A Layout And Some News

Hi all! I wanted to share a layout with you as well as pass along some fun information. :)

First up, the layout.

 I fully intended to share this with you on Valentines Day, but this month has just not worked out as planned. I think I am just not a fan of Februarys...they always seem to go bad.

 But I am sharing it now. Better late then never.

This layout uses the Love Note collection from Fancy Pants.  I paired it with their awesome black corrugated cardstock and one of their even more awesome stencil cards.

Here are some close up's of my layout:

It also uses adhesive from Tombow and was posted as part of the combined Fancy Pants and Tombow blog hop earlier this month.

And I wanted to make sure that you didn't miss this fun announcement....

The deadline is quickly approaching, so if you are interested you'll want to act fast.  I gotta tell you...I have loved every minute of being on the Fancy Pants team, they are very easy to work with and generous.   It's a great team to be part of!  

Have a wonderful day!!!

Who Needs Photoshop!

Hello all!  I have a fun layout to share with you today!  It uses my Cameo and one of my favorite brands ever...Webster's Pages.  Webster's Pages had a challenge up on their blog to get trendy and use die cuts on your layout.  They are right, cutting with your Cameo (or similar machine) is very in right now.

I personally love all the cool things you can do with your Cameo.  Although, I will admit, I haven't used it as much as I want to because I get frustrated.  I feel like I must be doing it all wrong because most the time I can't get it to work right.  I can get it to cut my kraft cardstock perfectly.  Yeah! But if I want to cut patterned paper, it either doesn't cut through the whole paper and I have to use my craft knife to cut out the rest, or it rips up the paper.  Seriously thought I wasn't going to try anymore when I finally got it to work with my kraft cardstock.  But I do wish I could get this thing figured out.  :(

Anyways...

Here's the layout I did for the WP challenge:

I used pieces from a variety of collections for this layout.

This summer my sister-in-law took pictures of me and the kids.  There was four photos.  But just my luck, none of them worked great...each one had at least one person with eyes closed or face turned.   You know how great Photoshop experts can take one person from one photo and put it in another photo and have it match seamlessly so you have the perfect picture.  Well I spent several hours trying to do that.  And failed miserably.  So finally I gave up and thought I would do a better job just me and my craft knife.  So I cut each person out of the best photo they had and then layered them all together on the photo to create the best possible photo for me.  :)  It was actually kind of a cool trick...who needs Photoshop.  ;)

Here are the close up's of my layout and you can see the photo better too:

Well thanks so much for popping in today!

Have a fantastic day!

Happy Fourth of July!!!!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are having a fun and safe Fourth of July!

Well you've popped in on just the right day because we have some fun stuff going on!

The Skipping Stones Design Team is thrilled to be teaming up with the fabulous designers from The Ribbon Carousel to bring you a blog hop that is sure to impress!  

Here's the card I made for this week's inspiration challenge on the SSD blog.  This was the inspiration photo:

And this is the card I made:

I was inspired by the flags, as well as the kraft background with the red, white and blue.  

I used the fabulous Cupcake Cutie stamp set from Skipping Stones.  

I used 4 different ribbons on my card, all from Ribbon Carousel.  Three for the flags I made and then the wide red, white, and blue one near the bottom.  

Ok...now let's talk prizes...

Hop along and leave some blog love for our designers for a chance to win one of 2 great prizes!  The Ribbon Carousel will be giving away a ribbon carousel and Skipping Stones Design will be giving away a stamp set of the winner's choice!   Winners will be announced on Saturday at 8:00 PM EST!  

Ready to hop?!  

Lets do it!

You'll want to hop on the Peggy next (see full list below).  But don't forget to first leave a comment here!  

Hope you have a fabulous FOURTH!!!  :)

Making Laundry Easier (and Prettier)

Hi everyone!  I've got a fun project to share with you today that has a purpose.  We are trying to get the kids more involved in the chores around the house.  Previously they had been just piling all the laundry on the floor in the laundry room and leaving me to deal with it.  Well I have told them now that they need to sort it out.  I made some signs using the Half Bracket Chipboard Banners from Fancy Pants Designs to hang on the baskets so the kids know what goes where.  

I used the fabulous Time For Spring collection from Fancy Pants for my laundry banners.  

Here's how I did it:

1.  First I covered my chipboard banners with some of my favorite pieces of paper, and cut them out.  

2.  I painted on some gesso in the center of my banner pieces, and added some splatters as well.  You can use white paint instead of gesso.

3.  I glued some burlap to the back of my pieces.

4.  I took the letter stickers and added the labels (colors, whites, delicates, towels) that we use to each piece.

5.  I then added a crackle texture technique from Helmar.  It is painted over the whole piece including the letters.  It helps keep everything securely on (so no missing letters later) but it's also just a cool look!  I added a bit of pink ink to the cracks.  

6.  Then I decorated each banner piece using strips of papers, flowers, stitching and ribbon.  

7.  Then I added them with ribbon to my baskets.  :)  

And here's a tip for you.  These banners came with a bit of ribbon but it didn't have enough for this particular project.  I looked for ribbon that I had that was similar in color, but I didn't have any.  But I did have some fabric (it was actually canvas fabric), so I just cut a strip and used it as ribbon.  You can do this with any fabric.  :)  

Of course, you can make this a quicker, simpler project by skipping some of my steps, but anybody can do this fun project!  I am thinking of doing more projects for my laundry now with the collection to match these.  :)

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!!  Have a wonderful day!

Just Enjoying Summer

Hi all!  We've had a busy summer so far, with lots of swimming, birthday celebrations, and fun!  Basically, we've just done a lot of playing.  :)  And we are getting ready to go on another road trip soon too.  It's been nice.  

I do want to share a layout I made with you.

I've had beautiful gardens on the mind lately and I think it may have influenced this next layout:

I used the wonderful My Private Happiness collection from The ScrapCake.

Here are some close up's:

I used a foam stamp and paint for that tree...it's my most used foam stamp and has certainly got a lot of use (from Prima).  I added some simple gems to the tree instead of flowers or anything else.

Oh and I didn't get my card done for the Skipping Stones Design challenge 134, but you can check it out and play along here!  :)

Well I hope you are having a fantastic summer!!!!  Thanks for stopping in!

SSD 127

** I still have a giveaway open here.

Hi everyone!  Hope you all are having a wonderful week already.  My card I am sharing today is done for sketch 127 over at Skipping Stones Design.  I used the beautiful Always Here stamp set.

Here's the card:

This card also uses papers, gems and trims from Webster's Pages, from their Everyday Poetry collection.  I thought I would use several trims on my card, piled on top of each other.  I love it...course, I love trim!  :)   

And here's the sketch:

The sketch was created by the fabulous Heidi Van Laar.  I hope you take the challenge and play along with us!  *You do NOT have to have Skipping Stones Design stamps to play along!*  Play along here. 

And you don't want to miss out on what the rest of the team did with this sketch, check those out here:

* Jennifer Ingle

* JoAnn Valderama

* Karen Baker

* Katie Gehring

* Lindsay Amrhein

* Stephanie Mino

* Wendy Jordan

* Wendy Price

And our guests for the month, along with Dina:

* Jen Rzasa

* Taylor Usry

So, like I said, I hope you play along with us!  :)

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY EVERYONE!!!! 

Have a fantastic day!!!

Be You But Be Nice

Hi everyone!  Thanks for stopping by the blog today.  

So Eryn tells me all the time that she is silly.  

And she is.  

I love it when she gets a bit goofy, though sometimes it can be a bit tough to get a photo of her just smiling at the camera...especially lately, she's always wanting to make a funny face at the camera.  

And then the other day she said something to me...she said "I'm not weird like Hayden, I'm silly."  I thought of these pictures and I knew I had a page in the making.  I decided to leave the "like Hayden" out though, as to not start a fight.  Sisters....

I guess I should have told her to be nice.

Anyways, here's the layout I made: 

I used the fabulous Be You collection from Fancy Pants Designs for this layout.  I can't get enough of this fun line.  I decided to make a large heart with the ribbon, and then I stitched a heart over it too.  I am really happy with the way it looks...just something a bit different.  I also love the rub-on on top of the black and white photo...so fun!  

Here are some close up's of my layout:

So, what are your plans for National Scrapbooking Day tomorrow?  I know there are activities and challenges all over the internet as well as crops and fun stuff going on for NSD.  I myself will be doing a giveaway on my blog.  :)  So make sure you come back tomorrow!

Have a terrific day!

Being A Mom

Well it's almost May!!!  Can you believe it?  It's a busy time of the year...lots of school stuff going on.    And with the new month comes a new challenge over at Once Upon A Sketch! I do hope you play along with us! :)

The challenge:

Journaling Criteria: The focus of your journaling is "mom".  It can be about your mom, or about being a mom...take the challenge and run with it.   :)

You MUST combine the journaling criteria with this sketch:

My Layout:

Well I choose to do it about my job as a mother.  I made  the page a bit funky and fun.  :)  

Here's my layout: 

It uses the awesome Be You collection from Fancy Pants Designs.  I really just had a lot of fun with this one.  :)

And here are some close up's:

The prizes:

You won't want to miss the prizes you can win...lots of good stuff!  In fact there is SO much stuff that I am not going to list it all, I'll just send you here to check it all out.  :)  

The winner of this challenge, as chosen by the Design Team, will also win a spot on our Design Team for the month of June. That's just the icing on top the cake.  

I really hope you play along with us this!!!! You have until May 30th to upload your entry here. Can't wait to see what YOU do! :)

Thanks so much for stopping in today!!!! 

Have a wonderful day!  

Using Ribbon

Well, I'm getting up a bit late today.  I have had stuff to post, but I just seem to crash at night, which is when I usually type up blog posts.  But instead of scheduling it for next week, I thought I would just go ahead and post it late this morning...if I don't get many comments...it's ok, I don't need to plan things out in a way where I think more people will see it.  It's things like that I just need to let go of (I have this strange notion that if I don't post early, I might as well not post at all that day and save it for later).  But if most people miss it--it's all good, I'm not going to stress about it.  :)  I think this whole blogging thing can get consuming, especially if you are trying to please readers instead of just posting what you do when you do it.  I have seen many bloggers out there strategizing to get the most viewers and comments....what do you bloggers all think about that?  Do you post things when you think the most people will see them?

Anyways...kind of went off on a tangent there.

Today I wanted to share a layout that I made for the Fancy Pants blog.  We were to focus on using ribbon creatively.  So I used this fun ribbon:

And created this fun layout:

I folded over small pieces and tucked them behind my paper, essentially making two borders of looped ribbon. I also added little pieces of the pink floral ribbon to my layout as design elements.  The layout uses the Summer Soul collection from Fancy Pants.  I really love combining brown with bright colors.  :)

Here are some close up's of my layout:

And in case you missed it, you should check out this post to see what the fabulous Betsy Veldman did with this ribbon.  Well thanks for stopping by today!

Have a wonderful day!!!