Shout out to all my peeps!

From our family to yours, have a happy Easter!!!

The Mouse is in the House! Practical Scrappers rub on challenge

Hello my friends!

I'm finally back from our road trip to California and catching up on my blogging absence. Scroll down below on my home page to see projects from Frosted Designs & Practical Scrappers for both last week and this week.

In honor of our Disney vacation, I made a special card using Disney rub-ons for this week's Practical Scrappers challenge:

I made a little window out of acetate and applied rub-ons to this window to accentuate the greeting inside the card.

This card will actually be used as a journaling block in my Disney album to describe some of the fun highlights of our trip.

Thanks for looking and be sure to check out the rest of the fantastic work from the incredibly talented DT at Practical Scrappers by clicking here.

Fun & Funky Colors to Welcome Warmer Weather! FD Color Challenge

Frosted Designs has a color challenge this week to get us all in the mood for spring. We challenge you to use BLACK, LIME GREEN & HOT PINK as your primary colors on your project.

Here's what I came up with:

This whimsical card was created with papers from Colorbok, cardstock from Bazzill, die stickers, hot pink cardstock and white flower from Close To My Heart, glitter embossed cardstock from Doodlebug Designs, patterned flwoers from Making Memories, bling from K&Co., brad from Target Dollar Spot and ribbon from Offray.

Be sure to stop by the Frosted Designs site to check out how the DT used this challenge on all of their awesome projects this week!

Clearly, it's (almost) spring in Colorado! Transparency Challenge for Frosted Designs

Here's another delayed challenge post... This time from last week's transparency challenge at Frosted Designs.

First, a close up:

And finally, the whole shebang:

For this card, I {carefully} embossed a Close To My Heart butterfly stamp using Versamark and black embossing powder from Stampin' Up on a heavy-duty 3M transparency film, then I carefully cut the butterfly out and used it as a template for the bottom part of the butterfly. For the bottom part, I used a variety of Twinkling H20s iridescent water color paints to make kind of sunburst of colors. Once this was dry, I cut it out and popped it up to place in the center of the distressed circle. I added double-sided sticky tape from Stampin' Up to the body of the butterfly, then bent the wings outward slightly to make it appear that the butterfly was in flight. I added a few color-coordinated brads from Basic Grey and a big black bow to finish the card off.

Use your stash! Practical Scrappers 1+ yr. old supply challenge

Hi all -
This {delayed} post is from the Practical Scrappers use your stash challenge from last week. We had to use products on our project that we've had in our stash for more than 1 year - which, since I'm such a scrap supply hoarder, actually came easy to me!
Literally everything on this layout are more than 1 year old - and in some cases, more than 2-3 years. Even the pictures, which are of Andrew when he was 5, are old!
The paper came from a Dog-themed set from DCWV, the large die cut letters are from Basic Grey that I got when I was pregnant with Sophia, the chipboard bracket & funky shaped star die cuts are from CTMH, and the large star is from Colorbok. Though you can't see it too well in the picture, the large star is also ligthly stamped with a swirly stamp from Stampin' Up. The small letter stickers are from Pink Paislee.

Goin' Green - Chipboard Challenge at Practical Scrappers

Hello friends,

I am finally fully back to normal - yeah! - and created a fun project for this week's chipboard challenge at Practical Scrappers - reusing some packaging from one of my favorite scrappy goodies - Prima bling flourishes.

For this square card, I used the Rainy Day Cynthia digi stamp from The Stamping Boutique - one of our wonderful sponsors over at Practical Scrappers - and matted it onto a trimmed piece of the Prima packaging. The diecut flourishes and fresh, organic printed design were too cute to toss, and was a great compliment for the colors I used to add some life to the little fairy girl. (Stampin' Up Watercolor Wonder Crayons, of course!)


Green Tip: A lot of manufacturers incorporate fun packaging and funky designs to help market their products that add a distinctive flair to cards, layouts and other crafts. Some of my faves - Prima & Jenni Bowlin, plus I hoard funky tags from clothing - Mudd jeans usually have some pretty awesome articles. If you're concerned about longevity of the product, spray with an acid-neutralizing spray that can typically be found at local scrap stores or online scrap stops - or, if you're lucky, your local Wal-Mart or Target. (EK Success makes Archival Mist & Krylon has a spray called "Make it Acid-Free")

Here's a close up of the card - I added Liquid Glass to the water and dots on her dress and mushroom, plus a little blue bling for her hair flower. The sentiment was hand-written.

Thanks so much for stopping by & don't forget to check out all of the rest of the fantabulous work from the Practical Scrappers DT!

Better late than never... last week's Practical Scrappers Ink Challenge

Sorry to have been absent lately but I have been soooooo very sick for the past week... literally. I went to the doc today because I just couldn't bear it anymore, just to find out that I have an inner ear virus that is causing vertigo, kind of like being an "old drunk" according to my doctor, and that my symptoms can last up to a month. Ugh!!! I hate this feeling, which is why I don't ever drink in excess, and here I have that feeling for no good reason. Way not fun. At least I have some meds to help ward off the nasty feeling, I guess.

Anywho, enough about me... here's my layout for last week's white pen/ink challenge at Practical Scrappers.

I really don't play with my white pens as often as I should, because I really like the way they look. I used my white pen to add a doodled frame around the picture and to trace some of the edges of the flourish shape and Prima flowers. This page uses Basic Gray papers & journaling spot, Bazzill cardstock & stitched ribbon, Bo Bunny gingham ribbon and miscellaneous brads
& letter stickers. The flourish is from the Home Decor Cricut cartridge - another fave! (Thanks, Juanita for letting me hog your machine at our last crop!!!)

Thanks so much for looking. Be back soon with some other fun designs to share!!!

Colorado Beach Babes

After all the winter weather we've had this year - gobs and gobs and gobs of snow, then in traditional Colorado fashion, a week of warm weather to tease us - then more snow, I'm really mentally ready for the beach! Even if, in Colorado, the only beach we get is a lake. I'm cool with that!

Here's a layout of three of my favorite girls from our camping/beach trip last year in Western Colorado - Sophia, my niece and Sophia's best friend.

The paper is My Mind's Eye, cardstock is Stampin' Up, flowers are Prima, stamps are from Autumn Leaves, and ink, brads and chipboard are all from Close To My Heart.

Thanks for stopping by to check it out!

Sometime's it's OK to raid your hubbys tools for scrapping... really!

It's technique week at Frosted Designs! This week we were instructed to create a layout featuring our favorite technique, so mine features sanding - talk about a great stress reliever!

I must admit, I have been known to raid the hubby's tool box in search of sandpaper from time to time, just for the sake of a good layout. I now have several sanding tools - the Tim Holtz mini grip sander and my Precision Files from Close To My Heart (which are amazing for detailed objects, like chipboard letters or frames or for getting into tiny nooks and crannies like scallop corners); but the rest of the time I stick to plain old sandpaper and even, an emery board! Emery boards (or nail files - whatever) are great for smaller items, like the letters here.


For this layout, I primarily sanded the edges of my papers, but here are some other techniques to try:

* Sanding in different directions across the width of your paper (like up and down then side to side) to create a faux-fabric look

* Sanding in circles across your paper

* Place objects under your paper - like flowers, chipboard elements, stamps, etc., to get a subtle outline of the image

* Sand your embellishments, like I did here, for a fun take on distressing

This layout was created with Close To My Heart papers and a mish-mash of tons of small embellies.

Thanks so much for looking! Be sure to stop by Frosted Designs to check out all of the amazing techniques, tips & tutorials from the talented group, too!

A whole new way to use your stamp pads

This week's challenge at Practical Scrappers was to use inks and chalks. Instead of the same ol' distressing technique, I decided to use my ink pad for another purpose - to make my patterned paper.

For this layout, I used my Tim Holtz distress ink pad to create a patterned band of off-set squares directly onto my Bazzill cardstock - between the ink pad and the texture of the cardstock, it got a great, distressed look. I also used my StazOn ink to stamp some flourishes in the corner of the photo, then added a hand-drawn title (minus the awesome) with crafting markers.

The only other products I used on this layout were American Crafts foam Thickers and Kaiser Craft brads.

Merry Memories

This may have been the first year that we got good pictures of the whole family at Christmas. You know - looking at the camera, no goofy faces, no bunny ears, no huge glare in the glasses, nothings blurry and nobody's head got cut off. Well, we didn't get great pictures of all of us together - even though with the glasses glare some still turned out cute, but still, some of the best, most genuine stuff did get captured on film!

Here's my layout celebrating three great holiday pictures:

This was one of the last layouts I did on the first night of last weekend's crop. I think I finally put the finishing touches on this layout at 1:30 a.m. - and it was one of my best of the whole weekend, even if I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open!

This uses Pink Paislee papers, Bazzill cardsock, Zva Creative blingy flourish, Prima, Making Memories & Close To My Heart Flowers, Stampin' Up blingy brads, and both American Crafts Thickers and Sandylion glitter foam alphabet stickers for the title. I also used the Threading Water border punch from Fiskars.

Thanks so much for stopping by! More goodies to follow in the next few days!

Wish me luck....

I just applied to the DT search for two fantabulouso sites -

Sketchy Thursday

and

Jillibean Soup's Bean Talk Blog

If you read me, you already know of my love of the Sketchy Thursday site. Hands down some of the best sketches (and best weekly prizes) around! Many of my layouts already utilize their fabby sketches, so it's only natural that they choose me - LOL! *cough* Even if my application had two unintentional spelling errors. Agh! The horror!!! I'm going to blame it on technological difficulties - Yahoo was really acting up on me tonight - no joke! Hopefully they love me anyway.

And Jillibean Soup - somehow, I just recently found their products. Why it's taken me so long to discover this company, I don't know! Where have I been?! But seriously - amazing stuff! Their corrugated alphas (and the nifty tutorial they have here to alter them) are just some of the fantastic products they offer.

Anyhow, we shall see what the fates grant me. I'll keep you posted of any fun news to announce.

Scrappy hugs -

me

Have you seen what Prima's giving away?! HOLY MOLY!

Prima - my hand-down most FAVORITE ever embellisment manufacturer is giving away two huge prizes packed with Prima awesomeness to go with their Big Surprise....
I spy blingy swirls, awesome pearls, flowers, stamps and more. Seriously, I think I just drooled on my keyboard. Ain't no thing.
Who wouldn't want to be so lucky as to win all of that slice of scrappy heaven?! Lucky day, lucky day! And because I really want to win, I'm sharing the news with you:
For your chance to win, spread the Prima love on your blog, Facebook or other site that you frequent (as long as it's OK with the site's TOU) and post a link to the Prima blog here.
Two very lucky winners will be picked - one US and one international - and named on the Prima blog this Thursday, March 4.
I'd say good luck, but I want to be the lucky one... bwahahahaha!!! Just kidding - really though, if by some chance I do happen to win, I promise to spread the joy and give away a little Prima RAK. Pinky swear!!!
Scrap happy, friends!

Extra Pink Paislee class kits for sale

I have TWO EXTRA class kits on my hands from my recent "Cupid's Love" scrap class that I did. I added some extra things to the kit, so they're filled with everything you need to create these four layouts, plus tons of extras... Click on the picture to enlarge!

Kit includes:

5 sheets of double-sided designer cardstock paper from Pink Paislee's Cupid collection (see the reverse side of these pages here)

1 die-cut designer cardstock sheet from Pink Paislee's Cupid collection

5 sheets of Bazzill cardsock

1 pack of Chocolate self-adhesive pearls from Kaiser Krafts

1 pack of Pink self-adhesive pearls from Kaiser Krafts

1 pack of Salutations fabric cardsock Thickers from American Crafts

1 pack of Pink Paislee Cupid Punch-Outs

1 pack of Pink Paislee Cupid Bella Brads

An assortment of blooms - 2 large Bazzill flowers, 3 medium Bazzill flowers, 5 red felt self-adhesive flowers and 6 Prima flowers

3 lengths of coordinating brown & pink ribbons

Kit cost $23 plus $6 shipping & handling. Paypal only - but you can pay with a credit card through Paypal without having a Paypal account- shipping costs calculated at time of transaction.

Please e-mail me at jasafras98@yahoo.com if you are interested in either of the two kits!

Spring Fling - bring on the flowers! (Frosted Designs challenge)

Spring is in the air - or at least teasing us as it usually does here in the Colorado mountains. This week has been super warm, so we've busted out shorts, skirts, sandals and my fave - ballet flats. Yesterday I was able to wear a short sleeve shrug over a cami, and guess what's forecasted for today? Up to 8" of snow!!! I'll enjoy the warm when I can.


This week's challenge at Frosted Designs was to incorporate flowers into our project. For this layout, I have stamped flowers, used a variety of paper flowers, and stamped, cut out and popped yet more flowers.

I've actually had the base of this layout - bare naked (sans pictures & embellies) for almost two years because it was for a class I taught while I was still with Close To My Heart. I pulled out the layout at my crop a few weeks ago and finally had the perfect pictures, along with a fab assortment of magically coordinated flowers - so I was so jazzed to finally get it done!!!

All papers, stamps & inks are from Close To My Heart; flowers are an assortment of Close To My Heart, Prima, Imaginesce & Making Memories, and brads are again - Close To My Heart, plus some K&Co. epoxy brads.

Be sure to pop on over to Frosted Designs to check out all the other amazing work those awesome girls have in store! Have a great week!

Cupid's Love Layouts

Hi again,

Here is a compilation of the layouts I taught in my recent Cupid's Love scrapbooking class. Those Pink Paislee papers were to die for - seriously, I can think of 20+ layouts to do with just pictures lying around my house with them. Lucky for me I still have lots of leftovers from my little kit to create all sorts of fun stuff!


My first baby Andrew with newborn Sophia... look how little they were!

My "baby" with his first piece of jewelry meant for his first crush... this is a long and adorable story that I'll share soon!

Andrew's first Valentine's party

And, of course, my little shoe diva...