One More Day!

One more day until we have one of the most fun filled days! Halloween!  I'll be with the grandkids so that will be fun for me.  We went to the Trunk and Treat on Sunday and I didn't get the best pictures but here are a couple of the kids.  My daughter made the little ghost onesie with a tutu for Taylor and David was Captain Hook.  I'm hoping to get better pictures tomorrow.

 Let me tell you....that little 16 month old totally got the concept of getting candy!  And of course her big brother is a pro at this now!

 I made a couple of cards to give to them tomorrow.  These are designs from the Silhouette store by Jamie Koay (Totally Jamie).  I just thought they were so cute and not as "dark" as the Tim Holtz stamps I've been using.  Anyway, I just did an offset (one was slightly more offset than the other...I love that you can just manipulate things the way you want them and each creation can be just a bit different!) and created a shaped card and then cut the designs from some Authentique papers.  I added a little Stickles and that was it.  Quick and easy...both cards were done in about 15 minutes which included buying the shapes from the store!

I've entered this in the following challenges:
Party Time Tuesdays: PTT #92 Anything Goes
Die Cuttin Divas: Challenge #89 Anything Goes 
And the fabulous Cameo Spotlight Challenge #6: Halloween

I hope all the folks in the northeast are safe and with power.  We have had lots of wind gusts here in Georgia...nothing like hurricane force winds but windy nonetheless....the wind advisory will be lifted at 6pm which is great because I have a tennis match at 7 and the wind is NOT a friend to the tennis player!

Happy Crafting!

Halloween!

I love Halloween! I think it's a great holiday for young and old alike.  We took the little ones to a Trunk and Treat yesterday where some folks decorated the trunks of their cars or vehicles and gave out candy to the children.  David loved it and Taylor "got" that whole idea quickly and really seemed to enjoy taking her little pumpkin bucket around and filling it up!
I made a few Halloween cards and here is one with a Tim Holtz stamp and Authentique paper.  I love these blueprint stamps he's done.  This set came with four stamps and is sold online at Archivers Annex for $21.99 but I found this set at Overstock.com which has the larger stamps PLUS the fall ones for just $23.99.  And if you go through my favorite rebate place, EBATES you can get a 5% cash back!  If you're not an Ebates member check it out HERE.
OK, so I got all excited about that buy but I already have all those stamps! LOL!
Anyway, here is the card:

 I love that spooky bat.  Looks like something Dr. Frankenstein would be drawing...
I used a Martha Stewart border punch and added a little sparkly Stickles and a few gems and just a tad of inking.  I used a We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, as well. That's it!  (And Cyndi....I almost got to the point where the Stickles were dry before I touched it!)
This card with a $20 bill inside it brought a huge smile to my son's face.  LOL!

Happy Crafting!  And may those of you along the east coast with Frankenstorm bearing down on you....I hope and pray you stay safe!

Halloween Treat Bags

I made a few Halloween treat bags for my son, his girlfriend and the grand-pup.  The pattern is one where you take 2 pieces of 6x9 inch paper, score it with a few lines, cut and fold.  No fancy cutting here...just a trimmer, paper, scissors, and adhesive.  Easy and fast (unless you mess up your score lines....then it takes longer.)
The papers are K&Co and My Mind's Eye that I had bought last year.  (Note to self:  YOU HAVE ENOUGH HALLOWEEN PAPER TO LAST THE NEXT 14 YEARS!)
I filled them with some treats and hope they will bring a smile to their faces and a wag to the tail!

Happy Crafting!

Family and Friends

Times with family and friends are the best, right?  I'm happy to be crafting alone a good bit of the time but I do look forward to the time with family and if friends are also there...well, that's even better.
We went to a marriage celebration recently and there was a lot of family present and a few friends, too.  We had a fun visit and the little ones had a great time with their cousins.
I did a couple of layouts of the event using my Silhouette Cameo once again.  Go, Cameo, Go!

That's my cute son in the top right picture with his oh so cute girlfriend.  The papers are My Mind's Eye papers.  I cut the title out with the Black Jack font which is a great cursive font (you can download it for free HERE) and welds so well on the Cameo (or the Cricut with SCAL).    Sorry about the blue tape on the left of the layout....that was my reminder for which album this page was to go in! LOL!  It is gone, now!
Here  is the backside of that layout:

The wildflower was a design from the Hero Arts portfolio in the Silhouette Store.

Hope you all have a wonderful day...it's a bit cooler in Georgia today!  Fall has officially arrived.  I do hope those of you in the path of the huge storm stay safe!

Happy Crafting!

Simple Stories Make it a Sn@p!

Simple Stories, which make great paper kits, has a new line out called "Sn@p".  There are a couple of themes...one being "Life" which I recently picked up at Archiver's.  It's a cute and very happy line and works well for quick pages!  Of course, for me that means half the time I usually take which is still a long time!
Here are some layouts with the Sn@p papers and embellishments:

Hope you have a fun day today and find time for some Happy Crafting!

More Silhouette Layouts

As I mentioned before I went to a crop this past weekend and at the last minute decided to take my laptop and Silhouette.  I wasn't sure I wanted to fool with it but I certainly glad I did.  I practically burned it up I used it so much!
Here are two simple layouts I did with Silhouette images.  The first is a train frame I found in the Silhouette store:

 I popped it up with some foam tape to give a little more dimension.  And I made a journal block out of the coal car.  :)  I considered doing some stitching or dressing it up some but I decided to leave it the way it was.  But now I think I'll go back and add a little twine looped out of the smokestack so it will look like smoke. Good idea, huh?

 Secondly I found some leaf patterns in the Silhouette store and cut them out in some various sizes.

I embossed some of them and inked them and just scattered them on the page at the top...some were popped up with foam tape.  Nothing extraordinary here but it does look better and cute IRL (in real life)! :)

Papers were from DCWV.

And that's it for today....
Happy Crafting!

Fall Festival

My daughter, her husband and their little kiddos live in a great family oriented community.  They have lots of family events each year and one they have annually is the Fall Festival.  The kids love it...this year there were jump houses, games, food, animals to pet and see, classic cars and more.

I took my camera and got a few shots although those children move so quickly I seem to never get a good one anymore! HAHA!

I used DCWV papers and my Silhouette to cut the title:

I printed the pumpkin from a free digital stamp but can't recall where I got it right now.  

I colored it in with Copics and then used Spellbinder dies to cut the flag pole and rectangle to use for journaling.

Off to see the little ones today...

Hope you all have a wonderful day with some time for some crafting!

Splish-Splash!

Hello All!  As I mentioned in yesterday's post I cropped the weekend away with some of my friends.  We had a great time and I got a lot done....for me....World's Slowest Scrapper!
I am using the We R Memory Keepers slotted page protectors for many of my pages.  I thought it would make it so much simpler to scrap but it still takes some planning and you still have to embellish...you just use smaller sheets of paper! LOL!  Anyway, I had this photo of the Splash Fountain at the pool my kids go to and found a cute one in the Silhouette Store to cut.

Here it is outside the page protector so you can see it without glare:

 I thought I was so smart cutting this and it was so cute....and then I saw the 30 or so water drops that would have to be hand adhered!  What I did was put the cut out piece over the fountain which was already adhered and then I could more easily position the tiny pieces.  I'm so smart! HAHA!
I used a little Glossy Accents on the drops and the puddle and it just turned out so cute!  Papers are from a collection by Close to My Heart.

And here is the reverse side:

Simple and fun but for me NOT fAsT!  HAHA!

Happy Crafting!

May the Force Be With You!

I just got back from a scrapbooking crop at a friend's lake house. There were 10 of us cropping, laughing, telling stories, eating, sharing, sleeping (not much), etc.  Lots of fun with a great group of ladies!

I almost did not take my Silhouette because I didn't think I'd have much space to set it up.  My plan was to figure out what I needed at home...precut before the crop and take those diecuts with me.  Oh, yeah...right....  Pre plan?  It's not in my vocabulary when it comes to scrapping.  So at the last minute I grabbed it up as well as my laptop and hauled it with.  Boy, am I glad I did!  I used that thing over and over and over again!!!

Of course when I got to the lake I realized I didn't have my Silhouette mat with me.  Oh great....
But I had read that Cricut mats work just fine in the Cameo so my lifesaver, Christine, gave me one.  It worked perfectly....there was a little adjustment for me on loading my paper because the Cricut mat is a little longer but that was pretty easy to take care of.

This layout I'm sharing today is nothing spectacular in terms of scrapbooking "art".  It's of two little boys with their Star Wars Light Sabers.  But I just love the expression on their faces...especially David's.  He just loved doing whatever his older cousin, J.P.,  was doing! I had to scrap it!

But what I am proud of is that my Silhouette came in very handy!  I downloaded a Star Wars font for free from DaFont.com which you can see HERE.  Easy peasy...the Silhouette does a fabulous job of cutting True Type Fonts.  I also did a little offset to create a shadow.  Pretty cool, huh?

Well, I only had 2 little pictures for this layout so what was I going to do on the bottom?  Well, I searched online for some Star Wars figures and came across some jpg files of these ships.  I was able to import them into Silhouette Studio and trace them for cutting.  Worked easily and quickly!

The Star Wars fans in the family will love it!

And May the Force Be With You...and may you get lots of crafting in!

Sympathy Card

The cards most challenging for me are cards for boys and men and sympathy cards.  I don't know why cards for boys and men are so tough...I get why sympathy cards are difficult.  There is a fine line between tasteful and over done, I think.
I made this card last night for someone who recently lost her mother and it came together pretty quickly.  I had seen new Cuttlebug embossing folders at Joann's that had a border strip with them.  I bought a couple and was wanting to use one so decided on this chevron which is called "Charles".  I don't know if chevrons translate to sympathy cards well but I liked the way this ended up.

 I used Papertrey ink paper, ink, and the die and stamp are from Mat Stack 3.  The sentiment is a Hero Arts sentiment which fit perfectly in the little space!  The butterfly is an EK Success punch.

 Not a great photo below but I was hoping  you could see the embossing.  I love this combo of the larger embossing folder and the smaller design on the strip.

And that's it for today.....
Happy Crafting!

I entered this in the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show: Challenge: Your Favorite (my favorites are dies with coordinating stamps)

Spooky and Scary!

I love Halloween.  I used to make most of my kids' costumes...well, that's probably not true but the costumes I did make them were just wonderful!  I do remember making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for my son and a mime clown costume for my daughter and I did make the cutest little devil horns for my son to wear on his first Halloween as we strolled through the neighborhood.  Of course, now my children are adults so I don't get the fun of making their costumes anymore.  But they both still like Halloween, too.
I'm in the process of making a few Halloween cards to send to a few special folks...I bought this set of Tim Holtz creepy and spooky stamps at Archiver's recently...I believe they are exclusive to Archiver's.  I just love the blueprint look to them.
Here is the first card I made with this set (no, I haven't made a second card but I'm hoping to get there!):

 It is actually a shaped card on top of an A2 card sized base.  The background print is Authentique.  I cut the little bats out on my Silhouette from the free shape that was in the store a week ago.  I added a little green Stickles to the eyes to give them a little eerie glow.  The grass was done with the Martha Stewart fringe scissors.  Here you can see how the tombstone opens:

Well, I'm off to a fall festival with the grandkids today. 

Happy Crafting!

Make a Wish!

I got about 15 minutes of mojo going today and made this card:

Someone special in our lives is having a birthday next week and I made this card for her.  I used Penny Black stamps and embossed with Zing white embossing powder.  The blue paper and ribbon is Papertrey Ink.  The scalloped punch is a Fiskars punch but did you really need to know that?  Probably not. 
I do love this stamp set though...it comes with lots of little circle thingies and some sentiments as well.  So pretty and there is something about a dandelion that makes you want to make a wish!

I used the Swiss Dots embossing folder for a little more texture.  And oh yes.... I guess you can see I corner rounded 3 of the 4 corners.  Whoopie!  LOL...I just get such a kick when people give so much detail on how they make things.  "I took white paper from Walmart and cut it down to 4.73560 inches by 5.0286750 inches and used my Fiskars punch purchased in 2000 to cut a 1.84692 circle"  LOL!
Of course, sometimes people create these great things and don't give you any clue how they made it! LOL!  I don't know which is worse!



And that my friends, is it for today!

Happy Crafting!

Expression at the Garden

I have not had any mojo to do any crafting this week.  Just a bit under the weather but hoping I get "above the weather" soon!  I did go to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens on Tuesday with my uber fabulous grandkids and their more than fabulous mother who happens to be my daughter.  Each year in October the Atlanta Botanical Gardens has displays of dozens of scarecrows.  They are created by schools, vendors, manufacturers, non profit groups, clubs, etc.  And some are quite fun and creative.  And again....I love all forms of creative EXPRESSION!
Before we get to the scarecrows here are two photos of the two cuties:
David with his "smile, David" face on:

And Taylor riding the chicken in the children's play area.  We think she thinks she's smiling.  LOL!  Hard to get a smile out of that little one sometimes!  And despite loving taking pictures it is very difficult getting a GOOD photo of two toddlers together. Just doesn't happen much! LOL!

This is as good as it got:

Here are some of the scarecrows:

 Your basic Angelina Jolie scarecrow:

 Your basic Pinterest scrarecrow:

 Your scary political scarecrow:

And a favorite...a scarecrow reading the Fifty Shades of Hay:

Off to play tennis this morning....I hope some running around in the fresh air gives me a little mojo to play later in my craft room!

Happy Crafting!