My daughters College Graduation pages

I thought I would post some pages that I have been working on for several scrapbooks so this post might be heavy with pics. My first born graduated from College YEAH..3 more to go back in 2007- so this was a very proud moment in our family. So I did several pages.

I went thu my black and white papers and pulled out everything and went from there- I didn't want the papers to distract from the pics so I used either stripes or plain papers. I tore a sheet from a notebook to journal on and inked the edges with Tim Holtz "old Paper" inks. Used my Gypsy  & Cricut for all the words and layered them with red and white cardstock. This 2 page is for my memory scrapbook.

And these (kinda blurry sorry) 2 pages are for my daughters memories. I used one of the programs we saved from her commencement and cut it up so embellish her page with. the college song, the program times, logo for 150th years  and her degree page and titles. I used all the same papers and Cricut cuts also.

Little Angel for Frosted Designs

Isn't she just a Little Angel? I thinks so, but that's because she is my grand-daughter. I did this lo while I was a my retreat a week ago and I also entered it in the Parade of Pages- as the most favorite page I did during the retreat. Everyone loved it- so pretty and love the cute stamps as a banner- they said.
  Well I got the sketch from Sketch Along Tuesdays over at Frosted Designs and these photos were perfect for the sketch.

Materials used: Graphic 45 paper, DCWV green paper sanded, white and red cs, and photo paper embossed with Cuttlebug and folders, jewel brads, polka dot ribbon , red cord or ribbon for banner, Cricut and Gypsy for Title cut "Little Angel" on Coredinations paper sanded prior to cutting. Paper flowers misted with Clear Tattered Angel Mist, Stickles in red, Graphic 45 stamps cut out, and the Seasons Greeting precut embellie. So not only is this the sketch from Frosted Designs this week I incorporated the Ribbon/twine challenge in this layout also. This will be a treasured page in her scrapbook that for sure.
      Be sure to check out all the challenges and the Love is in the Air Blog Hop scheduled for this weekend over at Frosted Designs

big SIS... little BRO

What a fun layout this was for me to do for the ribbon/twine challenge over at Fabulous Fridays at Frosted Designs this week. These 2 photos are of my 2nd  cousins, that I had the priviledge to babysit for while their mommy (my cousin) spent some quality time for herself on her birthday. The baby (Joshua) was only 2 weeks old and I loved holding him every minute and so did his big sister.

 We R Memory Keepers papers, Recollections border punch, a colorful pink / orange gross grain ribbon in several spots on the page, stamps, brown & teal inks, Journal tag, chipboard alphas in green and sticker alphas in brown, chalks and a few brads to complete this "cute" page.

 I stamped the birdhouse, branches and birds on cream colored cardstock and then fussy cut them to put on the page. I used some chalks to give them a bit of color.

 Also added some colorful ribbon to the "cute" tag. Well be sure to stop by Frosted Designs to see some more wonderful projects that the Design team came up with this week and enter into our challenge of Ribbon/Twine on a project for a chance to win a prize from Memorable Seasons.

Debbie's Christmas Tree- guessing game

 I just had to do a layout of all my trees that I had put up back in 2007 and all the fun we had with a game that I had played with all 22 of my guests(family) on Christmas Day. I just love to decorate for the Christmas season- but that year I went overboard and put of 5 treees and I counted all the ornaments on each tree as I put them on. Main tree with all handmade ornaments, SANTA tree with all santas, and 3 trees together with a variety of small and handmade ornaments. Then on Christmas Day, I had everyone guess how many on each tree and then a grand total of all ornaments ( not lights) and put them on the peices of paper that I had already designed and made copies of. There were 4 winners- who ever came the closet on their guess for each of the trees and the grand total winner - which my Uncle guessed right on the nose....Each recieved Gift cards from Starbucks- just something little for fun. Now the family wants to do this game each year...lol

I used ornament paper from Paper Heart( how appropriate) and plain cs for all the matting- tore the edges and inked with moss green , and three tags to identify each tree...simply layout-- but I love and will cherish the memories from this page.

I"M BACK..from my scrapping retreat.

    And I'm all fired up for the new chapter in my life to begin. I had so much fun while on this 3 day retreat sponsored by Heart & Soul Memories- I believe this was the 8th time I have gone and look forward to next time. I was celebrating 2 occasions at this retreat-  my Birthday (26th) and my Divorce Day( 20th) with old and new friends, whom made this weekend extra special for me. Thanks girls!

 I completed a whomping 30 pages...so I think I got my mojo back..lol I worked on some Christmas & graduation layouts from 2007 and some more recent photos of my grand-daughter and my dogs- so a variety of photos to work with.  I will be posting all these layouts in the next few weeks- and I leave here with a photo taken of me and my balloons while sitting at my scrapping spot-

2 Pieces of the Puzzle...

     First of all ,I just wanted to post that it was my Birthday yesterday (26th) and I have been so busy I haven't had the time to post anything this week. Because at the beginning of the week the 20th- I finally had my day in court for my Divorce, which has been consuming me for the past 9 months with all kinds of worries and doubts about my future. But , now that it is final-- I am happy to say that I'm in a good spot and I'm looking forward to the new chapter in my life and can't wait to start moving ahead. I have so many goals and plans for myself- and I get to do them in the comfort of MY home and my wonderful craft/scrapbook room, which I have been organizing and filling with all my goodies for the past 4 years.
     My life has been like a puzzle and all the pieces were scattered and now I'm starting to put all the pieces back together again..and here are the 2 pieces are so dear to me...my girls. I did this layout a month or so ago while on Christmas break and thought it was a good one to post with my topic of discussion. And I'm happy to announce the girls are living with me also (Jenna & Izzy)

    So with that said- hopefully you will be seeing and hearing from me  more often and I cant wait till this weekend to get started back into scrapping once again- on a regular basis. I am treating myself ( for my birthday) to a 3 day scrapbooking retreat here in Palatine Illinois, once again- and I'm so excited for that 5 o'clock whistle today and will be scrapping- laughing and enjoying new and old friends till 3 pm on Sunday-

    I want to say and express a big heart of thanks to some of you whom have already known of my situation and all the support you have given me- on either my blog or on facebook- it means alot- So thanks for caring! And- I will be blog hopping once again too- I will have more time to concentrate and relax with what I love to do--- my passion for scrappin!

A-Z Challenge the letter F this month

Here is a layout I did using  the letter F=  friends, flowers, flourishes and fun times for Scrapbookers Anonymous challenge this month.I just love this challenge I look forward to it every month- makes you go thru your stash and see what you have that starts with that letter. I went out with a few of my dearest friends whom I haven't seen for awhile and we got together for a nice dinner and one of the girls brought us all Bling Rings to celebrate us getting together and our friendship for over 30 years- we had a fabulous time and plan on getting together again- soon. So, I did a layout to remember this event and titled it- The Bling Ring Friends.

 The fancy lace flowers were cut individually and added rhinestones to the center, the flourishes I used Tulip Paint and hand drew them on and the rhinestone flourishes I bought, the rest of the title "friends" is in the lower right corner which is a metal  saying.

 I used my Gypsy and Expression to cut out the title with the Ashlyn's Alphabet cartridge from  a shiny silver and black cardstock and added silver Stickles to it for more bling. Used my new Martha Stewart butterfly punch and added 3 of them to the page with some glitter.

I pulled the colors out of the clothes we were all wearing from K&Company specialty papers I really like the color combo and it also has a floral pattern-so festive. Well can't wait till next month- for the letter G.

Color Us Happy

The Fabulous Friday challenge over at Frosted Designs this week is Paint...and that is what I did here in more ways than one. I used several colors of acrylic paint and scattered brush strokes over the page and then this layout is of my son and his girlfriend painting some projects in my craftroom one evening. As you can see they were a litlle messy- I think they got more paint on them than the projects...lol  I also drew and cut out my own paint-brushes and painted the tips of them.
 I used a colorful patterned paper for background, torn graph paper- so the photo's would show up better, cricut cartridge- Ashlyn's Alphabet for title and acrylic paints. I think this turned out great- such a colorful and fun page. So be sure to get out those Paints this week and have fun on a project and be sure to enter for a chance to win a prize at Fabulous Fridays at Frosted Designs....can't wait to see what you come up with!!!

Farwell Miss Antioch-layout

Here is a page I did the other day for a challenge to use 5 or more photos on a layout - The Studio Challenge this week. The photos are of my son's girlfriend saying farwell this past summer and giving up her crown to the new Miss Antioch.

Materials used: K&Company background paper, Webster pages die cut heart, white cardstock for all matting,Gypsy and Cricut Cartridges for cuts of the title and crown, Stick pins, K&Company border strips, lots of bling. I made my own flowers from paper towels and used some florist silk white leaves.

I made this a two page layout so here is the other page that goes with this one- but there is still 5 photo's on this one page for the Challenge.

a treasured POEM

This was a challenge alright- 4 of them-- First one is Frosted Designs to use cardstock only ( this was stepping out of the box for me) Scrap Our Stash "NEW" challenge - so this was a new technique of cardstock only & no pictures- a poem instead, Scrapbookers Anonymous to use either ink, mist or paint along with masking on a project and the last challenge I used was the sketch from Sketch Along Tuesdays over at Frosted Designs.

 All my papers are plain cardstock- which I masked stars on the background, chalked a rainbow,  embossed on the sun and clouds, and fringed for the grass.  I used Tattered Angel Mist, several inks and jelly roll markers. This cardstock was a great challenge for this layout of mine- because I wanted the poem to really be the main focus of this page for my daughters scrapbook.

 She wrote this poem the night her grandfather (my father) passed away and gave it to me the next day, which was also 2 days before I was getting remarried- so it was an emotional roller coaster in our household. I tried to bring out a few of the embellishments that she had written  about in her poem such as the birds, clouds, the sun , rainbows and grass. I used some rain drop like rhinestones  to represent rain from the clouds which she mentioned also in this lovely poem.

I drew some birds and some swirls to represent the wind- which might be kinda hard to see in this photo. This is the original copy that she wrote on -so this will be a treasured page for sure in her book. I know the sketch is not quite the same as Sketch Along Tuesdays- but I was inspitred by the sketch and tried to follow it the best I could with this poem- instead of a photo.

B & W and hint of Color Layout

Black & White and a bit of Color is the challenge at The Paper Variety and this is my layout of a  friend of mine's- daughter (Aubrille Lynn). And this challenge was just perfect for this black & white photo I had  and I choose yellow as my hint of color with a few bumble bees and ribbon.

 I used a border punch and Cricut font cartridge ( Calligraphy Collection) and did some fussy cutting of  the white flowers and staggered them with pop dots on top of the black flower paper. I then used diamond Stickles on the name and the white flowers to add a little bling to the page. I think this page is so elegant and perfect for this adorable photo. Sweet & Simple.

Camp Buddies

Here is my take of the sketch over at Sketchabilities this week- but I used 4 pictures instead of the 3 to keep them all together in one layout. My daughter recentlly went thru some of her older photos and is giving them to me to scrap for her book...but I have already chronilogically passed this time in her life- so I am kinda back tracking in her scrapbook. 
I used Recollections-Charming Stack papers, buttons, scrappers floss, inks, pop dots, sticker alphas, scalloped punch, fine black marker and misc cardstock and scrap papers.

Some cute little gift bags and tags

I made about 70 of these cute little gift bags with tags for  my friends at work, my bowling buddies and my relatives- each bunch of people got different goodies in their bags. Some, I made my Christmas tidbits (seasoned oyster crackers) some received a variety of chocolates, and the other relatives got gummy bears- which everyone seemed to enjoyed what ever they received. So of course, I was making these too --at the last minute- so I wanted something fairly simple to put together 70 of them in an evening or so.

 I already had the little plastic bags on hand- so that was great- didn't need to go out and buy them. Then I remembered that I had bought a few bags full of cardstock scraps from the Scrapbook Expo for $2.00 and Yes!-- I found this shiny white cardstock strips in the package- so I used it all up. I knew I would put it to good use sooner or later.

 I found a simple tree cut from Christmas Cheer Cricut cartridge and again went thru my larger scraps of green paper and cut out 70 trees and  also cut from Tags, bags, boxes & more cartridge 70 tags out of white cardstock.While that was all cutting went to my stash of red papers and found 5 sheets of the same floral leaf-berry paper and cut them into 3 x 3 squares and mounted them on my white cardstock -which I earlier used my scor-pal to make all the fold lines

 Then when everything was finally cut I inked all the edges of the trees with brown and the tags I inked in multi colores of pink, red, blue and greens. next step-- was too get my stamps out and stamp all the tags with my saying "Joyful Greetings" and on the back I stamped a swirl design and " handmade for you" then took a red marker and wrote my name. Then with scrappers floss I curled and tied it on the tags and used pop dots to attach them to the card- for a little more dimension  and then I quit for the evening after about 3 hours.

The next day I filled all the little plastic bags with the different goodies and stapled them to the back side-inside the tag holder...and put them into the boxes for each group of people I was handing them out too. Some of them I wrote their names on ( on the tree) so I knew who was getting what. I had fun making  these little goodie bags this year- I always come up with a new project every year for my friends and family - so they kinda expect something from me and it is always something handmade with LOVE.
   Note* the gummy bears I had were soaking in vodka for 4 days prior to putting them in their bags- (keep refrigerated)- thats why I also had names on the tags, so I knew who was getting these with alcohol (which the young/old  folks really liked them)  lol
 Thanks for stopping by and checking out my little project last week--Wishing you all Happy Holidays and a very safe and Happy New Year.....

waiting till the last minute this week

Here is the quick 2-page layout I did tonight for Sketches in Thyme. I had a  few hours to spend in my clean and reorganized craftroom, so I thought I would do one challenge during these busy holidays. It's pictures (that are not very good in lighting) that I took when I took my girls ( the dogs) to Bass Pro Shops to have their pictures taken with Santa in the beginning of the month.

 I used white cardstock for the background, Daisy D, and Basic Grey papers and some ho-ho ho paper from my stash. Cricut cartridges were Ashleys Alphabet & Christmas Cheer for the title and all the snowflakes. I used Tatered Angel Mist in lime green and Espresso for the title and covered the snowflakes with a light blue Stickles.And some distressing done in Vintage Photo ink by Tim Holtz.

The girls had so much fun running around the store (of course on leashes) and visiting with all the workers and customers- they just loved all the attention they received from all, and all the treats too.

My DT project for cloth/fabric challenge

I decided to do a layout this week for the DT  and Challenge for Frosted Designs this week instead of a project- using fabric/cloth . Which was pretty simple to do. I titled my page Apple of my Eye..its a picture of my oldest daughter and her father back in the days when she was in high school.

I had so much fun doing this layout-and I really like how it turned out- even tho it took me a few hours to do- well worth it all in the end and my daughter will really appreciate this page also.The cloth/fabric is the burlap I used behind the picture, which I unraveled the edges a bit and used the twine to tie a bow on the corner of the photo.Materials used in the page are: October Afternoon for apple/checked paper, KI- alpahabet paper, Burlap, Tree Cut from Cricut - My Community, chalks, inks, Stickles, 4 apple brads, alphabet tiles cut out and mounted on barn red cardstock and attached with pop dots- and bakers twine for the banner effect of the title
I hope you get a chance to do a project and enter it over at Frosted Designs for a chance to win some fabulous prize they have to offer- Happy Holidays to all.

My daughter H.S. graduation...

I was busy this weekend and got 5 layouts done for challenges and here is another from Sketchy Thursday. The sketch called for a background broken up in 4 squares and to use 6 pictures which is alot- but I managed to find 5 with the same theme so here it goes for my take....

I used my scraps for this layout the school colors were royal blue and yellow so that was easy for the cardstock to find the blue, and their dresses were yellow and blue floral prints  -so the whole thing pulled together for me. I made the banner flag using Hero Arts banner stamps amd upper case Alpha rubber stamp set for the title. Tied on some blue cord with knots in between each flag. Did some simple journaling in the middle of the page, and lots of pop dots on the banner also.

Monkey Business...

Here is my take for the sketch from Sketchabilities  this week...and its a silly page of some older pictures I found of my daughter and a friend of hers having a silly sleep over and monkeying arond. I used Recollections (monkey cuts outs) K&Company (Rhapsody paper) and misc scraps of black and grey papers.

 I painted the mats of the circle cut out pics with white paint and added glitter to it (which doesn't show up here at all) Also with the white paint I splattered all around the edge of the page to resemble the white powder or whatever it is on their faces.

I used my Cricut to cut the scalloped piece of paper for the journaling area- which my daughter can do later. and a small circle punch for the title  and inked the edges in green. other materials used were pop dots, inks, chipboard flowers, hearts and buttons, scrappers floss and a Big letter M from my stash.

Frosted Designs-ribbon challenge (DT)

I was so excited to make this ornament for this challenge at Frosted Designs  this week... here is my ribbon pinecone ornament.
     I will have a tutorial on how to make this ornament on the Frosted Designs blog on Sunday- December 18th- so be sure to come back and check it out.  (just click on the name)
     It was very simple and fun to make this - and would make a great gift for anyone on your list this year. The dimensions on this ornament or 2" x 3" so it is a great size- not to big or to small- just right!
The challenge is to do any project using ribbon this week for an entry and a chance to win not 1 but 3 fabulous prizes this week from our generous sponsor GRAPHIC 45--- so be sure to give this a try and let me know how your ornament turned out.

SOUS sketch challenge

I was busy this past weekend doing layouts- it felt so good and of course I had to do the SOUS challenge love that blog site- great sketches and ideas all the time.

I always try to do a layout using all my older scraps if I can and this is the one I decided to do that with this week. So all the papers are from my Holiday stash. I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the trees and added Stickles to them also. Some misc gold vellum stickers on the photo corners, and ornaments cut out of paper and layered for some dimension. This is a photo of my daughter and her cousin (who is in the Marines) and was home visiting- they are the same age.

All Dolled Up...

This is for the challenge over at Sketchy Thursday this week and I found some older photos of my daughter at a variety of her high school dances- so I thought I would do a page for her. I was trying to pull the colors out of the dresses that my daughter and her friend  were wearing on top pic throughtout the layout.

The background floral paper is by Paper Studio"Boho Chick paper stack" and the strips are from my stash including the gold ribbon and the pinky/purple floral acetate by Mambly. I used my circle cutter for the musical paper and found some sticker alphas in the purple color that I wanted to pull out and applied them with pop dots. Inked the border of layout with black

I needed something else for this page - but wasn't sure whated- I didn't want to put flowers on this one- so I was looking at the photo and noticed the gold necklace my daughter was wearing and thought...I can make that. So I took out my acetate and Stickles and drew the necklace on the acetate then added a fine glitter in gold to really shine more than the Stickles. I then trimmed around the necklace that I had drawn and placed it on the page and I kinda like how it turned out. So why stop there I added some more gold stickles to the floral pattern paper in several areas and  purple Stickles in centers for some more added bling.