15 challenges completed!

OK, here are two of the fifteen challenges I haven't shown you yet. I managed to get a total of 15 of the 50 challenges completed, meaning I got 3 tickets into the Slice drawing over at Personalscrapper! It would have been nice to complete all 50 but I am just too slow to manage that! But overall I was pleased as I had aimed for only 10, so I beat my goal by 5 layouts! The first layout is a double pager of my son and my brother riding four wheelers on our Fall break vacation last October in Nebraska. They had a great time. The paper is from Paper Loft and I LOVE it, very nice shades of blue, and the die cut embellishments are great, LOVE that compass one! The second page called "Staying Connected" was my hardest challenge. It was the technology challenge and I am NOT a high tech person, so I didn't have a lot of cool gadgets to feature, but I decided to do a layout about how my computer has allowed to experience a world I never would have dreamed possible 10 or more years ago. From buying stuff, to using MapQuest to find my way anywhere, to googling info on ANYTHING imaginable, to doing online crops, playing my fav games of Hearts and Spades with people from ALL over the world, to keeping in touch with old friends and family via email and my blog to surfing for scrapbooking inspiration I just couldn't live without my computer. I just can't imagine what cyberspace will be like in another 10 years even, kinda fun to think about! And for a funny story on this topic of technological advancements for those of us who remember when high tech was an 8 track tape deck or a Commodore 64, go to Julie's blog at http://www.cosmocricket.typepad.com
This is just SOOOO funny, you will get a kick out of it, plus if you leave a comment you will be eligible to win a free Early Bird scrapbooking kit!! So go check it out. Back to my layout...I used SEI Dill Blossom papers and Scenic Route and Making memories alphas on this simple layout. I have one more to show you but it has gotten dark out and I can't get a good pic so I will post it tomorrow!

Use your stash Tuesday Mad Dash!

Yes, I am running a mile a minute around here making a HUGE mess of my scrapping space trying to put the last minute touches on my last 3 layouts..yes I said three! I have until midnight to upload them and I am running behind. I have 2 of them done, just need to photograph them and upload them and the third I still need to complete..but I have til midnight right? Well, that's still 6 hours away! LOL! So here is one I did get done and photographed...it is for the die cut challenge. We were to use a die cut or die cut paper on our page. I didn't have any die cut paper to use so I made my own. I had made a template on an old piece of cardboard a while back before I used my last piece of diecut paper in this shape (which I love) traced it onto a piece of Pink Paislee Office Lingo grid paper and tadaaaaaaaaaa die cut paper (I inked the edges to cover up my kindergarten like cutting skills) and there you have it my own homemade die cut paper! The other papers are all VERY old (at least 2004 or 2005) from Basic Gray's Hang 10 collection. They matched my Egyptian theme perfectly! It's times like this when I say to myself "I knew I was saving this paper for the last 5 years for a reason" !!! This layout is based on 52 sketches sketch #16 for last week. The tag with the hieroglyphics is an actual print out we made at the King Tut exhibit called a "cartouche" pronounced "kar-toosh". A cartouche is a seal that Pharaoh's of ancient Egypt used as their nameplate on their tombs etc and this cartouche spells out my son's name in hieroglyphics. We had a great time at this exhibit and I highly recommend it if you have a chance to go. Ok, enough of my history lesson for now, gotta run, afterall I've come this far, now I can just envision me using that Slice that I won't win if I don't get these pages done! If I'm still standing tomorrow, I will share my other challenges with you!

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday everyone! I had a very productive weekend. I finished up a few more challenges for my Slice contest that ends tomorrow night. I have one more layout to go and hope to finish it up tomorrow (nothing like waiting until the last minute huh?!) Here is a layout I created for the PUNCH challenge. We were to use our punches on a layout. Here I used the photo corner punch, circle punches and star punches from Stampin' Up. The papers were by Fancy Pants (Daily Grind and About a Boy collections) and Basic Gray (Offbeat collection). I made a photo collage on Picasa to make the strip of small photos at the bottom. The journaling card which I used here for my title is from Creative Chaos. http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5367046If you didn't already you must check out Jen's etsy shop for the most awesome looking journaling cards and other goodies. This star journaling card is my all time fav from her shop! Well, better run, gotta get back to work on my final challenges. Check back tomorrow and I will share them with you!

There are still FREE things in this world!

Who would believe it,but there are still free things in this world and I found one while blog hopping this morning! The team at The Scrap Room is offering a FREE sketches class starting May 1st. I signed up and you can too! Just visit their blog at http://thescraproomblog.blogspot.com It is open to everyone not just club members and all you have to do is join the message board which is free too! So hop on over and sign up, hope to see you there!

Let's celebrate Earth Day with a Blog Crop!

What's a blog crop you ask? Well, it is an online crop hosted by an AWESOME scrapbooking company called Paper Trunk that not only has the most awesome scrapbooking papers but papers and products that are GREEN as in good for the environment and for preserving your memories! This crop in celebration of Earth Day starts today and ends on May 2nd National Scrapbook Day. There are awesome prizes and even better awesome inpspiration..go check out the challenge for today and the beautiful layout created for it at the Paper Trunk blog: http://papertrunk.blogspot.com There will be a challenge posted everyday from today until May 2nd and you have until May 2nd to post your layouts to be eligible to win a prize. So play come play along and if you are leave me a comment so I can watch for you work! Happy Earth Day everyone!

Use your stash Tuesday

Happy Tuesday everyone! Wow, time seems to be flying by doesn't it? It seems like once the weather gets warmer time seems to pass me by even faster, this time of the year is so busy and I am finding I have a HUGE list of things to do every night and just not enough time to do them in! Which leaves me less time to scrapbook, however, I am so close to the finish line on the Slice challenge over at Personalscrapper I just can't let myself give up now. I now have only two more challenges to go, and this eighth challenge proved to be pretty tough. We were to create a layout about Personalscrapper. Well, everyone who reads my blog knows I LOVE Personalscrapper, but I had a hard time coming up with an idea. So I decided to think of ONE word to describe my love of Personalscrapper and I came up with ANTICIPATION. It seems like I anticipate the beginning of each month and seeing what my new kit will look like. Then I anticipate so eagerly it arriving on my doorstep so that I can create with it. I have even been known to stay up til midnight waiting for the new kit's picture to be posted on the website! LOL! So now if you didn't already know about my little obsession with Personalscrapper its now official, I am "obsessed" with my fun kit club! For this "use your stash" layout I used the July 2008 Personalscrapper kit featuring Paper Salon papers. I love the red, white, blue, brown and lime green colors, very unusual and very striking. The journaling spot is a RAK from my good friend Jen at Creative Chaos. If you haven't checked out her etsy shop you've gotta do it! Her journaling jotters are the best, plus she has her own design team that showcases great ways to use her products, so go check her out at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5367046 Have a great rest of the week folks!

Weekend scrappy time

Here's another layout I did for my seventh Slice Challenge on the Personalscrapper site, only three more to go and my name will be entered twice for a drawing for a Making Memories Slice! This layout was created using one of the sketches from the Pagemaps site this month. This sketch is so versatile and fun, allowing me to get all four photos on to one page which I LOVE! The challenge here was to create a page about your favorite things. I have done this in the past but thought I would do an updated version to reflect a few of my favs for 2009. The papers are by October Afternoon and the letters stickers by American Crafts. If you haven't seen the Pagemaps sketches for April run on over to Becky's website and check them out http://www.pagemaps.com , besides all the wonderful sketches you can see examples of each sketch by some very talented scrapbookers. Well, better get back to creating, I think I hear that Slice calling my name!

Check this out!

I was blog hopping and happened upon this AWESOME yumminess at the Cosmo Cricket blog! It is a sneak peak of their new release due out May 1st called EARLY BIRD! I LOVE it, but the again, when don't I love a line by Cosmo Cricket? You can see the entire line at their blog at http://www.cosmocricket.typepad.com I MUST have this line, I now have a new fav line (my old fav was Mr Campy). Isn't that spin the bottle spinner embellishment the cutest thing? I have no ideas for it,but I think its cute LOL! Julie has an awesome page she made using this line on her blog as well, stop by and then let me know what you think, will you or won't you buy it? Sorry no layout today, I have 2 almost done and will try to share them with you in a day or so!

A friendly little layout

Here is my next layout I completed for the Personalscrapper Slice contest. It is for the friends challenge. I have so many good friends, but really no pics of them or even of me with them. I did have one pic from CKC with my friend Janelle and one pic that my son took of me with my friend Angie. So I decided to use this sketch from the Got Sketch 103 class on this challenge. I am not sure if I told you guys and gals how much I love these Got Sketch classes, but they are so super. I did most of the sketches in Got Sketch 102 during class but during the 103 class I got behind (I know its hard to believe), but no worry, you just save the assignments to your trusty computer for when you do get a bit of time, like now. Then eazy peezy you conjure up a nice friendly layout! YEAH! I used the February Personalscrapper kit to complete this layout and boy do I love these WRMK Tiffany line papers...much prettier in person then on the net I must say. Hope your Monday was good, I did get some of my windows cleaned...yucky job, but it feels so much better to actually be able to see out the window! LOL! Now with that lovely job out of the way I am off to work on my seventh Slice challenge layout so catch you back here when I'm done!

Happy Easter Friends!

Half way there!

Well its official, this layout is number five of the first ten challenges I need to complete to be entered into the drawing for a Slice over at Personalscrapper! I still have over 2 weeks to complete the other five challenges. I am hoping to get another one done this weekend in between my Easter Bunny duties and house cleaning. I have the idea, just need the time to complete it! This layout features paper by Autumn Leaves from the May 2007 Personalscrapper kit. The large envelope is from the Lisa Bearson KOTM from April 2008 but the colors were so hard to match, that I just covered it with paper instead of using it in its original format. The pink it was originally was just very hard to match and was driving me crazy trying to find just the right background paper, so I took the easy way out and customized it a bit.
I cut the little mini file folder out with my Cricut, using the Graphically Speaking cartridge, if you don't have this one, run don't walk to buy it, it is awesome! I had fun researching prices, songs, toys, TV shows, etc from my birth year of 1966. It's hard to believe that some of these things are that old! I remembered all of the most popular TV shows and songs, but the movies I really have never seen, but might do so now just for fun. I am planning on doing a page with the highlights from the birth year of everyone in my family for my family album, it will be fun as the years go by to continue to look back on the prices etc and see how things have changed. Enjoy you weekend, hope the Easter Bunny puts lots of goodies in your baskets!

My Wise Guy!

It seems that owls are the latest craze. I have found myself caught up in the latest craze and finally found an owl that I liked (I'm picky that way). It seems like many of the owls are too girly, too cutesy, too evil looking or just not very owly (is that a word?!) I think this owl is masculine yet eye catching. It is made by Fancy Pants and it matches this My Minds Eye paper (found in the March Personalscrapper kit) perfectly! I may not find another owl I like, but at least I got to scrap a page with an owl (FINALLY!), in fact, one of my friends who will remain nameless got so tired about me talking about owls, she bought this lovely owl for me and gave it to me! LOL! I am sure she was biting her nails worrying that this owl would not live up to my standards and she would have to endure even more owl talk! LUCKY HER..I love it, it was just what I wanted. I had this idea for a LONG time, but didn't have the owl, this picture was taken last year when my son received his TAKS awards for Math and Reading. The pictures of him getting the actual awards turned out HORRIBLE, the lighting in the cafeteria at that school is not good at all and thus the pictures there look GREEN, and although I am not a photoshop expert, they are pretty much unfixable! So I only got this one photo in the classroom when I went to pick him up to leave after the ceremony. The real funny thing is, I am again in search of another owl for a page about this year, you see my son changed schools and the new school's mascot is ....you guessed it...the OWLS! LOL! I told him I might start calling him bird boy because all the schools he attends have bird mascots! So please leave me a comment about any other owls that you like or have seen that I could use for a page on the new school. I am looking for a smallish owl for this page so please leave me a tip with any that you might be aware of that are out there! Oh, I forgot to mention this page was made for one of the Personalscrapper challenges called FAVORITES...it is to feature you favorite paper and embellies....well, I just love the new FREE BIRD line by My Minds Eye, it is so awesome, and of course the new owl, my new fav embellie, and these American Crafts thickers are also some of my absolute favs. This layout was inpsired by sketch #13 at 52 weeks 52 sketches. Have a wonderful rest of the week, I hope to have another layout up by the weekend, so catch ya back here soon!

I'm back

I'm back from an awesome time at CKC St. Louis. I took some awesome classes, actually they were all very good. Absolutely no complaints about any of them, and this is the first year I can say that. In years past we have always taken one that was not so good, either due to a poor instructor, not very much product for your high class fee OR just a project that was really unusuable. So I am happy to report none of the above this year! This is a layout I made in the Basic Grey class featuring the brand new Lime Rickey line, LOVE these bright colors and they worked perfectly for photos from my son's last sleepover. I really would like some more of this line, but by the time I made it to the Basic Grey booth it was all sold out...UGH! I am sure I will find some more of it at some point in time though! I came home with a lot of layouts and am hoping to put some pictures on them in the upcoming weeks, so I will be sharing more as I get them done. Right now I am getting back into the swing of completing my challenges for the Slice contest over at Personalscrapper, too bad I can't count this layout, but since it was a class one, I am sure it would be cheating to submit it, so I am going to buckle down and finish up some of the challenges for this contest before working on finishing up my class layouts. Only 3 weeks left to finish up my other challenges, and I have 7 left! Hope I can make it! That's like 2 a week..better get to work!

Friday's Featured Blogger

Hello from CKC St. Louis! Wanted to take a minute to check in and say hi! We are having a lot of fun, wonderful classes last night and today and looking forward to the PaperCrafts swap tonight...can't wait to see all the wonderful cards everyone has created! I will definitely share when I get home in a couple of days. I am about worn out for today and we still have a few classes to go! Only taking 3 classes tomorrow so hope to get in a bunch of shopping then. Since I can't post any pictures today I wanted to take this opportunity to feature a wonderful blog that I know you will all LOVE...its the Scenic Route blog by Sarah Milne. You can check it out here: http://sarahmilne.typepad.com/scenicroute/ Her blog features products we have all grown to love from Scenic Route Paper Company. I took 3 classes from Sarah today and they were all awesome, top of the line layouts, wonderfully designed and beautiful colors. I know we all have some Scenic Route stash, so her blog is a great source of inspiration so you can be inspired to use up some of these beautiful papers. We got to work with many of the awesome lines from Scenic Route, including Sonoma, Surprise, Appleton and many more...you are going to be knocked over when I show you what we created (or shall I say I attempted to create, as usual I never finish everything in the short class period, so I will hopefully be finishing some of it up tonight and tomorrow!). So in my absence the next few days go check out Sarah's blog and I'll be back to share all my great finds and creations in a few more days! Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

No foolin' today my nephew Ryan turned the big FIVE! WOW! Seems like yesterday he was just a bitty baby! Ryan loves to play outside and even more fun is playing in the water! Ryan hope you had a wonderful birthday and can't wait to spend the summer at the waterpark with you again this year! Happy birthday little buddy we love you!