Calendar workshop!

I was able to spend a lovely Saturday afternoon with two friends making calendars using the January Stamp of the Month. We used 4" square heavy-weight coasters as our base and used a clothespin glued onto the back to prop the calendar up for viewing. Calendar pages are stamped onto 2x2 squares and held on with decorative paperclips so that these calendars can be used year after year. SOO cute!!

Hope that you enjoyed the quick look! I know that I will enjoy using mine!

HERE WE GO STEELERS!!

Ok, so this one is NOT artwork of mine, but I *do* find it inspiring! This is a picture that a friend of my husband posted on Facebook and I have fallen in love with. In light of the VICTORY last night against the Ravens, I thought that I needed to post this picture here. It is *definitely* getting scrapped soon - along with highlights. Look VERY carefully at the picture - there are several details that will explain why I love it so much :-)

Now, onto those Cardinals. :-)

My Infamous ScrapCave

OK, so I keep telling people about my favorite escape spot on the planet, and decided that it's time that I share it with you all :-) I will apologize in advance to those on dial-up, but it took me 12 pictures to get it onto here...

Going around the room from where you enter:

This first picture is my WONDERFUL stack of papershelves -acquired when my favorite LSS went out of business :-( - these shelves are filled with my random Cardstock paper collection.

The little yellow squares that you see on the left side are labels indicating which colors go where (for when I pull them out to go to crops, etc). All colors are in an expanded form of ROYGBIV order- which earns me a great deal of harassment from a few friends who say that I have "OCD" tendencies... Just because a gal likes to be able to find things!!

Next to the shelves, I store my newspaper tablet- you know, that paper that you put under things so that you can make a mess without having too much clean-up to do!! I also store my guillotine trimmer there. VERY handy tool!!

This lovely piece of furniture is a drafting table / lightbox that my husband's late grandfather gave to my father-in-law, who then passed it down to my husband, who then gave it to me. To say the least, it is very special to us.

We believe that grandpa might actually have made this table, but we can't be sure, so if you did, Grandpa, we love it!

Underneath the drafting table, I have a Cropper Hopper paper storage bin - this is where I keep the majority of my B&T - you'll see the rest in a bit...

This is a combination of two plastic drawer units. The top, smaller, unit has candles to make my room "stink pretty," as my husband calls it. The other two drawers have stamped images - like my Bellas- and cards that I have made with no specific person in mind.

The bottom, larger, unit houses all of my stamps. Currently, the top two drawers house my CTMH stamps while the bottom three are a combination of my other unmounteds. Eventually, I have a feeling that I will need to use all 5 drawers for CTMH stamp sets and find a new home for the others, but I'm not there yet, and have some time until I am, so I just enjoy this arrangement.

This is my main work table- with all of my inks, Stickles, acrylic blocks, adhesive, work mat, OttLight, spray bottles, chalks, sponges, texture tools, and book holder. This is where I spend the majority of my crafting time. The table itself is another drafting table that also came from the same grandfather.

You can't see it in the photo, but there are two large drawers under the work surface - one houses my mounted stamp collection and the other houses my embossing supplies.

This is the wall next to my main work table.

It houses some of my ribbon collection as well as alcohol inks and Glimmer Mist bottles, my card collections from CTMH, and my Whisper stamp pade. The OttLight that is attached allows me to see what I'm doing on the table below.

Below this shelf are five pegs, on which I store rings with fiber cards, sketch images that I have found online, and CS samples from CTMH.

This is my journaling desk, placed right in front of my window to the outdoors!

The desk was made my taking some small shelf units (of the MDF kind), and topping them with an Ikea desktop. LOTS of storage and a wonderful writing space! The baskets hold my adhesive collection, acrylic paints, cleaning supplies, embellishments, stickers, and rub-ons.

On top of the desk, I have my Pampered Chef Tool-Turnabout with pens, etc, and a shelving unit that I found on clearance at Target. On top of that shelf, I have a shelved "Lazy Susan" that I fould at a thrift store. My Crop-a-Dile lives on top of the desk, as does my inspiration kitty. When I'm not using this desk, my real live kitty occupies it in order to stare out the window!

This is my second wall. My stereo is mixed in with my embellishment storage and my 8 1/2 x 11 CS supply.

This is the shelving unit under the photo above. My dear husband build these shelves for me back while we were in college - they are, I swear, indestructible!! They house my inspiration collection and my photos to be scrapped.

The bins hold my re-inkers and punches, memorabilia, tools, and gadgets :-)

This is my design desk.

My CTMH books sit next to a bin full of CTMH CS.

This is my remaining B&T storage shelves - housed under the design desk. These were made my using cable ties to hold wire shelves horizontally in one cube while the bottom cube just allows everything to stand semi-vertically.

This is my cutting task table - all of my paper trimmers and shapes are housed here. Another OttLight keeps it luminated :-)

The clipboard on the wall was made at one of my first papercrafting projects outside of scrapbooking.

This is my messy closet - anything without another home goes in here - all grouped by cube or bin :-)

It looks messy, but it is a good kind of chaos.

Well, I hope that you liked the glimpse into my little scrappy world!!! Now I'm off to go play in it!

New Year, renewed effort to blog!

Well, the end of this year has been busy for me. Lots of projects created, and many were not photographed... But let me show you some that *were*!



This card is one of my favorites, and I have made several versions of it recently. I sponge multiple colors in layers to create a sunrise or sunset effect, then stamped images from September's Stamp of the Month set (Treasure Life) in black ink - first and second generation stamping.
Mat the sunrise/set onto darker CS and attach to the card front. This one uses a saying that is also from the Treasure Life set.

Each time I make this card, I love it more!! Play with the colors in your layers to get the effect that you are seeking. I don't think that this can be done badly!




This next one was a wedding card for two very dear friends of mine, who, like me, LOVE all things Celtic.




I found a Celtic heart knot online and blew the image up, then used a light box to trace the image with a gold pen. Then, I matted the image on a sheet of green CS and gold vellum, rounding the corners of each layer.


The sentiment was printed on my home computer, using RGB codes to match the green CTMH paper, and matted in the same manner.





Lastly, I was involved in a 6x6 Scripture verse swap- 23 pages of Scriptural inspiration. All entries used the "Boom-di-Ada" paperpacks and related stamps. All of my Scripture verses were printed on my home computer using RGB codes.

My three submissions were as follows:




For this entry, I did a LOT of intricate cutting.

I used three different flowers from the Cottage Floral set, cut them out, layered them using foam tape and adhered to a circle that was sponged around the edges with Garden Green ink.

I also took the striped B&T paper and cut out the scallops to make a paper ribbon.

The remaining pieces that you see are the green polka dot B&T and buttercup CS.






This was my first attempt at "paper quilting." It wasn't until I was done that I realized that the effect was lost because of the paper patterns that I used - oh well!!! The inspiration was from a quilting block book that I own. I took two 3x3 squares of the orange floral B&T and two 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 squares and cut each into triangles, then pieced these into the quilted pattern. I went over the seams with the Simple Stitches stamp set in cocoa ink. Then adhered the CS with my verse- making little cross stitches using the new orange floss. I will definitely be doing this technique again - can you say "workshop?!?!"





Finally, my experiment in total distressing!!
The striped B&T is sanded.
The Barn Red CS is edge distressed.
The buttercup CS is sponged on the edges.

Three eyelets were set in with my favorite tool - my Crop-a-dile, and wha-la, there is one beautifully distressing layout!







I hope that you enjoy these creations as much as I do!!!
Talk to you soon!