Masculine Cards...

I have a cluster of birthdays at the end of June and most of them are for the men in my family.  I usually don't struggle making cards for women, kids or for various holidays but birthday cards for men...those seem to be ones that I tend to belabour.  I will often procrastinate in getting them done because I don't have any ideas.  I just can't stick a pretty flower on it and call it done.

This year was no different.  I procrastinated to the last minute and then I made these:

Materials used:  Bazzill cardstock, Core-dinations cardstock, Tim Holtz grungeboard, Krylon Copper leafing pen, Basic Grey pattern paper, and dictionary paper.

Materials used:  Basic Grey pattern paper, Bazzill cardstock, Bazzill dot cardstock, Core-dinations cardstock, Tim Holtz grungeboard, Krylon Copper leafing pen, Tim Holtz metal elements, various brads and May Arts ribbon.

Materials used:  Bazzill cardstock, Bazzill dot cardstock, Core-dinations, Basic Grey pattern paper, Tim Holtz grungeboard, Krylon Copper leafing pen and various brads.

I was trying to keep them fairly simple, a bit grungy and tried very hard to stay away from the frou frou that I normally love to put on cards.

Now that these are done, I need to get my dose of frou frou...luckily, I have a layout challenge using that masks that will fit the bill.

Last day of School....

My kids are practically vibrating with excitement knowing that today was the last day of school.  They are looking forward to the break from the homework, from the set routines and just getting a chance to do their own thing.  My son was hopping around the house, this afternoon, singing: "No more French".  Little does he know that he is suppose to be reading and speaking in French everyday in the summer....well, I will break that news to him on Monday.  We will give him the weekend to enjoy first.  I just have to make sure that I suppress my evil cackle when I tell him the news on Monday.

As usual I was running around frantically at the last minute trying to finish off some cards for the teachers.  Our thank you gift usually consist of a nice handmade card with either a gift card to Chapters, Tim Horton's or Scholar's Choice.  Having a number of teachers in our family, we have heard many horror stories about some of the gifts they have been given so we play it safe...very safe.

Since I was once again short on time, I was looking for something that would have the "wow" factor but with minimal effort.  Nothing adds "wow" to a card better than Prima and if you add in some quilling...well, you get this:

Materials used:  Basic Grey pattern paper, Stampin' Up cardstock, Krylon silver leafing pen, Cuttlebug quilling dies, Prima flowers, Tattered Angels Glimmer mist, Rock Candy stickles and Golden Pearl Mica.

Seriously, this card only took me 10 minutes to put together.  I have fallen in love with these quilling dies and well, Prima stole my heart long, long ago. 

I just hope that my daughter's teacher liked it.

It has been a while....

So what can I say? 

Well, my life got a little insane for a while with commitments at home, at work and a couple of unexpected trips to my home town.  All of which were quite stressful and basically sapped all my time and energy for creating anything. 

Thankfully, the home commitments have settled down and will even more when school is out in a couple of weeks.  The work commitments have slowed a bit as well and the unexpected trips home will not be unexpected this time but anticipated and planned for the end of July.

Mojo has not fully come back yet but I anticipate a full return soon.  The longer days with more sun usually spur me to create more.  This summer, the kids are spending two weeks on the farm with their Grandparents instead of the normal one.  I will have two whole weeks of kid-free time to create.  I still can't believe I agreed to them being gone that long and I will probably go stir crazy with the quiet but everyone keeps telling my husband and I that it will be good for us. We will see....

Even though I haven't been creating anything in the last few weeks, I still have been actively acquiring new paper, embellishments and other wonderful items.  One of those items was the new quilling dies from Cuttlebug. 

I have been waiting for these since the moment that ProvoCraft announced them.  I must say that I have never quilled before but my mother does such beautiful work that I have always figured that I would give it a try some day.  Well, someday has arrived.

These dies come in a set of three and each set has 4 dies, a quilling tool and some flower stems with it.  That is actually my only complaint with these dies is that if you want all three sets, you have to purchase the 3 quilling tools as well...you really don't need to have 3 quilling tools.  It would have been nice for ProvoCraft to have the option to just purchase the dies without all the extra bits.

The dies are easy to use and the learning curve to produce a decent result is small.  As I played, what I discovered is that a thinner weight paper works better than a thicker paper.  It is still possible to produce nice flowers with the thicker paper but it took a bit more playing.

I don't think it took more than 5 minutes to make a flower but what to do with them once they were done.  I had originally planned to make a card but for some reason this layout popped into my head instead.

Materials used:  Bazzill cardstock, 7Gypsies pattern paper, Prism cardstock, Pink Paislee Artisan Tape, Grungeboard, Making Memories Journalling page, Prima butterfly from a vine, Copper Krylon marker, Tatter Angels Chalk Mist, Cuttlebug quilling dies, DMC pearl cotton.

I think that mojo is slowly coming back after all.

Happy Sunday....and I am off to play with more cardstock and pretty paper.

Happy National Scrapbooking Day

What a bright beautiful day it is too.  I finally think my mojo has been jump started and I am doing a happy dance since I have really missed creating these last few weeks.  I needed a little help this time to get going and sometimes there is nothing better than a class to get the juices flowing once more.

For National Scrapbooking Day, Jenn from The Scrapbox invited Debby Schuh up to celebrate with us and to give us some rocking classes.  Out of the three that she is doing this weekend, I could only fit one in our weekend schedule.  As the school year end gets closer and closer, I find the kids weekends get busier and busier and it is harder to fit in my stuff.

Any way....back to last night, I left my husband and children at home with some money to order in some food and off I went to have an evening full of inspiration and dirty fingers.  The class was a wonderful little album made with 7Gypsies product and is called "Pennies from Heaven".  There are lots of folded pages to make all kinds of interesting little pockets to store bits and pieces collected over the year.

The class was only 3 hours so the pace was quick to be able to get all 12 folded pages completed.  I finally got a chance to use the bindery punch as well.  What a cool little toy!!  If I made more mini albums, this would a "must have" tool.  Since I have only made 4 mini albums in 4 years, it would be collecting more dust in my house than not.  Maybe sometime in the future.....

Today, I am going to spend the time in between chauffeuring my kids to their various things putting the finally touches on the album.

As you can see, the cover is not complete and I still have a bit work to embellish up the pages but I must thank Debby for jump starting my mojo.  I really enjoyed the class and I am keen on getting this album completed and moving on to do a few layouts.  I might just have to see what kinds of challenges are out there in the cyberworld for NSD today.

Have a fabulous Saturday and a happy National Scrapbooking Day.

I have a new toy....

And it is really cool....this is what I picked up at The Scrapbox today:

I have been interested in this since I saw a video on Donna Salazar's blog.  It looked very cool so when Jenn had them in her store today, I tentatively, put one aside and asked for a demo.

Man, oh, man is this thing SWEET.  It ate through 4 pieces of chipboard at the same time.  Gave a nice distressed edge to a piece cardboard and worked well on a single sheet of cardstock.  I can see some really interesting effects with this baby.  I can't wait for the kiddos to head to bed so I can dig out my supplies and play with it tonight.

My only complaint is that it is loud.  Not excessively loud but I can see myself shutting some doors before I use it.

It is so much fun to have new toys to pay with. :-)