bliss

Hi there -

Oh, I have so many projects to share! I signed up for Scrapbook League at Scrappy Chic, so every other Saturday I spend five straight hours making as many layouts as humanly possible. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I do scrap pretty quickly. Last time, I made seven layouts; yesterday, I made eight. That might be my limit, though -- I don't see myself adding one more every week!

Anyway, that means I have plenty of blogging to do. First, a layout with this month's DT kit (already up on the wall, I think).

Look at those cute people. They got married on New Year's Eve (hi Ruth!), and I snapped a couple photos at the reception. I used American Crafts' lovely Love line to scrap 'em. There's a couple KI die-cuts in there too. My favorite bits are the details, though (as always):

A pretty Twinery twine bow with a resin rose from Stampin' Up.

Lovely glitter Thickers and my absolute favorite: the frame made from some 7gypsies tape.

Now, I'm not just saying this because I'm pretty sure Ruth (the bride) is reading -- this is one of my favorite layouts in quite some time. The products are just pretty.

Well, I should be getting back to laundry and such. Enjoy your Sunday!

A little village

Howdy!
How's life treating you? Besides getting a little tiny bit tired of the snow, life is good here.

I have a card for you!

I'm on a mission to use my stash, so this little ditty involves three products that haven't seen much action: the row of houses (all one stamp -- from Hero Arts), the sentiment (from an SU set), and that little heart punch (also SU). The houses are embossed in white, making them quite shiny irl.

That's it. Not very fancy, but right up my alley!

Enjoy your evening. We're off to dinner with some pals. Take care!

Hooray for Emily!

{Sing that title to the tune of "Hooray for Hollywood." Now it's stuck in your head -- you're welcome!}

Emily is today's Featured Stamper over at Splitcoast Stampers -- that is awesome!

So awesome that I had to make a card, of course (that's the point, after all!). I also added something to my Splitcoast gallery for the first time in, oh, a month and a half! Oops -- time to update!

I CASEd this card (you can see her blog entry here) not only because it's awesome, but because I already had this card saved to my computer with the file name "case Emily NOW!" -- since that was back in October, I figured it was high time! Here's my take:

I added some patterned paper from my stash, flipped the design vertically, did a little inking, and went with a Valentine's Day theme (since it isn't exactly October anymore!).

Used a mix of Papertrey sets -- Tiny Treats: Valentine, plus Just the Ticket. Funny how Em was using Twinery twine way before she joined their DT :)

The only bit I'm not sure about is the button/brad thingie -- it's one of those oddball one-holed buttons, so I stuck a little heart brad and some twine in there...next time, I think I'd go with a non-mutant button and skip the brad.

So...one issue I have with Valentine's cards is that they can easily skew too mushy for anyone but a significant other. I tried to keep this one friend-appropriate. Did I succeed?

Hope your weekend is ending well! Happy almost-Monday.

Play Date Cafe for a birthday

The Play Date Cafe color challenge is fairly new to me...ok, really new: it's the first time I've played along!

Here are the featured colors:

Lovely! I see Baja Breeze (one of my all-time favorite colors), plus goldy-kraft and silver-grey. Here's what I came up with:

I used some shimmery golden-tan cs for my base, with a stamped strip of baja breeze and some going grey butterflies on this card, which is for my aunt -- her birthday and anniversary are the same day, so I struggle to make a dual-duty card every year. The sentiment strip, full of "celebrate" and related words, is perfect!

I die-cut and embossed the butterflies before giving them a bit of glimmer, which you can see much better here:

A little stitching here and there rounds out this simple (but surprisingly elegant {for me}) card. Oh, and I swear those butterflies are grey -- they look tan on my monitor, though -- hope it's better for you!

Hope you're having a lovely day :)

...back from a little time off...

Hi folks --
I haven't posted too much in the past week -- let's just say it was a week of ups and downs for sure.
First week back to classes.
Got a few bits of good news.
Got some bad -- last Tuesday, our little cat Marty was diagnosed with feline leukemia, and we had to let her go. It was really sad (she was just over 1.5 years old, and the sweetest, most personable cat I've ever met). But luckily, we have lots of great memories to share.

Suddenly, I'm extra-glad that I picked up scrapbooking. We have so many pictures of our Marty Moo, and I've made lots of pages already.  If you'd like to see them, you can click on the "cats" tag in the cloud in the sidebar -- you'll get to see Dexter, too. She's doing ok, but is definitely a little bored. We've been giving her lots of love and playtime, though.

So, in tribute to Miss Marty pants:

We have so many pictures like this. I actually made this page a few weeks ago (it's up at Scrappy Chic already), and it uses lots of warm, homey products from Kaisercraft and Glitz and My Mind's Eye and more.

I love these Thickers, and that envelope from Maya Road makes a nice landing spot for them. A sweet page for a sweet cat. I look forward to scrapping some more happy memories like these!

Back on the bright side, I had my first Scrapbook League meeting at Scrappy Chic on Saturday -- I'm on  a team with my pal Mary (hi Mary!) and a couple other women, and it was lots of fun! Plus, I made seven new pages. Nice!

I'll share those soon -- but first, I'll have some cards for you later this week.

Have a great MLK day (or happy Monday, if you're not in the states). I'll see you soon.

Oh yum.

Yet another layout for you today. Don't worry, though, all you card making types: I have some of those coming up. I think. I'm behind on photographing projects. 

But for now, how about I make you hungry?:

Well, maybe the layout isn't hunger-inducing, but eve sure as heck would be. Feel free to go check out the menu. I'll be here when you get back :)

On occasion, the women in my family will get together for dinner somewhere. Lately it's been in Ann Arbor, since my little (!) cousin is a sophomore at UM. This time around, her roommate came too, which was a nice little addition.

Anyway, the food at eve is really quite yummy (drinks are, too) -- they do that now-typical upscale-restaurant thing of using a lot of locally sourced products and seasonal recipes and whatnot. Oh, and I guess their head chef was on Top Chef or something -- sound right, local people?

So, the layout: I used Webster's Pages -- this is good for me, as it's a line I usually admire and often am clueless about using! I think the flowers are theirs too. I added some stamped tickets (tickets and stamps both from Pink Paislee's House of 3 line), along with some real and drawn stitches.

Those Thickers in the title are so old, but I love them. Who doesn't love puffy stickers, anyway?

Hey, here's my question: The photo was taken in a dark restaurant, so we all got blown out by the flash. My solution was to go b&w with the photo -- but when I got it from the developer, I realized I hadn't totally desaturated the color. Oops. So...does the photo look dorky, or is it ok?

Well, our semester starts up tomorrow, so it's back to work officially for me. Yee-haw. Happy Sunday.

"Running." Right.

First, a confession: I don't really run. Like, ever. I get plenty of aerobic exercise, I hit the gym, I'm in decent shape. But I don't run. Well, I did run once. When I was 15. Anyone who's 15 can run, so I don't think my single season on the track team really counts.

So, the story I'm about to tell you is extra-funny, at least to me.

Pretty much everyone (else) in my family runs -- all my aunts and uncles do or have run regularly for at least 20 years. My cousins (12 and 19) are not necessarily runners...but they're 12 and 19, so whatever. They can run. My dad used to run. My mom and grandma are not runners, but my mom walks faster than most humans should be allowed to, and my grandma gets around just fine, thank you very much. She's 80.

Andrew and I don't run. See above. So what the heck are we doing in a race? Ah, family togetherness:

In August, most of the fam was up North (Benzonia, to be exact), and some bright bulb thought it would be awesome if everyone did a 5K together. We wore matching t-shirts (see above) and got up bright and early to do a 5K in the tiny, tiny town of Copemish. Andrew and I signed up to run, figuring we might jog a bit once or twice, which is exactly what we did. Jogged once or twice, then walked the rest of the 3.1 miles. My entire family, save my grandma and dad (they walked together) beat us. Even my mom, who walked the entire time, beat us by many, many minutes. So what's so funny?

I got a trophy. In fact, I won my age group - as in, you know, FIRST. Andrew and I were absolutely the last two "runners" over the finish line, and I won my age group. The race was so dang tiny that I was literally the only female in the 25-35 age group. I was the best they could do! I think that's the look on my face in that photo: "Seriously? This is the best you could do?" In fact, out of the eleven family members in the photo above, NINE of us got trophies! I think next year the trophies should have a family reunion of their own.

This, my friends, is hilarious. And now my trophy sits on top of my craft storage thingie, looking at me like it knows I didn't really earn it. So I ask you: what fun crafty thing can I do with a goofy little trophy? Your feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Have a lovely day.

PS: this layout uses Little Yellow Bicycle's Savor Line (the B-sides are non-kitcheny), a stamp from Memory Box, and Prima alphas. You can find it at Scrappy Chic.

Village People

Yeah, we're village people. Greenfield Village, that is! Any local readers know what I'm talking about, and the rest of you should totally come and visit. Why? Take a look:

Sheep, windmills, and...a water tank? Ok, so the photos might not be super-compelling on their own, but if you went yourself, you could also take a ride on a real Model T, hang out in Thomas Edison's workshop, dip your own candles, have tea in the garden of a centuries-old Cotswold cottage, or...just hang out with the sheep, which we do pretty often.

Or...you could just enjoy the layout instead (the village doesn't reopen until April anyway). It's a nice and bright and sunny layout for this chilly winter morning. I used My Mind's Eye's Fine and Dandy line in blue, along with a couple other goodies here and there. It also has 5 whole photos, which I can't pull off too often :) You can, of course, see it in person at Scrappy Chic. 

Today, I plan on cleaning the house and hitting the gym. Verrrry exciting, I know. Tomorrow it's back to meetings for a new semester. Verrrry exciting as well. What are you up to today? Hope it's fun!

2 snowy pages in one!

That's right, folks, I actually made a 2-page spread! My very first. Aw.
Here it is all together:

Sweet snow boy. Love these pictures. Left page:

Snow days bring out joy in everyone :)  Used my rockin' vintage typewriter for the journaling.
Right page:

The design is really, really simple, but I did add a lot of little layer-y details around the photos. The mix of alphas was not initially on purpose...those glitter thickers are some of my favorites...so I have two packs...but no "e" remains in either one, so I went ransom-style instead :)

Close-up:

The gold doily thingie is a rub-on from Hambly. Their stuff is really high-quality, but I had a heck of a time getting these dudes to rub on! Also here: Tim Holtz tissue tape, some stamping with pearl acrylic paint, and flocked lace and papers from We R Memory Keepers' Merry January line (cute title!).

I actually made this layout a couple months ago...but now it's Merry January, right? You can catch it in person at Scrappy Chic. When I get it home again, I'm planning on adding some stitching with gold thread. Didn't have any when I made it, but I do now.

Well, have a happy evening. Andrew goes back to school tomorrow, so we're gonna mourn celebrate with some Mexican take-out. Yum.