New stamps and monthly club

I just joined a new monthly stamp club called The {stamps} of Life. The stamps are only $11 + $1 shipping per month and they are super cute. It was started by Stephanie Barnard who I first was introduced to by watching the videos she made for the former stamp company called Inque Boutique. I sent her in a simple stamping idea that she used to make one of her last videos with them.

So fast forward to yesterday when I ordered her new stamps yesterday. Her policy is that you order and then she calls you personally to get your payment information. I was excited to tell her who I was and sure enough, she remembered me. And she mailed out my stamps the same day. She has some great customer service! I can't wait to start using her stamps!

Gypsy...another chance to win!

Win A Gypsy By Cricut over on cartridge helper.com. That link will take you there! Good luck to all of us!

Call me crazy...10 posts today!

Make that 11, including this post. I took a long break from posting projects on this blog and I am repenting of that. I decided to update my scrapblog with my favorite projects I've done over the past 6 months or so. I hope you enjoy them!

Giraffes

Aren't giraffes funny creatures? I mean, check out that black tongue! I made the border on this page by cutting out the center of this DCWV green stack paper, and the tree branch is from the same stack. I made the paper flower using Donna Salazar's technique. I'm pretty proud of how I changed up the journaling card. It had the right words but it was the wrong color. I traced over the red on the card with a blue Sakura Souffle pen. It was a perfect match!

Halloween...then & now

I love finding photos we have taken that match photos from our youth. These photos were taken in the same doorway (with the same color costumes) of my husband as a child and then my oldest child his first year of really getting trick or treating. The title and haunted house I first dry embossed on this black magic core'dinations paper and then I sanded for the orange color to come through. I love this technique!

Places we go title page

I felt liberated when I discovered Stacy Julian and her Library of Memories system. Organizing pages by theme and not chronologically was a very freeing concept for me. I enjoy scrapping memories and little things more than big events. This was a perfect match! The categories I chose for the main albums are : People we love, Places we go, Things we do, and All about us. I made the title pages the same, just changing the colors, and tied them together by adding stripes of the other three colors on each page. Here is my Places we go title page:

The mini images are from my index prints. The title strip is a piece of black magic Core'dinations paper that I dry embossed with some old stencils and then sanded to let the color come through. The strips of brown, red, and green are scraps from the core'dinations paper I used for the title strips on the other pages.

2 Sisters

Once again, I journalled on Penzu. This time it was about my childhood memories of my sister. I was 9 when she went away to college and 11 when she got married, so I don't remember a lot about her. As I typed, I came up with quite a bit, and I wanted to remember all of these things about her. I came up with this mini book I attached to my page with elastic ribbon. It can be removed to be read without taking the whole page out of it's page protecter. I bound the pages with some gaffer tape. Those little letter stickers from Pink Paislee sure came in handy on this mini album--I labeled the top of each page with them. Most of the journaling is only interesting to me or my family, so this hidden journalling was the perfect solution.

Johnny-isms

My youngest son is a talker. And he comes up with some winners. I could do a page like this every month highlighting his funny phrases, I'm sure!

No photo layout: Just a Note

I recently discovered an online journaling site, Penzu, where I'll occasionally write a long journal entry which isn't necessarily scrapworthy. I wrote this note about one of life's lessons: I'm not in charge of my life. Life is in God's hands. A lesson I learned when we were trying to grow our family and suffered loss through miscarriage a few times. I didn't feel like this entry required a photo, but it was something I decided needed to be preserved in an album.

The title comes from the Wild Card Cricut cart. The flowers I cut from an MME stack, I believe, and then I dry embossed them to give them dimension.

Blanket & One Happy Kid

It was with mixed feelings we celebrated Johnny giving up his blanket. It helped him in so many ways. But it was nice that he gave it up on his own. These two layouts feature different aspects of his blanket, and both include actual pieces of it. Brads and eyelets were the perfect tool for attaching the pieces. The first layout I went for a more subdued mood as I discussed how particular he was with his blanket. The second layout focuses on how happy he was with it, and hence it has a more fun mood to it.

Brothers

This layout features my two sons and how alike they looked as babies. My favorite feature of this layout is the detail cutting I did on the border papers. And the buttons. I love buttons!

Mini Me

I got this Pink Paislee transparency in the warehouse box I bought from PP. This is my first transparency and I love how easy this one made the layout. The paper, letter stickers, and brad are all PP. The flowers are prima, of course! Doesn't my daughter (on the bottom) look just like me as a child?

The flower and brad are attached on top of the transparency. Everything else is underneath.

Scrapbooks, Etc. adhesive challenge: It's All Good

The Scrapbooks, Etc. challenge was to use adhesives in new ways. I had a lot of fun playing with my adhesives trying to find new ways to use them. My favorites, obviously, were heat embossing with them. Here is what I came up with. First, a close up of all the embossing I did. I rubbed glue around the edge of my bracket paper to emboss and also embossed glue dots (the gold dots) and Kokuyo dot n roller. I also glittered a button.

This is the final product, about all the little things in life that make me happy!

And a couple detail shots showing how I painted glue over a template I made on my Cricut to make a mask...

...and then I inked over the mask to make my background paper and title.

Thanks for looking!

Sketchy Thursdays: 9/17 sketch Cute & Crazy

Here is my interpretation of the 9/17 sketch on Sketchy Thursdays. I admit, that at first I was motivated by the giveaways for these sketches, but I'm having fun discovering inspiration through the sketches. For some reason this one took me all day and 3 tries to get a page I was happy with. First, the sketch:

And here it is, me and my crazy family!

I used rub-ons on the letters to help communicate the emotions I was going for. The ampersand was an interesting technique: I stuck a Pink Paislee glitter sticker on some white paper and decided against it, but when I removed it the bottom layer of the chipboard backing stuck to the paper. It looked too good to throw away, so I cut around the edges and sprayed with my new snow angel glimmer mist.

Moxie challenge

I did another challenge from the Moxie Fab World blog.

Create a paper crafted project (card, gift bag, tag, layout, home decor, etc.) that incorporates some kind of household item as its focal point. I chose a grungeboard key and lock. They are actually pretty gold and silver looking in person. I sprayed them with Glimmer Mist...a favorite product of mine. This is actually my first time using my sewing machine on my paper crafts. I've always loved the look but never dared try it. After stamping my image, I sewed and then added the doodling and ended with liquid glass over the image. Very cool effect!

Cricut gypsy giveaway!!

I found a great new blog named Cutting Above. It focuses on scrapbooking, especially for those of us with Cricuts or other electronic die cut machines. They are currently having a Gypsy giveaway to celebrate the blog's debut and the gypsy grand opening on HSN. It will be airing on September 24th, starting at 12:01, I believe. Here's a link to the post on that blog with more info: clicky Good luck!

Sketchy Thursdays: My Sweeties

I don't usually get into doing sketches, but this sketch from Sketchy Thursdays was absolutely perfect for a photo I had hanging out on my desk!

It is all from the Pink Paislee Sweet Cakes collection, except for the button embellishment I put together from various products I had on hand. This is the first time I ever took a photo to go with a piece of scrapbook paper I wanted to use! The journaling reads: "8.14.09 Our family est. 1998 Happy Birthday to us!"