I love ScrapScene.

I really do love the ScrapScene blog and subscribe to it so I don’t miss any of the daily announcements or the Saturday Speedlink.  There’s always something included that inspires me to make something or shows instructions on something I’ve been wanting to do, or just gives me awesome things to see that other scrappers have made.  I’ve even had some of my own projects shown on there.  Angie generously donated to my “Anita Auction” a copy of each of their 3 e-books that they’re selling.  These books are “Scrapping Spring“, “Mini Book Projects“, and “Scrappy Gifts.”  Click on the names to see the descriptions of them on ScrapScene and all the projects you can make with them.

Angie, thank you from the bottom of my heart for donating and helping me with my cause!

You can go here on the blog to see all the posts for upcoming auction items.

**Come back to bid on any of the items you’ve seen in my previous posts or this one.  You can subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column on the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auctions goes live. 

Donation from Country Bum Creations!

First of all, I just think the business name is cute!  haha  But the story with this one is that the lady who owns Country Bum Creations works at Karen Foster Design and when she found out that I was asking Karen Foster Design for donations she wanted to help also so she sent me these DARLING items that she makes and sells.  How COOL is that?  She doesn’t have a website, but man I think she should GET one because her items are so cute and really well made.  She does have a blog with some photos of her products here.  You can purchase items from there by emailing her.  Becky must be selling at craft fairs because she has a photo of her booth from November.  She also holds classes, so if you live in Utah you might be local to her and can take one of those.  Check it out on her blog.  Thank you so much, Becky.  The daisy and the kite are really just beautifully made and I appreciate your donation so very much!

Daisy is 18.5 x 18.5 and retails in her shop for $25.  It’s a light ivory color with a burgundy raffia ribbon.  You can hang it by the wire or there’s a sawtooth hanger on the back.

I LOVE this kite.  It is 20 inches long not including the tail, which is 3 feet long all by itself.  I couldn’t fit it all into the photo above!  haha  It’s a bard red color with an ivory colored flower.  These retail in Becky’s shop for $28.  It also comes with a sawtooth hanger on the back for hanging it. 

Hawk attack.

I wanted to take a break from all the auction posts and tell you a little story.  This one is especially for my 3 friends Sandie, Connie, and Jerry, who are loyal readers of my blog, and a few of them love to call me up and harrass me and laugh their heads off (laughing AT me – not WITH me) whenever I tell a traumatizing story on my blog like the Illini football game story.  Yeah, they really enjoyed that one.  So I dedicate this blog post to you 3.  haha

So…..totally not funny when it happened and frankly I’m still not laughing about it but my husband Ken about choked himself laughing when I called and told him about it, so thought I might share with you all and start your day off with a chuckle.  My trauma is for your amusement.  And when I say trauma, I’m sooo not kidding.

Here goes…….

So one recent morning I go out my back door to walk to the garage (not attached to my house) to get the car out to take Summer to school.  Let me preface by saying that our house/garage is VERY OLD.  Frankly, I think our garage is in such bad shape that if we hit it hard enough with the car it could potentially fall over and crumble into a pile, but Ken won’t let me try it.  Anyway, the doors broke many years ago.  I’ve lived here for 9 years and the left side has never had a door, right side door is a piece of crap and is very hard to open and close (no electric opener). 

On with the story………….Lots of snow out there (no path shoveled and it had just snowed 6 inches) so maybe my footsteps were kinda noisy and I startled the “bird” inside the garage.  He starts fluttering around in there and I involuntarily scream, you know how it is when you suddenly hear wings flapping about and a bird starts flying toward you, which startled him more (I wasn’t inside the garage yet THANK YOU LORD).  He starts to fly OUT of the doorway (that I’m standing in front of) and I can plainly see that this “bird” is a HUGE HAWK in the garage.  I guess I was scary looking…or maybe it was my second involuntary scream?…but he’s startled again, so he just DROPS THE DEAD BIRD he was holding to the ground AT MY FEET and flies back into the garage, where he continues to flutter from side to side.  At this point I want to puke and I’m too scared to go into the garage to get into the car!  Yes, I’m a weenie but I’ve never had my head attacked by a huge hawk and I think I can safely assume that I wouldn’t LIKE IT.  I go over and stand in front of the other garage doorway where the car is parked and wait a few seconds hoping he’s going to flutter around and see me gone from the doorway and fly out.  He does.  WHEW. 

The fun doesn’t end there kids.  I run and jump into the car only to find I don’t have the keys.  Summer comes out the back door and I ask her to go back in and see if keys are in my purse.  She comes back out with said keys, brings them to the garage.  Runs to the garage and doesn’t even notice she passes by this huge dead bird!  I couldn’t believe it.  Anyway, I start the car blah blah blah, back out into the daylight (garage is dark) and almost barf my breakfast.  You know how you get startled and involuntarily scream AAHHH ?  Yeah, did that.  Again.  There are bits and pieces of bird feathers with bits and pieces of bloody bird still attached to them ALL OVER my windshield and STUCK to the hood of the car.  I AM DYING by this point.  SO GROSS.  Bloody bits!  Ack.  We are borderline late for school at this point, so I drive Summer to school looking at this “stuff” all over my windshield and hood.  A few feathers flew off on the way.  LOL  But I figure most of them are stuck on there cause they’re frozen to it!  I came back and tried to scrape them off best I could without vomiting.  My husband was giving me advice on the phone, “Oh, just go out there with a cleaning rag and wipe them off.”  Um, NO.  Sorry, can’t do it.  Weak stomach……blech.  But that dead bird the hawk dropped down to me as a gift?  Apparently he came back later and picked it up because it disappeared by the time I took the dogs outside later in the day.  Whew…

Donations from Dorothy part 2.

**This is another post detailing donations I’ve received for the auction to try and raise funds for my trip to Canada to deliver Anita’s scrapbook to her.  If you’re a new reader to my blog and don’t know who Anita is, you can read my previous blog post here.  To see other donations I’ve received that will be put up for auction in February and March, you can go here and here  and here.

**Yesterday I showed you some items that Dorothy had sent me for the auction here.  Here is part 2 of Dorothy’s donation.

The Fiskars ShapeBoss and lots of stencils to go with it.

The Fiskars CardBoss with 3 stencils to go along with it.

**Come back to bid on any of the items you’ve seen in my previous posts or this one.  You can subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column on the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auctions goes live. 

My latest Pazzles project

So if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I love the Pazzles Inspiration machine and that I’ve been to a couple scrapbooking conventions and worked for my friend Klo demoing the machine.  I’ve shown several projects by me and some of my scrapbooker friends who own Pazzles here before, and here’s another one I did the other day.  Figured I’d take a break from bombarding you with all the “auction talk” (sorry to my non-scrapbooker readers!) and show you what I made for my bathroom mirror. 

Cool, huh?  I put this on my husband’s side of the mirror because he’s always cheerful and sunny in the morning and I hate him for that (haha) and I’m not usually pleasant, which makes me feel bad so this way I can tell him GOOD MORNING honey without actually SAYING it! 

I’ve got another little project planned in my head but when I tried to actually DO it there was a roadblock, so I have to call my friend Klo the Pazzles Guru and ask her what I did wrong! 

Another donation!

**This is another post detailing donations I’ve received for the auction to try and raise funds for my trip to Canada to deliver Anita’s scrapbook to her.  If you’re a new reader to my blog and don’t know who Anita is, you can read my previous blog post here.  To see other donations I’ve received that will be put up for auction in February and March, you can go here and here  and here.

So, if you don’t know a scrapbooker, then you’re missing out.  We are really an awesome category of people.  I’ve always known that anyway (duh, because I AM one!), but with this whole fundraising thing I’ve got going on, that belief has just been proven to me time and time again.  I belong to an organizational group for scrapbookers on yahoo and I mentioned on there about my Anita scrapbook project and how I’m trying to raise money to deliver the book to her in Canada.  I had a nice lady named Dorothy McCarthy contact me wanting to help.  She gathered up a big box of supplies she had that she could part with along with a neat little scrapbooker tool that she invented and sent it off to me.  Thank you so much Dorothy! 

Here’s some of what she sent.  I’ll show more tomorrow.

A McGill scallop tag punch that punches 3 different sized tags.

And “somebody” used to like Sizzix paddle punches and must have gotten tired of them.  haha  She also included a Sizzix hammer and a Sizzix craft mat, the ejector tool, and replacement heads for the hammer to go along with these!  I’ve tried to do some research because I don’t own any Sizzix products.  I have found out the names of these punches.

These are the retired tropical fish (#38-0851) and the retired palm tree (#38-0859).

These are the snowflake (#38-0845), retired snowman (#38-0862), and retired Christmas tree (#38-0848).

These punches are retired primitive star #1 (#38-0824) and retired primitive star #2 (#38-0825) and retired primitive heart #1 (#38-0822) and the retired sun (#38-0835).

Here we have the dragonfly (#38-0833) and the butterfly (#38-0834).

Lots of decorative scissors (click to see them bigger).  I’m thinking of bidding on these myself for my Girl Scout troop!

Lots of letter stickers (click to see them bigger)

Packs of papers and cute diecuts.

A couple leaf punches

and up close

Here’s the tool Dorothy invented below.  She calls it the 2nd Chance.  She describes it as tool for separating tape runner adhesive from paper craft items but she has also used it on glue dots, stickers, double-sided tape, postage stamps, and even items used with the Xyron sticker maker.  You can see a video demonstration on her blog here.  She also sent me one to keep so I can try it out for myself.  Looks pretty neat to me. 

Thanks so much Dorothy!

**Come back to bid on any of the items you’ve seen in my previous posts or this one.  You can subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column on the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auctions goes live. 

Donations from Karen Foster Design.

**This is another post detailing donations I’ve received for the auction to try and raise funds for my trip to Canada to deliver Anita’s scrapbook to her.  If you’re a new reader to my blog and don’t know who Anita is, you can read my previous blog post here.  To see other donations I’ve received that will be put up for auction in February and March, you can go here and here  and here.

Okay, Karen Foster Design officially rocks, people.  They sent me a huge box of supplies for the auction.  They even bundled them up by theme and packaged them for me. 

Wanna see photos?  Be sure to click on the tiny ones to make them bigger! 

We have the picnic/family bbq package.  Included in this is a picnic page kit that has papers and a sticker sheet inside, another set of cardstock stickers, a big title rubon, a package of fancy brads, a package of button brads, and a package of metal mini bbq charms.  Awesome!

Then we have what I am calling the love package.  Inside this one is a package of fancy brads, a little license plate embellishment, 2 sheets of cardstock stickers, a big title rubon, a 12×12 rubon (looks like an overlay but works like a rubon), and 12 sheets of paper (2 sheets of 6 designs).

Then there’s the brad/book bundle.  They sent their spiral bound book called Braditude, the book of brads, and 4 packages of different brads, 1 button brads, 1 macaroni brads, 1 brad lines, and 1 loopy brads.

This one is my personal favorite.  I called it the amusement park bundle.  It has an amusement park page kit which includes 6 cardstock, 6 patterned papers, cardstock stickers, a big 12×12 rubon, and a diecut tag sheet.  Then they added a big title rubon, a package of mini metal charms, more cardstock stickers, a package of loopy brads, and a package of scrappers floss.

AND…..if that’s not enough, they also sent 2 huge stacks of patterned papers.  There are 25 designs and 2 sheets of each, so 50 sheets of paper in each package.  WOW.

**Subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column to the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auctions goes live. 

I am blessed.

I’ve been talking here on the blog about the scrapbook that my friends and I have been working on for Anita in Canada and my attempts to raise money for the trip to hand deliver it to her.  It’s a lot of work that I didn’t foresee.  Quite exhausting! 

My friend Jill Brush, who helped me make TONS of pages, also did some fundraising of her own out in California for me!  She had a scrapbooking garage sale at her house and sold her supplies and raised money for me and then chipped in some cash of her own.  How’s THAT for being blessed with friendship?  Jillie, you ROCK!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  Go check out all the creativity on her blog and give her some love, people! 

And…. if that doesn’t make me lucky enough (and it does…), my friend Thea White did sort of the same thing.  Except I helped her last fall organize and purge her scrapbooking studio and brought home tons of stuff to sell for her on an organizing group I belong to on Yahoo and I’ve just been selling her stuff and collecting the cash for her for the last few months.  The other day she told me to take the cash I’d made for her so far and instead of sending it to her just put it into my “Anita fund.”  Thank you, Thea, from the bottom of my heart.  I’d tell you to go to HER blog, but she’s a really sucky blogger and never writes on it. 

I am so grateful to have friends like Jill and Thea and all the other girls who helped me make this beautiful book for Anita.   I am so thankful for all their support and help they’ve given me in this cause I feel so strongly about.  Once I get all the pages from the girls, I’ll be scanning them and showing them here on the blog, so stay tuned.

Products donated from Kelly Panacci.

**This is another post detailing donations I’ve received for the auction to try and raise funds for my trip to Canada to deliver Anita’s scrapbook to her.  If you’re a new reader to my blog and don’t know who Anita is, you can read my previous blog post here.  To see other donations I’ve received that will be put up for auction in March, you can go here and here .

One of my favorite designers, Kelly Panicci from SandyLion, has donated items from her new His & Hers line and the 360 Degrees line.  I love all of this stuff!  I have actually loved all of the stuff she’s designed.  I just like the style of the flowers and the words and everything!  LOL  This lady ROCKS!!  Thanks so much Kelly.

**Subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column to the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auction begins in March. 

Donations arrived from Jennifer McGuire!

***This is another post detailing donations I’ve received for the auction to try and raise funds for my trip to Canada to deliver Anita’s scrapbook to her.  If you’re a new reader to my blog and don’t know who Anita is, you can read my previous blog post here.  To see other donations I’ve received that will be put up for auction in March, you can go here.

I’ve been getting some donations in the mail this past week.  I’m telling you people, my faith in humanity is renewed.  I’ve had so many companies say no, they couldn’t donate supplies, and I partially expected that.  But then I started contacting PEOPLE, scrapbookers who have blogs, scrapbookers who write in the magazines I love, scrapbookers who have layouts published in the magazines I love, and the response has been much better.  These girls are generous and I have gotten lots more Yes answers and haven’t even asked as many people as I did companies yet.  Thank you all from the bottom of my heart if you’ve agreed to send me items.  I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.  Someone suggested I make a new blog post every day or every few days and let people bid on it in the comments section for a few days before moving on to a new post.  If any of you out there have done this before, please contact me if it worked well for you!

One donation I received this past week was from Jennifer McGuire.  Her blog is here.  She’s a contributor to Creating Keepsakes magazine and a design team member for Hero Arts stamps and a 2Peas Garden Girl.  I just enjoy everything she does!  I subscribe to her blog and she’s always showing the cutest projects on there.  So, this is what she sent.  Can we say GENEROUS? 

She even threw in a cute little tag and signed it inside.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart Jennifer!

**Subscribe to this blog by filling out your email in the top of the column to the right to receive updates about other donations as they come in and get notification when the auction begins in March.