It's a Scrapbooking Weekend...

It's VSBN (Virtual ScrapBooking Night {although it has become a whole weekend}) over on SplitCoastStampers. I was thrilled to be asked to hostess on of the challenges so I thought that I would post it on here too and maybe you all will want to play along!

My Challenge:
The Loves of Our Lives...

All of our days are filled with things that we love...people, places, things, even foods!

Today I want you to scrapbook something from your life that you LOVE.

It can be a family member, pet, favorite clothing item, your love of chick lit...whatever you want. This is for your scrapbook album so have fun with it. If you don't have any appropriate photos for this type of layout, well then try something new (at least for most of us) and do a scrapbook page without photos (you could even do a scrapbook page about your love for stamps/scrapbooking!)

Bonus to the challenge: one of the things that I love is Paris so if you want an extra little challenge to your scrapbook layout, then let your layout be inspired by this piece of Parisian inspired art by Fabrice De Villaneuve...

And here is my layout that I did as a sample...

This is my layout for the The Loves of Our Lives challenge.

I listed my top 5 loves:
1. my family
2.Starbucks or anything coffee
3. things with history
4. chocolate
5. all things Paris/France

There are TONS of fun challenges happening over in the forum. If you need something to do this weekend, come check it out... VSBN forum!

Exercise Your Creativity Week 5- Red

{click on the image for better viewing and printing}

I'll be back later with my art to share from last week's exercise- Signs.

Hip-hopping along....

Welcome to all my Hip-Hopping Peeps! I love Hip-Hop days...so much fun!!!

Let's get right to it...fun new stamps this week...Beach Days & Sun Rays!!! I apologize for the quality of these photos. I was overcome by enjoying the beach theme and the sun and just let it all shine in... :o)

The grouping of three cards together.
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Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Beach Days & Sun Rays

*SEI paper

*Webster’s Page Pom trim

*American Crafts Black brads

*Fiskars Threading Water border punch

*watercolor pencils

*pop dots

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Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Beach Days & Sun Rays

*American Crafts paper

*Fresh Paint paper

*Bazzill Kraft

*StazOn Jet Black inkpad

*Fiskars Threading Water border punch

*Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder

*ribbon

*watercolor pencils

*pop dots

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Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Beach Days & Sun Rays

*Sassafras paper

*American Crafts paper
*StazOn Jet Black inkpad

*watercolor pencils

*ribbon

*corner rounder

*pop dots

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This was a bag that I created for the Unity Booth at CHA to go along with their Giggle Grove theme. I really think that it turned out cute, but I just wish I had done it in Unity teals and browns now after seeing the booth. I am not even sure if it got to Unity in time to make it to the show as it was a really quick last-minute thing...c'est la vie.

A close-up of the shrinky dink charm on the handle...

Now head on over to Jennifer Buck's blog and check out what fabulous creations she has to share with you today!!!

It's a Snow Day...Take Two!

Well, we got another 5-6" of snow last night...wow! We have a TON! I would say that there is easily 10-12" of snow on our yard. The kids are all loving it esp. since this is the 2nd day in a row without school. Luckily, though, the sun has shown all day today so the roads are clear and school should be back in session for tomorrow.

In the midst of all of our snowy weather this week, I got some fun mail from Unity with a load of new stamps to play with. I had ordered some new singles and when I pulled two of them out of the box, I realized that I really liked them together so I designed a couple of cards around these two stamps...Grandma's Button and Mystical Swirl.

As you can see, the cards are VERY similar...just little changes to make them different as the design evolved when making the second card. ;o)

This was the first draft of the card. I was thrilled to discover that I could layer these punches perfectly with that Grandma's Button stamp. The punches that I used are shown in the first photo of this post...one EK Success punch and the other two are Marvy Uchida.

Here's a close-up of the stamp-work on this one. Isn't that little polkadot "hi" the cutest little stamp? It is out of the new Little Buggers kit. I LOVE the new re-designed size on these cute little bugs...it's definitely going to be a favorite for kid projects!

For this second card, I just took the design up a tiny bit for a bit more detail. I added the second circle with the butterfly from the Spunky Princess kit and the brad detail.

And here's the close-up...

Supplies used on these cards:
*Unity Stamp Co. Grandma's Button
*Unity Stamp Co. Mystical Swirl
*Unity Stamp Co. Little Buggers
*Unity Stamp Co. Spunky Princess
*MME papers (super-old ones...LOVE rediscovering papers in my stash)
*ribbon
*Marvy Uchida scallop circle punches
*EKSuccess circle punch
*watercolor pencils (on the butterfly)
*corner rounder

I'll be back tomorrow for some Hip-Hopping fun with Unity. Have you seen the gorgeous booth that they have had at CHA...if not, go check it out here...all new packaging and some re-designs on the kits and singles. Unity just gets better and better!!!

It's a Snow Day!!!

It's a snowy day here in Illinois...really our first of the year. We have had ice and a tiny bit of snow, but this is our first accumulation. Right now, we have about 3" on the ground, but it is snowing and sleeting again so we should accumulate a bit more. The debate in this house, with Ben out of town this week and Jacob home from school, is which one of us is going to go out and shovel. I am thinking that the teenager may lose this one, but I did only do yoga this morning and the exercise would do me some good so we will see...

I have a bit of an art share today. The Card Positioning System blog is celebrating their 100th Sketch this week with a huge party with lots of fun sponsors/giveaways. I love this blog and unfortunately don't play along as often as I would like, but Tami always creates amazing sketches which the DT always rocks out! TONS of inspiration over there...you need to go check them out if you have never been there before. Here is the layout that I created using their sketch for this week...

Supplies used:
*Unity Stamp Co. Love Etc (Jan. kit of the month...only available for a few more days!)
*MME papers
*brads
*Martha Stewart border punch
*Marvy Uchida scallop circle punch

Thanks to everyone who offered advice/sympathy on my camera issues. It's frustrating because I become so ADD when it comes to sit down to read/learn about what I can do with it. I just need to learn better patience and the learning will come. Funny though, we did go out Sunday to take some photos. I was looking for some old country signs to take photos of and Ben thought that it would be fun to take me to a little town just northeast of here that he thought would have some good photo opportunities for me. When we left the house, we had some snow flurries, but nothing accumulating and the roads weren't even wet...they were really just floating around in the air. By the time we made it to Lebanon (the cute little town...which is not even 10 miles away) the roads were completely covered, slick, and snowpacked and they easily had an inch of snow on the ground so we turned around and came home. When we arrived back here, it still wasn't even wet and it didn't change all afternoon. Truly bizarre and of course, no photos to show for it. I am not sure if I am going to be able to get any sign photos this week or not....

This alien living in my midst...

She scares me.
I am pretty sure that she doesn't like me very much.
She just sits there and taunts me.
I know that I should do better by her, but I don't know how.
I tried yesterday, I really did.
I went to the store to check out some new toys for her.
I had no idea what they were talking about.
The store clerk felt sorry for her as obviously I am not worthy of having her.
Today is a new day and I will try again to regain her trust.

Study in Woodland...

This is post #2 for the day. If you are here looking for Exercise #4, then that is the post below this one. This post is for my Study from last week- Woodland.

Unfortunately, I just did not have the time this week to commit to this project/exercise as I would have liked. I had so many ideas...just no time to get to them. So I only have two papercraft projects with the woodland theme to share with you {for now...I will probably re-visit this theme when I get a chance.}

This first one is a layout with the photos from our NewYear's Wintery Walk.

When I bought these cute Sassafras papers, I never thought that I would actually be able to use them on a layout because of the pinks/color combo, but with Kat's coat that day, the colors are perfect for this layout and all those wonderful little woodland creatures are perfect for the layout theme.

Supplies used:
*Sassafras Hog Heaven
*Unity Stamp Co. Enjoy Your Story...Laugh (journaling frame)
*October Afternoon paper (woodgrain and green/blue strip)
*Fiskars Threading Water border punch
*Pink Paislee alphabet stickers
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This second project is a card and there is a bit of a story about this stamp on here. Way back in the fall when all of the woodland creatures started showing up, I found the cutest little K&Company paper that had squirrels on it. From that point on, I was on the hunt for a squirrel stamp.

I finally found one at Purple Onion Designs...isn't he the cutest little thing? This is the first time that I have had a chance to get him inky and quite honestly, he is a LOT of the reason why we had a Woodland theme for this week. I needed a good excuse to use him.

Supplies used:
*DCWV matchmakers paper stack
*Purple Onion Designs squirrel stamp
*MM Love Notes trim
*MM metal embellishment
*white brads

Exercise Your Creativity Week 4- Signs

Good Friday Morning! It's Friday so that means it's Exercise Your Creativity Day!! Yippeee! If you don't know what I am talking about, EYC is an ongoing, year-long, 52 week project to flex your creativity muscles. You can see more about the details of how it works/intro here and all the archives can be found on the Creative Prompts blog for easy access.

This week's exercise revolves around signs. Click on the jpeg below to get the whole story of the exercise for the week...

And here are some images off the internet of different uses of signs/pennants/banners to inspire you. Unfortunately, I didn't notate my files very well about the origin of these images so if you know where I found them, please let me know so that I can give proper credit!!

from Pottery Barn Teen:

from MarthaStewart.com (I think):

from Pottery Barn Teen:

from ???:

from ???:

Unfortunately, it has been a crazy week working on other projects that I am not free to share with you yet, and that has made me a bit behind with my Woodland Study from last week, but I should be back later in the day with my post and projects from that...

The Boss is Away, but We're Still Gonna Play! Happy Hip Hop!!!

Good morning to all you Hip-Hopping Peeps!!!

The boss is away on her way to California for the Craft and Hobby Show, but we are still going to have a fabulous hip hop so plan on dropping into the SCS forum today to play a bit with us all!

I have two projects to share with you today. This first one is using that gorgeous Valentine's kit that was released last week, Be Owl Mine, although I did steal the "i love you" out of one of the other new releases, Love Grows.

The inspiration challenge over on SCS this week was to be inspired by a Pottery Barn teen room and this is the one that inspired my card. Funnily enough, I had saved this image just the day before the challenge was issued as an inspiration piece for my Woodland Exercise. I still hope to create a woodland-styled card based on it too...hopefully today!

I used watercolor pencils to color all of the images and then just cut them out.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Be Owl Mine

*Unity Stamp Co. Love Grows

*October Afternoon paper (teal)

*Imaginisce paper (pink)

*watercolor pencils

*Zig Writer

*Marvy Uchida scallop oval punch

*cuttlebug embossing folder

*white cardstock

*Jet Black StazOn

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My second project today is a layout using today's new release, Time For Travel.

I have my computer set up so that the screen saver is random photos from my picture files. Yesterday morning, I walked into the room and one of these old photos from 2005 of DS and I visiting my alma mater, Texas Tech, showed up and I was inspired to print/scrapbook them. We had so much fun playing on campus that day.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Time for Travel

*Bazzill Swiss Dot embossed paper

*October Afternoon papers

*old dictionary paper

*Marvy Uchida punches

*buttons

*Martha Stewart border punch

I just LOVE the style of this set and if I remember correctly, this is another Angela (with some help from Brooke) designed kit!



Now head on over to Jimmi's blog to see what gorgeous things she has to share with you this week!