Custom Album #2

My 2nd custom order was for a Father's Day Album. I had a lot of trouble with this one because I rarely make masculine items. I love to embellish with flowers & girly things, so this was a challenge. I used Basic Grey's Marrakech line of paper & Karen Foster stickers. I found some tool & fishing type die cuts in my drawer and they worked out perfectly on this album!

Custom Album #1

Here is my first out of 5 custom albums that I have to do this week. This customer wanted an album for her friends 40th Birthday. She said she wanted pastels, which when talking Birthday was kind of hard for me. I think of Birthday as being bright and cheery, but I think this one turned out nice! She gave me ideas for the album and said she wanted pages for a young girl, friends, family, vacations, and sports. So to tie in with the beauty of the album, I went to Quote Garden and found some beautiful quotes to add to the album that went along with each page theme. The paper line that I used for this album is Basic Grey's "Lily Kate" I think it worked out really well!

Custom Orders & NSD!

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day. I decided to do a little shopping! Lots of stores had great sales and I snagged a few great deals!


My first stop was of course, Archivers! I did this cool make & take with the K&Co Citronella line of paper. It's so pretty & summery I had to pick up a pack as well!


I did a little shopping... got lots of Prima Flowers, a few paper packs, some cute cupcake paper & wooden album by Kaiser Crafts, and lots of other fun stuff! The flowers in the large tube in the back that say Archivers were a free gift for being a newsletter subscriber! How awesome is that?


I FINALLY picked me up a rolling craft tote to take with me to crops! Hobby Lobby had all of their totes 50% off! What a great deal! I also picked up a matching caddy for tools and stuff and a matching green glitter album.


Now to my custom orders... I got 6 this past week all for paper bag albums! That's more than I've done all year! I'm so excited to get new customers! This is a start to one of the albums that I am working on. She wanted a pastel 40th Birthday album for her friend. For me, it was kind of hard to think pastel and Birthday. So I rummaged through my paper stash and found this beautiful paper from the LilyKate line by Basig Grey! I think it's turning out nice so far! I'll post pics of all of the albums once I'm finished!

Now you know what I'll be doing all week.... SCRAPPING!!!

I've been Workin' Hard (or hardly workin!)

This week, I decided to actually scrap some of my own photos! Since I rarely do that, I thought it might be fun! I actually had fun doing it and I think the layouts turned out quite nice! I used some sketches from Page Maps for ideass, they helped me out a lot!


This is a 2 page layout to add to my cruise album. It's several photos from the shore excursion we took to a private island when we were in the Bahamas.


I bought this cute paper a few weeks ago and I HAD to use it with this picture of Reagan from her first Halloween. I never thought that pink & red would go good together, but those are the colors in the paper and I think it turned out quite nice!

This is my first time ever scanning in layouts. I had a bit of a problem with the colors/shadows. I figured out how to stitch them in photoshop, but when adjusting the colors, that was the tricky part! I don't know how much I like scanning them, though you can see them in a little more detail, you can't see all of the pretty glitter on both pages! They are much prettier in person!

Motherly Love

With Mother's Day coming up, I got in the spirit to make a "Mom" album. The hardest part of this album was coming up with a clever title. Last year my Mother's Day album was titled "My Mother, My Best Friend," I don't like to use the same title twice, so I tried to come up with something different. Luckily my cousin Amy helped me with that! We were scrapping this past weekend and she said "How about Motherly Love?" It worked! I think this album turned out to be a very beautiful album. I used Basic Grey's "Porcelain" line of paper and packed it full of lace, pearls, flowers, and beautiful "Mom" inspired quotes.



CLICK HERE to see this auction!

Don't Forget! Mother's Day is May 10!

My Daughter the Supermodel

Well, I hate to say it, but that time has finally come... I have become one of those "Gymboree Crazed Mommy's!" I didn't think I would ever fall into the Gymboree fad for my daughter because their stuff is usually so expensive! A few weeks ago I got on their website and they had stuff marked down 60%, which brings it to about the same prices as Carters and other stores that I normally shop at so I thought I would give it a try because I know Gymboree has a wonderful quality to their clothes. I also had a 20% off coupon that I could use as well. I ended up buying a few things from the Happy Rainbow & Wild One lines. Well, let's just say that I got addicted! Everything is SOOO cute!!! The cool thing is that all of their lines have accessories and everything that match! That way if I buy lots from one line I can mix and match everything! I ended up getting a lot from the Happy Rainbow line and she's pretty much set for her Spring & Summer clothes for this year. I thought I would go ahead and buy some 2t in the Wild One line and keep it for the fall. It's hard to buy ahead because I don't know what size she will be in, but I guess it's worth a shot! If it doesn't fit her at that time, there's always eBay! With this shopping trip I ended up earning $75 in GymBucks which are like coupons that you can use during a certain "redemption" period. To use them I had to buy $150 worth of merchandise and I ended up getting it for $75, so basically 50% off. When I redeemed my GymBucks {last week} I got her a lot of 3t sized clothes for next Spring & Summer from the Social Butterfly line. It's all just too cute... and addicting! I feel like Reagan is my own little Barbie Doll! :-)


Here she is in outfit #1 from Happy Rainbow


She finally let me play with her hair, since it's long enough now we keep it in pig tails when we go out.


Outfit #2 from Happy Rianbow


It was a tough job... but she let me paint her little toenails!


Outfit #3 from Happy Rainbow


The rest of her wardrobe & accessories from Happy Rainbow


Her Fall wardrobe & accessories in Wild One

If you have children and you haven't shopped at Gymboree because of the higher prices, I suggest that you check out their sales! They get new lines every month so they have to make room for them by marking down the old lines! You can also find coupons in magazines like Parents, Parenting, Plum, etc. To learn more about how to get deals & steals at Gymboree, check out GymboHaven or GymboFriends. Sometiems the deals make the clothes even cheaper than Walmart! Beware, Gymboree is ADDICTING!!!

I Love "Going Green!"

After altering the Prima Flower jars the other night, I decided to try my hand at another recycling project! I had some soup cans sitting on my counter and I wanted to see what I could do with them.


First, I cleaned the cans and then painted them with my Making Memories Acrylic paints that I had laying out. I ended up putting 2 coats of paint on them, and then spraying them with glitter and sealing it with Mod Podge {a MUCH better solution than clear fingernail polish!}


Once the cans were completely dried, I cut out little flowers & leaves with my Cricut and adhered them to bamboo skewers {I used a hot glue gun to do this}


Then I cut down a piece of styrofoam and glued it into the bottoms of the cans.


I cut the ends of the skewers to the size that I wanted and put them in place in the styrofoam. Next I added some crinkled paper to give it that grassy feel {you can get this in the gift wrap section at Target or Walmart for about $1}


To finish them off, I added some glitter to the "grass" and tied little bows around the cans.

These make a very fun and cute project. I have done several in the past using little metal pails {you can find samples of those at http://www.papercreationsbyemily.com} The good thing about these little flowers is that they will live forever! They make great centerpieces and very pretty decorations! Try one for yourself, they are so simple to make!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... I am giving these away on the MLDT blog! CLICK HERE to enter and win!!!

Happy Earth Day!

It seems like EVERYONE is "Going Green" nowdays! Especially this week since today is Earth Day! The ebay design team that I'm on (MLDT) has also decided to Go Green this week! Here is my contribution to the challenge:


I had some old prima flower jars that I was saving back for a rainy day, so I decided to "recycle" them for the challenge! You can also see a line of Making Memories paints, I haven't used them in years, so I also dug them out for this little project.


I actually had a lot of fun with this and I think the lids turned out very pretty after I sprayed them with glitter and added a clear coat {as you can see, I used nail polish... the fumes kind of got to me!!!}


I used some scrap paper that I had laying around from the Basic Grey "Urban Prarie" line {I've been using it for my Cruise album as well}


The jars say "Live, Love, Laugh, Believe, Dream, Create"

CLICK HERE to see this auction on eBay!