Visit my NEW BLOG!

I have a new blog set up at http://iscrapmemories.wordpress.com/. All of my Blogger posts have been transferred over. I am still learning my way around wordpress but I am looking forward to the new adventure. Please tell me what you think!

MOVING SOON!

I have had a good run with Blogger. Sadly they have made the decision to implement changes that have made Blogger a frustrating place. Pictures do not upload properly, sometimes they take hours to load, and last night after spending way too much time trying to upload pictures my entire post just disappeared. So beyond frustrating!!! I tried to contact Blogger only to discover they do not offer customer service. Ummmm really? So I would like to say the decision was a tough one but it really wasn't. Blogging is supposed to be FUN not so frustrating that I dread adding a new post! I have heard good things about Word Press and am in the process of setting up over there. I will let you know when I have officially moved over!

Key West Layouts

I wanted all of our Key West pictures to fit in one album. My goal was to finish the album during my LMNOP scrapbook retreat. Alot of the pages had a ton of pics on them so I didn't embellish much. I was able to get it done most of Saturday by staying up past 1am and then I finished off the last 5 pages Sunday morning before heading home. This trip included New Orleans, Daytona Beach, Key West, Orlando, and a final stop in Mobile.

 Yea....I know the O moved. LOL. I fixed it but didn't feel like rescanning.

 

This page is supposed to be way up top with the other dogs at the beach page. I swear this new blogger design is killin me. It is a PAIN to load pics and its not so easy to arrange them either. :-(

Card Swap

In 8 days I am going on the LMNOP retreat! I am so super excited! I am participating in an "artists choice" card swap at the retreat with 8 other swappers. I chose a Christmas theme because once the temperatures drop Christmas is all I think about! Many thanks to my dear friend Leslie who helped me thru my creative block and suggested I add the pop up snowflakes to the card.

Vintage Card Class

I took a vintage card class at Archivers with my friend Leslie. It was fun! She was a great classroom partner!
I learned a new technique so I am glad I took the class. I walked away with 4 cards and a tag.

This one was not my favorite. I altered it from the original design but I still don't really like it.

I altered this one slightly. I like it. We used petal soft on the trees. In my opinion its not much differant than flock and not something I would purchase....but the effect on this card is pretty.

This is a gift tag and I LOVE it!

This is my FAVORITE! I love vintage santas!

Grandparents Day

Sunday is Grandparents Day!!! I found an adorable gift bag at Hobby Lobby and decided to make a matching card.

 I was going to make this interesting spinner card that had 2 folds and when you opened it there was something in the middle that spun around.....well.....no matter what cardstock I used the card just felt too flimsy for me. So I turned an oooops card into a cute card by matting the "flimsy" card onto heavy cardstock. I embossed the card and cut the center out with my Sizzix Top Note. I cut the owl with my Cricut Destinations Cartridge.

Scrappy Saturday

I spent the last 11 hours with friends having a great time and scrappin my heart out. I finished up the cards for the LMNOP card swap, finished up the puppy book with my Treasure Box puppy kit, and I did 2 layouts.

This cards only requirement was we had to use scraps to complete it. Man did I have a TON of those! I used my new embossing folder from Stampin Up with those beautiful roses on it and inked them to make them pop.

The next card I made was an interactive card. My friend Cat told me about a neat idea of using pennies for a spinner card. A quick google search on the computer gave me the directions and voila.....I LOVE this card.

The butterfly spins around in circles from left to right.

After I finished the cards I did a few projects that just needed finishing touches. The last hour or so I worked on these two layouts.

This one is a picture of my Grandma and my Great Aunt Sharon- my Grandma requested this one so I will get it framed and give it to her.

I already have this one in a small frame at the house so I am taking this one to work in a frame. The stamp (in case it's too small to read in the picture) says

Once in a Lifetime You Meet Someone that Changes Everything.

ATG- Love it or Hate it???

I finally broke down and ordered an ATG for my craft projects.

The adhesive is SO much cheaper. I calculated I was spending about $100 on adhesive runners when I could get the same amount of ATG adhesive for about $20. Eeeek.

So I ordered a cute pink one from Custom Crops and it took Danny about 10 minutes to load it for me. LOL. I figure I must have him or another "wise loader" in my presence if I ever run out of adhesive....no way am I patient enough to try and figure that out!

So here is my issue- this gun is NOT for left handed people!!! I can NOT see where the adhesive strip is- and I swear this afternoon more adhesive went on my desk than on my projects! I am fairly versatile with my right hand but I think this gun requires too much coordination for me to be able to use it right handed. I could crank my neck around and possibly see where the adhesive strip is.....but what a pain (literally!)

Any other lefties out there with my problem? Not sure what to do besides maybe just practice with it. The cost savings are so great...I hate to give it up... but goo gone is kinda expensive and its looking like I need a whole jug of it for my desk so in the long run it might not be that much cheaper!

Cards

Today was the LMNOP monthly crop. I stayed the entire 13 hours!!!! It is sooooo time for me to go to bed but I wanted to post this before it slipped my mind. I had a great day of socializing and finished a small amount of scrapbooking. I had a goal to complete 4 sets of cards, an 8x8 album and 2 recipe boxes. Normally I am super speedy and that is not unrealistic.....today I finished 2 sets of cards and that is it. LOL! Oh well....it was a great day.

This card is for the theme Red, Black, and White. My Aunt Cheryl recently had to put her dog down so I wanted to make her a card and just decided to incorporate it into this theme.

The next card was based on a sketch and inspired by my Aunt Sharon. On my 21st birthday she made me this sun.

On the back there is a message that says May the Sun Always Shine on You. I always loved that she wrote that and since we lost her to cancer in May she has been on my mind alot and I have been missing her. So I used the sketch challenge to make a card with the same greeting on it.

Here is the sketch

and here is my card

So it took me 13 hours to get those two cards done....HA-HA. Not really. I did make 9 of each card but still....that wasn't much production for the day. I still have 2 sets of cards I need to finish for the swap before next month.

New Desk

Thanks to Danny's Dad I now have a new desk! I removed one of the craft tables to add the desk. I love it because I can hide some of my goodies in the desk drawers! LOL. I still have one craft table against the other wall and of course my small desk against the wall you can't see in the picture that just holds my computer. I have a little more room now to use the creativity room as the occasional real estate office. :-)

A family layout

This is a picture of my Grandma, me, and my Aunt Sharon. I miss my Aunt Sharon so much. We lost her to cancer in May. She was such an amazing women and so talented with all of her arts and crafts. I always asked her to paint me roses- which she hated painted- but did such a great job at. When I saw this paper I knew it could be our little inside joke with all the roses on it. LOL.

Recipe Box

Last weekend I went to the MMM crop in The Woodlands. I made this Recipe box out of Close to My Heart paper and embellishments. The word RECIPES was cut with my kitchen cricut cartridge. Of course I added stickles to the words and a few of the cherries.

I plan on making several of these for Christmas gifts this year.

Now to just get the recipes put inside!

4 day retreat

I am home from a relaxing 4 day retreat weekend. The retreat was fun. Low key, relaxing (I had several naps), and productive. I finished all of my August card swaps, 2 mini-albums, a gift for Grandma, and a few layouts.
For the LMNOP card swaps I participated in 3 categories. This card is for the Circle Element Swap. We had to incorporate a circle into our card. I figured the best way to do that was just to make the card a circle. I discovered I am not a very good circle cutter so these cards took awhile. Also- thanks to Nicole I discovered I could have been getting more circles out of each piece of paper....oh well. Live and Learn. LOL.

The next card is for the Paper Technique Swap. For this card I used embossing, sanding and tearing. LOVE coordinations paper and so glad I found it in my bag and had the idea to use it for these cards. The inside stamp says thru happy times and sad.

For the last card I made you were supposed to use this picture as inspiration.

I looked at this picture and thought what in the heck am I gonna do with this. WAY outside of my box. But this is what I came up with and while I would never have put this together on my own- I actually like how they turned out.

I have a 12 hour crop coming up on Saturday so I need to unpack and repack my bag for next weekend! We just got a new puppy today so there should be no shortage on pictures to scrap!

Sketch Stress

Let me start off by saying I really don't like sketches. Some people look to sketches to get ideas....but they seriously stress me out. I stare at them forever, feeling my creativity being restricted with each glance at the sketch, then I stress over whether I followed the sketch properly and most times I don't. I prefer to just "wing" it. That is why this card took me FOREVER. And honestly- I didn't even follow the sketch properly. I kept checking to see if I had the right amount of layers ( I don't) and I just could not figure out how to make it work.

WHY did I make a card following a sketch?!? Because I signed up for a swap where we had to follow a sketch. It's cute too....and I bet people are going to come up with some super cute cards.....but I will probably be asked not to join any sketch swaps after this since I don't do them properly. LOL.

Here is the sketch that we were asked to follow-

and here is what I finally came up with-

I am going to apologize now to my fellow swappers for my inability to follow directions. Love you guys....sorry I was taken over by sketch stress. :-) Now I have to go make 5 more of these cards.....sigh.....

$75.00 Gift Card Giveaway!!!!

I would like to introduce all of you to Jamie Koppi. Jamie is an amazing photographer in the Spring, TX area. She does school portraits, weddings, kids, family, boudoir....pretty much anything you can think of. She has a great personality and makes you feel very comfortable when she is taking pictures.

For all my scrapbooking friends out there- what better way to get some new pictures to scrapbook?! Take the kids or the family or the family pet (LOL) and use this $75 gift card towards some new photos! The gift card expires August 31st so make sure you book your session with Jamie as soon as you win! You have to have the pictures taken at her studio in Spring, TX but she does have an outdoor area if you are wanting outside shots.

How do I win you ask??! Just post a comment about how cool I am or how cool Jamie is and you are automatically entered. I will choose a winner via Random.org on Saturday so hurry up and comment!!!

July Card Swap

Yesterday I intended on finishing 4 sets of 6 cards each. I only finished 3 sets but when the creativity runs out there isn't really much you can do. LOL.

All of these are for the July card swap in LMNOP.

This one is called one layer wonder. You have to create on the cardstock layer- no adding patterned paper or anything. I think the card looks elegant.....but kinda boring. I feel like I didn't put enough into it but how much can you really put into one layer? LOL.

This card theme was birthday- using orange, green, and blue. I love the green patterned paper, and the orange flower is pretty....I was probably stretching it a bit on the blue bling and blue ink for the stamp but hey....its all in the idea of the artist right? Ha-Ha

This card was supposed to be a thank you card focusing on flowers. So.....it has a flower on it- I'm glad the LMNOP girls are not strict or my creative ideas probably wouldn't be accepted. Hee-Hee.

Grungeboard Bracelet

I saw this tutorial on Split Coast Stampers last week for a grunge board bracelet. I never wear jewelry but I thought the bracelet was so cute I wanted to make one. I had all the materials I needed so I made it tonight.

I didn't exactly follow the tutorial but that is because I was going by memory. So this is what I did.

I cut a piece of plain grungeboard and ran it thru the cuttlebug with a swirly folder. I then inked the embossed area with my distress ink. Then I thought....hmmm...something doesn't look right. At this point I checked the tutorial and realized I was supposed to paint it first. LOL. So I painted it....let it dry and then sanded it to reveal the embossed area so I could ink it again.

Danny actually has a little tool to add the snap and he even had the snaps. WOW....what a great guy to keep around! I added some embellishments, the snaps, and voila....Jenn has a new bracelet. And its so cute- I might actually wear it!