Summer Notebook Cover

My last notebook is almost full so time for a fresh notebook and fresh cover.  I use these for to-do lists and other daily notes.  My Stampin' Up! wish list is already written in the back :-)

I did a video a few months ago on creating the cover if you don't have a notebook style hole punch that matches the notebook you are covering.  This technique works with any type of notebook.  It's my most watched video. Here's the link:  Spiral Notebook Cover.

Before I fitted the cover of this version, I used my Cricut to cut 6 large circles to allow my pattern papers and embellishments to show through.  This trend of having elements behind your die cuts was a challenge over at Two Peas a few weeks ago I just didn't have time to do then.  I thought it would make an interesting cover and allow the notebook to have some layers while still lying very flat.  I also cut a layer of thin chipboard with the same circle pattern and placed it under this blue paper to give a little more depth.

It was so tempting to put buttons in those cutouts!  I have to resist to keep this really usable.

The stamped image is from Stampin' Up! and the stickers are My Mind's Eye So Sophie.  I used lots of happy summer colors though I'm sure this one will last me through fall at least.

Thanks for visiting!

Making a Mask

I should have taken one of those 'what's on your worktable' photos on Saturday.  I had these cards and some other projects in progress. It was a mess!  Many ideas had come to me at once which I loved.  It seemed that for the last few weeks I haven't been that inspired.  One of these new ideas didn't quite pan out (OK, everything got crumbled up and thrown in the trash) but the others were finished and will be along as the week goes on.

I was looking for a good material for making my own reusable masks.  An easy way to make a reusable mask is to use your Cricut or other cutting device to cut on out of transparency film.  The same film you use for printing transparencies works great as a mask.  It is thin and won't curl up when spritzed the way papers will.

I cut the mask for the background of this card using the Storybook Cartridge and my Cricut.  Here is the  the transparency mask I'm saving so it can be used again on other cards.  It is a little stained but still usable.

In my quest for something good to use for masks, I tried vellum.  It turned out to be horrible for a mask as it curls immediately when you spritz it with a mist.  However, I cut this same image from a printed vellum and got a really pretty result so I used it as a background.

The flower is made with plain old muslin.  I dyed it with some SU! ink mixed with water and stamped the dried fabric with a background image.  The brad is from Teresa Collins and the trim from Webster's pages.

What did you do for Memorial Day weekend - relax, travel, craft?  Hope it was a good kickoff for summer.  Thanks for stopping by today!

Almost 7

Wrapping up my stepdaughter's wedding photos from 2010 with this layout of Nai Nai in her pretty blue dress.  She wasn't in the wedding but she certainly matched and her doll had a coordinating smocked dress, also.  I have no idea where they found this; it was adorable.  Her birthday was just days away, thus the title.

I used rub-ons to find some key words to describe her.  A wonderful thing about family events is getting to see the children.  Living three states away, we don't get to see them very often.  "Grampa" and I watched after them while the adults were at the bachelor and bachelorette parties the night before the wedding. We originally planned on taking them out for the evening but ended up in a hotel room with the kids making a fort out of hotel bedding.  Why were we such fuddy duddy baby sitters?  There was a tornado and torrential rains!  The kids didn't seem to mind.  What a weekend!

Some Cosmo Cricket Material girl paper and flowers from Stampin' Up! rounded out the page.  Thanks for stopping by!

The Season ends and a New Catalog begins

Today's card features Season of Friendship which Stampin' Up! is retiring at the end of this month.  I've always enjoyed this set for both cards and scrapbooks.

My new Stampin' Up! catalog arrived this week.  As usual I have lots of opinions about the catalog.  Here are my thoughts and some info if you haven't seen it already.

The Best
Almost all stamps are now available in 'clear' (really cling) stamps as well as wood mounted.  The only exceptions I noticed were the large background stamps.  So I now have some things on my wish list that I'd previously passed over as too expensive.  Having a choice for both new and older sets is a really great thing!

Also, many prices have remained the same including ink pads, paper, envelopes and dimensionals.  I didn't check everything but those I know by heart.  I applaud SU! for doing this.  It seems like my grocery store is raising prices weekly so when we can go multiple years without a price increase on something, I'm delighted.  (Pattern paper did go up $1 per pack.)

The Good
The layout and photography of the new catalog are even more professional. Always at a high standard, they have turned it up a notch this year.  I know some people aren't pleased with the closeup photos and not being able to see an entire project.  I believe you can see enough of any of the projects to make your own or use them for inspiration so it doesn't bother me.  I like the angles of the photos.   The cover no longer says "idea book" but there are plenty of ideas.

They moved the hostess sets to the end of the catalog so you jump right into holiday and things to purchase.

Personally, I like the designer paper a lot more this year.  And I also like the Simply Scrappin' kit choices.

The Not-so-good
There are two pages at the beginning of the catalog with some of the 'tools' and then the rest are at the end.  It is confusing.  Why not just put them all together?  If they were going to do this it would have been a good place to explain the new ink pads.  There is no explanation in the catalog.  I think they just changed the pad and not the actual ink except for a few colors.  Hopefully more info on this will be made available when ordering time arrives.

Markers and 12x12 paper are no longer available in all individual colors.  A few colors are still available for individual order but not that many so there are markers I'll probably never get now.  Thank goodness you can still get Crumb Cake (kraft) in a 12x12 individual pack.

The Really Annoying
The ink colors are once again printed teeny tiny so they are hard to see.  Last year they used those leaves to keep with their growing theme, this year they are using a different shape but the effect is the same.  It is very hard to see what a color really looks like.  In a 200 page catalog that bases everything on color families, you can find space to print the colors at least an inch square!


One other thing that really bugged me was, I think, supposed to be a feature.  Every so often, they will have a group of projects all made out of the same colors.  The colors are shown in blocks, but they didn't label the blocks!  So you don't know what the colors really are.  Some of their colors are so close it is hard to tell.



Whether you like the stamp choices is definitely personal.  I found several things in Elements I like and one holiday set but am not finding much in the other categories.  SU! needs to shake things up a bit on their designs.  Too many of the new sets look too much like those that were discontinued to get me to purchase - but again, this is opinion for sure.

There are many good choices here in a very eye pleasing catalog (and idea book).  If you are a stamper, SU! is always a good option.

2010-2012 In Colors

A new Stampin' Up! catalog term begins next month and so do new In Colors.  So five In Colors are retiring including the ones in this card - Peach Parfait, Pear Pizzazz and Blush Blossom.  I used Splitcoast stampers sketch for my layout.

The 'berries' are some pink stickles in this very simple card.  My challenge was to make a card using the only one of these In Colors I had the ink for.  I have paper in all the colors but only liked one of them enough to buy the ink - Pear Pizzazz.

Tomorrow I'll have another card and some thoughts on the new catalog.

Priceless Memories

Before we get to the layouts, we pause for this important weather announcement...

We are in the midst of tornado season though so much of the country started early.  There was one that did quite a bit of damage about 30 miles from us in January!  Next month brings us Hurricane season and some of the country is already so dry they are starting wild fires.

No, you didn't click on the Weather Channel by mistake.  I'm mentioning all these awful things to put a little fright into you and to me.  Why?  Because our photos are triggers of our most precious memories.  Are your photos safe from disaster?

Here are some tips for taking care of those precious photos:

1.  Scan old pictures or take a picture of them if you don't have a scanner.  It may not be as good as the original - although my cheap all-in-one printer/scanner does a pretty good job. It is better to have a photo of a photo than none at all.

2.  Back up your digital photos and scans.   If you take photos with your cell phone, download them.  A cell phone is way too easy to lose.

3.  Store the backup somewhere besides your own home.  Note the natural disasters mentioned above.  A good backup is an off-site backup. It is what corporations do and it is what we need to do also.  Consider a bank safety deposit box.  You may also store backups with a family member who lives a good distance away from you.  On-line backup services may be a good option for you as well.

4.  If you have extra prints lying around, those too can be stored off-site.  Perhaps doing a photo swap with a family member for those extra school pictures or other extra photos that you don't need. Keep a box of their keepsakes safe at your home and let them keep a box of yours.

5.  Remember that all media gets dated.  By this I mean that if you backed up data a long time ago on a 3 1/2" disk, you might have a lot of trouble finding a computer to off load it onto should you need it.  Your backup system will need to be revisited every few years.  Is this a lot of trouble?  It is some aggravation but think about those people you see on the news hunting through the wreckage of their home after a tornado to find just a few photos or mementos.

I know this isn't new information, but I for one am guilty of not having everything backed up.  I have a lot of it scanned and stored in a safety deposit box but not everything so this is a reminder to me as well to keep working on recording those memories and keeping them safe.

I truly hope you never need a backup of your photos but if you do, I hope you will have those precious memories preserved.

Now that I'm done preaching, onto my layouts for today...

For this layout, I used the originals - after I scanned them.  Often the thing I notice most in old photos is not the main subject which I guess was supposed to be me as a baby but the other people and the background.  These photos tell me a lot about my parents and my home growing up.

Look how thin my Mother is!  I was only 3 or 4 months old here - the photo isn't dated, but I can tell from the flowers.  She certainly got her figure back in record time.  She was and is such a beautiful woman.  Also Mother is obviously very comfortable as a new Mom, my Dad looks a little more uncertain of having a baby in his arms. Unfortunately, I inherited my Mother's photographic ability :-)

I did "The House that Built Me" page first and I'm glad.  It turned out pretty busy so I knew the other one needed to be a lot simpler.  The major embellishment here is the hand stitching.  I was inspired by all the stitching I've been seeing lately on Sue's blog.

While all these pictures are of me as a baby and a toddler, I was more interested in the setting. Each of these photos remind me of the home I grew up in.  My parents still live in that house but you wouldn't recognize it as the same one.  They did two major remodels.  Since they owned a carpet, wallpaper and window treatment business, Mother redecorated our home a couple of times when I was growing up and again after she retired.  So all those original furnishings and finishes are gone or buried under new wall paper and carpet.  I don't just barely remember some of this.

Both layouts were completed with papers mostly from Echo Park's This and That Graceful collection that I got from ArtfulDelight.  These papers have a real 50's vintage look.  My parents house was constructed in the late 1950's (I wasn't constructed until a few years later).

The idea for putting the photos in the 'house' came from the fall Scrapbooking and Beyond issue.  The photo frame was small in their layout, more of an embellishment.  I decided to fill all the squares with photos.  The 4 square design was cut on the Cricut with SCAL software from chipboard and then a woodgrain pattern paper that reminded me of the paneling in our den.  The roof is courtesy of the Scoreboard and then cutting paper into strips and layering.  Once I got started layering all the stickers and papers I liked, I just couldn't stop!

The House title is from the Miranda Lambert song.  In the song she goes back to her childhood home. I see my childhood home all the time as my parents live less than a mile away.  Still with these photos I can 'go back' to the original house look and a different time.

Thanks for visiting today!

Rainy's Card Sketch

May has several birthdays for us.  I made two of these - one for my sister-in-law and one for a friend.   I love this set - Fifth Avenue Floral by Stampin' Up!  It is on the discontinued list but I'm sure we will see it in use for a long time as it is such a popular and versatile stamp set.

For the arrangement of this card, I used the sketch from Rainy Day Creations blog found here.  I did shorten the panel on top and use a velum insert into the frame cut with the Cricut.  This keeps more of the My Mind's Eye stripe showing.  The back side of that stripe is the green on the bottom.

Thanks for visiting today and check out Rainy (Susan's) blog for the sketch and a chance at her giveaway.

Hope you have a great weekend!

More Wedding Pages

Almost finished with these wedding pages. Here are the happy bride and groom. I'm impressed with the photographer's ability to get their photo and block out all the background stuff.  I'm unimpressed with my ability to photograph this page.  The printed transparency makes a very pretty if difficult to photograph backdrop.

For this page on the Rehearsal, I did a photo collage in Photoshop Elements, a technique I hadn't done in awhile.  It had been so long I had to strain my little brain to remember how to create a drop shadow.

The peacock feather was part of the wedding keepsakes. She used peacocks for her theme and thus the teal and blue color scheme.  The photographer did the top 5 photos here and I did the bottom two including the one with my parents and Lenny.  I took tons of photos of the cupcake tree and flowers but hers were much better.  A few simple embellishments were all these photos needed.

Thanks for stopping by today!