We're Back!!!!

Sorry we have been absent from blogging for so long but summer has been busy with the kiddos and now we are plunging into back to school shopping since the kids will be starting school in a couple of weeks. I have not created much since I decided to convert the home office (my hubby doesn't use anymore) into my scrapbook studio. The deal was it could not look like a scrapbook store since the office is across from my bedroom and front doors of the house. I had my supplies in a closet in the laundry room and would work on the dinette table and would have to clean everything up everytime someone wanted to eat (the nerve). So after hours of shredding paper and purging of scrapbook supplies and organizing, this is the result.

This is what the office looks like from the inside. I got a punch of clearance boxes at Michael's and labeled all of them so I could easily find my toys.

This cabinet stores 3 foldable boxes from Walmart with my inks, embellishments, embossing powders and stickers. My cricut and cartridges are on the second shelf with my rolls of vinyl behind it. The 3rd shelf has my printer with my Martha scoring board and paper cutters. Behind the doors of my cabinets are my ribbon,seam binding, stamps that are in cd cases (which I unmounted to save space), my big shot, embossing folders and nestabilities. Below the white binder holds all of my dollar stamps from Micheals and Joannes and my embroidery floss is in the other binder.


In the clear stoarge drawers all of my chipboard letters, shapes and big sheets.
Now you can see all of the boxes labeled with my goodies and I have my markers, pencils, prefolded cards, mini photo printer, lots and lots of buttons, flowers and pins.
I will show you the rest of the room later and I have another cabinet arriving tommorrow for more goodies. I will open the drawers and cabinets and show you how I store my goodies. Hopefully my creative juices will start flowing to make crafty goodness. See u soon

My New Idea

Don't you hate it when you have a stamp set you fell in love with at the store, you purchase it with every intention of making many cards with it and then look at it months later and say, "I don't know what to do with this stamp." Well now I have solved my unused stamp set problem. And let me tell you I have a lot of stamps sitting in my closet unused. I am so creatively drained that I now search to see what others have done with the same stamp set and just recreate it. I love making cards but I just don't have to time to be creative and my stash is just piling up. Here is what I have 'cased' from other crafters that have the same set I have. Please understand me when I say I take no credit for coming up with these cards. All I am guilty is of loving the design and recreating it at home. I hope I can help all of you out there who have the same stamp set and don't know what to do with it. Enjoy!!!

Let me begin by saying the first stamp set I have featuring today is from Inkadinkado: Garden Delight and Autumn Leaves: Flourish set.









You can see the original card I cased it from here and here

All I did was emboss the flourishes, colored the butterflies using my Stampin Up markers. I also colored some of the butterflies using colored pencils and gamsol. I used Prima flowers and my Martha Stewart lattice punch, doily lace and lattice corner punch. This card was very easy to do but very elegant. You can change the sentiment to make it whatever you want it to say. It is such a versatile card. I hope to add more ideas from one set you can get a lot of use from it. Please let me know if this helped you.
Thanks for viewing.

September 2010 Papertrey Blog Hop

The CHALLENGE IS:

One of the most fun things about this hobby is the people you meet, whether in person or online, and the things you learn from them. Now is your chance to show off any skills you might have learned from a fellow stamper, and perhaps even give them a little shout out to thank them for the inspiration they have provided. Create a project using one of your favorite learned skills and perhaps after a little blog hopping, we will ALL learn some new tips and tricks and continue to pass on the love of this hobby!

This is a great challenge because I was feeling uncreative and I couldn't find the time to do the hobby I love. Then I came across Mish's post. I would like to start by giving a SHOUT-OUT to Mish. Thanks Mish for that great post about having a date with my stamps and feeling creative again. I was just searching for ideas for a Halloween card and got my idea and technique from Monica, the M.A.D stamper. She used a sponging and masking technique and this is what I created.


I used the largest nestie for the circle. Then I used a smaller nestie to cover the center of the larger circle. Next, I used my brayer to color the whole circle orange, then I took off the center circle and what I was left with was a white center. I sponged a little yellow in the middle and then stamped the tree using PTI's Through the Trees. Finally, I sponged black around the edges and added some bats and embellishment and VOILA, the Halloween card was made.



It was so simple and quick to make, I cranked out five in no time with lots of different paper. .

Remember and Never Forget 9/11/01

The world changed for all of us on this day....but remember and pray for those who lost so much..

Mission Organization

Sorry it has been a while but with school underway I feel like my head is spinning! Between driving to two school (I have one in middle school and the other in elementary), afterschool practices (baseball and dance), I barely have time to breathe let alone sit down and be crafty. So last night I decided that I had to organize my life so I can get back to doing what I love.

I went to this great blog called eighteen25 and the mom on this blog had a wonderful and cute way to organize myself for the week. She gives this awesome template that you see in the picture frame. I printed it on cardstock that matches the scrapbooking paper I put behind it. I sponged it a bit with different ink pads to give it a vintage feel. I matched the colors to my kitchen because I love fall colors and my house is filled with rusty reds, greens, browns (you get the picture.)
I got the frame from Walmart for $4. What a steal and I got a fine tip overhead projection marker that wipes right off the frame with water and the kids can't take it off by just wiping it with their fingers. (HA HA Mom's little secret.) If you use a dry-erase marker curious children like my son will erase your entire month in one second. That's tragic. This ideas is great because I'll only shop for the food I need for the week and just get what I need and I hate thinking about what to cook and if I already know ahead of time cooking can be done in a snap. I still have to fill my calendar but I just wanted to share this great organizational but classy tool for your home. Hey and its eco-friendly. I'm not wasting paper: just write, wipe and use again. Here is where you can get the template. Let me know what you think. I love it!!!!

August 2010 Papertrey Blog Hop

Hi Ladies!!!Long time I haven't posted but life has just taken off with school starting this week and I started working 12 hr shifts this week but that I will leave for another post....I didn't think I would make it tonight my shift as a nurse was a little longer than anticipated. I realized I dont own any of the PTI Halloween stamps so I had to be creative since I wanted to make a Halloween paper gift bag...I hope you like it !!!!

Bella and Prismacolor pencils

Sorry it has been a while since my last post but I took the kids to Disney World and let me tell ya I had to recover from that vacation!!!! My legs were achy, I had tons of laundry and I had to do some school supply shopping. UGH!! But here I am doing what I love and I wanted to share with you how easy it is to color with your Prismacolor pencils and Gamsol.
Here is a card made by another blogger that I admire, Stephanie from the UK.

She created this beautiful card using her Copic markers and I thought to myself, can't I create this too with my Prismas? So I tried and here are the results.
Now here is my card.

Now here is what I used color it. For the pants: PC947 Dark Umber for the edges and PC940 Dark brown for shading or lightly coloring in the pants. Do the same thing for the jacket. I used PC956 Lilac for the dark highlights and PC1026 Greyed Lavender to lightly color the jacket. Then I also used it to color in the bags and the headband. I used PC1005 Limepeel for the flowers on the bag, PC1086 Sky Blue Light all around the image, and used PC944 Terra Cotta and PC945 Sienna Brown for her hair. This is what your image should look like before you apply Gamsol.

Now use your odorless paint thinner and a blending stump to blend the colors together and this is what your image will look like after you blend.

Of course you can't just color the image once and that's it. Now I took my dark brown and colored the pants again to make them even darker. It is your own preference of how dark you want it to be. Then I used my blending stump again dipped in Gamsol and here is the final result.


What do you think?