Another Sketch Challenge

I had such good luck with doing a sketch for my last page that I decided to go ahead and give it another try and headed over to Sketchy Thursday to check out their current sketch.  I was once again not disappointed and got some much needed inspiration.  I also saw that this layout is eligible for the current challenge at Frosted Designs to use Glitter on the project.  I used Stickles on the Tattered Angels Mistables under the title.  I am pretty happy with the result.  I once again used Pink Paisley papers, Tim Holtz Distress inks, Glimmer Mist (with a glimmer screen) and some Thickers for the title.  

 

This layout is of this past March when we celebrated Purim.  We made Hamantaschen cookies and generally enjoyed ourselves.  

I actually scrapbooked!

For the first time in months I actually sat down this week and I scrapbooked!  It was amazing.  I have done quite a bit of paper crafting, but I hadn't made a scrapbook layout since probably September or October.  I just didn't feel the motivation or inspiration to do it.  I started to get some inkling of motivation so I decided for inspiration I would check out some sketches and hope to get going from there.  I went to Frosted Designs and found their current sketch challenge to be just the inspiration I was looking for.  I used mainly Pink Paisley products on this with a big helping of Tim Holtz Distress Ink and some Glimmer Mist.  I don't think I ever make a project without using at least a little bit of distress ink.  

 

This layout is about my husband's 32nd Birthday this year.  I cooked him a surprise meal of a bunch of his favorites and for the celebration with my family I baked him a root beer bundt cake that I thought he would really like.  All in all it was a great birthday for him.  

Thank you

Lately I have been really busy.  What have I been busy with?  Thank you cards!  I tell you what...Having a baby sure does require a lot of Thank you cards to be made and written.  I must say I am truly amazed at the amount of gifts we have received for our little guy.  I feel so amazingly grateful for all our friends and family who have been more than generous.  Unfortunately I have not been able to make a thank you card for every single person who got us something, but I have at least sent one to everyone.  I saved the homemade ones for shower hostesses and special gifts. 

I just wanted to stop by quickly to show off a few recent ones that I made.  This first one is actually using the card sketch at Frosted Designs.

 

The rest were also using card sketches I just can't remember where I got them all.  I need to pay better attention to that!

 

13th Birthday card

It is pretty amazing how time just seems to fly the older you get.  When you are really young a week seems like it lasts forever and a year is pretty much an eternity.  As you get older though that time begins to start speeding up until you feel like it is flying by like the county-side on a high speed train.  It is here and gone in a flash and no matter what you do to try and slow it down and savor it, it just keeps rushing past you.  You may ask "Why this reflection on time?"  Well, it seems that I blinked and something pretty incredible happened.  My nephew grew up.  This Wednesday he turns into a teenager and I honestly can't believe how quickly it has gone by. 

I was only 17 when he was born and he was just the sweetest, cutest littlest guy I had ever laid eyes on.  He was a darling little baby that I got to spend so much time with and really loved more than I could ever imagine.  Over the years he has grown up into a handsome young man with all the attitude of a budding teenager, but still with a very caring side.  It makes me proud to see the person he is growing into and I just know that he will turn into a great man one of these days.  It is amazing and wonderful yet also sad because that sweet little boy is gone forever.  The time just flew away.  It makes me realize that my time with the little guy I am currently carrying and will soon bring into this world will be just as fleeting.  In the blink of an eye he will grow up and become a young man.  I need to cherish every moment as much as I can because he won't stay the same for long. 

Every year when my nephew's birthday rolls around I make sure the spend an extra amount of time on his card.  He likes the cards I make and always has a "This is so cool." for me when I give them to him.  I even found out that he still has the card from last year that I made him still hanging up in his room.  That sure was an ego boost for me so this year I made sure to have something just as awesome for him.  I used the Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutant line for his card this year.  I thought it was edgy and cool and masculine enough for a 13 year old young man.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of my absolute favorite holidays.  To start with you have a day dedicated to eating a lot of rich and delicious food.  It is like your day to have a free pass and just eat a little of everything that sounds delicious.  Next, you have a day that, at least for me, is dedicated to spending time with family and appreciating what you have.  It is always such a nice time to reflect on what I have and what I am thankful for.  There is always love, laughter and warmth.  I can't wait to spend this holiday with my son in future years and teach him about the true meaning of holidays, family.    

So I know I am a little early, but I wanted to share this Thanksgiving card that I made for Crafting Jewish Style.  I used their fabulous Rosh Hashanah line to create the card along with some spare ribbon scraps I had in my stash.  The Rosh Hashanah line is so beautiful and the colors are just so rich.  They are perfect for fall layouts, cards and other projects.   

  

I hope you all have a safe, happy and delicious Thanksgiving this year.

Nursery Decoration

I must admit I haven't done a whole lot of scrapping lately.  Life has been pretty hectic and I have had other things on my mind.  I also (apparently) haven't had blogging on my mind much either since I have been SO horrible about keeping this bad boy updated.  Well I wanted to share some of the nursery decorations I made for our little one's room.  Long before we found out that we were having a boy we decided that we were going to do an outer space/rocket ship theme in the nursery.  I was so excited about it and when I first saw October Afternoon's Rocket Age line I knew that is what I was going to use for my altered canvases.  Also I thought that their mini album kit was perfect for a name banner that later can be used as a mini album when the little guy outgrows his nursery and wants something different. 

 

An 8x10 altered canvas

 

12x12 altered canvas

 

8x10 altered canvas

 

Name banner

Happy New Year!

The Jewish New Year is quickly approaching and I wanted to share a fun craft project I made for the occasion for Crafting Jewish Style.  It is a box for tzedakah or charitable giving.  Ros HaShanah (the new year) marks the beginning of the high holy days and during this time the concept of tzedakah is very important.  Since my husband and I are expecting our first child we wanted to make sure that we instilled this value in him as well.  I made a cute little box to place tzedakah in during the high holy days to teach our son about charity and make it a little more fun. 

Just some stuff to share

I just wanted to share some new layouts that I have done recently.  I hope you enjoy them.

An Announcement!

First I wanted to share a new layout that I did.  It should give you a bit of a hint of what my announcement will be.

Well if you haven't already guessed my announcement is that my husband and I are expecting our first child!  We are over the moon excited and can't wait to meet our little nibblet in January. 

Sketch Challenge

Head on over to Crafting Jewish Style to see our newest sketch as well as to enter into the Hanukkah in July contest to win a great Hanukkah prize pack!

Mini Album part 2

As I said before (in this post) for Mother's Day I made my mom and my grandma mini albums.  I realize Mother's Day was forever ago, but I just got around to actually blogging about them....Yeah I am a bad blogger...I know.  My grandma's album was shared in the previous post and her's was a "brag book" theme.  For my mom's I decided to leave it photo less and give her the option of filling it with whatever photos she wanted.  I did give her an extra trimmer and some adhesive and I have and matted out photo spots with specific sizes for her.  Part of this was because I just didn't have the time to find enough photos because I only had 1 week to make both albums and part of it was because the album had the title "Life".  Why this title?  Well I got this kit from Archiver's one crop and it happened to have the title of "Life" already.  Yup....I am super original.  My mom's album was substantially bigger than my grandma's so I won't bore you with all the pages, but here is the cover and a few on the inside pages.

 

 

 

 

 

My first Mini Album!

At 2 am the Sunday before Mother's Day I woke up with the most brilliant idea ever....I was going to make both my mom and my grandma mini albums for Mother's Day....Did I say brilliant or crazy?  The crazy was compounded by the fact that I had never made a mini album before, but slightly alleviated by the fact that I had two mini albums sitting around the house.  Today I will show you my grandma's album as it was the first of the two that I made.  I will show my mom's in a later post. 

I really had a ton of fun with this mini.  The fact that it was a clear acrylic album and each page needed to mirror itself on the front and back side was a challenge, but also took some of the guess work out of doing the back.  For a theme for the album I chose to do a Great Grandma's Brag Book and put photos of her four great grandchildren in the book.  It was a lot of fun to make.  Each kid also got their own page and I did my best to match the current personality of each kid with the design I did for the pages.  I hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folded Flower Tutorial

Want to learn to make these awesome folded flowers?  Head on over to Crafting Jewish Style for a tutorial I put up today!

Happy Mother's Day

First I want to give a big shout out to all the mother's out there today!  Especially my own mother and grandmothers.  A woman could not ask for better role models of strong and intelligent women than what I had growing up!  I love you ladies more than you can ever know!  So tell me...What do you love and cherish most about your mother or any other female role model you may have had?

Next I want to direct your attention once again to Crafting Jewish Style's blog.  This project I was tasked with creating a layout about an event.  It didn't have to be a specific event, but it needed to be an event.  I chose to create my layout about Simchat Torah.  Simchat Torah is the time of year when we celebrate finishing our Torah readings for the year and beginning again.  It is a celebration of the Torah and our story and history.  This year we went to Temple Micah to celebrate and had a wonderful time.  There was dancing and singing and clapping.  It was so full of joy and celebration it was truly a wonderful experience.  At the end of the celebration we unrolled the entire Torah to be able to see it in its entirety.  The whole scrolls are so big, long and intricate that it truly is a breathtaking experience.  The photo on this page is hard to see, but it is just a portion of the unrolled scroll.  From end to end there were probably 4 or 5 times as much as this photo shows.  I used Crafting Jewish Style's Rosh Hashannah line for this page.  The colors just fit so well with the photo.

Crafting Jewish Style Sketch Challenge

I have another wonderful sketch challenge to share with you guys and even more exciting is that it is an extra special sketch made just for Crafting Jewish Style and I got to make my project with their wonderful products and papers.  It was so much fun.  The awesome sketch was created just for us by the very talented Anam Stubbington. 

I made the layout about my dog, Bruno.  I found these adorable Hanukkah PJ's for dogs at Target this past year and I couldn't help, but get them for him.  He looked so cute and they kept him nice and warm through the cold winter.

Sketch Challenge

Wow....Once again I have been a serious slacker!  In my defense we have had some computer issues and I have had a pretty giant mojo vacation.  It just seemed to up and vanish.  Yuck!  Well it finally has returned and I am back in the groove of things.  In one week I have made 4 cards and 4 layouts!  I haven't been that hopping in a long time!  I'm going to share one today from that is based off a sketch from Sketchy Thursday.  I had a lot of  fun working with this sketch and it all came together really quickly.  These are photos of my husband and I this past summer at the Renaissance Festival.  One of the main reasons we went was because he really wanted one of those turkey legs so I just had to scrap it.  Check back next week for several projects for the Crafting Jewish Style design team!  I am so excited to finally get to share these with you.  I think they are a big part of refinding my mojo.

Epic Battle

While we were in Texas this past summer our nephew couldn't wait to get my husband to have a light saber battle with him.  As soon as we got back to the house he was raring to go.  Both J and I took turns fighting him and it was a great time.  I had a lot of fun making this page and even used a sketch from Sketchy Thursdays, but when I showed the layout to J he said "You made a layout about a light saber battle with flowers?" Apparently I broke a rule in the guy code or something when I did that.  He also informed me that had he done it there would have been platforms, light saber beams and other masculine Star Wars things on the page.  Well good for him, but I am the scrapbooker and I scrap how I want.  If he wants a page with those things he can scrap it himself ;)  If we ever have a son the poor kid will have flowers all over his pages too.

Trip to Maine

I have slowly, but surely begun work on our vacation trip to Maine from this past August.  Vacation might be the wrong word for the trip..we flew in Friday night for a friend's wedding party and we were supposed to fly out Sunday early in the morning and be back to Denver by noon.  We ended up getting stuck in the Portland airport until nearly 3 in the afternoon and didn't get back to Denver till late.  Oh well.  The little jaunt was worth it as it was my first trip to Maine (it is beautiful by the way) and we got to see one of my husband's best friends at her wedding party.  It was a fun trip even if it was extremely short.

Need for an Update!

It has been WAY too long since I have updated my blog.  See what happens when I am left to my own devices and have no design team work to show off?  I get lazy.  Geesh...At least I haven't been lazy on the scrapping front.  Between the month of March LOADED with birthdays and two crops in two weeks I have been actually pretty productive.  Just horrible about actually getting anything up online.  Well that changes now!  I would like to share a few projects and as long as the ladies at Frosted Designs don't mind I want to go ahead and enter one of their challenges too.  What can I say?  I just can't stay away from that blog. 

First up for my Frosted Design challenge entry I made this card for a cousin's birthday.  I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

 

Next on to a few layouts.  The first is a layout about when my husband and I "camped" out on a friend's property after a BBQ.  We had a great time and these photos are of us enjoying some wine when we went out to find a place to pitch our tent before it got too dark.

 

This next one is from our trip to Texas this past summer.  We stayed with a friend for a few days and one day we spent the entire time lounging around their pool.  It was wonderful.  I would also like to brag that this is the first time I have had my photo taken in a swimsuit that I actually liked the photo.  Losing 60 lbs. can do a world of good for your confidence.  

Exciting News

I have some really exciting news to announce.  I have been accepted on as a new design team member for the wonderful product line Crafting Jewish Style.  I admit that when I decided to leave Frosted Designs about a month ago the thought of joining another design team didn't really enter my mind.  I mean sure it was a thought for the future, but for the time being I was hoping for a break and I really wanted to do some scrapping just for me.  When I saw the design team call for Crafting Jewish Style I just couldn't resist.  It was definitely something that caught my eye and I felt like it was a great way to really challenge myself to include my religion and my heritage in my scrapping.  It is something I don't do enough. I really can't wait to get started crafting with their awesome products.  They are SO pretty and I admit it is great to have some patterned paper that is geared to Jewish scrappers.  Head on over in the coming months to see some wonderful layouts, great sketches and inspiration for both Jewish and non-Jewish scrappers alike. 

A Tutorial and a Goodbye

With great sadness I want to announce that this will be my final project as a Design Team Member for Frosted Designs.  I have been on the design team at Frosted Designs since it began all the way back in Fall of 2009.  It has was my first design team and I tell you it has been one heck of a time designing for them.  It is a wonderful challenge blog and I have had the privilege to work with some other amazing paper crafters. 

I made the decision to step down from the design team because I felt like it was time for a change and that I needed to branch out and try some new things.  I must admit that a big part of me is sad and feels like I am leaving my home, but another part of me is excited for new opportunities in the future.  I wish Barb, Diana and all the other wonderful ladies at Frosted Designs all the best and I certainly hope they don't mind if I stop by to play along with their challenges every now and then.

Now on to more exciting things.  We have a tutorial that I created for you over at Frosted Designs this week!     

This week at Frosted Design we are showing you how to make wet distressed flowers.  These are incredibly easy and take no special punches or equipment to make.  You can see the finished product in the layout above.  To make these flowers you will need:

scissors
scraps of patterned paper or cardstock
distress ink
mini mister or other spray bottle of water (not pictured)
adhesive - I prefer Zip Dry Glue
Gem, brads or other flower center

Step 1)  Take your patterned paper or cardstock and cut out a rough circle with a wavy edge a little bit bigger than you want your finished flower to be.  It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, nor does the edge need to be perfect.

2)  Cut out increasingly smaller circles just like you did with the first.  Depending on the size of the flower you want depends on the number of layers you will want.  I tend to stick with either 5 layers for larger flowers and 3 layers for smaller flowers.

3)  Take your scissors and cut small triangles evenly spaced around the circles to create petals.  I usually do 8 triangles on larger circles and 4-6 on the smaller ones.

4)  Ink the edges of all your flowers with Distress inks.  It is important to use Distress inks as they will run and look more like natural coloring when you get them wet.

5) Using a Mini Mister or other spray bottle filled with water spray your flowers fairly liberally till the paper is fairly wet, but not soaked.  You want it to be pliable, but also able to retain its shape.

6)  Using your fingers smoosh the petals so the stand up and are scrunched.  You don' have to make all the petals do the same thing.  Some can be turned more under while some may be turned up and others just smooshed.  Let the flowers dry.

 

7)  Put a small dab of glue in the center of each layer and glue the layers together with the largest on bottom and the smallest on top.

8) Affix a gen or a brad in the center and your flower is ready for your next project.