Quick card

The vinyl on my cup is finally giving up so it's time for something new. Plus I still need to replace my sister's cup and I have a new phone cover that needs something. So I've been playing around with new designs to cut in vinyl, but I haven't found just the right thing yet.

Because I've spent so much time on that, I didn't have much time to do a sympathy card for a co-worker who recently lost a sibling. Fortunately, I was able to put together this quick card using one of my absolutely favorite DCWV stacks - La Creme. I didn't have the right length of sentiment stamp, so I simply printed it out on my word processing program. But the white cardstock didn't go with the creamy color of the background paper. No problem there, I just added some Distress Ink in Old Paper and it fit in perfectly. Now that it's done, I can go watch movies with the hubby.

Great Giveaway at Creating from the Heart

Melissa at Creating from the Heart is turning 40! To celebrate, she has fabulous blog candy over on her blog. Go wish her a happy birthday and let her know your favorite birthday present for a chance to win.

Sketch Inspiration - Mini Snow-cation!

I have some exciting news! I'm sponsoring the prize over at Sketch Inspiration this week. I just love this site. I find so much inspiration there, so I was so happy to be able to show my support. So this week features a marvelous sketch that I really found inspiring. In fact, I had picked out my Echo Park paper from the Winter Park collection and my pictures of the furballs playing in the snow, but hadn't yet found the time to put the layout together. Then hubby and I took a three day camping trip to the coast where it snowed! By the time we got home, I knew the furballs pictures were out and the camping trip pictures were in. My absolute favorite picture right now is this one of Chewie and hubby napping together on the couch in the RV. Just too cute! I really had fun with this layout. I speckled paint on the stripped paper to bring it more in line with the speckling pattern in the other papers. I used my great Stampin' Up paper piercer to prepare the paper for hand-stitching with DMC floss. I made the title in the Silhouette Design Studio. The "Snow" is is cut in glitter paper (unfortunately that doesn't show well in the picture). The snowflakes are also cut out in glitter paper on the Cameo. The snowflakes were an image downloaded from Silhouette's Design Studio. Did you know that Echo Park has shapes that match some of their paper lines in there? I didn't until I found these and that just gave me one more reason to love the Silhouette and Echo Park (as if I even needed another reason). I just really love Echo Park paper! This Winter Park collection perfect for this time of year when we all get such great wintry pictures, well except DaisyMae Maus who lives in sunny Sandy Eggo, where it rarely, if ever, snows. But the paper also has some pages that would fit any time of year too. That's why I picked it for the prize for this week.

So, go on over to Sketch Inspiration and upload your take on the layout for a chance to win the entire Winter Park collection pack from Echo Park plus a bonus page of white glitter paper.
If you can't participate this week, stop by Sketch Inspiration any time you can. You'll always find an inspiring sketch and lots of inspiration in the gallery.

Sympathy Card

It's time for another card for the "I feel the love" project. Unfortunately, this time it's a sympathy card and because of that, fewer people are participating. So please, take a moment and make a card to let this family know that people care. You can read more about it on Madison's blog here.

I found inspiration on an old sketch from Freshly Made Sketches found here. I have absolutely no idea who makes the paper since I pulled it out of a stack of miscellaneous paper from my scraps drawer and the butterflies are from the Silhouette Design Studio store. The sentiment stamp is from the Garden Flowers set from Inkadinkado and I used a flower stamp from that set to emboss around the sentiment as well.

Something fun and exciting is coming...

To get ready for it, I decided to make a logo for my blog. I couldn't really think of a way to express both crafting and the cats, the cats won out. Plus, I have this great little collage of the cats that I've included whenever I've sent a card to a fellow crafter. So I decided to go with a button version of that and here it is: It took a little playing, but I finally was satisified. So I'm posting it on the side with information on how to grab it for yourself and stay tuned for fun news next weekend!

By the way, thankfully, Congress has announced that they have abandonded SOPA and PIPA. Yeah!

A world without blogs?

I understand that there are things that need to be done to stop piracy (no, not the kind of piracy with eye patches, peg legs and parrots), but I cannot imagine my life without my blog or those of my friends in the blogsphere. Unfortunately that could be a reality if SOPA or PIPA passes.

I'm old enough to say I remember living in a time without the Internet, but I don't want to go back there. I know that my life has been enriched by it. I've met people I never would have met, have been able to share and learn so much about the things I love, and have developed better relationships with family that are spread far and wide. But that's in jeopardy now. I certainly don't want to have my right to free speech on my own blog censored nor do I want to miss out on what others may share. But that may just happen if we don't fight these bills.

If this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, then I issue you challenge. Take one week and spend it without posting on your blog. Don't read other people's blogs. Don't use Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Facebook, Myspace or any other search engine or social media site. See what it would really be like to go back in time. I'm sure when you're done, you'll realize just how important it is to ensure we still have free access to free speech.

Then, learn more about these bills and show your support in stopping them, check out Google.

Mojo Monday 224

Whoo hoo! Back to paper crafting! I loved the new Mojo Monday sketch 224. It was the perfect starting point to getting back into playing with paper. As usual, I pulled out scraps from my bin. This time I used left over paper from making my mother-in-law's Christmas gift. Here's the weird part: I have no idea what the stack is called. See I made an album for the hubby using DCWV's Scrapbook Kit in a Stack called Love and Marriage. It's one I had in the drawer in my craft room that I must have bought some time past for some reason (likely because I've never done our wedding album). But, I decided it would be perfect for the project. When I was done, I liked it so much that I decided to do one for my mother-in-law. But I couldn't find that same stack at Michaels. All I could find was a different 8 by 8 kit from DCWV, so I made her album from that. But I cannot find it at all anywhere to include the name of the stack. Even though I bought it much later, it must have been an older stack. How weird is that?

Anyhow, all the paper except for the card base and the white scalloped circle and white flowers are from that DCWV stack. The card base is from my stash of Nekoosa Linen Text by Mohawk that I bought at Paper Zone (I am soooooo sad that they are going out of business). The white is from my scrap bin so who knows where it's from. The pink flower that makes the base of the flower is a Prima Marketing flower out of my Bucket of Blooms (man that thing is never ending!). The white and red are cut from the Asterisks die from Cuttlebug. I love the little black gem from Eye Candy.

But the best part is the little "thank you" circle cut on the Cameo. It's from the Silhouette store and I just cut off the little tag to make it fit my design. Unfortunately I didn't have a scalloped circle on the Silhouette, so I had to get a little creative. I did have a flower design I had downloaded earlier that was close to what I wanted, but I needed a solid design. So I used the "offset" feature on the flower design and played with the amount of the offset until I was happy with the scallop. I just love the Cameo. I learn more each day.

So there's lots of time left, why now play along with Mojo Monday and get your mojo on.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming..

Since we had a long weekend for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, we decided to go camping. Because the forecasters mentioned the possibility of snow at lower elevations, we decided to head to the coast rather than the mountains. The perfect thing about needing to make a baby sweater is that it's much easier to pack the supplies when going camping than taking supplies to make cards or layouts. In fact, I was able to finish not one, but two sweaters over our three day trip. I found this quick and easy pattern on Lion Brand yarn's website and was able to use some yarn leftover from other projects. I must confess that I did not crochet the entire time. Mom and Dad came over to visit for a while and have a lovely lunch. After they left, I crocheted while we watched a DVD. Then, on Sunday, Matt and I hiked some of the trails (even in a little bit of falling snow) to the local brewery and back. Then while Matt and Chewie napped, I crocheted the second sweater.

I just had to get a picture of them napping in similar positions: But then it started snowing. No problem because we were toasty warm in the RV, but as you can see from the foot prints, I did have to run out to clean off the satellite dish. That was pretty cold on the feet, but worth it.

But I must confess I was a little nervous for the drive home. We rarely get snow so people drive like idiots in it. Plus the RV isn't the easiest to drive in the best of conditions and drivers rarely recognize that it will not stop on a dime or quickly get out of the way. But Matt's a great driver. Even though we saw several cars and trucks in the ditch, we made it home safely and I was able to get some great pictures. A little snow on the side of the road by the beach:

Some great waves:It snowed a bit while we were driving (have I mentioned that Matt's a great driver?)

But snow didn't keep people away from the casino (although it did make it a little hard to see):

We know that they plowed our side of the road and we did see this one heading toward the casino:

What's funny is that there was more snow at the beach than there was inland near our home, but it was still beautiful.

But I'm really happy to be safe at home with the RV unpacked and life back to normal, although it is still snowing outside, but it's not really sticking so I guess I have to get back to the grind tomorrow. Oh well. It was a lovely break.

Paper crafting interrupted

Just as I was starting to get my groove back, here comes another interruption to my paper crafting. A co-worker's wife just had a baby boy and I don't have a single sweater ready. So I have to put aside my paper for a few days to crochet up a baby set. Hopefullly it won't take too long. See you in a few days!

Hmm...

I've heard about other people losing posts before but it's never happened to me until now. Earlier this week, I lost one I had written and now I just lost another one. It's frustrating, but, oh well. So here's the card I made based upon Freshly Made Sketches sketch #17. While the sketch was very inspiring and I had all these wild ideas, I realized the card was for a man, so I had to keep it simple. So I did and kept it to just a stamp from Inkadinkado's All Occasions stamps, some random paper from my scrap bin and some crochet thread because I didn't have the right color of baker's twine...

But while I was looking for the picture of the card, I saw this great one of Chewie from our walk during our last camping trip that I just had to share.

Another card

I so love the Cameo! I just can't stop playing with it. I really should be going to bed early and getting lots of rest. But I find myself drawn into my craft room to play instead. I just love this card I made the other night. It's probably already in the hands of the recipient - my "aunt" Sharon. I hope she loves it as much as I loved making it. All the paper is Sierra Paper Crafts, the button is a random one from Scrapbuck.com (love them!), and the stamp is again from the Inkadinkado's All Occasions stamp set that I picked up for a song on Scrapbuck.com.

Thank you card

I have a cold. I've been fighting it but there's no doubt that it's taken root. Unfortunately it's just about wiped out my creativity gene, but yet I still want to play. Thank goodness for the cards in the Silhouette. They make it super easy to put together something cute even without a spark of creativity in my brain. I did make a few changes to this one. The card in the library is really a shaped card to match the mat, but I couldn't find a great sheet of plain paper to cut it from. So I used some card bases I had on hand instead. I added a little inking and switched out the button to a rhinestone because that was more what I was in the mood for. The sentiment is from that same Inkadinkado All Occasions stamp set. I just love that one.

Birthday Card

I needed a masculine birthday card and found this perfect one in the Silhouette Design Studio. This one wasn't a perfect A-2 size, but with a little re-sizing, it fit the bill. It was a snap to cut out and put together. I used Sierra Paper Crafts paper purchased at Craft Warehouse and just one brad per card. Super simple.

New Layout - Our Happy Family in 2011

It's been so long since I made a 12 by 12 layout that I thought I had better give it a try before I get too rusty. The Sketch Inspiration sketch of the week was the perfect way to get back into the swing now that that the craziness of the holidays and such are over. I thought that starting by chronicling our family as it looked in 2011 was the perfect way to get started. Now purple and back wouldn't have been my first choice, but when I was looking for paper, I found this page in the Luxury Stack from DCWV and I just couldn't resist. The I decided I needed some flourishes so I looked through what was available on the Silhouette store and found two that I loved, along with this great "happy family" phrase. I wanted to add the year so I did a little welding (actually pretty easy to do on the software to turn the phrase into the one I wanted. Since the welding was so easy, I welded the flourishes onto some rectangles to frame my pictures. A few flowers, some Black Soot Distress ink, and a little Eye Candy bling and I was done.

One of Those Projects

So often I make things as gifts for others that I can't share on the blog because, well, they would find out before I'm ready. One of "those" gifts last year was for my hubby for our anniversary. We are blessed that both our parents are still with us, but it's been a long, long time since we had good pictures taken of either set. I know better than to ask my mother because she would far rather be behind the camera than in front of it, but I thought I might be successful with his parents, and I was. I lucked out with a great Groupon for photos and sent my in-laws, with the caveat that I get the photos and they had to keep a surprise until our anniversary. Armed with great photos of them together, I tried to set up time to work on the book, but things seemed to conspire against me. A whole day of crafting to myself during a camping trip turned into a hot mess. The time had planned for myself during another crafting trip was interrupted too. Every time I tried to work on it my craft room, dear hubby seemed to wander in and I had to scramble to make sure everything was hidden. But, despite the interruptions and changes to my plans, I still managed to get it finished and it remained a surprise until our anniversary. But I still couldn't share it because my in-laws wanted to use the pictures at Christmas. But now, all the surprises are over and I wanted to share some of my favorites. The album is one that fits inside it's own box. I bought the whole thing (including all the paper and stuff inside) for only $6 at the CKC Convention a couple of years ago. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right project to come along, but the outside is pretty plain. I pulled out all my love, wedding and family stamps for this project and found that my favorite was a Heidi Swapp stamp of the word "love" that I picked up on clearance at Target in Minneapolis, MN several years ago on a work trip. I scanned the stamp for a page that I'll show you later and then decided to see if could cut it out of vinyl. I enlarged the image in SCAL and, sure enough, it cut pretty darn well with the Cricut. This shot is not my absolute favorite, but it's definitely close to it. They just look so happy together. I love the vellum on this one. I punched out the heart strip with my EK Success punch. Then I laid the punched strip over the vellum and traced the edges. I love the way the cut-outs show through the vellum on the final page. This next picture is probably one of the better shots of my father-in-law smiling.

The only thing different on the page was the hearts on the picture. I needed something in that corner to balance the picture and I just thought I would use a little white Staz-On ink, but that just didn't look right when it was done so I colored it in with red ink. It turned out perfect. It's unfortunate that this next picture turned out so dark because I really did love it, but unfortunately there wasn't much I could do to lighten it given the restrictions on the CD that the pictures came on. (After the fact I realized that I should have printed it, scanned it and then tried lightening the scanned version, but I didn't think of that at the time). But what I did love was the effect of the stitching and the chipboard flower. The stitching was a piece of cake to do using my Stampin' Up paper piercer. I had nice straight, perfectly placed holes to run my DMC floss through. The chipboard flower was easy to cut from a cereal box using SCAL. I love getting to recycle packaging in my scrapbooking. This next one is certainly not my favorite picture. But I love the "love" embellishment. I scanned the Heidi Swapp Love stamp, turned it into a SVG and using SCAL and my Cricut, I cut it out just a bit larger for a shadow effect. It's a fun technique.

Last but not least is this page, which is probably my favorite of all of them. First, I just love this picture. I think it's probably my favorite of all of them. But also because I love the background paper. I've read about this technique many times, but I had never tried it myself until this page. It's the technique where you stamp your own background, which I did using the Heidi Swapp Love stamp in Versamark then embossed with a clear embossing powder. It's quite subtle but very beautiful. A few Perfect Pearls in the shape of heart on the mat along with more clear embossing to finish it off.

Valentine's Day Card

I was trolling the blogs today when I was truly inspired by a snowman Valentine's Day card that Michelle had on her blog, I Stamped That. Next thing I knew I was searching through the Silhouette library to see what snowmen were available. I pulled out some scraps from the album I made for my MIL using a DCWV love-themed kit for the red and pink paper. The rest were simply scraps from the bin. The font is CK Script. I still cannot get over the intricate cuts that the Cameo will make. I never would have tried those crazy skinny stick arms on the Cricut in that textured paper. It would have been a mess. Here it's so amazing!

Thank You #4

I just love my new Cameo. I can't believe what a great job it does cutting, even little intricut cuts like the one on the lattice work on this card. Not a rip, tear or problem just as long as I set the paper and blade correctly, which is taking a little trial and error since I have some really heavy weight paper. But even better, I love this thank you card that I bought from the Silhouette store. It's adorable and was so easy to make. I whipped out three of them in a short period of time this morning using scraps from my bin, a little ribbon from Michaels and a brad from JoAnn's.

New Variation

I loved the get well soon card from yesterday so much that I just had to make a variation for my thank you cards. I used all the same supplies from yesterday (scrap paper, Sizzix dies Vine, Swirly, ProvoCraft die, Asterisks, and Flower Clusters Sizzix embossing folder), but this time I used a purple Irock hot gem instead of the yellow Darice gem. I also didn't emboss the center rectangle. Instead I used a lovely stamp from Inkadinkado's Garden Flowers set. I just love this stamp set. It's so elegant. Right now you can pick it up for only $4 dollars (that's right $4) at Scrapbuck.

Get Well Soon Card

My aunt had surgery last week that will require several weeks of recovery. So I thought I would send her a card to let her know I'm thinking of her. I found one that inspired me on splitcoaststampers and decided to make my own version. I'm still using scraps from my scrap bin so the paper is likely all DCWV cardstock, but I can't be sure. I had a lot left over from some projects I did for Christmas and this red, blue and green combination looked cheery on a yellow card base. I used a new Sizzix embossing folder called "Flower Clusters" for the large embossed area and the dotted folder from the Dot and Flowers set I've had for years for the smaller frame. I reused the Vine, Swirly Provo Craft die for the greenery and also the Asterisk set for the flower. It's wonderful how they can look so different just by the amount of layering. This time I cut two of the large asterisks for each flower and one of each of the smaller sizes. With the two large ones offset and then the smaller ones stacked offset on top, they made a nice full flower. I topped each flower with a yellow Darice gem. Then it was just a matter of stacking and gluing all the pieces together. I must admit this is one of my more favorite projects of late. It's quite elegant in person and just what I had in mind.

Thank You #2

I received a number of new Sizzix folders for Christmas and decided to try out some of them for my next thank you card, however, I found that I was pulling out old ones I've had for a while and found to be tried and true. This fun thank you card was built with Coordinations Black Magic cardstock using the Thanks folder. I then added a flower built from the Vine, Swirly die (the only new one used in this project) along with both a large and small flower from the Asterisks dies from Provo Craft. I colored the larger flower with Coffee Shop Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and topped the whole thing off with a Darice stud using my IRock tool. It was quick and easy, but looks pretty cute in person.

1st Thank You Card

I'm making progress. I found a great thank you card on Splitcoaststampers.com that I scraplifted into girlie colors. I finally used my "Jack's World" stamps from Cosmo Cricket but I did modify them. The "thank you" stamp has a lion on it, but I cut it off (gasp). Yes, I cut a stamp. I love the lion but I'll use the stamp more without it. I can still add the lion when it's appropriate, but I love the craziness of the letters of the thank you and they were perfect for this card made with scraps from my scrap bin.