend Carrie & me at an LSS in Michigan in 2005. A group of 12 of us who had known each other for years on-line finally decided it was time to meet in person! So, we decided on a trip to Michigan (since 5 of the girls lived there and they have a ridiculous amount of LSSs). Carrie & I agreed we were each other's safety nets (neither of us had ever traveled alone somewhere let alone to spend the weekend with people we had never met). But having known these women for so many years on-line, I felt very safe. (And quite frankly, they know me better than some local friends I've known for 20 or 30 years.) But there were still those funny looks you get when you tell your co-workers & family "yea, I'm travelling to a city I've never been to to spend the weekend with 12 women I've never met in person". They just didn't understand. But, nonetheless, Carrie & I had each other as a safety net. :) And I know she would always be that for me. As would the others I spent the weekend with.


What do a group of 12 scrapbookers do on a weekend together? We run around shopping at scrapbook stores. Duh! And it was a blast. This photo was taken by Shannon and it's one of my very, very favorites of the weekend. We were all giddy & snappy with our cameras in the first store and I was totally enamored by these adorable little shopping carts. If I could have bought one and convinced the airline to let me check it onto the plane, I would have. I was so loving the little thing that Shannon was taking a picture of Carrie & me with it in the photo. At the last second, Carrie jumped in the cart and voila! a perfect photo! (and hense the title.) I've had this photo sitting in a project sleeve for THREE YEARS with some papers (purple & green because Carrie & I both love those colors) and it just never came together. I finally separated the photo from the papers and it definitely helped make things happen. I'm glad I waited because I'm much happier with this page than had I used what I originally intended. And I'm 99% sure I used a Page Map for the launching point. But for the heck of me I can't find which one (And I just wasted 45 minutes trying to find it.) Okay.... I think that story took longer for you to read than my flight to Michigan.

Ironically, this next page is about yet another trip (two years later) to meet the very same group (with some additions and a few people who couldn't make it) of women. There were 16 of us who met up in Chicago in November '07. When I saw this American Crafts paper, I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for. We all traveled (wanna guess?) by..... plane, train or automobile to get there. I matted each photo in the corresponding title word based on how each person traveled. I had taken individual head-shots of everyone (I have a tendency to do that on trips like this) so I could be sure to have a single shot of everyone on the trip and flexibility to scrap each one however I wanted (and not worry about who else was in the photo). I did this in Michigan in '05 as well but I still haven't scrapped those (but the idea of how I want to do it is still in my head!). :) Anyway... I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Oh, I was bummed that AC didn't include a train in their thickers package (because there was a plane & a car) so I crafted my own using a bus and some other random shapes to create the track. Shh... my secret's safe with you all, right? Anyway... it's a very "busy" layout for me but I like it. A fun trip deserved a bright, fun page. I've posted the pages individually as well to get a closer peek.

I started this two-pager back in October when these papers first came out. I'm not even sure why I didn't finish it because pretty much all I had to do was print the photos and adhere everything down. But yay it's done now!  I *heart* Halloween!! :)

And this one is a back-to-school page I started at the Reading Crop last weekend. I absolutely LOVE this Fancy Pants line. I chose it for the 2nd Grade back-to-school photos because that was the year Matthew was taught cursive. And I really liked the words of advice for a b-t-s page (Be curious, strong, loving, etc). These companies sure make it easy sometimes to use their products! The colors are actually a bit more bold IRL.

More to come. My goal is 20 for January. I have only one week left. Miles to go before I sleep. (But I do have about 5 or 6 in progress already; that helps!)

One-A-Day Challenge

So the girls at MLPA set a challenge to try to do one page a day for the month of January. I started out strong... kept it going. Then the 6th arrived. I knew once I had to return back to work, I'd fizzle out! But so far, I've gotten 5 more pages done and that's a good thing. Here's a re-cap of those 5...

January 1st... Expedition Everest

This was from our trip to Disney World in '06 and highlights their newest ride "Expedition Everest". Woohoo... a 2-pager! Since it had just opened up a few months before we were there, I put together a hidden journaling block with interesting facts about the ride. I swear it's straight in person... the left page doesn't really slope off like this. I'm just not in the mood to re-scan it.

January 2nd... Flowers of Support

This one was emotional and I cried the majority of the time scrapping it. Friends sent me these flowers in August while I was going through a very emotional week. The journaling is hidden behind the large photo. I still cry when I think of their kindness.

January 3rd... Crazy Hair

This one makes me laugh. Matthew snapped this picture while we were headed to Baltimore in July. I love driving with the windows open and this is what it does. This page was fun, fun, fun to make but took a lot of planning. It was based on one of the January '09 Page Maps sketches.

January 4th... Just Us

I really like how this one turned out. It's a lift from a page posted on Crate Paper's site. Loved it so much, I had to do one of my own. It's a picture of Matthew & me on Thanksgiving night. It's a circular page... ignore that stark white square behind it!

January 5th... Little Surprises

Another one from our Baltimore Trip. It uses the BYOM November Kit and is all about the unexpected changes from Matthew moving from the back seat of the car to the front seat.

And that's where I lost my oomph. I've still got mojo, but I'm oomph-deficient. It'll come back... right after I'm feeling a little better. In the meantime, more & more pages are being flagged in my scrap magazines for inspiration.

What I did on my Christmas Vacation

I was somehow able to sneak in some scrapping time over the Christmas break. Deadlines definitely help (thanks, BYOM!). And then I just kept at it and did more things in January. Shocking, I know. But I'll save those for another post. These are the ones I did during that time between Christmas and New Years Day...

This is a favorite... I just liked how it all came together. These are pictures from Amanda & Greg's engagement party last Summer. I used Shannon's sketch and it definitely made this one a breeze!



This is from the Margie Romney-Aslett visit to MLPA in October. She's one heck of a great person and I really enjoyed the time sitting and talking with her... about her family and about her career. The journaling spot on here is actually a note she signed when she was here. I wanted to add it to a layout so I had her write it on some MM paper (how apropos, eh?). The journaling is hidden behind this note (which pivots on the brad you see). All of the flowers were x-acto cut out. It took about an hour, resulted in a very cramped hand but I like it a lot.





This one is a simple one from Thanksgiving. Matthew & Kathy duking it out over the wishbone:




And lastly, I altered a clock. I found this clock last Spring and was waiting for one of the BYOM kits to blend well with it. Voila! I wonder how long before I actually put a battery in it and making it a functioning clock. Speaking of which... do you know why analog clocks are always photographed with a time of "10:10" on it? Well... I'll tell you.... it's because visually appealing and resembles a smile. I'm just a wealth of useless knowledge.


Hopefully, I can keep this momentum going throughout January. Not likely but I never give up hope!

Let's start at the very beginning....

.... a very good place to start! (sing it with me all you Sound of Music fans).

For several years now (procrastinate much?) I've wanted a place to post the pages & projects I make but never got around to committing to this blog thing. So, this is just a place to keep my "things", not my "thoughts" (because those are very uninteresting). I'm hoping that it will eventually be a place for those who normally wouldn't see these things to get a glimpse into what I document & create. (I'm pretending people are interested in my life.) I'll start with recent creations and try to tag them well enough so they're easily searchable. I will leave my self-proclaimed bad stuff off of here. Or re-do them. Or never admit to having done them. I'm sneaky that way.

Okay... away we go!