Wedding card.

I was commissioned by my friend Sandie to make her a wedding card.  She had specific colors she wanted and in her words “kind of plain.”  Which is hard for me, people!  Which Sandie quickly found out because I must have emailed her 5 times with options and choices and she finally said, “Hey!  Shut up and just make the damn card or I’m cancelling my order!”  Well, not in those words EXACTLY, but I know she was thinking those words exactly.  Right, Sandie? 

I started out using a pretty little gold glitter pen that is VERY subtle and I hated it because it was TOO subtle so I ended up using Diamond Stickles (and if you read this blog you can probably tell I love those). 

(I love the little rub-on phrase from American Crafts, one of my fave companies)

She asked for wedding rings somewhere, and wouldn’t you know I have had this little charm hanging out in my studio for probably 7 or 8 years……. so it really DOES pay to hold onto things, right?  (don’t tell my hubby I said that)  haha

(my fave part, the Stickles!)

You like? 

You can find other things I make in my etsy shop.

A 500-Word Essay.

Back in May on my daughter’s birthday, I wrote this post about an essay I wrote (on her challenge) to her about how much I love her.  I did finally get around to making a scrapbook double page about that and wanted to show you here.

I used Webster’s Pages patterned paper (I think the “magical wishes” line) and one of my favorite things that I’ve been holding onto for YEARS, that cool rose “ribbon” (for lack of a better word).  It’s not really ribbon.  It’s more like tons of roses all embroidered and then embroided to each other.   Hard to explain.  Got that from my buddy Abby.  Those letter stickers for the title are Making Memories, one of my all time favorite scrapbooking companies. 

Senior Photo Shoot J.H.

I was hired by a former boss and old friend of mine to make a photo display board for her daughter’s graduation party.  We were discussing what sorts of photos she wanted on it, and I couldn’t believe she didn’t have senior pictures taken yet with graduation a week away!  What?  But see, this is one of the many reasons I like Tammy so much….cause we are SO alike in those types of things!  haha  Anyway, when she heard that I was dabbling in photography, she hired me to take the senior photos.  Frankly, you don’t even need a big ole fancy camera with this girl, cause she is so pretty and just naturally photogenic in my opinion.  Even the photos my 9-year-old took of her with my point and shoot camera were great!  Anyway……here they are (some taken by me and some taken by my hubby).

Dance In The Rain.

I enjoy when I have a really nice quote that I like and the photos to go with that quote to make a scrapbook page!  The quote here is “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, but learning to dance in the rain.”  I think it goes perfectly with photos from 3 years ago of my daughter dancing in the rain in her pajamas on the front lawn. 

There are so many things I love on this layout.  Those cool chipboard pink flowers I got in April at Creating Keepsakes University in St. Louis when I was there working for Pazzles.  I added Stickles to them to make them glittery.  Those green strips are from an old Top Line Creations page kit and I added Stickles to the swirls that were already on it.  I printed out every other word in alternating colors of pink an blue to coordinate with my papers and then cut the words out individually.  Those blue letters are Thickers from American Crafts and one of my favorite things.  This is probably my favorite scrapbook page to date. 

(these Thickers letters are my favorite ones from American Crafts.  Love the font.)

See the rain drops?  Those are apostrophes from the letter stickers sheet! 

Forgive the glare and bad lighting please.  I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to remove them from the page protectors before photographing them!

Mighty Mendit and Mighty Gemit!

Have you heard of this stuff?

Well, of course my kid is the one that can recite every infomercial/commercial for every “as seen on TV” item you could ever want, so she’s been telling me about this and telling me I should get some.  Yeah, that and the “sleep number bed”…..

But instead of having to buy it, I got some for free to review!  I love that!  We received a huge bottle of Mighty Mendit that will probably last the rest of my life and a small bottle of Mighty Gemit and they even threw in a small bag of gems.  Summer and I cracked it open and tried it out on a few things.  We both used it in some card making, and I did some clothing alterations also.  Wanna see?

Here’s a card that Summer made.  She’s my little artist, and she’s very abstract about it usually, and this card was no exception.  She used the Mighty Gemit to make swirls on the inside of a card and it was also the adhesive for the piece of pink splatter net thingie she wanted to stick in there.  She also glued down the jewels in the middle with it.  It looks messy but once it dried, it really held up! 

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I made a card and used the Mighty Gemit to glue down my jewels (which were the ones from Mighty Gemit).  You can see here that the Mighty Gemit is white where it oozed out a bit when I first applied it.

Then after the Mighty Gemit dries, it’s clear!  I love when glue does that. 

*******

There were 2 shirts that my daughter refused to wear because they were too low cut and she felt they showed too much of her skin on her chest.  (Yes, I will probably be reminding her of that in a few years!!)  I had gotten the idea in my head to take some of my ribbon from my scrapbooking supplies and sew it onto the edge of the seam that goes across the chest but had never gotten around to doing it (welcome to my life).  Then the Mighty Mendit came and I thought, hey I’ll just use that to GLUE the ribbon where I want it.  I did that and then I washed both shirts AND dried them both and this is what the end result was.  I think it did a really good job of holding up through a washing and drying.  Pardon the terrible photos.  Lighting in the laundry room is almost nonexistent.

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I used the Mighty Gemit on several other projects also with the gems they sent me. 

The above flower is their gem applied with Mighty Gemit (dried clear).

For this butterfly I used my own tiny gems with Mighty Gemit glue.

Again here are some Mighty Gemit jewels applied with Mighty Gemit glue.

Used Mighty Gemit on this chipboard branch to apply the jewels (from Mighty Gemit).  I can’t tell you how much I love having it dry clear!  No, it doesn’t take much to make me happy does it?

The round clear jewels are from Mighty Mendit and I used the glue to attach them all.  The little bag they sent me had 3 different sizes in it and they’re very nice.  Even if I hated the actual glue, I would still buy the jewels!

I also had this purse that I bought at Target and within just a couple months the straps are literally hanging by a thread.  It makes me so mad.  I’m not carrying around bricks in the purse!  So on the 2 straps that are the least damaged (the other 2 are beyond hope of fixing) I applied some Mighty Mendit and clipped the 2 parts together with an office bull clip thingie and it’s actually not a bad result!

I wish I had before pictures, but I took them with my new camera with no memory card inside and I just thought that the camera had its own memory for at least a couple of photos without the card, but unfortunately it doesn’t so the photos I thought I took really disappeared into thin air!

However, here are the after photos.  It ain’t pretty, but nobody is really looking at my purse straps that close.  Or at least they SHOULDN’T be, right?  haha  I don’t know what this stuff is made of, but it’s got magical fairy dust inside or something.  I literally grabbed each side of this and tried to pull it apart from the Mighty Mendit and it wouldn’t budge.  It’s amazing. 

Now I’m off to go check out their website and see if I can buy some of their jewels.

Be Happy.

One of the things that I love about my kid is how sometimes she gets joy from little things.  Like dancing around in the front yard in the rain.  She did this recently at the age of almost-9 and as soon as the photos came back from being printed I looked at them and wanted to immediately make a scrapbook page for them. 

These 3 colors are not ones that I would normally use, but I was inspired by the colors in my photos for a change.  I am not a big fan of Basic Grey papers, but I used the new Lime Rickey here.  See the rainbows?  That’s actually a shoelace I bought from my awesome friend Abby!   

Have you ever……

turned on your kitchen faucet hot water……and then forgot about it and went back to work in your office…….and then kept thinking that you heard something funny like water running…..and then finally after an hour and a half went into your kitchen to investigate and found out that you’d left the hot water running ALL THAT TIME?

Me either………

Photo Sympathy Cards.

My friend Sandie is very supportive of my work and will throw ideas at me sometimes.  She recently suggested that I offer sympathy cards for sale in my shop because that’s something she is in need of a lot it seems, and I told her I would make her a few because she gave me the idea!  I’ve been experimenting with using photos on cards lately, and these are what I came up with.

Sandie, I hope you like them and can use them.  I will be mailing these out to you today.

Creek Bank Creations June 2009 kit projects.

I’ve purposely left my June kit from Creek Bank Creations sitting here on the counter in my studio because it’s the first time I’ve ever gotten a kit and I wanted to determine how many projects I could make with it.  This is my newest project, a layout about my husband’s mother who passed away 2 years ago and his father who I never got to meet.  From the kit I used the Cherry Arte papers, the Bazzill red dotted swiss cardstock (the photo mat and the butterflies), and the ribbon.  This layout has all my favorite stuff, sparklies and bling!  I outlined Heidi Swapp ghost shapes (heart and clock) with Crystal Stickles.  I punched out those butterflies with a Martha Stewart punch and then put Stickles on them also.  The Heidi Swapp circle bling is one of my favorite things and so are those glittery Creative Imaginations letters.  There is a red swirlie-doo (yes, it’s a word) on the paper and I just outlined it a bit with my Crystal Stickles.

Click photo to see it larger!

I realized afterwards that I hadn’t journaled on the page (gasp–that’s just not like me!) so I’m either going to hide it somewhere or make a second page for it with the journaling and maybe a few more photos.  Or I may just make a whole ‘nother page and put the journaling on that.  I am all about telling the story with my scrapbook pages, but you don’t have to journal your life story on every single one of them, right?  I’m just feeling like I need to put a story with this one I think because it’s the first layout I’ve ever done of my husband’s parents. 

Here are some cards that I showed in separate posts that I also made with this kit.  Click on them to see them larger.

********edited to add:

I actually did end up making another page to go with the first one of my in-laws.  They’re actually being displayed on the mantel in my living room right now.   Here’s the second one. 

The items from the Creek Bank Creations kit on this one are the patterned papers, the red Glitz jewel strips (I cut them up), the chipboard swirlie (Creek Bank manufactures those), the red button, the Bazzill black dotted swiss cardstock, and the butterfly journaling card. 

The little white buttons are vintage from my mother-in-law’s sewing basket, and I thought it fitting to use them on a layout about her.  We lost her to Alzheimer’s almost 2 years ago at 93 years old and I miss her spunk!

For A Dear Sister card.

My hubby hired me to make my sister-in-law a birthday card for today.  Lately I’ve been into using some photos on my cards so did that with this one also.  They live on a lake with woods behind them and deer visit them a lot, so thought this photo was appropriate.