Did ya miss me?

If you noticed my last blog post I mentioned that I wasn't feeling well. That was the start of what I'd like to call the cold from hell! Seriously, the baby and I have had this cold type thing for almost 3 weeks. And every time I think I'm getting better, it just laughs at me and moves on to a different part of the body. It started out as a run of the mill cold and then moved into a flu type thing, then we had a sinus infection. Took all my antibiotics and it's now moved into fluid in the ears and lungs that has added a whole new level of disgustingness. Ewww, you probably didn't want to know all that, but suffice it to say, there hasn't been a whole lot of crafty things going on here.

But I did put together my Faux kit for the {why can't I make a cute little link in blogger? I used to be able to do it, what happened to me?} Counterfeit kit challenge. And I stare lovingly at it wondering when I'll have the energy to craft with it. This month they have been inspired by Studio Calico's March kit "Into the Woods" Here's my interpretation.



I wasn't really digging the color of Studio Calico's kit, so I went in my own direction. So I used Stampin Up paper and it must be from a while back b/c I just looked through the last 3 catalogs and I didn't see it there. The top left brown plaid, the darker brown {just a scrap and this one has got to be at least 5 years old,} the light pink pinstripe and the light green diamond PP are all SU!. I've been itching to use my new Basic Grey Green at Heart kit, so I pulled out the {top row} flowers, pink dotty circles, rows of daisy's and {middle row} orange swirly paper. The names for those are, in order: recycle, pea {um, why is bright pink paper called pea?}, emerald {I'm sensing a trend} and oscar. Last paper is only a scrap for me and it's Making memories {I believe} the blue and green shaped paper. I also pulled out the BG alpha stickers and element stickers, Paisley Cricut cart, Studio M stamps and SU! stamps Punch Potpourri and Bliss. Looking at the photo I'm realizing that I didn't put any cardstock in there. Not to worry though, I'll remedy that soon!

I can't wait to craft with this kit!

What to do when your not feeling well and you still have a LO to do?

Steal, Uh I mean, scraplift someone else's design. ;) I'm pretty sick today. Plus, my darling husband had to go to work and I'm home with the 3 kiddos. But I still wanted to get a LO done for LOAD 2/11. So, I pulled out one of my trusty sketch design books, Easy Patterns by Brenda Arnall. {side note, I just tried searching for some images or a link to where you could buy this and I saw a woman on Amazon trying to sell it for $99.99?!?!? What, really? This is a great book for when you're in a scrapbooking slump or need to churn out multiple pages for a theme album. But $100?!?! Hmm, maybe I should sell mine}

I really do love this book {or is it considered a magazine? IDK} I like to use it when I'm making an album for a gift or on my Disney albums. But it's also great for pulling out some PP scraps you like and making a page or two out of them. Plus, if you do the full pattern you'll end up with something like 3 double page LO's, a couple of cards and maybe a cute sign to hang up. So, CK, if your listening to my lowly blog, how's about another edition?

Anyway onto the LO...



This was the family {well the family at the time anyway} in Turks and Caicos all dressed up {get it, the title of the LO, heehee, haha, wink wink} for my sister and brother in laws wedding.

All the paper and butterfly punches are from {you guessed it} Stampin Up!, the title is a My Mind's Eye rub-on {and let me just say that these rub-on's rock. I've had this one for years and it still worked like a charm!} Unknown swirly transparency and Michael's pearls for the butterflies. Oh, and I'm not sure where I got the green felt ribbon either.

eta: Perhaps I should not be blogging while I'm sick. I've edited this post 3 times now and I keep finding more and more misspelled words, missing words and sentences that just don't make sense. So if this is your first time reading, I usually do have more of a grasp on the English language than this. Kind of.

Valentines Day Cards

Okay, I know I'm really late on posting these, but I did get them done in time to give to my girls. Barely. I made them a cake though, so they didn't care one iota about the cards anyway. I might keep them and give them to someone else. {insert evil laugh here}



I used the Counterfeit Kit challenge { http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/ } kit for this. Bazzill cardstock, My mind's Eye PP, Close to my heart stamps, Stampin Up! ink and Smooch accent ink to color in the little heart on the sentiment.

Baby Brown Eyes

Remember that giant, intimidating camera that I posted about the other day. The one where I said that if I carry it around long enough and take a gazillion pictures that I'll eventually get a good shot. Well, I got one. {I know, I know. It's not exactly the best since I chopped off his nose and everything. But so far, it's good enough for me.} I was trying to catch a good picture of Baby Boy's eyes changing colors. Yeah me, 'cuz I did it!


So, of course I had to scrap it. I also used this for one of my LOAD layouts. It was a busy day, so I just used a Stampin Up! {surprise, surprise} scrapbooking kit with some Making Memories letter stickers {colored them again with Bic Mark it's} and Cricut letters for "brown".

Ack, it's a snake!

And it's my Daughter holding it! Last year, my daughter went to a friend's birthday party and he had a reptile party. As in they brought in lots of yucky things to hold. My eldest had a blast! The birthday boy's mom was kind enough to send this awesome picture of my girl. Brave one, that girl.



So, I made another project with my Feb counterfeit kit club. It's a pretty simple page so not a lot of handmade embellies. Just PP from My Minds Eye's and Marcella by K, Bazzill cardstock, Thickers for "Snake" and Cricut Wild card font for "charmer" Stampin up! {you didn't think I'd make a page without SU! stuff, did you?} book plate, brads and border punch.

Some princesses, a counterfeit kit and a sketch.

So, Bethany and Meridy over at Counterfeit Kit Challenge{ http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com } have come up with an fantastic idea! Each month, they post a current scrapbooking kit {with the kit owners permission} and challenge their readers to make a copy cat of that kit. Brilliant! I saw Feb's kit from Scraps of Darkness { http://www.scrapsofdarkness.com }and just knew I had to copy it. So here's my take:



Plus, the great thing about Counterfeit Kit challenge is that they post tutorials for making your own embellishments. That is right up my alley! I love making my own stuff.

I thought that the dark gothic romancey {yeah, it's a word} feel of this kit would be perfect for pictures of Princesses. This is also one of my LOAD pages with the prompt of using a sketch. I used a Becky Higgins sketch {love her and her little sketches too!}



Cardstock is Bazzill, Lighter pink PP is My Mind's Eye, Purpley {seriously, it's a word} red PP is Stampin Up!, Silver scroll is a Creative Imaginations PP that I cut up, the Prima flowers are colored with Smooch Accent Inks in Taffy, "Storybook" is
American Crafts thickers in Rainboots, "Lunch" is Close to my Heart Storytime Caps stamps and finally the rub-ons are DCWV. Sheesh, I think I need to use less scrap supplies next time.

You make me smile!

This picture is so Baby Boy! That cute little infectious smile always, always brings a smile to my face. I was playing with my new {to me} Canon 10d DSLR camera the other day and amazingly {I say amazingly b/c this camera intimidates the snizz out of me. Yeah that's right, I just made up a word, sort of. Anyway, back on topic} caught this photo of him mid-laugh. Now I am in love with said intimidating camera, I mean look at that picture! So, if you know me in real life, I will be walking around with my giant camera taking pictures all day b/c eventually, I'll get a good one.

So this is also my attempt at faux Ali Edwards stamps that I've been seeing all over the place. I really love this look, but frankly I don't want to be limited to using the same stamps over and over again. {Sorry, AE, love ya though!} So I came up with this ingenious technique {okay ingenious might be an overstatement, a big one} First, I googled "smile quotes." Then I found 3 that I liked. Next I typed them up in Word in a font that I liked. And last but not least, I printed them out on patterned paper. Easy, Peasy Lemon Squeezy!



Another amazing thing happened today. I only used Stampin Up products for the ink, blue cardstock and blue patterned paper. Bird and letter stamps are Close to my Heart. Green check patterned paper {okay from here on out patterned paper will be know as PP. Lot's less to type out and I am forever spelling patterned wrong} is Basic Grey. Yellow PP {that's patterned paper for those Rachel Ray types} is unknown. The font I used for the faux AE stamps is Cambria in size 10. Finally {for goodness sake} "Smile" chipboard is from K by Marcella {or is it Marcella by K, hmmm. IDK)