Very Mary

My Heart (a card)

Been super busy with assignments and one very special kiddo's two year birthday....more on that later. :)

Here's a quick card share to start off the week:

This is very literally a 5 minute card. My fastest ever!

I stamped the heart from Banana Frog's It's All About...Hearts set onto white cardstock, cut it out and attached it to a scrap of kraft cardstock. A simple rub-on and a flourish from the Home Decor cartridge, and voila!

Color Focus...#1 (a card)

The color focus for May was this lovely little creature:

I used the colors for inspiration and made a boyish card:

I used the block of stars from the Super Stars set:

I stamped it onto different colors of cardstock, which I embossed with white powder and adhered to a transparency card. The star is from Provo Craft's Home Decor Solutions cartridge, and the #1 is from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.

Check out the rest of the design team's interpretations of the color focus here and here!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: Making Memories, Bo Bunny;Stamp: Banana Frog; Rub-on: American Crafts; Tag: Avery; Die-cutting machine/cartridges: Provo Craft

29 3/4 (a layout)

I finally had a chance to catch up on some of my favorite blogs, and man oh man, were you all busy while I have been whiling away the hours schooling myself on vampires! Today, I managed to be semi-productive and finish a layout for Banana Frog:

For a while now, I've been envying other scrapbookers' ability to use these full sheets of wild American Crafts patterned paper (this is Chic from the Moda Bella line), and for me, it was a stretch, but I kind of like how it turned out. Not my usual style, but it's good to change it up every once in a while.

To create the title block, I stamped the journaling block from It's All About...Circles onto white cardstock, and trimmed it out. I stitched around the border with white thread, and I matted the block on a marquee border die-cut from Provo Craft's Storybook cartridge. The numbers are from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, which comes with the Cricut Expression.

That's all for now! Enjoy your weekend!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: American Crafts; Stamps: Banana Frog; Ink: Tsukineko; Butterfly: Me and My Big Ideas; Gems: gel-a-tins; Die-cutting machine and cartridges: Provo Craft

For the Twi-hards...

who - like me - are having a love/hate relationship with Stephenie's books, please read this brilliant and hilarious review: James's review of Eclipse. I just read it again, and again, I laughed my ass off.

Another YuDu project

I screened some jeans with the same design I used on this t-shirt:

I flipped the screen over and taped part of it off to add a little design near the pocket:

I wouldn't recommend taping anything to the emulsion side of the screen. I think I read somewhere to do exactly that, but I found that when you go to remove the tape, it rips away the emulsion and then you have to either painstakingly apply blackout to the damaged areas (you might as well stick toothpicks under your fingernails - it's that fun) or simply trash your whole design and start over from step 1 (not a great alternative either)....

Simple, but true...

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

-unknown

And by the way, I've loved hearing your thoughts and personal stories about the quotes I've been posting on my blog. I'm not hinting at anything in particular with these quotes. I just happen to like words. For the most part, my own word arrangement usually leaves something to be desired, so until I transform myself into an intellectual, I'll just share what I find from others. Enjoy!

Outtakes (a layout)

I used to contribute to circle journals. Seemed like good idea. But my thoughts on what makes a "good" idea have changed considerably now that I am inundated with baby and toddler photos. Too many photos, too little time. You know how that goes.

Just after Sadie was born though, I had a circle journal to finish up, and the topic was "The Girl in the Mirror," and we were to create an entry based on a photo we had taken of ourselves in the mirror. Sadie was just four months old or so, and I was finding that most of my time spent in front of the mirror was with her, making faces and generally trying to make her laugh. So that's what I used for my entry.

I took 79 photos.

Did I get a good one? No.

Could I trash any of the 79? No.

So I made my journal entry with a collage, and I printed a second one for myself. It turned into two pages.

This one (which I've shared before):

And this one, which was in Simple Scrapbooks Scrapbook Play With Photos:

The original collage was an 8" x 8" and I just planned to slap it onto some cardstock and be happy. But I can never leave well enough alone. So I snipped the collage into vertical strips and arranged them to create more movement on the page, which really suits these photos. After all, I was holding my Nikon AND a wiggly infant.

I used an envelope from one of those CK kits for part of the title. It's hard to see in the photo, but it reads "priceless." I didn't put anything in the envelope. Just liked the added color and design aspect. The other part of the title "out-takes" was created in Photoshop Elements and printed to graph paper.

The stars on the page were all painted with glitter, and I added lots of other little details: cardstock rings, gems, mini-stars, buttons, brads. No real rhyme or reason, but this page just sort of all came together for me. I like that because it doesn't happen very often.
 

Supplies: Patterned paper: SEI, Scenic Route Paper Co., CK KOTM; Chipboard: CK KOTM; Gems: Junkitz, Hero Arts; Buttons: Wal-mart

Back in action...

Did y'all miss me? I'm going to ease back into this whole blogging thing. Honestly though, right about now, scrapbooking seems really boring to me, and I feel really boring, and life feels really boring. Boring. Boring. Boring. I think they call that a Twilight hangover?

But in any case...I DID promise something scrappy, didn't I?

Here's a card from the March issue of Cards magazine:

This card was created specifically to use up those Chatterbox flowers because, you know, I simply can't tolerate flowers cluttering up my scrap space. The stamps are Hero Arts Fancy Flourishes and From the Heart Greetings.

Supplies: Patterned Paper: Scenic Route Paper Co., Flowers, Buttons, Gems: Chatterbox Inc. Stamps: Hero Arts; Paper Frills: Doodlebug Designs; Colored Pencils: Crayola

Because...

apparently, I'm having some sort of barely explainable mid-life crisis, wherein I waste all my time looking at photos of Rob Pattinson, and I desperately needed another guy to obsess about, check him out: Paolo Nutini. He's easy on the eyes and the ears. You can thank me later. :)

P.S. I swear I will post something scrappy in the near future.

The End.

Done.

In a little over a week, I finished all four books. I watched the movie* four six times, once with the commentary on.

It was ridiculous.

And against my better judgment, I love those damn books.

My mom refers to them as "garbage." I said, very weakly, "oh, I kinda liked them." She told me how she saw those "piles of garbage" for sale at Costco. She was referring to the hardback collector's edition pack. I flushed and neglected to mention that I'd all ready bought them for myself. A little mother's day gift to me. I'm going to have to hide them when she comes to visit.

So, now the question is, what am I going to do with myself? I'm having Edward-withdrawal. I'll guess I'll just have to entertain myself by watching Rob interviews. Happily, I know for a fact that I'm not the only one, and that makes me feel slightly less pathetic.

*Did you know that Stephenie is actually in Twilight? A little cameo in the cafe. I noticed this on the fifth time through. And I know what you're thinking. I actually have A LOT to do. I just choose not to do it. Much to Derrick's dismay.

Hopefully, back to my regularly scheduled programming next week, but I can't promise I won't gush about Edward or Rob or anything else Twilight-related and equally fascinating. ;)