Ready for Christmas?

You can start early when you have this page ready to go! Create it and add the picture just as soon as you print it!

You can get all the details HERE.

Happy Scrappin'!

MDS Monday for the Creative Crew!

It's finally HERE!!!! That day! That day when I can post my first Creative Crew Challenge on my blog for all of you to see!


To say I'm just a little excited would be a GROSS understatement. I do hope you'll share in my excitement as my "stint"on the Creative Crew continues through to the end of December.


Today's layout was a "recipe" layout. Not that it had to include a recipe, but that we had to FOLLOW a scrapbooking recipe in order to meet the challenge! I'm going to like the scrapbooking challenges because they'll give me a chance to S-T-R-E-T-C-H. I haven't done much scrapbooking lately and it's about time I got back into it! It's not like I have a lack of pictures or anything - HA!


Since our theme was "apples", we used an actual recipe as inspiration for all the parts.

Here's the "ingredient" list we were given:

A round layer - the traditional shape of a dumpling
Pacific Point - the plate
More Mustard - the crust
Old Olive - the apple
Stitching - faux, ditigal, or real - the seams of the dumpling
One photo - that's right just one
A tag or die cut - for your journaling
A button or buttons - use as you want, BUT one must be on your title!


And here's my layout:

It's a PERFECT layout for the end of summer break...the kids go back to school TOMORROW - WOOT! 


My littlest man can be a TOTAL goofball sometimes as evidenced by the above photograph. His older brother told him he looked a little like Wolverine with his spiky hair, so I guess this is his interpretation of what Wolverine would look like. Told you. GOOFBALL!


To create the circle behind the photo, I started with a circle punch and the filled it with Pacific Point. Then I made a duplicate and filled it with Whisper White, but reduced the opacity to 30%. Cool, eh?


After that I just started adding things till it made me happy! :) Stitching here, a button there, banners, journalling and the picture.


What do you think?

TOOLS: MDS

Happy MDSin'!

Prepare to be AMAZED!

Are you sitting down? Sure? Ready?

I SCRAPBOOKED!!! With REAL PAPER!!!

I was trolling Facebook earlier this week, catching up with all the last bits and pieces of convention chatter, when I came across the most AWESOME scrapbook page by the amazingly talented Wendy Weixler. She was an Artisan Award WINNER this year and seeing her work, you'll KNOW it was well deserved.

Anyway, it was one of Wendy's pages that made me want to scrapbook with PAPER! I didn't end up CASEing her page as I had planned, because while I was trying to remember where I'd seen the darn thing, someone linked me up to Brandi and then I got a whole OTHER idea!

Check this out:

That's my girl!! You may remember seeing this photo before. I used it here for a digital layout created in My Digital Studio. I was messing around in Photoshop Elements and I'm still not REALLY sure what I did, but I like the way the colour is mostly gone from the photo. It gives it a nice vintage feel.

Here's the journalling:

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.

~ Jeffrey Glassberg

Since I used all those butterflies, I was looking for a quote and this one just spoke to me. Sometimes, she can be a pain (what teenager isn't?), but for the most part she's a ray of sunshine!

A couple of detail shots:

I cut out a LOT of butterflies, using both the Beautiful Wings Embosslit and Beautiful Butterflies Bigz Die.

What do you think?

STAMPS: None
INK: None
PAPERS: Sahara Sand and Midnight Muse Cardstock; Sahara Sand and Comfort Cafe DSP
ACCESSORIES: Big Shot, Die, Embosslit, Basic Rhinestones

Happy Scrappin'!

Things I learned on National Scrapbook Day

Thing 1:

• 12 X 12 Pages are HUGE! I'd forgotten just how big!  When I first started scrapbooking, I couldn't even begin to imagine how one would scrapbook on anything SMALLER than 12 X 12.  I mean...I had SO many pictures! How would I EVER get them ALL scrapbooked if I used anything smaller than 12 X 12?
• These days, when I scrapbook (which isn't very often), I think 8 X 8 is LARGER THAN LIFE!

Thing 2:

• Taking pictures of a 12 X 12 layout is hard!!! Getting it all into focus with NO shadows is next to impossible.

Thing 3:

• 12 X 12 scrapbooking leaves LOTS of room for journalling.  This is foreign to me now.  When I taught scrapbooking classes (before SU!), I would almost literally pound into my students' heads the need for handwritten journalling.
• These days (thanks to my discovery of 6 X 6) most of my journalling is reduced to a date or a quick caption...sometimes I even let the photos speak for themselves - the horror!!!

Here's my 12 X 12 for the day:

The journalling reads:

• Happy National Scrapbook Day! What does that have to do with these photos? Nothing really...except that I'm scrapbooking them on Naitonal Scrapbook Day. The photos themselves were taken on July 1st, 2004 when Jonathan had barely learned to walk, Colin still had "baby fat" and Lauren wasn't anywhere near "13 going on 30". We spent the day enjoying a country concert at Sunnyside Beach.

Products Used:

• 12 X 12 Whisper White Textured Cardstock
• Celebrations Designer Series Paper
• Celebrations Quick Accents
• 8 1/2 X 11 Real Red Cardstock, trimmed
• Pacific Point Marker, for journalling

And now, my preferred 6 X 6 size:

To note:

• I don't have a garden - LOL!  But when I do (we live in a high rise condo at the moment) I know I'll enjoy scrapbooking it since I much prefer taking pictures of "nature" than people. (Does that make be a bad momma?) The flowers can at least "stand still"...unlike my children. *sigh*
• When using a set of Sizzlet Die Cuts, use lower case if the size of the combined letters will be larger than your page - OOPS!!!  Thanks goodness creative license allows for overlapping!
• This layout uses the colours from the Stamping 411 challenge, which can be found here.

A closeup:

Design notes:

• I stamped the flower three times and then cut it out to make the different layers.
• The bottom layer is attached using glue dots and the next two were attached using Stampin' Dimensionals.
• I stamped the stem directly onto the Whisper White Cardstock using Pear Pizzazz ink. 

I hope you're enjoying National Scrapbook Day and that you have managed to get some scrapbooking time in!

Happy Scrappin'!

Strength and Hope - Campaign Starts TODAY!

With the launch of the summer mini, the Strength and Hope Campaign has officially begun!

With the purchase of each and every set of stamps (as well as the digital download), Stampin' UP! will donate $2 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. How awesome is THAT? You get a great stamp set and the BCRF gets a donation!

If you've seen this post, you've already seen the set in action.  And on this post, you get a REALLY nice close up of the butterfly.

If you want to see more projects that you can make with this set, just click here. Do note however, that the card listed as 6 X 6 is actually 3 X 6.

In other news, this is National Scrapbooking Month!

My love of paper crafts started just over 11 years ago in early spring 2000. A friend of mind dragged me to one of those parties (you know the one!) and we made a scrapbooking page.  I'm pretty sure I signed up that night! I became disenchanted with the company and their incessant need for the consultant to carry this huge inventory, not to mention the fact that they wanted us to say that if wasn't their product it was NO GOOD.

I never gave up my love of scrapbooking though...not until I discovered Stampin' UP! in 2004 (or somewhere around there!).  Then, I was all about the CARDS!  My scrapbooks lay untouched, pages unfinished - I think some of them still need journalling!

In an effort to get back into scrapbooking, I've challenged myself to complete a Page a Day in May!

To whit:

There's NO WAY that I could do a 12 X 12 page, which is kind of funny because when I first started scrapbooking, I simply could NOT understand how people created all these mini albums - LOL!

My poppies (from the BRAND NEW set Fabulous Florets released today) are stamped in Staz-On ink on our Watercolour Paper and coloured using our watercolour crayons and aqua painters.  *Really Christyne? You used watercolour crayons and aqua painters? How novel! We've never seen you use THOSE before!* Yeah...right - LOL!

Anyway...after they were coloured (and dry), I cut them all out (seven of them!) and adhered them to my page using either glue dots or Stampin' Dimensionals.

My white photo mat (still need to find a pic!) is sponged in Poppy Parade and my whole page was sponged with So Saffron Ink.

What do you think?

STAMPS: Fabulous Florets
INK:Staz-On, So Saffron, Poppy Parade, Wild Wasabi
PAPERS: Whisper White and So Saffron Cardstock; Watercolour Paper
ACCESSORIES: Watercolour Crayons, Aqua Painters, Sponges, Glue Dots, Stampin' Dimensionals

Happy Scrappin!

National Scrapbook Month starts Two DAYS EARLY!

Good news, good news!!!  National Scrapbook Month starts two days early - LUCKY US!!

Check out all the details here.  This promotion lasts for the whole month of May!

But wait, there's MORE! You can join Stampin' UP! RIGHT NOW with the Digital + Starter Kit for just $150.50! You can even add on the Stampin' Memories kit for just $42.  These two kits together are worth almost $500 and you can get them both for under $200. PLUS, there's NO shipping OR tax on the starter kit and it ships RIGHT to your door!

Get all the details for that here.  And, don't forget, the very next person to join my team will get a free Colour Coach and the free Level 3 Hostess set "Simply Sent, Cute as a Button", which contains EVERYTHING to complete eight cards, including the ink and stamps.

Happy Scrappin'!!!