My First Tri-Fold Card

I don't know about you, but I'm horrible at following written directions! I'm a visual learner and usually have to see how something is done before I can do it myself. When I couldn't find the tutorial I had saved for this card from Splitcoast Stampers, I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to make it. I had to revert to my memory (an even scarier thought!) and after a few tries at the folding, I decided that the finished project didn't turn out too shabby.

I created this card for the Freaky Friday challenge over at AC Bailey Designs. They challenged you to use multiple folds in a card project so I created this tri-fold card.

(And yes, I know it's {technically} Tuesday, but since Friday, I've had to leave town for a memorial service, come back for my son's baptism, go out of town to deal with our rental property, and come back to town for birthday festivities. And this was just this weekend!)

After all was said and done, this was a pretty easy card to make. I'd tell you how, but you'd probably get confused, so instead I'm going to refer you to where I saw it originally - at Splitcoast Stampers. Their step-by-step tutorials are great!

The end product is a 4"x6" little bundle of love created primarily with Close To My Heart products, including the new FaLaLa paper packet and glitter(!) rub-ons.

In fact, the only things that aren't Close To My heart is the stitched ribbon (Stampin' Up), the blue glitter for the snow swirls on the front (Martha Stewart). and the orange for the carrot nose (courtesy of Crayola)

As always, thanks for looking!

Wish Big!

This was my second submission for this week's stamping challenge over at Practical Scrappers. It's always fun to have an excuse to play with my stamp stash - especially these stinkin' cute ones! I'll admit, I'm a little biased. I use this stamp set more than probably any other stamp set I've EVER owned - and that's saying a lot!!!
The stamps are Life's a Jungle and Legendary Moments - both from Close To My Heart. Inks are also from Close To My Heart, but I colored them in with my trusty Watecolor Wonder Crayons and mounted them on kraft cardstock from Stampin' Up. The sentiment stamp is also from Stampin' Up (but I forget which set.)
I finished it off with some bargain ribbon and a little felt flower embellie I picked up from Target forever ago. The king of the jungle also uses a Just Bloom paper flower for his mane (CTMH).
Thanks for looking!

Two Challenges in One

I came across the sketch (Sketch #27) above from this great new-ish challenge site, the Scrappiest and thought it would be a great layout for Sophia's first day of kindergarten. I had the perfect layout in mind and was able to incorporate this week's challenge at Practical Scrappers, which was to use stamps in our layout or cards.

I have a huge supply of stamps from Close To My Heart, where I was a consultant until recently, and a bunch of stamps from Stampin' Up that I purchased through my good friend Candice. This layout uses my favorite sets from both companies:

The letter stamps are from the D & E size Friendship Alphabet sets, the doodle swirl line and line of dots are from Priceless Love Word Puzzle - from Close To My Heart, as is the base page, inks and cardstock. The accent stamps - flourishes, flowers and butterfly - are all from the Priceless set from Stampin' Up. I embossed the word kindergarten in the clear sparkly Iridescent Ice embossing powder from Stampin' Up. After cutting out the flowers and butterfly, I added dimension by putting them on pop dots and curling the edges of the flowers up. The only other thing besides stamps, inks and papers that I used was a little coordinating bling for the flowers.

And if you're wondering why there are no pictures on there yet, I ran out of ink for my printer and am too technologically challenged to upload them to my local supermarket to get them printed! My husband was even going to buy me some extra ink the other day, but I told him that I only needed one color cartridge. Turns out he was right (shhh... don't tell! LOL) - I did need the whole pack! Ugh! I will pick up some more ink today and re-post the completed layout later this week.
Thanks for looking!
Jessica

Freaky Friday Challenge Promoters Needed

Erica & crew over at AC Bailey Designs has an awesome chance to become one of their Challenge Promoters for their Freaky Friday Challenges. They host some really neat challenges over there and if you're chosen, you get a gift certificate to their awesome store which is chock-full of scraptastic goodness! Here's the scoop:

What you would do
Complete each Freaky Friday Challenge for a period of 1 month
Post your completed challenge in 10 popular sites Galleries and Forums each week
Email the link to where you posted to me when you are finished

What you would get
A $20 Gift Certificate to ACB OR a $10 Gift Certificate to any other scrappy store you choose
A chance to win another $10 ACB gift certificate if your layout is chosen as the winner of the challenge
A chance to be published in the ACB Newsletter and Blog if your layout is chosen as the winner of the challenge

The Fine Print
Only 5 people will be chosen for each month thru December.
You cannot volunteer for more than 2 months.
All challenges will be emailed to you on the 1st of the month so you will have time to complete them before their announcement date.
If you are interested please email a link to your Gallery or Blog to erica@acbaileyltd.com

I'm sending my entry right now!

Hawaiin Hippo

I don't know about you, but when I'm bored, I tend to day dream. I make grand plans after browsing my in-box, chock full of great ideas for fun products. I sketch what I think I'll use and I try to plan down to minute details how to get it accomplished.

It's not often that I actually follow through on my little creative day dreams - sometimes it's just plain hard to find the time.

But when this sketch came across my e-mail from 2 Sketches 4 You and I saw all of the great cards the design team came up with (and the yummy rub-ons they used and you could possibly WIN if your design is chosen for the Card of the Week), I had to try it out!

Here's Laura's sketch #33:


Here's the crazy, last hurrah of summer, totally hip hippo card I came up with:

The products are from a wide array of scraps so I have no idea where any of the paper actually originated from. The stamp is from my all-time favorite Life's a Jungle stamp set from Close To My Heart, as is the ink, bling and the sparkly brad (new in the fall catalog!) I embossed the saying with the sparkly glitter/clear embossing powder combo from Stamp;in' Up (I can't remember what exactly it's called, but I'll update you later.)

Here's a close up of the sparkles & bling:

So, what do you think? Pretty cute, huh?

Hey cupcake (or Girls Night Out part 2)

We had so much fun at Girl's Night Out last Friday! Almost all of my favorite girls were there, we had great food and cake to celebrate Candace's birthday - and she showed us this super-cute cupcake card. Her version was much cuter than mine, with this neat pop-up feature when you opened it up, but I'm not so good at those technical things so I made mine as a regular card instead.

We stamped the cupcake in StaZon and colored it in using the Water Color Wonder crayons and blended everything together with a blending pen. Out of all of my supplies, those are my most go-to "tool".

All supplies here are Stampin' Up, except for the orange bling which is from Target's Dollar Spot.

Moments to Cherish

Today was a good day - crazy as it was!

As I post this, I'm eating a piece of the yummiest, homemade coconut cream pie from Midland Bakery Co. in Basalt, CO (the best-ever bakery!), drinking a glass of ice cold milk, and relishing the the silence!

I just put the finishing touches on a layout that turned out better than I imagined - gotta love when that happens!

These pictures were taken for our "happy spring" cards since I never did get my holiday cards out last year. Not that the happy spring cards got out, either, but that's another story! LOL! I did, however, have these pics framed for all the grandparents because they turned out so sweet.
This layout uses a mish-mash of materials - I really went through my supply to find the perfect mix! The papers from 5 different companies - Yellow Bicycle for the fancy-cut page, DCWV for the glittered paper on the chipboard heart, Making Memories for the red polka-dot and Stampin' Up for the rosy-circle mat behind the photos, plus a black patterned sheet of paper from a Best Occasions scrap stack I picked up at Wal Mart. The glittered title and swirl and pearl accents come from Marcella by K and the pearly flower is recycled from a gift bag I got at a friend's wedding. The chipboard heart is also from Stampin' Up.

Today also brought our Stott-family traditional first day of school breakfast celebration:

After a whole summer of sleeping in, Andrew was not too thrilled to have to wake up early and partake in the celebration. After downing some tasty biscuits & gravy, he almost changed his mind. This came, of course, only after he accidentally dumped an entire glass of orange juice all over Sophia's first day of school outfit. I had to trek it all the way back across town to pick up a new outfit for her, which ended up good because I forgot to get their water bottles and ice packs for their lunch. In planning for next year, I'll be sure to pack a change of clothes for both kiddos, just in case.

Andrew was a little grumpy, too, I think, because he was starting a whole new school. For the last week he's worried about whether he'll make friends, if he's got the meanest teacher in school and if the kids will be nice. Poor guy! Luckily we live in a small town and he knew literally half of his classmates from karate, soccer, church and summer camp.

Sophia was higher than a kite! She's been looking forward to "big girl school" for weeks and could hardly contain herself.

Even though Andrew was a little anxious, he still made sure he took good care of his sister:

See what I mean about being excited? Don't you just love that goofy little grin?!

By the time we found his class, Andrew was thinking it would all be OK. This is him at the start of the day. By the end of the day, he was grinning from ear to ear and telling me how cool it was (huge sigh of relief!!!)

Fun with vellum & a crazy day!

Hi Friends,

Sorry this is so late. Today was crazy! I sent my baby girl off to kindergarten and my sunshine of a boy off to 4th grade! I can't believe how time flies. But I think that this was the first year I didn't cry sending them off.

Here are my layouts for this week's challenge for Practical Scrappers. We had to use vellum in our projects - which, I have to admit, is one of the most challenging products for me to use creatively. And, since things have been positively hectic getting ready for the new year, I was running low on creativity. Here's what I came up with:


This first one is an additional layout that didn't get submitted to Practical Scrappers. I stamped on my vellum - and, to set the titles in each of my stamped images, I used a heat gun (held several inches away so I wouldn't burn a hole through it!). I made sure to set the vellum aside, even after heat-setting the ink, for a while to allow the ink to fully dry and prevent smudges.

For this first layout, I attached the vellum a few different ways. I used a hinge with brads for the first part of the title and a beaded spiral-clip for the second part of the title.


For the Riverwalk layout, I hand-wrote my journaling on vellum. I also added a velum overlay to the left-hand side of the layout, covering it with thread and pretty beads to dress it up:


Here's a better picture of the vellum overlay. For this, I folded the edges (top and bottom) of my vellum to fit over my paper panel. That way, I could adhere the vellum on the back side of the paper panel and didn't run the risk of having my adhesive show through.

For the last layout, I used vellum as both a title overlay and a journaling block. Both were attached to the layout with brads.

All supplies in all of these layouts are from Close to My Heart.

Big Tex

Today is my blast from the past day, I've decided. The last two projects are ones that I created a while ago (and one a really long while ago), and this one is no different.



In 2007, we took a nine day gigantic journey of a road trip from Western Colorado to all over the state of Texas. Looking back on these photos, I see how little my babies were - Soph was still in diapers and Andrew was still in kindergarten. To this day, it was the best vacation I've ever been on. I would do it every year, if I could. Great company, of course, but who could pass up a week and a half of insanely delicious, mouth-watering, smoky, rich, authentic Texas barbecue. Yum! My stomach is rumbling just thinking about it!

Over that period, we visited several museums, rode on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, went to Sea World, and collected tons of memorabilia. The dilemma came when I went to start this portion of my vacation album. If I scrapped ever single event, my Texas album would become of epic proportions. At the same time, I didn't want to leave anything out, either.

I decided to add a pocket to the page to hold everything we found - but I didn't want anything lost, so I made the pocket out of a 6x6 page protector. That way, you still were able to tell that there were some interesting things behind the scenes, but also provided an interesting starting point to that album.

I trimmed the hole-punched edge of the cover off and attached it to my page with glue dots. I adhered the main attraction points - one each of our tickets to Sea World, the Riverboat and the JFK Memorial/Dealy Plaza Museum

Everything else got pushed back into the pocket so one day, when the kids are grown up, they can see where we went and marvel at how cheap everything was back in the old days. LOL!

All supplies here are Close To My Heart. The pictures of the Alamo and the space ship taking off are mini-postcards I picked up from our trip.

Scrap Happy pt. 2

I was going through my vacation scrapbook yesterday and came across one of my favorite layouts when I realized that it fit this week's Practical Scrappers challenge perfectly, so I thought I'd share with all of you. =)

This picture is of our trip to Disneyland in 2007 and one of the best pics we took the whole vacation. If I remember correctly, Andrew was the one who actually took it with his little disposable camera that we gave him to keep track of his favorite moments. Sophia's eyes just lit up once she finally saw the Princesses - after being there all day long through a torrential rain storm and sweltering temperatures. It's one of those moments that I'll never forget!

I taught this page for one of our Girl's Night Out crops last spring - it uses just a bunch of random scraps of paper for faux ribbons. I colored in some of the details of the swirly stamp, highlighted key words in my journaling and distressed the whole bit. Everything, minus a few of the pink flowers are Close To My Heart. Those other two pink flowers are from Prima.

In our hearts & prayers...

A friend of mine recently had some bad news fall upon her family, so I wanted to send her a little reminder that we were there for her and her family in their time of need. I hope that when she sees this that she'll feel some measure of comfort.

I had the original card on hand from one of my friend Candace's club workshops from a few months ago. I added a bow, some bling and a sentiment to tie everything together.

The cardstock, image, Water Color Wonder crayons and ink are all Stampin' Up. The bling is Marcella by K and the sentiment is from Cllose To My Heart.

Girls Night Out Preview

In the spirit of this week's challenge over at Practical Scrappers, my project for this Friday's Girl's Night Out Crop that I'm hosting with my friend Candace uses a whole bunch of scraps in fun, bright colors. It seems that everywhere I look these days I see a bright and shiny sun

on everything from layouts to cards to clothes. What better way to send out summer with a bang than with a project featuring it, too?

Besides, all of the sunny projects reminded me of when my mom would sing "You Are My Sunshine" to me when I was a little girl. With a huge hoard of family baby pictures, the hardest part about this layout was choosing my favorites.

Here's what we'll be doing as my project this coming Friday:

I'm pretty jazzed with how this layout turned out - I love the bright summery colors against the neutral kraft cardstock. I free handed the little cloud and popped the sun up with thick pop dots to add a little extra umpf. For the most part, this was created with scraps and leftover buttons that came from the pile of leftovers on my desk. The kraft cardstock is from Stampin' Up. The letter stamps, inks, hemp and the papers used for the sun are from Close To My Heart. I used my trusty Bic Mark-It pen for journaling and outlining.

From what I hear, Candace is planning on a birthday card project since it's her birthday weekend. Come celebrate with us and have a great girl's night out - I know I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again! Email me by Thursday afternoon if you're going to join the fun, too!

Scrap Happy

Hello out in cyberspace! I hope this finds you well!
After a crazy weekend and a long day, I decided the perfect "gift" to myself was to take a little time out for creating and jumped on the chance to participate in this week's Practical Scrappers challenge. (This was my week off, so I got to do mine totally for fun!)
PS Design Team B had a challenge to create a layout using scraps. This was a great challenge for me - after being a demonstrator and doing tons of workshops and create & takes over the last 5 years, I have tons and tons of scraps.
I pulled supplies from one of my all-time favorite scrap sets - the Life Delights collection from Close To My Heart. These particular papers and stickers were leftovers from a mini-album workshop I did a year ago. I had some great pictures of my daughter and my niece being their typical silly selves and the pinks and browns were great for their pics. I also used some scalloped-circle card bases I bought from Stampin' Up a few years ago. All of the papers were lightly ink distressed to tie in the worn-down siding Sophia & Kaelee are standing against.
I also used my left over Doodlebug Design rub-ons (letters) which are great because since the letters are so whimsical, a lot of them can be used as different letters. All of the "e"s in the title are actually upside down numbers - a 3 in make and a 2 in Me. I used a flower as the o in You. Don't you just love that versatility?
Laugh was stamped with Close To My Heart's Friendship alphabet set and the swirly rub-on is also from Close To My Heart.
The felt flowers are from Stampin' Up and the brads are from Bazzil (I think).



I had some extra scraps left over in my bag of goodies, including little 1" strips that fit perfectly onto the mini card bases I had scored for a different project and forgotten about. I even had the cute little piggy already stamped on a scrap piece of card stock - so half of my work was done for me. Woohoo!
I distressed the edges of the card and strips lightly in Chocolate ink. I trimmed my piggy down to one little guy (the original image is this guy standing piggy backed onto another pig, ha ha ha). I used my Watercolor Wonder crayons from Stampin' Up, added a little flower and bling, and a left over strip of wide ribbon that fit the width of this card like it was meant to be. All that was left was room for a little saying I made with my Doodlebug rub-ons (of course!)

Thanks for looking! Off to create the project for this Friday's Girl's Night Out crop in Silt. (There's still room to join us if you haven't already RSVP'd!)

Scrappin' with stickers and a neat technique

Hello to all of my blogging buddies! I hope your weekend was great!



Our challenge this week at Practical Scrappers was to use up some of our stickers. This was a great challenge that I was eager to tackle - I can't tell you how many sheets upon sheets of stickers that I've collected over the last 10 years scrapbooking. My collection mostly consists of the cardstock stickers that come in the Close To My Heart and Stampin' Up scrapbook kits, so I decided to use up some of that massive stash on my challenge layout.



Since it's been so hot here lately, I wanted to take a mental vacation back to the cooler weather, so I dug out some of the pics from our impromptu sledding party after one of the big storms last winter. Here's what I came up with:

It uses 16 different stickers - can you find them all?

This layout features Stampin' Up cardstock & cardstock stickers, a Colorbok bling sticker, Close To My Heart Liquid Glass, button, stamp (alphabet) and Tulip ink and cardstock (for the tag); Doodlebug Designs rub-ons and a Bic Mark-It fine tip red marker. I also used a little chunky glitter from Martha Stewart.



To make the tag that has the date on it, I cut out the outline of a bracket sticker I had used on another project:

After it was cut off of the main sticker sheet, I placed it onto some cardstock and cut it out more precisely - leaving just 1/4 of an inch or so of the sticker itself for the outline of my tag:

Once it was all cut out, I added rub-on letters from Doodlebug Designs for the date and added it to my layout:

P.S. This little tag technique is not my own, but unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw it used first. If I come across the original inspiration, I will pass on credit where credit is due. In the meantime, thanks to all of you who take the time to share!

To add some extra dimension to my layout and match the glitzy striped paper, I added bling sticker and glammed up the snowflake stickers. For the snowflake stickers, I added dimensional tape to the back of the red snowflake to pop it off of the blue snowflake, then added a blue button and a pink-polka-dotted white circle sticker to the center.

All of the little circle stickers and the snowflake in the center of the big circle got a little Liquid Glass and chunky Martha Stewart glitter to add a wintry feel. Oh - and that cute rickrack and pink strip are both stickers, too.

And here's a shot of the toll my creative process takes on the kitchen tables...

My process tends to be a little messy! It's a good thing Michael is so patient & supportive...

One crazy summer and a little sneaky peeky...

Summer has been an insanely busy, super crazy, all-out action packed few months. I had my entire summer booked by Mother's Day (agh!) - so far we've been out of town to be with family, celebrated my birthday, gone to Vegas for a bachelor/bachelorette weekend, had family visit, hosted book club, gone out of town again for a family funeral, had more family visit, celebrated July 4th, gone camping & celebrated birthdays of family friends, helped our best friends get married, watched Andrew earn his yellow belt in karate, celebrated Sophia's birthday, had more family visit, celebrated my mom's, step-mom's and another family friend's birthday, and had three big fundraisers for Relay for Life. Whew! And that's just so far!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures that this summer has brought me.

Fun at the lake with three of my favorite girls - Lia, Kaelee & Sophia

My silly niece & daughter

Andrew's great accomplishment

The newlyweds

Sophia's beautiful smile

My handsome boy who's getting way too big, way too fast!

Our happy little family

Camping adventures

Pool fun with my little sister Clare, Andrew & Sophia

Andrew & Sophia with my little sister Clare and little brother Max at my grandpa's funeral

Birthday dinner with the Youngs - I think this is the first time that just the moms are in a picture - we're usually the ones behind it!

The last few weeks of summer brings our Relay for Life tomorrow night, Michael's birthday and my niece's birthday next weekend, Girl's Night Out crop & book club the following weekend, Andrew's birthday and a memorial event for another family member. And, apparently, searching for my missing 4th of July pics. Dang - wonder where those ones went.

It's a wonder that any creating gets done. Luckily, being on the Pracitcal Scrappers design team is really bringing me out of my normal creative box and adding a little extra mojo to my world. Here's a little sneaky peeky of next week's project. I can't wait to share the whole thing!

Practical Scrappers reveal challenge

It's finally time for the big reveal over at Practical Scrappers! The inaugural DT challenge features works from all of the designers and I'm so excited to see what everyone has come up with!



The whole mission behind Practical Scrappers aims at helping you use up your scrapbook supplies. If you're like me, you have an overabundance of tons of beautiful products that once they come home, never see the light of day.



One of the products I have but rarely use are eyelets. Lucky for me, our first challenge was to make a project featuring at least 5 eyelets.



Sophia turned six on Friday so I wanted my project to feature her in some way. I used a picture from her first night at home from the hospital, when I fell asleep with her in one arm and big brother Andrew in the other. Here's what I came up with:



I used my ever-so-handy (and hubby's all-time favorite scrap tool) Crop-o-Dile to set eyelets in some really stiff, thick ricrac and as the centers in my paper flowers. Both patterned papers were Taylor for Daisy D's - ones, I might add, that I've had in my stash probably since around the time this picture was taken, six years ago after we brought our daughter home from the hospital. I added a doodled border on the big polka dot sheet and ink-distressed my circle mat to match the main paper. I added a solid cardstock strip (in Tulip by Close To My Heart) for the title strip and did the title in my fave letter stickers from Doodle Bug (must get more of those!)



Here's a little close up of (most of) the eyelets.