Extremely Quiet Saturday

I had forgotten how quiet this house is without the kiddos.  This is the first time since the kids were born that my husband and I have had the house to ourselves on a Saturday.  No children climbing into bed waking us up early looking for food, no ji-jitsu or ballet, no arguing, bickering or "But Mom..." all day long.  I am not sure that I like it.  It feels wrong somehow.

I spent most of the day working on my next entry for the Great Impressions Rubber stamp company's monthly contest.  I will share later on in the month but here is a little teaser:

I have the itch to work on a couple of layouts but I am not sure what layouts -- summer or winter, kids or myself, event or every day life.  I think I will just go through my photos until something pops out at me.

I do have a few other cards to share.  I did these last November as demos for the ScrapBox and had forgotten to take pics of them.  Both of these are using Great Impressions stamps as well:

Materials used:  Copic Markers, Prism Simply Smooth cardstock, Memento ink, Spica Markers, Ranger Stickles, VersaColour, Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock, Making Memories Holly Leaf Foil Mistletoe pattern paper, Spellbinder dies, Prism cardstock, pop dots, BoBunny ribbon, Great Impression stamp.

Materials used:  Prism Simply Smooth cardstock, Copic markers, Memento ink, Spiga makers, Angel Wing Shimmerz paint, Zig 2-way glue, Flower Soft, VersaColour ink, Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock, Making Memories Holly Leaf Foil Mistletoe pattern paper, Spellbinder dies, pop dots, Great Impressions stamp.

I think that I am going to head out to Timmie's, grab myself a nice large double-double, in preparation of a creative night.  One good thing about the kids being gone, I can leave my scrap supplies all over the dining room table.  My husband can just eat his breakfast in the living room tomorrow.

Happy Saturday :-)

My Contest Card Entry

Well, my card entry for the Great Impressions Rubber Stamps' monthly contest was not the winner but I must admit, I really like what I did for it.

The stamps for July were a beach theme.  Instead of going the typical route of doing a beach diorama, I decided to do something a bit different.  Spellbinder octogon dies were perfect for making a port hole style of frame.  Then add in some Spellbinder doodle parts to give the port hole a more waterish feel.  Of course, we can't forget the stamps since the whole purpose of the contest was to showcase the stamps.  I chose to use the monthly stamp of the water swirls and the whale.  The whale seemed to be the best choice for the port hole style of card I had swirling around in my head.

Well...this is what it ended up looking like:

Materials used:  Great Impressions H200 Water Swirl border stamp, Great Impressions G373 Smiling Whale stamp, Bazzill cardstock, Bazzill swiss dot cardstock, Memento Ink, Copic Markers, atyou Spica glitter maker, Ranger white embossing powder, Martha Stewart layered arch corner punch, Spellbinder's Large Octagon dies & Doodle Parts dies, Pop Dots, Kaisercraft rhinestones, Queen & Co pearls, and Krylon silver leaf pen.

The new stamps for August have been posted and I have several ideas swimming around for my August entry.  I just need to get my hands on the stamps. ;-)  I love contests they force me to stretch those creative muscles and often help jump start my mojo when it decides to take a vacation.

On a more personal note, I am going a bit stir crazy in such a quiet house.  My kiddos are staying with my in-laws for the next two weeks.  Two whole weeks....I still can't believe I agreed to it.  After all this quiet, I will be ready for some sibling bickering.  Remind me that I said that when I am pulling my hair out 3 weeks from now.

Hot, hot, hot....

It has been a hot, humid week but thankfully, the heatwave seems to have broken.  The air is cooler and smells fresh after all the rain that we had yesterday.  I know my garden was happy to see the rain and now that the humidity is broken, I guess I don't have an excuse to avoid the weeding any longer.

On the crafting side of things, I have been participating in the 28 days of Summer Fun Challenge over at LCOM the past week or so.  Every day there has been a new challenge to jump start the creative process.  I have been enjoying the kick in the pants since lately, it seems like I have needed it.  I have done more layouts in the last two weeks than I have probably done in the first 6 months of this year.

The most recent challenge was to create a layout about friends.  I have been wanting to scrap this photo for a while.  It is from the retreat last fall when I got to meet up with Michelle and to finally meet Lori from ScrapCentral.  It was perfect for this challenge and in this day and age, it is interesting that you don't need to live close to each other to meet and develop close friendships.

Materials used: Basic Grey Basics pp, Core-indinations Jenni Bowlin embossed cardstock, BoBunny pattern paper, Prima flowers and felt, Tim Holtz stamps, Stamp'n Up ink, American Craft Thickers, Robin's Nest Dew Drops, My Mind's Eye Journalling Spot, Tattered Angels Chalk and Glimmer mist, Tim Holtz grungeboard, unknown brads, & Twinkling H2O Radiant Rain.

 I am so looking forward to the retreat in the fall again this year.

Today's assignment is to try and figure out a card design.  Great Impressions Rubber Stamps has started a monthly challenge where you can win the next month's stamps.  Basically you need to use two stamps from the current month's Stamp of the Month to produce either a card or layout by the 20th of the month.  They will chose a winner each month.  Details can be found HERE.  Jenn convinced me that I should try out for this one.  I have used a number of their stamps for the demo cards that I have done for her in the past.

Well, I better get the troops moving.  It seems like they are sleeping in and wasting this beautiful Saturday.

Holiday Weekend Hangover

Mondays after long weekends are the hardest.  It is so hard to get moving again, to get motivated, to get back into the routine.  It always seems like you have a holiday weekend hangover.  You are tired, sluggish and feeling just a little depressed to have to walk back into work and start on those piles of papers that you hide away before you left.  The only thing that seems to brighten the day is knowing that you are one more day closer to the weekend when this one is done.

Our holiday weekend turned out to be pretty quiet.  Canada Day was a bit of a bust.  We usually head out to a local park that has a midway, bouncy castles, a big beach and food vendors.  Well, this year was a bit too cold to go swimming.  The midway wasn't there and there were huge line ups for the bouncy castles.  We basically had lunch and head back home.  Since my kiddos are not big on fireworks (they hate the noise), we hung around home and played Lego Harry Potter instead.


But before we left for the Canada Day celebrations, I did manage to get pics of my kids is being silly in the red and white.

Materials used: Bazzill cardstock, Tattered Angels glimmer mist (Candy Apple), Fabric leaves from Walmart, Luxe pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock edge, Glitz Designs 12" rubon, Versamark ink, American Crafts thickers, and Queen & Company pearls and felt.

Gotta love kids in silly hats.

Canada Day basically set the trend for the rest of the weekend.  We stuck close to home and just spent time with each other -- enjoying the fact that there were no routines to follow and no commitments to be fulfilled.


Happy Monday...only 4 more days till the weekend.

Happy Canada Day!!

It is a beautiful sunny day for it too...at least so far. 

For some reason, I woke up at 4:30 am this morning.  Wide away for no reason.  My eyes just popped open -- very strange.  Since I was wake and there was no way that I was going to be able to fall back asleep, I decided that I would get up and finish off a challenge layout that I was working on.  The challenge was to use a mask.  A fairly simple challenge but it did get my creative juices moving.

The other night I had misted, painted, stamped and inked a piece of Bazzill dot cardstock to create the base of the layout.  The next step was to figure out how the rest of it come together.  So after much fiddling, shifting, layering, distressing, inking and playing around....

Materials used:  BoBunny pattern paper, Bazzill dot cardstock, Tim Holtz stamps, dies & distress ink, Cuttlebug quilling dies, Golden Acrylic Pearl Mica, Versamark ink, Tattered Angels chalk mist and misting screens, Prima flowers, and American Crafts Thickers.

I am loving the BoBunny Peacock Lane pattern paper.  I love all the purples.  It is my favourite colour and one of my favourites to scrap with as well.  It fit perfectly for my youngest school picture.

I got it done just before my kiddos decided to wake up and take over the dining room table with their breakfast mess.

Not sure how we are celebrating Canada Day yet.  It will depend on how the weather holds up.  I heard rumblings of possibility of rain later on this morning.  We might take the kids to one of the outdoor celebrations with games & a midway or we might head over to the Museum of Nature and check out the dinosaur exhibit.  Either way....it will involve separating the kiddos from the Lego Harry Potter game.  If they had their way, they would play the game the whole day.

Have a fabulous Canada Day!