Christmas Eve 2008

So it is Christmas eve in the Jenkintown, PA. My hubby and I decided to open our presents tonight (including the traditional xmas eve stockings) due to he has to work tomorrow, sadly, and my parents are flying in tomorrow night. Even though most of the presents I already knew what they were (we basically shopped together on Black Friday and got pretty much most of our shopping done in one shot) my hubby surprised me with the great little things that matters. :)

He got me a mini camcorder (which I picked out and did already know about) and some little gadgets to add to my ipod addition. Along with a few other goodies I'll spare you from reading about, he got me 36 mini stamps. This quite frankly I believe to be the best of my presents. They aren't 36 extremely expensive stamps, but the fact that he knows I a) love stamps, b) remembered me complaining that I didn't have many Christmas and holiday stamps/sayings, etc, c) so therefore got me 36 mini stamps to fullfill that request. I think I just might keep him. haha. It made my night and reminded me why I truly love my hubby- he remembers the little things sometimes. :)

(I know I know, shut up M, you're being all mushy) Anyways, here is the goody stamps my hubby got me. They are no pink paselee stamps, but they still make me smile from cheek to cheek! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Many mini stamps!

He's so thoughtful! Yay!

Merry Christmas all!

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Round 3 of Christmas/Winter cards

So this is round three of holiday cards/winter cards. I'm getting closer to my goal of christmas/winter cards that I want to make this year. It's funny that I've made this many cards when I used to only scrapbook. This batch I focused on using this one striped paper I have (I dig it a lot) and these felt sparkly snowflakes I got from A.C. Moore (they were mad cheap! and they have adhesive on the back already, which is a bonus!). At first I wasn't sure I could find a use for the snowflakes, since on their own they look, well, cheap, but with jewels or cutouts in front of them, they rock! Through this whole process I realized a) I need another circle punch, one that is slightly bigger than my little yellow one, but smaller than my blue one (I can't remember the exact sizes at the moment of what they are). and b) I don't have very many stamps that say merry christmas or any christmas type saying for that matter, that are small to fit on the punch. oh, and c) I don't have a punch that makes kinda "flower" shape, which I happened to have some left from a color swap I did, so they worked great, I just wish I had a different color. Anyways, those are things to look into eventually when I get more money saved up. Okeys, enough chit chat, here's some cards. 3 cards again. I've realized I've managed to make 3 card each Sunday that I posted cards. That must be my limit on cards per day to crank out, lol. Anyways, enjoy.

"Do NOT open until Christmas".... yeah...right....

Ok, I LOVE this stamp. So beautifuly done! It also stamps out nice for those of us *cough cough* me *cough cough* that are not the best at stamping clearly.

Simply, Winter wishes everyone!

I love stickles and sparkles if you haven't noticed.

Up close with the no-dry-yet stickles.

Winter wishes on the 25th!

I used a sparkle embossing on the "25th" stamp, which is from my new favorite stamp set by Pink Paislees (one of my favorite companies!)

I'm hoping tomorrow night or tonight to finish up my presents for my dance class ladies, basically they are paint bucket tins with sugar and gingerbread cookies in them. (I know, I'm cheap, but hey, I would LOVE getting cookies for christmas. :) lol.

Laters.

-M

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blog candy

Some blog candy giveaways here: http://blog.papermonkey.org/index/contests_and_candy/

Check it out and join in the fun!

Yay for holidays!

:)

-M

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More holiday cards

So 3 more winter cards down. I've found I enjoy making snowflakey cards. They make me happy. Maybe it is the sparkle, maybe it is the blue and white, I'm not sure. I just know I enjoy making them. So I finally figured out a card idea to use with the mini vellum sheets my mother sent me. Stuff I used for this card is as follows:

• Blue paper sent through BigShot in a Snowflake Cuttlebug folder
• Vellum stamped with StazOn Ink, with Crystal stickles on to of that (It really needed more sparkle).
• The "snow" letters were a BigShot alphabet (don't remember the name right now) but one of the mini alphabets, and then crystal stickles on top of them.
• Blue ribbon with silver edges (not sure where my mom got this, she sent it to me)
• Snowflake punched out with a punch (from mom) with jewels onto (from mom) with more stickle (did I mention I LOVE stickles).
• Then a few blue brads up top to hold the vellum in place at the top without showing the adhesive.

me love sparkles!

and snowflakes.

Snow!

It was fun, I dig snowflakes, and most of the stuff to put that card together were given to me. That's always a plus.

The next card I made I decided to do kind of a simple approach. It may look interesting with the paper punch and the sparkle tree, but it really was quick to put together. I got the idea to cut the corner from this great paper I got at the scrapbook store. I used an edge of it in a previous card, so I decide to try it again with showing more of the fun middle section of the paper. I then stamped the tree in white. After putting the faith popped silver sticker word, I realized that the tree really needed something that only sparkle could fix. I now look back at it, and think I really should of embossed it, but what's done is done. I added a ribbon for flare and tada!

"Gotta have faitha, faitha, faithhhhhaaaa" as George Michael says.

More Sparkles!

The last card I made on Sunday was my favorite of the bunch. It looks more like the cards I aspire to make. I have this great striped paper from My Mind's Eye I got from the The Cropping Station when I went on a Christmas paper hunt. Even though it technically can be used for things besides Christmas, I thought that it matched perfectly with this popped ornament I found at Michael's (or was it A.C. Moore, I can't remember) from Recollections. Anyways, I dug through my ribbon scraps and came across this fun red thin sparkly stuff and it worked out great. I used two types of sticker letters, the big "merry" ones were Thickers Tinsel red foil letters and the small "christmas" ones were K&Company:Brenda Walton Peppermint twist Glitter Stickers. It was nice that they were repositionable easily when I miss calculated originally how much space I needed for the "christmas" part. It was fun, and I enjoy looking at this the best. :)

Merry Christmas!

I love this ornament popped sticker. It even has a little clear window 

that has sequins in it that you can shake around. :) Fun stuff!

Hopefully I will force myself to make more cards and finish up before next week my present ideas for my buds and dance class friends. Adios for tonight.

-M

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Winter Cards

Let it snow is the theme today. Actually cranked out a few cards today. My goal is to get holiday/christmas cards all done by the weekend, but I can't pledge to anything 100% since you never know what's going to happen. Anyways, wanted to try out some stuff I got from my mom in her winter fun. Also, I felt like snow cards. Still trying to think up ideas of using the clear sheets she sent me, since my original idea needs the hard stuff for the main part of the card and not the lightweight sheets that I have. Anyways, keeping busy. All the Christmas presents are wrapped and I only have 2 Christmas presents really that has to get done. We cranked out the majority on Black Friday (I know, insane we were, but we got most of our shopping done and saved a lot of money!). Ok, card time. Enjoy.

More SNOW! I love these sparkle letters.

Can you spell S-N-O-W? :)

snow! I had fun with this cool scalloped edge paper and a snowflake punch my mom sent me.

SNOW!

looks just as fun when folded.

Look at the snowflakes on the blue card. Only in the right lighting can you see them. :)

snowflakes!

Let it snow! Simple simple. The blue card part actually has snowflakes on it, 

but you can only see them in the right lighting.

Ok. I admit it, I kinda want it to snow. I want the dusting, not the ice. I hate driving in the ice but I love the look of the snow. :)

Night all and dream of a white Christmas!

-M

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More fun things to check out!

Ok. so I recently have been spending more time finding ideas then actually carrying them out. This a fun thing of a .pdf give away. check it out and enter to win yourself! :)

http://talkottown.blogspot.com/2008/11/etsys-keeping-me-awake-give-away.html

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Cute idea!

Ok, so this is very cute. Now I want to get one to decorate or even win one (they are having a contest. ) So you have to check out these cute Chipboard chandeliers. I love it with glitter! :)

Check it out at:

http://talkottown.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-friday-giveaway_28.html

I dig it!

-M

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Birthday card

So I got invited to a friend's Mascarade Birthday party. I realllly wanted to make a mascarade themed card, however I quickly realized I didn't have a mask stamp/cutout/paper,etc. so I decided to go with the Birthday card generalized type card.

Here it is, in it's green glory. She already has it by now (the party was last night).

Also we got our wedding photos and albums,etc. from the wedding photographer today! yay! Our main album is coming in Tuesday, but we got these mini albums (mini versions of our big one) called "brag books" so I was uber excited to get that to keep at work. We also got prints of some of the layouts from our album as a special gift bonus from our photographer to us. :)

If you haven't seen our wedding photos, check them out at www.pictage.com/446901 . Our wedding photographer, Jonathan, was awesome and very cool, I would suggest him to anyone. Supposably the one photo: (of us walking down the street in Bethlehem,PA with it being in Black and White except my dress' red lining is colorized to pop the red out while everything else is b&w) helped get our photographer a few more weddings booked, because people really like them. :) yay.

Anyways, off to figure out dinner and get my mom's package (wedding photo stuff) ready to go to send out tomorrow. Adios!

-M

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Fun mail and layout challenge

So I've been slacking on posts recently. I blame World of Warcraft and the newest expansion for it, as well as me stressing to figure out what the heck we're going to do about our car insurance. (Ours is getting to be a pain and is too expensive, must find a new one. blah!)

Anyways, did a layout challenge (I might and might not be able to enter it, it depends on if I can get to the scrapbook store by Saturday-it is a little bit of a treak to get there.)

Below is the challenge result for what I did. Basically they give you a kit with stuff in it, and you provide the pictures and design it how you want. They included 1 main sheet, 2 half sheets of designer paper, a chipboard circle, a green tag, and a safety pin. All the rest of the stuff I provided from my own stash and designed it myself (with a slight bit of inspiration from a scrapbook page layout sketches book I got.) Here it is:

The full layout!

primas!

oh baby!

Ok, so my journaling leaves something to be desired. 

I have bad handwriting.

So I did the whole layout, then realized it wasn't Thanksgiving but Easter, 

so I got the button to work for it. :)

Also I got a fun package from my mom in Michigan. It is all fun stuff for expanding my stash of scrapbook/card stuff. I also got a free table (left in the hallway in the "free" area of our apartment complex) so now I have more table space to do my cropping and actually don't have to do it on the kitchen table or the floor. My cropping room is actually a room to do stuff! Yay!

Below is the fun stuff I got from my mom. Thanks mom!

(my loot)

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Pumpkin Treats

So I got this recipe from the Thinking Inking blog of DebbieDesigns.

She made these cute Pumpkin shaped Rice Krispie Treats, so I thought I'd try them.

They probably don't look as cute as the ones she made since I'm not as crafty in the kitchen. Anyways, making them from friends at work, since I thought I'd bring something in for the NewsRoom table for once.

I'll decorate the bags maybe if I get a change. If not, they still are cute.

Anyways, this is how they turned out.

1) Basically start with 10 oz bag of marshmallow and mix 4 tablespoons of margarine with it in a glass bowl that is sprayed with cooking spray.

2) Microwave the mixture on high for about 1 1/2 minutes

3) The stir/add about 15 drops of yellow food coloring and 8 drops of red food coloring.

4) Microwave for another minute.

5) stir in 6 cups of Rice Krispies.

6) once you can pick up the mixture shape into 2" balls, indenting the top for the stem hole.

7) for the stems and leaves/curls use green fruit roll-ups. Roll about 1/4 portion of the roll tightly to make the stems. Then take a thin slice and make the curly leaves just curling around your finger to make it curly. Add the stems and leaves where the indent on the pumpkin balls are.

8) Since I hated waiting and wasn't sure exactly when to make the pumpkin balls they started out a little blah looking, but after I was all done with the stems and leaves they firmed up a bit more, so I re-shaped them a bit, which in turn helped the stems stay inside the indent better.

Basically I had to re-shape them more than I wanted, but that is because I hate waiting for things to "dry" or "firm", so I re-shaped them after already "making" them.

It was fun, a little messy, but fun. I hope the crew likes them tomorrow at work. :)

Night.

-M

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Cardmaking in the Dark

So after about 5 minutes into my Halloween card making, our power went out. Luckily it was around 3pm, so there still was some daylight out, however it was stormy and rainy, so it wasn't a lot of light. After about an hour of the power being out and having to open the window because it was so damn hot in our apartment (we are on the 8th floor) the complex's fire alarm started to go off. So I end up gathering my purse and heading down the 8 flights of stairs to outside since you never know if something really is wrong and I would rather be safe than sorry. 

Well supposably one of the people in the apartment thought that if they pulled the fire alarm it would get the power on faster. haha. Anyways, the fire department turned off the alarm and checked everything, though the power was still off. Pouring down rain outside, I decided that now that the fire alarm was off, I might as well head back up to my apartment and get back to card making by window light and use a flashlight in the bathroom. Halfways upstairs I realized that, damn, I really am out of shape and that going up 8 floors of stairs really does suck.

Anyways, got 3 cards accomplished before I had to pick up my hubby from work. The power kicked back on as I was walking out the door. (figures).

Anyways, these are the cards I did with no power on in the apartment. I hope to make a few more Halloween/Fall cards so I can send some to family and friends and not just to a few from that list. Thank heavens the power is back on, otherwise I wouldn't be able to post this! haha, nor would I likely survive in this day and age. I need my computer and tv! Okeys, posting pictures now. :) All three have a consistant theme of the polka dotted paper which were scraps from a scrapbook page I did for the monthly contest at the scrapbook store, but each card kinda took on their own personality though used the same dot scraps. Enjoy! :)

(Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch)

(cute charm I found hiding among my scrapbook stuff when I was cleaning the room)

(31st of October Card)

(I love this stamp. Sadly my glitter brackets look weird. I had crystal stickles but I wanted orange so I put orange sparkles, however it didn't turn out well. It's ok I guess)

(I do love this cuttlebug pumpkin embossing folder that my mom got me. Thanks mom!)

(Happy Harvest! I love prima flowers)

(Like I said before, I love prima flowers)

(who needs stamps when the ribbon says it all!?)

I had fun, even if it was without power. Whipped out the ipod for some tunes since I hate being in the apartment without some noise/tv/music going on when no one else in here with me. The music helped me zone out and forget the fact that I had no power in the apartment.

Anyways, I hope to get more cards and scrapbooking done these days. Yay! :)

-M

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Type photo fun

So later today I plan to sit down and make my halloween cards (I know I know, I'm running out of time!).

But before I dive into cardmaking land, I stumbled upon this cool site:

www.typorganism.com

It takes pictures and remakes them via type. Very cool if you ask me.

Here is one picture I did: 

(Original Photo)

(Typorganism picture below)

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Re-designing stuff

So today I decided to re-design the blog. The old setup just was not what I really had in mind. I still am trying to figure out the basics of html, so right now I'm not going to attempt to change the background texture, partially because I kind of like it, even if it is a template. 

I did decide to make a new blog header. My husband asked me a few days ago if I could make his blog (on the video game World of Warcraft) a new header eventually, once he gets pictures of all his characters together, so it got me thinking about my header. My old header was kind of boring and highlighted a few of my actual designs from my old college portfolio. Since more of this blog is the crafty side of my hobbies and less of my actual portfolio work (though I will put some of that in here too sometimes) I wanted to make it more unique.

A while back when the scrapbook shop near where I used to live had classes on different techniques and such, I met a wonderful woman who helped me get ideas about my wedding (this is before I even had an idea what to design my invitations like). She helped me get through all the majors as well as make my "Bridal Bible," as my husband called it all the time through our wedding planning. 

(The Bridal Bible)

(The Bridal Bible is a bit overloaded. 

Thankfully I don't have to add anything else to it anymore!)

Anyways, after some of those classes got done, she mentioned that she would be doing a digital scrapbooking class. All excited, I jumped at the chance to do digital scrapbooking since me being a graphic designer and also working in Photoshop everyday for my job. Sadly however, the class was canned due to the scrapbook shop being sold, bought, re-located and things got all re-done. Luckily I got some great stuff she sent me to try it out on my own before that happened. Hopefully they will bring it back and I can make it to the classes at the new place. Due to the wedding, I've been keeping it all on the back burner, but decided to whip the materials out and try them when making my new header. And Tada! New header. See the old vs the new header below (well and the new header is up top as well).

(old header)

(new header)

It was fun, and I can't wait to try my hand at more digital scrapbooking stuff. :)

Happy craftying!

:)

-M

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