Autumn Blessings

I've been itching to play with my new Gina K "Grateful Hearts" stamp kit.  And was also missing the story telling of our lives.  Kind of my own version of the Project Life stuff that's been sweeping the scrapbooking work.  It's been well over a month since I've written the family so I decided a letter was way overdue.  Love how this turned out and had so much fun doing it.

The Gina K kits are pretty nice.  It has a bunch of stamps in the kit, coordinating cardstock and patterned paper and some ribbon and brads.  And is packaged in a nice plastic box.  Pretty good deal I think.

Maybe you can see the kit details in this pic? . . .

See you at the shop tonight!

Crafter Xtra-ordinaire!

How dag-gum cute is this little guy?!  He's part of the backing fabric for this adorable quilt Mona just finished for her daughter's new baby boy.  As always we were blown away by her talent.  And we loved, loved, loved! the colors.  Lucky baby to have such a crafty Grandma!

Flat Brads

The Universe must want me to have these!  While I was surfing my favorite blogs over morning coffee today, I found a link to a new blog with some fun cards on it and happened to notice the flat brads on one of the cards.  Thankfully the blogger did a great job of listing her supplies and I linked over to the shop carrying them.  Looks like I'll be doing a little online shopping tonight!

Had a good time at the shop last night.  Hope you have a good day today!

Baby Webster

Hi Gal Pals!

Hope you had a good Veterans Day today.  Although Cricut Man had to fly back to Alaska which made my heart a little sad, I did end up having a good day and a productive one too.

After a couple of hours of house chores, I spent the rest of my time in the craft room and made this scrapbooked picture frame for Baby Webster - Wenonah Jane Webster - who will actually turn 8 months old this week.

Kelly, one of my teammates, was pregnant when we left for Florida this spring and had the baby while we were gone.  I had such good intentions of getting the gift done as soon as I got home but sadly that didn't happen.  And then it seemed that the more time passed, the more I struggled with the design inspiration.

But Kelly, who is UM's Writing Center Director, and I have been talking recently about family story telling and particularly about the stories of the women in our lives.  Just the inspiration I needed.  

I made these "pages" to insert in the frame, but included a formatted journaling page on the back of each page with the hopes that as Kelly changes out the pictures in the frame as Wenonah grows, that she'll write some of her thoughts about her baby girl on the back of the page and slip it into a 5x7 photo album as part of her own memory keeping. 

I cropped up the photo birth announcement Kelly sent this spring and dug through my paper stash for coordinating colors of purple, pink and coral.  I don't have much baby paper but found some really pretty papers in my Stampin' Up papers and 6x6 paper packs that coordinating perfectly.

I had so much fun pulling out embellishments.  Some pearls to highlight the corners of the picture.  Used a clear button on top of some patterned paper tied with some baker's twine.  Found a cute little metal flower from SU.  Used my file label punch and a Tiny Tag "Love" stamp to tag the photo.  Found some pastel mini-diaper pins and a pink metal heart to finish off the embellishing on the first page. 

I used one of the fonts from Free Font Friday (CK Amour) and started each journaling page with a "W", the first initial of her first and last name.  Changed the font color to Sahara Sand to match the colors on the pages.

I love Winnie the Pooh quotes and thought this one I found on a Pinterest board was perfect.  I covered a chipboard heart with another patterned and added a small metal embellishment to balance the metal on the coordinating page.  The little bird on the leafy branch was a part of the original announcement but I cropped it to use as an embellishment.  I pulled out the purple from that to anchor the page with a textured purple paper I had.

There was some yellow-green in the clip art/quote - which in my perfect world I would have liked to change - but that wasn't possible.  So in order to balance the color on the pages I introduced the same color in the center of the metal flower and in the color of the "Love" stamp on the coordinating page.  "Color Balance" - is that really me talking?!  It's amazing how much I'm learning from all the scrapbooking videos I've been watching lately!  WhooHoo!  Maybe I'm ready to tackle my Grandmother's scrapbook afterall?!

See at the shop!

Dangling Bats

Hi Gal Pals!

Wanted to share a link to some really cute Halloween printables from Paper Crafts.  These bats are cute on their one but can also be made to hang down from a doorway, although I think the patterns are too pretty to be scary.  There's also some other cute Fall and Halloween quotes here from Creating Keepsakes.

Hope you have a good day.  See you tonight.

Julie

An Honorary Gal Pal

He's not a female but he is my favorite "Pal" (next to Cricut Man of course!). 

Wonder if he approved of this card?

Happy Monday!

Better With Age

Playing around in the craft room today with some new Gina K stamps and paper I bought a few weeks ago.  This stamp is called Better With Age and the papers are from the Grateful Heart kit.  I used the current Fusion Card Challenge sketch.  Did some Copic coloring which was fun, although I'm realizing a need more wine colors.  Used one of the $1 stamps from Memory Lane to emboss on the purple card stock and then used the Sanded block stamp from Stampin' Up for the bottom panel.  Just thought it looked to plain with just cardstock.  Liked the way it turned out.  Hope you're having a good weekend.  Off to see the Griz Game now and will be going to the Shawn Mullins concert later tonight.  Fun day for sure.

Something New

Good morning Gal Pals and Happy Friday!

Just wanted to share an email I received yesterday about the new Cricut Stamps which match their cut files.  Kind of fun!  I plan to check it out soon.  Hope you have a good weekend.

Girl Friends

Happy September Gal Pals!

Way too long away from the blog.  Finally getting around to posting some of the cards I've made this summer.  I just love this Girl Friend line of stamps.  Love the colors of this card.  And especially love the sentiment.

Hope you had a good Labor Day weekend.  Mine was pretty good.  I don't mean to sound ungrateful but it still felt like the weekend was 1 day too short.  Between the Griz Game, yard work and house chores I only ended up with about an hour in the craft room.  Not long enough for sure.

Cricut Man is off today for his first trip out on the new job.  Keep you fingers crossed that all goes as planned he's only traveling part-time and that the work is rewarding for him.

I'm going to skip going to the shop tonight.  I have a few craft things I promised some folks at work so I'm going to take advantage of the "Home Alone" time and focus on getting those done.

Have a good one today.

Just a Little Note

Finally got around to finishing up all these cards in the kit from a few weeks ago.  Thanks again Gal Pals for playing along.  

I'm bringing some inspiration photos with me tonight so we can pull out one of our toys that's in the drawer at Memory Lane and have a little fun.  See ya' soon!

Let's Rock and Roll

Happy Monday Gal Pals!  Just wanted to thank you for helping with the coloring and stamping for this card last week.  Here's how it turned out.  Cute, huh?!  So what are we going to do for an encore tomorrow night?

Hope you had a good weekend.  Have a good one today. Stay cool!

Fun Scraps

Good Morning Gal Pals!  Hope you had a good weekend.  

I *finally* got a little time in my craft room and made some kits and this cute card.  

It was an inspiration I found on Pinterest.  What a great way to use up scraps! I did the sentiment in Word and then used my new chicken wire embossing folder, which I just love.

I'm going to bring a few more scraps for tomorrow night along with my Cuttlebug and make a few more.  Bring some scraps too if you're so inclined.  I'll have some extra sentiments printed out and ready.

A New Friend

We met a new friend and cardmaker at the shop last week.  She has a beautiful name (and accent) and although I repeated it several times when I met her I can't seem to remember it exactly right now.  I hope our paths will cross again.

She's just starting out in cardmaking and shared this card she made. Isn't it cute?!  She hand cut hearts and folded them for the petals of the flowers.  The one petal falling off is so sweet.  It could be a "Love me, love me not" card or maybe even a "Missing You" card.  I also loved that she turned the orange Candies upside down - a totally fresh perspective.  

That's yet another thing that's so great about hanging out at Memory Lane.  Not only do we get to have our Gal Pal time, we get to meet so many other wonderful women and through sharing, learn new things.

See you there tonight.

He's Home!

Cricut Man's back home from North Carolina safe and sound. And we're snuggled back in to home life just like 2 little bluebirds of happiness.

This was the family card for the week.  A one-layer card done in a rush at 9:30 last night.  Just never enough hours in the days or days in the weekend.  Cricut Man actually helped with the coloring on this one which we did out on the deck as we were trying to stay cool.  We came close to running out of daylight so hopefully the family will be forgiving if we missed a spot or two. 

One Layer Card

This week's family card.  Don't let it fool you - it wasn't as quick and easy as I thought it was going to be - at least not the first one.

I saw the idea on this fun blog and loved it.  Here's the Pin of the original.  But I didn't have a graphic "Hello" stamp so I printed it on the computer to start the card.  Had to get the measurements just right so I had enough room to stamp and things were evenly placed / balanced on the card.

Then I picked a border stamp - another from one of Val's hand-me-down sets - Thanks! again Val!!  But the border was too long for how I wanted it placed on the card and I didn't want to cut it.  So I tried at first inking it with markers.  Not a good idea when you have 4 different colors and 6 cards to make.  Plus I didn't have the colors I really wanted - really bright, summery and tropical - somehow I forgot to buy the 2011-2012 In Color markers and now their retired, dang it!  But I did have the ink pads and I finally got the placement just right without having to mask the stamp and from there on out it went really fast.

I'm thinking it might be really fun with a snowflake border in pale blues and purples for a wintertime "Hello" card.  

Lots to Like

Good morning Gal Pals.  Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Found some card pictures this weekend and wanted to get them posted on the blog for safekeeping.

This is one from Tuesday card group.  It has so many things on it that I like: the color combination, the cool fonts on the sentiment, the hole-punched border strip, the embossing technique, the circle theme. . . I could go on and on.  This one's an inspiration for sure!

Cardmaker Quotes

I didn't get around to downloading pictures of the cards I made this weekend or photographing the ones we made last night, so I'm digging back through some other digital folders this morning and I stumbled on a screen capture from one of the old archived CardMaker magazines I've been going through.  I just love some of these quotes.  Especially the one about being grateful to people who make us happy.  That includes  my Gal  Pals for sure!

I really like collecting quotes.  They're great for prompting a card idea, or using as a focal for the card front, as well as being the sentiment for the inside of the card.  I'm so glad CardMaker has gone digital, aren't you?

The Cat's Meow

This was last week's family card.  I was trying to use this Pinterest post as my inspiration but it didn't turn out  exactly like I had envisioned.  In fact I'm not sure I even like it.  I think I muddied it up by inking the edges with brown.  Maybe inking with the coral color would have made it brighter and cuter.  Mom did call to say she liked the cute papers - part of a Lime Twist 6x6 paper pack I got at Memory Lane awhile back.  But she's my Mom and has to say nice things, doesn't she?

We'll be missing a Gal Pal at the shop tonight.  Hope she has fun with her chores at the cabin this afternoon.  But looking forward to spending a little time with my other Gal Pal and working on our kits.  Hopefully we'll have some cards to share for tomorrow's post.

Cricut Man Saves the Day!

I was scrambling yesterday after a weekend's worth of yard work to get the family newsletter written and a card made.  As I finished the letter, in which I told the family about the long "Honey Do List" I had going for Allan, he said. . ."Let's use this list for a card".  Presto! Whammo!  Done! It's kind of cute, huh?!  It will be even cuter to me when all the tasks are done :-)

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  Thanks for understanding about my week off of blogging and crafting last week.  Feeling much more energetic and creative heading into this week.  Had a great weekend in the yard.  Things are looking really wonderful.  This is one of those times I'm looking forward to going to work and really thankful for my desk job as my legs and feet and back sure are needing a rest.

Have a great Monday.

Sneek Peek

Good morning Gal Pals!  Hope you had a good weekend.  Cricut Man and I had a nice one.  We did the Missoula markets on Saturday and yard work on Sunday until the rains came.  Kind of glad it's a rainy Monday as that will make going back to work a little easier.

I have a little sneek peek for you today of a card kit I made for you over the weekend.  Thought we could have a little fun tomorrow night and give my kit idea a test drive.  The only thing you'll need to bring is your adhesives and an acrylic block for stamping.

See ya' soon.