Christmas Present Giveaway Winner!

All I can say is wow! Some of you girls must have really wanted that paper because Errant Scraps doubled it's following this past week. Thank you. 

Now the moment you have all been waiting for... the winner of that delightful Daily Junque (et al) as determined by random.org:

The winner of your drawing is…

1st	amberloyana at yahoo dot com

Amber, you'll be getting an email from me shortly so that we can talk about getting your prize in the mail. As for the rest of you, I'm just so thankful for each of you and hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas! I'll be seeing you all after - I've still got presents to mail/or wrap, food to buy, goodies to bake, a birthday party to throw, the in-laws are ushering Santa into town, and then my parents will arrive in time for the feast. Sheesh. It's a lot, but it'll be fun, plus it'll give me a few dozen more activities to scrapbook about. Right?!

Scrapbooksteals.com Jade 2

Kerys did a fabulous job with the sketch this week! I was very excited to play along with the Scrapbooksteals.com MWM - Jade 2.  Once again, I used a weekly sketch to knock out one more page of my December Daily album. 

December Daily 9

I'm also entering this page into the If It's Groovy challenge - create your own paper/background. I made the background by laying tree die cuts (from a mis-cut, yay for still finding a purpose!) onto a piece of American Crafts Kraft Cardstock. Then I used three shades of mist, from October Afternoon and Mister Huey, and sprayed and splattered away.

The other layers are an assortment of scraps from LilyBee Designs, Echo Park and My Mind's Eye. The twine is WRMK. Embossing powder is American Crafts Zing!. Green glitter glue is Studio G.

Pink Paper Cone Tree Tutorial

I keep seeing these trees pinned on Pinterest, but it seems a lot of people use the foam cones. I'm living under a rule right now - no craft stores so that I can more easily resist the urge to buy even more scrappy supplies! This brought me to a very successful trial run with making paper cone trees from cereal boxes. 

While not rocket science by any means, I thought I'd share with you how I went about making the tree. 

My supplies:

• hot glue gun
• hot glue sticks
• cereal box
• one 12x12 sheet
• lots of scraps cut into .75x6 in strips 
• ribbon

1. Cut open the cereal box and lay flat. I cut that long flappy (one of the two smaller panels) on the far left off first, save it because I use it in the next step.

2. Using the panel as a guide, mark off your next end point, creating two equal sides to what will be our triangle/cone.

 3. I was experimenting remember, so I drew to curves to be the third side. More on that in a bit.

4. Cut the cone. FYI: I cut that bigger section first and then wrapped it into a cone shape. It was to steep of a curve, so I slowly trimmed off strips and ended up roughly where the smaller curve was drawn.The main thing here is that you want the cone to sit flat and not really leaning.

5. Cute little cone, I glued it into shape with my hot glue gun. (My kids really like that cereal so I happened to pull it out of the recycling bin for this project.)

6. As much as they love the cereal, I didn't love the look. So I covered the cone with some MME paper that's been in my stash for ages.

7.  I ran a bead of hot glue down one side, wrapped the paper around and adhered the other end onto the cone. I tucked the excess that hung off the bottom into the cone itself. If you look at this pic you'll see how it had a cornucopia shape, that's the part I tucked. ;)

8. Loosely fold the paper strips in half and give a dab of hot glue. Stick onto the cone tree, alternating colors in whatever order you fancy. I tried to offset subsequent layers of strips so it wouldn't have obviously lines going up and down the cone. I also decided, on the third layer, to trim it an inch to help give it a more tapered look. So every two layers I went down an inch. 

9. My ribbon topper was made by tying a bow and then using the ends of the bow to tie a second one across the top of the other. I just hot glued it onto the tip.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Don't forget that today, December 15, is the last day to sign up for my Christmas present giveaway. 

Teacher Gifting

Gifts for teachers. Such a broad concept. At this stage, since we aren't doing a preschool, our only teachers are the ones at church. I started planning a project and realized I couldn't figure out where to draw the line regarding which teachers/helpers to leave off the list so I ended up making a little ornament for every preschool teacher and helper who is volunteering this month - 15 ornaments and wrappings made by yours truly! Rylan's nursery workers got a card with a silly kid-craft ornament that Vance helped make, but his teachers got something just a little nicer looking - also known as made by mommy!

All of my teacher gifts. 

The boxes were a file I bought from the Silhouette store during their Cyber Monday sale. It's supposed to be an ornament, I think. I cut them from American Crafts Kraft Cardstock. I also used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the tags, My Mind's Eye Andrea Victoria. Then I stamped a MME All Is Bright stamp in gold and "inked" with Copper embossing powders. 

Close-up of the boxes and tag.

For all the Users at Use it Tuesday - this is my challenge post to make something Christmas/Hannukah with hoarded supplies. The ornaments (and paint on them) were from a project I helped with at church this fall and probably the newest items used. The ribbons have been part of my stash for probably 3 years. Some of the ornaments have buttons inside, some of which have been around for a *very, very* long time.

Stop by tomorrow for a little more about that cute pink tree in the first picture - it's all made from upcycled, scraps and hoarded products. ;)

And don't forget about my Christmas present giveaway that ends Dec. 15 at midnight.

Not while I'm eating!

So this week I have jury duty. Now in my county that means that the night before you have to call in to see if you go to the courthouse the next day. Monday and Tuesday, didn't have to go in, so I dedicated the day to getting ahead on some things (like blogging and Christmas present making)- just in case I get to spend a couple of days doing my civic duty.

Without further ado, I present my December week 2 Let's Get Sketchy interpretation! 

I started with two groupings, like in the sketch. The elements just sort of morphed themselves. They're still sort of there. Sort of.

I used a bunch of mismatched Fancy Pants Designs papers, American Crafts Thickers, Jenni Bowlin Designs mini alphas, several Kiwi Lane Designs templates, a Lifestyles Crafts embossing folder, my sewing machine, and of course some good ol' inking. 

Let's Get Sketchy Dec. wk 2 sketch

And don't forget to checkout the Christmas present (aka giveaway) I have for one of my followers. 

Joy-flake

Joy-flake. Sometimes my own humor kills me. *sigh*

I made this card for three purposes.
1. To include a fun greeting in my sister's Christmas package.
2. For the Cameo Creations Challenge Blog - using the theme "White Christmas"with my Silhouette.
3. For Scrapbooksteals.com's MCM challenge of creating any sort of project as long as you mix two or more collections.

Look at me getting all my multi-tasking going on.

Needless to say, the snowflake is from the Silhouette Studio store. I cut it out of a 6x6 MME Signature Christmas pad. The base of the card is American Crafts Kraft cardstock. I traced the word part of the snowflake with Studio G glitter glue and inked the card base with Alabaster ColorBox ink to make it a little lighter.

Now I just need to mail that package to my sister!

And don't forget to checkout the Christmas present (aka giveaway) I have for one of my followers.

Christmas Present aka Giveaway

One of our advent calendar activities this year is to have the boys clear out some old toys, to give to kids who don't have as much/make room for the new ones I know the grandparents are buying much to my protest.

Well, I decided to do a little weeding out of my own. But rather than donate parts of my stash to charity I'll be doing a little giveaway. How'd you like to win this as a little Christmas pressie from me?

Pink Paislee Daily Junque
My Little Shoebox Mini Alphabets
Glitz Designs Pom Pom Ribbons

Here's the rules:

1. You must be a follower to enter.
2. Leave a comment here saying that you are a follower. Leave your email address using the following example: youremail (@) domain (dot) com
3. The deadline to enter the giveaway will be December 15 at midnight CST. The winner will be chosen using Random.org and will be announced December 17, 2012 here on my blog.
4. Giveaway restricted to U.S. and Canada only. 

For extra entries:

1. 'Pin' this giveaway on Pinterest and/or
2. 'Share' this giveaway on facebook
3. Come back here and tell me you did (with email addresses again!)

That gives you up to three chances to win. Easy Peasy Pumpkin Squeezy. Whatcha waiting for?

Perspective

Every day can't be a mountain top experience, and we all have some valleys. I've been in sort of a creative valley for a few weeks now, my adventure as Scrapbooksteals MWM guest sketcher being an oasis of light in that sea of despondency.

I was in email correspondence with Kristy Lee, seriously my guru when it comes to scrapbooking and definitely an inspiration as a mom, and she pointed out how far I've come in the past year and a half. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of my pre-blogging adventures with you all.

Ready for this?

My.First.Page.Ever. I was trying to find something to fill time while hubs was in class and I wasn't at work. I seriously felt that paper crafting was not for me (and quite lame!). My mom had started a book about me, I had all my pictures, and a less than half filled book. It's still not full...

in reality, it's not a horrible way to start, but it sure isn't an interesting or pretty page!

First layout of Vance, August 2008. It may not have been the first first, but it was definitely one of the earliest ones! I didn't date or photograph my pages back in those days so I really don't know. But you get the point.

Look! same sketch on each side. And lots o stickers. FUN!

My first Mid Week Mojo, August 2011, Topaz 5, but even though I started mid-series I did go back and catch up.

Better structure, colors, etc., but man oh man, this picture is worth a thousand words.

The page I made today. You know, I'm glad I stuck with this whole scrapbooking thing.

Beautiful moments 

I'm entering this page into the Paper Girls Challenge Blog. This week's challenge was to have a multi-photo layout (3-4 being minimum for a single page). I just love how Amy Tangerine Sketchbook matches my mom's energy and shirt! And my Kiwi Lane templates made it a snap to create during naptime. YAY!

And don't forget to check back tomorrow for information about that Giveaway that I have coming!

Wishes

Vance hasn't taken a nap since around the time Rylan was born - so for a little over two years now. And I can sense that I'm losing that time with Rylan now too. Which is so not fun! Today I barely got started working on my My Mind's Eye December Challenge - Wish List when the napper started playing which set the quiet player into full playtime mode.

I was thinking about doing something along the lines of the song "Grown Up Christmas Wish" but losing that time today made me realize how ::sacred:: it is to me. I'm going to have to figure out a new way to get "me" time in if this no/low napping business continues. So on my wish list this year I have one request: that my kids take naps. If you look closely you'll see that I actually wrote things and changed them, I was going for humor - changing "taking longer naps" to just "taking naps" and the like.

This page is Day 5 in my December Daily and will eventually include a picture of my scrap space which is of course a hot mess right now since we have several projects going at once! Part of what's on my desk is a Giveaway I'm working on, check back next week for more information. ;)

Covering the month

If you're here to check out the Second Page 

of my Scrapbooksteals.com MWM sketch, head here.

_________________________________________________

I've sort of gone about this whole December Daily thing in a mismatched order. Most people start with the cover, I've started with interior pages. But here's my thing. It doesn't matter. In the end, there'll be days that I don't journal or photograph or anything. That's just how it is. 

That being said, my whole mini album will probably be filled with pages from various challenges. Because those challenges are what's going to keep me sane in this craziness! Bwahahahaha.

Which brings us to the cover of my album. The colors are inspired by the Paper Secrets team's color palette.

So how fun is that? I made the cover from a piece of cardboard (thanks to Scrapbooksteals.com for always including a nice large sheet in paper packages!). 

• I covered it with some Lily Bee Design paper, 
• gessoed on a tree, spritzing October Afternoon mists into the pattern, 
• then added some iRock gems, 
• glittered some pop dots, 
• added the rub on and Thickers and word stickers, 
• and finally, wrapped the edge of the board with WRMK washi.

Traditions beginning

If you're here to check out the Second Page 

of my Scrapbooksteals.com MWM sketch, head here.

_________________________________________________

We haven't spent a lot of time on Christmas traditions in our house up to this point. At first it was just us. Then the Vance was just to young to care. So this year, he's finally starting to catch on, which is why December Daily is something I wanted to attempt because this year is going to really set the stage for what he's looking forward to about Christmas in the years to come. Because this is the first year he's cared about a tree or presents or really wanting to help make fudge or you get the idea.

I started by making that advent calendar with my Silhouette. I filled it with candy and a daily activity (adapted from my crafty friend Kara's list). Things like afternoon craft or a Christmas movie or baking cookies. The movies and baking would have happened anyway, and I planned the date according to when the homemade goodness needs to be delivered. The craft times are sort of a new thing - he's really showing an interest in learning so they are my effort at non-spelling sorts of education (cutting straight lines, following directions, etc.). 

The other major player this year is our Elf on the Shelf.  We've never really acknowledged the man in the red suit so we're sort of talking about it. At this stage, as you can read in the journaling, he's quite skeptical about the whole thing.

For this page I used the current Let's Get Sketchy challenge sketch. Their sketch used three photos, but with the smaller mini book format I felt that the photos would be to small so I altered a bit. ;) 

Christmas tags

I've never made my own tags before, but when this week's Scrapbooksteals.com Monday Craft Madness was to use embossing powder I knew that I really wanted to make tags for one particular set of gifts. These gifts are getting packaged into fabric bags that held the boys' twin sheet sets. So they'll look like little blue and grey Santa bags with tags. I'm fairly excited about the prospect!

Here's the tags. I simply "inked" the tags with the embossing powder. It is quite possibly my favorite way to use the powders.

The family has a couple of duplicated first initials so I just wrote their full name in my scribbly scrawl on the backs.

Scrapbooksteals.com Guest Sketcher - Jade 1

Can I just say that I really, really enjoyed typing that title?! Those of you who are regulars here know that I have been following the Scrapbooksteals.com MWM series for a while and it is quite an honor to provide a sketch. And playing with My Mind's Eye All Is Bright?! I LOVE MME. I also was a huge fan of Follow My Heart and was thrilled to hear that the designer had created a Christmas line. Gorgeous. Gorgeous, I tell you. So "me." *sigh*

If you haven't been over there yet, you should head back because today's Steal is My Mind's Eye Winter Wonderland & All is Bright and having seen both in person you really need to add some to your stash! 

Then there's the matter of the MWM sketch. Back on the ol' Scrapbooksteals.com blog I provided a sketch for page 1 of a two page layout and promised a peek at what I did for page 2 of the spread, so here it is:

For my "O Christmas Tree" layout I actually made a tree. I felt so giddy, even witty at the time. And yet the level of cheese is something I typically avoid. I love it. 

 And here's a close up.

You'll have to head back to Scrapbooksteals for this week's sketch and to check out the other projects I made. Now, if you don't normally play along with the sketches, you really should because it's the start of a new series, "Jade." And there's no time like the present to start a new habit.

Noel, noel, noel

I don't know how many of you have heard of December Daily, but I only heard about it...4 days ago. And I love the idea! I think mini books are super cute but never have a "reason" to make one. The logic behind December Daily is to prep pages before the hustle and bustle and after the New Year you'll have a fab mini album. There's kits you can buy online to help with that process. 

Well, given that I only found out about it days ago, I'll be playing along with the concept and doing it totally on the fly. What I'm gonna do is just take lots of pictures and notes and if it takes me until February to finish it, well, it takes until February!

BUT I did get a start on it, for Kerys' blog challenge I completed my first page. Yay me! And by completed I mean, I journaled on it but there's no photo yet because I'm gonna print them all at once.

Kerys and some of her friends team up to provide a fun challenge every month. This month they chose to spell the word "Noel" through their recipe. Things needed to meet all the requirements for bonus entries are as follows:

N - Number in the title/subtitle (yep! Day 1 isn't much of a title, but it's what I gave it.)

O - Oval (tucked in on top of that tag)

E -  Eyelets (at least 5 - helloooo for an excuse to use these babies that I was given!)

L - List of three things -or- use lined paper (I went the lined paper route, you can almost see the lines in the pic)

Also really fun here, I used the Tiny Accents Star from Kiwi Lane to act as a mask and sprayed a whole bunch on the page. When the mist started pooling to much I'd shake the excess liquid onto the paper to make the splatters. 

Now to figure out what I'm gonna use for my cover. And how in the world I'm gonna bind the thing. Maybe if I'm really good Santa'll get me a Cinch for Christmas?

Completely Coral

In order to enter for the 10 week series drawing at Scrapbooksteals.com you have to put all 10 layouts in the same place. Many of you have already seen these layouts, so thank you for humoring me!

Coral 1

Coral 2

Coral 3a

Coral 3b

Coral 4

Coral 5

Coral 6

Coral 7

Coral 8

Coral 9

And a really bad photo of the last one so I can get this posted:

Coral 10

Happy Thoughts - so many happy thoughts

Happy Thought 1: In the words of my friend, Joy, I'm "crazy and a mess." I know this to be true. For the past two weeks in my spare time I'm not only doing my normal scrappy challenges, but I've also started working on some card kits. She and I are hosting a little card party for Operation Write Home right after the first of the year. 

I'm so stinkin' excited!

Happy Thought 2: I'm also excited because I'd seen a version of this card on Pinterest the other day (and go figure, I didn't pin it so I can't link back) but I liked it and wanted to make one like it so I could use my favorite Black Friday purchase - Big Kick!!! Eek!

Happy Thought 3: It gets better. The post from Use It Tuesday this week (#44) was to use a previously uninked stamp with your hoarded product. So I proceeded to make this super cute card using my new toy, a stamp and some twine that I won several months ago, a MME pre-folded card I bought over a year ago, and lots of scraps. I also got a start on cutting out the duplicates for the kits. 

Happy Thought 4: With the completion of this batch of cards, I'll have 50 cards for our party. All of it on hoarded bases with lots of older papers. Woot Woot! 

Rabbit Trail 1: Hopefully lots of friends can play, otherwise I'm gonna get really bored putting these babies together. 5 nearly identical projects is about my max. 

Jeans

I don't know what inspired my choice to use a photo of myself, but I did it. It was probably a lack of printed ones of the kiddos that I felt were scrap-worthy. Anyway, for the Let's Get Sketchy Week 4 challenge I use photos that I think were from my parents bringing me home from the hospital. I'll check on that before I journal it.

I'd been seriously inspired by Stephanie U.'s interpretation which used a slew of buttons as part of a shape element in the background. I have tons and tons of buttons - and I never seem to use them.

And once I saw the pictures I knew that the title had to incorporate "jeans" in some way so I could use my gorgeous Authentique Original (and then enter the page into their Inspiration Color Challenge).

Authentique products used:
Original Organized,
Elements,
Compound,
Different,
Independent

Other products:
AC Thickers,
stash buttons,
Ranger Distress Inks,

Kiwi Lane Templates (Aspen Court mini 2A/2B, Tags 3, Nature 3T/5T),
sewing machine

MWM Coral 9 - Trucks Up Close

I don't often push these things to their deadline, but with Thanksgiving this week I sure squeaked under the wire to finish up my Scrapbooksteals.com Coral 9 on time. I loved the sketch when it was posted - especially when I saw the initial interpretation. The papers just screamed at me to buy them. I resisted, partly because I was to busy! So here I am, blogging after the deadline so that I can find the link easily because at the end of the series there's always a little drawing for those who completed all ten. Sweet. I've never won it, but the prizes are normally out.of.this.world.

Favorite thing about this layout?! That I  used up a lot of  bigger scrappy leftovers from various collections. Don't get me wrong, I still have scraps from these scraps...the scraps seem to be neverending!

Advent Calendar done, ready for Christmas!

Last spring I purchased one of the Limited Edition Silhouette Advent Calendars (actually two of them, one is used to hold my washi, glitter, button spice jars, and other odds and ends). I'd seen a lot of crafty inspiration and loved that they were fillable with whatever my little heart desires! 

It's been fun cutting it out and decorating all the little boxes. Now I just need a trip to the grocery store so I can find tasty treats. I'm guessing I can get a couple years worth of use out of those boxes, so the goal is to find non-candy options for next year.

I used MME Dear Santa and American Crafts Thickers and Flower Shoppe flowers.

May this be the start of a fun holiday tradition!

Love those guys

I have a love/hate relationship with grids. I LOVE how they look when others do them. I HATE making my own, they never turn out "right." Read as "I can't keep the lines straight without going crazy with measuring so I give up."

So this week's Let's Get Sketchy's dominant element, in my opinion, was the grid background with a banner under the picture. I tried to keep with that and just make it look a little extra homemade to mask some of my less than perfect-ness. 

You can see threads dangling where I just stopped sewing, or where the thread tension was off and I lost stitches. Nothing is centered or straight, though the columns are fairly close. Close enough to call them columns. 

I think I might have to start an album and call it "Grandparents," and store all those pics in it because that's where this one belongs! And I have more of the other grandparents to scrap soon - and that doesn't include all the holiday events that loom in the near future.

Better go charge the camera!

How do you album your pages? So far I've got a book for each of the boys' years of life, plus one for things about me. I'm thinking to pull the Christmas pages from older books and start Christmas books for the family in general. Plus this Grandparents book. 

Kiwi Lane November Doodles

I've never done the Kiwi Lane challenges before. I have to say that the November Doodles were fun to play around with!

There were two page sketches (a single and a double) and a card sketch. 

My single page interpretation. Never one to leave a sketch alone, I flipped it so I could use vertical pics. My templates here are Tag 4, Nature 1T, Madison Avenue mini 3A/3B and Bracket 3.  I used My Mind's Eye Indie Chic Nutmeg and American Crafts Amy Tangerine Thickers.

For the two-pager (side-note, my roots in journalism would call this a Double Page Spread or DPS, so if you ever "hear" me call them that, that's why) I used Scallops mini 1B, Madison Avenue mini 3A, and Bracket 2. And that dear Nutmeg was still out so I plunged right into it for this spread too. And check out the cork board Thickers?! In person, they give such a naturalistic texture to the page. Cool.

For the card I used a couple pieces of scrap paper, including some MME Dear Santa. My favorite part is my attempt at altering one of the Holiday templates from a poinsettia (7T)  to a small star, eh my downsizing ability left a bit to be desired, BUT the tinsel with glossy accents over it is way fun! I also used the Holiday 8T for the tree. The rub-on is from Pebbles.

Winter Paper Girls

I have knowingly skipped most of November, in favor of my favorite time of year. And I know that thankfulness is important, but as I like to tell the hubs, "I can be more thankful for my turkey with carols playing and a pretty tree than I can with a cornucopia and drab brown." It's all in perspective, I guess.

Well, this week the Paper Girls happen to agree with me. The challenge (#20) is to make something Christmas or winter themed.

I made some more Christmas thank you cards for my mom to use.