Fun & Fanciful - LGC Blog Party FINAL DAY!

Hello! We've almost made it through the week - woohoo! This is also the last day of the February Lucky Girl Crafts blog party, celebrating our latest kit, "Kid at Heart". This kit is awesome, and so jammed pack that today isn't actually the last time you'll see my projects from it this month. I've got so many more to share with you, but for today, I'll give you two projects!

Before we get to my latest projects, though, have you visited the rest of the Lucky Girls? Each of them has a prize to give away, and the new team is rocking our latest kit! Be sure to check them out & give them a warm welcome - their links are in the posting above.

In the spirit of our celebration, here's a little birthday card. I love the little animals from the Prima papers, especially paired with the vintage-funk of the Echo Park patterns and metallic Studio 54 adhesive embellies. Don't they make just sweet little balloons?

And finally, a little tribute to a family stay-cation. We brought my mother-in-law to town for a round of mini golf, and the fun number paper was a perfect mimicking of our score cards - especially since we don't really keep accurate scores.

I did a lot of fussy-cutting here, with the Echo Park flowers. I further embellished them with the Mod Podge Dimensional Glaze and pop dots, which created a natural curled effect. I also added Dimensional Glaze to the centers of the small green flowers, and, though you can't really tell, to the glittered chipboard Thickers. I really love how that turned out!

Today's your last chance to try to get Lucky!

Each of the Lucky Girls on our blog party has some Lucky Bucks to give away, and each day of the party you'll have another chance to enter to win! Just follow these simple steps for a chance to win $7 Lucky Bucks to our store for my stop in the Blog Party!

Earn 1 entry for referring a friend to the LGC blog party

Earn 1 entry for answering today's question:

What 5 products in our store most make you feel like a kid again?!

Earn 10 entries for the giveaways on all of the Lucky Girl Crafts Blog Party when you place any order by the end of the day!!!

Stuck on stickers!

Hi all!
Welcome to my Tuesday posting for Practical Scrappers - new day, new projects! Yeah! This week our challenge is stickers. I got some new Basic Grey stickers to use on my layout:

The layered fabric and button flowers, chipboard and even the striped ribbon in the corner are all stickers... OK, self-adhesive embellies, same thing! All products are from Basic Grey's Green at Heart line, except for the vinyl Thickers and cardstock - both American Crafts.

Thanks for stopping by & don't forget to check out the details for my new Lucky Girls DT Call!

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!

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!

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!

Love & Laughter - Magpie Sketch Challenge

I have just returned from a whirl-wind scrap weekend with some of my closest friends, and I have got so much to share with you over the next few days! In just 24 hours, I completed 25 (!) layouts - and this is after I just threw the closest available products in a few bags to take to the crop, then having to reorganize the photos that I randomly threw together from my scrap area once I got to the crop. Seriously, that's more than double the layouts I had hoped I'd get done. I'm one happy - and exhausted - scrapper!

Here's the first layout I'm sharing with you:

I was so glad to come across the kiddo's antiquity photos from over the summer - they turned out so great, and much better than their first antiquity photos 4 years ago, where poor Soph was terrified by the photographer and had huge alligator tears and a snot nose. Good thing those pics were in sepia tones! Anywho, this layout uses Bo Bunny papers, Bazzill ribbon, K&Co. alpha stickers, Stampin' Up felt flowers and Making Memories diamond-shape pins.

It also uses this fantastic sketch from Magpie Club, which is an awesome kit club run by an English-born Colorado girl. I love supporting locally if I can, and hope to start her awesome kit club next month. Anywho, here's her adorable sketch for the February challenge. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!

Family Traditions... Practical Scrappers Challenge

Our challenge this week at Practical Scrappers was to do a layout about holiday traditions - what a fun way to remember those things that a family holds near and dear!
Every year I bundle my kiddos up for a trip to Grand Junction for the Parade of Lights. My brother & his family join us and we usually end with dinner at a local BBQ joint {my fave!}. This layout features pics from this year's parade - my nephew's first (he slept the whole time) - and by far the coldest one yet! We froze! Literally! And as such, bailed about half way through, which was fine because it was a loooong way back after dinner. I forget that it's now almost 2 hours from my house to downtown Grand Junction - one way. Thank goodness for good weather & safe driving.
Anyhow, ignore the really bad picture of the layout and focus instead on the way-fun print on that die-cut paper. That's from BoBunny, as are the matching letter stickers. I also used Bazzill card stock, some K&Co. glittered embellies and Stampin' Up buttons & twine. The ribbon was from my stash - I think I got it at a local paperie/stationary store.
Thanks for stopping by!

Tear it up! Frosted Designs challenge layout (with a little tip)

Hello all! Happy Friday! I hope this finds you well! I'm in a great mood today - I had a girl's night out with some close friends last night at a really yummy restaurant so I'm still all full & happy from that. It was also a work thing, but all the delicious food both at the restaurant and the 50 appetizers I ate before hand more than made up for any boring work talk. LOL. Actually, it was really interesting, but anyhow...
I'm also skipping work today so I can go see New Moon at lunch with my book club friend. Yeah!!! I'm so excited I feel like a teenager!!!
And finally, back to the real reason at hand - this week's challenge at Frosted Designs was a fun one - we were supposed to use paper tearing in our project. I used to do paper tearing on everything, but it's been quite a while since I've used this technique. I don't have any of the fancy, $10 paper tearing tools, but I have an even better suggestion! I use a wet Q-tip to trace a line or pattern on my paper that I want torn, which makes tearing quick and easy and "clean." Usually one swipe of a wet Q-tip works on flimsier papers and it takes a few swipes for thicker cardstock. Voila! A tip that costs about 1 cent!
For this layout, I used my Q-tip trick to trace a bracket shape for my title block, as well as the straight lines for the rest of the tears.
This layout was completely from my stash of scraps - The ribbon and most of the papers are from Close To My Heart (forever ago!), the actual layout piece itself, which is from Provo Craft, the flowers are a mixture of Making Memories, K & CO. and Petalloo, and bling is from everywhere! The title is from EK Success glittery foam letters.
Thanks for looking and be sure to check out the rest of the talented team over at Frosted Designs!

Time to break out the office supplies!

Our challenge over at Practical Scrappers this week is to use office supplies (and not buttons, as I was originally thinking! Agh! It's been one of those weeks!) After much decision on what to do, here's what I came up with.
These pics were taken of my sweet little Sophia when she was just three. My peanut girl - how cute is she?! I love the black and white photos against the bright & funky background. I used colored paperclips as a fun little border with ribbon on one side, then my notebook hole punch for the pink border.
Papers and die cuts are My Mind's Eye, stickers are Doodlebug Design, and ribbon and paper clips are Close To My Heart.
Be sure to visit Practical Scrappers to see what else our talented Design Team has come up with!

Playing with lace (cardstock, that is!)

Our challenge this week at Practical Scrappers was to play with lace cardstock, which is essentially one big huge die cut piece of paper. I've used it before in creating a graduation card for my cousin Ashley - which, of course, I didn't get a picture of so I'll just have to recreate because it turned out pretty neat. My sweet friend Juanita got me some fun lace cardstock for my birthday this summer and I've been itching to use it. This is some of it - you'll see the other stuff tomorrow!

I trimmed my large piece of lace swirly cardstock down to a 3" or so border and glued it to the edge of my little-more-than-half-moon shaped patterned paper to create this fun and relatively easy layout. From there, I added some dollar aisle Target chipboard glitter letters and some Pink Paislee "Captivating" stickers for the title, my new Sizzix swirly stamps and Powder Puff ink, Close To My Heart white grosgrain ribbon, some felt ric rac, a chipboard star from my Making Memories stash and misc. papers.

Kickin' it old school - bust out those decorative scissors!

When my step-mom first got me into scrapbooking a million years ago, I got several pairs of decorative scissors. I kept them and used them often through Andrew's first baby album, but I can't say as I've done much with them since. When our challenge came up this week at Practical Scrappers, I had to dig through the kiddo's art box to find a pair!

I totally wimped out and used the most non-threatening decorative scissors I had in stash - which luckily was my only pair, so I was safe! The edge on the purple & green strips were made using my scallop scissors - these were the inverted (upside down) pieces to create a wavy look instead of the girly scallops.

Overall I really enjoyed how my layout turned out. This uses supplies from the AC Bailey Goodies Kit of the Month for October - stinkin' cute! Including Pink Paislee patterned papers (from which also came the tag) & glittery brad. The glittery swirls are from Marcella by K and the flower is an ink-distressed daisy from Wal-Mart's faux floral section.

Thanks for looking!

Creative little flourishes!

Our challenge this week at Frosted Designs was to create with a flourish (or two!) Yeah - my favorite! I'd use flourishes in everything if I could.
And, since I just received my October Goodies Kit of the Month from AC Bailey, it was a perfect chance to incorporate some fun designs for my Halloween layout.
I used Pink Paislee Twilight collection papers - the main polkadot piece being cut into my recent fave fad shape and distressed with black ink - plus a Pink Paislee tag, a strip of scallopped My Mind's Eye paper, some felt ric rack and vinyl Thickers. The black swirls were all Close To My Heart - and I accented the corner swirl with Ranger Stickles (like a glittery glue in a fine-tip applicator).
I had a card in mind, too, but when it went to paper it totally didn't turn out like I had pictured. I'll perfect it this weekend and share with you soon!
Be sure to check out the Frosted Designs blog to check out all of the great projects from the incredibly talented (as in wayyy talented) Design Team and be sure to enter your flourish projects for a chance to win!

ACB On-Line Fall Crop Challenge #6

Here's my first project for the AC Bailey Designs Fall On-Line crop, going on now! I had big plans to get a lot done last night, but Michael & I were watching last season's Grey's Anatomy - what a tear jerker! So, needless to say, not a whole lot of scrapping happened!

Challenge #6 over at ACB forum is to create a layout following this sketch to the T! It's supposed to be about an everyday moment, which mine is not. That's what happens when I read the directions on the fly!



And here's my take on it:


My layout uses Close To My Heart papers, cardstock, stickers, flower & button, a strip of Jenni Bowlin paper, Stampin' Up rubon and Thickers for the title.

Non-traditional Disney Layouts

We went to Disney Land two years ago for spring break and I'm still working on pages for our album. Since I don't do anything in chronological order, but rather as the creative mood strikes, I'm not in any huge rush. Here are a few of my recent pages for the album.


I found this paper and immediately thought of our trip to Disneyland - even though I think it was technically designed for school/sports. The A Day to Remember paper is from Adornit by Carolee's. Polkadot paper is Making Memories. Jeweled brads are from Oriental Trading Company and Mickey sticker is from Jolee's.

This is one of my favorite Disney layouts! I love how clean this feels, and how girly! "Dumbo" & "favorite" are from the Cricut Storybook collection (I might have to break down and buy a Cricut just for that cartridge!), flowers are Making Memories, Petaloo & Oriental Trading. Papers & small bling are from Close To My Heart, bling brad is Stampin' Up, and pens are the Bic permanent acid-free pens. Oh - and the swirl stamp is also Stampin' Up - I used Staz On ink so I could stamp directly onto my picture.

Aren't these colors perfect for Jasmine & Aladdin? This uses all Close To My Heart papers, a little Bling from ColorBok, and of course, the Storybook cartridge from Cricut.

My awesome friend Juanita gave me a little gift at our retreat last weekend and the goody pack contained this yummy embossed, glittered paper. I'm not sure who makes it, but I want more! The flowers are Making Memories and Prima (can you tell I got stuck on a new technique last weekend) and though you can't tell very well, there is a glittered brad layered into a button to create the center of the flower. I had to sand the button holes with the Finishing Files from Close To My Heart - Love them! The sticker letters are from a Making Memories card kit I got ages ago. Oh - and that cute little file tab thing? That's one of the new metal embellishments in the latest Close To My Heart Idea Book - released just last week! The foundry tabs are sold in a set of 8 (four colors, each in different designs) for just $3.95! I sanded the embossed design on mine to get it to stand out a bit more.

Lots of layouts!

My goal for the scrapbook weekend was to catch up on some of Andrew's baby album. He turns 10 this year, so I figured I should get the ball rolling if I want his album done by the time he graduates from high school!

I used a lot of old pictures, making me miss my chunky monkey baby of a boy, but I also used a lot of old papers and stickers that I've had almost as long as he's been alive. It made me feel so happy to finally be using some of my excessive stash.

Silly Little Mess uses some alpha stickers that I got forever ago at Target - I think that they're ColorBok. You could tell they were really old because I had to re-glue all of the letters to actually have them stick to my page. The dimensional stickers are from Sandylion - also from a long time ago. The pictures of that silly little boy? He wasn't even three yet.

I don't scrapbook in chronological order, so this next page is just from last Christmas. Here Andrew's on the slopes with his uncles. Cardstock, stamps, inks & rub-ons are Close To My Heart. The patterned paper is from My Mind's Eye - and I've only had it for 1 year!

I think this is my best layout from my scrap weekend. I could not even guess where the papers came from, but they were double-sided and I've had them for ages. I added some fancy-dancy little star brads from Stampin' Up and the title is in alpha stickers from Doodlebug Designs - both recent purchases.

I also tried doing a few pages of the sweet girls in my life:

Here's my Sophia - girl getting all grown up. We got her ears pierced (finally) right before last Thanksgiving. The lady who pierced her ears was a little crazy and convinced that Soph was only 3 (she was actually 5) and kept telling me that I was going to scar her for life. That should have been a red flag, right? No, I'm stubborn and made her go ahead and pierce my baby's ears. On the first ear, she got her rubber glove pierced too, and had to remove the whole earring and re-insert it into the new hole after she removed her glove as my daughter's accessory. The second ear, the gun got stuck on the earring as it went into Soph's ear, and it took some wrestling to get it off. Poor girl. But through it all, Soph didn't cry or so much as whimper. She was so brave!

This page uses Close To My Heart patterned papers, ribbon, stamps, ink & flower, cardstock & brads from Stampin' Up, photo corners by Martha Stewart and sparkles from Wal-Mart. The crown & title are from the Cricut Storybook collection.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm most creative in the middle of the night. That's where this page came from of my beautiful little niece, Kaelee. Everything here minus the buttons and pen are Close To My Heart. The die-cuts are from last November's Dazzling Die-Cut campaign. I ripped the bottom of the "T" - it was late, after all, but hid it with a flower so it's all good.

More fun old pictures! Here's Sophia and her uncle (no joke), my youngest sibling Max from a few years ago. Little Max is such a gentleman! Papers are from the Life Delights line from Close To My Heart. I cut out the big flowers from one of the patterned pieces to add as embellishments. The white flowers are also Close To My Heart. Photo corners are Martha Stewart and rhinestone swirls and flower centers are from Wal-Mart.

This last layout uses more stuff from my stash. Here Andrew is enjoying his new bike that he got for his fourth birthday.

By the way, all of the very limited journaling you see on these pages are done with the Bic Mark-It permanent pens. They are ultra-fine point, acid free and come in TONS of colors. I've heard them called the poor girl's Copics. My kind of pens!