Chipboard alpha and paper flower reorg

Happy fall!

This weekend ended up being a hectic one. I thought there would be plenty of time for crafting, but all I manage to get done was a quick birthday card and a little much-needed reorganization. Even though I swore off buying any new crafty stuff until I sat down and did a few scrapbook pages (or at least printed some photos), I got sucked in by the Target Dollar Spot.

I am such a sucker, I know, sometimes the items aren't even worth a dollar! But chipboard alphas for $1? Can't pass it up. I got four (two sheet of multicolored Halloween-ish letters and two packs of glittery orange letters). I also got a pack of Halloween paper, some ribbon and two cute plastic bins that I needed to find a productive use for.

Add all of this to my JoAnn and Two Peas in a Bucket purchases that arrived last week and I could barely walk to my craft table, never mind sit down and be productive. Yet I was going to my friend Jackie's son's second birthday party on Sunday and knew that a store-bought card just would not do. So I piled the stuff up even higher on the floor and got crafty for a few hours on Saturday afternoon, after my exhilarating but exhausting zumba class that morning.

No, there is no photo of the card. Oops. I really need to get a new camera. Or a scanner at home. It was cute though, used some birthday themed paper (also from the Dollar Spot, but not this trip) in primary colors and a foam number 2. Not my best work but my desk was so messy, there was barely any room.

Sunday after the party I took some time to organize, deciding to move my adhesive gems and other bling from the acetate box they were squooshed to one of the new Dollar Spot bins. Still haven't figured out where the bin goes yet.

The I focused on my chipboard letters. I have been wanting to store all them together by letter but the compartments of the embroidery floss boxes I had them in were too small. I finally put my chipboard letters into the the nuts and bolts organizer that my husband got me at the local hardware store. Unfortunately there are only 25 compartments, so I get to be creative and mix the Ms and Ws together since they can be used almost interchangeably. Still not sure what to do with the numbers, so I may have to do more combining.

Because I had to combine, I could only fit the letters that were already in the floss boxes -- mostly ones that are mix and match type letters and not whole alphas that look the same. I still don't know what to do with these. I have about 8 packs, from Making Memories, K&co, Basic Grey and a few random ones from Target. Some are in sheet form and some are separate letters. Right now they are standing up in a plastic box but that's temporary. I also have sheets of plain chipboard letters looking for a home. I put them in an ArtBin Super Satchel box but not sure I am loving that. I am torn as to whether I should punch out the letters or leave them in sheet form. Not sure which will make me more likely to use them.

I then tackled my growing paper flower collection. I originally sorted by material/flower size, with different colored flowers from the same manufacturer stored together. Then I bought a lot of 50 assorted Primas off of eBay, a bottle of yellow Primas (on sale at Michaels for $1.99!) and a tube of Primas from Two Peas (on sale for $2.50) that were not going to fit into the box I was using. Never mind the giant tube of white Primas I got from Two Peas that I intend to dye to match my projects.

First I thought I wanted to sort by color and store each color in a separate bottle. I thought I's use the Making Memories flower bottles:


I have six of them from ordering from www.cropchocolate.com. (If you haven't checked out this site, it's pretty cool - they feature one item and it's usually about 50% off. I also got four sets of MM clear stamps from them.) Plus I have a few Prima bottles I could use.

I sorted my flowers thinking this was the plan but then realized I need more order than this. I don't think I want to have to sift through an entire jar, even one sorted by color, to find the perfect flower. I know many people do this and use the bottles as a decorative display, but I need my storage to be more functional than decorative. So I sorted by color and by type into two plastic embroidery thread boxes. I had to put them sideways on one of the wire shelves of the door of my craft closet, but I think they will still stay pretty organized.

So now I am excited to get my craft on this weekend! I need to make three birthday cards and am thinking about making a set of thank you cards as a birthday present. My craft desk is still a bit of a mess but I plan to concentrate on putting more stuff away tomorrow night. Oh how I miss half day summer Fridays!

Couple Friends

Two posts two days in a row, whoo-hoo! Go me.

This is a page I did over the weekend. I was doing some cleaning and came across my friend Jackie's wedding invitation from 2005. Looking at the invitation got me thinking about how I regret not having gone to her wedding. One of the main reasons I didn't go (besides it being 7 hours away and on Labor Day) was because that weekend I moved in with my husband, who was just my boyfriend at the time.

But another reason was because the guys hadn't even met each other yet and she was really little more than a girl I met on Craigslist that I scrapbooked with. I guess there was no way then to know that we would all become such good friends! I do feel fortunate that we all hit it off since I know it can be hard to find couple friends where both girls and both guys get along. I'm not sure that I captured that message as much as I would have liked but I guess it's an idea for a future layout.


I started with the invitation, which was printed on white cardstock, and built the layout around it. Then I saw the small aqua friend tag (top right) that came in a large coordinating kit I recently picked up at BJSs and it became the basis for my color scheme. I recently bought a bunch of Basic Gray paper off of the clearance rack at AC Moore (25 cents apiece!) that coordinated with the aqua. I selected two sheets from the Blush collection for the top and bottom of the layout.

It took me forever to find letter stickers that worked until I remembered these from K&Co. They were on a sheet with fall colored letters that surprisingly contains an entire alphabet in each style. I wanted to emphasize the ampersand and again it took awhile to find the perfect one. First I thought chipboard but I couldn't find anything the right size. Finally I found this aqua ampersand on a sheet of pastel colored letters (not sure of the brand as I had removed it from the original packaging).

The K&Co journaling tag, from the Wild Saffron collection, just randomly seemed to work as I sorted through my recent purchases. I liked that it used both the aqua and the red from the papers and it was (almost) big enough to tell my story. When I wanted to add just a bit more, I saw that the red label (also K&Co Wild Saffron) would be perfect, plus there are so many of them in the package that I don't know how I'll ever use them (a good problem to have I suppose).

I've been thinking about paper flowers lately, having recently bought some Primas from eBay (50 various sizes for $2.50 -- good deal?) and a whole can of white Primas from Two Peas that I am still waiting for. I am trying to find a better way to store them, as right now I have them in a small divided box, separated by type, which I will obviously outgrow. I also think I'd like to sort by color.

So while I was looking at my current stash, I saw the large gridded cream and aqua flower, which I have several of, and it seemed like a good opportunity to pair it with the dotted aqua flower that came in the same set. I thought a brad would be good in the middle but then I saw the K&Co Wild Saffron felt embellishments and liked that I could incorporate the red and a bit of yellow. I thought the bottom needed a bit of pink to bring in the pink of the top patterned paper so I used a small pink paper flower with another felt embellie. I attached the flowers with Glue Dots.

I put the friends tag underneath the top flower a bit and added "Couple" using small Making Memories ledger stickers. Finally I added some hand stitching to bring in some more brown and help ground the letter stickers. I made the stitching holes using a template that I made by piercing through a sheet of plastic packaging and then sewed some zigzag stitch using two strands of DMC embroidery floss. The top right corner seemed bare (I seem to have a problem with that) so I lightly traced around a random die cut swirl that was on my desk, pierced holes and back-stitched.

Daddy's Girl

OK, really bad blogger I have been. But it was kind of starting to feel like work, with how nice it was outside there for awhile (finally!) and I said that I was out when it started to be too hard.

However I have actually done some scrapbooking lately and I thought I'd share one today. It uses an old photo as I am in a quandary about photo printing. More on that later. First the layout:

This one is me and my dad, as you can see by the cute little Studio G stamp that I used for the subtitle. This is an OLD photo, from 1994, that is in one of the four icky magnetic albums that I am trying to redo. Yes I know I should pull all of the photos out to minimize further damage, but the idea of having to store all of those photos in some organized way or risk having to resort them is too much for me to handle. So I am s-l-o-w-l-y redesigning these pages.

I knew I wanted to use this cute bird background paper from the DCWV Glitter Summer Stack (or is it spring?!) and the cordinating DCWV chipboard flower, which I ended up topping with a blue foam circle and clear gem to minimize the hot pink. Then I found the red vinyl stickers in my stash that I bought last year from Michaels' holiday clearance, figuring they didn't really scream "Christmas." I thought the black Making Memories rub on letters were a nice constrast.

It took me awhile to settle on the b&w polka dotted paper, which has been in my stash forever. I used my newish Fiskars Upper Crest border punch. The photo mat is a randomly a page from a yellow lined hotel notepad that was on my desk. The ribbon was already cut in my ribbon scraps bin, it's $1 kind from Michaels. I added the green dotted Making Memories leaves for a little contrast. The subtitle lable was the only item I used from the large K&Co kit I got at AC Moore, even though I planned to use more of that kit on the page. I stamped it with Staz On using the aforementioned Studio G stamp.

Finally, I though the upper right corner seemed a bit bare so I back-stitched with some black embroidery floss. That made the center seem a little bare so I added the sentiment sticker, the negative from punching the black dotted border and some cross-stitches. Ta da! Nice father-daughter moment captured.

So as to my photo printing quandary, the printer I have does not play nice with Vista and I have no way of knowing how much ink is left. I also think it is just not printing as nicely and I have started wondering how long the pictures are going to last. I thought it was more economical to print myself, and also more freeing since the pictures can be any size. I was also doing a lot of digital scrapbooking so it made sense.

But I am starting to think that for longevity's sake I should get my photos printed professionally. I want to use more of my paper scrapbooking stash and I think this will encourage me to not just default to digital. Also it is taking me so long to think up layouts with different sized photos and I think I am falling into the trap of thinking I need to scrap every photo. Maybe it would be easier to go back to having mostly 4X6s?

I am thinking about checking out www.scrapbookpictures.com but I'm open to suggestions.

Dad

Today is my dad's birthday. I am a bad daughter in that I forgot to call him and he had to call me! But he didn't know I didn't call since he wasn't home and figured I'd just left a message on his answering machine. Yes most people would call his cell (which he was calling me from) but my parents never have their phones on. So annoying!

Anyway, I don't feel that I'm too bad of a daughter because I did send him this lovely birthday card, which should have arrived on time.

I finally used the rub-ons for glittering that I bought months ago. They don't work quite as well as I hoped but not bad. Also the blue glitter didn't quite match the DCWV patterned paper (summer stack, I believe) which was leftover from creating this layout:

This layout was one of the first that I actually used a sketch to create. I used stickers from the 2008 DCWV spring sticker stack. Some of them are flocked and glittered and I always like the bling. I also make the brown letter stickers by inking up some white ones. I added a little glitter shine with Making Memories glitter glaze paint.

I also made my dad this rockin' Father's Day card so I think he should know I love him! I think the bird and branch are Autumn Leaves stamps.

Happy birthday, dad!

Cleanup Weekend

Busy weekend, although very little crafting. I sat down to craft on Saturday afternoon, thinking I would finally make my husband a birthday card (his bday was Sunday). But my craft table just seemed such a mess that I couldn’t get started, plus I had picked up some new goodies at AC Moore on my way home from work on Friday and I wanted to play and find a home for them.

Highlights of my purchases: the Fiskars scallop sentiment and upper crest border punches, which I have been wanting forever! Well the scallop sentiment at least. I have the threading (or treading, I’ve seen it both ways) water punch and I love it but wanted one without the holes. I would have actually like one with a little bit bigger of a scallop and I think possibly the Stampin’ Up one may be, but the Fiskars one was right there at the store with no waiting, no shipping charge, and at 40% off, so it is now mine (I think I paid about $9.50 each?). I can use my Fiskars Cloud scissors for larger scallops anyway, which I have finally mastered now that I realize I need to draw a pencil line to follow to exactly line up the cuts. Eye-balling it just doesn’t cut it.

I also got some Basic Gray patterned papers off the clearance rack, 25 cents apiece. I really love their papers but the collections are so expensive! One day I’ll use a 50% off coupon and get a whole set, but for now I am happy to combine bits of the patterned papers with cardstock I already have.

Another purchase was that Ranger Teflon craft mat. Not really sure I needed it and I am positive that I had bought almost the same thing to use with my Melting Pot, which I haven’t used in, well, so long I can’t remember. But I can’t find that other mat anywhere and this one is much bigger anyway. What I am really hoping I can do is heat emboss right on top of it without melting my cutting mat underneath. There’s already a bendy spot on my cutting mat from an earlier unfortunate incident with the heat gun (and a melted spot on the carpet) so I am a little nervous about trying this but the instructions say it can be done with no adverse effects to your work surface. We shall see.
Update: I tried this and it seemed OK. Yay!

I had rearranged my punches last week, moving my giant scalloped circles from a tray on my desk to one of the large drawer in the Iris cart next to my desk that my Ribbon Ring allowed me to free up. Really don’t know what I was thinking, filling that drawer with rolls of ribbon, what a waste! (If you haven’t yet seen the Ribbon Ring, check it out! Love mine). I also moved my large circle punches, large scalloped circles and miscellaneous large punches (like the EK Success Whale of a Punch ones) into the same drawer, freeing up the top drawer of the Iris cart. I’ve decided to treat is sort of as a junk drawer but with little containers that I had picked up at Target storing various embellishments by color. These are mostly one-off embellishments that I made and had no other home.

Now my back-up Fiskars trimmer that I mostly use for scoring these days after getting my Making Memories cutter can no longer fit in the top drawer. Right now I have it on top of the MM trimmer which is on top of a large file box full of letter stickers underneath my desk. Not sure if this is going to work out but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it. It seems too large in the center of my Making Memories carousel organizer. I did move one of my rulers there, the 12 inch metal one, and put a push pin into the window frame to hold the 15 inch one. I also cleaned my entire craft table, sorting the scraps (for the most part) and putting everything back in its home. All of this so I could lay down the Teflon mat.

I never did make my husband a birthday card. I think he had a nice birthday though. On Saturday night I took him to a Polish restaurant we had never been to. He has this thing for goulash and has been talking about it forever so even though it seems like winter food, we decided to try out this new place.

YUM! If you are ever in Boston, try Café Polonia in South Boston! It’s right on the Dorchester line. I wasn’t sure about the neighborhood so was happy it will still light when we go there, but it seemed fine, and parking was easy, with plenty of resident spots that non-residents can park in for two hours. Mike started with beet soup and I had soup pickle-cabbage soup which was unexpectedly delicious. Then he had goulash with potato pancakes and I had the Polish platter, which was three pierogies (I had cheese, cheese and potato, and cabbage. The cabbage was so good!), kielbasa, Hunter’s stew (cabbage and meat, and surprisingly good!) and stuffed cabbage (not like mine or my mom’s, but still enjoyable).

Funny, I had bought a head of cabbage and 3 lbs. of ground turkey at the supermarket on Friday and was thinking about making stuffed cabbage. I think now I’m going to make unstuffed cabbage in the crockpot this week. Tonight we are having roasted chicken with vegetables. So easy and yummy! And cost-effective. It’s a big 6 pounder and was on sale for 79 cents/lb. We’ll have plenty of leftovers for sandwiches and such and I will probably make chicken broth/soup with the carcass. It’s probably a little warm for matzo ball soup but I am betting I can still tempt Mike with it. Mmm, the chicken is smelling so good, I can’t wait until it’s done!

On Sunday Mike and I went up to his parents house in NH and had a big lobster dinner. Well his mom and I had salmon but Mike and his dad are allergic to it. I also had two lobster tails. This is turning into the summer of lobster! I think it’s the fourth time we’ve had it. The best was when Mike cooked the giant 4 lb. lobster a few weeks ago. So good, although I’m still finding bits of lobster shell around the house!

Gold Ball

Another layout with old photos from 2006. I'm trying to catch up. Also practice new techniques on pages I don't care about so much anymore.

My husband's company has this ball every year to recognize the high achievers (of which he is one). I originally planned to do this as a single page digital layout but I printed the photos and not the background I created. I wanted to use gold but knew that I really couldn't print metallic gold from my inkjet. The photos sat around in a to-be-scrapped folder for months because I couldn't find a layout I liked for so many pictures. Finally I decided to make it a two-page spread and try out some new techniques on it.

One of the new-to-me techniques was using paint. I recently bought a few Ranger Paint Dabbers from joann.com. First I thought they didn't work right because I didn't realize they weren't supposed to go on smoothly. I actually liked the texture they provided and the gold is really vibrant IRL. The backgrounds are just regular cheapo black cardstock but I used the paint dabber on to "dry brush" around the edges.

I made the Gold Ball title using the gold dabber on an also new-to-me product, Tim Holtz's grungeboard. I picked up a pack at Michaels with a 40% off coupon. Interesting material. Not sure why I'd want something bendy on my page but I will try experimenting more. If I can get past the smell! Really odd smelling product.

Anyway, after dabbing the grungeboard letters and the small heart on the second page with two coats and emphasizing the bubbly texture of the dabber, I rubbed the edges with a Ruby Satin pigment Colorbox Cats Eye. I have a few of these ink pads but rarely pull them out since they are rather small and it seems like a lot of work to ink up a stamp with them. But it worked wonders for inking edges and getting into the small crevices! I wasn't sure that the pigment ink would dry on the painted grungeboard and wondered if I would have to emboss, but it dried just fine.


It's making me think I should get some more Cats Eyes. On sale at joann.com for $1.49... I usually wait two months in between orders so I have time to play with my new goodies but there is a free shipping coupon for July and a few things I have been wanting.

Anyway, I also inked the edges of the gold mat on the second page with the Ruby Cats Eye. Then I stamped on the cream ribbon several times with a swirly scroll border stamp from Inkadinkadoo and the Ruby ink. This was more successful than I thought it would be, as I had stamped on ribbon before and it was blurry. The pigment ink came out clear and it dried fairly quickly. I'll be trying this again!

Another new technique for me was stamping with paint on transparencies. Well I actually used cut up packaging from some glitter rub-ons I bought. How very green of me, I know. Or cheap. I used the Ranger ink dabber in gold with various clear stamps. The swirl corner is K&Co Amy Butler lotus. The little journaling spot is from one of those $1 Studio G sets. The flower medallion is from Making Memories.

I wasn't sure how I was going to attach the transparencies ater I cut them out but I discovered that Zots glue dots really are totally clear! I usually get the GlueDot brand (3L maybe?) but I had bought a pack of the mini singles Zots and I am impressed! I had planned to put a purple gem in the flower centers, thinking it would cover the adhesive but I really didn't need to as you could not see the Zot at all. I added the gems anyway to bring in some more purple and give it some bling.

Of course I figured out the Zots were truly clear after I had already stapled on the small journaling block, which is the one part of this spread that I am really not happy with. Oh well. I did color the staples with a black Slick Writer before stapling so at least they aren't too noticeable. This is a good way to color your staples to match your layout -- color the staples before you put them in the stapler, then you can touch them up in necessary after you staple.

I used a purple Slick Writer to write on the plastic. Not sure it really matches but I was trying to bring in some purple since I used the "Rock On" and "You're An Original" die cuts. These were from a K&Co tin that I picked up at a discount store in NJ. I would guess it is discontinued since it was steeply discounted. I attached them with foam tape.

The "Friends" strip actually was inside of the large medallion on the second page. That and the "Love" and quote die cuts are K&Co Amy Butler Lotus. They are attached with foam tape. I bought the diecuts, chipboard letters, sticky ribbon and matching clear stamps when it was on sale at Michaels. The I got the two paper packs on sale from joann.com so you'll probably see more projects using these supplies.


The journaling block on the first page is s a digital element that I typed my text on, printed out and cut. The journaling block on the second page is from the DCWV Le Creme sticker stack as are the photo corner, "All Dressed Up" sticker that I used to cover the hole in the large K&Co medallion, and the cream flourishes on both pages. Some of the flourishes are actually cut from the sticker backing sheet as the actual stickers weren't quite the shape I was going for so I cut around them and used the excess instead.

This is the spread that the swirl glitter paper came from that I used on yesterday's wedding card. The dotted gold paper was also from that same paper pack from Target. I totally cheated to stretch the paper but gluing down my photo collage on the first page and then cutting squares of paper to fit behind and make up a square shape with actually cutting a large square from the paper. I love to do things like this to stretch my supplies, especially when I only have one sheet of something I like. I am trying to get away from just using the fancy papers as backgrounds.

Iused my trusty Dymo label maker for the small subtitles on the first page. The final embellishments were some white feathers that I bought forever ago at JoAnn's thinking I might use them in my wedding centerpieces. I thought they complemented nicely the feathers that my goofy husband put in his shirt collar.

That's it! It took me a few days to finish this spread as I kept it out on my craft desk and kept rearranging the elements until I thought they worked. I actually finished it over the weekend, not last night but we were at my SIL's rehearsal dinner last night so no craftiness for me. One very cool things is that her future MIL made baseball hats for everyone at the dinner and used the monogram/logo that I designed for them. I will have to take a pic and post.

Tomorrow is the wedding and my parents are coming to town so I probably won't be back until Sunday the earliest.

Wedding Card

The wedding card I promised. This look me FOREVER to put together for some reason. I just couldn't get started on it. I knew I wanted to use the monogram in the center (that I designed for them and they used on the invitations, menus, programs, etc.) and the piece of goldish cardstock that my SIL left at my house when she was here folding the covers of the programs. I also had some gold patterned paper lying around that I used on a scrapbook page a few days ago (hey, I should post that!) And their secondary color is pink.


I used a cream card like I used for their shower card. Which I actually think came out better than the wedding card, but oh well. Unfortunately I wasn't able to scan that before I gave it to them so will have to ask for it back one of these days since the photo I took of it is awful.

I cut the goldish cardstock .25 inches shorter on both sides than the 5 by 7 card I made from cream cardstock. I cut the swirl patterned paper (from Target! Love the $ spot) .25 inches smaller than that. I ran both pieces through my Xyron 900, layered them and then wrapped wide gold ribbon (leftover from wrapping the bouquet stems from my own wedding) around it lengthwise and attached to the card.

I cut a piece of pink paper from my scrap folder into a 3.5 inch square and rubbed it with a Frost VersaMark pad (new purchase from Joann.com) to make it shimmery. I cut a piece of the gold cardstock .25 inches smaller and rounded the corners. I ran both pieces through my Xyron and attached to the upper center of the card.

I printed the monogram on the same cream paper as I made the card with. I punched it with my Marvy scallop circle punch and attached it with foam squares (love those!). I painted a grungeboard heart (new purchase from AC Moore) with pink Making Memories paint and let it dry. Then I painted it with Aleene's tacky glue and dumped Martha Stewart's white glitter on it (on clearance at AC Moore recently). I'm finding that this method of glittering chipboard works really well for me, although I'm open to other suggestions.

I attached the glittered heart with glue dots. I adhered the chipboard sticker (Marcella, I believe. 99 cents for a whole sheet of glittered chipboard wedding stickers. From a lucky jaunt to a discount store in NJ.) Then I cut off three separate strips of pearls and attached them over the ribbon and then stuck a larger pearl in each corner of the pink mat. The pearls I think are from Michaels.

I didn't intend this to be a budget project but it certainly worked out that way! Which is a good thing since it will be accompanied by a check...