One Sweet Blog Award

I *love* the word 'sweet'...and I just found out that I received this 'sweet' blog award from Deb at Sharing My Obsession! Deb is pretty sweet herself... When I had just discovered Bellas, it was Deb who sent me a RAK full of them! And it was by admiring her creations that I learned to colour images with shading and dimension. She's definitely a sweet lady, a sweet paper-crafter, a sweet wife & mom and a sweet friend! So everybody, please go and visit her blog and leave her some sweet comments too! Thank you Deb for thinking of me like that! You always make my day with your sweet comments!!

I'm going to pass this award along to a few other sweet bloggers too... I especially like the projects each of these people post and for their responsiveness to questions and their sweet comments too!
- Lyndsay at Stamping with Linz - darling projects!
- Jenn at Stamp Your Heart Out - she posts a new card everyday and sometimes even a tutorial!
- Sarah at Thinking Stamps Again - sweet style!

Simply BLESSED

I made this card for Beate's weekend sketch challenge. I've never participated before so I thought I'd give it a go - plus I wanted to make a Thanksgiving card for my inlaws. The problem though is that I don't have any thanksgiving stamps/greetings.... So I made this one very simply and decided to let the papers speak for themselves:)

Pop up Card

So this week's tutorial at Splitcoast was how to make those pop-up cards that I seem to be seeing everywhere - so you know I was game to give it a try...

Composition Notebook

I've been "told" that it's been too long since my last post?!! :) So, I'm posting this project before I'm totally done. It's a composition notebook, and I'm trying to figure out how to make pockets for the inside. If you have any ideas, please let me know! Thx!!

Here's a link to Angie's tutorial on this one! I love her videos and her friendly southern drawl!!

Edited to add... I think I figured out the pocket thing - I basically cut them a half an inch larger on each side that I'd use to attach them with and then scored them a half an inch from the edges, mitered the edges and folded them in and attached them with sticky strip to the inside flaps of the notebook. I'll try to remember to post a photo later:)

A couple pages of a mini album I'm working on...

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...it's tiny, but it's coming along... and I just *love* the bella rose paper:)

I've been Tagged

Charith at 'Life's Hard Get a Helmut' tagged me today. Don't you just love the name of her blog?!!

Here are the rules:
1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are my facts:
1. I was born on Father's Day.
2. I love Starbucks!
3. Papercrafts are my creative outlet, my time for me.
4. I want to get more into making altered items.
5. I also want to make my first acrylic album soon.
6. One day I will visit Paris with my hunny!
7. I'm thinking about getting a Big Shot (should I or shouldn't I - I need your advice...)

The Blogger's I've tagged, but only play if you want to:
1. April's Scrappiness
2. Deb - who is 'Sharing her Obsession
3. Kadee
4. Nicole
5. Julie at 'Paper Pleasing Ideas'
6. Shawna
7. Jen at 'Stamp Your Heart Out'

A little something I'm learning...

...and here's a project I made for the someone who's been teaching me:)

Here's a link to a previous project I made with the tutorial.

Christmas Gift Card Holders

I was completely inspired when I saw Kristina's gift card holders, so I had to make a couple and play with my Christmas paper stash. This is definitely a project where the paper can be enough, you know?! Kristina has complete instructions on Two Peas today! Oh, if only I had more time, the things I could play with on Two Peas!! (Sorry, the colours don't coordinate between these two gift cardholders, I was going for a different look with each of them:)

Pacific Point Christmas...

Someone recently said that they didn't really like this blue, so I had to play with it some more to decide. I really liked the liked blue, green & pink card I posted the other day, and here are a couple of Christmas cards I made yesterday when I was white embossing to my heart's content...

Riding Hood Red & Kiwi Kiss Christmas Card

The white embossing powder I ordered came in!! So did my in colors and bella rose paper! So I've been playing with more Christmas card ideas this morning. At this rate, everyone is going to get a different card because I just keep doing different things. I am trying to use simple designs though, so if I decide to make a lot of one I can easily replicate it.

Club #1 - Embossing!

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So Wish List Wednesday started last night. It's the SU club I go to once a month, and this year it's going to be a technique club, and this month's technique was -- wet embossing! We did regular white embossing, we did irredescent background embossing, and we learned two really neat new techniques with embossing...emboss resist (that's how the flower on the blue card was done - the flower was clear embossed and then it was sponged with a darker pink ink to create the lines...) and faux metal (that's how the flower embellishment on the cherish card was made - you emboss the paper twice with silver then stamp the stamp in versamark, emboss the paper once more with silver and then stamp it while it's warm with the stamp and voila!) All in all a fun night - and I learned how to do two things I hadn't done before!!

Also I'm thrilled for Nicole as this is the first year that she has been doing this and she already has 10 people in club! Isn't she awesome!! We drew from a basket to see what month we are each hosting and I picked July - I sure hope everyone isn't gone on vacation then?! lol:)

Colour Inspiration #23 (#6 if you're me)

This week's Colour Inspiration from Kristina was a challenge! Several of the colours weren't colours I work with often so I had much less supply-wise to work with. That being said...I love the little tree stamp I used - it's from Heidi Grace and the picture doesn't do it justice for how cute and folky it looks with its leaves all coloured for fall. I don't think the picture captures the dimension of the card well...someday I'll learn to take a better pic!

Recipe:
Cardstock: SU choc chip & burgundy
DP: Basic Grey & SU
Stamps: Heidi Grace
Flowers: Prima

Prayer Basket

I made this prayer basket tonight as we were getting ready for the fall start-up of our small group. This year it's really on our hearts to add more worship to our group, and learning and fellowship continue to be important, but sometimes we find that in that fellowship we end up spending more time talking about our prayer requests than actually praying for them, so that's where the prayer basket comes in. As we're gathering and sharing about our week's, everyone is encouraged to write any prayer requests down so that when we pray as a group later on nothing gets missed. I plan to change the basket up a bit by season, and I also made this little clipboard so people would have something firm to write their requests on.

Another Scripture box...

This is a scripture box that I made for a friend. I love making these boxes...you get to do something creative with something that means the world to you! This box is quite a bit different than the one I made for myself a few months ago, yet it uses the same formula. The paper is from Basic Grey and I used a lot of hodgepodge hardware on this one too! (Oh, and that's the swirls from Baroque Motifs that I used to stamp on the patterned paper...)

Close to My Heart

I met April at a Happy Hour at JSI, and now I've learned that she's participating in a Fall Kickoff Trade Show Saturday at the Lawson Civic Centre. See here for details and go and check out April's table. April sells Close to my Heart which I didn't know existed until I came upon her blog.

Colour Inspiration #22 (#5 if you're me:)

...say it's only some paper flowers...sailing over a cardstock screen...but it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me...

I've got the tune to Paper Moon in my head today, can you tell?!

So Kristina's colour inspiration this week was a bit of a challenge for me. I wasn't sure at all about putting the burgundy together with the rose red & regal rose. The bravo burgundy is a browny-red toned burgundy and the rose red and regal rose are very pink-y to me. So I stared at my paper for a while before I actually started creating.

Recipe:
- cardstock - bravo burgundy, whisper white, rose red, regal rose, soft sky
- stamps - SU short & sweet and SU one of a kind
- ink - versamark & bravo burgundy
- boho blossom punch

I also made this little gift bag/box with some K&Co paper that matched the inspiration colours well.

So I'm not the only one thinking Christmas cards already...

Today I noticed on JSI's blog that they were playing with Christmas card ideas too. Here are a couple more that I've been toying with. The larger black images (the tree in the first and the Santa's hat in the second) are embossed in black. I'm waiting for my white embossing powder to come and then I'm going to try a different colour combo and white emboss the tree. I do kind of like the very vanilla in these cards though, and I *love* that ribbon on the tree card:)

Christmas Treat Bag

OK, so I'm playing around with Christmas early... Every year I do up treat bags for the neighbours with some kind of homemade chocolate baking or candy. I also do this for some of the businesses I frequent where I feel like the people who serve me are more like friends, you know?! So this morning I was playing around with this tutorial to see how I could adapt it for this year's treat bags. I changed the dimensions to work with a brown paper bag so the cardstock is 5 1/4 x 8 1/2 (scored at 1 1/2) and 5 1/4 x 7. I purposely tried to make this project fairly simple as I might be making several of them. If I go with this idea, I think I will line the inside with clear sulofane because of the chocolate. I'm not sure that this is how they will stay, but I'm fairly happy with how this went. But I'm really starting to see how I'm going to NEED the scallop edge punch... currently I'm creating every scallop edge you see with my corner rounder:)

Paper Bag Family

I made this little paper bag album for my folks. It's their anniversary and we're headed over there later today. It also happens to be my brother's birthday and my sister's birthday. OK, today technically isn't my sister's birthday - her birthday was a week ago today. Confused? My brother was born exactly on my parent's first year wedding anniversary, and my sister was born exactly one week before their second year wedding anniversary. What about me? Well after my brother and sister there were to be no more kids according to my mom... So I was born eight years later on Father's Day!

As an aside, it is almost impossible to figure out something to get my parents for an anniversary. They are not sentimental people at all and their marriage isn't typical. I always feel that anniversaries are really between the couple, you know. I would never expect our daughter to do something for anniversary, but this is the first year in a long time that everyone could be together on my folk's anniversary and the birthdays, so I kind of want to make it special. The thing is though, what I think is special probably isn't special to them...(sigh). So we'll just do our best, right!

I don't really know of a tutorial for this exact album, but here are a couple of different paper bag album tutorials here and here to inspire you!

Nicole's Theme Thursday

I thought I'd just put in a plug today for Nicole's class this Thursday. I believe you have to let her know if you're coming by Saturday so she can have all the supplies ready, and this week's project is a fantasy box.

The pictures to the left today are of the fantasy box I made this past Valentine's day for my daughter. I went to Claire's and filled each little box inside with a treasure (a ring, a bracelet, some earrings and a necklace). She still keeps the box on her dresser and stores special things in it! Here's a link to a tutorial on it, but it's easier to learn in person, if you know what I mean - especially if you haven't made a lot of boxes before or covered chipboard.

Another take on this week's colours!

I told you I loved this week's colours! This is a card I made for my hunny using the All in a Family stamp set... (you'll notice how much taller the guy is than the girl...that's because my hubby is 6'4" and I'm 5'2":)

...the colours aren't a perfect match to the inspiration on this one, but I still like the feel!

Colour Inspiration #21 (or #4 if you're me:)

I couldn't resist doing Kristina's Colour Inspiration today because once again I *loved* the colours that she picked! So I made this little card. This week has been a little bit discouraging so I really tried to make this one cheerful... I think it worked:)




Recipe:
- Pacific point, kiwi kiss, rose red, regal rose and whisper white cardstock
- Stamps used were from SU sets: Boho backgrounds and One of a kind
- Ribbon is from Bella's favourite ribbon:)
- Tonnes of dimensionals (under each strip of cardstock and under the white as well!)
- Scalloped edge was done with a corner rounder, but that new SU scallop punch is definitely on my wish list:)

Christmas in September?

I've started playing around with ideas for this year's Christmas cards. I still have no idea what I'm going to do this year, but I do love this Bella image that I received in a RAK recently:) I love colouring bellas!!

Another Happy Hour

I *love* holiday Mondays! Because today was a holiday, it meant that we didn't have to rush back into our weekly routines last night (or today!), so we had a friend over and played games last night, then we slept late today, had a breakfast of homemade blueberry scones, yogurt and coffee, went for a bike ride, and then, I picked up a friend and we headed to Just Scrap It (our lss) for *Happy Hour*. Today's project was this 12 x 12 page. I have to admit that I wouldn't typically use these colours, but I thought they worked ok with these pictures from of when we were at White Spot. They aren't the prettiest pictures of us - they are after a 5-6 hour journey and we are tired and hungry... And we were only too happy to get to White Spot, our favourite restaurant that night!

As you know during our recent vacation I went to several larger scrapbooking stores in Alberta, and I just want to say, that I like ours here at home better than most of them! Also, I'm feeling really fortunate that we have a Creative Cafe here because none of the stores I visited on our road trip had one!

The other fun thing today is that I finally learned how to use some die cut machines - ooh what fun! I have been missing out!! ...and so after happy hour I lingered more than a few minutes cutting out letters and all sorts of swirls!