Mom and Dad's anniversary party with SEI's Field Notes

yeah.  long time.  old story many times told.

last month (excuse the lower case, apparently i'm in that kind of mood) i had a surprise anniversary party for my parents.  their 50th will be Dec. 23, 2016 but 1. NO way NO how i'm trying to hold a party like that around Christmas and 2. mom's dementia is progressing quickly and in two years, i'm not sure she'd enjoy seeing friends and family anywhere near as much.  so.

i LOVE LOVE LOVE sei's "field notes" line and have accumulated more of it than i care to admit. some of it i picked up for 25sheets/$5 so who can blame a girl?!

There were the invites and the jars I already posted about:

  

Then there were the favor boxes with butterfly attracting wildflower seeds in them:

And the banner (unfortunately the colors were lost in this photo.)

There's also an album I made for them that has pictures of them as children, wedding photos, and photos from the party.  It also has a notes to them from the most of the invitees and pictures of those folks, most with mom and/or dad in the photos with them.  When I sent the invites, I also sent cards for them to write the notes on and a request for photos of them, preferably with mom and/or dad in it also.  It makes for a great after-party remembrance.

WCMD- Simple krafty snowman

And this was my final (albeit a few days later) WCMD card.  The challenge was to color- definitely something I do a lot of.

Challenges:
Studio Calico WCMD #4: Coloring
The Kraft Journal #193: No patterned paper
The Paper Girls #65: Solid cardstock

WCMD- Starry night Christmas

The challenge was a simple "Christmas card" theme.  I love this stamp (and I'd love to tell you who made it but I haven't a clue) but have struggled to use it a bit.  I decided that it might be kind of neat to make the sky recede a bit more by cutting it out and popping the scene up.  The only thing I'd do different is to add a bit of sparkle to the snow hills. Though it's a bit hard to see in these photos, the paper has a slight silver sparkle to it.  Again, no idea who made it since I picked it up from a discount paper dealer at CKC the other year- NOTHING was labeled.  :)

Challenges:
Studio Calico WCMD #10: Christmas
Christmas Card Challenges #45: Layer it Up

WCMD- Simple twinkly Halloween card

The colors on this are a bit odd for Halloween but I wanted to color it all using my Twinkling H2Os so I had a limited palette. It may not be overly colorful but it certainly sparkles.  LOL!

Challenges:
Studio Calico #8: Watercolor

WCMD- Fall colored lanterns

This is it before I call it a night.  These may not be overly bright lanterns but I like the more muted quality and think it will be great for a masculine card.

Ingredients:
Paper: SU cardstock, Studio Calico print papers (Here + There)
Ink: Black Momento
Stamps: Lawn Fawn's Lunar Lights

Challenges:
SC WCMD #7

WCMD- Heart is Here card

I have a friend who just dealt with having a melanoma removed and is still waiting for pathology reports to come back.  I thought sending her a card would be a good idea, needless to say.

Ingredients:
Inks: Black Momento, TH distress pad (Spiced Marmalade) & daubers (Peeled Paint, Vintage Photo, ... Concord?)
Stamps: Unity's HERE for You
Paper: SU's Whisper White & Glossy White
Misc: Stampendous' clear & glittery gold EPs

Challenges:
Studio Calico WCMD #9: Touch of gold (the heart is covered with a glittery gold EP)
Unity: Monthly challenge:

WCMD- Scrap Kit Hello

This one is definitely a bit out of my norm.  Challenge #6 over at Studio Calico is to use some of an SC kit on a card.  Honestly, I have one SC kit that I won back in 2012 and while I did make a 2pg spread from it, I really haven't found much else to do with it as the style of the kit just isn't what I usually work with.  It has a lot of butterflies, frames, wood and such.  However, I've been wanting to use it and worked well for this challenge, particularly with the Moxie Fab sketch challenge.

Ingredients: 
All from the April 2012 SC scrapbooking kit with the exception of the Mr. Huey's used on the tag

Challenges:
SC WCMD #6: Use a scrap kit for a card
Moxie Fab: 

WCMD- Elephant birthday

Studio Calico's WCMD Challenge #3 was to use one of their digital files on a card.  I have a Silhouette.  I don't use it much.  I need to.  Badly.  I thought this might be a good kick in the tush to get me working with it again so I used the number strip that I found on SC's "sct_summer_2013_cutting_files." I believe it was a freebie they had up last year.

 

Paper: SU's Whisper White & Ballet Blue cardstock

Ink: SU's Ballet Blue

Cut File: Studio Calico

Stamps: The Craft Meow's Birthday Pun Solid, SU's Favorite Teddy Bear

Misc: Twine- The Twinery or Whisker Graphics

Challenges: SC WCMD #3: Use an SC digital file

Anniversary Invitations

Well, the invites went out.  A few days late but they went out.  Excuse the Fur-Lump in the 2nd photo.  You know how it goes.  No cat to be seen.  Put something on the floor, try to take a photo, a cat you can't remove from the scene no matter how hard you try.  In the end, you just let them in the photo.

 

Paper: SEI's Field Notes, SU's Very Vanilla & white vellum. 

Stamp: SU's Sincere Saluations

Extras: SU die, Gold EP, Butterflies cut from a sheet of FN paper

Butterfly Jars

I'm going to be having a surprise (I hope) anniversary party for my parents in Nov.  I'm using SEI's Field Notes line for the save the dates, invites, album and decorations.  I've been pretty gaga about the line since I first saw it and the rich colors are perfect for this type of occasion.  I saw the mason jar mobiles that Cosmo Cricket makes and thought they'd work well with butterflies so I'm making butterfly jars for the tables.  I'm still working out the details but right now, this is where they stand.

As you can see (though not lit very well), I'm going to put a small electric tea light in the bottom of each.  I imagine the room will be a smidge dim- fancy schmancy kind of restaurant and all- so the lights will show up a bit better.  I'm hoping to find some yellowish lights rather than the LED blue that's in this one.  I was planning to put the candles in votive holders to dress them up a bit but they just took up too much real estate so I may make small paper wrappers for them out of more of the Field Notes paper.

Challenges:
LESSology: Butterflies. The mason jar has been with me for YEARS and probably contained pickles or something else I canned once upon a time.

Mononchromatic Christmas

I have an anniversary party that I need to put together, make save-the-date magnets and invites for, etc. for this fall.  In other words, I have a lot to do and it's going to tangle with Christmas card making so I really need to get moving on my Christmas cards. Here's my start- simple and not overly adorned (ok, not really adorned at all) but sometimes, that's ok.

Challenges:
The Paper Players: Monochromatic clean & simple 
The Corrosive Challenge: Christmas in July
Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge: Layers
Winter Wonderland Challenge: Blue Christmas

First shaker card

This didn't turn out quite as fabulously as I'd hoped but since I really couldn't picture the complete end result in my mind, I'm not particularly disappointed. It still needs something but I'm not sure what and again, for a first try, I'm generally happy with it and what I learned in the process.

Ingredients:
Stamp: Unity
Sticker: SRM
Paper: CS & Vellum: Stampin' Up, Print: SEI
Sequins: Darice
Ink: Stampin' Up

Challenges:
SRM: Birthday
Unity: Friends with Flair
Shopping Our Stash: Birthday (I've had the vellum for YEARS and the SEI paper I've only cracked into once in the 2+ years I've had it.)

Maggie birthday card

This one was a bit tough for me to start.  I usually (read 99.99% of the time) make standard 4.25x5.5" cards.  Maggie is a skoash shy of 5.75" tall.  I thought about cropping here.  Eh.  I thought of not using here.  Duh.  I bought her, I need to use her.  Duh.  So gee, being the genius I am, I came up with the thought of making the card bigger.  Wow.  Genius.  Duh.  LOL!  Luckily I have an envelope for a 5x7 card so it'll actually work.

Ingredients:
Stamps: Unity (Maggie Girl)

Papers: Stampin' Up (Cardstock), Basic Grey (Printed paper)

Ink: Momento (Black), Tim Holtz (Brown), Copics

Challenges:
Unity: Friends with Flair

Baby Card

A woman who I take TaeKwanDo with is expecting her 2nd munchkin in the very near future.  We're having a small get-together for her on Friday so this is the card I made for her.

Ingredients: 
Paper: Stampin' Up
Stamps: Unity (Boat), Stampin' Up (Banner)
Colors: Black Momento, Watercolor Pencils, Brilliant Blue Stampin' Up (edges)

Challenges:
SEI: Colors
Unity: Friends with Flair (I'm entering this on the 16th because I TOTALLY missed it last week!)

Mother's Day cards

I usually try to make 2 completely different cards for my mother and MIL.  This wasn't one of those years.  While I did make one image a bit darker than the other and the background paper a bit of a deeper pink on one, that was it, those were the differences this year.

Ingredients:
Stamp: LaBlanche
Papers: Stampin' Up
Coloring: Copics
Embossing folder: Stampin' Up

Challenges:
Simon Says Stamp: Spring Flowers
Paper Players: Mother
SEI: Color Combo
 Just Us Girls: Sketch

Simple Sympathy card

Unfortunately we need a sympathy card so I used the great "...may hope sustain you" set from Unity for it.

Ingredients:
Papers/Ink: Stampin' Up (colored with SU inks from the lids with a blender pen)
Stamps: Unity
Misc: Clear rhinestone colored with black Copic

Challenges:
SEI: Color Challenge
Unity: Friends with Flair

Big Day layouts

Happy (Inter)National Scrapbooking Day!  Yeah.  It's almost 10pm here on the east coast but it's still today and it's the thought that counts.  Right?

I picked up a BG scrapbooking kit at my LSS quite a while back.  I'm generally not a kit person but I loved the colors and patterns in this one and it WAS on sale after all!  Had to have it.  So it's been hanging around with a lot of other stuff and I really needed to get it done so I made it my goal for today- use the kit.  I altered the included sketch slightly and then made a 2nd 2-pg layout out of the leftovers which worked well since it took 4pgs to get all of my pictures in.

I hope that you have a chance to do a bit of scrapping today and in the days to come.  I'll be posting this over at Big Picture Classes NSD10k and at Moxie Fab's Scrapbooking Rocks challenge.  Hope you'll join me!

Calm Before the Storm Layout

I generally don't do more than a 2 page spread for an event but it looks like I'll have 5 Imagination Movers pages by the time it's all said and done.  I definitely had to do a page about how calm our son was before the show and how he completely lost it during the show.  This one is tied to the Write, Click, Scrapbook Scrapolympics, Day 3.  The event was Freestyle- basically show something that's your normal style.  My style tends to be simple, not overly embellished, and lots of photos.  This one only has 4 photos which is a bit light but it's what I had.  I definitely broke out the Thickers which is a norm and did a decent amount of hand journalling.  I frequently layer papers - this time I used crayons to shade behind my photos.  In a lot of ways, other than multiple photos, my style is I don't have much of a style- it depends on the photos, how I trim them, how they fit, etc. 

Opening Act Layout

I'm VERY overdue in finishing layouts about our 2011 Imagination Movers concert experience.  Of course, in the process of digging out what I needed to finish one of these layouts, I found 3 other projects that I've either started and wanted to finish or never started but really would like to get moving.  Of course, that's in addition to the Disney album and 100's of photos I haven't scrapped yet from lots of events but one thing at a time.  Movers.

 

I designed this one along the challenge lines set up by Write, Click, Scrapbook's Scrapolympics, Day 1.  I actually used a color palette and sketch shown in one of the samples though the color was a fluke.  I went digging through their site looking for a color palette I liked for these photos, selected one and just now, when putting this post together, realized it's the same one that Marnie used for the her page, using the same sketch I used.  Cue creepy music.

Aug. 2013 sketch:

Oct. 2013 Color Palette: 

Hot air love

This is my last Valentine's Day card... for today. I still need to finish one for the pipsqueak.

This was another case of a card I saw and loved from Bosenberries.

All materials except the embossing folder (Darice) are from Stampin' Up.

Challenges:

Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart
The Stamping Boutique: CAS

Mosaic Madness Hearts

I've used the Mosaic Madness punch for Christmas and now for Valentine's.  I wonder if I could squeak off something for every holiday.

Everything is from Stampin' Up.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Shopping Our Stash: This embossing folder has been in my stash for about 2 years and never used that I can think of.
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart

Row of Hearts

This is a card that I cased from my friend LeAnne Pugliese.  I saw one of her Christmas cards and had to recreate it.

All ingredients are SU except for the sentiment which is Katie & Co.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart

Valentine's Day is upon us!

I'm going to make several quick posts with the Valentine's cards I've made.  First up, I think this is my fav and will likely go to the hubster.  Everything on it is a Stampin' Up product.

Challenges:
Paper Girls: Love Your Love
Shopping Our Stash: Love Me Tender (I've had the Lovely Little Labels stamps and punches for over a year... and hadn't even opened them I'm very embarrassed to say!)
Simon Says Stamp: Have a Heart
Stampotique: Heart in Your Art 
The Corrosive Challenge: Feel the Love

The final kickstart

Today's Smeared & Smudged Kickstart Your Art challenge is to create a blotted background.  I started a bit differently than usual in that instead of rubbing my distress inks on the background, I just tapped the ink pads on the paper.  Once I had a pretty good layer, I did rub a bit of Vintage Photo on it to fill in any open spots and to get a bit of a blend.  From there, I spattered water, blotted it, and then used a bottle cap to put circular water rings on and blotted those.  The stamped sentiment is from Close To Your Heart.

Again, many thanks to those of you who have stopped by and left comments.  I wasn't able to respond to most of you since your email addy's aren't associated with your IDs and unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to get around to all of your blogs.  Again, thank you!!  Wonderful work all!

Kickstart Your Art Day 6

Today Smeared & Smudged declared it to be Texture day.

There's a baby wipe I used to clean up ink and paint from day 1 glued and gessoed to the cardstock.  There's black acrylic on that, crackle gel on that (which can bubble up in a very satisfying way if you put it on really thick and heat it even more) white acrylic dabbed on that.  I didn't have a clue what to put on the page so I just started to doodle which for some reason turned into a large segmented box with strange tentacles.  I think we'll leave it at that.

Kickstarting Day #5

Today over at Smeared & Smudged, it's all about using scrap paper to make your background.  I have a file box next to my desk filled with folders of scraps, organized by color.  The final file is full of print papers.  I had no idea where I would go with this but I figured I'd see what I had and then what jumped at me.  Turned out to be easy.  It went something like this:

Open folder
2 great full-spectrum rainbow papers on top
Below, more striped papers with a range of colors
What goes with rainbows?
There's brown in here
Gesso will dull the brown
What goes with rainbows?
How do these papers look together on the base sheet?
What goes with rainbows?
Gold pots go with rainbows
Unicorns go with rainbows

Yeah.  You get the idea.