Project 29, A proper birthday calendar

On yesterdays post I said I have a calendar hanging by my desk to keep track of birthday cards to send out. I may have been embellishing a little. What I actually have is a piece of paper with the months listed on it and birthdays written in underneath each month. I've been thinking I wanted to put something a bit more attractive together. Just something simple, a tag for each month, with a list of birthdays in that month, that I could hang up next to my desk. Lucky for me, yesterday there was a tutorial for almost exactly what I wanted on the American Crafts blog! So I made a few changes and this is what I came up with,

I used My minds eye, Fine and Dandy. I love the bright colors in this line. These tags are exactly what I wanted and now all I have to do is write in the birthdays!

Happy hellos, project 28

I've been trying to improve my card making skills. I really enjoy making them but I could definitely use more practice. So I've been trying to make one a week. I have a calendar by my desk with up coming birthdays and events listed on it and at the beginning of each week I check to see whats coming up and make an appropriate card. This week I looked at my calendar and saw that for once I was all caught up on my cards. On the rare occasion that I'm all caught up I like to make a just because card for a special person in my life that I consider to be like a grandmother to me.

Her name is Gladys, and she used to work with my mom. It was maybe 15 years ago but she has been a close family friend ever since. She has been more of a grandmother to me than my real grandmother, she just has such a big heart! I know she enjoys writing letters so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to keep in touch and share my creations with someone that I feel will really appreciate them. Since I'm still developing card making skills I cardlifted once again from Pinterest. Here is the example card,

and here is what I made,

I'm actually really happy with how it turned out! I used Echo Park's Summer Days for the background and Dots and Strips, Candy Shoppe for the pinwheels. It's safe to say this is my favorite card yet and I'm glad it's going to someone so special!

Continuing along

Project 26 and 27 brings us back to my 8x8 Christmas albums. I'm just so happy to be making progress on these books and not waiting till the last minute on at least one thing. This layout is about Brianna's first hair cut. Here is the original layout,

  For the 8x8 I decided to just make the title page. Since I'm not doing journaling in the 8x8 albums and I don't have a piece of hair to add to them I thought the left page would just look plain. So here is what I ended up with,

I love the way it turned out! I think it's a pretty close copy. Of course I made two of them, one for each grandmother. So another two projects done and another two closer to 100!

Mid week mojo Topaz #5

Woo! 1/4 of the way done with my 100 project goal!! The milestone project is of course another Mid week mojo from Kristy Lee at Scrapbooksteals.com Here is the sketch she provided,

And here is my interpretation,

This layout was so hard for me to do but also a bit therapeutic. This is my dog Sara that I lost 3 years ago to cancer. She was absolutely my best friend and I've never really gotten over losing her. I actually don't plan on ever getting over it. I like that I still think about her on almost a daily bases it makes her a part of my life still even if she isn't here anymore. About a month ago I decided I was ready to adopt another Rottweiler. I was having a really hard time with it because in a way, I feel like it's forcing me to come to terms with the fact that Sara isn't coming back. So I made this layout with the intent of it being a little scrappy therapy. The envelope under the photo has a nice long journaling page about our relationship and how special she was. I plan to frame it and hang it in my scrap room and I think it did help me become more ready to accept another dog into our family.

Two for one, Project 23 and 24

For the sake of the 100 project challenge, the girls that are participating, decided that a two page layout would count as two projects. I'm not usually much of a two pager kind of person but when I saw Kristy Lee's new Mid week mojo sketch for Topaz #4  I decided to give it a try. Here is the sketch she provided,

And this is what I came up with,

 

I wish I could take credit for the idea of the stitched circles but that was my incredibly talented friend Brenda Smith. When I originally saw Brenda's layout I said I wanted to try the stitched circles but on a smaller scale. I failed! I don't think a two pager counts as "smaller scale". 

I might be a little weird but I actually love stitching on my layouts, the extra time it takes is so worth the end result! This layout seemed to fight me every step of the way. I swear I spent days staring at paper trying to decide what to do. Everything I tried just seemed too busy. Which is why I ended up going a little plain and doing the stitching to add color and detail. My favorite detail of the layout is the twine lollipops.

I was so happy to get this layout done! I love the end result and I love that I was able to capture Brianna's first time tasting a sucker seeing her eye light up was priceless!

Scrapbooksteals Topaz #3 sketch

On Wednesday August 10th my friend Kristy MacKeen was the guest sketcher for Scrapbooksteals.com and their Mid week mojo. Here is the sketch she provided,

Some times I start with a sketch and end up with something so far from the sketch its hard to see where my inspiration came from. This was definitley one of those times! Here is what I came up with,

A little bit different right? It started because the photos I wanted to use were landscape instead of portrait, then my mind just ran with it! I'm really happy with how it turned out and even happier I got to use A walk in the Park by Echo Park!

Sketchy Thursday, September guest design team sketch

On August 6th Sketchy Thursday released a sketch for their September guest design team challenge. Your layout had to be related to reading in some way, inspired by cover art, about a book, quoting a book, whatever you wanted. Here is the sketch they provided,

I had ideas as soon as I saw it! Rarely do I look at a sketch and just know! Here is what I did with the sketch.

The photos are from mine and Trevor's first year of marriage and are some of my favorites of us. The title is a quote from one of my favorite books, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I placed some thickers on the page and misted over them with my Tattered Angels glimmer mist in Creme de Chocolat. I then removed the thickers to leave just the faint outline of the word dream. Next I lightly wrote the rest of the title in pencil and went over it with a liquid glue. Then I "traced" it with Lemondrop twine from The Twinery.

The flowers are made with hearts, folded in half. I then glued the tips to a small circle and added a brad to the center.

I really wanted the flowers to just flow across the page and I think they turned out perfectly! I never thought I would have the time to go back and scrap the piles of photos of Trevor and I from the last 10 years, but I'm actually starting to make some progress in the pile! I'm so glad too, because this turned out to be one of my favorite layouts that I've done so far!

Project 20, Altered letters

Another project that's been sitting in the corner of my craft room ignored is letters for Brianna's room. I'm in the middle of redecorating her room and when she's old enough (hopefully soon) to move to her big girl bed this will be her bed set.

I found this bedding and fell in love with it! The whole room is based around this bedding. Another reason I would like to get her in her big girl bed! lol It just so happens that shortly after buying the bedding I bought My Minds Eye, Alphabet Soup and the colors matched the bedding perfectly! I knew I had to use it to alter the letters for Brianna's room. Here is how they turned out,

Now I just need to get my husband to hang them up!

Brianna's room is an ongoing process, I have big plans for it but its taking a lot of time. I'm hoping to have most of it done in the next month, it's hard work decorating with a toddler running around "helping" me. I'm looking forward to showing the finished product... Eventually!

Project 19

Project 19 is another attempt at a card, cardlifted once again from a Pintrest pin! I wanted to make a card for a friend that has had a hard summer. Here is my inspiration card,

And here is what I came up with,

I used My minds eye, Lime Twist, Life of the Party. I don't have an embossing tool (It's on my wish list for sure!) so I went with a stamped image to imitate the look. For the flowers I used my Silhouette sketch pens to draw the stems and some coordinating buttons for the actual flowers. I'm hoping my inferior card making skills didn't detract from the thought! lol

Project 18 Sketchy Thursday 8.4 sketch

I don't stray outside of the mid week mojo sketch very often but with 100 projects to get done, I went looking for inspiration! I found it at Sketchy Thursday! The Sketch just jumped out at me and I couldn't wait to get started! Here is the sketch,

Christmas in August?

Project 16 and 17 are for my 8x8 Christmas present albums again, and once again I used Echo Park! Here is the original layout that is in Brianna's scrapbook.

Once again translating into 8x8 isn't easy but here is what I got,

I'm not adding journaling in these books so I substituted an extra photo. These smaller albums have been perfect for using up the scraps from the original layout. I love that the paper is not going to waste!

Mid week mojo Topaz-2 (Project 15)

It's a bird, It's a plane, no it's another Mid week mojo! Have I said how much I love Wednesday? This sketch is from August 3rd, and the amazing Kristy Lee did it again! Here is the sketch she provided,

And here is what I came up with,

I love these photos of Trevor and I from our first Halloween as a married couple. We went out with a group of our friends, who were dressed as the village people!

For this layout I used Echo Park, Little Boy. The journaling spot is my favorite part, next to the actual photos of course. I searched online for the superman logo and imported it into my silhouette. I then cut out just the outline and taped it down where I wanted to journal. I used red acrylic paint and a stiff brush to "flick" the paint around the logo. To make the outline stand out more I stitched it with airmail twine. The small red letters in the title are from Echo Park, For the Record. I love Echo Parks little alphas I think they should sell them in every color!

Artist Trading Cards

The group of crafters I belong to, Crafty Enablers, organized an ATC swap a few months ago. For a lot of us it was our first experience with ATCs. The theme was summer and that was the only guideline put on them. As a group we decided that for the sake of the 100 project challenge 3 ATCs would equal 1 project. With 18 ATCs to be made that was 6 more projects on my list! My cards were simple but time consuming!

I started out by stamping the hot air balloon in the middle of the ATC and coating it with black embossing powder. Then I stamped the hot air balloon on a scrap piece of paper and cut it out to use as a mask. I used repositionable adhesive to place the mask over the hot air balloon on my card. Then I misted the background with my Tattered Angels, Teal High Heal glimmer mist and a homemade mist that I mixed up with some light blue acrylic paint and water. After they dried I removed the mask and stamped the clouds with white ink and covered them with clear embossing powder. Then I just colored the balloon with my Prismacolor colored pencils. 18 was a lot of balloons to color but it was so worth it! I love all the ATCs I've gotten in return from all my crafty friends! I also like that they counted for projects number 9 through 14!

Project 7 and 8, Recipe books

I have had piles of index cards, with recipes on them, floating around my house for longer than I care to admit. When I got a Bind-it-All a few months ago the first thing on my list to make was a recipe book! Then the Bind-it-All got put up on a shelf and forgotten about a little bit. The piles of recipes continued to migrate around my house, I just never had time to type out all my recipes and make a book. What better time to finally get that book made than when I'm on a 100 project spending freeze. 

Unfortunately I only had 1/2 inch owire so my project actually became two projects. I made one book for main dishes and one for side dishes.

 

I used 5x7 covers and decorated them with some scrap paper. Then I used my Crop-a-dile to put an eyelet in the bottom of the covers and attached a ribbon. Now when I'm cooking I can open the book up and tie the ribbons together to form kind of an easel and make it easier to read the recipe while I work. When this challenge is over I plan to buy bigger owire so that I can make it one big book but for now all my recipes are finally in two organized spots!

Project 6

About two weeks ago my father in law went to the emergency room because he was having trouble breathing. After a very scary week and a surgery, he is now doing much better. He is still in recovery and will hopefully be going home in the week. Trevor asked me to make a card for him, which made me a little nervous, I haven't made very many cards and even less masculine cards, but I gave it a try. I was inspired by two different sources, the first being this card from Pintrest,

 
and the second being this layout from my friend Melissa at A bit of scrappy goodness.

I absolutely loved the design of the card but I didn't think my father in law would appreciate the pink butterflies! The first thing that came to mind was the grown up masculine feel of Melissa's layout! So I combined the two and came up with this!

As far as my card skills go I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. It hasn't made it to my Father in law yet but I assume it should be getting there today. I hope he likes it, it should help that I included some pictures of Brianna! How can you not like something that delivers all that cuteness, right?

Mid week mojo Topaz-1 (Project 5)

Wednesday is hands down the best day of the week for me! Every Wednesday the amazing Kristy Lee of Scrapbooksteals.com posts a new sketch. Anyone that wants to participate has the chance to try their hand at the sketch. Then post a link to it on the blog for a chance to win a scrappy prize! My 5th project was based on the first sketch in the Topaz series. Here is the sketch,

 
and here is how I interpreted it.

One of my last purchases before this challenge was Echo Park's Victoria Garden. I am absolutely in love with this line! (As I am with all Echo Park!) I didn't have the color cardstock I was looking to use for the background so I glimmer misted plain white cardstock with Tattered angels, Sand, glimmer mist. The green "lace" design behind the photo is plain cardstock that I cut out with my Silhouette SD. The lace border was actually from an old shirt that didn't fit me anymore. I really wanted to add some lace and since I didn't have any and could buy any, I went into my closet! Also the yellow border was a bit of a tragedy. While working on a different project I was enjoying a glass of red wine and of course had paper all over my desk. One quick move of my hand and red wine was everywhere. I'm not sure what was worse that it spilled across the whole sheet of paper or that it was the last of my wine!

Anyway I let the paper dry, thinking surely I could still find some use for it, and I was right! While looking at my layout trying to decide on the perfect borders to add, I had the idea to fussy cut a border out of the wine stained paper. So the portion of the yellow border that's covered up is covered because there is a big wine splotch! Never a scrap of paper wasted in this house!

Project 3 and 4, Sitting on Santa's lap

For Christmas last year I made mine and Trevor's mom an 8x8 album of Brianna. Kind of a review of her first year. It was a rushed project, as I had the idea last minute, and I wasn't thrilled with the results. However My mom and mother in law loved them! So this year I decided I would start early and work on them throughout the year, so that I could be proud of the results! Unfortunately come July I had still only done one page for each book. I quickly saw this become another mad dash before Christmas. Thankfully now that I've started this challenge I've gotten to work on them a little bit more and can hopefully catch up. The holidays are stressful enough without adding to the list of things to do.

For the most part I'm doing a mini version of the layout that I put in Brianna's 12x12 scrapbook, with a few adjustment for size of course. So here is the layout that is in Brianna's book.

 
I used Echo Park's Everybody Loves Christmas. It was harder than I thought to shrink it down to an 8x8 but here is what I came up with.

I was able to use some of the scraps from the original layout and include the pennant banner in the title. I had to leave out the Merry Christmas ornaments but I was ok with that. I made two of these, one for each book so that was project 3 and 4.

Project 2, Visiting Campbell

Before Trevor and I were married he was stationed at Ft. Campbell Army base in Kentucky. During the spring and summer of 2005 I drove the 8 hours to see him as much as possible. I had a photo booth strip of pictures from one of those visits that I had been trying to scrap for a long time. I had these half formed ideas in my head for the layout but I just couldn't seem to get it to come together. Then I few weeks back I found Life is Good by Echo Park on sale at my local Hobby Lobby. I had no idea what I was gonna use it for but I love Echo Park and had been looking for the kit for a long time.When I got it home and took it out to look at it the idea for the layout finally made sense!

I love the way it turned out! I had bought Teal high heel, Chalkboard glimmer mist, a few weeks ago and had been dying to use it. I reprinted the photos because the original was pretty beat up. (having been to Iraq and back) I glued them down in a strip using a brown background. Then I cut various borders out of Life is good. (and a few from My minds eye, Ooh La La) To do the misting I used sun rays that I had actually cut out and saved from a previous layout. I taped them down to use as masks and then misted till I got the effect I was looking for. I played with the borders for a long time trying to figure out exactly where I wanted them. Afterward I placed the sticker element on pop dots and picked out the perfect thickers for the title. I honestly wasn't sure where I was gonna journal till I was done. I didn't want to cover up my misting with a journaling block so I wrote along the "sun rays".  Looking at these pictures always brings back the memories from those trips. I think of all the wonderful people I met and all the amazing stories I have. I'm so glad they're finally scrapped!

Project 1, Sending a hug

When I decided to join the 100 project challenge it was right after hearing about a friend of a friend, who's daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Her little girl is only 20 months old. My friend organized a large group to send cards to her and her daughter.  So her card was my first project.

I should mention, I am not a card maker. I've only just started attempting to make them. I credit Pintrest for the majority of my inspiration. I shamelessly cardlifted this, right down to the paper used, which was, My minds eye, Stella and Rose. Here is the original card.

So mine is slightly different. (and upside down, oops!) I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I hope it brought a smile to her face during this hard time.  

100 project challenge

A few weeks ago someone in my crafty group, Crafty Enablers, came across a blog post about a challenge to create 100 crafty projects before buying anymore scrapbooking supplies. A handful of us have decided to join in this challenge together. Each of us has adjusted the rules a little to fit our personal situation. My challenge is to create 100 projects, only buying adhesive and possibly some cardstock or a silhouette blade if necessary. I also decided to allow myself a small scrappy reward after creating 50 projects. I know myself and if I wanna keep this going I need a little reward!

There are a few reasons I decided to join the challenge. It's not because I think I have to many supplies, that may be because Im in denial but I'm standing firm on that fact, I do not have too many supplies! This is solely based on the fact that I have less paper collections than the majority of my scrappy friends. I'm not as bad of an addict if I can prove there are worse addicts, right? That's my story anyway! A few weeks ago Trevor and I sat down to talk about our budget and our upcoming financial goals. For the first time since I started scrapping, a little over a year ago, we put a dollar amount on what I was aloud to spend. (EEEEK!) I was given $25.00 a week. In the first 4 days alone, there were so many online deals, that I was about to spend a months worth of my budget in less than a week. Hmmm maybe I do have a small problem...

The next day I learned about the challenge. It came at the perfect time! I'm an all or nothing kind of person. For me its easier to buy nothing at all than to limit myself to a dollar amount. Also I have to admit I was a little frustrated with myself for having such a problem holding back. Since the challenge was issued (July 26th I believe) I have created 21 projects. It has actually been inspiring to focus completely on creating. I have found I'm getting my layouts done faster and stepping outside my usual a little more.

Over the next week or so I'm hoping to do I quick post on each of the projects I've done so far, then I will continue to post all the way to 100! So hopefully I will be back later today!