From one good thing to another.

I love having candies in my studio. Stuff like cinnamon hearts, skittles, jujubes and sour keys....you know, candies that are supposed to last a long time, but never really do? Yeah, them!

Well, recently, a tub of jujubes went empty on me and instead of bringing the tub down two flights of stairs to the garbage, I decided to make it useful again.

I've got a bunch of flowers that just sit around in their original packaging, meaning I've got to dump them out and stuff them back in each time I want to use any of them. Well, these bulk candy tubs are the perfect size to drop all my large flowers into and still be able to root around for what I want. Only problem....flowers this pretty deserve a pretty container too!

Ah, that's where getting involved in swaps comes in handy. I participated in a summer circle swap earlier this year, and these pretty, circular creations from my MMMB friends just happened to be the perfect dimension to attach to the lid of my candy bin!


It was really, really hard to decide on one circle for this project, but I went with Paula's pretty creation for a number of reasons....it's flowery, it's purple, it's got flourishes and butterflies and while it has a summery feel, it didn't say summer on it. After all.....flowers are for all seasons when you're a scrapbooker!
As a final touch, I added a fuzzy, self adhesive border ribbon cut into butterflies and flowers which helped spruce up the side of the container without obscuring the flowers inside.

And there you have it, a cute, cheap and useful container for my ever-growing flower collection.

Hope you like it!

because it was my birthday

Here's a "me" layout I did about my birthday. I just love the papers, they're all Dreamstreet that I picked up in a super yummy package at the Scrapping Turtle yard sale. That's also where I picked up the stamp set used in the title. "Because" was done on the Cricut with my Alphalicious cartridge. The flourish and point markers for the journaling are all stamped and embossed.

As happy as I am with the esthetics of this layout, the journaling is my favourite part. That's where the whole idea started; bits and pieces just came to me as the day of my birthday progressed. Here's a closeup:














Thanks for looking!

Fall Fun

It was a lovely October Sunday, and we made the best of it by heading out with friends to a local country market to pick up some pumpkins and let all of our kids play in the corn maze and on the haybales while us scrapbooking moms snapped off picture after picture.

As promised, I used just what I had on hand to make this page. I started by masking off a frame, then with a brayer rolled on a slightly darker yellow ink. Once that dried, I added on some punched leaves that I received in a punchie swap and sprayed a nice deep red Glimmer Mist angled from that corner up. I had a little uh-oh moment while peeling off the frame mask, as some of the edges were not coming up so cleanly. I probably could have cleaned them up a little more but quickly took a liking to the effect it gave as you can see in this second picture.

The leaves above the picture frame were stamped and embossed. The title tag was coloured with inks and brayer, the title stamped and the whole thing clear embossed. Similarily, the square between Kelsey and Cole's pictures was distress inked and then clear embossed for a tile effect.

Oh, and those leaf punchies I saved for another layout about this day. Here's a little peek at that.

This may be crazy.....

....but I'm just loving my new fridge and stove. In fact, my daughter caught me hugging the fridge this morning. It's larger than our old one, large enough that it looks like we need to do groceries again.
Kelsey wants to name them; she says dad named his coolers (Big Boy and Hugh....short for huge) so why not the fridge so I said, okay, the fridge is Ernie (first name I thought of after figuring it would be fitting to call it enormous). Then she asked about the stove and of course, being a Sesame Street junkie in my younger years, I said Bert. So little Miss Smartypants asked if that means the microwave is Elmo. Well that's just ridiculous....a microwave would obviously be called Reba.....after reheat. Hmmm....I hope that doesn't mean Bert is code for burnt. Never thought of that.

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! Here's our trio of Jack 'O Lanterns, designed by Cole, me and Kelsey (in that order). The kids had a wonderful time trick or treating and I had a blast handing out candy. Kelsey talked me into dressing up, so I sat perched on the porch, a regal medieval queen, with a blanket over my knees, a bowl of candies and a scrapbooking magazine for the slow moments. I stayed out most of the night....until my fingers went numb and all the little ones had retired to their beds.

There were some amazing costumes out this year. Amongst the usual pretty princesses, there were a few young girls dressed as superheroes, a boy in a homemade Lego costume, 3 teenaged boys dressed as 70's detectives playfully roughing up a 4th dressed as a robber (made me think of a Beastie Boys video!), an adorable little elephant, groovy hippies and gypsies and a throng of zombies, monsters and ghouls.

When I woke this morning, I already had some ideas for layouts. Instead of going out and buying Halloween themed papers and embellies, I'll be making my own with stamps, inks and some embossing. I'll post the pics once they're done....providing they turn out the way I want!

Finally, a new post!

Hello! It's been so long. I missed blogging so much, but have been so busy, with little time to spend in my studio.

But now kids are back to school and Scott's back to work and I've been busy working on some crash your stash challenges on the Scrapping Turtle forum. It's been a lot of fun and because we get bonus points for making cards from our scraps, I've been able to catch up with the card a month swap on the Memory Makers forum as well! Yay me!

So anyways, this is the last challenge I completed. We needed to use a sketch from the forum, Basic Grey pp, My Mind's Eye pp, bling, stamping and a chipboard shape.

My favourite parts of this layout are the stamped and embossed scalloped edge and the layered chipboard flower I made using my Cricut and Life is a Beach cart.

And here is the card I made using the scraps. I loved the embossed edging so much, I did it here as well. It's a late card going out to Belinda for the month of September.

So there it is....a little teaser of what I've been up to lately! More to come very soon; I promise!

Embellishment Swap Con't.

Here's the final embellishments I'm sending off to Carrie for her themed embellishment swap, my pet journaling tags. Once again, very simple, but I think they're cute!
Everything but the lined paper is from the DCWV Pet Stack which is such a fun paper pack.

I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with for this swap....and have new themed embellies to play with!

Mail Call!

Oh this is so exciting! Look what just came in the mail, my first ever Etsy purchase! I thought these were just so cute and versatile and, well, I've got a bit of a fascination with journaling tags/boxes/spots. So this first shot is of my purchase which is actually 4 separate packages.

This second shot is of the thank you note and goodies that came with my purchase which I thought was such a sweet jesture on Jennifer's part. She's the owner of Creative Chaos, where I got all this neat stuff. You can find her blog on my blog list to the right. I just can't wait to incorporate these into my layouts!

Embellishment Swap

I'm well known for being late getting my swaps out. Actually, I'm well known for being late for pretty much everything, but I'm talking about swaps right now. My friend Carrie is hosting a themed embellishment swap on the Memory Makers forum that was due sometime in May (I think) and I got some time today to finish up my love theme stamped embellies. Here they are:

You can't really tell from the picture, but the white paper is attached with foam adhesive to give it some dimension, along with a lot of inking.
I've had my school and Easter journal tags done for a while now.

Funny, but after I did these up, I saw diecut journaling tags just like them from a company whose name escapes me right now. Honest, I came up with this before I saw it elsewhere! Fellow Cricuteers may recognise the bus from the Doodlecharms cartridge.

The Easter journaling boxes are pretty simple, but I just loved the colourful chick ribbon and the purple patterned paper.

So that just leaves my pet journaling boxes which I'm playing around with right now. Hopefully, I'll be able to post them later this week and finally get this swap out to California!

Thanks for looking!

Fish Tales

Here's a layout I did recently with my Life's a Beach Cricut cartridge (the fish in the bowl). Can you tell I'm loving this cart? When I started using my Cricut, it was almost exclusively for fonts. Now, I'm really having some fun with the shape cartridges and making my own embellies too. And, thanks to Lisa's post about her card candy (think homemade Jolee embellies), I've been inspired to make even more of my own embellishments!

Thanks Lisa!

A New Challenge

I spent this morning in my studio and thought I'd share my work. It's a bookmark I made for a swap and my first creation using my brand new Life is a Beach Cricut cartridge. The photo might not do it much justice, but there's Stickle details on the leaves and the flower and I stamped the pattern on the word daydream with watermark ink.

This is my first attempt at a bookmark, and I'm quite happy with the results.....hope you like!

Perfect day to feel sick!

It's gloomy, rainy and cool outside...just the right kind of weather to be bogged down with a cold! Okay, so I'm still not happy about being sick (who is?) but like my son mentioned this morning, "How lucky you are Mom, you're going to be all by yourself soon and can do whatever you want!" At first I just smiled and thought, yeah right kid! But then it hit me, I'm in the perfect situation to take my time about things and do what I like; rest, scrap, read....just as long as my body is up for it!
It's just too bad I couldn't handle going for a visit at my mom's like I'd planned on......