Where does the time go?

Lily Bee has a great new line called Stationery.  The subtle patterns and colors are perfect for mixing and matching with the bolder patterns of the other Lily Bee collections, and they also look great on their own.  Here's a page I created using a couple of the Stationery papers and the adorable banner stickers from the Happily Lost line.  The cute little 3-year-old girl of mine in these photos just turned 9 years old a couple weeks ago!  Where does the time go???

I recently purged a bunch of my old scrapbook supplies and I came across several packs of Chatterbox wood frames that I bought about 5 years ago in my early days of scrapping.  I challenged myself to use an entire pack of them on this page.

I added droplets of Sea Foam Spritz to the paper and then typed my journaling on a transparency.   The beauty of printing the journaling on a transparency is that the words blend in nicely with the background and don't completely cover up the beautiful paper.

A fond farewell . . . my design team term with Lily Bee is coming to an end this month, and after much vacillation I've decided not to continue on for another term.  I want to slow down a bit over the coming months and not scrap quite as much as I have been over the past year (which has pretty much been ALL the time).  It's been a wonderful experience being on the Lily Bee design team, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity (thank you, Kristen!).  I can't wait to see who makes the new Lily Design Team!

10 Year Anniversary

Today my husband and I are celebrating our 10-year anniversary.   He proposed to me in a very special way.  The background story is that we used to go out for Chinese food every Sunday night when we were dating, and we topped off every meal with fortune cookies.  One Sunday night our waitress placed the usual plate of fortune cookies on our table.  I reached for one, unwrapped the plastic wrapper, and broke open the cookie to get my fortune.  I discovered that it was no ordinary fortune cookie.  Inside was a handmade fortune written by hubby (then boyfriend-soon-to-be-fiance).  In tiny letters he had written some beautiful sentiments, followed by the words, "will you marry me?"  Of course I said yes!!

I later found out that my husband had gone to the restaurant a few days before to get one of our regular fortune cookies.  He carefully cut open the plastic, then he used hot steam from boiling water to open the fortune cookie without breaking it.  After replacing the fortune with his own message, he steamed the cookie shut, then placed it back in the plastic wrapper and glued the wrapper closed with a dab of crazy glue.  He snuck it in his jacket pocket that Sunday night and secretly slipped it to our waitress. Thank goodness she didn't accidentally deliver it to the wrong table! 

The table favors at our wedding were beautifully embellished cellophane bags containing white and dark chocolate-dipped fortune cookies to commemorate the sweet proposal.  One of the messages tucked inside some of the  fortune cookies was this lovely quote:  "Grow old with me, the best is yet to be."   I used the quote as the title for this page:

I made this page with Prima products, including one of the new canvas sheets that I used as the base for the page.  The canvas comes painted with these colorful butterflies.  I added clusters of colorful embellishments to match the colors on the canvas underneath.

To highlight the photos and give the rest of the page some subtle sparkle, I coated the area outside of my stitched circle with Mod Podge, then I sprinkled glitter over it while it was still wet.

Thanks for stopping by!!

New Shimmerz Products!

I've been busy the last few days planning for my daughter's 9th birthday party yesterday. We had planned to have the celebration at a local miniature golf place, but when I found out last week that heavy rains were predicted for the day, I had to scramble and plan a party indoors at our house. So we had ten very energetic and sometimes bickering 8 and 9 year old girls here yesterday for 4 hours straight. Music blasting, girls jumping on the furniture and running throughout the house . . . EEEsh!  Our poor cat didn't know what to make of all the ruckus and decided to seek refuge in a quiet place under my desk.   What is it about this age? They seem to have a lot of disagreements with each other. The tears! The drama! The conflict! And that was just me!!!  But seriously, they all seemed to have a good time for the most part.  And I don't have to think about planning another birthday party for a while, so all is well.

I want to tell you a little bit more about two great new product lines that Shimmerz has added to it's line-up of gorgeous sprays . . .

Coloringz were created with bright, vibrant crayons in mind. They are super opaque, highly saturated colors without shimmer.  I love them because they are great for saturating lace and other items with rich, solid color. Yet they are still water-based and clean up with soap and water like the other Shimmerz products. My favorites are Mama Sings the Blues and Pink Stiletto.

Shimmeringz are non-pigmented, highly iridescent sprays that can be used on their own or layered with any of the other Shimmerz products. We're talking serious "bling" here!

And the good news is that Scrapbook.com  now sells Shimmerz products.  My new favorite color is Mama Sings the Blues.  So when you're doing your scrappy shopping there, you can throw some new Coloringz and Shimmeringz into your cart!

Happy Birthday my Sweet Rebecca

My not-so-little girl is turning 9 today!  Happy Birthday, sweet Rebecca!  Here's a Prima layout I made with pictures of her from a couple years ago.  She's still my little fairy princess!

Every year I make handmade cards for my girls on their birthdays. Inside the cards I write a long letter to them sharing my warm feelings about them, about who they are, who they have become, and I tell them how wonderful I think they are at their new age.   After they look at the birthday card and I read the note to them, I tuck it safely away in a box to be saved for them when they are older.   Someday -- maybe when they are 18 and going off to college -- I will hand them the box full of these cards that I've made for them every year since they were babies.  Here's the card I made for Rebecca this year:

*SIGH*  I just wish she would slow down with this whole growing up thing! 

Headbands

My daughters love to wear headbands.  Danielle, especially, is enamored with them.   There was a period of time when she would not leave the house without a headband on her head.  So before she outgrows the headband phase (which hopefully won't happen for a few more years), I've been having fun making some flowery headbands.

Here's Danielle modeling them for me. I made these first three headbands with Prima's gorgeous flowers and trim.  Prima now makes plain headbands that you can embellish yourself.

 

Here's a headband I made using paper's from Lily Bee's Lovely line. 

I made the flowers using various punches, then I coated them with Mod Podge to protect the paper.

The only problem now is that my girls fight over who gets to wear which headband.  *sigh*  Next time I'll make duplicates.

By the way, I widened my blog columns to (hopefully) make my blog look less cluttered and easier to read.  It looks fine on my screen, but please let me know if it looks wonky on any of your screens!  And pursuant to a request, I  added FeedBurner "subscribe by email" to the sidebar.

Have a great day!

Prima happenings

Have you seen all the beautiful new Prima products trickling into stores?  There's so much great stuff!  I have lots of Prima projects I haven't posted yet. Here are a couple:

Here's a layout using some of the brand new goodies. The new flowers and rub-ons are heavenly!

Here's a calendar I made using two acrylic sheets and some of the products from Prima's beautiful Sparkling Spring Collection:

Want to win some goodies?  Prima has a fabulous giveaway on their Facebook Page right now.  Be sure and "like" them and follow the instructions for a chance to win a great prize!  

Creating Keepsakes February cover layout plus a downloadable dog template . . .

I was honored to be asked to create the cover layout for the February 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes:

Here's a close-up of the layout:

As seen on the cover of the February 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes.  Copyright Creative Crafts Group.  Posted with prior permission from the publisher. 

Some people have asked me about the boy on the cover.  No, that's not my son (nor my puppy).  But they sure are cute, aren't they?!  I've also been asked about the paper pieced dog peaking over the title strip.  I made it myself by simply sketching the shapes on cardstock and cutting them out.  Then I added ink, chalk and pen for the highlights and markings. And since some people have expressed an interest, I created a template that you can download and print.  You can find my downloadable pattern on the Club CK blog: Doggie Die-Cut Template.

Tootles!!