Altered Letters

Sorry that I haven't updated in a long, long time. Working full-time has kind of killed any ambitions I have to do much of anything after work lately.

I altered these letters for my sons a few months ago. I covered the letters in patterned paper in their favorite colors (blue and green) and then picked ribbon I thought they'd like and added that. I modpodged over the paper and ribbon after I was done. If I do this again, I'd modpodge before adding the ribbon, because it made some of the ribbon not stick as well. I had to put heavy things on some of areas to keep the ribbon down.

Otherwise, it seemed the letters turned out okay. The boys seemed to like their new art for their bedroom walls : )

These are the letters before I covered them.

My younger son's Z.

My older son's A.

A thank you card

Not your traditional thank you card, though. Last night we went to a friend's house for a party. On the way there we stopped by Archivers and I picked up a stamp set that had different wine and liquor glasses in it. I showed it to our friend and she thought it was cool and asked me to make her a card with it. So I made this card to say thank you for the cool party.

I used a gel pen that I picked up from Archiver's also that is just glitter that you can add to anything. I put the glitter on the little air bubbles and on the left and top edges of the ice cubes.

I put the ribbon too close to the bottom so it didn't turn out exactly like I planned, but I thought it turned out okay.

Sorry about not posting for two months also. I started working on June 21st and I've been a little overwhelmed with that. Hopefully I'll keep up better from now on.

Danielle

Seashell Art

Our older son collects sea shells. For quite a while he has had them in a plastic shadow box we bought him when he first started collecting them. A few months ago I saw sea shells displayed in a fish bowl and thought I should try that for his shells. I had an empty fish bowl, but just kept putting them off. When we went on our cruise in February (my husband and I), we collected a bunch of new sea shells for him and he suddenly had too many to fit in his original box. Today I decided to try the fish bowl display, and it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself : ). I crumpled up some newspaper and put that in the middle, so that most of the shells could be seen from the outside instead of having to fill the middle part that no one sees with some of his beautiful shells. I'm sure there are some shells in the middle somewhere, but at least this way, you get to see at least a little of most of the shells. He loves the new way his shells are displayed, by the way.

A top down view of the fish bowl. I'd like to get some sand to mix in with the shells, but it may be a while before that happens.

A side view. I love how the colors of the shells play off of each other.

Another side view. You can see in the bottom left hand corner the crab shell we found for him on the beach in Mazatlan.

A close up of the crab shell we found for him.

The side from a slightly different area.

Another side view.

A close up of the star fish that came in a package of shells we bought him in Puerto Vallarta.

A side view with the star fish in the bottom right corner.

Another side view.

I love the conch shells on the bottom of this view.

A last view of the side.

Birthday Scrapbook Page

I really wanted to get something creative accomplished today, so I sorted through some photos until I found a group that called to me. They were pictures of my opening a present from some good friends of ours for my birthday this year. I used a tag title that I got from Kathy M at Scrapbook Addict for winning a prize at her cyber crop that she held in April. I mounted the tag on some ribbon. I then stamped some candles on a piece of paper (that matched the journaling block). The candle stamps are from the Studio G $1 stamp sets at Micheal's. I also stamped and colored a cupcake stamp. This stamp was originally mounted on wood, but I've unmounted most of my wood mount stamps since I find unmounted stamps easier to store and position. I think I got this cupcake stamp from a dollar store near us. I used the stripe paper because the horizontal stripes mimic what I'm wearing. I included the note that our friend wrote me and the card that they gave me. The big "Danielle" is from the envelope that the card came in. I loved how our friend wrote my name, so I wanted to include it on the layout.

Graduation Card

So much for updating my blog regularly. I just forget about it except when I'm either not home or I'm doing something I can't interrupt.

Anyway, we have a graduation party to go to on Friday, so I made this card today for the friend who is graduating. The school colors are gold and purple. I cut the graduation cap with my Craft Robo using a tri-fold graduation card template I got from one of the Wishblade Yahoo Groups I am on. I had cut out the actual card last year for my sister-in-law's graduation from the same school, and had saved the cap outline in case I made another graduation card. For once my pack rat tendencies actually came in handy : ). The "congrats" saying is stamped with a Studio G stamp from the $1 clear acrylic sets from Micheal's. The gold ribbon was wrapped around as candle holder I bought, so I saved it to use in my crafts. On the gold spotted paper, I ran it through my Cuttlebug, using the swirls embossing folder.

Ribbon organization

Last summer I participated in a craft fair with my mom. Before I went to the fair, I wandered around Home Depot for a while, trying to figure out a good way to display my cards. A very nice and helpful employee took interest and helped me make a card display unit from two shelving brackets and a few dowels. I ended up using it a little differently than we made it in the store (see it here), but it worked to display some of my favorite cards. It's been sitting in my craft closet since then, just taking up space. About a month and a half ago, I put it back together, using the dowels to connect the two shelf brackets. I then stapled all of my ribbon that was longer than 12 inches around the dowel. I hung it on my wall, but some of the ribbon was so long it pooled at the floor, even though the display was hanging at about 5 feet 10 inches or so off the ground. So on the really long ribbon pieces, I folded them around my fingers and then held the resulting "ball" to the ribbon trailing from the dowel with a clothes pin. I think it looks very pretty hanging on my wall, and now that I can see my ribbon, instead of it being hidden away in baggies in a basket on my bookshelf, I'm actually using it more often. I still have a few bits and pieces of ribbon in the baggies, so it'll be hard to remember to use them. As I type this, I just thought that maybe I should hang the baggie rings on the dowels also, so that I have all of my ribbon and fibers in one place.

As I look at this pictures, I realize I need to maybe get a shelf to go on top of the brackets. It'll provide some more storage space in my room, and will make it look a little more finished. I also need to paint the brackets and maybe the dowels. But that would mean taking it all apart, so it'll probably not happen for a while.

Danielle

My Wedding Album, Take 3

I've worked on my wedding album several times. The first time I hadn't discovered scrapbooking yet, so I mounted the pictures on white paper, printed out captions, and called it good. The second time was about a year after I started scrapbooking. Thankfully I decided to leave the pictures uncut (instead of cutting them into wedding related shapes, like I did many theme pages, Easter shapes for Easter, baby shapes for baby pages, etc). For embellishments, I used whatever embellishments I could find for relatively cheap, such as wedding embellishments from the dollar store or huge pages of stickers for $1 at the craft store. Needless to say, none of them matched and the pages weren't very put together. When the new Stampin' Up catalog came out in January, they actually had a wedding stamp set I liked. Not too cutesy, not too religious, just right for what I wanted. I bought it the beginning of February and have been trying to find motivation to use it since then.

On April 29, I started taking the pictures out of the old wedding album and did one page. I only did one page that night because our wedding colors were blue and pink and I'm going to alternate the background cardstock between blue and pink. I discovered I didn't have any light pink cardstock I liked to match the blue cardstock I had picked out of my stash. So on the 30th I stopped by Micheal's and picked up 30 pieces of pink paper in two different hues, one is kind of pearly and the other more a matte finish. The paper was the same price as the single sheet cardstock they carried, so I figured I'd buy the paper since I liked it better than the cardstock. Friday, May 2, I did two more pages. So at least I've started the album : ). I also still have all our cards we were given that are just in a file folder so I figure I'll also include some pocket pages to actually include the cards in the wedding album. I finished taking all the pictures out of the old album on the 29th also.

A page from my second attempt at a wedding album. Two little stickers and a die cut, that totally don't match each other, except for the fact that they all happen to be wedding themed.

Another page from the old album. Again, two little stickers and a die cut. At least I understood that odd number of embellishments work better than even numbers of them to balance the eye. : )

The new album page I did on April 29th. I bought the pink paper in the lower right hand corner in a package of 72 pieces of hand made paper at Costco. It was originally white, so I used a q-tip and an ink pad I have that is called "Satin Rose" and covered it with the pink ink so it'd go better with the colors in the layout. All of the stamped images are from the Wedding set I bought from Stampin' Up. The pink piece of paper on the right will have journalling on it. I am waiting until I have several pages to do so that I can print them all out on one sheet of cardstock.

Organizing again

I was working on cards the other night and realized as I kept getting up to get stuff from shelves, that what I'd really like is something that allowed me to put my most frequently used stuff right next to my desk, but wasn't so big that I felt it would loom over me. The book shelf in my room would feel that way if it was right next to my desk. I basically wanted to create an L shape around my chair. I was at Costco yesterday picking up groceries (and two new scrapbooks) and found a cart like this one. The only difference is that my cart only has 12 drawers instead of 20, and it was $26.99 (I had debated whether to get it, but after looking at costco.com, it looks like I got a good deal). It's just the perfect height for what I was looking for. I started organizing it last night and so far I love it. I use the cropper hopper vertical paper organizers and they were sitting on my desk taking up a lot of space. I moved them to the top shelf and they look good. I moved the tools I use most to one of the top drawers, and now my desk isn't littered with the tools. Last time I scrapped, I barely had room on top of my desk for 2 papers side by side. Yesterday I moved most of the stuff on my desk into this cart, and my desk looks so clean.

I put all of my eyelets and brads in one of the drawers. I put all my adhesive in another draw. I organized my paper scraps into page protectors by color and put all those in one drawer. Patterned paper scraps are in another drawer. I originally had them in a crop-in-style Paper Taker that just lived on the floor by my desk, so this makes my room visually cleaner also. I put all my embossing powders, my embossing gun, my acrylic blocks, and my little tray to keep the embossing powder from leaking over everything into another draw. Looking at the picture I'll post later when blogger is working, it looks like so far I've filled 6 drawers.

So far I love this little cart. We'll just have to see if it actually keeps me organized and if it helps when I'm actually scrapbooking.

Danielle

This is my cart. Imagine all the stuff on the top on my desk. Yeah, it made the desk kind of crowded. Not to mention a bunch of other little stuff that is now in the drawers. I love that the cart is exactly the right height for what I wanted it to do. I know that scrapbook companies sell stuff like this, but it usually costs a lot more. Point of fact, on the costco.com website, they have a cart by this same company that has 10 drawers (here). And they have one by Cropper Hopper, exactly the same, except all the drawers are black (here). It costs $7 more for the Cropper Hopper one. Drives me nuts that you put the word scrapbook on something and it automatically increases the price.

My desk (well, really a table from Ikea). It used to be, before I bought the cart, that the only area without stuff on it is where the two white pieces of paper are. Not a whole lot of room to create with. I had so much stuff on it because I hate having to get up to get everything. Hopefully the cart will allow me to keep it clean like this.

Friendship cards

About a week ago, we had some friends over and they were playing the video game "Rockband" with my husband on our Xbox 360. It was late, after midnight, and they had the windows open because they were hot. Apparently the music was a little loud and our neighbor came over really upset about it. My husband felt really bad about it and asked me to make a card so he could apologize (he plans to take it over with a bottle of wine). These are the two cards I made (I figured it's easy to just make the second one, since I was cutting a piece of paper in half for it anyway, and this way I have a card on hand if I need another one). I used the cuttlebug embossing folder (I think it's called swirls). The tag is a sizzlet die cut. I stamped on the tag with blue chalk ink. I used the friends stamp from the Stampin' Up Tagger's Dozen set. Hope you enjoy! I varied the placement of the ribbon to see which one my husband likes best (he hasn't decided yet). I found the printed ribbon at Micheal's and thought it'd work perfectly with this embossing folder that I already had. I picked the cardstock colors based on the color in the ribbon.






Danielle

My complaint of the day

Since I'm sure my husband is tired of listening to me complain about our World of Warcraft guild, I'll complain about something else that frustrated me today. I bought this Disney stamp set today at Micheal's (clearance for $9.00). I love acrylic stamps. I love how you can see through them to make sure you are placing them in the right spot. I love how little room they take up.

What I don't love is how the manufacturer's don't make sure they cut the stamps anywhere close to the image. Most of the acrylic stamps I have I've had to take and trim around the images so that I didn't get over stamping (also so I could store more in the cd cases I use to store them in). This set was especially bad. They didn't make any attempt to trim them at all, there's just perforations along the sheet so you can break them apart. It says directly in the instructions that you'll have to trim them yourself. It's just frustrating to me to have to spend a half an hour or more trimming the stamps.

Oh well. I know there are worse things out there to have to complain about. But it's been bothering me for a while, every time I buy acrylic stamps, so I figure it wouldn't kill me to get it out of my system : ).

A star card

I made this card last week for my husband. Recently I got the Karen Foster clikit system from Costco.com (it was only $6.99 with free shipping here) and it came with a double-tipped applicator that I knew was for threading ribbon. So I made this card for my husband to show him how it worked. I stamped the background with a bunch of different star stamps I had. I traced a big star from one of the old plastic templates I have left over from my early days of scrapbooking when we used to cut pictures into shapes all the time. I then used the clikit tool and punched holes at the tip and in the middle of each side. I threaded ribbon through the holes and then cut out the whole thing. I made the part that I had traced by the back side so that no pencil marks showed through. It was a fun card to make.

Why haven't I been scrapbooking?

I've been thinking a lot about why I haven't been scrapbooking much, or paper crafting in general either. A few years ago I was averaging several hundred pages a year. Then life got really, really busy - selling our condo, moving into my sister's basement while we built our new house, working on the new house, moving into the new house, unpacking, having a friend live in my craft room for a few months, babysitting my nephew last year. The list goes on, even leaving off just the normal day to day stuff of homeschooling our boys and running a household. Yet, I used to scrapbook all the time. I like it enough that we set aside a whole room in our new house for me, painting it the color I wanted, setting up the closet so it was more usable for storage and everything. So why am I usually lucky if I get in there once a week to work on anything? For crying out loud, I have stamps I bought a month ago that I haven't even done anything with, not even adding the picture to my stamp index. Let's be really realistic here. I don't know that I've done anything in my scrapbook room since I finished the layout a day challenge at the end of January. I did a few pages the beginning of February, but that was in the living room at the birthday crop I threw myself.

As I read over an organizing article on Two Peas in a bucket (this one), it gave me an idea of why I'm not scrapbooking. The first reason is really, truly simple. I haven't printed pictures since around June 2006, except the pictures of us building our house. The pictures I have left are the ones that I wasn't really inspired to scrapbook in the first place, ones that are left over from when I was scrapping the other groups I got printed at the same time and I picked the other groups first because I didn't know what to do with these ones. I've decided I'm going to pick a sketch for each group and just follow the sketch, using ribbon or buttons or some generic embellishment instead of trying to perfectly match the theme of the pictures with the embellishments. And I set aside $50 to get new pictures printed. It'll probably just barely put a dent in what I have to print, but it'll get me new pictures, up-to-date pictures, and hopefully that will help me be motivated to scrap also.

The second reason, the main reason, is that I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that makes sense to how I scrapbook now. That's the insight I got from reading the Two Peas article. I have 3 paper sticker binders that I have a bunch of stuff in. I used to love them, I used them all the time and they were so great. Now though, I don't even remember to look in them half the time. I was really drawn to the rooms in the article that had stuff organized in bins and boxes, jars and baskets. I don't know why that is so appealing to me, but I think, over the years, my style has changed and with it, my organizing needs have evolved too. I think I'm beginning to be more visually oriented than I used to be. I'm also moving more from stickers and diecuts to stamps and textiles. I think I need to do another purge of my scrapbook stuff, and find new ways to organize what I have left. I think doing that will draw me to my scrapbook room more often. And it'll make it so my desk is hopefully cleaner : ). My desk, right now, has so much stuff piled all over it that it's hard to get motivated to even start because I have to move stuff to even make room for two pieces of paper.

Anyway, just my thoughts for today. I'm going to go exercise and then play around in my scrapbook room, seeing if I can organize it a bit better, get things to the point I can play a little today.

Danielle

Our Cruise

The cruise we went on was great. It was really nice to get away from everything (our kids stayed with their Grandma), not have to worry about much of anything. The Friday before we left, we discovered that the cruise line (Carnival) had upgraded us to a balcony room. The life boat cut off part of our view, but that was fine. We got a great deal on the cruise, and being upgrade to a balcony room, even a partially obstructed balcony room, was just icing on the cake. We sailed on the Carnival Pride. It was a beautiful ship.

We went on a Mexican Riviera cruise for 7 days. We started in Long Beach, California and had ports of call in Porto Viarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas. My favorite was Mazatlan. We spent 45 minutes listening to a time share presentation (didn't buy one), and for that investment of time, we got $50 per couple, a liter bottle of either Tequila or Kahlua (we took the Kahlua), and all the drinks and food we could consume (which was a lot, we averaged four drinks for each of the four of us, and I'm sure these drinks were at least $5 a piece if we would have paid for them). We also got to enjoy their private beach and enjoy the private resort. It was definitely my favorite port!

I had never been on a cruise before. I loved that the price of the cruise included everything except alcohol and soft drinks. I loved going to the nice restaurant for every meal we were on the ship. Dining on wonderful food that I normally either don't have the money to buy or don't take the time to prepare here at home.

I had really needed an adult only vacation and this one was great. Not that I didn't enjoy going to Disneyland with our boys last October, but sometimes it's nice to just get away and enjoy yourself without the pressures of parenthood.

Me enjoying a glass of wine on our friend's balcony as we pull out of the Long Beach port.

A view from our friend's balcony as we pull out of the Long Beach port.

Most nights that we came back to the room our steward had left us an animal made out of towels to enjoy. This elephant was our first animal.

This is my husband playing poker at the new type of table the ship had. Instead of a dealer it was basically a computer controlled game. The shared cards for Texas Hold'em were displayed on the center of the table and each player had their own screen that was touch activated. You'd cup your hands around your cards and touch the screen and it'd show you what your cards were. Definitely new and interesting.

Danielle

Just a quick update.

Sorry that I haven't been around much. I haven't done much crafting lately. I did do the layout a day challenge from Big Picture Scrapbooking during January. Got 31 pages done, woohoo.

My birthday crop was fun. I got three layouts done. Not a ton, but last year I didn't get anything done, so it's an improvement : ). One of my friends gave me flower ribbon. It was perfect for a layout I did that night. She was really happy that I used it.

This coming Saturday my husband and I are leaving for Long Beach, CA. We're going on a week long cruise to the Mexican Riveria. I can't wait! We booked back in December, so I've been anxiously awaiting this week for a long time. I have to take the car in to get safety inspected and emission controlled tomorrow. It was due last month so I'm a little behind. Also have to buy two new tires. Last time we drove to California, we had to buy tires while there (didn't notice that they were really badly worn, oops!). Then when we went to Las Vegas in the summer of 2006, one of our tires blew on the road to Vegas and we ended up paying double what we would have in Salt Lake for new tires in a tiny town in Southern Utah. Those tires are now really worn, so we figure we're better off replacing them here, than taking the chance of them blowing somewhere on the road or having to replace them once we get to California (don't have a lot of time there). Sales tax is less here, so it's better all around to do it before we leave.

I'll have to share pictures once we get home. I'll try to post more this week, but just thought I'd give a quick update.

Danielle

My birthday party invites

A few years ago I started the tradition of throwing myself a scrapbook party for my birthday. I figure this way I'm ensured one birthday party that I enjoy : ). All three of the invites feature embossed flowers made with a cuttlebug embossing folder, a border stamp that alternates a flower and the word party (this stamp is an acrylic stamp by Fiskars) and sparkly flower paper that I picked up at Micheal's a few months ago. I tore the flower paper and matted it on the cardstock back. I then punched holes and set eyelets (using my new crop-a-dile punch, still need to use it more to get the hang of setting eyelets with it) and threaded ribbon through the eyelets. I mounted the embossed flowers on the ribbon using foam squares. Inside it lists the date, time, etc. I also stamped "forget the gift, just bring the you" from the same set as the party stamp by Fiskars.