A Kick In the Grass

It looks like this is going to be our year for sports and the first game of the year.  It's always fun to watch the little ones at this age play soccer, they all follow the ball around the field and only kick if they have a clear shot. On this clear and cool day in April my DGS played his very first game of soccer. He had the biggest grin on his face the whole game.  I believe it ended in a tie 3 to 3. 

The Christmas paper by Bo Bunny matched the colors in my pictures and with the diamonds it gave it the masculine feel I was looking for in my layout. I find I do not use "traditional" papers for most of the juvenile pages I create therefore I never have papers that fit a theme, I give each one a more timeless classic look.

 And when I do not have embellishments that fit the theme, I turn to my computer. In this case I downloaded this free soccer kid image, printed it on a tag then added just a touch of color to match the uniforms. Hmmm, I may find a bit of fiber to add to the tag........

The three circle chipboard pieces are colored with acrylic paint dabbers, the metal things on top are bead caps that I flatted with a pearl in the middle. The title is cut with a Cricut on glossy black paper that I dry embossed before I cut it out.  On closer look you will see that the embossing  in "soccer" matches, somewhat,  the style of the squares in the word "star".  The word, star,  is a sticker that I have had forever and finally used.  Whoo Hoo! I love using old supplies, it makes me feel like I did not waste my money on stuff I NEED. We are not going to talk about the sack of purged supplies I am taking to The Crop this week to give away.

Thank you for stopping to visit.

Mother's Day is Coming Fast

In just a just over 2 weeks it will be Mothers Day!  Have you gotten your mother anything yet?  Are you a mother yourself and want a gift that will gives you hours of creativity? I have just the thing for both....how about a kit of pure fun? Flourishes has these creative kits already coordinated with plenty of ribbon, trim,  flowers, pearls, rhinestones, and paper. Flourishes would be happy to ship a kit to your mother just in time for her to make cards, projects, or scrap book layouts.

The card I made uses the dp from the Gabrielle kit along with the teal dot paper as the back layer. The coordinating ribbon is the same on both sides so you can tie a bow without the fear of one side being a different shade.

The other thing I love about these designer papers is the fact that you can pick just one sheet of paper. You don't have to add any other designs to your paper, it has been done for you, hence the name designer paper!

I used the orchid stamp from the set by the same name, colored with two of the new collections at Flourishes......... Lenten Rose and Raspberry.  I was not sure how I would like the red violet and reds together but they work well.  The greens are G82 and G24.  As a finished touch I used a few rhinestones and one big pearl.

I hope you enjoy this paper as much as I do. In fact I an getting scrap layout kits ready to take with me to a crop at my LSS next week.  One of the kits have the same paper but in a 12x12 format. So YES, I do use papers because I like them and would use them anyway, not just because I am promoting them!

Here are more designs you can look at to see what all can be done with the same papers and embellishments.

Barbara Anders

Stacy Morgan

Jan Marie Caruso

Spring Track

Spring is my mostest favoritest time of year, it is not too cold, it is not too hot (I say that but we have had the air conditioner on for the last three weeks, it is humid more that hot), and the hurricane season has not started yet.  We do not often get bad weather this time of year and unlike the like the mid section of the country we very seldom see tornadoes/waterspouts either. 

What we do get is an abundance of flowering shrubs, trees, and plants. We also have lots of outdoor sports that we can attend. On this day we went to our GD's track meet. She is in middle school but runs on the high school  team, sprints, long distance, and relay.     

I paid a visit to my LSS looking for track dp, the only thing they had was this paper by Scrappin Sports. It turned out to be probably the best choice I could have made.  I love the look of the gray accents which allowed me to layer my photos on  light blue and use dark red embellishments.  The journaling is on a pull out tag to the left of the photos.

I am just beining to use stitching on my layouts, I have an old feather weight machine that sits on my work table and the only stitch is have to straight stitching. I would have liked to use a ziz zag stitch on the large circle but I was to lazy to get up and go to the other room to use my regular machine. You will have to click on the picture to get a closer view of the stitching.

I have been getting prepaired to attend a local four day crop next week. I have finally learned to make "prepaired kits" to take with me.  That way I am assured of getting something accomplished as most of my time is spent trying to decide what I need for the layout.  I should have plenty of share when I get home. 

More Gabrielle and Subtlety

You know, I have never learned to do subtle well!! Even in my personal life... It just ends up being too bland and boring and I never want boring!! When I got a comment about this card like "pretty butterflies" I took another look at the picture and yes they are pretty, and the flowers could be too, if they weren't so BORING. 

I went back and added just a bit more color to the petals, not much as I was still trying to be a little subtle but not so much as to blend into the background.

 

What fun it was to combine a challenge on SCS with all the supplies that come in the 1 2 3 Create card kit from Flourishes. That kit uses coordinating papers, ribbons, and embellishments to take the work out deciding what to grab to make a card. With the a fore mentioned sketch,  it made it easy to start creating.

The stamp is Clematis and Blossoms and all of the rest came from the kit pictured below.

I  used the back side of the lightest coordinating dot paper to cut with Spellbinders #4 fleur de lis square, I inked the edges with Antique Linen distress ink and stamp with Memento rich cocoa. The images are colored with Copic (of course).  I find that they are my go to coloring tool of choice. Why? Because of their transparency and blendability. That and I have not mastered other forms of coloring, not that I have mastered Copic's but at least I find it easier to stick with one technique.

I hope you like what you have seen..........I will have more in a couple of days.  HHmmm I need a birthday card for next week, off to find the stamp set I wanted to use on that one!!

It Is Time To 1 2 3 Create

Yes, it is time to create with another kit that have everything needed to complete cards,  paper crafting projects, and still be able to use many of the pieces to complete a scrap book page.

 With the addition of "add on's" that coordinate with the kit, you can add a classy touch of distinction to your crafting projects.

The first project I have to show you is a card that I whipped up using the all inclusive kit for the third week of April.

I love using papers with a lot of color and design in them, at times it seems as if my stamped image becomes secondary to the background. This collection of papers brings many delightful colors that I have not used much of in the past. With the blend of island mist, coral, tan, brown and teal bring with it great options for exotic tropical flowers.

I thought it a very fitting backdrop for the exquisite Orchid. As for many of use the orchid brings back memories of years past. This was the flower in my first corsage for the first dance I went to many, many, many years ago. I have a picture of that (me and my date) somewhere in my boxes but it is too, too.....dorky to even contemplate showing it now. But that was the first thing I thought about when I saw this stamp image. I even colored it how I remember it looking, every delicate and fragile. Those colors fit well with the color scheme of the Gabrielle kit.

The dot paper that comes with the kit is white core card stock. This one of the few times I have used white core paper and have found it to lend itself very well to distressing for that shabby chic look. The card stock is also double sided and I used the back side on this layer.

The second project I have to show you is a scrap book page I finished today. It is the second page I have made using the 12x12 paper from the Gabrielle collection with additions from the card kit and accessories designed to compliment it.

I used one full sheet of 6x6 paper behind the main photo. I love to combine the two collections as the 6x6 paper have a smaller scale design that fits a scrap page as well as for a card. The framing layers for the pictures are the coordinating dot papers. I have added dimensional stickers as well as chip board stickers on my page, then finished with the dot ribbon.

Card
Paper; classic white, kit papers
Stamp; Orchid
Misc; pearls, ribbon
Ink; Copic markers, black memento

Note, the butterfly was cut with an exacto knife so I could tuck my stamped panel behind it.

Scrapbook
Paper; card kit papers & 12x12 Gabrielle dp
Misc; dimensional stickers, chip board sticker, metal hardware, letter stickers, ribbon

There are more projects that you can view made from the Gabrielle card kit....check out the fabulous work done by

Stacy Morgan
Barbara Anders

Cards from kits

There is something about kits that appeals to me these days.  I have always liked being able to just "grab and go" when it comes to creating, whether it is cards or scrapbook pages. I like the fact that I don't always have to think about what do I need to make this card. Worse yet is trying to find it in my stash or as my dh calls it hoarders heaven.

No, I am not a hoarder, I don't think!? 

 

The first card has a very simple design stamped on classic white paper that I cut using Spellbinders fancy tags II and layered onto fancy tags III. The dp is from the Botanical Kit sold at Flourishes along with a variety of sparkler buttons, pearl swirls (which I did not use) trim and ribbons. I used a small piece of cotton trim for accent.     This card was designed using a card sketch at SCS.

The second card is even more simple than the first one. I stamped the sentiment from the Orchid (oops, guess you will have to wait until tonight to see the whole set) stamp set onto a die shape, added an elegant post, a few pearls, a classic lace border and a couple of ribbons. How simple is that?

Come join Flourishes tonight at SCS forum to see more!! Or better yet, see more now by viewing Flourishes blog.

Time to run, and see you soon.

Getting Back To Normal

I was so ready to "get back to normal" with my everyday life.  It seems as if it has been one thing after another the last few weeks. The Florida family is has dog care for the North Carolina son who travels with his job now and is unable to provide constant daily care for his greyhound.  I say the Florida family because if you have ever had a rescued racing greyhound you know they are high maintenance dogs (kind of), I say that because I have never seen one that is off its leash, they are house dogs (when they are pets) that need beds or something soft to sleep comfortably. Like many breeds they have more health issues the older they get and at 10 years of age you start seeing the aging process set in big time.  

Lightly was having breathing problems and went to the vet 10 days ago, she seemed to be getting worse after a couple of days and when she quite eating a drinking we knew something was going on. Another trip to the vet for x-rays, blood test, and nasal check did not find anything wrong with her. Well, when she came home again she had what we think was a stroke or heart attack during the night, as the next day she had all of the symptoms that you see in adults. To make a long story shorter than I could........ lets just say,   GM and GP keep her during the day so she is not alone and we can assist her out the door (no doggies door for greyhounds) while everyone else is at work or school.  She appears to be getting a lot better and can walk without  harness assistance,  is eating regularly and wants attention again. It will take time to see how much strength Lightly can regain.

I also have been without my lap top for a week, first I had it checked and found out the wireless card has gone out but it can be hard wired but when I did that NOTHING happened! I finally took it back to 911 Computer Medic (ya, that's really the name) and it did the something there, NOTHING. It was an easy fix, Daniel had to install windows XP again. 

How do you know you are a computer geek??  When you carry a Windows flash drive on your key chain!

But YEA, I have my computer back as working better than it has for several months. Now I can download my pictures, edit them, and post to my blog in a matter of minutes. I can use my own camera, which has better lighting without all the hassle of a light box or major editing in photo shop.

One blessing of no computer was.........I had time to work on cards, scrap pages, and clean my studio. Here is the page I finished today. My first of 12 pages I set to have done by the end of the month.

My monthly kit from, My Creative Scrapbook Kit Club, came in Monday. I had just gotten back some pictures with colors in them that went very well with the Gabrielle paper collection by Bo Bunny.  I had great fun working on this page and the only things not in the kit are the solid card stock used to mat the photo, the small frame on the right side, and the white ribbon flower.

The striped piece of dp was cut from the background layer ( if you could look on the back side you would see a hole) but since I will be putting this page in a book no one will see unless they take the page out. I find having double sided designer paper can cause me many moments of indecision, I can not always decide which side of the paper to use.......this way I can have a contrasting bit of paper without cutting into another 12x12 sheet.

I have several more groups of pictures I need to pick out paper and embellishments for so I will publish this and get busy in the studio.

I  have several cards that I can post now so come back soon and take a look! Thank you for stopping by and see ya soon.

Aprils 1 2 3 create "Its Spring"

 This is the first create kit of April. It uses many of the newest products that Flourishes has gotten in from orders placed at CHA in January. 

The paper is a blend of bold burgundy and brown with pastels in green, blue, cream, in floral, postal images, and even a couple of pages of tags or journaling pieces that can be cut out and used as an accent. There are endless possibilities using the paper.

Check out the ribbon trim and embellishments that come in this kit! I love the look that Prima has put out in their cotton trim. Flourishes has added a couple of May Arts ribbons to compliment the trim and an assortment of button sparklers and a couple of pearl swirls.

Would you believe that I used a blue sparkler in the center of the bow I made using the red ribbon.  The sparkler took on the shading of the ribbon and looks very red! In fact the picture it is a little hard to see.

I  wanted to show you what I had created using the botanical card kit.......Those scrumptious ribbons and trims really make the card. I just had to layer them all on one card. 

I had the current challenge at Flourishes blog in mind when I made the card, I used blues, greens and yellows to color the image that I had stamped on Classic white paper from the Spring has Sprung stamp set.

The bird and bluebells (I liked red) were stamped right over the rabbit image, I did not get the placement just right and the little rabbit in the foreground had too many "grass" lines on him so I colored and cut out another little guy and popped him up over the top.

1 2 3 Create Kits

There are more inspiration cards to see with this kit! Just check out

Julie Koerber

Cindy Lawrence

Christine Okken

Computer trouble!

Having computer troubles can be a two edges sword! One one hand it provides me with more time to get other things done like creating, organizing, housework, ............but on the other hand not having my own computer does not allow me to get my pictures of my creations download,  as I have not figured out how to down load from my camera to my DH's computer. It seems that he has not activated that feature and I have not been successful figureing out how to activate it yet! I did as instructed and nothing happened, I love to just turn on a computer and everything works automatically. 

I was told that the wireless card is going out on my PC and since I have been thinking about purchasing a new one anyway I opted not to put more $ into what I have.  I just wish I was not so computer illiterate that I could figure out how to connect directly to the net.  What I had been told to do does not seem to work for me, could it be that I am doing something wrong??  Very likely!!

Where are your kids when you need them!!!!
 In my next life I will be a computer genius.

I have to figure out something before Monday as Flourishes has a new 1 2 3 card create kit coming out and I have cards I want to share.  For now, my "organizing" has seemed to create a bigger mess and it is time to get it uncluttered.