Please Consider a Donation

One year ago, on September 11, my dear mother lost her battle with lymphoma.  On October 4, I am participating in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk.  Please consider making a donation.  It's tax deductible and for a good cause.  Click here for a direct link to my fundraising page if you'd like to help.

Long Time MIA!

Wow, can't believe my last post was in November of 2011!!  I took on being yearbook adviser at school starting the 2011-12 school year, and just haven't spent as much time stamping and scrapping as I have in the past (too busy proofreading yearbook pages!).

Last day in Hawaii (currently on Maui) and I've been doing some digital scrapbooking that I thought I'd share.  First up is the cover of my album.  I'm using My Digital Studio to create it.  The image was taken from the Kona by the Sea resort on the Big Island.

Still messing around with the title page, but this is what I have so far:

I've finished three spreads so far.  The first is a page featuring snorkeling on the reef in front of the condo we're renting on Maui.  We did the snorkeling during the first six night stay here.  The girls and I were in the water on four different days, having the waterproof digital camera with us the last three times.  I sure am glad we spent the money several years back on the waterproof camera - it has come in handy!

The next spread is from our trip up Haleakala, the larger of the two volanoes that make up the island of Maui.  First time we've been up there with fog and rain, so there wasn't much to see this time, unfortunately.  This part of our trip started out wet with a storm the night we got here, and it's taken several days to get back to things being sunny again.

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I was working on this spread last night and finished it today.  After our visit up at Haleakala, we stopped in at the Maui Golf & Sport Park and played two rounds of mini golf in the wind (it was windy up at head level but not a golf ball level).

 

I'll have to post the rest of the album once I finish it.  Might also show you the album I did two summers ago when we did a roadtrip to Carlsbad Caverns, Yellowstone, and the Redwoods.  I've also done some stamping in the last two and a half years of my absence from Blogger, so I should round up a few of my favorites to share.  Thanks for stopping by!

Nephew's Birthday Card

My Cricut has been sitting on my desk since this summer, unloved, so I dusted her off and actually made something!  I had seen a very cute card posted by Wendy Weixler and wanted to do something similar.  I didn't want to exactly CASE her card, so I made sure I didn't look at hers while making mine.  Mine fits in one of the SU large envelopes (that I wish they still sold) - a little bit bigger than the standard greeting card.  It's funny, I ended up adding the scallop circle sentiment like Wendy did, but didn't remember that she'd done that on her card until I looked at hers after finishing mine.  I broke out my SU! cloud template and sponged in the sky using Bashful Blue ink.  Really like how the card turned out.

I made this card to give to my nephew who is turning 11.  I hope he likes it.  I think I need to invest in a sports-themed cartridge to give me more options for male cards... we'll see if Joann's has their great Black Friday deal ($27) on them again this year so I can add to my collection!

November - the LAST Batch of Christmas Cards!!

My, how fast 2011 has flown by!  It seems like only yesterday that I signed up over at the Stampin' Addicts for their 2011 Holiday Cards challenge.  Here it is, November, and the last batch of cards is finished.  Woo hoo!!  Here they are, a color variation of last month's cards.  I've gone through just about every mini rhinestone I had, but they're done!

I have far more than I need, but it's a nice feeling that I don't have to make time to make any more Christmas cards this year!

I've got one more post for you tomorrow, but this time it's a birthday card.  See you soon!

October's Set of Christmas Cards

I was a bit behind, but I finally got my October set of Christmas cards done!  Just posted them over at Stampin' Addicts, a bit late, but they're done.  One month to go and we're done with the 2011 Christmas cards, and I've got the November cards ready to share with you tomorrow!

They're based on a card made by Jan Tink for the November Control Freaks Blog Hop (and she was inspired by Darlene DeVries), although I made thank you cards several years back using the same masking technique.  My box of 2011 Christmas cards is in the background, bursting at the seams!  Tomorrow I'll share with you the last batch, the November cards.  Hope to see you then!

Another Gently Falling Card!

Hello there, how is your day going?  Good, I hope!  I'm back again with yet another post.  This one started out being inspired by another favorite stamper, Wendy Weixler.  There were two cards I'd seen on her blog - the first from a recent Control Freaks Blog Hop, and another from her blog back in 2010.  I made my version on a clouded-out night at my favorite annual stargazing event which is held each fall in Borrego Springs.  I shared it with my stampers last weekend.  This baby took not one, not two, no, not even three, but a full FOUR stamps to mail!  Mailed one to my mother-in-law, and one to my upline.  The other two I made are going to be hand-delivered to my folks and my brother.

I used Mary Brown's trick for making bows using brads, and I love how it looks!  The inside of my card is a repeat of the bottom stamped layer (my DH loves it that I design the inside of cards instead of leaving them plain card stock).

Thanks for taking some time today to visit my little blog... I'll have another post for you tomorrow!

Another CASE of a Favorite Stamper

Welcome back!  As promised, I have a few cards to share with you over the next few days.  The card I'm sharing with you today was inspired by one of my favorite stampers, Debra Currier.  I love her clean and easy style of stamping.  I wanted to duplicate her beautiful card, but I'm a layers girl, and just couldn't do it without adding more to Debra's original design.  Here's my first version of her card, which I made back in September while hanging out with my DH at our local coffee shop (little did I know, it was closing in a few short days from then).

I wanted to use a thicker ribbon, and feature the new Hand-Penned Holidays stamp on my version of Debra's beautiful card.  I cut out 12 card kits for my September stamp camp, when along comes a need for a swap card for my upline's September meeting.  We had to feature products from the Holiday Mini, so I changed the Autumn Days stamp set and used Gently Falling once again.  Here's how the card looks with the stamp change:

 

You know, when I saw Gently Falling in the Holiday Mini catalog, I thought to myself, do I REALLY need yet ANOTHER leaves stamp set?  No, not really... but, I bit the bullet and bought it anyway!  So glad I did, as I've used it a bunch of times!

Hope you can make it back tomorrow for another post - yup, I said another post!  I'm on a roll...

Halloween CASE

Well hello there!  I know, amazing... another post in the same month!! This one is a direct CASE (copy and steal everything) from the very talented Heidi Baks.  I loved her cute card, but I didn't have the stamp set she used for the wooden sign, so what's a girl to do?  Well, download the MDS version of the stamp set and print it out!!

I had hoped to share this one with my stampers last month, but it just didn't happen - never had the time to sit down and prepare the card kits, so I'll save it for next year!

Holiday Mini Swap Card

Wowza, it's been over TWO months since I've posted something...  so I'll share with you the few things I've stamped in those two months!

Today I'm sharing a swap card I made for a Stampin' Addicts swap a while back featuring the stamp set Gently Falling from the Holiday Mini catalog.  I stamped each maple leaf and then used a dauber to add some champagne mist shimmer paint to the rubber before stamping (first time I've used it).  I really like the effect and hope you can see it in the second picture.  The sentiment was created using My Digital Studio and printed out onto vellum.  As Jan Tink always says, lookie...

I hope you liked my card.  I have a few more to share over the next few days, so be sure to stop back by!  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Hershey Bar Wrapper CASE

It's been a while!  This happens every year when the school year begins... my poor blog sits and pouts, waiting for me to finally have time to sit down and add a post.  Well, today's the day!  I actually have quite a few things to share with you, but I haven't photographed most of them, so I'll share what I did photograph.  It's a cute candy bar wrapper, pretty much a CASE of Mary Fish's very cute one, found here.  I have a ton of designer series paper, with a good amount of it being Halloween DSP, so I thought I'd create a bunch of these using up some of the scraps.  I've made six different ones, and still have at least one more Halloween DSP I haven't used yet.  I'm going to make 12 of them for my girls to give to their teachers, and it will be a project I'll share with my stampers in just under 2 weeks.  So easy and relatively quick to make - who wouldn't love to receive one of these?  My high school daughter, upon seeing them, asked if she was going to have to pass them out, to which I replied, "YES!".  We secondary teachers rarely get goodies from our students, so it's important to me that my girls let their middle and high school teachers know that the work they do is much appreciated.

Hope you like it!  That's Cajun Craze for the box - sure looks like Tangerine in the photo.  Have a great week!