San Francisco!

From Peoria, my old home, to near my new home....San Francisco!

I was contemplating the Sketchy Thursday sketch and came up with a layout about my mother-in-law and brother-in-law's visit during DH's graduation. We took them all over the Bay Area, of course with a stop at the lookout for the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here's the sketch:





Here's my take:

This layout uses the Sketchy Thursday 3.25 Sketch and incorporates the requirements for the Scrap And Stamp Saturday Challenge (stripes, large title, tearing, and a stamp!). And for The Pink Elephant's Scrapbook Challenge #1, this page shows my favorite part of scrapping...following a sketch! I think it makes my pages much more unique when they are all together in the book and makes me stretch my creative side.

DETAILS:

Paper - Solids (Martha Stewart, DCWV), Patterned (K&Co)

Embellishments - Stamp (Heidi Swapp), Ink (Brillance White), Thickers (American Crafts), Circle Cutter (Fiskers), Star SF Embellishment (Handmade, bought in SF)

Farewell Peoria

I suppose it is only fitting that I decided to do this page about Peoria this week. This past weekend DH and I headed to Peoria for a wedding for two good friends. Here's a picture from the event.

It was the first time I had been back there since the week of the photo in this layout. I thought this photo went well for a layout based on Sketch #96 at Creative Scrappers and served as a nice break from some of the Peru layouts. I'm working hard to catch up all of 2009 yet!

Here's the sketch:






Here's my take:

I haven't done many layouts that are not jam-packed with photos, but sketches are a great way to have me step out of my comfort zone. Also, they offer a great way to have me scrap some of those events that I might not have done due to only one or two photos of note. I carried through the Mexican restaurant theme we were at by using some fun patterned paper from American Crafts. The rub-ons are also from American Crafts, which satisfies the challenge over at Practical Scrappers (a new scrapbook challenge blog I recently found).

DETAILS:
Paper - Solid (Martha Stewart), Patterned (American Crafts - A La Carte)
Embellishments - 1" Circle Punch (EKSuccess), Corner Punch (EKSuccess), Circle Cutter (Fiskers), Circle Journaling Stamp (Autumn Leaves), Ink (Excelsior Green), Alphabet Rub-Ons (American Crafts - Eddie)
Sketch - Sketch #96 at Creative Scrappers

(And remember there's blog candy for my 100th post! Check out this post for more details!)

Sketch #95 @ Creative Scrappers

I'm being pretty productive today. This is actually my second layout today (the other will be revealed at a later date...oh, the suspense!). Continuing with MachuPicchu layouts, I used the Sketch #95 over at Creative Scrappers for this one.





I really like this photo of DH and I. We were exploring around the ruins on our own and while we had plenty of the scenery and separate pictures of us doing various things, we thought one of us together was needed. We have gotten pretty good at those extend-your-arm-to-take-a-couple-shot photos over the four years of our relationship. It almost becomes a necessity or else we would always have to bug complete strangers all of the time. And being that we know most of our photos go in scrapbooks, we take a few just to make sure we get the shot. So, throughout all of that, we've had lots of practice at this particular shot. I think this one is one of our better ones. The lighting is just great on its own too. :)

I decided to make one of the rectangles in the sketch our tickets from MachuPicchu. The tickets have a lot of character with the paper feed borders and our official stamps to get into the ruins. DH knows to save anything and everything...it has a great chance of being in a scrapbook!

DETAILS:

Paper - Patterned (American Crafts - A La Carte, DCWV - Citrus Stack), Solid (Recollections)

Embellishments - Border Punch (Fiskers), Vacation Fun and Compass (DeJa Views)

Sketch - Sketch #95 at Creative Scrappers

(And remember....blog candy is being given away on this blog! See this post for details!)

Post #100 and Blog Candy!

Here's post #100 on my little blog...

Okay, so maybe it's not a huge accomplishment, but I thought it would be fun to celebrate anyway. I started this little blog in February 2009 so I guess it took me about a year to hit this milestone. :) I didn't know if many would be interested in my ramblings or my little craft projects, but it has been fun to really get into the card making and scrapbooking community. I've made some great friends along the way and have learned plenty!

Challenge blogs remain my favorite ones since jumping into this hobby fully. I think most of these posts centered around a challenge in some way or another. It's gotten that even DH doesn't even ask if something is for a challenge! I recently got into scrapbook layout challenges (especially sketches) and I think my pages have definitely gotten more interesting and vary. My first books in 2003 make me almost ashamed...good thing I still like them for the memories!

Well, you're probably here for that promised blog candy! Here it is:

There's ribbon, stickers, notepads, quote stickers, and other embellishments. Some has been in my stash since I started scrapbooking. And that's with a cross-country move from Illinois to California in there! But now I've got it packed up in a box all set to go to its new home...will it be you?

Here's how it could be....

First Chance: Leave a comment on this post. (We all love comments right?)

Second Chance: Tell someone else about this blog candy. Post it on your blog sidebar and then leave another comment telling me you did with a link to your blog. The code you need is right here:

<a href="http://lalybi.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja_cuqrb2G02nJ0cA2bLywQp1u-F_ZLAoHvcF4XwSQCS1Yx3B-Jbt30JTh55PtAjFbiAkHVLuriyqnXRnV0_5-jfAfamoLQ9ZHqX6jp4YqKwMRr_0UgH9eHTwxjWTXMEDf_DXDbmj9qGdy/s1600/IMG_3197.JPG" width="200" height="150" /></a><br />Blog Candy Until March 31!

Third Chance: Become a follower! (I just might follow you back too! I'm always looking for more blogs to read.) And leave another comment telling me you did.

Simple right? Okay....you've got until MARCH 31. I'll make the announcement on APRIL 1 (no fooling!)

Good luck!

EBTKS Challenge

I've been lurking on this fairly new challenge blog and this time I've decided to play! The Everything But The Kitchen Sink Challenge Blog is about finding inspiration around the house to create sketches or use common household items in the card making process. This challenge was a sketch:

Do you ever have a card not come together very easily? This is that card for me. I think I was making this way too hard, but I think it turned out pretty cute in the end. I hope you agree. I'm again on the purple kick so I used my trusty Martha Stewart papers. It is my favorite color! I also created another birthday card because you never have too many of those around. A lot of friends and family have April/May birthdays so I hope to be set soon with all the birthday cards I will need in the next few weeks. :)

Thank you for stopping by!

(And this is post #99....#100 will be soon! YAY!)

DETAILS:
Paper - Cardstock (Martha Stewart)
Stamps - Cake and Present (Studio G), Happy Birthday (Waltzingmouse Stamps - Say It With Style), Ink (Colorbox)
Embellishments - Ribbon (Target), Border Punch (Fiskers), Circle Cutter (Fiskers), Dimensionals
Sketch - EBTKS Challenge #11

Stamping Around With Waltzingmouse Stamps

Another great challenge is going on at Stamping Around that is sponsored by Waltzingmouse Stamps. This time it's an inspiration challenge. Here's the inspiration pic:

Now, when I started the card I was drawn to the little quilt under the place setting and the purple color. Having looked through all of my papers, I don't have a purple like that...can you believe it? So, carrying on with the little quilt I thought this would be a great time to use my scrap paper stash. I pulled out papers like the red on yellow, red on white, pinks, purples, and green to match the little squares in that one bigger quilt square. I then punched out butterflies from each of these papers.

The papers that had the reds spoke to me the most, so I kept to these three papers to make a grid of butterflies. I felt the butterfly (while a new toy that I just got) brought forth the dainty feel of the picture. I replaced one of the butterflies with my sentiment. This is "Happy Birthday" from my new Waltzingmouse Stamps - Say It With Style set! YAY! I love this loopy font!

So there you have it....thanks for stopping by! :)

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (Stash), Solid (Wausau Papers)
Stamp - "Happy Birthday" (Waltzingmouse Stamps - Say It With Style), Ink (Excelsior - Red)
Punch - Butterfly Punch (Martha Stewart)




(And if you've read this far, here's a reward: This is post #98 for me on my little blog. I just might have some blog candy coming on post #100. Just saying! LOL!)

Waltzingmouse Stamps St. Patrick's Day Customer Blog Hop!

In honor of St. Patrick's Day and Claire, the owner of Waltzingmouse Stamps based in Ireland, another customer blog hop is happening today! The theme is of course green and St. Patrick's Day. The hop is taking place on the new Waltzingmouse House Forum, so go there for all the other hoppers.

My card today went the simple route. I decided to go with my heart and "St. Patrick's Day" saying from the  Celtic Heritage set. I had not gotten these little stamps inky yet but I'm loving the little pattern in the heart! How cool. :) I knew I wanted to make a shamrock with this little stamp, but then what to do: either a 4-leaf clover or 3 leaves but what to do for a stem? Taking a feather out of Claire's hat of tips and tricks, I decided to curve the sentiment before getting it inky and stamping. Works pretty well, I must say!

This little card is already sent off in DH's lunchbox. I thought he'd like the little surprise. :)

DETAILS:

Paper - Solids (Wausau Papers), Patterned (K&Co)

Stamps - Heart and St. Patrick's Day (Waltzingmouse Stamps - Celtic Heritage), Ink (Excelsior)

I was going to have just one card in this post, but I got in the green spirit and had to do one with Claire's great digital stamps too!

My second card uses the great digital stamps Claire provided for those that might be a little low on the St. Patrick's Day themed stamps. I've used digital stamps before but these color just beautifully! I mean, even my little Crayola colored pencil coloring looks pretty good with that shading already provided in the stamp, doesn't it? And this stamp is hand-drawn by Claire! Even DH liked it. (Yes, he got to see this one in progress.)

I'm combining my Swapping Sistahs Kit papers and embellishments with the great digis for this card. Teaming up with a few other card maker friends we send each other a little kit each month to make a project from. This month was my turn sending the kits and we had planned to post on March 17 too, so I went with a green theme. As we're all fans of Waltzingmouse Stamps, you might see the others in this blog hop too. And if you're interested, I have our previous projects linked on the right. It's a fun little challenge that makes us step out of our comfort zones as we use different products we send along. :) 

DETAILS:

Paper - Solid and Patterned (Martha Stewart)

Stamps - Clover Bouquet and Emerald Blessings sentiment (Waltzingmouse Stamps - Digital Stamps), Colored Pencil (Crayola)

Embellishments - Ribbon (Martha Stewart), Corner Punch (EKSuccess)

Be sure to check out all the others participating on the hop today by heading to the forum. And thank you for stopping by! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hannah

I thought I would take a break from the cleaning to get this page posted. I finished this page last night following the Sketchy Thursdays 3.11 sketch. It was a break from the Peru 12x12's that I've been doing lately and is an 8x8 page for my little furbaby Hannah's book. This is only the second finished page in her book but I have a lot of digital photos to choose from for many more in the future.

This page is about Hannah's New Digs in California. She got to come to California with me after I visited my family again in May last year. My parents were cat-sitting since the first place that I lived did not allow cats. Hannah instantly liked the vantage point from the living room windowsill. She has a complete circuit throughout the living room: run up half the stairs to the landing, go through the railing to the windowsill, run across the windowsill, pounce on the back of the couch (usually surprising anyone that is sitting with their back turned to the windowsill and not expecting a cat to come falling out of the sky). I know that when we move, she'll definitely miss that aspect of the house.

A simple page, but I got to use my new paw print punch (clearance find at Joanns) and one of the bigger flowers I've had in my stash but I thought went well with the sketch. The "mischief maker" tag is a part of my kitty stash that I've accumulated for her book.

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (K&Co), Solid (Green - Bazzil Swiss Dot, Pink - Stash)
Embellishments - Flower (Stash), Mischief Maker Tag (K&Co), Paw Print Punch (EKSuccess)
Sketch - Sketchy Thursdays 3.11 Sketch

American Crafts Birthday Card

I enjoy doing the American Crafts challenges on their studio blog when I can. This week the challenge was to create a card using at least two American Crafts products. I did one better and have three!

This card completely revolved around the little embellishment I had in my stash. I thought the colors were fun, but definitely out of my norm. I then found some paper from my A La Carte pack. I almost stopped there and called it good but I wanted to use my trusty Thickers...unfortunately I do not own pink ones, something that will need to be remedied! So my white foam Thickers turned pink with a little help from a Bic marker...I think they take the color nicely.

As it's always good to have birthday cards on hand, I decided that was what it would become. A different take for me, but I like it. I hope you do too. After a day of cleaning up my craft area, it was good to create something clean and simple.

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Solid Yellow (DCWV), Patterned (American Crafts)
Embellishments - Thickers (American Crafts - originally white), Flower (American Crafts), Ink (Studio G)

Wedding Card with MFT

Hello! Yet another post today, so please scroll down for more from today.

I wanted to participate once again in Joanne's Blogaversary challenge so I pulled out my My Favorite Things Going to the Chapel stamp set to create a little wedding card. I'll be in need of wedding cards soon as we head to two weddings this season. I was in the mood of making another swirly patterned paper and luckily this set had two little swirls to do just that!

Of course, Joanne's challenge is to do some folding, crumpling, or pleating. I decided to make my own flower embellishments for this little card. I found the tutorial to do these simple rolling flowers here and have wanted to make them since. Now I finally have. :) Very simple to make!

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Solid White (Wausau Papers), Solid Green (Martha Stewart)
Stamps - Swirls, Bride (My Favorite Things - Going to the Chapel), Ink (Studio G - Green, Colorbox - Black)
Embellishments - Ribbon (Michaels), Flowers (Tutorial found here), Swirls on Flowers (Cuttlebug Embossing Folder)

MachuPicchu!

I've finally made it to our part of the trip where we visited MachuPicchu. This part came after our three day hike and one evening in Aguas Calientes. I have quite a pile of good pictures from our adventures exploring these famous ruins. The view was terrific! One thing I will recommend to anyone taking such a trip like this to Peru though, definitely do the trek! That was our highlight even over MachuPicchu, if you can believe it. The pictures are the best here, but the place is so touristy! We personally liked the laid back and slowness of the rest of our trip. But, probably just personal preference and you have to say that you've been to MachuPicchu if you're already in Peru.

So here's my first two pages about MachuPichhu. I went with more of the artistic and general viewpoint pictures we took first. I love that llama one! The next pages will have more of our exploring (and Hupert! you don't want to miss Hupert!). I used sketches #93 and #94 over at Creative Scrappers for this two-page spread. I first did the 1-photo layout, but saw that #93 would be a perfect compliment. Do you agree?

I enjoyed working with some papers from My Mind's Eye for these two pages. Just enough glitter and glitz but not to overpower my photos. I'm a very photo-oriented scrapbooker. I feel my photos should stick out more than anything else on the page, so that's why you don't see a ton of embellishments. Not to say that I don't have them, but I am finding that paper (patterned and solid) is more of my go-to for embellishing my layouts more than anything.

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (My Mind's Eye - Organics), Solids (Martha Stewart, Wausau, DCWV)
Embellishments - Thickers (American Crafts), Circles (Fiskers Circle Cutter, EKSuccess 1" Punch)
Sketches - 1-photo (Creative Scrappers Sketch #94), 3-photo (Creative Scrappers Sketch #93)

Thanks for being a good friend

I did one card for the Moxie Fab Olympics of Stamping challenge last night, but was wanting to play with my stamps once again so had to make another one this morning. Yet, again, in just under the wire since the entries are due by midnight tonight.

For this one I combined a few other challenges too. I wanted to make sure that I entered Stamping Around's challenge sponsored by Waltzingmouse Stamps. I'm a fan of Claire's beautiful stamps and the incentive of a Spring Baskets set is too good a prize not to try. Be sure you check out this challenge, unlike the Moxie Fab, this one goes until March 14. (See, I can get challenges done early too.) This is where my colors for this card came from.

Finally, I needed some sketch inspiration this time and turned to 2 Sketches For You. I really liked Laura's card (the first one on the challenge post) with the open center for the focal point, so I pulled out one of my Inkadinkado stamps ($1 at Joanns). I cut out the one inside box and popped up the image on dimensionals for some interest. I also thought I would try the color on color technique I've seen on my blog hopping. I used a kraft card base, but then layered on a kraft border punched strip. I'm enjoying making my own patterned paper and this card has one from taking the two circle stamps from Waltzingmouse Stamps' Sewing Box Christmas.

DETAILS:
Paper - Kraft Solid (Wausau Papers), Solid Colors (Stash)
Stamps - Thanks for being a good friend (Inkadinkado), Circles (Waltzingmouse Stamps - Sewing Box Christmas), Ink (Cocoa - Colorbox, Green/Pink - Studio G)
Embellishments - Border Punch (Fiskers), Brads (Recollections)
Techniques - Paper piecing, Stamped patterned paper, 2 Sketches For You #47 sketch, Stamping Around Color Challenge SA04

Happy Birthday Owl Card

With the Moxie Fab World Olympics of Stamping challenge going on, I had to get out my stamps and participate. Right before the midnight deadline tonight, but it's still on time with plenty of time to spare!

This entry is a little fun birthday card I did using one of the Hero Arts Owl Trio stamps I got from my best friend for Christmas. I finally got these little guys inky, but decided I liked just this one owl for this card. I wanted to do little peeking squares for him. To keep with the stamping theme, I pulled out my Autumn Leaves swirls and made my own patterned paper. A fun, yet easy little card to go in my go-to pile of birthday cards (something always good to have).

DETAILS:

Paper - White Solid (Wausau Papers), Light Purple (Martha Stewart), Dark Purple (DCWV)

Images - Stamp (Hero Arts Owl Trio), Ink (ColorBox Cocoa), Sentiment Stamp (Studio G), Swirl Stamp (Autumn Leaves)

My Favorite Hiking Partner

This page is dedicated to my DH. I'm enjoying sprinkling in a few fun pages within our Peru honeymoon trip book with some of the more random pictures we took. These pictures are all from our second day on the trek through the Andes. We only hiked during the morning and early afternoon before we got to our campsite. This left a bit of time for some exploring around the valley. He definitely is "my favorite hiking partner."

I tried a new technique of adding ruffles to my ribbon for this page for the texture challenge over at Scrap and Stamp Saturday. I thought it seemed simple enough to do...a few stuck fingers with the needle later, I got it done. :) I also made my own patterned paper with some of my flourish stamps. To go along with the American Crafts challenge this week, I included three American Crafts products: the backside of the Elements ribbon, mini mark Purkey rubons, and Rocketeer Thickers.

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Solids (Martha Stewart)
Embellishments - Ribbon (American Crafts), Thickers - Rocketeer (American Crafts), Rub-on Purkey (American Crafts), Stamps (Autumn Leaves), Ink (Studio G), Heart Stencil (Target)
Techniques - Stamp my own patterned paper, Ribbon scrunching