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Some Excitement

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Two posts in a day, but this is a special announcement. About a month ago, I submitted a some projects for the Design Team at the Scrap-Mart blog. The call was in an email, and I got to the blog at the last minute for the submission. I am so excited to have been asked to join the 2010 Design Team. The announcement is up on the blog, so now I can "spill the beans!" In addition to a new design team, they have a beautiful new blog.

The first time I encountered Scrap Mart was at the CKC Convention in Buffalo three years ago. They sell Nestabilities, Spellbinders, Copic markers (which I knew nothing about at the time), Just Rite stamps, Unity stamps, the new LetterPress, Sizzix, Quickutz, and more. At the time, they also carried all of the Scenic Route (now out of business) line which was my very favorite. I spent most of my convention "fund" at their booth! Their customer service is great, and I must say, working with them over the past two weeks has truly been a pleasure. Check them out!

Happy New Year

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Happy New Year–well, almost! I managed to get a card done for the 2 Sketches 4 You blog as well as a challenge at the Cards Blog. (For some reason Typepad isn't letting me add links here.) We're off to friends' tonight at 8:00, and their party is probably the only way we'd be up to see the ball drop at midnight!

Cheers 

CheersDetail
White cardstock (Staples), charms (Impress), glitter alpha (Making Memories), red frill (from stash), square Nestibility on Bazzil dot paper, Stickles glitter. It's hard to see, but every other hole in the scalloped border is glittered and there are glitter bubbles above the glasses.

The other project that's been on my mind is a 2009 Summary layout. I could have chosen a lot more photos, but decided on family shots and two favorite photos from our road trip this summer.

2009SummaryLO 

Dotted cardstock (Bazzil), red puff alpha (SEI), digital template (Mushy Playing with Paper 12)

Have a safe and joyous New Year! 

 
 

Caught Up!

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I finally had time to day to catch up with the Christmas Journal. I had mixed feelings about the 6X6 album, but one clear advantage of it is that I have done a lot more digital and hybrid layouts. With such a small size, doing photo collages is almost a necessity. I have two pages left at the end of the album and am saving one for New Year's Eve and have two other possibilities for the other one. Getting straight photos of them tonight has proven exceptionally difficult, but here they are (straight IRL for sure!).

Visitors 

Menu
I altered a journaling card from a digital kit by Cathy Z for the menus. The velvet letters are from American Crafts.  Patterned paper is from Memory Box.

Wrapping
Patterned paper (Memory Box) 

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I used a part of Ali E's Believe template for the journaling on the left-hand page. The left column is my journaling from the morning, and the right-hand is journaling I wrote after church on Christmas Eve. It wasn't feeling much like Christmas in the morning, but by the time we went to bed, it felt just like Christmas. We had a great evening. Patterned paper from Memory Box, circle stamp from Hero Arts, and numbers from SEI.

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ChristmasJournaling
Hero Arts circle stamp and Making Memories numbers.  

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Sunday we had a belated birthday party for my brother-in-law. Ribbon from my stash, circle number from karenika. 

Yesterday I had lunch with four good friends. We had an elegant, long, and leisurely lunch. I decided to take a notepad to each of them, so finished up a few more yesterday morning–just in time.

Notepads 

Patterned papers from October Afternoon, Crate Paper, and Cosmos Cricket. Stamps from Papertrey Ink (Take a Note), ribbons from Papertrey Ink and from stash, gems from Amuse (Creative Candy). buttons from a Studio Calico kit and Papertrey Ink.
  


Creative Calendar 2010

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For the last four or five years I've made myself a little calendar to keep track of the number of cards and layouts I do each year. I'm always amazed at the end of the year to find out how many cards I've made! I don't complete as many layouts, but they take me quite a bit longer. Nonetheless, it's gratifying at the end of the year to discover that I did actually get quite a bit done. This year I used all Jillibean papers. I love the graphic grids on one side and the polka-dots on the other. Since the papers are so bright, I kept embellishments to a minimum; pulling out a few paper punches seemed to do the trick. The calendar pages are from a Junkiz Calendar Kitz that I picked up several years ago. The red alphabet is my favorite this year–a puffy alpha by SEI. The number stickers came from Michaels, and the ribbons from my scraps.

CalendarCover 

AprilMayPgs 

JuneJulyPgs
 
 
 

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

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Tonight's blog hop is all about taking inspiration from your holiday decorations for your project. I knew right away what I wanted to use: my favorite new candles from Target.

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And here's the card. I used the CPS 147 Sketch as well:

PTIBlogCPS 

Cardstock (Pure Poppy & Dark Chocolate), Stamps (Snowflake Additions & Mixed Messages), Button (Pure Poppy Vintage buttons), gems (Amuse Creative Candy), Nestibilities (Circle and Scalloped Circle), Ribbon (Michaels), and tag from stash.
 

 

 

Merry Christmas

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It's hard to believe it's Christmas Eve. I'm sure by the time we come home from the 11:00 service, I'll feel like Christmas is here. We're ready. In fact, I have never had so little left to do; there's not much else I can do until tomorrow afternoon right before the family arrives for dinner.

When I started this blog four years ago, I really had no idea what I would do with it. Over the years, I've come to know many lovely people through the internet. Twice I've been lucky enough to meet friends I've met through the internet, and they are as wonderful in person as they are online. It's truly been a pleasure, and I gain so much inspiration for photography, cardmaking, and scrapbooking because of you! Merry Christmas and may you enjoy every minute of your special time with family!

Catching Up

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I finally made time today to do a little catching up on my Christmas Journal. I have the journaling done for four more pages, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm off to wrap stocking stuffers, and to be sure I have enough for Matt's stocking.

WrapLO
Memory Box patterned paper, cardstock from my scrap drawer. 

AuburnLO
Anna Griffin patterned paper, paper punch, Amuse Creative Candy, photo template from CoffeeShop

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Template: Liv.e Design (Storyboard Album)-JessicaSprague.com

MusicLO
Patterned Paper: Cosmos Cricket "Jolly by Golly," Making Memories glitter alphabet stickers, holly sticker from stash.

CookiesLO 

Photo template from "Playing with Paper set no. 05" Little Dreamer Designs, puffy alphabet stickers from Making Memories, Jolee's sticker, Bazzil cardstock.
  

Projects

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Tracy and I got up early to frost cookies this morning, and the package for Sarah and Adam is ready to be mailed early tomorrow morning. I unpacked my goodies from Papertrey Ink this afternoon and did a bit of organizing. Tonight I finished a few projects that I needed to have ready to give on Wednesday. I made notepads for a group of women I work with each week when I volunteer and packaged them with a colorful pen to match and some candies.

Notepads 

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NotePadsPackage
I'm really happy with how they turned out. I love this stamp set (Take Note) from Papertrey Ink. I also made one for my SIL to go with her Christmas gift.

BookPad
 Yesterday I went to a Hero Arts party at the local stamp store. I had visited most of the blogs on the Hero Arts Blog Hop so I had a list of stamps I hoped to buy. I was lucky enough to find all four of them. They had a Make & Take which I enjoyed doing. When I got home, I decided I didn't like the way the message covered the bottom of the card, so I took it off, added a ribbon, and a pretty button from the vintage Ripe Avocado buttons from Papertrey. You really can't see it in the photo, but the button has a bit of glitter on it to match the glitter on the grasses.

HAMake&Take
This posted a bit darker than it is IRL.

And finally, I played with one of my new Hero Arts stamps. It's a lift from Laura Griffin. I loved the brown background with the bright red poppies.

Poppy
The sentiment is from Everyday Classics (Papertrey) on an embossed Spellbinders tag. There are tiny pearls in the center of two poppies and three at the end of the tag.

I finished editing all the photos I've been taking for the Christmas Journal. Tomorrow's "Layout Day," if I don't get distracted by the Christmas list!

   
 
 

Moxie Fab: All Creatures Great and Small

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Here are two cards for the Moxie Fab challenge. I was inspired by the Crate and Barrel (love this store) plate for the first card.

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Winterwishes1 

All Papertrey ink except for the Midori ribbon and Amuse Creative Candy.

HelloFriend 

Again, all Papertrey Ink except for the Fiskars border punch.
 
 

Embellish #2 and Lunch Out

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As I was making the first card for the Embellish four color snowflake challenge, I remember my Spellbinders Snowflake dies which I used for one of my Christmas cards last year, so I decided to make another card.

Embellish#2R 

Embellish2Detail
Cardstock (Papertrey Dark Chocolate, Aqua Mist, Lemon Tart, and Kraft), Spellbinders die, Nestabilities Circle and Scalloped Circle dies, Patterned Paper (Papertrey Bitty Stars), Stamp (A muse), gems (Hero Arts), ribbon (Michaels)

A friend and I had lunch today at one of my favorite restaurants. We discovered The Gate House Cafe this summer and have never been disappointed in our meals. Today was no exception, great salads, wood-fired pizza, and this fabulous mulled cider:

Ciderw
I'm not typically a fan of cider, but this was so delicious I'll be hunting for a recipe on the web!

Snowy Night

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I have another card to post for the Embellish challenge (strange since the color combo is so not me), but none of the photos I took tonight are very good, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. It's snowing here; my favorite kind of snow, white and fluffy. I took this shot of the tree on our patio with my point and shoot. The flash went off and caught all the snowflakes in the air. Probably not a very good photo technically, but I like the effect. 

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Embellish & Hero Arts Challenge

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Snowflakes_4ColorChallenge

Between baking several batches of cookies, I managed over the course of the afternoon, to get a gift card holder done for the Embellish Four Color Snowflake challenge as well as the Hero Arts gift card challenge. It's my take on Jennifer's gift card holder. When you pull on the bow, the gift card emerges. I reduced the card size by 15%. I would never think to put these four colors together, but that's the point of participating in a challenge. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with it.

EmbellishGiftCardHA 

Cardstock (Papertrey Dark Chocolate, Kraft, Lemon Tart, & Aqua Mist), Stamps (Hero Arts: snowflake border, PaperTrey Snowflake Serenade: sentiment), paper punch, Ink (Papertrey Dark Chocolate & Tea Duo Chai), pearls from stash.

Two More JYC pages

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Thanks to Amy, I rediscovered the digital templates a classmate from Cathy Z's Design Your Life class created. I used it on this page and resized it to fit the 6X6 album. I wish you could see the photos better, however. They're pretty small. I added Making Memories glitter letter stickers and a piece of ribbon from my stash.

ShoppingLO

And a very simple page with some of my favorite ornaments.

OrnamentsLO

Reclaiming My Time

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When I worked full-time, had two active and involved teenagers at home, and volunteered at church in a variety of capacities, I used my time very effectively. I'm not so sure that happens now that I'm retired. I am getting a lot of things done that were on my To Do When Retired list, but there are an equal number of things I'm not getting to at all. So I was interested when I got an email about a BPS class called Reclaiming My Time. I thought about it for a long time, then by chance I found the instructor's blog: karinka. Once I started reading her blog, I knew I'd like the class. And I do. The exercises are very enlightening, and I've spent quite a bit of time on it the last few days. I've already made some interesting discoveries, and done a lot of thinking about how I want to use my time in 2010. That, of course, is the point of the class. I made a quick cover for the binder where I'm keeping all the handouts and my worksheets.

TimeBinder
The image on the binder comes from one of the handouts. It's a photograph of Karen's mini-book. I don't think I'll work on that until I finish my Christmas Journal. Speaking of which, I have the photographs and ideas for five more pages, but have been busy with other activities for the last couple of days.

I did make two cards a couple of nights ago with the Making Memories Mistletoe collection. I didn't use much of this for my Christmas cards this year, but I know I'll still like it next year. I decided to make a couple of Thank You cards as I know I'll need a few of these after the holidays.

Thanks

 

ThanksCardinals 

All the materials are Making Memories. I didn't like this one as much until I added some red stickles to the berries on the patterned paper. The letter stickers on both cards are glitter stickers–a little hard to tell in the photographs.

Winter Morning and Sinterklaas

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This is what we awoke to this morning. Alas, by noon, it was raining and a generally dark and dreary day. More snow and high winds are predicted for tonight through early Friday, so it looks like winter is on its way.

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Sinterklaas also arrived on our street on Saturday night. I took a photograph of his gifts to us for my Christmas Journal.

Sinterklaas