Back to School!

With school starting again, my creativity has come to a standstill. Well - at least my scrapbooking creativity. My "free time" is being spent grading papers and writing lesson plans. Oh well, such is life. (Althought I did hang up some vinyl in my classroom that I will post soon.) For all of you faithful bloggers, here is a card I made a few months ago. The picture is not so great - what was I thinking, but I love the card. I have to admit, I scraplifted this card. Usually, I do not do a lot with Oriental inspired themes but I love this set of acrylic stamps from Hero Arts. They are called "Four Dolls" and are so cute to play with. I stamped the doll and the fan on white cardstock and then colored them with colored pencils. I then cut them out and attached them with pop dots. On the long strip of pink, I stamped some matching flowers in white ink and colored in some of the flowers. I attached everything to some flower cardstock and thought it still needed something so I stamped some smaller flowers, cut them out, and attached them under the quote. The quote says, "It's always GREAT being with you!" This quote was printed on my printer. I sent this to my friend Mandy who lives in Wisconsin. Even though she lives far away, she is always there for me and I appreciate her friendship more than I can ever say. Happy Stamping everyone!

Vroom! Vroom!

My dad celebrated his birthday about a week ago and he is so hard to buy for! What do you buy for the man who has everything? His card was not much easier. I always like to try new things for my dad's cards so I did the Iris folding technique. Basically, you use several pieces of paper and you layer them in a design to make a picture. It leaves a space right in the middle, just like the iris of your eye. (Circle of Crafters has a step by step guide with patterns if you want to learn how to do this.) For this card, I used some vintage looking paper to make the car look older. Then I cut out some wheels and used some brown paper to fill in the iris in the middle. I stamped Happy Birthday with some black embossing powder. These cards will be really thick because of the amount of paper you will use so I always try to use double sided tape to keep it all together. Let me know what you think!

Photoshop

Hello! Can you believe July is almost over? Parents are getting excited and teachers are getting nervous. Ahh - the first day of school is near. I only have a few weeks to get some of my summer projects done. Now if only I could find that list I made back in June!

One thing I did was to take a class through jessicasprague.com. She is the queen of digital scrapbooking. The class was to help me use Photoshop Elements. She does it step by step in language I can understand. Here is the first picture I did. It makes me laugh because Kate and I were at the park after her t-ball game and she just could not believe I was taking another picture of her. I told her she was sassy and the lady next to me started laughing. The picture uses a frame and I think it is called word art. Maybe I will figure out Photoshop after all! Stay cool!

Stories

Have you ever sat down to scrapbook only to realize you are a year behind? That is what happened to me recently. I have not exactly "scrapbooked" in so long. Last week, I finally did some scrapbooking. I am going to visit my friends in Wisconsin again for the 4th of July and I had not even scrapbooked last summer's visit. How can I take loads of new pics with the pile of old ones waiting here for me? This week, I just worked and worked and got so many pages done. (Almost 30 at last count.) For once, I did not worry about the latest techniques and trends. I worried about getting the story down on paper. Isn't that what scrapbooking is all about? Leaving our stories? Years from now, no one will care what embellishments I used or how much time one layout took me. They will care about the pictures and the people and places in them. Here are some of my simple layouts I finished this week. They are not the most creative, but they tell a story. My story with Kate and Drew who mean the world to me. I sadly did not finish all of last summer, but someday I will and I look forward to taking great pictures of them again. When I get back, I am going to work on my story too. My boxes of pictures are waiting to be shared! (Part of my story - a Happy Belated Birthday to my little sister Heather! Can't wait to scrapbook your story too!)

Is it vinyl or art?

There has been nothing above my bed for quite a while now. I used to have a huge picture but it did not match anything so I took it down. My sister gave me a large metal thing to hang up there but I imagined it falling during the middle of the night and crushing me. What to do? What to do? I know - cut something from vinyl and hang it up. So I tried it and this is how it turned out. I had always thought I would do four squares but I like the look of three. First, I cut strips of 1 inch by 12 inch in brown and made the frames. Then, I used the Storybook cartridge and cut the flowers out at 3 and 1/2 inches in red and beige. The middle beige one is hard to see in the picture but shows up well in person. (I would have done them all in red but I ran out!!) Not bad for a first timer and a girl who never makes straight lines. I have always done words, never objects in vinyl. Now, what to do on all of the other walls!!

Dressing Up

Happy Thursday everyone! A while ago, my mom and sister found some onesies over at JoAnn's and thought we could dress them up a little bit. (By we, they meant I.) I had read that you can cut fabric with the Cricut machine so I bought some cute fabric, onesies, and some wonder under. You iron the fabric onto the wonder under and then cut it using the Cricut. Well, the Cricut tore up the fabric so I know I am doing something wrong but I did not give up. I used my Cricut to cut out some templates and then traced those onto the fabric. The fabric was cut into various shapes and then I ironed those onto the onesies. Whew - I am tired but these turned out cute. They are for Brayden, our friends' Kathy and Justin's new baby boy. He is a welcomed and special addition to their family and he will look so cute in these. I think they look pretty cute on my clothesline. (Now to figure out what I did wrong in the first place!!)

Color Inspiration

Good morning everyone! I have always wanted to enter something into this challenge and I finally found a project to do it with. I posted this frame a while ago, but it matches this color challenge so I am posting it again. This frame was made for my friend Amy and I finally got to meet her son Vincent last night. He is definitely Baby Love!