Creative Space

I've been having lots of fun creating with friends and look forward to our workshop group this coming Friday. But lately I've been in the purging mood! I am lucky enough to have a whole room that is my creative space aka The Scrapbook Room. But it is also my stamping room, the sewing room, the everything creative room! I am also blessed with lots of STUFF. But I'm not as organized as I'd like to be so I'm giving myself a challenge this week. Spend at least 15 minutes a day (or more!) purging and organizing! I want it to be easy to pull things out and put things away. My dear friend, Laura, is busy working on her new "studio" and that is inspiring also. I challenge my friends to spend a little time in the midst of the chaos and reclaim your creative space! It can be done. Think of all the fun you can have creating if you know where everything is and be able to have your whole desk to work on, not just a small spot of it! I will post pictures once I get the room organized. Please send me your pics or stories! I'm giving myself until January 1st to get it just the way I like it, you can do yours too! I'm throwing in a stamp set for the best story/picture of your space! Please let me know how you are doing and if you need a little bit of encouragement! January 1st (or maybe sooner) I will post my pictures of my space. Have fun!!

Puyallup Fair

In August, at the urging of my scrapbooking students, I decided to submit an entry in the Puyallup Fair. It's the largest fair in the state and 8th largest in the world. I was very intimidated at the thought of it but decided, why not? So I entered the Army Strong layout and a card that I had made for my dad's 75th birthday in the cards division. And then promptly forgot about all of that. So a couple of weeks ago I get a call from my dear friend, Barb, and she asked if I was surprised? About what, I asked? She said, "You don't know?" "No, know about what?" She says to her husband, "She doesn't know!" "Know what?", I said...Then she told me that I got the biggest award, the Grand Champion in my category!! I could hardly believe it! So I called the Hobby Hall at the fairgrounds and they verified that and said that I also got an honorable mention for my card that I entered too! Not only did my layout get grand champion but it also includes $100 in prize money too! The nice ladies at the fair said that I need to use it to buy more scrapbooking supplies so that I can enter again next year. What a thrill to have such an award!

The Kindness of Friends

I work for Michaels when I'm not doing my Close to my Heart business. The location I've been working in for the last 2 and 1/2 years is in Federal Way, Washington. A spot has opened up in my city, Tacoma, and Debbie ( the manager there) said she'd love to have me. (Sweet lady.) So even tho' I will miss my Federal Way co-workers, I will still see them once or twice a week since I will still teach SDU (Scrapbook Design University) at Federal Way as well as Tacoma. Two of my favorite people showed up to wish me well as I did my demo at work today. Keiko and Catherine. They are ever so sweet and brought me a present. Catherine is Keiko's 8 year old daughter. She is smart, funny and loves to craft with me and her mom. I have loved getting to know them during our craft times each month. Here are pictures of the gift that they brought to me.

Father's Day Cards

I made these cards for my dad and my father-in-law for Father's Day. I want them to arrive early and since they have to go out of state I figured that today was a good day to mail them. The truck card is made with the the CTMH Beary Busy My Acrylix stamp set and the Beary Best stamp set. I used Chocolate cardstock and the Creative Basics Cherry-O collection plaid paper. I also used Sorbet Exclusive Inks stamp pad and Chocolate Exclusive Inks for coloring. I used my sewing machine to stitch around the borders of everything. I used Sorbet ink and Colonial White Exclusive Inks stamp pad to ink the edges. I used some linen thread on the fold to tie a bow. I don't know where I got that. But I'm sure that you could also use some floss if you wanted to.

The Dad card also used the Creative Basics Cherry-O collection plaid paper. My card base was made using Sweet Leaf cardstock and Crystal Blue cardstock. I used the Beary Best My Acrylix stamp set for that super cute fisherbear on the lower corner. My dad LOVES to fish so this set was a must have! I stitched borders with a deep tan color. I got the arrows and brads from the Mini-Medleys Antiqued Copper Collection. I used the paper piercer to make my hole before putting the brad through. I stamped dad with the Chocolate Alphabet Large in Sweet Leaf ink and tied each letter with a strand of Chocolate Floss. And I used the Blender Pen to color the fisherbear.

I really enjoyed doing a couple of masculine cards for a change. Now I am off to create a surprise one for my husband for Father's Day! Have fun making a Father's Day card for the men in your life! Show them you care with a handmade card or gift. They will love it!

Army Strong

We are so very proud of our son, Travis, who is serving in the United States Army. He has finished basic training and is now in AIT, advanced training for the job he will have. I wanted to preserve these memories. I included the letters he has sent in a pocket behind the picture on the left page of the layout. The title was done with some Making Memories foam stamps in the Jersey font. There are some official U.S. Army stickers by K & Company. The dirt paper is by an unknown source, as well as the Bazzill paper, I don't know the color names...sorry, I was scrapping at a local store and used what I could find there. I did use Colonial White cardstock by Close To My Heart. The pewter brads are also CTMH. Oh, and the camo paper is also from an unknown source. I really love how this layout turned out and most importantly, I hope that my son loves it!

Seize the Day

A few weeks ago I really needed something to get my creative mojo going. I went to spend the day with my friend, Debbie and we did a bit of "tandem scrapping". What that is, is that we had the same pics and same paper, etc, so we both worked on the layout together. It had been a long time since we had done that but we had these pictures and just had to preserve our memories of our fun in March when we took the opportunity to seize the day! We used the Cherry-O Workshops On The Go, which included the Tulip Mini Medleys, Chocolate Waxy Flax and a guide to give you layout ideas. We didn't use the idea but just kind of went our own direction. The background is Cocoa. I used the Chocolate Large stamp set. I LOVE that set! It is so pretty and can go with so many layouts! To finish it off I printed my journaling on a clear transparency and adhered it with spray adhesive. I felt charged up and can say that I'm finally scrapping again!!

The Big 75!

Today is my dad's 75th birthday! And in honor of that I am posting a picture of the card that I made for him. I will try and see if I can add some detail pictures too, but for now here it is. I used the March Stamp of the Month set, called A Little Everything. And the Remember This stamp set also from Close to my Heart. The colors I used are Vineyard Berry, Indian Corn Blue and Garden Green. Oh, and also Colonial White for the top and also the color of the brads. I used some Liquid Glass to accent the month and day. I used the Martha Stewart scoring board for the Indian Corn Blue pattern. It was easy to do using the envelope piece on the board. Nice angle for the lattice effect. I used some metallic embroidery floss by DMC. Neat stuff to work with. Even with the hand stitching.