Mini-Album, My New Blinkie and (the dreaded) Vacation Photos :o

Our projects are up at My Creative Scrapbook so I can post my latest mini-album now :) I did this album with the album kit shown here: August Album Kit

Hey, Check this out:

I ordered a custom blinkie for my blog from Graffiti Chicks . Isn't is adorable??!! And a steal too! Those girls are AWESOME - fast, friendly and did I mention the prices are amazing??? I HIGHLY recommend them - You've gotta go order one!

Whew! We got back last night from vacation. We were gone 8 days but it felt like a month! I think it was all the moving around we did - instead of staying in one spot. We flew into Altanta last Sunday and stayed there until Tuesday morning. We got a rental car that morning and drove to Clemson, SC (to see where DH went to college) and then went on our way to visit my sister-in-law and her husband in Spartanburg, SC. We stayed in Spartanburg for two days and then went to Columbia, SC to stop in and have lunch with my brother-in-law then drove over to Edgefield, SC to visit my DH's parents - spent the night there and then drove over to visit my parents near Augusta, GA and stayed there two nights. We drove back to Atlanta yesterday and flew home yesterday evening. See what I mean - it was a lot of shuffling around! But it was nice to see everyone!

Here are a few photos from the trip, now I could've posted all 300 photos that I took, but decided I'd only bore you with a few:

In Atlanta we went to CNN (did the tour, its interesting...I've done it before) and went to a Braves Game:

They lost, it was fun anyway - but darn it was HOT and this was a night game. I live in South Florida so I should be used to it, but I was about ready to pass out from the heat!

(Tried to take a good photo and this is what came out - LOL)

This was our rental car - I had something different in mind when I asked for a luxury car so it was sort of funny. DH said he's considering trading in his Camry for one after driving it around for a week {just kidding}.

Clemson

Feeding the horse and donkey at Aunt Grace's house. That donkey was so cute....I wanted to bring him home :)

Well, that's about it for now. Happy Monday - Hope you have a GREAT week:)

Birthdays!

I've been in Birthday mode this month - did a birthday gift project, made a birthday mini-album (will post that next month) for MCS and yesterday made a birthday cake (paper, of course). I made this for my daughter's birthday, can't believe she'll be 8 tomorrow!!!!!

I used three wooden round boxes and covered them with papers printed from this fun, girly kit by Manda at SSD. I added buttons, ribbon, felt ric rac, flowers, some clear sequins and a birthday candle. I put little gifts in each box: earrings, bracelet and a gift card. We got her a Wii last week so this is just a little something extra :)

What have YOU been working on lately? I'd love to know - if you get a chance leave me a comment to link me up to your blog or gallery so I can check it out :)

Happy Weekend!

Fun Stuff :)

I got the two cutest books last week and I've been having some fun with them. I got:

Softies

and

Aranzi Cute Stuff

Here's what I've made so far:

This cute tree:

A keychain

and I've also made some pincushions - the strawberry pincushion wasn't in the books, but one I made for fun - just playing around. The flower pincushion was made with a simple pattern in the book for the "x" shape and I cut a flower from my sizzix to put on top with a button.

These are just way too fun to make and totally addictive!

On to something else............

Do you want to win some scrapping goodies?????

Well, head on over to My Creative Scrapbook for the Sizzlin' Summer Contest! All the details are here: Sizzlin' Summer Contest. Many prizes will be awarded for best layouts in the different categories with one BIG prize for just posting comments on the message board! CHECK IT OUT!

Oh, another thing, I had some good news last week - I had a project picked up for the Dec/Jan issue of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine AND ...... I was named the new Hybrid Editor for The Insider at Digi Shop Talk! If you don't get The Insider, its FREE so go download it now! If you're not a memer at DST, you'll want to register on the site to access the downloads. Pretty exciting (and a little intimidating knowing that over 15,000 people get The Insider each month - eek).

That's about it for now. Hope you have a great week! My daughter's 8th birthday is this Saturday so we'll be celebrating - Yippee!

A few projects to share :)

Got a few things done the past couple of days. Everything here is for Sweet Shoppe Designs (LOVE THEM!!!).

I wanted to make a birthday box with this adorable birthday kit called It's My Party by Christy Lyle. I made a tag to go with it but it wouldn't fit with that honkin' big bow so I left it off :)

This next one was a bit of an experiment - I saw this kit by Dani Mogstad. Its a pre-made album kit for a round coaster album. I added my photos and printed four of the pages (and cut them out). I attached each of the circles with ribbon at the sides. I added a bottom and handle and made a basket. The photos make it look a bit wonky, it looks better in person. Didn't really make the basket to hold anything, just a "memory basket" I guess - I'll put it on the shelf in my craftroom.

I made this card using a layered digital template (see below). Really easy if you've never used one, just drag the digi papers over onto the template and drop them in place. I wanted to make it hybrid so I printed out the different layers separately for the card, cut them out and added them back to the card - to give it dimension. I also added some lace.

Here's the template I used and the envelope I made with the template is below:

The last one is a card I made with Dani's MVP Kit. I made another project with this same kit last year (I'll post photos below). The more I look at this kit the more potential I see. My daughter plays/has played basketball, soccer and volleyball - I was thinking it would be fun to make up some "baseball cards" (you know, like the trading cards) for her with the different sports (another idea to add to the super-long list).

Here's the other project I did with this kit last year - this was an altered shoebox to hold her first pair of basketball shoes (I loved those pink Converse Chuck Taylor high tops!!)

Well, that's about all for now. Hope you have a great weekend!

My Creative Scrapbook

The July Kits are up at My Creative Scrapbook! I've got a few photos of the album that I did for the July Album Kit. I wanted to make a little album about some of the things our freedom allows us that I am grateful for (in the spirit of Fourth of July).

That's about it for now - Have a GREAT week!

I'm Finished!

I've been reorganizing and decluttering my craftroom (well, a little - didn't get rid of as much as I intended). I'm pretty much finished except for reorganizing a few cabinets and painting a big cabinet which I'll be doing next week. I've got a few photos below but have a bunch more here if you want to take a peek: My Craftroom

(click for larger images)

I'm just so happy to feel a little more organized :) Today I start the same process in my daughter's bedroom - eeks!

Hope you're having a GREAT weekend!

Fourth of July!

Made a little Fourth of July Candy Bouquet. I found the star box at AC Moore and covered "fun size" candy bars to make the bouquet. I used this adorable kit by Heather Roselli & Darcy Baldwin called Freedom Rocks from Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Here are a few more pics of the box:

Well I started the daunting task of re-organizing my craft room. I do it about once a year. I've had my eye on this storage rack from Sams Club for a long time now, but was hesitant because it didn't have the "cuteness factor" I was looking for :) But, it is really big and holds a LOT so I caved and got it yesterday. It comes with 18 plastic bins sized 10.5"W x 14"L and the whole thing is 54"H x 36"W x 14"D.

And now, I LOVE IT!!! I started loading it up last night - I can't believe how much each of the bins hold. I'll take some photos once I get things back in order - its chaos in here now.

Here are some "before" photos of my craft room that I took a few months ago:

I'll be decluttering this wall - its gotten too junky. I got rid of the tall white plastic cart - moved all that stuff into the new storage rack I got.


Also got rid of the brown cart under my desk (next to the black chair)



I put the new storage cart with bins here where the wood shelving is in this picture (got rid of the wood shelving). This photo also shows the entrance into the HUGE walk-in closet attached to my craftroom - I reorganized in there too and THAT was the tough part - that took an entire day and I'm still not done. That closet is the size of a small room (you can see it even has its own window in there - lol). I have wall to wall shelving on three of the walls in the closet and it is packed full of craft stuff (its a sickness, really).

I took down the shelves and everything off the wall here and am putting up three rows of uniform white shelves - "L" shaped to fit around the corner. Hopefully it will be a LOT less junky.

So, I have lots to do and will be busy, busy this holiday weekend working on my little re-organization project. Whatever YOU do, I hope you have fun! Happy 4th!

A fun gift idea...

(Click for larger image)

I've been making these for years - this is one of my favorite gifts to give kids because kids typically love art and I love to encourage them to create art. You can get the art cases from the craft store and whenever my daughter gets invited to a birthday, I typically do one up as part of the gift. For the past two Christmases, Michaels (craft store) had the art cases on sale - they had them on sale several times but during one sale they had them for $2.50 each so I bought a whole case of them!

Here's what the cases look like "before" and I have another photo of the inside:

There is a clear plastic cover on the case so I use an exacto knife to carefully cut into the plastic on one side of the case. You have to cut really close to the edge so you won't see the cut. After cutting, the prepackaged cover slides right out and you can slide your new cover in. I use a little bit of ashesive to hold the plastic back down, again just on the very edge and just a little so its not noticeable.

To make the cover insert on this project I used an ADORABLE digi kit from Sweet Shoppe Designs, called Squiggle It. It was PERFECT for this! Here's a peek:

Isn't that cute??!!

I had some good news this month - I had Scrapbook Dimensions ask for a project, Bella Scraps published two of my projects this month and Scrapbook News and Review ask for two projects for their July issue. That's always fun :)

That's about all for now....I can't believe June is almost over - where did the time go???!!!