shameless plug

Have you started thinking about Christmas cards? 

Cards for gifts? 

Gift tags?

Teacher/ hostess gifts?

Well the holidays will be here before you know it. Now is the time to place an order with me for your handmade personalized paper crafted items. Head over to my website and see what I currently have for sale as well as examples of what I have created in the past.

Don't see what you are looking for? Please ask. I am always up for a challenge to create an item that you will fall in love with and be proud to give.

Click on the image below to get to my website.

I can be reached at my email as well as on Facebook. 

Click the image below to get to my FB.

I hope I can create something amazing for you!

kira and mommy bonding time- wreck this journal

Kira and Alex each received a Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith for Christmas. Alex has already done a few pages as he thought it was a really cool thing to be able to write, draw, and cut a book without being scolded. Totally up a young man's alley! 

Kira on the other hand had let hers sit and collect dust. I found a few YouTube videos and Instagram feeds on how others are wrecking their journals and thought how much fun is that? I wanted to do it. Knowing Kira would not let me play with her journal, I picked one up at Barnes and Noble and then hatched my master plan. (insert evil mommy laugh)

We could have some serious quality mom and daughter time while destroying a book!! We could go anywhere they have a table we can use. If there is food and drink, that makes it a much better choice. I put together a little destroying kit with my Thirty-One bag. It includes stickers, markers, colored pencils, regular pencils, erasers, water color paints, highlighters, colored pens, Sharpies, scissors, pencil sharpener, glue, and washi tape.

Monday March 24, 2014 we headed to Crackskull's and found a spot at the counter where we could play.

We 'may' have indulged in some hot chocolate and baked goodies. But I am not telling. Kira looked through her entire book reading all the different ways to wreck, decorate, destroy, and play. I started by numbering my pages as I like order. However, you will not be able to find the page you are looking for very easily. I started numbering my pages at page number 524 and went to 602. Then I did pages 1- 30. Then I 'numbered' the pages using the alphabet, then the months of the year. I ended up starting at page 100 and going to page 13 before I ran out of pages!! Totally random and so not like me. 

She makes some of the silliest faces!

On this page she had to draw with the marker, pencil, pen in your mouth. Pretty funny. The best part of this book. You can go back in and add to pages if you want or leave them sparse. You can create a kind of art journal with this or get rid of any stress. It is also an amazing way to have chats with your tween without having the deep eye contact that lets them open up. We had fun!!

Here is her decorated cover. I will try to get a better picture on our next adventure. She was giggling at this moment.

Here is her inside cover. The markers that we have all have different types of tips (Crayola Pip Squeaks) so they mark different ways. We had fun playing with those.

Here is the cover of my journal now that I have personalized it. We discovered we need more fun and unusual stickers to add onto our pages. As well as some office supplies. I have a small stapler I am going to add to our kit as well as some paper clips.

 

And here is my inside page. I am thinking I need to add something to the inside cover. I shall have to work on that on our next journal wrecking date. It was one of the best hour and a half I had this week.

More fun to come!!

teacher christmas gifts 2013

I have the pleasure of helping out in one of the kindergarten rooms with an amazing teacher and her equally amazing helper/ partner in crime/ friend/ paraprofessional extraordinaire. I help out twice a week so I can hang with both the AM and the PM classes. Cutest littles ever!!

But once again I digress.....

I made each of these ladies a set of eight cards for a Christmas gift. So much fun as I love making cards!! I also love using a new tool. I picked up the Fiskars hexagon punch on the black Friday weekend for a steal at Joanns. I also purchased a corner punch from Fiskars to replace the one I misplaced in my office and got both punches for under $10. Seriously happy day for me!!

So using my new hexagon tool I went to work on some cards.

And there you have a fun little something to give to two ladies who let me come into their classroom and paint the children!!

card organizer for mom

On one of my many blog ramblings, I found a card organizer tutorial here at Be Creative with Amy's blog. I thought it looked pretty and not too difficult so off I went! Some of the measurements were a bit off so I had to adjust here and there to make it work but it was a great jumping off point in this adventure!! Here it is before I added any decoration to the front.

These are the month dividers for the inside. I found a free calendar template that worked for me and printed and cut it to fit the dividers. Now mom can keep track of everyone's birthday, anniversaries and special occasions. 

Here is the front of the card organizer once I added my beaded flower. I cut the flower with a Spellbinders die and then hand stitched the seed beads into the center. I also spritzed the front with some of the Heidi Swapp color shine which added just enough pizzazz for mom.

Side view with the organizer all full up with handmade cards. There are 24 cards in there. Standard card size including envelopes. Yup, the lizard cards are living in there now. Along with a few others. Some of which I have already posted but didn't mention they were for this organizer.

who loves lizards??

My mom!! Well not really but it is a family joke which will not die. The kids seem to be keeping it alive more than hubby or I but when I saw these adorable lizard stamps, I knew who had to have some cards created with them!!

I will let the little guys do the talking for me. 

All of these cute guys are now happily residing with my mom in her Christmas present. I created her a card organizer complete with monthly dividers so she can keep track of birthdays and such. Hoping to post those pictures tomorrow for your viewing pleasure. Anywho, these little guys were so much fun to make and very colorful. I think I could learn to like lizards if they were as adorable as these!!

merry christmas from our house to yours

May you all enjoy the blessings of the day.

rudolph christmas tags

A few days back, Alex was bored. Code word- needs to be hanging with mommy or daddy. So I asked him what he wanted to do. He wanted to do arts and crafts. Okay, we can work with that. What kind of craft? Gluing, paper, marker, paint, clay? oh yeah, and let's remember I was heading upstairs to start working on dinner in five minutes!!

He didn't know what he wanted to do so I pulled up Pinterest and showed him this cute pin I found and asked him if he wanted to create some to/from tags for us for Christmas. He was all for it. I got him all set up and walked away!! He was so excited to be left in my office with paints and in charge of getting these tags done. He came up to the kitchen, without any paint on his fingers!! and let me know he had finished stamping and was waiting for it to dry.

He went up and down the stairs a few times until he was certain things were dry so I got the red and black paint all set up for him and let him at it. Oh my gosh, he did such an amazing job!! I told him I would add the antlers and the to/from stamp when he went to bed. I also rounded the corners and love how they came out!!

I think I have to get Kira to do some too. There are not enough tags here for all the gifts we have to give!!

christmas tag swap

In a scrapping group, we decided to have a Christmas tag swap. This is what I came up with for the group. 

I stamped the snowman using a Hero Arts stamp set (CL629- there is no name on this set) I then stamped the scarf on a piece of printed paper and cut it out. I also stamped the carrot nose on some scrap orange paper to cut out. The holly leaves were also cut out by hand. Colored the top hat as well as the snowmen. I am so happy with how they came out. But not sure I could cut out a ton of these. 

I stamped some snowflakes with white and versa ink on the kraft paper tags as well as the sentiment from the Hero Arts set and a To/ From wooden stamp I picked up at Michaels years ago. I popped the snowman up on the tag after adding a strip of washi tape to the bottom. I finished the tag with some natural twine to hang the tag on the gift.

Here is a side view of the snowman.

Thanks for stopping by!!

christmas paper ornaments

Yup it has been forever since I have been here. Crazy busy life and then it got to be so long that I was almost wondering if I should continue this blog at all. I decided to give it another try and see what happens. I have been doing some creating here and there when the spirit moves me.

I shall start with these cute Christmas ornaments that I created. There was a challenge in a group I am in to create a paper ornament. My sweet daughter Kira picked out the papers that I used so these are for her Christmas tree.

The papers she picked all came from my scrap stash which is also a great thing to use scraps.I embossed some of those circles which was really cute. I also used some Heidi Swapp color shine on them which for some reason didn't show up in the picture.

Hoping to continue posting. Crossing fingers.

christmas 2008 continues

And here we are again back to Christmas 2008 and all the fun it was. I have a much smaller pile now and am feeling very motivated to continue. Here are the latest two creations.

This layout was so much fun and yet so simple. Love it when that happens. I found the paper in a stack I had and it screamed for these pictures. I used my Fiskars apron border punch to mimic the gingerbread roof for the top of the page and for the top of the journal box. I used some chipboard letters I have had FOREVER! I added stickles and puff paint to the house on the background paper to give it a little pizzazz. The kids look so young!!

This next one I am loving so much right now. I do not want to put it in an album because I will miss it!! Sometimes it just happens. These are pictures I took after Alex got a haircut right before Christmas. You can see the major difference between the page up above and the one below. He ages so much in a few days with the haircut!! I used some Basic Grey papers that I had which worked with the colors in the pictures. Added in some chipboard stars that I covered with paper and inked the edges of. I used my stitching tool from We R Memory Keepers and used some embroidery floss for the sewed border around both pictures. Like I said, I am loving this layout right now.

Have a great one! I am off to make some cards. At least that is the game plan- we'll see how far I get.

oh yes i did!!

Scrap that is. Get your mind out of the gutter... geez. :)

I have had the photos from the end of December 2008 (yes you read that right 2008!) pulled out from their box for a few months now (read that as about 6-8 months) and have been S L O W L Y working on them. I was going to pack them up and had actually put them back in their box when I stopped, slapped myself around a bit and pulled them back out. 

Let me explain the self beating and why it happened. I first must explain that I have not printed any pictures lately unless they were going into my Project Life album and the reason for that?? I have three photo boxes F U L L of pictures that I need to scrap. The dates on these boxes go from 2002 or 2003 until early 2012. That is a ton of pictures sitting there taunting me into putting them into albums. (this does NOT include the three other photo boxes of Walt Disney World vacation photos) oh the shame.

As I was putting this tiny pile of pictures away I was overcome with a massive amount of guilt. Seriously massive. Probably because I had to take down all three of the photo boxes full of pictures to actually get into the one box where these photos should be placed (chronologically speaking). Another part of it, may have been that for the past couple of nights, the kids have been taking their scrapbooks off the shelves and looking at them. Really looking at them and laughing at what they were like when they were smaller. Alex especially thinks it is funny of the things he used to do. Unfortunately, Alex only has about 5 albums and they are not completely done (enter in the three boxes of photos I have mentioned before) so he is feeling unloved. Major mommy sigh and enormous amount of mommy guilt.

So off the races I went. I am going to scrap. I am going to scrap for me. And not only for me, but for my kids. I am happy they have found enjoyment in what I have been working on for years. I don't want that to end. So here goes... I am scrapping!! These may not be magazine works of art using all the latest and greatest tools, embellishments and paper. But who cares?? As long as the memories are in the albums and not stuck in a box, that is what matters- to me and my kids.

This one is going into Alex's album as I had already done another page to put into Kira's album using other pictures taken the same day. My title is weak but that is what happens when you are using the scraps and are running out of letters. But let's remember- it is headed for an album and not a box. Happy mommy.

This one is so cute. Look at that happy face of childhood. Placing her written letter to Santa into the Santa mailbox at the post office. I can't believe she was so small and adorable. Now she is stunningly beautiful and I have the right to say that since I am her mom! Love my girl. The letter on the bottom of the page is what Santa wrote back to her. Love it!!

I hope to keep working on this pile and the three boxes. That should keep me busy for the next 100 years!!

what's been happening

I feel so behind in EVERYTHING!! I have not had a free moment to get my thoughts together enough to blog in ages. Crazy time of year. But I do have some pictures to share of what we have been up to. At least some of the time!

We decorated the tree. This is the first year since hubby and I have been together that the tree does not contain a single Hallmark ornament!! This year for my sanity, I decided that I was not unwrapping six huge totes of Hallmark ornaments and putting them all on the tree while the kids ran around playing and ignoring hubby and I. It was a very liberating moment. Instead we purchased a few sets of ornaments at Walmart and some new white lights. The colors on the tree are red, silver, gold-ish and brown. Very pretty. I think Kira misses the Hallmarks as she would not participate in the decorating but she didn't help when we had the others either!! 

Alex however was all for helping! And a big step in my letting go this holiday season... I did not move a single ornament after he placed them. So what if two snowflakes ended up right next to each other. It is a wonderful tree and I am so happy he enjoyed decorating it with us!!

Our elf on the shelf has returned for the holiday season and brought a new friend. We now have Scout and Cookie and they have been having a great time getting into trouble and just plain being silly. That will have to be a whole series of posts to share their holiday adventures!!

On this day, they had left the kids new Angry Birds jammies!! Can you tell they like them??

We went to the annual Christmas party at the Rec Center while daddy was working one Saturday. Oh so much fun!! Kira had Rudolph painted on her cheek and was very proud to show him off.

Santa even came to visit!! The kids said he looked silly with his painted white eyebrows but still managed to tell him what they wanted. Adorable!!

Alex won one of the raffles!! This huge and soft bear is named Edgar Six (and yes there are five more bears named Edgar in our house) He was so happy!!!

We also took the kids to see Santa at the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts. I love the set up they have for Santa and they are always so friendly and kind to the kids. We love going there. The kids enjoy it because we go to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch. Christmas traditions.

I LOVE this picture that the photographer captured. AMAZING!! Then they even emailed me the other three they had taken. Pretty stinking cool. I think it was an oops but I am taking it and am now the proud owner of four great pictures with Santa for this year!!

I have also been a baking fool for the past three weeks. My kitchen and I need to separate as my hubby is missing me. But totally loving the cookies!! After breakfast this morning I need to get baking again and finish wrapping presents. Going to be a busy one.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas! I do hope to be around more in the New Year!! 

last sketch challenge of 2012

I made it to the end of the year with doing a layout every month! This month's was especially hard and I almost didn't make it. I was sliding in pretty close to the cut off time. Hate when I get sick and can't function.

Anywho... here is the sketch we had to work with. Pretty neat and I think I shall keep this in the pile of sketches to use again. Basic in layout but can be embellished like there is no tomorrow. Or left pretty sparse as mine is. (told you I was on a time crunch!!)

And here is my take on the sketch. Pretty much went with what they had. The small picture on the left hand side was placed along the top like the one next to it and I couldn't get it back off to lower it so I added in a small white box to play off the white title on the second page.

These pictures are from Christmas 2008! I'm a few years behind. :)  Alex was big time into Blue's Clues and desperately wanted a Handy Dandy Notebook so he could play along with the show/ DVD/ VHS tape. Finding one was no easy feat and the price.... oh my word. Highway robbery!! The things we do for the kiddos. I will admit it was the best gift that season. He carried it around everywhere and wrote down his clues. I steered away from many embellishments mostly because I was short on time and I love the pictures so much I wanted them to be the focus. I used chipboard letters and rub ons for the titles. Happy to have this done and heading for an album!! 

Okay... honestly... between me and you.... (don't tell) this will be heading into an envelope of other layouts that need to be put into albums. But it did sound good saying it was going to an album. Remember... don't tell!! ;)