Check it out!!!!

Hey, Vicki is having an absolutely awesome Blog Candy giveaway over on her blog! Be sure to check it out and leave a comment!!! http://www.stampedsmiles.com/ She will choose the lucky winner on August 7!!! Hurry on over!

Shabby chic or just distressed??

This card was an experiment from the start. I was so happy with the way it turned out. Let me give you an idea of how I did this.

I started with the card base in Kraft colored cardstock. I love that color!! Then I stamped background images (all stamps are from Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps). I stamped the swirls in Vivid dye inks and then used my lino background stamp using Ranger Distress ink. After doing that, I used Twinkling H2O's to paint on a layer of Mallard Green in the right-hand corner. Then I proceeded to stamp and emboss the sentiment and the eagle. I love this eagle image! It is great for artsy projects, as well as masculine cards. After I used the heat gun for the images, I used my Versamark pad to distress the edges of the card and then sprinkled gold emossing powder on it. After tapping off the extra and rubbing some of it off with my finger, I then heat embossed the edges too. I loved the look that it gave to have that final touch of gold around the edge!

Well, peeps...guess it is time for me to hop on over and do some household chores. I have spent quite a lot of time at the computer this a.m. and my kiddies are beginning to wonder what happened to Mom! Have a good day out there in cyberspace!

I am a Prickley Pear Girl!

Greetings to all you peeps out there in cyberspace. Hope you are having a good week. I am rather weary this a.m. My kiddies spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's and I am sure they had a rockin' good time! However, this mommy had to work last night. I taught a class at the scrapbook store that went very, very smoothly. Just the way I like them! So not only is my brain a bit weary, so is my body.

However, I just wanted to post a picture for ya' all. Since January, I have been part of the design team over at Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps. If any of you have never heard of them, you should head on over there! http://www.prickleypear.com/ They have a great selection of artsy, yet whimsical stamps. I know Nicole has added quite a few NEW stamps this summer and will be adding some more very soon.

Anyhow....I am part of their design team. So today, I am going to show you a card using NEW stamps from Prickley Pear.

The patterned paper for this card is from Deja Views. The ribbon is from a roll I picked up from the dollar bins at Target. Cute, huh? However, the images are all Prickley Pear. The sentiment and the birds. Here is a quiz. There are two birds, can you find the second one?? The first one is obvious, being stamped in ultramarine Vivid dye ink from Clearsnap. The other one is more carefully hidden. Does it help if I tell you it is smaller? How about that it is done with white embossing powder?? How about this...it is perched on top of a flower in front of a green, white and magenta stripe?? Ya' didn't know you were going to have to go hunting today, huh?

For added dimension on this card, I used pop dots under the pink piece with the blue bird on it. Doing that also allowed the piece to lay flat and not have a bulging area under the ribbon.

Okay, peeps. I gotta' fly! (chirp, chirp) I have to go save Grandma and Grandpa, oops, I mean pick up my kiddies from Grandma and Grandpa's house! Have a great day and be sure to see what Nicole has over there at Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps!!

At last...

Well, Peeps...this will be the last post about darling daughter's birthday album. We will move on to other things next time! However, I have one more photo I wanted to share.

Hope you all had a rockin' good weekend. Here in the middle of the desert it was a hot one. However, we run our A/C all the time because of my husband and daughter's extreme intolerance to the heat. When it's a 100 degrees, even 75 degrees inside is a huge difference!

On this layout I used swirl stamps and stamped swirls on the background (left) using versamark. Then on the purple photo mat I stamped more swirls, running them off the edge. I also embossed them using Ranger's white embossing powder. I took it a step farther and used the Versamark pad to "edge" the paper. After using the inkpad on the edge of the paper I sprinkled more embossing powder on it. I didn't want there to be a heavy border, so I ran my finger over the embossing powder and removed some of it. It gave it a fun distressed look.

On the right page, which is really not a full page, I adhered a vellum envelope (cut in half) that had been embossed with white embossing powder and the edges inked with purple VersaColor ink. I added tags to the envelope with plans to journal and maybe have my sweet girl write something about her own birthday party that she would like to remember. One of those tags also has some Prima flowers adhered to it and a pink tab (done on the Silhouette) added to the top corner. A great way to customize tabs is to stamp on them.

Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what ya' think! I would be great to hear from you! Have a great start to your week!

Shabby.

Hi there Cyber-Friends! Greetings from the Gem house where I am slamming out a quick post before going with my fabulous hubby to another doctor's appointment. Sometimes our life seems to revolve around how many doctor's appointments we can fit into a week. I kid you not, between the end of January and the middle of March we had at least TWO every week. I guess that is what you get when you have a husband with a chronic illness. Anyway, I snuck in (using my stealth-ninja powers) and am going to make this post super fast!

This is another layout from the birthday album I did for my little sweetie. One thing that I have done with several of my mini-albums is to make the pages different sizes and shapes. This allows you to see parts of the previous (and future) pages when looking at a layout. I love the look of that! It gives it a shabby chic/altered book kind of feel. It's so fun to get to see some of what you looked at a few pages earlier, and also get a little peak of what is to come. Also, it is a bunch of fun to add envelopes and tags. That way you can journal or stick in a little photo or have pockets to put other fun memorabilia too!

Hope you enjoy today's tidbit! Have a great weekend peeps!

All Flowery

Well, for this post, I have chosen a page from an album I did for my sweet daughter's birthday. I have since gotten photos put in the album, but not until after photographing it. So there are no photos placed in the album in this picture. It is, however, one of my favorite pages in the album. Sweet daughter likes it too!!! (Boy...she must have good taste, huh?? LOL!)

It's been fairly busy this week here at the Gem house. Family in town, doctor's appointments, work and of course, much needed relax time. Not much scrapbooking or card making going on, however. I have lost my mojo and can't seem to find it. I am going to have to keep looking, I guess!

I used my Whale of a Punch retro flower punch to punch all the flowers then arranged them around the mat. When I was ready to place the photos, I simply slid them under the flower petals after adding adhesive to the back of them. That way the flowers overlapped and created depth to the pages. The lime green tab with the window was cut from the Quikutz Silhouette. (very versatile!)

The cover of this album was created by folding a manila file folder. I covered it with patterned paper and on the inside of the cover and back cover are pockets to stick tags and cards in. It created a very fun album for my daughter to hold all her birthday memories.

One last time...

Well, I think this will be the last post from this album. I have had the photo ready for a couple of days, but we have been spending some quality family time together over the weekend with our extended family. It has been a lot of fun.

We have had quite a bit of family related issues concerning family members in the hospital...so if you would remember us in prayer it would be so appreciated. My husband's family and mine both.

Okay. Now on to the photo.

I love this close-up photo of my son. It shows all the freckles on his nose. (Can't see those in this post, however!) I did print it in black-and-white, which lends continuity to the layout, but the unfortunate thing is that ya' don't get to see his sparkly blue eyes. Aaahhhh....another time.

Since I wanted the focus to be on his face, I zoomed in really close for the 4x6 photo. The actual photo was taken pretty close, but I still wanted to lose some of the background. The word "His" on the left layout is made up of sticker letters from Doodlebug Designs. The white "bullseye" embellishment is from that Creating Keepsakes scrapbook kit I got for a whooping $5, and the patterned paper (both striped and dots) are from the Bo-Bunny Shabby Princess line.

I adhered the photo on three sides (making it a pocket) and stuck in a tag. That is a trick I often use to hide my journaling. That way the journaling is still there, but I don't have to worry about finding a place on the page to put it!

Hope all you cyber-friends have a great day!

Still Learning.

Well, I have spent some time trying to practice watermarks for my photos and also trying to decide what format to save my photos for posting them to this blog. Oh my! I have done watermarks before, but it has been a while. Learning a new program is always a challenge! Sometimes it takes time to get it to do what ya' want! And I know almost nothing about posting things to the web and to my blog...so it is going to be learning as I go!

However, I did get a photo ready and have a scrapbook page to show you.

This is another layout from my son's mini-album that he loves so much. This is from a special time he spent with his cousin. (who is now FIFTEEN! Where does time go?)

The patterned paper is again from the Bo-Bunny Shabby Princess line. The circle is cut with the circle cutter using The Paper Company's Papaya metallic cover stock. After adhering most all of the edge of the circle, I did leave a place that I could stick a couple of tags down behind it. That is where I "hid" my journaling. The letters are from Reminisce. (I think!) and the frame for the photo is kind of a cool little thing. It has a story behind it too! I was at a scrapbook/craft store and they had a scrapbook kit on sale for $5. It included an 8x8 album, embellishments and paper!! Wahoo!!! Well, in this Creating Keepsakes album kit were some metal frames covered with paper. So what I have done here is paint over the frame using Making Memories Scrapbook paint (Funking Vintage Chartreuse) and then stamp on it using some Verve Visual star stamps in Clearsnap's Chestnut Roan Chalk ink.

Also, if you get out your magnifying glass or microscope and look at the left side of the layout, you might be able to see some alphabet tabs that I adhered to the edge of each of the pages. One tab per page and it spells out my son's name.

Have a great weekend, cyber-friends!

Blow out!

This is a scrapbook layout I did for my son's mini-album. He loves it because he knows it is all about him and it is all HIS!

On the left page I used Jack + Abby Cupcakes by Else Flannigan for the background paper and then sanded off the top of the embossed images. The small rectangles of polka dot paper on both pages is from the Bo-Bunny Shabby Princess Collection. All the papers from that line are oh-so-cute!!

The ghosted photo I used for the right-hand page was created by printing my photo out on a sheet of cardstock using my laser printer. I then adhered a sheet of vellum over the top. I then added my embellishments over that.

The pages in this album are all different sizes and so added a lot of dimension to the book. It is a very fun way to scrapbook!

Here it Goes!

Well, I am here. I have said I was going to do this for months. Okay...like over seven months. Things keep getting in the way. Work, kids, schooling my kids at home, scrapbooking. But here I am.

I don't know exactly how to explain what I anticipate this blog becoming because I don't have any pre-conceived notions about it. I want it to be a place to post some of my scrapping, cardmaking, artwork-type stuff. However, it might also be a place for me to post some of the other "stuff" going on in my life. Perhaps it will turn out to be a "brain dump" also.

I know there are some blogs out there that I really love and I love each of them for different reasons. Some of them because they have some great artwork/scrapping things going on. Some I love because of the personal nature of the blog. I have come to the conclusion that I don't have time to do a blog for my personal thoughts and one for my artwork...so it is going to have to be a combined thing. And here it is!

So, forward on! I will be posting semi-regularly. At least that is my heart's desire. However, life has a tendancy to rush on leaving me behind. I guess I will just roll with the punches. Thanks for visiting and hope you stop again soon!!