On A Card-Making Roll!

I am finally getting some creativity accomplished! I have been on a card-making roll the last few nights, and am happy to say I have used up every last bit of some of my Christmas scraps…scraps I have had for three or four years! Here are some of the regular sized cards I have done…

This one was done for the “Bling It” Challenge at Stamp Something. I didn’t use much, but I did add a little rhinestone to the tip of her hat. The image is a digital stamp from Fred, She Said colored in with pencil crayons.

All of these cards were made with larger scraps that I had…and the ones below are where every last bit of the rest of those scraps went…3×3 mini cards…

New (old) Cards added to my shop!

I just finished moving all the cards from my ShopHandmade shop over to my artfire shop, and added a bunch more that I hadn’t got around to uploading yet. Not many Christmas cards yet, I’m saving those for my craft sales, so they should be up beginning of December.

Hoping to get my mini albums added on in the next few days…really hoping I figured out the shipping right!

Midnight Madness Blog Hop!

I stumbled across this Midnight Madness blog today that does card sketch challenges…and they look like really fun sketches, I can’t wait to give the latest a try! AND they are having a blog hop this weekend which looks like tons of fun and there are loads of really awesome-lookin’ prizes to be won, so be sure to stop on over and check it out!! The Halloween/Fall themed hop runs from October 16th at 8 a.m. EST until October 20th at 12 a.m. Midnight.

Discovering Blog Candy

Ok, so this is actually the first time I’ve fallen victim to the whol blog candy thing, but I have been on the prowl for card challenges lately and have come across a ton of blogs with links to blog candies on the sides and the piqued my interest…it has been a loooong time since I’ve had new scrappy goodies, and I don’t lose anything by trying…matter of fact I gain some really cool inspiration from the bloggers offering them! Anyways, some ask to post on our blogs about them, others to add them to our sidebars, so I am just going to add them all to my sidebar…if I can figure that out! LOL! Check them out!!

Sassy Scrappers October Projects

This month at Sassy Scrappers our sponsor was The Cutting Cafe! Thank you so much to Regina for giving us some wonderful cutting templates and digital stamps to work with. Here are my creations…

This birthday card was created with the Cupcake Digital Stamp set, upsy daisy papers, daisy d’s ribbon, kaisercraft rhinestones and martha stewart glitter…

The treat holder and the witch hat card were created with templates from the 13 Piece Halloween Set, reminisce papers, and misc. ribbons and embellishments.

I’m Dreaming of a PINK Christmas!

I found this challenges over at Christmas Cards All Year Long…they do a challenge each month and you need to make 5 cards that fit into it. The challenge for October was to use pink papers and add a ribbon. I ended up doing six altogether…so far! I have decided I LOVE pink Christmas cards!!

New Shop and WCMD

I have been trying for ages to find a place to sell both my paper creations and digital kits, and everywhere I tried seemed to have something that just wouldn’t work for me. Thank to Nessa for pointing me in the direction of artfire, I now have a shop set up that I am really happy with!! It’s still in the “under construction” stages, lol, but it’s getting there! You can check it out here: http://www.artfire.com/users/stephster17designs

Tomorrow is World Card Making Day and I am REALLY hoping I can spend my day making cards. Hoping and praying and hoping some more, lol! I have been in such a creative slump lately, I have been scouring the internet for places to celebrate tomorrow so I can get the inspiration I need to get moving…ummm, don’t hurt me, but Christmas is just around the corner and I have done NOTHING so far!! My first craft sale will be here before I know it and at the rate I’m going I’ll have one seriously empty table!

Anyways, here are a few places I am hoping to find some inspiration tomorrow…

Sassy Scrappers: We’re having a crop, which actually kicked off today! Stop by and join us!

Caardvarks: challenge posted every hour from 8am-10pm PST *Edited: they are not posting challenges but lots of inspiring cards from some featured designers every hour.

Scrapbook Star Countdown to WCMD Challenges

My Sketch World: a crop plus challenges & tutorials all month

I’m sure I’ll find more places to visit, and I know I am missing at least one that I apparently forgot to bookmark. Let me know if you know of any other events!

Last Scrapper Standing Part 2…3…4…

Well, I meant to post after each challenge but that obviously did not happen! There are just NOT enough hours in the day!! I managed to make it as far as challenge #5 but just couldn’t keep up to the speedy scrappers they’ve got over at Serendipity! My elimination came at a good time though, I had to spend the week at Brian’s while he was away in Vancouver and I just CANNOT scrap there for some reason, in a whole week I got one page done…grrr….! So, here’s what I got done for challenges 2-5….

Challenge #2: We had to use mixed alphas, either mixed b&w and color photos or new and old photos, dressed up with bling and down with distressing, and had to do some comparison journaling. I struggled a little with the journaling but I managed two layouts. The first are some old photos I found when I was at my mom’s for a few days, the couple is my great-grandparents and the one photo was taken back in the 40’s. The second layout has a photo of my on graduation day and one from last year. 

Challenge #3: We were given some color combos to work with. These two pages I think are the quickest I have ever done! We were on our way camping for the weekend and I was afraid I wasn’t going to get any done, but our departure time got pushed back a couple hours so I whipped these out in record time before we left…

Challenge #4: We were given a sketch to work with…these both have some mroe photos I found at my mom’s (don’t worry I used copies, lol!). The first is me at 4, and the second is me with my mom, grandma and great grandma.

Challenge #5: This one was really fun, we had to use found objects from around the house. I found all kinds of fun and interesting things to play with…

This one is me at my first birthday. I used a notebook paper, a binder divider tab, and the bottom of a styrofoam cup

This one is Austin with all of his Webkinz toys. I used a popsicle stick, the rim of a styrofoam cup to stamp circles, and the tags from on of the Webkinz

This one is Austin at the beach, I got two pages out of this…the first page has some twine from a soup mix, a soda can tab, and staples. The second page has a piece of onion bag, a safety pin, and painted medical tape (also on the first page)

The last one is Austin with Leo the Lion from the Royal Bank, we ran into him in the street and Austin wanted a photo taken. I used a sponge for the background, some party streamer, and part of a spinning top toy.

And that’s as far as I got! I have been playing a long a little though, the challenges have been so fun! Now I’m off to bed, gotta be up early for Austin to go to swimming lessons in the morning, but I’ll be back here tomorrow with my reveal for our Sassy DT! We got some AWESOME packs of paper from Bound + d/termined, I can’t wait to share my creations with everyone!!!

Last Scrapper Standing

It has been a loooooong time since I have entered any contests, I have just been so busy with so many things lately, I have barely even been scrapping at all! So, I signed up last week to join the Last Scrapper Standing contest at Serendipity Scrapbooks. Round 1 finished off this morning, and I managed to get 4 pages done for it, I was so proud of myself! We had to use distressing, bling, journaling strips, and one photo with dimensional adhesive to make it pop above the rest. Here are the layouts I managed to get done…

This one I did using last week’s sketch at Let’s Scrap:

This one I did using this week’s sketch at 52 Sketches 52 Weeks:

Now I better get work on Challenge #2!!

Day at the Beach

We spent the day at the beach yesterday, the three of us, plus our friend and her three little girls. It was a ton of fun, I LOVE swimming in the ocean, I could have stayed in there all day if the sun had not been bringing on the tell-tale headache of heat exhaustion…can I just say it is going to be a looooooong summer, lol!! Anyways, I didn’t take my camera along this time since cameras and oceans and lots of little children don’t mix too well, lol, but I did take it when Austin, Brian and I went out and spent the day just hanging out at the same park a couple weeks ago.

Brian mentioned I don’t do anything spontaneous anymore…well, it’s hard when you have to take busses and have a child. If you don’t plan you’ll end up stranded somewhere with no diapers, am I right? So I came up with a compromise…I told Brian to meet us in town the next morning, we were going out for the day, but he couldn’t no where. I knew exactly where we were going, plannedevery detail in front of the computer checking park info and bus schedules and making a grocery list of things we would need. But for him, it was spontaneous because he didn’t know what was happening. It was a great plan if I do say so myself! LOL! So we head out to Chemainus on the bus and hit the Kinsmen beach park, right on the ocean. Awesome spot complete with playground and bathrooms…essential. We spent some time checking out the creatures at the beach, playing on the playground, having a picnic lunch, and even having a water gun fight, something I must say Brian was NOT expecting from me, lol. Then we went for a walk through town and down to the ferry launch, found a few more creatures and headed home. It was a great day!! And here are some photos to share…