Scrapbooking

Love Saturdays....

DSC04705.jpg

We got up a little after 5:00 this morning so Mike could do some cleaning up outside (you have to when it is going to be well over 100 degrees).  So I was able to get up and have a quiet Saturday morning with my coffee and computer before the kiddos got up. I worked on Operation Organize the House and cleaned out my bedroom drawers and bathroom cabinets, stuffing a huge bag full of clothes to give away and another with expired stuff to throw out.  The rest of the day was spent doing exactly what I hoped...relaxing.  I took a nap (a rarity for me anymore), scrapped a bit and planned my shopping list for the Studio Calico reveal tomorrow.

I did this layout using the Studio Calico Partly Sunny June kit/add-on's plus an additional coordinating We R Memory Keepers paper.  I had done a similar page about Nicholas a little while ago so I wanted to do an "alphabet journaling" page for Jackson, too. It worked great to do an 18 month page for him.  I found this 6x6 alphabet section on the backside of the polka-dot WRMK paper and the page was born.  And I love, love, love the stamps from this SC kit too.

Jackson is...

Salmon Pizza is baking in the oven and the boys are eating bagel cheese pizzas (because no matter what time we plan dinner they want to eat earlier.)  Looking forward to some more scrapping tonight after the kiddos are in bed.

Can't wait for the weekend....and weekend plans

DSC04692.jpg

After being gone last weekend, I can't wait to be home this weekend and get some relaxation and scrap time.  This morning I had to whip up a birthday card for a friend, the leftover scraps from the May Mosh-Posh kit were perfect:

This weekend I'm looking forward to:
Starting Camp Scrap at Big Picture Scrapbooking and digging into that this weekend.
Ordering my Studio Calico July kit add-on's (OMG the add on's this month are unbelievable)
Dinner to celebrate the Arizona dad's on Sunday night.
My light potato salad for said dinner.
A quiet Saturday morning before the kiddos wake up drinking coffee from the new Kreuig coffee maker
Hoping the Kindle I ordered today (at the new lower price) gets here this weekend so I can get it set up for some books I want to read.

Working on my 1st challenge for ScrapTiffany that will debut the first week of July.
Happy Friday!

I'm so excited!

DT-Blinkie.png

Now that I have been away from Color Me Daisy for a while I decided to throw my hat in the ring for a couple of design teams.  I was pretty selective on what I chose to apply to,  I was trying to find a fit for me and something I felt good about committing too.  Having been on the other side of choosing a design team I know the excitement.  But it felt really good to get that e-mail this week inviting me to be part of the ScrapTiffany Team. I am very excited to be scrapping for fun again and I can't wait to start showing you all of the great stuff Tiffany has planned over the next several months!

So if you want great inspiration or a weekly challenge check us out at ScrapTiffany!

A layout and ScanCafe

MeNanaC800.jpg

Another layout from my Baker's Dozen class.  Now I have just 4 layouts to work on to be caught up to the class.  One thing I love about the class is the simpleness.  You have already picked out pictures and embellishments and every couple of days you get a sketch and a recipe and you can get to work on telling a story.  Last night I wanted to scrap, but was tired so my heart wasn't in it as much.  So I flipped on the Glee season finale (which perked me up some) and grabbed my next assignment.

Me and Nana
PP, CS & ribbon from Studio Calico kit. Making Memories 
letter stickers and paint. Maya Mist, Quick Quotes canvas heart, 
Clearsnap ink and paper clip.
I love this picture of Nicholas and his Nana C.  He has really grown close to her since they moved here a year and a half ago.  I am glad that the boys will have a chance to grow up nearby to some of their family.  We are very lucky to have Mike's parents so close to us.
I am looking forward to this weekend already. My Mosh Posh and Citrus Tree Studios kits have arrived already this week.  My box from Studio Calico should be here today and another couple of orders should be here by Saturday.  It's been like Christmas! I have a big picture order to pick up at Costco today too.
So I'll have lots of new goodies to scrap with and a whole lot of new pictures to scrap with.  Including several pictures I recently had scanned by ScanCafe from my pre-digital days.  The Mosh Posh kit will be perfect for some pictures I have of my grandma's and my mom from the 40's - 70's. The Citrus Tree Studios should be great for a Father's Day surprise for Mike I am thinking about. And the Studio Calico kit is going to be great for last weekend's pool pictures.
If you have been thinking about getting photos scanned I really recommend ScanCafe. I heard about them when I took Library of Memories at Big Picture Scrapbooking and although the whole process took a couple of months I am so happy to have my old photos in digital format.  They retouched and in some cases restored photos and now I finally have them to incorporate into my scrapbooks.
I had been looking at scanning my photos for years including trying to do it myself.  I sent them about 2000 photos and selected about 1400 to have digitally. The great thing about ScanCafe is you are only obligated to pay for 50% of what they scan. So I sent negatives in that I had no idea what would be on them and only selected the pictures that were worth keeping.  There prices have gone up slightly since I ordered but they are still reasonable compared to other services.  And if you sign up for their newsletter they send out discount codes pretty often.  (I am not being paid to sing their praises, I was just really happy with their service.)

Starting on my Baker's Dozen

DSC04460.jpg

I signed up for the Baker's Dozen class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. However, life got in the way and I am a bit behind in the class.  However I did put together my first layout last night.  A simple one that just focuses on the story I wanted to tell about a little boy who is getting into everything right now....

Sorry about them not being side by side, but I don't like the way the picture of the 2 pages together came out and it is too dark now to re-take it.

And just like that it's over....

DSC04408.jpg

Color Me Daisy, that is. We sold off out the clearance mystery boxes in less than a week.  They are stuffed full and  ready to be picked up tomorrow.  So with that done, Color Me Daisy is no longer.  I have to admit that I realized while we were packing up the boxes late into the night last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, that I will very much NOT miss packing kits. I would much rather play with paper, and pretty sparkly things. Speaking of playing I pretty much used up all of my Mosh Posh May kit and here is the last layout I made. I love the Lily Bee colors.  I was pretty excited just now, I went to grab the Lily Bee blog link and saw one of my layouts I posted last week was in their Friday Faves post.  How cool is that? :)

"U 2 boys 'r' so Sweet"

I really had hoped to scrap some this weekend, but I was so tired last night I crashed early and this afternoon I ended up organizing my craft room instead.  So maybe tonight I'll get back to scrapping,

Nicholas had his last day of preschool this week.  They had a water and ice cream party, I had planned to volunteer that day, but it being quarter end at work I had to cancel. We really like his teacher, Ms. Jackie and we are glad Nicholas will have her again next year as his teacher.

I made his teacher, class assistants and speech therapist summer bags with beach towels, sunscreen, water bottles and a magazine.  I whipped up some matching cards with just a package of Sassafras Felties, a scrap of Basic Grey paper, a punch and a couple of stamps.

At the beginning of the year I did a major clean out of the craft room.  My LSS, Scrapbooks Etc., had it's semi-annual yard sale in March. I sold so much stuff I ended up with almost $600 in store credit, and up until this week I hadn't used any of it. With new lines starting to showing up, I made a trip over to the store on Thursday and picked up lots of goodies.

That Crafters Workshop star template should be fun for misting and painting. I am in love the new Bella Blvd. Man's House line (I even ordered a kit from Citrus Tree Studio), and think it may work for a project I have in mind. Nicholas loves trains, so I have a few pictures already for that new stamp. And  I have on more than one occasion wished I had an oval punch when making a card or needing a journaling spot. Also, I recently got the I Top on Scrapbooksteals, but the deal didn't include the small punch, so now I have it. It makes good layered flowers too.

I picked up more of Girl's Paperie On Holiday papers and some embellishments. They will be great for summer pages with or without actually traveling anywhere.

I really like Pink Paislee's new Starlight collection.  I also ordered a couple of pieces from Stop and Scrap and I thought the Basic Grey Basics stickers worked well with the papers.  Should be fun for boy pages or 4th of July pages.

Have you seen the new Echo Park line? It is so summery and happy, and those new Cosmo Cricket little alpha's are so perfect with it, as was the Sassafras Me Likey Ice Cream paper. I also ordered a couple of other pieces of this from Stop and Scrap.  I think this will be cute for a summer banner.

Studio Calico had the paper with the frogs in one of their add on's this month, but I passed on it over another add on I liked more.  But I still  had to have this paper. I also found these others from We R Memory Keepers 72 and Sunny line. Isn't it fun?!

I also picked up most of the new Studio Calico Documentary line. It will be fun for some travel pages and I love the hot air balloon. I have the Fab Rips and Alphas coming in a separate order.

So I have lots of new stuff to play with.  And best of all I didn't spend anything for this since I had a store credit.

CKC Mesa Projects and Class Reviews

star.jpg
A little over a month ago we had what will be our only scrapbook convention in Arizona this year. For the past several years we have had one in the spring in Mesa and another in the fall in Phoenix and last year Glendale.  So me and the scrap friends were a bit dissapointed that we would only get one girls weekend this year. We considered going to the Riverside CKC but it is scheduled for Father's Day weekend, so although I will be in California for Father's Day I will be hanging out with my dad and the family and not scrapbooking.
To make the most of it we signed up for several classes, had 2 full days of shopping and stayed over at the hotel Friday night. This time we skipped the crop.  We didn't need to spend the money to walk away with a goodie bag filled with stuff that I will probably give away.  We had our hotel room, a bottle of wine and some chocolate. That was all we needed for a little scrap night.
The shopping this time around was very good. In the past few years it has felt like all the vendors just have a bunch of close out stuff at great prices. Which is great if you are looking for a bargain, but generally I want new things that have been released in the previous CHA. This year I was not disappointed, I ended up spending way more than I expected to.  I picked up lots of new Basic Grey, Fancy Pants, Pink Paislee, American Crafts including Dear Lizzy and tons more.  Plus I liked some of the new little finds like Arc Crafts wood veneer pieces. I always love the bling at Queen & Co. There were a few new close out discount places that had things I hadn't seen several times before. So all in all a good although expensive shopping weekend.
Now for the classes.  I took 8 classes over the 2 days.  I spread them out enough that it didn't get to overwhelming.  I have mostly learned who I like to take classes from and who to avoid. I broke that rule with one class, and will go back to my stick with who to avoid list in the future.  I finished up all my class layouts a few weeks ago which I am sharing below.
Tool Time - A Paper Crafts class taught by Kim Kesti.  In addition to the layout we made the pieces to a card and tag (that I used on a card).  We used the Epic Die Cut/Embossing machine. A simple layout kicked up with some embossing.  I need to pull out the old Cuttlebug a big more often, it does add something.  The card and tag were cute with the same colors (I didn't take pictures of them).

Always a favorite class, Embellish It's Latest and Greatest with Shelby Dredge.  We always get to play with the new Basic Grey and Fancy Pants lines.  And we always end up with 4 layouts that we like and will use. And we always pick up the 2nd page kit you can buy at the booth for $12.  They make for good pages that you can get a lot of pictures on.

This layout uses Basic Grey Green at Heart

This layout uses Basic Grey Kioshi
This layout uses Fancy Pants My Family

This one using Basic Grey's Origins ended up being my favorite layout.  Mike has become quite the chef and I am glad I finally scrapped about it.

Clearly Creative Acrylic by Story Tellers Club -  The sample mini album picture looked cute, so against my better judgement I signed up. I was pretty sure from my past shopping that their kits weren't really something I liked.  We got to the class and the project was different than the sample, but still along the same lines. But we didn't think the colors matched well, the class moved too slow, working ahead was a bit tough because the instructions were missing some things.  So we just winged it.  I wasn't really thrilled with the finished product, and although I finished it I didn't put any pictures in it, so I didn't photograph it.  If you don't mind the "it looks like ribbon but it is just a photo copy of ribbon die cut look (but not really you have to cut them out yourself) than maybe you won't mind this class.

Ribbon Girl taught by Queen & Company

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this layout based on the sample, but I liked that we would get some ideas for ribbon, and my friends wanted to take it so I signed up too.  I LOVED this class! The teacher was entertaining, we had plenty of time to work on our layouts, they had giveaways where it seemed like just about everyone won something. And we made these cute ribbon flowers on our pages too.  Of course although I am a mama of boys, I do have 6 nieces.  So I just had to dig out some pictures of some of them to finish this layout.  I have to say it worked perfeclty for these pictures from Christmas morning.  Mike's brother and his family spent Christmas with us last year and their 4 girls were all in their pink PJ's Christmas morning.  So they were perfect for this layout.

Live In the Moment Designed by Ali Edwards taught by Technique Tuesday - This is the 2nd Technique Tuesday class I have taken and I am always so inspired to stamp on my pages more after taking the class. The class kit is pretty generous with product with a few leftover pieces and a stamp set you get to keep.  We made the left side of the layout (which is a shaped layout not on a background) in class and I finished the second one at home.  I also ended up getting lots of TT goodies back at their booth.

I Dare You taught by Kim Kesti for Creating Keepsakes - I liked this class based on Elizabeth Kartchners book 52 More Scrapbooking Challenges. The layouts were cute, quick and easily adaptable.  The misting got a bit messy, with the first layout if you were one of the last to go up. The bottles were a bit clogged and the boxes to mist in were a bit saturated.  We had to cut lots of circles so sharing the Coluzzle took a bit of time, but other than that we mostly finished up these 1st two layouts in class. The 3rd layout was quick to put together later.  More memories quickly scrapped.

All In the Family taught by Tattered Angels - I was excited to take this class, because I wanted some more misting ideas.  Although between the time of signing up in January and the class in April I have decided I like Maya Mists a little more that the Tattered Angels mists.  The Maya mists are darker and give a more painted look, where the Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists are lighter. We used Glimmer Masks, TA chipboard and TA stamps in the class and got quite messy.
Fabulous Flower Techniques taught by Maggie Holmes for Creating Keepsakes - Upfront I am going to say I loved the idea of this class, but I don't think the class works well and I think now that it has been taught a few times CK has to know it.
Maggie was teaching the class but Kim Kesti was also helping and they had several classroom assistants. I know that the teachers didn't design the class and I felt sorry for them for having to teach what was probably 60 plus people to use a tool that has a bit of steep learning curve. I think under the circumstances Maggie and the others did a great job. They should have been paid double to teach this class, because they had to put up with a lot of annoyed women,
We were supposed to make either 3 or 4 brads using the Imaginisce I-Top tool.  We should have made one brad with the tool and then we should have made a few more of the cute flowers that they showed in class or were included in the class handout.  At our table 2 of the 3 I Top tools were broken on one of the 2 sides.  We had to share about 3 people to a tool.  Getting the hang of the I Top tool was not easy, I have one at home that I had not used, so I didn't even really try to do it in class.
There are so many cute ideas with flowers that are inexpensive to make and easy to do that would have kept the layout cute and kept a lot more people happy.  I did like the flower we made out of the dictionary paper. And the layout did come out cute.

So that's it.  All in all a good CKC again.  Can't wait until next year and I hope we get 2 again.

Closing Color Me Daisy and lots of catching up to do...

DSC04275.jpg
 I think it is time for me to say, so long to...

We have officially decided to close Color Me Daisy. Originally I had intended to cut back to every other month with a limited number of kits with no subscriptions.  Our first kit in the new format did well and sold out faster than we would have guessed. However, after having some time away from the original decision to scale back and the ability to really enjoy more of my weekends and evenings I have realized it just isn't something I want to do anymore. I'm not even sad about it anymore.

So that being said we are selling off all of what we have left in "Mystery Boxes".  The boxes are $30 plus flat rate shipping costs and each box will contain at least $100 worth of scrapping goodies. They will be filled with past kit and add on left-overs.  We have a limited number of boxes available, get yours while you can.

Business stuff out of the way...now some catching up.  Work has been busy, I have been sick with a sinus infection and ear infection that made me so dizzy I couldn't even look at the computer for a couple of days. Mike has been cooking a lot on the grill lately andI have been scrapping (when I wasn't sick, working or finishing the last of this year's season finale's).

I was pretty happy with the American Idol season finale. I liked both Lee and Crystal and so I didn't really care who won, but I guess I was slightly pulling for Lee. I had been out of the running on my American Idol pool for a few weeks. It didn't matter who won, I wasn't going to win any money.

Now that American Idol, Desperate Housewives, 24 and Survivor are over I should have lots of time to scrap while watching Glee episodes after the kiddos are in bed.

I got my May Mosh-Posh kit a few weeks ago and I wasn't sure if I it was too girly.  But after perusing their gallery I changed my mind.  This weekend I have finished 5 layouts with the kit so far, and will probably get at least one more out of the kit bits and pieces I have left over.

I love these pictures I took last weekend of Mike reading to Nicholas. I also love my 2 new Martha Stewart border punches.

I am thinking I need to make these cupcakes again.

We've been spending a lot of time in the backyard lately, these pictures were from Mother's Day.  Nicholas likes playing with his golf club, and we like when he isn't trying to take Jackson out with it. These pictures were when he was playing with it appropriately. :)

I loved  Amy Coose's layouts in the Mosh Posh gallery, so I felt the need to scraplift a couple of them. This one is inspired by Amy's take on the MP May sketch:

And this one is inspired by Amy's "Love Note's" layout:

I have lots more of stuff to share over the next few days, including a review a long overdue review on my CKC Mesa classes, some tasty things to share from "My Man and His Grill" and some layouts from my last Studio Calico kit.

Some Color Me Daisy Layouts

Lemons.jpg
Here are the rest of the layouts from the Color Me Daisy Spring Fever kit. So far I have done 5 layouts, 3 cards and 3 altered projects from the kit and I still have a lot more to work with. I wasn't sure how much I could make the kit work since when I put the kit together I thought it might be a bit to girly for a mama of two boys. I found enough to use for the boy layouts but it also gave me a reason to scrap some pictures from my binders that I never got to before.
This one is probably tied for 1st in my favorite layouts from the kit. The colors make the lemons stand out and I just love the randomness of life in the story behind it.
When Life Gives You Lemons Make Lemonade...and Lemon Meringue Pie
The story was something I blogged about here. This LO was based on a sketch I had printed out a week or two ago, I believe from The Scrappiest.
I just love this picture I took of Jackson recently. I wanted it to be the focus of my page. I like how the button tree adds a lot of color but I think the picture still takes center stage. And I cannot tell you how much I love the Pink Paislee Artisan Element Frames and Tapes. Both are used on this page, along with a feature of my misting and border punch obsession.
Our Lil J

Before the boys were born, the dogs were featured in a lot more layouts. Since they are girly girl dogs there was plenty to work with in this kit for a princess puppy page.  I love the Jillibean Alpha's, the white ones especially give you so many options in altering them.  And the fabric in this kit is probably my favorite "evah"! The fabric circle flower was part of a What to Do Fabric Idea Feature in the Color Me Daisy April Kit Idea Guide.

Marti

This layout was based on a sketch from Inspired Blueprints a sketch site I recently discovered with great sketches and a friendly community.  I have had these pictures in my binders for a few years now from a trip to Las Vegas in 2006, the colors in the kit were so perfect for the bright colorful flower gardens of the Bellagio Hotel. I made a fabric strip flower for this one, which was also included in our idea guide.

I still have tons of photos of the gardens from that trip, maybe I'll use up my kit scraps for a mini album.

Bellagio Las Vegas

Well that's it for tonight. I still have cards, altered projects and a from my scraps project to share over the next couple of days.

Hope you have a great Friday!