I'm so trying this...

I have wanted to try Glimmer Mist forever, but one thing that inhibits me is the price. After a quick Google search I found this great tutorial for making your own: Make Your Own Glimmer Mist. I'm trying it and will let you know how it works!

I MUST get these papers

I didn't think it was possible for me to fall in love with a paper line as much as I have Sassafras, but Graphic 45's newest lines are making me DROOL! Usually I love their paper anyways, but they're not necessarily ones I could see myself using. That has changed. The ones I am absolutely head over heels with are Steampunk Debutante:

And Hallowe'en in Wonderland:

I can't scrapbook my Alice in Wonderland pictures from Disneyland without these.

I plan on ordering some on payday from Scrapbook Express. They have an awesome sale going on right now- the whole pack of papers for $15.99 plus shipping. 

Speaking of awesome specials, Chiara at House of Paper is making room for new product and has stuff on DEEP discounts! If she has any left, I'll be ordering from her on payday, too. And if you go there, save some for me, will ya?

Happy Scrapping!

And Life Goes On...

I am sad that this week one of my favorite scrappy communities, Serendipity Scrapbooking, closed its "doors." I already miss all the challenges that she hosted... boy, did they keep me motivated sometimes! I wish Kristen the best, though. I have a lot of the blogs from the other girls listed there. Check them out- there's a huge wealth of talent available. At least i still have the other sites I go to :) Thanks or being there, Becky & Chiara!
Speaking of the other boards, Head on over to Scrap Tastic for the Ms. Scrap Tastic competition. We only are on week 1 and there's still time to join! This week's challenge is to create a layout using the color combo of only magenta, slate and chartreuse. Here's mine:

I used paper from K & Co. and BoBunny. The alphas are from Miss Elizabeth's (which I have noticed are no longer available... too bad, they were great products!)

I am currently working on our vacation album, so I needed a good layout with lots of pictures. This is what I came up with:

For the layout, I used papers from Sassafras and chipboard from Sassafras and WeRMemory Keepers. The Metal accents are from Colorbok.

I'm not sure how much I will be blogging over the next few days, so, hope everyone has a happy 4th of July!

The Big Reveal...

I have been working on getting the house de-cluttered and so I haven't been scrapping much in the last week and a half. My apologies to anyone who was waiting for my usual Wednesday sketch. Anyhow, it's been a chore. We finished the kitchen and laundry room today. Our plan was to take my little scrappy corner out of the laundry room & give it an area of our dining room (which seems to collect junk from activities not related to dining at all.) We had planned on moving our table out into the garage to be used as a project table out there, but, when I went to move it, one of the legs fell off. This is not a new table by any stretch of the imagination, and this leg had been, in fact, re-attached several times. This time, though,m there was no fixing it. It is now currently sitting on our back patio in the rain, awaiting the fate of being chopped to bits and used as firewood. Before you worry about fumes from the lacquer on it, keep in mind that this table used to belong to my grandma and has been used for so many things, left so many times in different weather, that any semblance of chemical on it are fair to none.

Anyhow, back to the story at hand... I have a large corner of the dining room now. We are contemplating on getting a small cafe table, but right now, I am really enjoying the wide-open space that is now our craft area :) I even took a picture :)

The desk, chair & plastic drawers were already ones I had in my little corner before. We bought the hutch today at Value Village for $30 and I think it's just perfect for what I needed it for! I originally intended to have a tall bookshelf for storage purposes, but I really couldn't find one I liked. This one just stood out to me and it holds everything I need it to and then some! The side table is just a piece of treated laminated fiber board that we had bought for Chloe to use as a desk (and which ended up sitting in her room when she decided she didn't like having a desk. I love having that extra space, though, because it means I can even have my sewing machine out and actually use it! The kids also are loving that extra space because I did tell them that if they needed any extra craft area, they could use that. So far, Charlie is the only one who has taken advantage of that... and he is also addicted to using my Helmar Craft Glue. I think I may have to make him buy his own bottle before he uses mine up!

Now that things have settled down a little more, I should have a new sketch to post on Wednesday again... as well as some fun layouts! Until then...

Wishes Come True

Serendipity Scrapbooks is having a Wishes come true contest... register for the forum & say Jill sent you :) Also, there is a Project Runway crop happening soon, so check it out!

Scrappy goodness

I am in the middle of watching TV, but thought I would share a couple layouts and a couple of sketches. Up first,  a sketch that I did for a double page layout, but one that would translate well to 6x12, too :)

On the layout example for this, I used papers from Die Cuts With A View & a journal spot from Sassafras. The flowers & title were all cut with my Cricut. I also used some chipboard from American Crafts and some bare chipboard that I painted.
Unfortunately, the page was too large to photograph or scan together, so I had to split it...

This second sketch doesn't have an example... yet.

And finally, another treat of goodness using all my favorite products! I used the new Gypsy line shaped paper over a piece of Die Cuts With a View damask . I used a Teresa Collins overlay under the photo as well as a couple of Teresa Collins journal spots. The photo corners are Sassafras and the frames I used in the title are also Sassafras. I cut the flowers & title with my Cricut "Storybook" Cartridge and the Font "Vivaldi."

Lots of scrappy goodness

I finally got my font uploaded to a site where it can be available... you an find it HERE. Here's a small sampling of what is on it.

Keep in mind that this is meant more as a font to be used with SCAL, so the shapes aren't super-duper detailed. I tried to create things that I knew I could use, so there's shapes for shaped papers, photo corners, flourishes and even things that would work as journal spots.Most of this is clip art I found and these are meant for PERSONAL USE ONLY. This will be available for download for 30 days, unless there's a lot of downloads, then it may stay on there longer.

I have been really inspired as of late, possibly because I went paper shopping :) and got some yumminess. First off, here's today's sketch & example. For the layout of this, I used papers from Sassafras (I know, big surprise there, right?) and K & Co. The journal spot and flowers are from Making Memories.

I also have a bunch of layouts without sketches that I want to share, so, here they are in no particular order:

For this layout, I used papers from Sassafras & Die Cuts With a View. The chipboard photo corners are from Scenic Route, the die cuts are from October Afternoon, and the alphas are from Sassafras & Miss Elizabeth's.

 This is from our getaway to Westport. Joe let Zeke off his leash and he ran towards this huge flock of seagulls and pigeons  on the beach. Hence, the tile.

This page is one I struggled with. Partially because I chose to print the photo as an 8x10, and partially because I couldn't find anything that seemed to have anything to do with gargoyles, even during Halloween. I ended up using the Sassafras Monstrosity paper as an inspiration for this one.The felt is from Blu Eye Dezines. I cut the "Gargoyle" title from a font called "A Charming Font". I like how it looks, but this was one of those fonts that is really detailed and just doesn't translate well to the Cricut. I ended up using the negative image of it because the letters all got messed up.

Aren't all these princesses cute? This is the page of the infamous brother-in-law picture lol! I totally couldn't resist using it on here. Manda, I have a wallet for you of these if you want them :) On this page, I used paper from Die Cuts With a View "Once Upon a Time" Stack.The purple is cardstock I stamped & inked. The journal card is from Pink Paislee and the flowers are all Prima.

I saved this one as last because this one is one of my favorites... I also took this photo just to use this paper. This is from BoBunny's Kitchen Spice collection. The flowers are Prima. I used pastel pencils to color in and smudge the white ones so they went a little better. The leaves are ones I bought at Michael's that came pre-glittered. The chipboard is from the dollar store. I love how the big butterfly worked on this one. I have a few of these that I saved from some Christmas ornaments we had that fell apart. I liked how they looked and figured I would eventually use them.

Monstrously Adorable

I got this layout done last night for a page in our Book of Weird and I couldn't resist showing it off!

Does anyone remember Harry & The Henderson's? This is near where they filmed it and this wood carver decide to have a park dedicated to the big guy himself. I totally couldn't resist using some of my Monstrosity on this, but there is also some chipboard from Scenic Route, some stickers from K & Co. and 7Gypsies, and even some other miscellaneous stuff.

Stay tuned & I'll post some more sketches on Wednesday. I have had a ton of them just rolling around in my head!

In Memory

Something told me it was time to do this layout today. I'm not sure if it was because there were several of both their movies on TV last night, or just because it is the season for remembrance of the dead, but I did get it done. This was a hard layout to do because I have never scrapped anything like this before, and I wanted it to be special. I think I accomplished that. It all fell together with the sketch, so that's the one I am sharing this time.

For the layout on this, I used papers from the Die Cuts With a View Far East Stack in the background and some Scenic Route textured cardstock for the title. I cut out the title using a font called Parseltongue. The crow was cut using the KR Crow font and the dragon was cut using  a dragon dingbat font that I now can't find. The flowers and bling are from Darcie. For the journal spot, I used a stamp from Autumn Leaves and the flourishes are from JoAnn (got them in the dollar spot there).

For you fellow SCAL users (and digi-scrappers that use CU), I have found an awesome blog! Check out the Scrappin' Cop's Blog (it's in my blog list on the right). She offers a bunch of freebies for personal use and the fonts are to die for!

Some fontalicious fun :)

I haven't been able to play with my scrappy stuff nearly as much as I want to, due mostly to the fact that I have been working and doing a lot of house cleaning. I do have some fun fonts to share that I have found work exceptionally well with SCAL . The first is a font called "Butterflies", which is exactly as it sounds. Now, the font itself is a little too detailed for cutting, but if you switch it to Shadow Blackout mode, cuts some great butterfly silhouettes. For the layout on the right, I used some Sassafras that has a print on it that looks like elementary school writing practice paper and cut out the butterfly silhouettes. Before I took them off the cutting mat, I traced the cuts with a black pen. Then, I used these butterflies as my journaling spots on this page.
You can find the butterflies font here: http://www.dafont.com/butterflies.font

My second font is Called Unchanged Thoughts. It is a curly handwriting font. Now, most of the handwriting fonts you find are pretty thin and don't cut well, but this one is substantial enough that it cuts beautifully. Unfortunately, I have no examples to upload with this one as of yet, I've only tested it on a couple of scraps, but it works wonderfully :) You can find it Here: http://www.dafont.com/unchanged-thoughts$.font

I also have a couple cool sketches to share. I have been challenging myself to do some sketches that are really different, so you will see some with my examples and some without. It may be only because I haven't found a particular set of photos to go with that sketch yet. Let me know how you like them, and if you use them, please post your layout in my comments section so I can see, too :)

I love clip art!

I was going to try to get all my new sketches up, but my computer thwarted my ability to do so by getting rid of all my digital scrapbooking picture tubes... we have no idea how. Anyway, I was able to make some more by way of clip art sites, and was also able to get 2 of my sketches up... and even the one with the example :)

I love this first sketch, simply because it is so fun and whimsical, and I think that if I were to adopt it for my own use, I think I would have to have 5 cats at the bottom, as well as a dog.

The second sketch, I did for one of the Daily Challenges over at Serendipity. This challenge was to somehow alter a clear piece. In this case, I used two- the larger shaped piece and the word "Live." Both are from a Fancy Pants Acrylic album kit that I bought and ended up using piece by piece on other things. I used a rub on on the larger one and then on both of them, I painted a swirl stamp lightly with black acrylic paint and gently stamped it on the back. After the paint dried, I also used some Stickles to cover the back of "Live." The paper is from Die Cuts With a View and the part under all the embellishments is actually a paper towel. I liked the look of the paper towel while everything was drying that I decided to use it. The journal spot is Teresa Collins. I used some Prima flowers and the felt dragonflies are cut out of a larger piece of felt from Queen & Co.


I have to admit, I went hog wild at House of Paper and ordered oodles of the new Sassafras. I think I am totally in love with those little monsters! And it will blend so well
with the Daisy Bucket monsters I bought... everyone I have shown that stuff to has said, "That's so Charlie." Guess whose album most of this is probably going into?

I did not leave Chloe out, though. There's plenty of rainbows and funky designs for her album, too. My next order of business is getting ready for the holidays and getting some more Halloween stuff (yep, I bought some... not necessarily enough, though)... and I need to get more into my fall and winter stash. I used almost all of it up last year!

This week's sketches

Will be posted later on... I am waiting for the stickles and paint to dry before I can put my example for one of them together. On the plus side, I have 5 new sketches to share!

Be on the lookout for lots of Sassafras on my pages... Chiara finally got the new lines at House of Paper and I ordered every single one of them!

I added some new blogs to my blog list as well... a new favorite manufacturer- Daisy Bucket, as well as some blogs I've been following and have overlooked putting on my list :) I am hoping that more places start carrying Daisy Bucket because my local scrappy store is the only on that carries it and they were almost out when I got there! Check 'em out if you already haven't.