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)

Like moths to a flame...

... I am drawn to bright and shiny {aka Blingy} LO's. I've been trying to complete this album {my brother and sister in laws destination wedding album} for a couple of years now. I'll get there someday, maybe in time for their 10th wedding anniversary.



I really love the Jenni Bowlin's butterflies But not only can I not find them around here, I'm not really willing to pay $3.99 plus shipping for 6 butterflies. Even though they are darling. So I made my own with come patterned paper, a punch and some rhinestones. While not as elegant as Ms. Bowlins, I still think they're pretty cute.



Papers, ribbon, punch and ink are all Stampin Up! {I seem to be having a love affair with SU! recently} Rhinestones are from Michaels and I can't remember where I got the glittery chipboard letters.

A card made from scraps

After making a LO, I just couldn't put away these scraps of this beautiful patterned paper {in fact, I wish I had a couple more sheets of it.} I had to make something from them. So, I made this card for a friend whose had some heartache recently.



Creative Imaginations patterned paper. Stampin Up! cardstock, ink, embossing powder, stamp and water color crayon. Michael's ribbon.

"Jump" for Joy!

These pictures of MJ on a trampoline at Sea World make me smile. {The pictures of this LO, however, do not. Never fear though, today I got my new DSLR camera all set up with lenses and batteries. So, hopefully in the near future, you'll see better photos from me.}

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to experiment with a graphic type of LO with a more minimalist feel. Yeah, that didn't exactly work out how I planned, but I'm happy with how it turned out anyway.



I colored in my letter stickers {Making Memories} again, this time using a red Bic Mark-it. I also used the marker to draw the line around the white Bazzill cardstock. I honestly can't remember where I got all the rivets, buttons and the patterned paper.

First day of LOAD

I'm off to a good start. I was able to make this page in about 30 minutes this morning. And I actually like it. No, in fact, I *love* the way it turned out! Of course, it helps to have a really cute picture to start from. Also, a snow storm that prevents you from running out to the store. I mean, you can't really go out with a baby when it's snowing, right? It's much better to stay at home and craft {while said baby is sleeping.}



I bought this Martha Stewart Punch around the Page punch and I *love* it too. I can see that it's going to make it on a lot of my cards and layouts in the near future. If you don't have this punch you must run out and get it right away. ;) Trust me, you'll love it too! It's the "Cherish" one.

Products are: Cardstock is Bazzill; Patterned Paper, ink, flowers and buttons are all Stampin Up!, Chipboard letters and I used the letter centers for the middle of the flowers are Basic Grey and I really don't know where I got the scrolly chipboard.

P365, LOAD 211, OMG, WDTM?

So this year, I decided to do Becky Higgins' Project Life or Project 365. That is to say that I am trying to take a picture every single day and put it in my beautiful, specially made album put out by Becky Higgins. Let me tell you, I love this idea. I even got my BFF to start her own album along with me. I've been doing great and haven't missed a picture yet. Although, truth be told, it's only been one month. But I really am loving it.

So fast forward to last week and I see a link on 2peas about Lain Ehmann's LOAD 211. What's LOAD 211, you ask? Well, it stands for Layout A Day Feb 2011. Get it, LOAD 211. Cute huh! Yay, sound's cool, so I sign up. Then it hits me. This means I'm supposed to not only create a layout everyday in Feb, but I also have to take a picture as well as up load it into Flickr. Am I crazy? Yes, yes I am. Picture a day {POTD} and layout of the day {LOAD}. Sah-weet!

But no matter, right? I can just use that LO to post everyday to my blog and then my faithful {non}readers can see for themselves what I'm up to in Feb. Because we've seen how well I keep up with my blog. ;)

Coloring your letter stickers

Did you know that you can use Bic Mark It's to color on your letter stickers? Neither did I!

 

I was creating this layout, but was too lazy to get out my Cricut. I only had while letter stickers {I believe they are Making Memories} and I wanted blue. So I took my daughters markers and just colored. They work really well for this. I want to get some white thickers to try too.

 

I think I may need some more colors though, because I'm trying desperately to ignore the fact that the marker is more of a bright blue that goes with the patterend paper {piggytails} rather then the more grey blue of the cardstock {bazzill} BTW-I totally scraplifted this from 2peas Garden Girl Nichol Magourik.

Sweet card for my Sweet

 

Hopefully, he doesn't see this. Hahahahahahaha! *wipes tears of laughter from eye* Sorry, like he'd ever look at crafty blog. Even if it was mine. :)

Anyway, I made this out of scraps that I found in my stash. They were so cute, I just had to use them. I can't even tell you who made the paper or the adorable valentines. I can tell you that I got both from my Apron Strings scrapbook kit in say 2008 (maybe?). The cardstock and ink are both Stampin Up! and the sentiment is Close To My Heart.
*Also, need to mention that this card was inspired by Megan Gravener over at Above Rubies Studio. Linky on the right --->

Almost made it, well not quite, okay not even half..

But I did go 5.5 months without spending a single cent on scrappy supplies. Go me, heh! But that whole $9.99 Cricut cartridges deal at Michael's did me in. Seriously, how could a person pass that up. I ended up coming home with 6 (yippee!!) cartridges. Old West, Pagoda, Cars, Sweethearts, Jubilee and Birthday Cakes. I *love* them.

I did find myself being pretty resourceful and found a new attitude towards scrapbooking. I've learned that it doesn't have to be perfect (perfect paper, perfectly matching colors, perfect embellishments, etc.) and to just enjoy the process, not the outcome. Well enjoy the outcome too, but mostly the process. Okay, enjoy both equally.

So on the whole, I'm pretty happy with what I did accomplish (even though, I blogged about none of it, sorry about that, although I guess it doesn't matter too much since no one but me reads this blog) and I can't wait to see all the new to me stuff I missed out on. I now fully embrace my title of The Girl Who has all the Scrappy goodies!

(Have you noticed I have a love affair with parentheses {is that how you spell that?})