Blog neglect

The holidays are a busy time of year for me (both personally and professionally) so I generally have very little time to get my projects done let alone add them to my blog. Sorry my blog has been neglected lately. I promise to add some new projects for the new year soon!

Playing Catch-up

One of my goals for this blog is to capture all of my scrapbook related "stuff" in one place. Today's flashback capture is my project that was highlighted in the "Cricut Chirp" online newsletter from ProvoCraft. Ironically, the edition was released on my husband's birthday!

Vol. 15 - Sept. 4, 2006
CRICUT BOARD

This week's highlighted threads are: * Provocraft Wood Baby Letter

And, if you just want to see the project thread itself...
ProvoCraft Wood Baby Letter

This is one of my favorite baby gifts, but sadly ProvoCraft has discontinued these letters :(

Junk Binder Challenge

So my best scrapbooking bud convinced me to sign up for a Junk Binder class that another SB friend was teaching. Now, let me be upfront... I tend to be really excited about a project leading up to a class, but once the class is over I tend to never go back to finish the projects. Well, for this junk binder class I decided that I wanted a binder that was 5.5" x 8.5" in size. Not being able to find anything in the SB world that was meeting my needs I headed off to some big box stores in search of a binder and found this one at Staples:

Then I set out on my favorite part... deconstruction!

And promptly discovered a bit of a problem -it appears the vinyl I just removed served a purpose.... It held the cover to the spine, and the spine to the back. So I headed to the fabric store for some upholstry fabric and fabric glue.

But before I left, I sprayed the covers with several colors of metallic maya mists (cherry and yellow), added a little suede glimmer mist, and some green metallic maya mist. I left it out to dry in the sun and came back to find a lovely aged copper patina. I wish I could capture it digitially, but the covers have a really cool "depth" to the color.

Junk Binder Cover

Oh... and would you believe those roses used to be dusty pink?

Stay tuned for the inside pages... now that the class is over I haven't been inspired to work them. *wink*

Yay Hambly!

So a couple of weekends ago I was at an all day crop. I'd packed my coveted Hambly Christmas rub-ons for use on a mini-book I was planning to do that day. Unfortunately, when I attempted to use them they fell apart on acrylic and wouldn't even come off the sheet on paper. *GASP* How is this possible? One of my favorite things about Hambly rub-ons is that they go down like butt-ah (butter). I started the day with a plan to make them the focus of my design, and my poor scrapmate had to endure a good 15mins of whining while I tried to regroup and redirect my design.

The next day (Sunday) I decided to e-mail Hambly in hopes that they would replace them (afterall, they're pricey and I had 2 non-returnable packages of them. Tuesday I was a bit bummed because my e-mail hadn't received a response.

Wednesday my husband brought in the mail and told me I had a package. Package? I hadn't ordered anything lately. Well much to my surprise it was replacement Hambly rub-ons. So YAY HAMBLY! for taking care of your customers and for doing it so promptly.

Now, here's hopin' these rub-on like buttah!

Signed,
Still in love with Hambly Rub-ons.

QuicKutz Font Equivalents - LOVE IT!

Are you like me? Do you love QK fonts, but hate the tedious nature of cutting them out one die at a time? Here's a great list of font equivalents:
Designing with Die Cuts - QK Font Equivalents

Blue Ribbon Goodness | August 2008

I was at work one day and on a whim I decided to enter the Iowa State Fair's papercrafting category. So I got seven entry slips, but only entered  in five categories (yes, I tend to procrastinate). I was trying to patiently wait until the second Friday to go see how I faired, but on the first day I found myself incessantly refreshing the results page of the State Fair web site. So, when my friend Janet messaged me to tell me she had news, I just had to know!

Out of 5 entries, I won 2 Blue Ribbons and 1 Red Ribbon! Wooo hooo!

single page layout - state fair theme: lil' sprout

blue ribbon

single page layout: snow buddies

blue ribbon

single page layout: use of embellishments - family

red ribbon winner (by one little point!)

3rd Place Finish | April 2008

Mini book contest entry for "Same Supplies" contest at Memory Bound.

Amazingly enough, I think it only took me about 15 hrs to make it (started with a blank suitcase board book from maya road).

 

the picture and quote sticker are on an envelope. I sliced the end open and tucked a mini book underneath it. The white tab keeps the mini book from falling out of the envelope.

Same as above with the mini book showing. (It has wedding pics in it)

This page seems pretty self explanatory :)

I made the little flower pearlized with an elmers paint pen I discovered at Michaels this weekend. I can quickly see this pen becoming a favorite toy....

"Play the Lord's Music LOUD"

The guitar is cut out of a piece of patterned paper from making memories to create the base for this page.

"I finally found the goof to my ball"

Pics of lance and I being goofballs.. I know, I know, you didn't think I could be goofy did you?

"Enjoy life"

picture of the "action" item on this page.

"You're my kinda guy."

A cherished vintage photo

Last winter my mom came to visit and brought along some vintage negatives my grandma had found. We fashioned a way to hold them in order to scan them. The magic of technology brought to life five vintage photos of her and her family when she was just a little girl on a farm in southern Illinois. Here I took one of the photos of her and one of her older brothers and made her a birthday card.

Paint Dabbers and inky-ness

I found some paint dabbers at my LSS a few months ago and thought they'd be handy to use on chipboard since they have a built in applicator - but then I found Tim Holtz's blog. Who knew you could stamp with these paints too? How cool is this?

A little shabby goodness | 6-2008

I was asked to do lettering inside of a handmade book that a coworker was using for her wedding guestbook. It was soo cool! Pieces of old barn board were used for the covers and the bookmaker cut a window into the cover to hold the setting of the bride's grandmother's engagement ring. She also made a very cool cover for the book, but it looked a little plain to me, so I created a little shabby monogram tag for the string tie.

A little rustic hambly

Hambly is one of my favorite lines, but none of my local scrapbooking stores tend to carry it. This overlay happened to be perfect for a family photo of a trip to Texas.

How about a change of pace?

Some Basic Grey goodness...I've so been craving bright colors lately.

A little more pink for good measure.

I'm loving the hot pink. So here's another one!

Who says boys can't have pink layouts? | circa 2007

These were originally designed for a Cricut 101 class I was teaching at Memory Bound. The flowers are made from heart cut outs. Ah... some of my favorite Reminisce papers.

Wedding candy | 12-2008

I've made a lot of wedding albums in the past couple of years, but I just loved the champagne color scheme of this one. Here are a few of my favorite LOs from the album.

I made the neck tie out of 1" ribbon and tacky tape.

For this LO I used tulle from the ceremony to create a rooshed effect like what was on the bride's dress.

It was so nice of Jolee's to make this perfectly matching embellishment for me. :)

There were so many reception photos to include that I would have been making pages forever! Instead I used one of the handy Scrapbooks, etc. PSE templates to make collage prints.

Blog "Catsup" (portmanteau for catching up on what's up")

So, it only took me two separate attempts and several hours, but I've finally figured out the username and password for my blog so that I can actually add content. Look for several "catsup" posts.