First Project 365 post

I've actually been working on this in bits and pieces, but I've had some things that I HAD to get done for other people and such. It was FUN! I've already decided that while this one was more fun and bright and "boy-y" I will be using some of my prettier, flowerier paper that I don't always get to use. For this layout, I used some Polar Press paper that I've had for a long time. I saw a card made with it and had to have it...and there it sat until now. The baby food jar is from Cricut Imagine Nursery Tales, the font is Cricut Cherry Limeade. When I see a cool layout and want to find out more about it, I'm annoyed when I can't read the journaling. So, I took some detail shots that show some of the journaling. Enjoy - 53 more to come - I promise!

OK - I suck

I know I was supposed to keep up better this year. I wasn't even going for daily - but weekly would have been nice. I have been keeping up with my photos for the Project 365. However, I've noticed that my photography skills are not as sharp as they used to be. So, I'm doing some research online and trying to improve my photo-taking.

Now - I do have excuses as to why I haven't been blogging. It's been a roller coaster of a new year so far - with my dad going into the hospital and my daughter deciding (against my wishes) to switch colleges. It has been a challenging past couple of weeks. Hopefully, things will start to calm down some - although it looks as if my dad is going to have to have a couple of surgeries. So, please forgive me if I'm not around. I do have good intentions.

And - I have been crafting. Again - like last year, I haven't always gotten a snappy of my project, but I have gotten some. I will share some of my thank you notes that I made - I didn't even get them sent until last week and, some of them, are still with me waiting to be written!

This one is done with an SU set - It's Snow Time, using Baha Breeze, Wild Wasabi and Cherry Cobbler with Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses DP and SU Wild Wasabi ribbon. I used a little liquid applique on the snowman's hat and for the snow.

I did all of my cards with the same Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses DP paired with Wild Wasabi, Cherry Cobbler, Baha Blue and a little Pink Pirouette. This one features a cute little penguin from SU Polar Pals. I used some glitter on the iceberg and a glitter pen for the heart on the penguin. The coloring on this card and the one above is done with copics.

Fun! Bubblegum and Bentos!

This is made from a flower pot, two different sized flower pot saucers (is that what they're called? That sounds really awkward, but I'm not a gardener - I don't know) a glass flower bowl and a small wooden finial. I painted all the pieces with red acrylic paint (two coats) and then assembled and painted with glossy mod podge to make it shiny - and stick together :). As I said in an earlier post, I've been kind of nostalgic for the times when I would spend a Saturday afternoon at the Hallmark store taking in all the Hello Kitty stuff - I remember stationary sets and pen sets...so cute. So, I thought it would be perfect for my gumball machine candy dish. The image is from Hello Kitty Font, which I got for Christmas this year - thanks, Mom and Dad! BTW - I filled it with pretzel M&M's rather than gumballs. And, yes, those are Christmas M&M's with the green ones removed.

Kai was given an assignment to do a recycling project again this year. Last year, they made pillows made from jeans or t-shirts stuffed with scrap materials. His teacher said that if their pillows were still in good shape that they could make something else. She suggested a bird feeder made from a gallon milk jug. I do not like birds (bad experience as a child) so I chose the third option - find something on your own. I had planned to make a tie blanket quilt using Gage, my teenage son's t-shirts that he's outgrown, but still wants to keep. Unfortunately, Gage didn't want to give me his shirt. So, I looked around on the net and found some ideas. Then the other day, I found this little box in my bathroom. My daughter had gotten a make up set that came in a "bento box". So, I repurposed it as a gift for my son's teacher. We had some extra school supplies and I added them to the box. We bought the reward stickers, but everything else, we already had.

I suggested the paper and Kai helped pick the different colors of cardstock. He would have rather used a dragon (and we did put two dragons facing one antoher on the side of the box to cover the label), but I thought his teacher would like these dolls better. This is the top of the box. We used basic grey paper and my Pagoda cricut cartridge. All the paper was from my scraps box. The inside of the box was also lined with chocolate brown paper and has the chinese symbols for Teach, Wisdom, Learn in light pink mounted on red. Kai had a blast using my gypsy (his first time) and gluing all the pieces together. To finish it off, I tied some chocolate brown tulle ribbon I had saved from a candle I got a long time ago.

Hope you enjoyed! I had so much fun making both of these projects! And, Kai thinks my cricut is awesome - he can't wait to start working on his Spongebob birthday party - more crafts to come.

Happy New Year

Well, here I am - another post already! Just realized that I forgot to take a picture today. My son has a friend over and they are watching a movie. I could go snap one...OK, got a couple. If they don't turn out to be what I want, I had considered using a snippet of the sheet music from the song I did at church today. We'll see. So, anyway...my best friend used to say that all the time. It was her seque to anything. The right way to do it is to have an upwards inflection on the "a" and kind of stress that part of the word. So, anyway - this little countdown calendar was purchased from Stampin' Up. I believe I might have gotten it for Christmas or my birthday last year and I'm just now getting around to using it. Very simple. I just cut the pieces from the Celebate with Flourish for the new year's clock and hat (no such fanciness for me last night, I stayed home and when Midnight came, I whispered "happy new year" to Gage). I mounted the die cut on Basic Grey Cupcake layered with real red and black. Since the New Year is here, I will need to make a birthday something since Kai and I both have birthdays this month.

I bought this planner for $1 at a local $1 store. The planner I was using was 8 1/2 x 11 and was a little big for my purse. It fit in there, but the top stuck out and made it hard to carry my purse. This is about 7 x 9 1/2 and will fit much more nicely. I used the Elements paper from CTMH along with the Love Life Stamps. I CASED the idea from the CTMH idea book. It was a layout and I changed it up, but the border and the tag are the same.

Well - I hope you all had a safe and happy new year. I had a nice relaxing evening and I'm looking forward to my last day off before returning to work tomorrow. It's been a very productive week for me...wish I had more time to devote to crafts and yes, even to cleaning. See you soon!

Please forgive me...

it's been five months since my last post. :) I have been busily making name frames similar to the one in my previous post since my previous post. I have been selling them for my youth group at $15 a pop to help fund our trip to England in 2012. The orders have been steadily rolling in and have kept me pretty busy. Not to mention a promotion at work and a busy extra curricular activity schedule. So...I have been working on things, I just haven't been taking the time to post them. Quite honestly, I'm sure I've lost all of the followers that I once had. I wouldn't follow someone who didn't post for five months either.

Well, it's time for a new year - a new beginning. I am once again resoluting (is that a word?) to try to keep up with my blog...you can see how well I did last year. However, last February or so, I looked at two peas in a bucket for the first time in I don't know how long and a layout caught my eye. It chronicled the week of the designer. I read a little bit about the layout and discovered that it was part of "Project 365", in which the challangees, well...you know, chronicle their lives for the week all year. What a cool idea to really showcase our real lives, which is what scrapbooking is really all about. So, I decided then (remember, back in Feb. 2011) that I wanted to do that next year. Yes, I'm one of those perfectionist type people who would never jump right in and join in February. I say perfectionist type, because I am VERY far from perfect. Anyway, hopefully, I will be able to post at least something once a week this year.

Speaking of perfection - I've been revamping the screaming green studio. It's not quite finished yet, but I will post some pictures soon.

Now - onto my latest project...a Squinkie container for my son's new obsession. For those of you who do not know what Squinkies are, they are tiny little squishy toys that come about 12-14 to a package - they are pictured in the last photo of this entry posed on top of the lid. They come housed in tiny little bubbles, similar to what comes from a gunball machine, but much easier to open. And...they are addictive. My son has proclaimed "squinkies are awesome". When he opened them up at Christmastime, my sixteen year old son even got excited about them - very funny, they both got very excited about each other's gifts. I said we should just get them half the presents next year and they can share. Anyway, as I said, they are addictive. Kai got 2 packages, one from Santa and one from Grandma. He promptly went out the day after Christmas and bought four more packages with Christmas money and is asking for more for his upcoming birthday. He's really excited about the new Spongebob ones that are coming out soon. I think they're pretty cute, too. In fact, they have some Hello Kitty ones I'd love to get and scatter around the studio, just for cutes (I've been very into Hello Kitty lately for some reason - very nostalgic). Well - since squinkies are so tiny, but we now have a ton of them, we needed a container to...contain them. So, we went to squinkies.com and found the logo and a coloring sheetoved this guy, he's cute and ornery, just like Kai. Then we went to our trusty local hobby lobby and bought a big tin with a handle. (I reminded Kai that the last tin I made for his Cars got all bent up so if we were going to get a tin, he'd have to be careful and he informed me that he is seven now. I can be so silly sometimes.) The following pictures are the result of said supplies and a bunch of Mod Podges (yes, it is MOD Podge, not modge podge, that's one of my pet peeves). The paper line is Little Boys from Echo Park. I used spellbinders for the little signs, which say "No electricity required" and "Just add imagination". The image is colored with copics and the font for the lid is Cricut B is for Boys.

Hope you enjoy and beware, as I said...squinkies can become an obsession. And, to the folks at Squinkies - if you see my post and like it, feel free to send me a package or twelve of squinkies...remember the Hello Kitty ones! I'm sure if I have any followers, they'd love to have a squinkie give away :)

Name Frames

The mermaid name frame is much cuter in real life - I used shimmery cardstock and also used glimmer spray and glitter chalk on the mermaid and the seahorse, which you can't really see in the picture. The DP is October Afternoon and the letters and images were made using the Life is a Beach Cricut Cartridge.

The superhero name frame is made with Rusty Pickle DP and using the Classic Font Cricut Cartridge.

These name frames were custom-made for one of the ladies in my church diosese. I offered to make them as a fundraiser for our youth group. We are trying to earn money to go on a trip to England next year.

No hugs allowed

These are some shots from our Christmas Card several years ago. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose posed photo sessions end in meltdowns. Now I have 3, so it's even worse. The youngest is a ham, the middle one never shuts up, so it's hard to get a decent picture and the oldest, of course never likes any of the pictures taken of her! I used background paper from My Minds Eye. Just about everything else is from Bella Rose's For the Record line. The arrow, I've had forever and I added the pearl because I had no brass brads.