WSW: In the Trenches

WSW has been really busy this week. And I was lucky enough to snag some time at my closest LSS (Local Scrap Shop) in Copley last night. I was on a mission for cardstock and Stickles.
If you haven't used them before, stickles are like glittery glue in puffy paint (does anyone else remember the lure of puffy paint?) containers. They come in a variety of colors and are absolutely addictive. Once you start with one, I guarantee you'll want to use more. The Diamond color picks up whatever you layer it on. I also picked up Pink and Golden Rod. I had a project in mind, but it ended up going in a much different place.
Here is what I made:


It's a card for WSW. I bought some Marilyn Monroe stamps from Stampsmith (please, check it out and take advantage of their amazing rubber stamps. When I have some money to splurge with again, I'll probably be placing another order with them. Shipping is fast, you can get some really cool freebies and the customer service (Estelle) is amazing.
So I decided I wanted to do a gold and pink card in honor of Marilyn. It ended up being nothing like I planned, but I really like it. I took some corbis cards that I received in the mail and made a template for a card out of them. I glued the cardstock over them so I could have a little heft to the whole project and then laid out my card. I needed some cardstock and dug into my stash-the thin strip of paper is from a Disney scrapbooking sheet I bought ages ago. I painted some cardstock with twinking h2os and my water pen. Then I used Staz On Jet Black ink to stamp the image once the paper was dry. I used my We R Memory Keepers Foil, Glitter and Flock Alphabet kit for the letter 'M' and used some of my newly bought Prima flowers (bought at the LSS) as an accent. I didn't have a brad, and an eyelet looked too big, but looked through my stash and found a spare, so I popped that in the middle of three layered prima flowers.
I really like this card. And my plan is to make another one with a Norma Jean stamp on it, maybe reverse the whole layout of the card. I submitted it to a few challenges on two peas, but really I'm just happy that it came together so well. It restored my faith in my stamps. And the great news was that the card took just around 30 minutes. Yay!
My sinuses are not happy with the current temperature changes, so it looks like I'm going to be going now. I will try to look in soon. Keep creating everyone!
Note: the card itself is not crooked, but it looks like everything I scan on that scanner goes crooked, I chalk that up to user error.

WSW: Reflections

What was my night last night? For the first time in so many months, I sat at my craft table (yes, I wasn't just using it to stack things on) and played, experimented and created. And it was FUN!

All too often in life, we give ourself these huge goals and, if you're like me, make huge lists of things we have to do. All to often we forget what we want to do.

What is so special about this week? Being that it's WSW (Worldwide Stamping Week), almost everything is special about it. Head on over to Twopeasinabucket.com and sign up for free membership. From there, you can access the master WSW Challenge thread and start stamping! It's 100% free and you'll probably feel better than ever. No, you WILL feel better than ever, because you'll be doing something fun and creating some wonderful projects. This is my first year, so I'm probably way too enthusiastic about it.

I used to be a 'creative' which meant I went to work and made layouts and played with web-safe colors and everything was cool. I also played on Nervousness.org (a mail art site) and made cards, atcs and the like. Then there was a reorganization where I work and I'm doing some Purchasing stuff. So, other than when I do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or Script Frenzy (National Screenplay Writing Month), I'm not really letting my creativity fly. Luckily, I signed up for a membership at Two Peas, and it's been wonderful. It's inspired me to create, which I never thought would happen again.

I still have a lot to do. I made 4 or 5 projects last night that need to be scanned, and I have a couple of challenges (okay, a whole list on notepaper, with sketches of what I want to do) to work on, but that's fine. Because really it's not about competition (thank you, Lisa Vollrath), it's about creating. And I have a few more days to do it in, so I think I'm good there. All I need to worry about is walking the dog and making sure I eat at some point. Other than that, I'm going to be playing with pretty, glittery things and velvety flocks and even some Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils (which are, quite possibly, the most perfect things on the planet). And I'm thinking pink and gold for a certain project, and I really hope I can pull it off because it would make me really happy. Will post more as soon as I can, but for now, just go and check out the site!

Crossposted toTwo Peas Blog.

Digital Layout

You're probably tired of hearing from me today, but I just had to pop in to show you my newest digi-layout:

I LOVED using the toy camera frames on the photos on the right hand side. And I found a lot of pictures that show my brother's smile. He just graduated last weekend, and it was really fun to watch him interact with his guests. At one point, there were over 50 people in my parent's living room! I think about half of the senior class showed up.
There was a lot of food, and I got to bring home some dill dip, shredded chicken and baked beans. And some giant olives (which I was most thankful for, LOL). All in all, it was a great time. Now I can't wait to see what else my brother has in store for us!

Scr-aft! First Blog!!!!

It's Scrapping, It's Crafting, It's all kinds of things!
Join GothamGal on her journey with a very quick and easy project--a Graduation Brag Book.

Sc-rapper's Delight

I have a few projects I want to work on right now. First, my brother's graduation book. Mostly, it's going to be pictures and some captions of who was there, etc. Not too scrappy. But I picked up some cool papers, school and grad themed that I want to put as backgrounds. Of course, I have to hook up the photo printer first and print out the pics.

I'm going to give that to him just as a momento. I never really had one of those for graduation, and I sort of wish I had now. I know that I have some pictures floating around the house from my graduation, though.

I think I'm going to make a trip to Archiver's this weekend and get some plain cardstock and then use that cardstock (with the photos) to see if I can find some big frame die cuts. I'm not interested in anything fancy... I figure he'll be fine with just basic photos on mats in colors that 'Pop' off the page.

Of course, I might also pick up some grad stickers for him too. A nice cap and gown from Jolee's or something might be nice.

I'm asking my Mom and Grandma for some family pictures, I'll be making them Snapfish photobooks. My mom keeps saying she'll send some, but I haven't yet seen them. I wanted to do a few pages from scratch, but I have a feeling I'll just pop a few pictures into the layouts, too...

I also ordered two things from HSN.com. Now, I want to preface this by saying that we don't have the channel, but I was looking for something and found the item at a really good price on HSN.com. I ended up not even buying what I was originally intending to buy from there, but it's like a craft Mecca! I picked up a Scraparatus, which is a die maker, a hole punch AND an eyelet setter. I bought the MM kit a while ago, but never had much luck with the eyelets, so I'm hoping this works for me. The dinky dies look like a lot of fun. HSN had it for under $10! Here it is!

I also picked up something that I'm really excited to use--the Fiskars Shapecutter! I cannot find my paper trimmer, so I'm on the lookout for that. But I wanted the shapecutter because I saw some of the templates at Joanne's and they have one that looks perfect for picture mats. Here it is! I'll have to report back once I get these and try them out.

So that's what I'm doing now. Hopefully I'll have some eye candy soon.

Please visit a fellow Pea

Pea Kayla Barker has just opened her etsy shop, and to celebrate, she's holding a contest for some beautiful, personalized cards.
Spink Studio has some great cards, stationary, postcards and almost anything else you can think of to send to your friends and family. The best part is that they can be custom, which adds that personal touch. The colors are bright, the prices are good and I definitely recommend Spink Studios to anyone looking to send out something professional, clean and fun.
My personal favorite is the chandelier cards, which can be personalized. They'd be great as invitations, thank you cards, annoucements--the possibilities are endless.

Be sure to stop by Kayla's shop soon, so you can enter to win some personalized cards. And be sure to bookmark the site, so you can see what other wonderful things Spink Studios has in store for us in the coming months.

My new creative home

The reason I started this blog was so that I could explore my creative side. The only problem is that I never seem to post!
Anyway, I love the digi community at TwoPeasinaBucket.com. If you've never been, two peas is a great site for tutorials, paper and lots of other awesome stuff. There are free layouts, free courses in photography and much, MUCH more.
I just started to do some physical scrapping, after being a solid digi scrapper and mixed media art fan, and so that will be coming to my two peas blog (as well as here).
Anyway, here's my first pea blog. More is definitely on the way!
I hope you'll join me in my new creative journey. Please comment with your blog so I can see what's going on in your creative life!