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Hi there!

I made some crafty time for myself today.  It was so relaxing, so wonderful.  Oh how I love to scrapbook!  I finally got to play with some things that have been waiting, still in their packaging, for me to have real play time.  I hope you enjoy. 

First, I had to play with a new Heidi Swapp stencil and Glimmer Mist.  Any mist you use is fine; I happen to have about 40 different colors of the Tattered Angels brand.  This is after I had already sprayed the cardstock. 

 

Above, there's my sprayed cardstock.  Below, the finished LO.  Love this LO. 

 

Sorry for the glare in the middle of the picture on the above LO.  Here's a detail shot:

 

 

 

Next, I've had this Sew Easy stuff for a couple of years now, but only recently got the "Circles" tool.  I've been itching to play with it!  It was fairly easy, but a word to the wise:  You must press down fairly hard, and even then you might still need to go back with a needle or paper piercer to make the holes bigger before you begin sewing. 

Here's the LO I made with sewing on it.  Sorry for the fuzzy picture - my camera is on the fritz and I'm using my son's point-and-shoot. 

 

On the detail shot, you can make out the sewn circles a lot better:

 

Here's the LO I made the other day, now with appropriate pictures.  I added green flowers near the title to complete a triangle effect with the green.  :)

 

 

I also had time today to sort my pictures.  I really thought I wasn't taking many photos lately; I used to take hundreds of pictures per month, but that was when my son was smaller and seemed to change a lot faster, and it seems like now I don't even reach 50 per month.  Well, when I opened up my photo box to pick out a set of pictures to work with, I realized I had a huge mess of envelopes and unorganized photos.  No bueno!  I am nothing if not organized and while something may be in complete disarray for a while, it won't last long!  And I guess I was wrong that I haven't taken many photos because all of these empty envelopes are from February to now.  So not too shabby, I suppose.

  

 

Here the photos are separated by photo mats (the pre-cut, I-bought-a-pack-of-them-at-Hobby-Lobby kind).  Yes, I get double use from my photo mats:  1) to separate photos in my photo boxes; and 2) as actual photo mats.  Why spend money on dividers when I have all this paper?  ;)

 

 

Here's another LO I completed tonight.  I used to do a month-in-review two-pager every single month.  From January 2007 when I first saw the idea until July 2012, yep 5+ years I did a month-in-review every.single.month.  Last summer I had some life events that prevented me from continuing that effort, but today I corrected that by making April through July 2013.  I'm not sure I can gather up photos from August last year through March this year.  I might try - another day.  But here's my July 2013 layout.  I know, I know, July doesn't end until tomorrow, but I have a day-long appointment tomorrow and not a single fun thing to photograph so as far as my month-in-review layouts are concerned, July 2013 is over.  OVA!  :)  Anyway, the LO is kind of busy what with the big photos and the fact that I wanted to use both sides of all three patterned papers....

 

 

 

Sorry it's so small.  Windows Live Writer will absolutely NOT publish my blog post if I try to put photos into it, and Blogger will only let me make the first couple of photos large.  I need to look in my Blogger settings to change that, but I haven't quite figured out how. 

 

Well, that's it.  Thanks for looking and leaving love! 

 

P.S.  As for my day-long appointment tomorrow - I could really use some prayers for it to go well.  Thank you in advance! 

A little sneak peak...

... At new product to be revealed on August 1st with the blog hop. Stay tuned!!!

Coming soon.....

Time to play

Sometimes I don't have pictures to work with or a card in mind and I just want to play.  Here are the fruits of my playtime labor.  :)

 

I found some SU! punches, a Maya road stamp set, CTMH ink and twine, and some scraps of paper.  Oh and I also had a couple of rolls of ribbon tape. 

 

 
 

 

First I punched a circle and flower, and proceeded to stamp that cute little camera from the Maya Road stamp set. 

 

Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the ink coverage I wanted so I kept trying.  I tried SU! ink, CTMH ink, Maya Road ink, and finally settled on that Brilliance ink pad.  See the difference below?  Check out the "Smile" stamp - you can actually read the SMILE in there with the Brilliance ink pad. 

 

 

After I got it stamped just how I wanted it, I decided I wanted dots in each scallop of the flower, but I'm not so good at drawing exactly even circles (and I am completely anal retentive about it being equal and even), so I thought to just dip my pencil tip (minus the lead) into the ink pad and use that.  If you're trying this tap lightly as you don't want to bust up the spongy material of the stamp pad.  Ask me how I know that!  ;-)

 

 

Pretty cool huh?  I did punch the scallop flower twice and put pop dots between them.  It adds a little extra oomph. 

 

 

Here are a couple of other fun tags I made with the punches.  The yellow/black combo is ready to be used as a journaling spot, and the other "happy happy" could be just an accent somewhere. 

 

 

 

Layer, layer, layer! :-)

 

 

 

Finally, I really wanted to use a CTMH stamp set along with punches for possibly a title.  I went with some orange hues and added twine. 

 

 

 

It's cute but kind of boring... so I had to spruce it up a bit.  I decided to punch some circles, two different sizes, two different colors, and then re-stamp the title. 

 

 

 

Looks much better, no?  Then I decided I wanted to mount the tags on some paper and I liked orange and then white in the back, but then I thought to put the orange in the back to frame it really well, and then the white needed some more texture.  Thank you Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots folder!

 

 

After that was done I decided I didn't want to just put this away, so I built a layout around it.  I guess I was in an orange mood!  I left space for one 6x4 photo and two 3x3 photos.  The ribbon and chipboard accents are CTMH, the journaling cards are Project Life, and the brads are Paper Studio. 

 

 

Here's another detail shot.  LOVE it!  And the pictures I want for this are of my mom's beautiful green lawn so that is definitely going to offset all the orange.

 

 

I've done this on several occasions, where I just want to work with stamps and/or paper but don't have matching pictures.  Usually when I get a set of pictures printed I browse through my file of pre-made pages and see if anything fits. 

 

Here is a set of SU! papers from a few years back, along with one of their stamp sets.  Once I find a suitable 5x7 for this LO I'll finish it up by adding accents and embellishments.  Part of having a huge stash is being able to half-make layouts and filling in the holes later.  :-)

 

 

 

The papers in this LO were the leftover scraps from another LO, and I had just gotten a new sewing machine and wanted to practice.  Again, when I find suitable photos I'll add accents and texture wherever and however possible.  

 

 

 

This is one I made a couple of months ago or maybe last month sometime.  I really wanted to play with this CTMH stamp set and, oh look, I was in an orange mood that day, too.  LOL!!! On this one I left space for a 6x4 photo and under the "Uniquely You" title block I decided to use a background stamp on that piece of paper, which will be for journaling and/or a smaller picture.   

 

 

Here's a close-up of that LO.   I love how this one turned out.  Can't wait to add pix and put it into an album!

 

 

OK, now this next layout I made about a year ago and it was an exact replica of a layout pictured on the box that my Cricut Imagine came in.  Yep, I copied the exact layout down to the colors and patterned papers, which I printed out with the Imagine.  Pretty fun!  Too bad I haven't found pictures for it!

 

 

Detail shot of that pretty butterfly. 

 

 

And one more.  Hmmm... orange again.  I'm noticing a trend here.... O.o  This is another one that will need texture with ribbon or something when I get pictures and a title, because right now it's completely flat with just paper and stickers.  I need more lumpy and bumpy than that before it can be put into an album! 

 

 

All right, that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.  I hope I might have inspired you with some designs, colors (helllllooooo, orange!!! LOL), or to try some backward scrapping.  I certainly enjoy it every now and then! 

 

A visit to the ER...

My 10-year-old son bites his nails.  This is really tough when you're into building Legos, which he is a voracious fan of, because taking them apart isn't very easy.

 

That's why we have teeth.  Right? 

 

WRONG!!!!!!

 

Last night he was using his teeth to pull apart a couple of pieces when something pretty dang funny appeared on TV.  As he attempted to laugh he sucked that Lego piece right in.  This is a twin to that offending piece: 

 

 

 

This was the scene in the x-ray room of our nearest ER about an hour later:



 

 

PHEW! Not blocking his lungs in any way. 

 

 

Now, I know a thing or two about medicine.  I comforted him after using my handy dandy stethoscope to listen to his lungs and stomach, but he wanted an "official" doctor and x-rays to tell him he wasn't going to die.  Or worse, have to undergo surgery.  LOL - yes he was more worried about some invasive procedure than basically having his stomach blow up and him dying.  BIG eye roll on that one... but anyway, those are his feelings and I didn't devalue them at all.  Poor kid was really hating himself for the accident, but I reminded him that it's just an accident and I tried to direct him towards planning how to avoid such accidents in the future. He's decided that nail biting has to stop and he really should use one of multiple Lego taker-aparter tools (yes, that's the technical term for it, HA!!!) that he owns instead of his teeth.

 

It was definitely an adventure and isn't that what parenting is from day one?  Ah, the joys of boys.  :)

 

Now, back to some scrapbooking......

 

P.S.  I offered him some Lego cereal for breakfast and a Lego sandwich for lunch.  He doesn't seem interested.  Bwaha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

 

Later Sk8r

Ok, so I have to make up for the girly papers I posted about a couple of days ago.  Here's a masculine set of papers that I really enjoyed working with.  It's CTMH's Later Sk8r line.

 

 

 

Yes, this is the Workshop On The Go.  Unfortunately it is no longer available, but the pack of paper is, and it retails for just $9.95  (product number X7167B, and the sticker assortment is X7167C, price is $4.95).  These are only available for a short time.  Get yours now!



The left side of this 2-page layout:

 

 

And the right side: 

Don't forget the journaling!

 

 

 

I really love this paper.  I have quite a bit left over and don't want to add more into Nick's scrapbooks, so I'm determined to make some birthday cards with it.  I always seem to run out of masculine b-day cards before anything else, so this paper will be perfect for that.  Stay tuned and I'll be posting those at some point in the near future. ;)

 

Thanks for stopping by and leaving love!

Canvas Art Kit

Do you have a couple of super nice beach photos that you’d love to see up on the wall?  You can display your calm, relaxing beach memories for a pretty good price – the CTMH Canvas Art Kit is half price this month only. Quantities are limited…. 

This is the kit (and my 5x7 picture sitting in the background, too).  I had already stamped on the chipboard pieces as instructed in the booklet. 

This is what it took me 30 minutes to make:

 

Some detail shots: 

And this is what *still* left over for other projects.

Plus this snazzy stamp set that’s pretty versatile will always be a part of my stash, too.  This awesome project is all for $19.95 right now, while supplies last.  Get yours at http://marthasaenz.ctmh.com, product number G1062. 














Of course, beach photos aren’t the only kind of photos you can add to your canvas art kit, and you don’t *have* to limit yourself to two.  I just liked the mellow tan background that somewhat resembles waves; it made me think of soft sand under my toes, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the rolling waves…. wow I feel like going back to the beach again!  :)  

Anyway, you can personalize this any way you want.  You have two color choices as far as the chipboard sheets included in the kit, and of course you can use the stamp set to really customize your project and make it truly unique.  The only limit is your imagination, the story you want to tell, and how you want to tell it. 

Thanks for looking and for leaving love!

Chantilly

Chantilly is the name of a popular CTMH paper line.  It’s very feminine and pretty on one side, and fairly neutral on the other side.  It suits me perfectly as I have pictures of myself to scrapbook BUT I mostly scrapbook my only child, who isn’t terribly into pink.  LOL!

This is the Chantilly WOTG instruction booklet:

The Workshops on the Go (WOTG) are kits that include a paper packet (six 12x12 double-sided patterned papers and six 12x12 cardstock sheets), a C-size stamp set, and a couple of embellishments.  In this case it included some pink glitter gems and a package of fabric buttons.  You get all that PLUS the full-color instructional booklet for the bargain price of $29.95. 
From this WOTG I made quite a bit. 

--- A page about myself (using the CTMH Make It From Your Heart volume 1 – a pattern book that retails for $7.95):

--- I made the four pages (two 2-page layouts) as instructed in the kit:

No, I don’t have pictures for these pages yet.  I made them to see how far I could get this paper pack to go!  Not to mention I love the color palette and wanted to work with it!

---  Several cards.  I used a few other stamp sets to complete these, but you can use anything from your stash.  I used Frame Flair (product #D1546, which can be cut with the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge before stamping, product #Z1686), and Perfect Fit-Birthday (product #B1417).

--- Finally, I still have a ton of scraps leftover including two full 12x12 sheets of patterned paper!

So you see, the CTMH Workshops on the Go go a LONG way.  It’s lots of bang for your buck, which I totally love!  Unfortunately the Chantilly WOTG is no longer available, but the simple paper pack is, item # X 7163B, and it does come with all six double-sided patterned papers and six sheets of nice, thick cardstock.  Click on the top right “Shop With Me” tab and get your Chantilly paper pack now!