Heart Felt Stuff

I must have been in  mushy mood over the weekend because 3 out of the 4 Layouts I completed were emotional. I had the urge and I always follow my urges to scrap challenging topics because it does not happen often. Let's face it, I can scrap funny stuff and put a positive spin on everything, but if it requires to me feel sadness of any kind it is hard for me to deal with -- much less scrap.

First up is the not so emotional one. It is just a page of my beautiful girl -- Annie. This was taken on her 9th birthday.

 Now we get to the hard stuff. My grandma is 95 and is....well....slowly dying. I went home about two weeks ago to say my final good byes. This is the last picture I will most likely ever have with her and the last time I will ever see her on this earth. Now, before you go and feel all sappy for me -- don't. She has had a long good life and is moving on to a better place. She is comfortable and happy.

 I have always loved my Grandma's hands. Those are one of the physical characteristics that will forever etched in my brain. Naturally I had to take a picture of them one last time and do a page about her and her hands.

 Lastly, this is a picture of my little Hero -- Parker. As some of you may know we own a breeding company in which we breed Golden Retrievers. However, these dogs are our pets first and we are very attached to them. Of course it is only natural that we love the puppies with all of our heart. This particular puppy was named -- Blur. We had run out of yarn and had to put two colors on him -- Red and Blue. So we named him the Blur. Parker fell in love with the Blur and would drag this puppy every where he went. I even caught him a few times in Parker's closet because Parker wanted to keep him. Well, we told Parker that we were not going to keep a male Golden and that he probably would be chosen as a therapy dog for the Southeast Blind Association in which he would help a veteran who was wounded in war. Sure enough the Blur was the one picked for that job. This is Parker's last picture with his beloved Blur. He cried so much, but he also felt good about "training" him for this important mission and found a great deal of comfort in that. He sacrificed his own desire to keep the Blur for a greater good -- and that is why this 6 year old is my hero. I am so blessed to have him as my son too!

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Halloween Goodies

Thanks to my friend Martha I was able to make these :-) She loaned me her CTMH cartridge and I was able to cut out the little pillow boxes. Now I need the cartridge.

 I made all of these cards with the "kit" I put together:

This one glows in the dark...well the witch on the tag does.

This is my favorite of all the cards I made.

Thanks for stopping by!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge

I have not done one of these in months and months and months, but I am struggling to get much of anything done scrapbook related. It is a cryin' shame and I need some serious motivation so I am going back to Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog. This is the selection for this month and I picked the Halloween themed one. Click here to take a peak at it:

http://www.scrapclubs.com/2010/09/little-red-scrapbook-september-kits-add-ons/

Now, before I go and post my counterfeit I would just like to say that I totally cheated...if that is possible when you counterfeit. This is all CTMH and pretty much works together. The only thing that I had to actually dig through my stash for was the ribbon and stamps pads. Regardless this is my kit that took me no time to put together because it pretty much was already assembled. If you want any of it just drop me a line because I can put in an order for ya ;-)

 Then, I found the following that also went with my kit:

I would love to see some of your counterfeit kits, so drop me your link in my comment section so I can go check them out. I have a few ideas on what I am going to do with all of this stuff. I will post it all as soon as I get it completed. Thanks for dropping in ;-)

Sept. 2011 Layouts

This is the first time in my life that I have had 7 straight hours a day to myself without having a job or child attached to my hip. Granted that being a stay at home mom is a job, but not a job in which I had to go to the office at a certain time, work and then come home. You would think that I would have more time to do my hobby -- scrapbook. That is proving not to be the case. I am so busy, but I am going to make a point in the month of October to at least spend a few hours a week in my scrap room. Regardless, I did manage to get the following done this month.

These Layouts were done with leftover paper and embellishments from Close to my Heart. I kind of cheated on this page in that I used the collage that Walgreens came up with the first day of pictures and just smacked it on the LO.

 This page took a lot of time and I am not sure if I like it or not. First, I noticed that I have a spelling error on it (or two). The title I stamped and took forever!

 Here is the close up of the journal tags that I made for it. The first day of school was really interesting because my oldest was mortified that I was at school and my youngest did not want to let me go. The title is suppose to read "A mother holds her child's hand for awhile, his heart forever and embarrasses him often."

 I have had these pictures for months. I really don't like them, but the event was fun and I knew I had to have them in the album, so I used a sketch and came up with this. Everything on here is leftovers. I literally saved it from the trash can.

 The rest of these are from Sass Lass. I found the entire "Nerdy Bird" line on sale and had to have it. Each and everyone of these is from that line and I still have a ton of it left! This Layout is of the kids on the fourth of July. I know it is not the typical fourth of July page, but the stars caught my eye and the colors kind of match my children's non fourth of July outfits (PJs). I got the title from watching Taylor Swift's video -- Sparks Fly on CMT as I was working on another LO.

 I pop dotted the flower and added some stickles to it.

 Do you have any idea how many pictures I have of our new puppy? Way to many to say the least! I was able to get 14 pictures on this layout! Usually it takes me 6 Layouts to showcase this many photos. Do you see the picture with the orange bow? That is actually a mini album about teaching Sierra how to use the doggie door.

 Here is a picture of the mini album opened to the first page. The kids actually were the ones to teach her how to go through the door. Now she likes to keep her head propped out of the door with her body inside. Sigh.....she is so odd.

 I layered the die cut flower and used a FP pebble as the center. I then pop dotted it on the LO.

 There are two things that I do not enjoy scrap booking and they are Birthdays and Christmas. I think it is because they all have the tendency to look them same and you tend to have a ton of photos and only want to dedicate one LO to the event so they are more challenging. Anyways, this is the LO for my daughter and my past birthday (our birthdays are 6 days apart).

 I journal about the cake on the cloud and pop dotted that on the LO.

 I really like this photo of my son and this girl who has a huge crush on him. It captures the innocent funny flirtation they have going on. The thing is, Logan is not that into her. Isn't that typical? The girl always likes the boy more at this age?

It is funny how my style has evolved over the years. I am doing more two page LOs and trying to get more pictures on each LO. Three years ago it was more about just one photo and now the story behind them is so much more. I am also not as "messy" as I used to be. I feel like my style is changing because my life is changing. Though I still do enjoy scrap booking it is not the same to me. Now I do it to record our family history knowing that someday my grand kids are going to see these pages. Before it was an escape and what I used to recharge my batteries -- not the case anymore. It seems as if every area of my life is starting a new chapter -- sounds like a good Layout idea doesn't it? "The New Chapter"

Until next time -- thanks for visiting.

Just some Recent Stuff

I actually have had these LOs done for some time, but am just now uploading them. This firs one is the first half to a two page LO. The green frame is actually felt and I outlined it in Stickles.

 Second half of LO. I used the Lucky line from CTMH to complete it.

 This is a LO I made for my daughter's party. The paper is Basic Gray and I actually like it. Amazing because I am not a BG fan, but I love these bright colors.

I broke out my Glimmer Mist for this one:

 I have a ton of photos from our trip to Vegas, but did not want to make a ton of LO. So I cracked open my CTMH Magic book and copied a sketch to come up with this LO.

 I so love the title! Check it out!

 I made a pocket and journaling block under these three photos:

 And here it is open. I slammed like 8 pictures in it and did a lot of journal writing.

 I am trying to cut down on my scraps so I made this card with the left overs. I still have half a sheet of pattern paper....sigh...

This is probably my favorite LO I have done in a long time. Puppy Sierra crashed out. Went a little crazy with the tacky animal print, but hey, she is an animal right?

Thanks for looking :-)

A Year in a Box

Here is the last project from my favorite class I took at the Scrapbook Expo in Chicago.  Each little envelope does something different, so once it is complete it will be super duper cute with pictures and journaling.

 I used leftovers from the class to alter the box (box came with the kit -- the class was only $24).

 I bought the bling for a buck at the Expo. I just cut it up and reshaped it to fit the box (I do that a lot with swirly bling). The flower is from "The Latest and Greatest" class that had nothing all that late or great! Talk about a rip off. If you are going to the Expo just take that $50 you would spend on the class and spend it at Expo. Everything I got in that class was stuff you would find on clearance and not spend more than $35 on. Total waste, but I am chasing rabbits. LOL!

That completes my Chicago Expo projects. Looking back now I am amazed that I was able to get two albums and this cute little box out of if. AND the best part was that I got to spend it with my favorite gal pal! :-)

SEI Tumble Dye & Album in a Box

As I mentioned previously (in another blog entry) that I spent this last weekend at the Scrapbook Expo in Chicgo. At the Expo I took three classes. I will be showing you the final class projects of two of those three classes over the next few days. One class there is nothing to see. I wish I could show you the "Latest and Greatest" in scrapbooking supplies and tools -- which is what it was titled, but I can't because it was NOT anything new or great. In fact, that class really sucked! However, the other two classes were awesome!

One of the designers from SEI taught the Tumble Dye technique using a lovely album that she created. Yep! I got to take a class from a designer! She had selected and designed the album, paper, chipboard, and everything in between. Forgive the color on this because the album is white overall, so it was hard to photograph. Add that to the fact that I had slipped it into page protectors and it is bound to be a hot mess. LOL!

The class was $48 and you can order these all in one albums off their website for $41. It is a great value! You should be able to complete an album in an hour too! Although I think it will take closer to 1.5 hours. Everything is precut!

Here is the front of the album and the new SEI Tumble Dye:

The Tumble Dye is different from the glimmer mist and even that wonderful Maya Road mists. First, there is no glimmer in it, however you do still need to twirl the bottle to mix it like you do for Glimmer Mist. Secondly, it has more of a consistency of water downed paint and kind of smells like that too.

The technique that I learned was how to use the Tumble Dye on the PP in this kit. Basically, what you do is you spray the dye on a paper towel and rub in in circles on the PP until you get the coverage you want. She said the paper can not be sprayed on directly because it would literally tear it up -- she had tried. I really liked the look of it and had I done this entire album in the comfort of my own scrap room I would have Tumble Dye all the white sheets (the entire album is white) three different colors. However, I was not in my own scrap room, so I tumble dye two sheets two different colors (I used my neighbors purple). I then cut up that sheet as embellishments. Here are a few of the completed pages in the album and yes I did finish the entire album!

 Part of the kit was a package of tissue and tulle circles of different sizes and colors. As you can tell from the page above and the page below they got a lot of use and were really a clever way of using materials we may have on hand. Although, I don't know if I could cut a perfect circle out of tissue paper. Maybe I should leave that job to SEI! LOL!

 Do you see the purple pattern paper in the following layout that is behind the photo block? I made that with the tumble dye technique.



Told ya it was basically white. LOL! I got to confess that I was skeptical as I was completing the album because it was white as the base and I always thought white was a "no-no" in scrap booking. However, with recent trends in home decor and what designers are doing I can see how it could be the new trend in scrap booking. With all of that being said, once I get pictures in it, journal done (in purple or green), and titles on the pages I think it will be beautiful. Thanks for looking :-)

Oh, and come back in a day or two to see the other class I took! It was a lot of fun and a really great project to make.

Vacation Album 2011

My main goal at the scrapbook expo last weekend was to complete our vacation album. I don't know why, but these are not my favorite albums to complete so they usually sit around waiting to get done. I am happy to say that vacation album 2011 is happily complete and sitting on our shelf! I used CTMH "Cherish" and "Magic" books for ALL the page layout ideas. It came together in a snap because of those books! I normally don't like to take pictures of them in their book already, but since I placed them in the album at the expo I was not gonna pull them out to photograph them at home LOL! Long live being lazy :-)

 This is my favorite LO I made for the album. Oh, and yes the flower is suppose to be there. If it is not there this could classify as soft porn...sigh.....no, I did not know my boobs were busting out like that.

 Sorry this picture is so icky looking. It also happens to be my least favorite LO I did in the album.

 I really like this LO of Logan and Daddy fishing.

 Parker's hands on the saddle horn is my favorite photo I took of the whole trip.

 Yes...I took pictures of horse roadapples (AKA poop). Got to scrap ALL the vacation -- not just the good.

 I got these gosh awful ugly litt;e flowers in a C2P kit a few years ago when I designed for it. I had a hard time using them then and still now. I like them on this LO ;-)

 This is actually the first Layout of the book. It happens to be my favorite picture of the family :-)