National Scrapbooking Day 2014

As you may or may not know, this past Saturday, May 3rd, was National Scrapbooking Day.  Now since I haven't really scrapped since January, I pretty much had to force myself to sit down and make a layout.  Since scrapbooking has never come easy for me, I had to find a sketch to work off of first.

Here is the sketch I used:

 

And this is what I made:

I think it turned out pretty cute for the most part.  It seems a little plain to me.  But for this being the second layout I have made in 7 months, I'll take it! 

That is all for now!  Until next time...

I've been Challenged...

If one thing is for sure, it's that there are MANY amazingly talented paper crafters in this world.  Luckily for me, I get to call many of them my friend.  The one and only Kristy Lee (formerly of Scrapbook Steals mojo-creating fame) was feeling creative enough to dish out challenges to some scrappy friends.  I decided I needed to be challenged, especially since I hadn't made a layout in what seems like forever.

This was the challenge Kristy gave me: 

• 1 page, three pictures (filmstrip style),
• manufacturer starting with "c" because your name does,
• misting
• chevrons

Well that was just the kick I needed to get scrapping again.  This is what I came up with:

I am in love with this layout.  I used Echo Park's Everyday Ecclectic collection, some MME washi and enamel dots, Mister Huey's mist and, most importantly, Bazzil cardstock with a core that was a bit lighter than the outside.  I used a doily mask below the paper, pressed hard on the paper, then sanded the impression it left.  I love that it turned out more subtle than using a white doily would.

Another friend, Venetia Holbrook, issued her own challenge.  This one was for anyone who wanted to do it.  I jumped on this one.

Here was her challenge:

This girl is on FIRE... 
This one's all about you. We all avoid it. Find that fabulous picture of you, not from 5 years ago, but of you now.  You are outstanding and unapologetic. You are awesome, you know it. You're living your best life. Now scrap that picture and celebrate you!
Journaling- must celebrate you as an individual.
Color- include your favorite color.
Embellishments- include one embellishment that represents something you love.

Scrapping about yourself is hard for some reason.  Raise your hand if I'm not alone.  :)  I had intended to scrap totally and completely about myself, but when I went to pick up the pictures I had printed for these layouts, the one I wanted wasn't there.  So, I chose another picture that depicts me as a mother.  This is what I came up with:

I hid my journaling because I really wanted the picture and the title to tell the bulk of the story. But if you pull out the tag, it talks about how I am human and I make mistakes.  I might bark at my girls too much or feel way too overwhelmed I get at times.  But what it really boils down to is that I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up other than knowing I wanted to be a mother.  I'm not perfect, but I'm trying the best I can.  And hopefully I'm not screwing up two gorgeous girls along the way.  :)

As for the rest of the challenge requirements, I dyed the seam binding my favorite color (any flavor of aqua, turqoise, etc.).  And for the embellishment, I chose some of my favorites:  flowers, flair buttons and enamel dots.  Oh, and the MME Collections paper is a fave, too.

If you are in a creative rut, ask a scrappy friend to challenge you.  You just might pop out of your creative coma to create something you're really proud of, like I did.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Until next time...

Everywhere a butterfly...

Happy first day of Spring, everyone!  Seems kind of like it's been spring all winter long here, minus the few weeks we had 20 inches of snow on the ground from back-to-back blizzards in February.  Mother Nature is one bipolar chick, that's for sure!

Anyway, I have a couple cards I wanted to share today.  I used butterflies on both of these cards, which I have never done before.  Whenever I've seen or pinned a card with butterflies on it, I always thought they looked so beautiful and delicate, but I've never been inspired to actually use them before.  Well, until now.  :) 

This first card was commissioned by my brother-in-law.  My sister-in-law gave up a baby girl for adoption a couple years before she and my BIL got married, so they celebrate Birth Mother's Day, which is the day before Mother's Day, every year.  This is the card I came up with:

 

I wanted to make a card that was happy and pretty and not hokey in any way.  I had to print out the sentiment myself because, let's face it, stamp makers haven't rushed out to make stamps celebrating the incredibly difficult decision of giving up a child.  But I digress...  Here is a close-up:

I have known my SIL for MANY years and I was dating my husband when she was pregnant.  I have been lucky enough to have met the little girl she gave up for adoption a few times as my SIL has been very close with the family who adopted her.  Her birth daughter is a spitting image of her.  Just beautiful.  It was an HONOR to make this card for my BIL to give her this year. 

The second card I am showing you doesn't have quite as exciting of a story, sad to say.  I made it for a challenge.  :)  I actually might be entering it for TWO challenges, so this story is actually looking up a bit.  I made it for this challenge:

And here is what I created:

 

I wanted this card to be simple with little pops of color, which I think I accomplished.  In retrospect, I wish I would have chosen a paper that didn't have so much white in it, but it still works. 
 

I used a rainbow of colors for the gemstones in the center of the butterflies.  You can't really see them well in this picture, so just try to imagine them.  :)

The other challenge I will be entering this card in is this Paper Smooches Sparks Challenge:

My card isn't SCREAMING these colors, but the butterflies definitely have these colors on them in one way or another. 

Thank you for stopping by today to see my latest creations!  Until next time...

More News!

I am excited to announce that I will be guest designing for Sweet Stamp Shop this month!

They are releasing some CUTE sets this month, so make sure you check them out today to see two of the newest sets:  Kiss Me and Chalkboard Sign. 

Here is a card I created with the Kiss Me set:

I love how versatile this set is.  It can be used to create backgrounds and all kinds of cute lovey dovey cards.  :)  I might even be tempted to use it on a layout sometime in the near future...we shall see!

For this card, I used Echo Park's Everyday Eclectic paper, My Mind's Eye washi tape and Basic Grey alphas.  Oh, and I dusted off the old sewing machine to stitch the border.  I love how it turned out.

I will be sharing everything I created for this release later this month, so stay tuned!

Until then...

Feeling Funky...

If you've been following me for a while, you know that I used Pinterest frequently to find inspiration when I am making a layout of creating a card.  I thought I'd show you all a layout I created recently using a pretty funky sketch I pinned. (And I use the term "funky" loosely - it's funky to me because this novice brain wouldn't ever think to use a sketch like this.)

Here is the sketch, which comes from colorconspiracy.typepad.com:

And here is the layout I created:

I absolutely LOVE how this layout turned out.  It's so fun and different and yet still kinda me.  :)  I used Echo Park's Everyday Eclectic collection with a mix of various embelishments that I had lying around.

If you look in my stash, these are the colors that I have the most of.  :)  The pink flower was originally white, but I sprayed it with a couple different colors of Glimmer Mist to match my color scheme.  My newest obsession favorite embellishments are flair buttons.  So fun!

I love this cute little pennant.  :)  The canvass flag is from Maya Road, but I switched out the grommets to match my color scheme.  The stamp I used is from Studio Calico's exclusive Lawn Fawn set that was in their debut Card Kit.

Thank you for stopping by again today!  I hope this sketch/layout inspires you to venture outside of your comfortable scrappy zone.  Good stuff can happen if you do.  :)

Until next time...

Get well soon...

On Thursday I found out that my dad is really sick. He has bronchitis and borderline pneumonia and has been home sick since Thursday. If anyone knows my dad, they know how hard of a worker he is. He doesn't miss work for any kinds of sicknesses. In fact, if his employer hadn't banned him from coming in until Tuesday, he probably would have still gone in.

ANYway, I thought I'd take this perfect opportunity to use some new stamps I just got last week. I've been wanting these Paper Smooches stamps for a while now and finally took the plunge to get them.

Here is the card I created with them:

This card is simple, but I like it. I used paper from a 6x6 pad from MME's Lime Twist Life of the Party line. (Kind of ironic using "life of the party paper" when the card is "sorry you're hacking up your lungs" related. Didn't think about that until just now.) The red dotted strip is some of Target's new washi-like tape. It's basically decorated masking tape, but better. And it's from Target. When have I ever passed up anything from Target??

I knew I wanted to use the tissue box somewhere, so I decided to put that and the sentiment on the inside of the card. I used tissue paper for the tissues.

AND because I love to tag the back of my cards with my initials, the date and something fun that is card themed, I used the red cross symbol in between my initials. I love how this turned out!

That's all for today! Until next time!

Hopping Along With Scrapbook Steals!

Hello, hello! Welcome to my blog! You should have gotten here from Amber's page. If this is the first you're hearing of the hop, be sure to go back to ScrapbookSteals' blog and start from the beginning! Make sure you comment at each blog to help your chances of winning a spectacular prize...a $20 gift certificate which will be rewarded to a person randomly picked from one of the blogs!! You have until Monday, March 12th at 11:59 pm, MST to enter your comments.

Here is the line up just in case you get lost (click on the person's name to go to the blog):

Scrapbook Steals
Kristy MacKeen
Staci Jones
Amber Sheaves
Cristine Redmond <-- You are here!
Venetia Holbrook
Charity Becker
Van Nguyen

Now, on to the important stuff. :) Name one thing - okay, maybe two things - that are in your scrappy stash that you can never have too many of. Buttons and brads, right? No matter how big our stashes get, we always have room for more. That is why I was excited that today's blog hop was going to be featuring Basic Grey's buttons and brads. About 95 % of my button and brad collection is from Basic Grey. Their collections are just the best!

The first project I completed just SCREAMS Scrapbook Steals. Alright, not literally, but I got about 98% of the things on the page from them, so it screams SS to me. :) Here is a layout I created with Echo Park's new This and That Charming collection:

One of my favorite things to do with buttons is decorate them with twine. It dresses them up a bit.

I used a couple of brads to "hold up" the banner by my title and I am so happy with the way that turned out. I never know what to do at the ends of my banners, but now I have a new trick! Just stick a brad on each end and that's it! So cute!

I decided to create another project to show you a different way to use buttons. (I can not take credit for this idea...I got it off Pinterest. LOVE that site for inspiration.)

I made a simple card by adhering the buttons in a rainbow formation. I just added some cute clouds (I distressed the edges to make them look more fluffy), a stamped sentiment and some doodles around the edge and that's it! SUPER simple!

I'm so glad you stopped by my blog today! I love to get new followers, so be sure to follow me to see what other created projects I have up my sleeves!

Next stop on the hop is Venetia Holbrook!

The 80s are BACK!!

Hello all! Hope you are having fun hopping along on the Back to the 80s Birthday Blog Hop! If this is the first you've heard of it, go back to Emily (the birthday girl's) blog for all of the details!!

The 80s seem like such a long time ago, but also seem like just yesterday. My earliest memories are from the 80s...everything from the toys to the clothes stick out in my mind. The strange thing is, a lot of what I had, saw or experienced in the 80s are BACK! Guess I grew up in a pretty cool decade. :)

This is a picture of me from about 1985-ish.

Anyway, for my project I decided to scrap a picture that was taken of a friend and I back in 1985. I had just moved from Colorado to Arizona with my family and was going to be going to Disneyworld with my best friend from Colorado and her family. I flew - SOLO - from AZ to CO, then on to Florida with my friend and her family. The picture in my layout was taken at the airport in Denver before we left on our amazing adventure. The things that scream "HELLOOO 80s" in this picture are what my friend and I are holding: a Rainbow Brite doll complete with Sprite sidekick (me) and a Cabbage Patch Kid (my friend). Doesn't get more 80s than that, folks. :)


I used Echo Park's Little Girl line for this layout because the colors and patterns seemed very appropriate for a layout about the 80s. It was a very colorful decade, that's for sure.


I also decided to turn my picture into a polaroid-like picture as part of the throw-back theme.

I have to say, creating a layout to go with this picture was really fun. The memories of all of my 80s toys took me back to a happy place, which is something I needed after the last few days I've had.

Don't forget to post on all of the blogs along the hop because as Emily's post stated, there will be some FUN prizes given away! Have fun hopping!

The next stop on the hop is Heather!

Here's the blog line up in case you get lost along the way:

Emily
Lisa
Abby
Candace
Nicole
Julie Ranae
Stephanie
Tanya
Candace
Elizabeth
Angelica
Michelle
Erin
Sarah
Dawn
Kathy
Jeannie
Cristine <-- You are here!
Heather