Cardmaking contest at Practical Scrappers.

Just wanted to let you scrapbookers and card makers who read my blog know there’s a contest going on over at Practical Scrappers.  Make a card using pink and submit it by September 30th for a chance at some prizes.

Here are the details:

Girlfriends.

Yet another page from the girl’s scrapbook I was hired to make.  Almost done showing you those!  Once again applied rub-ons directly onto my photos here.  The word block sticker on the left is from Echo Park’s little girl line (so cute).  I love the little pink ticket but I can’t remember where it came from.

Life is made up of simple moments.

Here’s another page from the book I was hired to make of this young bride’s childhood.  She and her mom are very close and in the photos they’re wearing the same hat and scarf goofing around.  It’s little things such as this that kids remember later I think.  I really tried to use my stash for this book, and so many things on this page I have had forever, like the sticker with the quote, the chipboard flowers, the paper, the “remember” rub-on that I rubbed onto the photo. 

Aren’t these girls just too cute?

beautiful girl.

Here’s another page from the little girl’s childhood book I was hired to make a few months ago.  I can’t remember where those little chipboard flowers came from, but the paper and the cupcake sticker and the blue-green border sticker are all from Echo Park’s little girl line.  So cute!

Welcome to the Practical Scrappers blog hop!

Thanks for joining us for the Practical Scrappers Blog Hop.  We’re sharing projects that relate to the number two since it’s our second anniversary!    Today I’m sharing a project with you that incorporates the number TWO.   I’ve also got a prize to give to one of you who visits me.  You get TWO chances to win.  One way is if you are a follower of my blog and the other is if you are a follower of the Practical Scrappers blog.   Just leave a comment here letting me know for each one.  

Here’s my project for today:

I incorporated TWOs by adding two telephones, two photos, and the word hello two times! 

Here’s the prize that I will mail out to the winner!  It’s 10 yards of assorted ribbons (1 yard each of 10 different designs) from my etsy shop.  TWO yards sounded like kind of a skimpy prize.  ha ha!

Forgive me for this terrible photo.  There was no time to haul out the camera, so I threw them all onto my scanner!

Okay, we have an extremely talented group of designers, so I know you’ll enjoy checking out their blogs!  Now you can head on over to Brenda’s blog here as your next stop!  Thanks for visiting me! 

If you didn’t start at the beginning but you WANT to, you can go here:   Christine

Happy Anniversary to Practical Scrappers!

Practical Scrappers, the blog whose design team I’m on, is celebrating being 2 this week!  So Happy Anniversary!  We’re having all kinds of fun challenges over there all this week and a designers blog hop at the end.  Today the challenge is to make 2 cards using the exact same thing. 

I used this sketch for both cards:

It’s from Skipping Stones Design.

Here is my first card:

 And here is my second:

I did the same sketch, but I turned the card horizontal!

You can go here to the Practical Scrappers blog and see the other designers’ projects, how they used 2 of the same things for cards.  Check it out.  There are prizes being given away this week!

Z-Access display frame.

Check this out!  I was contacted by the people who make this frame to see if I would be interested in reviewing it here on the blog.   Since I am into preserving memories and displaying items outside of my scrapbooks in addition to inside my scrapbooks, I jumped at the chance.  Seriously….this is the coolest thing ever! 

It’s called a Z-Access Display Frame (website here) and you can use it to display momentos or souvenirs in a 3-D fashion because of this really cool stretchy clear “stuff.”  They call it “flexible frame insert”, I call it awesome!  ha ha 

They sent me the 4×6 rotating frame with a frame (with a base).  It comes in 6 colors (I got ivory) and is $20.99, which I think is pretty reasonable.  They have a cheaper one that doesn’t rotate for $15.99.  Here are some of their ideas for using the frame.

I love this idea, the thought of taking a few sentimental items that might be too bulky to place inside a scrapbook and putting them on display this way.  I have a beautiful old pair of my mother-in-law’s cat’s eye spectacles that I’m thinking about putting in this.  It’s really neat because it spins around and you can put it vertical or horizontal.  You can even use it as a plain old photo frame!   Another cool thing about it is that this film will shrink back to its original shape, so if you get tired of displaying something and want to change it you can because it won’t stay all stretched out from the first thing you put in it.  Neat, huh?

This is what I did with mine and I love it!~  This is a mold of my daughter’s foot from when she was very little.  I’m so mad at myself that I didn’t write the date on it somewhere!  Ack!

Here it is horizontal without the base part.

I also tried putting my daughter’s bronzed baby shoe in there. 

You can see above how far it’s sticking out.  That film is really stretchy.

Check that out!  ha ha 

And look …..this is what it looked like after I took both items back out of it.  It really did shrink back into place! 

Truthfully, they sent me one to check out for free, but it’s so cool and so affordable that I would totally buy this anyway.  I’m even thinking that I’ll be buying a few to give as gifts for Christmas gifts this year.

They have other styles besides the one I got.  Go on over and check them out here and maybe you can start your Christmas shopping early!

Are you a princess? Little girl scrapbook page.

This is the first page to the scrapbook I was commissioned to make for a woman’s daughter of her childhood years (the daughter just got married) and it’s one of my favorite pages.  The banner is a stamp from Hero Arts.  You can’t tell but the flowers in the lower right hand corner are all sparkly because I drew over them with Stickles (love!).

(click to see bigger)

The poem reads:

Can you imagine the joy I will bring to you with beautiful dandelions all in my hair?  A song I have just made up for you will move you more than any tune you have ever heard.  I will paint pictures that look just like you, with purple fingers and exagerrated noses.  I will make you cry.  I will make you laugh.  I will make you understand that life can be funny.  You will make me understand the meaning of life.  I will make wishes on shooting stars just like you have, and I will too watch them come true.  I will love you unconditionally, and you me.  Can you imagine the joy I will bring to you and you to me?

I love that poem!  What do you think?

Custom Wedding Card Box.

I recently was hired to customize a card box for a wedding reception, to hold cards that people give instead of gifts, you know?  The lady gave me a plain box that she had bought from somewhere made by Wilton and asked me to do it in the wedding colors, light yellow and navy blue.  I had an invitation to use as a reference.  This was a job!  Harder than I thought it would be.  The box was really just kind of a piece of junk (sorry Wilton!).  It didn’t assemble very well, and there were gaps or bulges that I didn’t like, but it wasn’t my fault so I tried to work with it.

Here’s the box before:

I began with covering all the sides and lid with this lovely My Minds Eye patterned paper from their Stella Rose line.  I had no yellow papers in my supply so I had to go buy it for this project at Creek Bank Creations.

Isn’t that a pretty, elegant paper for a wedding project?

The invitation was yellow and had areas of navy blue with polka dots, so I found this navy blue polka dotted ribbon (also at Creek Bank Creations), and used my yellow Copic marker to color all the white polka dots yellow!  Check it out!

Then I got to work on the prettiest part….the flowers!  I used navy blue cardstock and yellow cardstock for some of them and the same My Minds Eye paper for the large one in the middle.  I made them all myself (first time doing that!).  The smaller ones were made using the My Favorite Things “rolled flower” Die-Namics die, cutting them out with the Cuttlebug and then rolling them up…. and the larger flowers were made by just drawing a huge spiral on the opposite side of my patterned paper and cutting out and rolling up.  I have seen lots of great tutorials for how to make these on the internet.

At the last minute I decided to add a whimsical little touch with the bride and groom (wooden cut outs from Michaels).  I knew these kids getting married are in college and fun-loving and were even having breakfast as their reception dinner….so I thought a cute little something would be appropriate for them.

And there you have it!

Bella Blvd giveaway

Hey scrapbookers, just wanted to let you know real quick that Practical Scrappers has a Bella Blvd feature going on at the blog today and we’re giving away a prize pack of Bella Blvd goodies, so come over and check it out here if you like Bella Blvd stuff!