I'm Crop Suey Kit Crazzzzyyyy!

OMG I had so much fun playing with my Crop Suey kit at my crop yesterday!!! There is so much fun stuff in this kit you won't believe it! One thing I love is all the awesome patterned paper! Alot of whimsical patterns which you can use whole or cut images from - I did both on my first layout:
The background paper is made by Hambly and this stuff is first class - it's hand silk screened, and you can tell by the texture of the paper. I thought it made the perfect backdrop for this pic I took of a dandelion in our neighborhood. Dandelions make me feel whimsical when they are in this stage, and I tried to convey that in my layout. Everything you see here is from the kit except the red duct tape, the paint and the sequins. I have another kit project I am working on that is almost done. I should be able to show it to you tomorrow!

More news on the Crop Suey front - I am going to be the regular Tuesday blogger at the ShopCropSuey blog! I'll be chatting about all things creative - with special attention to their monthly kits - come on over and visit! The fun starts this Tuesday!

The new song is up at Scrapping The Music (along with a tribute to Aleida). The song is "Forever Young" by Rod Stewart - and here's the layout I did for it:
The pic is of Michael and his son Stevie on our family vacation this summer. I loved how they looked walking up the path together that day, and this lyric just seemed to fit perfectly with it. I wrote the lyric right on the picture, with a Slick Writer from American Crafts. I also stamped in the bottom right corner of the photo, added some distressed bits of paper from the Cosmo Cricket Happy Camper Line, and stitched the sun with embroidery floss. Forever Young is a great song for a tribute layout for that special person in your life. Come on over and play!

Project Catwalk Week Ten

The challenge this week for Project Catwalk at SiSTV was to scraplift another contestant's project from one of the last ten weeks of the challenge! What a great way to end the ten weeks - by honoring another scrapper's awesome work! I chose to scraplift my friend Kim's Happy Box. She made a fun, bright, happy box to put everyday things in that make her smile. I love that concept!
When I was a kid I absolutely LOVED the Pippi Longstocking books! I thought she was so cool because she was a strong independent girl, who lived all by herself with her pet monkey! Her favorite pastime was "thing-finding," which consists of going for walks and looking for "things." Pretty rocks, pieces of car parts, pretty marbles, bits of twine - whatever she could find that seemed interesting. She would pick them up and take them home. Ever since I read those books I've been a thing-finder! Now that I scrapbook, it's great because I can put my "things" on my pages! So the long and short of it is - I made myself a "thing-finding" box to store my "things!"

I used the new Social Butterfly collection from SiStv, plus a picture of our daily walk path (where I do a lot of my thing-finding), an orange Izze Soda Carton, and a book illustration of Pippi. On the sides of the box I put a Pippi quote - "When you're a thing-finder, you don't have a minute to spare."





Now I'm inspired to go find some things to put in it!

Signs of Fall...

We are starting to see signs of fall on our daily walks now. Who could look at the beautiful colors in these leaves and not be inspired?!!! I just love autumn, and I'm so excited to see all the trees when they get to their peak colors - it's one of the highlights of my year!!! I'm not in a rush tho - just so we're clear about that. I will hang on to summer for as long as possible, but it's great to have these little peaks of what lies ahead.
Great news! I got my first Crop Suey kit in the mail yesterday and it is even more fabulous in real life than I could have imagined! So much fun in one package! It's called "Over The Rainbow." Take a look!

I am just in LOVE with all that fun Sasafrass Lass paper! and the woodgrain contact and hambly papers are the perfect accent! Oh, and those CUTE Pink Persimmon stamps with the little frogs and mushrooms! How awesome! Oh, and see that cute paper with the green and turquoise forest critters up at the top of the picture - next to the alphas? That is Crop Suey original paper! I'm going to a 12-hour crop session with my friend Christina tomorrow and I'm going to be in "Over the Rainbow" heaven! Look for some pics of my Crop Suey creations in the near future.

Okay, I'm going to get going now - I must prepare for my crop! Oh hey - check out SiSTV at midnight tonight - they are having a special sale on their new vintage kits! It looks like they've got some really unique finds, and the price is right - starting at only $5 for a kit! Click on the SiSTV Widget in the right column and it will take you to the boutique!

Happy Friday everyone! Much love and creativity to you all!!!

Scrapfest, Project Catwalk Week Nine, and Spontaneous Dancing!

Happy Monday everyone! Went to Scrapfest at the Mall of America this weekend and it was a lot of fun! Scrapfest, if you haven't heard of it, is a huge annual event that Archiver's puts on each year at this time. There are tons of vendor booths with free make and takes, and tons of workshops you can sign up for if you want to. There are special crops, and all kinds of new products! This is a pic of my friend Christina and I at the World's Largest Scrapbook page! How fun is that?!!!
And these are just a few of my favorite make and takes of the day. I love the little hambly notebook with the robot! And I got to try the new Zutter Bind-It-All! I love it!!! I made that little diecut chipboard spiral bound notebook with it. Inside are little page protectors - I can't wait to fill it up!
I came home happy, but exhausted and aching from head to toe! Being on my feet all day takes its toll on these old bones!

Saturday night it was time for the Project Catwalk Week Nine Posting over at SiSTV. The challenge this week was to make a 12 x 12 layout, using something in a way it's not intended to be used. Here's what I came up with:



It's a layout about my daily morning ritual with Willie and Johnny.

The journaling on the inside of the tag reads: "When I get up I sing GUTEN MORGEN KINDER! (at the top of my lungs, just like my 4th grade german teacher Frau Oplesch used to do), and they come running to me cuz they know it's love glove time! Willie gets so excited he jumps up and down and sings back. They get petted with the love glove, and their fur looks beautiful. and they purr. and I sing them a song. It's the song from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. It's always the same song. and they love it. and I love it. cuz I know they're happy."

On the front of the journaling tag are the lyrics to the Mr. Rogers song.

Okay, for the challenge of using something the way it's not intended to be used I did two things:

1. I painted the black texture on the background with the actual love glove! It has these plastic nubs all over it that pull off the dead hair when you pet the kitties with it. I dipped them in black paint and patted it on the red paper to create the polka dot texture. Then I poured black glitter on for a little extra sparkle. I added just a few extra dots up around the letters with marker where the love glove wouldn't reach.

2. I also took the fur that came off the cats during grooming and wound it into yarn, which I used to stitch along the left edge of the layout. The dark yarn at the bottom came from my black cat Johnny, and the blonde yarn came from Willie. It's so soft, and was surprisingly easy to work with!

This coming Wednesday is the final challenge of the ten-week series! I can hardly wait!

I will leave you with a video for a song that's been in my head constantly since I heard it on the radio this weekend. It's one of those songs that I feel COMPELLED to jump up and dance to whenever I hear it. Doesn't matter how tired I am! (Scroll down and pause the music player before you play the video):


Do you have any songs that just make you wanna DANCE? Link me up! I'd love to have more reasons to dance!

Tribute on Scrapping The Music

There is no challenge this week at Scrapping The Music. Instead we chose to honor Aleida Franklin's memory with a slideshow of all of her Scrapping The Music Layouts. To see her beautiful work click here.

Pic of Aleida

I had trouble getting to sleep last night thinking about Aleida. The internet is a funny thing. It allows you to get to know and care about people you would otherwise never have a chance to meet. It really opens up our world, and that's a beautiful thing that I am grateful for.
I'm off to Scrapfest today, but I wanted to first post this beautiful picture of Aleida that I received this morning from another design team member - Barbara. Thank you Barbara.
Take care everyone - hugs to you all.

In Memory of Aleida Franklin

A very sad thing happened today. We lost one of our Scrapping The Music Design Team Members. Aleida Franklin was killed in a car accident on her way to work this morning. There are no words to express how tragic this is. When I told my husband what had happened, he commented how important it will be for her children to have her scrapbooks to look back on. Documents of her feelings and thoughts for them to treasure. This truly is more than just a hobby. Aleida was a bright star and I will miss working with her very much. My thoughts and prayers are with her family.

Life is so precious. Treasure every moment.

Inspired but oh soooo tired...

This week's Project Catwalk challenge at SiStv was fabulous! Our challenge was simply to create a 12 x 12 layout using something in a way it wasn't intended for. Leaves it pretty wide open, eh? I struggled with it for hours last night, trying to come up with something unique, and nothing seemed to work. Then tonite (thank heavens) I got a fun idea and had a blast working on it! Supplies were flying everywhere as I worked furiously to make the 24-hour deadline. I finished with plenty of time to spare! The results make me giggle, and I can't wait to share them with you! Can't do that til Saturday nite tho - harumpf. I am feeling so inspired right now, I truly feel like creating, or no, what I really feel like doing is making up a new scrapbook collection with papers and ribbons and such, but I am SO EXHAUSTED that I can't even get myself to clean up the gargantuan mess I made in my scraproom! Aargh. I would show you a picture of the mess, but I'm too tired to take a pic and upload it. How bad is that? Besides, who really wants to see a picture of a mess anyway, right?
Instead I will show you a pic of my hubby Michael. He received his medallion at AA tonight for 14 years of sobriety. I'm so happy for him and proud of him! Congratulations darlin' - I love you!

Take care everyone, and I will be talkin at ya again real soon!

Dreams are Fascinating.

It may be slightly disturbing, but here's how my art journal page turned out! Okay, so it's not quite as sunshine and rainbows as most of my stuff is, but it's real, and I feel really good about that! I felt compelled to finish my page with this image after I had ANOTHER one of my creepy dreams where there is gross stuff in my mouth and I can't get it out! Each time I have the dream it's different stuff, but what's the same is that I try and try to get it all out of my mouth and it just keeps filling up. IT'S GROSS! I've been having these dreams for years, and I have a lot of ideas of what they mean, but I thought if I got it down on paper it would be therapeutic, and it was. Maybe the dreams will stop now!?! My latest dream was one where there were these slimy little sea creatures crawling into my mouth and they swelled up in there, and I was trying to pull them out but they wouldn't let go and then their tiny legs would pull off and stay in my mouth. How weird is that? I actually find dreams to be sooo fascinating, don't you? They are so full of symbolism - at least to me they are. I have taken a few courses on dream interpretation and each presented a slightly different school of thought on the subject. I find that if I think about my dream right when I wake up, I can usually figure out a meaning for it. I think it would be fun to do more of these dream pages. It could open up a whole new world of artistic expression!
The page was done by drawing the mouth onto a separate piece of paper. I did the coloring with colored pencil and black oil crayons. I used a black sanford colorific marker for the journaling. It's the one kind of marker I have found that will write over any surface! (Note to self - buy more of those!)
So this is my foray into the world of scrapping the darkness as well as the light in life. I have to admit it feels really freeing! So what do you think about dreams? Do they have meaning for you? Are there any that you have over and over? Do you remember them?

Oh Art Journal - I have Missed You!

It's Friday again - YEAY!!! And I have another Scrapaganza weekend ahead of me! No particular plans and plenty of time to create! The weather has been beautiful the last few days - nice and cool and sunshiney! If that holds out I hope to go walking with Michael and get some photos to scrap.
My creativity tends to go in phases. For awhile, I was doing almost nothing but art journaling and I absolutely loved it! Then, for some reason, I started doing more layouts and other projects and the art journal got put aside. Poor, sad art journal! I'm so sorry to have neglected you! I hope you knew I'd be coming back when the time was right! I did my first layer tonight and here's a pic. I usually start by smooshing some acrylic paint around on the page to make a background. I just grab any colors that inspire me at the moment. I love the look of these two greens together. After this dries I will go on to my next layer. Since it's after 4:00 am, that will probably come tomorrow. (grin)
Do you art journal? I'd love to hear about your process!
It's about bedtime for me, so I will leave you with my latest pic of my late-nite scrappin companions - Willie and Johnny. Aren't they a couple of handsome dudes?

A Reason to Polka in my Scraproom!

Today was a VERY exciting day for me, because my "Nature's Magic" layout was chosen as a weekly winner for Project Catwalk over at SiStv!!! I was so EXCITED I literally grabbed Michael and we did the polka around my scraproom! I can't tell you how much it means to me to be recognized in this challenge. Project Catwalk is the biggest contest I have ever participated in, and each week has been an amazing challenge that has stretched my creativity to new levels. That in itself is a great reward, but being chosen as a winner makes it all the more sweet! JJ, The Big Sis over there - is the one who did the choosing - Thank you JJ!
Here's a new layout in my series about our recent family vacation. Still loving that Happy Camper line from Cosmo Cricket! The colors go perfectly with outdoorsy pics, and the stickers are so cute and funky! I also used SiSTV houndstooth gaffer tape, along with some natural elements picked up on the trip - birch bark, a leaf and a twig for Mr. Owl to sit on.
I can't wait for tomorrow's Project Runway - I wonder what the show will be about??? I wonder what the Project Catwalk challenge will be?

Bon Jovi At Scrapping The Music!

Bon Jovi is rockin' the song "It's My Life" at Scrapping The Music this week! Come on over and check it out! Sing along at the top of your lungs with me! If it's been awhile since you've seen the video - take a gander again - it can't help but make you feel good... and while you're at it, you just might get inspired to make a layout! Here's mine! I hope you decide to play along with us...

P.S. Today is the big day for Crop Suey! The website goes live this morning. I've been over there and seen the kits - and I'm absolutely ecstatic!!! We're talkin' some BIG FUN! Check it out!

Have a wonderful day my scrapparific friends!