Circles Anyone?

Call me crazy...literally! I signed up for a secret sister swap and the poor thing is still waiting for me to send her stuff. Okay, so I'm a little busy! Not to worry though. I created this little circle mini just for her! I bought this alphabet set a few years ago, it is from CTMH and this is the first time I've used it! You'll start to see a pattern developing here pretty quick. The buttons on the next photo came in an embellishment kit that I bought over a year ago. Do you see that chipboard arrow? I bought that particular chipboard family over two years ago. I'm not really a shopaholic. Maybe buy is the wrong word. The alphabet stamp I received by using my credit towards the catalog because I had a catalog party, so I didn't actually pay for it. The chipboard was bought with a gift certificate for a scrapbooking store, that I received for my birthday almost two years ago, so all I really bought was the embellishment kit and that was at 40% off. Honestly, I try to buy as little as possible. I do save all my scrap ribbon too! I take that back, the chipboard I received from another swap I did over a year ago, yes it was another secret sister swap! But there is some chipboard in this little mini book that I bought with my gift certificate. So like I said before, let's

use what we have. It does become challenging! I start to think, "But what if I run out?" Isn't that lame? When am I ever going to run out of things? I think that I probably have to much. Don't get me wrong, I am not discouraging you to buy things! I'm thinking...use what you have and then buy when you've run out of a lot of it :) So enough on the buying...are we done with buying sprees for a little while, now that you've had your lecture from Stephanie? (smile) I used browns, blues and greens for this mini because my Secret Sister has a preference for those colors. I'm thinking that I'm going to have a hard time parting with this, so I'm going to make one for

myself. I've got one more mini album to post, but it will have to wait. I want to post it when I've filled it with pictures. The hard part is trying to get my kids to want to take pictures, they detest it and hide from the camera when it is out. But will I let a small thing like teen stubborness get in my way? I think not...I've been using dirty tricks such as bribes :) to get them to pose for me! Yes, I'll resort to this when I am on a mission. I'm happy to say that my mission is almost accomplished! Now let me know what you think of my Circle Mini Book. Leave a comment!

Circles Anyone? (part 2)

I wish I could fit more than 5 pictures onto one post. Oh well...here is the last picture of the back cover. By the time I got to the back I was just ready to be done but I think it turned out. What do you think?

Valentine's Day Mini Book

I completed this book last week after I was so itching for my Candy Cane Lane paper to come. I wanted to kiss the floor the UPS lady walks on, when my paper finally arrived. For those of you who are aware, Stampin' Up has had back orders galore because of the holidays and the demand for the Love You Much Bundle. But, at last, it finally arrived. The first photo is the front cover. I didn't do much as far as stamping any sentiments throughout the book, because I may be giving this away and I wanted the person receiving this to embellish the book the way they wanted to. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a symmetrical scrapper. I like everything clean and lined up precisely. I'm working on that though! I really love the whole shabby chic look but it is hard to create shabby chic without all the embellishing, so although this isn't quite shabby chic for me, it is my attempt at it. What do you think? I think I need some improvement. I'm also trying to improve my picture taking. Would you believe that I just found the setting on my camera that allows me to take pictures in direct light from my lamp. Am I making sense? I do most of my projects throughout the day and by the time I'm done, it is dark already and I'm taking pictures by the lamp on my table. My pictures haven't been coming out all that great s0 I started fooling around with my camera today! I've had it for over a year and didn't know that I could switch the setting to indicate artificial light! Duh!! Anyway...I hope you see an improvement, it's noticeable to me! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think! Part 2 is below, which is the rest of the book!

Valentine's Day Mini Book Part 2

Here are the rest of the pictures. I couldn't fit them all onto one post. If anyone was ever in any doubt as to what my favorite embellishment is, well by look at this first photo, you've probably guessed it is ribbon. I love...love...love ribbon. It is relatively inexpensive and goes a long way. If you look closely, you'll see a pink striped ribbon, let me tell you, I have had this ribbon for ages, okay maybe only a year but I couldn't stand looking at it anymore, which is why I had to use it! Very little stamping done on any of these pages but I think I truly love the Candy Cane Lane paper, by Stampin' Up. I also have lots of these rings that I bought a while back and got tired of those sitting around all the time, so I took advantage of them to hold my mini book together. Are you spotting a trend here? I am really trying to use what I have on hand. I know everyone is probably feeling the money crunch right now, I for one am watching my pennies! So I have resolved to stop hording supplies and just use them. You know that Nike catch phrase "Just Do It?" Well mine has become..."Just Use It!" I challenge all of you to use your supplies and if your getting tired of all the projects that are piling up because you are using what you have, here is another tip for you, give them away! The persons receiving your gifts will be absolutely thrilled. I guarantee it!

KWerner Color Challenge #39

Amazingly my son Joe, let me take a silly picture of him. I came home from work and I was sitting at my computer when he walked in the door looking like this. He claimed that he and his friends were going to start a "Geek Squad!" I was thinking okay...uh...I guess if that's what you want to do...fine with me! I asked him if I could take a picture and of course he posed making these silly faces :) I was just happy to be taking pictures of him, if you have kids who are teens, the occasions when they want to pose for you become fewer and far between. At least it has been that way for me! Anyway, I thought this picture was perfect to use for Kristina's color challenge. The cherries on the background are from the Just Jawing (Stampin' Up) set and so is the You Rock stamp! I wanted a framed border. I love this color combination but I don't know if I succeeded in getting the layout the way I wanted it. I am one of those people that puts a page together and once it's done...it's done...I don't play with it anymore! I know the 11 x 8 1/2 layout is not very popular but I always wanted to try it out. So I am filling a scrapbook with this size and at the same time my stamp club is completing one too! Let me know what you think!

Hi All, Okay here is my stamp club layout for tomorrow. I have another as well but it is not exactly finished. I haven't been able to decide how I want the photo mats laid out...so stay tuned for that one. For this layout I used the Love You Much stamp set. I hope you can see that I used the Love You Much stamp and stamped it with white craft ink. I thought that this would be a good layout in preparation for Valentine's Day. I also thought about adding photo mats but decided that if I just laid photos on, it would look okay. All supplies are Stampin' Up except the ribbon. I had the ribbon left over from my Christmas stash and it matched the layout so why not use it? Hope you like it! Thanks for looking!

KWerner Color Challenge #38

Bear with me here. I added 3 photos to this entry for one color challenge! Yikes! Well, it was worth it! I love these color combinations and I had been wanting to make something that would hold 3x3 cards to give as a gift. If you saw one of my earlier entries, you know that I made tons of 3x3 notecards a few weeks ago to use up scraps. Well here is what I came up with. I used the Priceless set from Stampin Up and then added brads to the flowers. The sentiments are all from the same set (also from Stampin Up), but I can't remember the name of the set right now! I made 2 of each notecard and included envelopes

behind them. I added ribbon to tie the card keeper together and voila! I did do as Kristina suggested in her FAQ's and took 2 shots outside, of my project. It seems like my pictures were coming out to dark. Hopefully this is an improvement. Thanks for looking and let me know what you think by leaving a comment! I have another project to post but I need to get more pictures of my kids in order to complete it. Keep stalking my blog please! :)

Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge #50

Hi All, I'm trying to stretch my wings here and challenge myself to create outside my box. The sketch below was posted on the Taylored Expressions Blog (http://tayloredexpressions.blogspot.com/). I was thinking since the Super Bowl is right around the corner, that I wanted to do something a little masculine looking. Don't get me wrong...I love ribbon and flowers as much as the next person, but while I was surfing blog land I kept seeing so much flowers and ribbon that it put me in the mood to create something else altogether. This is what I came up with. If your into throwing Super Bowl parties, I think this would make a great invite! I chose the colors because my youngest son's team is playing today...Go Steelers! You can duplicate the card to your preferred team colors of course! The stamp sets are from Stampin Up; Just Football and Sporting. Thanks for taking a look!

Card of the Week Blog

I'm humbled that The Card of the Week blog posted a link to my mini coaster book! You should take a look at this site. It posts many links to other bloggers that feature cards and scrapbooking projects! Here is the site: http://www.cardoftheweek.com/ just click on the link and it should take you to the site. Take some time to navigate around because there is a lot to look at if you click on the links Susanna posts on her blog!

Birthday Card Organizer

I wish I could tell you this was all my own little idea...but it wasn't. I got this idea from Lauren Meader's blog (http://laurenm.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/). She did her card organizer differently than I did, but she had a template and I was just working off the photos she posted. I took photos of the front and a side view photo. If I had read through her blog a little more, the project may have been easier than I anticipated but I think I made it more difficult on myself. Lesson learned...read the whole blog post! I happen to love her blog and when I saw this, I knew I had to make one for myself! At first I thought I would give it as a gift to someone, but once it was done, I thought there is no way you will pry this from my cold dead hands! (smile) Thanks for taking a look and leave me a comment or two and let me know what you think!

Birthday Card Organizer (cont.)

The first of my cards I made for my card organizer. I tried to make everything match the organizer itself, I think I succeeded in getting close. I'm not much of a card maker sometimes so if these are just to plain for you, sorry about that :( Thanks for looking!

Birthday Card Organizer (cont.)

Here is another card, very simple but I used some patterned paper so that it wouldn't be so plain.

Can you see the recurring polka dot theme here? I think I'm in love with dots! Anyway, the organizer itself was a project so when I was finally finished I wanted to make the cards as easy as possible. Not a whole lot to them but if given as a gift, people won't believe how much you slaved away at making such a creation for them (smile)!

Birthday Card Organizer (cont.)

Here is one of the cards that I came up with to put into the organizer. Pretty quick and simple. In fact, it is so simple you can probably do a few when commercials are on between your favorite T.V. shows.

Birthday Card Organizer (cont.)

This is the divider I came up with. I had some help and inspiration from http://debbiedesigns.typepad.com. Her dividers are have more color to them, I just wanted something quick and easy so I made this on my computer and printed it out.

Kwerner Design Challenge #37

Okay, here is another color challenge by Kristina. I wanted the sentiment to go in the middle of the flower and couldn't find anything small enough so I took a cue from Kristina who uses her handwriting on cards and decided to use mine. Using my handwriting is really going outside my comfort zone! I happen to love this set too! Thanks for looking!

And The Winner Is...

Hi Everyone, I want to thank those that subscribed to my blog to enter the drawing for the Valentine gift bags. The winner is....Lee Conrey. Lee will be receiving these two bags in the mail shortly. Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Mini Coaster Book

What I was aiming for when I created this little mini book was something that I could place pictures in of my dear girlfriends. I really don't have anything like that so I tried to focus on creating something that was fast and easy. I mostly used the Flight of the Butterfly set with this project. But I did use others as well. Enjoy!

Here is page 1 & 2. I really aimed to keep this project as something that could be created quickly and easily which means minimal embellishments. Have you ever heard that phrase, "Less is more?" I do subscribe to that theory!

Mini Coaster Book (continued)

Here is page 3 & 4 of the mini book. The alphabet set I used is something I grabbed from the $1 bin at Michael's a while back. I don't know if you can read the title but is says "friends til the end." I used some brads to dress it up too.

Mini Coaster Book (continued)

Here is pages 5 & 6. I used some left over rub-ons from last year and a retired alphabet set. It doesn't take to much to dress up such small pages!

Mini Coaster Book (continued)

This is page 7 & 8 of my mini coaster book. I really like the Upsy Daisy set, I thought it turned out well with this little layout.

Mini Coaster Book (continued)

Hi Everyone, This is the last page I created for this mini coaster book.

3 x 3 Notecards From Scraps

I have been a busy little bee. In the interest of trying to clean my craft space, I cut a lot of my scraps down to make 3x3 notecards. I aimed for making 100 of them...believe me I had plenty of scraps...but I got as far as 40. I made thank you, birthday, Valentine's day, and thinking of you notecards. Unfortunately I had so many scraps that I could probably spend the next year creating 3x3 notecards and I would still have some left over. In my quest to organize I had to throw some out. There were just too many. I also had an old ribbon keeper that I don't use anymore. It has just been sitting around my space. I didn't know what else to do with it and I didn't want to throw it out. Well now that I have so many 3x3 notecards I was looking for a place to store them and voila! I laid my eyes on the ribbon keeper. Guess what...the notecards fit perfectly! In fact I have a little room for more so I'm going to get started on some more later on. Last night while I was at work I had the opportunity to make a mini book out of coasters. I will try to get it posted later on today! Thanks for taking a look.

Crocheted Scarf - Another New Year's Resolution

While we are on the subject of New Year's resolutions, I'm sharing another. That is to keep blogging more often. By the time the year is over you'll hopefully have been inspired by my creations or will have grown totally sick of me (smile). Anyway, I'm sharing this a photo of this scarf that I made for a friend who shall remain nameless until it is give to her. It was a really easy project to make and only took one skein of yarn. I even had some left over yarn and improvise by using it on some cards. These colors are bright but I do love them. I'm hoping my friend will love it!

Craft Space

Okay, so those of you who know me, know that my craft space is usually a disaster area. I have been working diligently to get it organized. Here are some before and after pictures. The one up top is after and the one below is before. I have to say that one of my New Year's resolutions is to really keep this space neat and tidy. Wait...I can already hear the sarcastic voices saying...good luck with that! Well I'll have you know that I did work on some cards and surprisingly my space is still looking good. Thank God! I mean it is not a big space but what I have is enough to work with. I'm going to be sharing some things that I have been up to while taking some time off work during this holiday season. Stay Tuned!