Some exciting News!!!

I have been choosen along with some other very talented ladies to be on the FROSTED DESIGNS- Sketch Along Tuesdays- Design Team.  I'm thrilled and excited to start creating some future layouts for the sketch challenges every other Tuesday to share with you. So be sure to come over to Frosted Designs and check them out and see what fabulous sponsors they have for the month of March and some great inspiration from the other team members.





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 Here is a layout I worked on this weekend- no challenge, but thought I'd scrap a page of my rock that I found in Arkansas on my parents property, shaped like the state of Illinois. Which I also hand painted to look like the state geographically- and I have it on display in my front yard. The picture doesn't do it justice- the rock weighs about 50 pounds or more and is about 3 feet high by 1 1/2 ft wide. They (friends) say I will paint anything that doesn't move..lol  Well this rock isn't going no where- yet everyone who sees it wants to take it home with them.

I'm just cranking out the layouts this week...

Here are a few more pages I did for some challenges this week. I have been on a roll and creative juices flowing- plus the weather hasn't been to great- but great for me to spend some time in the scrapbook room. The first one is for the sketch#108 at The Scrappiest- its a Magic Kingdom page of my 2 sons, cousin and Me back in 2004- before I was scrapbooking and these are the only photos I took with the beautiful castle in the background.

Materials used: My Mind's Eye and We R Memories, cream and white cardstock papers.
Chalks, starburst stamp, black ink, circle punches, yarn, alpha stamps, pop dots and prism stickers.

This layout of my 2 sons trying to break open a pinata (which the boys made) blindfolded and with a fly swatter at my son's 8th grade graduation party back in 2004 is for  Sassy Lil Sketches this week.

Materials used here were:
Paper Studio, Bo-Bunny Press, My Mind's Eye and Chatterbox papers. Decorative edger scissors, misc. alpha stickers, hole punch, pop dots, brown Zig marker, and some cut out words.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays #43

I almost have done these Frugal Friday posts for a year now- wow- time flies. So, while I'm scrapping away- which I have been doing alot of lately (I have over 100 pages done so far in 2011) I'm always thinking about my next Frugal Friday post and this week I was kinda stumped for awhile. Till I was playing around with my misc. drawers and kinda seeing what I had stashed away- and this is what I found and thought...what can I do with these acrylic overlays from my clear stamps?

Since I have all my stamps filed in cd's cases or in other storage boxes- I don't need these plastic overlays- I'm so glad I didn't throw them away (but, I never throw things away). I just put them all in a container and put them in a drawer, knowing I would use them for something someday. Well, my idea is to use them now on your cards or layouts-as great embellishments. You can just use as they are and place on your project- paint them is a great idea for me- I love to paint and give them some dimension, or use the words as part of your titles or sub titles on layouts. Just cut out the area that you want to use- if there are several designs on the sheet - or use them to trace for patterns. I'm excited to start looking thru my stash to see exactly what I can start using - hopefully you have saved these overlays or still have them to use. Happy Scrapping!

The next Future Model- LNS

 I was trying to incorporate several challenges into one layout and it all worked out- really happy how this turned out of my daughter and some of her modeling photos taken over a year ago. I wanted the photos to be the main focus not the embellishments or pretty papers so the challenge over at Frosted Designs this week to not use PP was just perfect, and I used the sketch from Sassy Lil Sketches and FCCB challenge is to emboss on your project and over at Crop Suey to paint on a layout. So here it is titled LNS- the next future Model.

 Materials used: Cardstock in black, white, red and blue-Cuttlebug and 4 embossing folders & die cut of butterfly, 4 corner brackets with white star brads, acetate for title area, white acrylic paint, sticker prisms, and pop dots.

 I placed the acetate over the embossed squares after I hand painted my title on them. The acetate on top of the page is over 3 black embossed squares which is hard to see in the above photo which I wrote her intials and name on. I also hand painted the white border around the page and the thin mat look on the photos in white acrylic paint.

I embossed the four colors of squares-each color with the same design to represent the color of clothing she had on in each photo- then added the simple white embossed butterflies to represent beauty and freedom with some added bling to the center of them. I hope she likes this page as much as I do. I need to see if I can get any more of her photo shoot pictures- these were fun to work with.

Remember when....good ole' days

This is my take for Sketchy Thursdays this week of a few photos of me when I was around 3- 6 years old. I don't really remember them- But I do remember the pajamas we all wore at Christmas and the dolls in my lap. I used all papers by October Afternoon, a muted green cardstock from DCWV, inked the edges in black ,white cardstock for mats on photos, made my own felt circles with buttons and thread tied on and made a little pleated paper ribbon with part of the title written on it and then chalked in 3 colors. Stamped with versa mark ink clear the words-aunt, brother,sister, uncle, mom and dad all over background. Then with black thread machine stitched a border in a zig-zag stitch.

I'm the Guest Designer over at Frosted Designs today

 Again, I'm thrilled to have been choosen to be the Guest Designer  today at Frosted Designs- Sketch along Tuesdays- and to work with another great sketch designed by Fern and here is what I came up with this week. I'm currently working on my 2004 photos and this is the year I took my boys to Walt Disney World, finally- they were 14 & 15 years old- we all had a great time the whole week we were there.

 Materials I used were: My Mind's Eye, Jenni Bowlin Studio, and Sassafras papers- misc cardstock. Cricut cuts from Mickey & Friends, Autumn Leaves (alpha stamps) for part of the title, white acrylic paint splattered, vellum saying, 3 yellow metal star tags, Karen Foster's scrappers floss, black 3-D glaze marker, black Staz-On ink, pop dots, vellum tape, Stickles in Diamond.

I did some doodling around the border in black dots, added Stickles to the silver stars and the swirls behind the Friends title and also circled the number 3 on the bingo card.  1 (pluto) plus 2 (new Friends) = 3 Well, I hope you like my take on this weeks sketch  and be sure to check in with Frosted Designs for all their many challenges they have with wonderful sponsor prizes for the winners.

Sketches in Thyme #36

I really enjoy working with these photos that I found of my father- which I have never seen them before. In fact this is the only baby picture that I have - which I just received about a month ago from my aunt (my dad's sister) who was going thru some stuff of my grandmothers and found a few photo's that she thought I would like to have. My father passed away over 10 years ago and this Thursday the 24th would of been his 79th birthday- so its perfect for me to have these photos right now to scrap and cherish them. I worked with the sketch from Sketches in Thyme #36 and I will be also applying this to the challenge to use a frame at The Studio Challenges.

 I thought it would be great to do another heritage layout of these black and white photos. I used K&Company designer 2 sided papers, DCWV Street Lace stack, and misc cardstock for cricut cuts, and a acetate screen print in gold by Mambly for the mats on photos. Distressed all edges and used chalks, inks ,and a  fine marker for journaling strips. The Cricut cartridges used - A Child's Year and Plantin Schoolbook, used my Gypsy to weld letters and enlarge the scalloped  border frame two times.

 I used Tattered Angels spray mists for the cut outs of a bear, wagon, cats,  eagle wings, bicycle and frame with his name on top of page. Other embellishments were brads, metal heart, corner brads, ribbon, old postcard and a metal bracelet chain with birthday on it (in between the 2 sm. photos)

I am really happy how this Hertige page turned out and I do believe this photo of my dad in uniform is when he was 18 years old and was going to be stationed over in Italy. I will have to get more info from my mother-she probably hasn't even seen these photos. Well, Happy Birthday- Dad- I love and miss you very much.

Creative Scrappers #143

Here is my take on the sketch #143 over at Creative Scrappers- a bit different to work with- so I didn't step to far away from the sketch on this one. I used papers by Making Memories, K&Company and Fancy Papers. Cut the blue felt leaves out and scattered them on page, circle punch, blue ribbon tied on the buttons and machine stitched around the border. The first one is titled "Here Fishy Fishy" This was taken of my two sons at Epcot Center at Walt Disney World back in 2004.

 Since I have two books and the same photo I did another layout with the same sketch but did my own drawing on the bottom half of the page. I drew with a light blue crayon then with several Tattered Angel spray I  misted the crayon that then wiped it off leaving the drawing area un sprayed (masked off.) Then I hand drew with a fine black marker some lines and added a few fish and shells cut out from some designer papers. No title to this page but some journaling and a cute little snail added on the side- again a circle punch and some hand made buttons from chipboard with ribbon and used Tim Holtz's distressing tool to the edges of colorful circle paper.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays #42

Here's a quick and easy organizational tip for you this week. I keep a 3 ring binder with a list of all my supplies  (which you can see in my week #5 ) I have a seperate page or two now for all my embossing powders that I have. I just use the same stamp each time and heat emboss the new color to the page and then I write underneath it the color and the name brand. This makes it easier to just look up to see what color I have and what to use on that special project, instead of looking thru the drawer where I keep them. There are so many kinds of new embossing powders w/ glitter out on the market I forget which one I have and which ones I want-but with this list in front of me- now I know exactly what I have.  Well enjoy your weekend and have fun creating all those new layouts and projects- Spring is coming!!!

Enjoy Life and Smile -3 layouts with same picture and sketch

 I enlarged this photo of 3 of my 4 kids the other day to do for each of their scrapbooks- so I kinda had an assembly line of layouts and I tried to scrap a page in under an hour. Well I did pretty good I did 3 pages in about 2 hours -once I found all my different papers in blues and greens.
     Each layout I used the same sketch (from my PageMaps Book = 12 x 12 sketch #2) and just changed the papers or embellies a bit on each one.

I used my Gypsy to cut the Enjoy Life- and the layered tree twice and a few dragonflies for my embellishments. I tore alot of my papers and inked the edges. I also covered chipboard with paper and cut out large brackets and flowers for the top layout and added a decorative stickpin.

I added some rhinestones and hand drew stitches on this layout for my daughters page- it has a softer more girlie look with the floral paper and white dragonflies. Each layout has a small journaling spot-which I still need to journal that- so I guess there not quite done- but I was happy to have completed all 3 in about 2 hours. Which would of taken me about 6 hours had I did them seperately. This was a great sketch to worth with for one enlarged photo.

Visiting Mickey Mouse

Here is a layout done for PageMaps for the February Sketch titled Visiting Mickey, which is photos taken of my two sons taken back in 2004. I had taken my daughter's years ago when they were younger and always promised my boys I would take them someday- well better late than never they were 14 and 15- which they had a great time and got along terrific.

Sandylion- red pola dot paper, black striped by Recollections and misc cardstock in black, red, white and yellow. Used all my cuts from Cricut cartridge Mickey and Friends, red and yellow Stickles for the stars and part of title "Mikey", stamped in black ink  the background with a block stamp by Penny Black, made a pleated border on white cardstock and inked for the other part of the title "visiting with " made a mickey face journal spot and used 3-D glaze marker for all writing on page. Also colored the black trim on outer edge with a marker.

African Safari layout for SOUS

Here is my take for SOUS this week and is titled "African Safari" taken at the Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World back in 2004. I used several animal print papers by Paper Pizazz, painted the mats on all the photos in Antique white, used a  circle cutter for journaling area along with a scalloped punch for one photo, ink edges of layout in brown chalk ink.

I then hand stitched with embroidery floss around the grey paper in a cream color straight stitch. Then with  twine I made x's on the left border and tied it on the tree trunks also- that I hand cut out for the right side of layout. I used the Cricut cartridge Zoobaloo for the title in a cream cardstock back with an animal paper and a bit of distressing with ink.

Scaredy Cats...really dogs

This is my layout for the sketch at Sketchy Thursdays. This past summer we took the dogs to Chicago to the dog park area on Lake Michigan near Montrose Harbor- a day planned around the DOGS... and they were afraid of the water. So my husband has to trick and bribe them with treats to get wet. We ended up having a great time after all and did alot of walking along the beach all day. That's why I gave this page the Title of Scaredy Cats!

I used K&Company papers from a designer stack and inked all the edges in brown, white cardstock for mats, acetate on the bottom which I painted to look like water and stamped a black border in Staz-On ink.Used a Cricut cartridge and welded with my Gypsy for the title and added Stickles.

Let's Eat Cake

This is my take for Sketches in Thyme this week and also the challenge to use cupcakes on a project over at The Paper Variety. Another few pictures of my mother-in-laws 80th birthday pary and a few of the guest from out of town (my husband's sister who was home on leave from Iraq) which was a big surprise for everyone- that were celebrating with her. Used misc papers from stash, cut out cupcakes from special designer paper and put pop dots on them, yellow ric-rac, Inkadinkado alpha stamps for the title stamped in orchid ink and traced with a fine black marker. Each photo matted in a bright colored cardstock and inked the border of page in lime green.

Happy 80th Birthday...Doris

This is my take for Creative Scrappers sketch #142 this week and it's a few pictures of my mother-in-law at her 80th Birthday party that the family all got together for in Wisconsin back in 2004.

I used Misc. papers that I found in the colors of lavendar, white and green cardstock for tags and leaves. An 8" doiley which I chalked with yellow and green and distressed with brown ink. I made the flowers and spray mist them for their colors and added stickles and rhinestones. Stamped the title "Happy Birthday: and the 3 other tags with black ink and chalked them also. Added a lavendar flower border with white lace above it, hand drew with black marker the stitch look around the border of the page. Doris's (the birthday gal) favorite flowers were the color theme for the party- Iris and daffodils which they had lots of them in vases all over in the house.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays #41

Did you have The Big Bite? that big tool you just had to have  and now you haven't used it for awhile or even a hole punch would work...well get it out and put it to use. It works great when you use it to punch those holes far in on a layout or card. And of course punching through chipboard or thicker pieces of paper sure does make it easier and  attaching your brads/eyelets its great. Here are just a few samples of things you can do to dress up some items for embellishments. Hole punch to make your own borders, add brads to all kinds of chipboard like letters or flowers  and eyelets to look really cute, like the green flower one with all different colors. Punch holes and then weave  ribbons through the holes. I sometimes just sit and get out all my supplies and just make up misc. embellishments ahead of time and then keep them in a container, so I can just grab one to add to a page or project. So use up some of those supplies that we have so many of and make your own cute embeelishments for your future projects.

Crop Suey Challenge

The challenge over at Crop Suey this week is to use 9 different items on a layout- which is alot but this layout of my daughter's Prom dance qualifies for this challenge. I used designer paper, black & white cardstock, several word stickers, I made the tuxedo with bow, cricut cut swirls, stamped the birdcage and embossed in black, made the flowers from paper towels, spray then with Tattered Angel mist, added rhinestones and pearls, some silk silver leaves,  andStickles glitter - which is more than 9 items on this layout.

I'm the Guest Designer at Frosted Designs...

I was so thrilled to be ask by Debbie over at Frosted Designs to be the Guest Designer for one of this week's sketches...which was Designed by Fern and a great one to work with. With Valentine's Day coming up next week I choose to use the colors black, white & pink and heart & flowers for embellisments for this layout of my cousins wedding. The photos are of the newly married couple and my husband & I dancing- there was "Love in the Air".

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Be sure to go check out the new sketches and challenges over at Frosted Designs-click here- they have such wonderful prize packages and a very friendly & talented DT to get alot of inspiration from weekly- I just love this blog site.

      I used K&Company Designer stack papers, pink, black and white cardstock for all the Cricut cuts using 3 cartridges. Calligraphy Collection for the title, Accent Essentials for the hearts, swirls and scalloped circles, and A Child's Year for the mat photo borders. On the hearts I used Flower Soft in Sweet Pea and wrote a few words in the center of them. I chalked the mats in pink and inked the edges also in Studio G pink ink added a few white silk flowers and stamped Love all around the matted photos. Pink and black Stickles were added to the title and the black swirls. Then last added one red heart rhinestone to the title.

      The month of January was a great month for me- in my scrapping corner of the world! I was choosen as a guest designer- which was a goal of mine this year, I was choosen by a customer to do a scrapbook of 33 pages for her daughter's skating book, two layouts were choosen as the Top 3 on other blogs, My page titled "Nature" was featured at Practical Scrappers - also I just won the Frosted Designs January prize package - and it was my birthday a few weeks ago- WOW. With this kind of start for the new year - I look forward to coming months ahead. Again, thank-you to all of you a Frosted Designs I look forward to all your posts and your friendly comments.

Our Sweet Izzy

I had so fun fun doing this layout-I love doing dog pages- there just so cute they make me smile all the time. This layout is for Sketchy Thursdays this week with a fabulous prize for the winner of this week's wonderful sketch. They will be choosing 3 layouts done this sketch to be published in a magazine- so I just had to do this page this weekend

 Materials used: Memory Box paper for background, Little Yellow Bicycle -Acetate sheet, Robin Blue and white cardstock, chipboard flowers -emboosed in black and glitter added with some silver stickles, 2 felt flower brads by Making Memories, polka dot ribbon, made my own chipboard title letters-stamped with silver pattern then embossed stamped letters and then doodled little black lines to match the acetate pattern, added a Maya Road clear rhinestone stick pin and some other stash chipboard saying embellishments

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Just Chillling...

Here is my take of the sketch #34 over at Sketches in Thyme this week- I really like working with this one and this is my 5th page with these same pictures because I have so many books I'm doing at the same time- and this is my last one with these pictures- yeah...and one of my favorite ones I did .

I used papers from Me & My Big Ideas paper stack and cut out some flowers and added stickles in copper to them,brown Zig marker for journaling and stamped with Stampendous Doodle alpha stamps the title and colored them a bit in yellow. I actually finished this layout in under an hour and really like how it turned out for my son's scrapbbok-even tho it has flowers on it.

Closest to my Heart

Wow- this page is qualifying for 4 different challenges this week. So first I'll tell you the materials used then Ill list the challenges after the layout. I really spent alot of time making my own embellishments and playing on my Gypsy with this one.  Papers were by  Paper Studio, white and red cardstock, embossing powder in grapefruit and Red Dragon for the hearts, heat gun, misc stamps, scrap chipboard for xoxo, Tattered Angels Spray mist- Bubblegum, Flower Soft in Ivory, Martha Stewart markers in Peony, Stickles in Diamond and Christmas Red, versa mark clear and black ink, fine black marker, pop dots and Cricut cuts from Wild Card and Lyrical Letters welded with my Gypsy for the frame heart and XXX border.

Qualifying challenges are:
Paper Variety-photo inspiration of valentine hearts
Fabulous Fridays at Frosted Designs- use Pink- Red and White only on a project
Studio Challenge- the February sketch and handmade embellishments
Scrapbookers Anonymous- use the letter x as many times as you want.

Poker Faces

Here are two takes for the sketch challenge at Sweet Peach Crop Shop that I found posted at The Scrappiest a few weeks back. Click on here to take you to the challenge which is due by Feb. 7th. Both my takes are similar and have the same pictures in each one (one for each of my 2 son's scrapbooks) yet a little bit different. I used black cardstock for both and used the Cricut cartridge Plantin Schoolbbok for the title on each cut from red and white cardstock. Matted the photos in white and added real cards to make poker hands.

Other embellishments were some poker rub-on words and chips and a sticker with several chips. I made journaling spots on each one with torn cardstock and scraps of poker papers for the background.

Younger Generation

This is my take for Creative Scrappers Sketch #141 this week -and I might say it was a bit different than I'm use to doing. So it took me awhile to figure out the papers and what embellishments I wanted to use for this. So here it is...The background paper is by We R Memory Keepers and the others are all from my stash  that I either inked with black or used my embossing folders and Cuttlebug, then sanded or inked. I stamped my flowers with black on white cardstock and hand cut out and used pop dots to give it more dimension ,added a bit of  diamondStickles to the center of the flowers, too. I used a cream gross grain ribbon and stamped the title in black ink. I didn't want the embellishments to get lost, so I made them all black and white- since the papers were so colorful already. I pretty much stayed with the sketch on this one this week.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays #40

Well, all I can say is WOW did we get the snow here on Tuesday into Wednesday- yeah- Snow Day at our school- so that gave me a whole day to play on Wednesday. I was looking thru my list of challenges for the week and thought I'd do the one over at Scrapbookers Anonymous. The challenge is to go thru your stash and use the letter X as many times as you can on a project/layout. So that got me to dig a bit into my stash and boy did I find the mix-match letters just taking up space. So I told myself- you are going to start using up these letters and cut-outs on this months pages that I do. So, the tip to you this week is go thru your stash and see what is hiding in your drawers or boxes and put them to good use. There is no right or wrong way on how you have to put your titles-so mix-n- match them or use the negative space, you can spray or paint

them to the color you want. Sometimes one big alpha on the page is great to work- or use the letters to make a design on your page, the possibilities are endless so have some fun with your stash and make run for some of the new products coming out soon after the big CHA convention.

The Scrappiest layouts #104 and #105

Here is my take on two challenges over at The Scrappiest this past week- they kept me very busy with all their wonderful sketches so here they are. Sketch #104 is the first one here. I used all My Mind's Eye designer Complete Boy paper stack  and some cardstock for the title cut from Lyrical Letters Cricut cartridge. I distressed all the edges by sanding them and painted the border/mats of the photos in a cream acrylic paint.

 I then added some twine to the handmade circle journal tag and to the top of the page. And lastly, drew the flyswatter as a cute little embellishment by the title

 This next take is from Sketch #105 at The Scrappiest and I used K&I Memories cute doggy/puppy papers, inked all the edges in brown and added some rub-ons and sticker alpha's from my stash. I also drew a brown dash border around the papers and added one floral embellishment at the top for this cute and simple page.

Chicagoland Blizzard here in northern IL

Wow- this is what I woke up to this morning 24" or more of snow-I guess will be busy shoveling for awhile- then I can go play around in my scrapbook room since we won't be going anywhere anytime soon. There is a ban on all driving here- emergency vehicles and plows only on the streets in Lake County, Illinois. And of course there was no school today so I didn't have to drive my school bus and they have already called us and told us there will be no school tomarrow either.. . YEAH... more time to play in my room. Oh and to Kim who won my birthday blog candy-it is packaged and ready to be sent, but might be a few days before I can get it in the mail- or even leave my house. Well going to go take some more pictures of this beautiful snow and shovel some more. My great husband out shoveling early this morning- I went out and took pictures and did a little bit of shoveling too and the dogs are just loving it.

This is a snow drift about 6 feet high on the side of your house-luckily we don't have to shovel this. We live on a culdesac which is completely filled with about 3 feet a snow and who knows when the plows will get to us. What a day to remember the Blizzard of 2011.