Family pictures

My parents 50th Anniversary was this past summer, so one of the things we planned was to have family pictures taken.  I have 2 brothers and one sister. And all but, my sister have families and most of us live apart from each other. So we started planning this celebration and the family picture about a year ago and even then on the weekend that we were to be together it didn't look like we'd all be there, but everyone did make it for the picture. One of our gifts to them was a scrapbook. I did several pages of their parents, grandparents and siblings. Then we sent out info to their friends and family and ask them to create pages for this special scrapbook. It turned out to be a very special scrapbook and they love it.
All that to say- I am just now getting the page done for my family to put in their book. I was so busy preparing for anniversary celebration and getting several of the other pages done and I didn't want to put the page together until after the family pictures.
So here it is.

 This also meets the following challenges:
H2H Challenge  for the third week of January. It is a photo inspiration challenge. I used the browns, tags, and leaves from the photo.

Frosted Designs Fabulous Friday . This week it's a recipe: 3 patterned papers, 2 buttons, one word title
and then at Let's Scrap we have a sketch.

Hope you enjoy and go check out the above places and see all the wonderful artwork.
Have a blessed day,     Polly

Feminine, vintagey card

I am finding that participating in challenges and using sketches has really challenged me to get more done in a shorter amount of time. Mainly I'm not getting a project all planned out in my head before I actually start putting together something. I'm learning to start and build as I go, most things can be changed or adapted. This is really a fun process.
So I started this card with a sketch challenge from Let's Scrap and then the H2H challenge for last week was to use color (Close To My Heart color of course) and glitter.  It was easy to work these two challenges together.
I misted the textured piece of cardstock on the left with clear glitter mist, which you can't really see in the photo. And then added just a touch of Glitz Glitter gel on the tips of some of the rose petals. I am also loving the seam binding and all the ways you can color it. You'll definitely be seeing more of that here. 

 

Here is a close-up of the rolled flowers with Glitz Glitter gel added to some of the tips. The ribbon is the popular seam binding. It comes in many colors, but if you purchase white or cream, you can then color it to match whatever project you need it for. Saves on buying so many colors, and then maybe still not having the right color, plus then you have the money to purchase other NEEDS :) It comes flat, but you can get this cool scrunched look by misting it with some water and wadding it up. Let it wadded in a ball until dry. Love this stuff! 

 

Close To My Heart products used:

 Roxie paper pack

Art Philosophy cricut cartridge ( the bracket shape on the left edge and rolled flowers)

stamps

waxy flax

the pearl buttons are vintage and this seam binding is also, but Close To My Heart now carries the seam binding in off white

                              Enjoy your day and thanks for stopping by. I love to see your comments too!     Polly               

Our Little Girls

I'm scrapbooking the first year of our twin granddaughters, at least that is all I'm committing to right now. It is so fun to be doing girly pages. We have a daughter and 3 sons and then our daughter had 5 boys, so I've done a lot of boy pages since I started scrapbooking.
This LO is for a challenge over at  Frosted Designs and a Winter Wonderland Blog Hop, so go check it out. For the challenge we were to use vellum, transparencies, and/or acrylic. I have vellum flowers the I cut from a vellum paper, a transparency over the two pictures on the left page near the bottom and also a transparency with the words "daddy" on it.
I also met the Let's Scrap challenge # 127. Often times we have more pictures than what we can find a sketch for. So we were to take a sketch and reduce the sizes of some of the pictures so that we could fit alot more on the LO.
I used Sketch 4-27-11

 

So here these sweethearts are, in their first few hours.

Here is a close-up of the transparencies I used.

I  used the new Lucy paper pack from our new Close To My Heart Spring/Summer 2012 Idea Book and of course the Art Philosophy Cricut cart and also the Storybook cart..

                                                Hope you enjoy,      Polly

Vintage card

I recently joined the community at  Paper Craft Planet and in that community there are tons of things to get involved in. Challenges, sketches, swaps, techniques, tutorials, groups and more. One group that I've signed up for is "All Things Vintage". They have lots of things going on over there. I will be sharing what I do and learn from over there. This is my first project with them. We were to take this image of an old post card and create a card.

So I used Mojo Monday 224 sketch

And here is what I came up with

 

and here is the inside

I haven't really gotten into printing images and working with those, but I did enjoy doing this card. So who knows, I might have found another fun thing to do! I love trying new stuff though.

                                                                  Blessings on your day,          Polly

Rock the Block collage cubes done!

I finished my Rock the Block collage cubes. Well, almost, I have the tray covered with paper, but I want to add some smaller pics to the inside bottom. I haven't added those yet. I might put in a title of sorts and the year if I end up giving it as a gift as I'm also thinking of doing. It didn't take me long to decide what I wanted to do with these blocks. I think it would be fun for the grandchildren to find their own  picture, but they won't be doing that often because they are so far away. :(  Some of my blocks don't fit together so nicely cause I added a little to much dimension. Hard for me not too. I did learn one thing while doing this project, when you ink the cork letters, let them dry good before flipping them and doing another side. I fixed most of what got messed up. I am going to have to do a least one more of these and maybe more. Great gift idea and I've  seen some cool home decor projects. You can order this set with a large stamp set from me. But just til the end of Jan.So hurry and order yours today.  The big stamp set will no longer be available, just the collage block set. See earlier post to see exactly what comes with this special and how much it is.
So here are my sweeties:
This is our oldest grandson, 

and the next one

and the next

and the next

and the last boy! These fun and delightful boys are all brothers and our daughter's children.

What a bunch of noise, rowdiness, and fun boy stuff. I love them everyone.
And then one of our son gave us 2 girls at once! And we are so excited to have some beautiful girls in our family.

So there you go, all 7 of our special little people. And such a fun thing to work with and decorate.
  H2H Challenge for this week is a 3-D project so here it is. Go on over and check out all the other 3-D projects that other talented ladies have created.
And this also meets the challenge over at Anything Goes for the "anything goes" challenge.
Hope you enjoyed.                                          Polly

Yay! I won Top Three winner over at Frosted Design!

I'm so excited. Yes, I know, it doesn't take much :) I won Top Three in the Card Sketch #9 entry over at Frosted Designs. Go on over and see all the wonderful artwork there. They have 3 challenges going all the time. A card sketch, scrapbook sketch, and Fabulous Friday challenge. It's lots of fun and a great way to provoke you to get creative. The card I made is posted here.
This is also the card we are making for our February card class.
                                                         


                                                           Have a blessed day,     Polly

Cardstock only Challenge

Over at Frosted Designs for their Fabulous Friday challenge we were challenged to do something using only cardstock, no patterned paper. Hmmmm, that took some thinking. In fact, I'm right down to the wire :) JK I am down to the wire, but I have had the project done for a couple days, just busy with other things and didn't get it posted. This was a fun challenge and it simplified the project a little. So here is my layout.

 

Go on over to Frosted Designs and check out more ideas for using only cardstock.

     Blessings to you all,      Polly

Another Winterish Card

 I created this card for two reasons: one was for Frosted Designs card sketch #9 and then for one of the ladies in my card class. She's just begun to attend and I told her she could pick out a card she liked and we could do her pick for the next class. I think she really liked the bird and I didn't have the one like she was looking at. It was also a window card.
I  wanted to cut the card from the Art Philosophy Cricut cart. There was a square card with rounded corners, but it didn't have the circle cut out of the center. So I went into the Cricut Craft Room and created it myself. This is a free program and you can manipulate designs and cut them if you have that particular cartridge. I haven't used it much so I can't tell you much about it yet. I then cut the circle scallop from the above cartridge. I had to guess at the size since I wanted it to work with the circle that was cut out of the center of the card. I had cut the center circle out of the card at 2", so I cut this layer at 3" and it worked almost perfect. If you were to look on the inside you would see a little of the layer circle there. But I was pleased with the results. I can fix the inside.
The brown flowers (or snowflakes, they kinda look like that to me) were made by cutting the zig-zag border that's on the same cartridge. It's the one with one straight edge. Again, I had to take it into the Cricut Craft Room so that I could set the width and length that I wanted. When I set it to cut at 1/2" just using my Cricut, I got about a 4" length cut, but in the Craft Room I could set the width and length. I then scored the length of this strip every 1/4" and accordian folded, joined the ends and squished together and stuck it on a small cardstock circle.  The bigger flower I did the same but cut it 3/4" wide.
The buttons are a stamp and then I covered them with Liquid Glass. I used Stardust glitter gel in each of the holes on the circle layer. I ink distressed edges of card, patterned paper and the inside of circle layer with Crystal Blue.

Supply List: Close To My Heart unless otherwise specified
  Paper pack- Wonderland
  cardstock - White Daisy
  paper flower - Spring Blossoms
  inks - Crystal Blue, Desert Sand
  stamp set: D1455 Blessed (retired)
  Glitz - Stardust Glitter Gel
other: Black Staz-on ink
          Martha Stewart ribbon

Tissue Tape Tutorial

Tissue tape seems to be one of the newest trendy decorating embellishments. There are lots of them out there, in every color and style, but how cool would it be to create your own? To have just the right design without buying a whole roll of it and to have it immediately and not have to either, go looking at all your favorite stores to find just the one you want or to have to find it online and wait for it to be shipped.
How about if you used a product you probably already have in your home and if not in your home, you'll only need to go to the nearest drug or dollar store to purchase? That's what I'm talking about. Go check out this tutorial at Let's Scrap. You will be using this trendy tissue tape on a layout or card today!
                                                               Have a super day,              Polly

A New Beginning

Well, I'm off to a slow start as far as the blogging goes, here it is January 9 and no posts until today :(  This was one of the reasons I procrastinated and put off even starting a blog, I don't want to be one of those who only posts once a month or less. I don't like going to someones blog and find out their last post was 6 months ago. I should insert, I realize that sometimes "life" happens and its more important than blogging, so I do realize there are times when it's better to be doing other things than blogging.
So that is one of my goals, to post at least once a week and ideally more than that. I'm going to start with that first anyway. I do still want to do some work on my site, change some things and learn to do some things that I see on other blogs and I haven't figured out how to do yet.
Another goal is to "get out" more- joining other groups and such, participating in challenges and blog hops. You learn so much and I get so inspired! 

I had a friend who used to try to convince me to scrapbook and one of my reasons (which I thought was totally valid) was that I was not creative. I viewed creative people as those who could draw and paint and do those kinds of things. I can barely draw a stick figure, I finally broke down and got started and got hooked! Then I had some ladies want me to teach them and they were giving me the same excuses. By then I realized that we all are creative, creativity can be displayed in lots of ways. Most of us can learn to be creative in many of those different forms. Mostly it depends on if we have the desire to learn a form of creativeness. All things take practice. And when you practice you get better. I realized that they were at the beginning (where I had been) and they were looking at me like I was the expert and at that point I knew I wasn't an expert, but I was far advanced from where I started and that they too could get to where I was. I still feel like there's a ton out there to learn and I want to learn so much of it. It's so fun sharing what you learn and having someone finally realize how far they've come too and that it wasn't as hard as they thought.
So here's to a fantastic, fun, full year of creating, inspiring, challenging, and learning whatever it is you want to learn and then sharing that with a world full of creative people.

                                                                                                          Blessings,     Polly