Harold and Maude Mini...

I finished my Harold and Maude mini this weekend. I had so much fun reliving the movie as I was filling it up...


















I hope you have a fabulous Monday my friends! I will be back tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by and for your comments! I love to hear from you!

The Crop Was Fun...

Happy Sunday and Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! I went to my monthly crop yesterday and had a lot of fun! I am getting better at being able to actually get stuff done at crops WHILE chatting! I have one thing to share today, and the rest will be coming tomorrow.

I finished my next page in the "A Year In The Life of an Art Journal" project. This one is called

I is for Imagine...
I used the SiSTV "Songbird" collection for this, plus Peerless Watercolors, dictionary paper, American Crafts Orange Houndstooth paper, an Imagine stamp by Ducks in a Row, and little blingy flowers.

I am excited because my local scrapbook store is having a garage sale, where you get to sign up for a table for free; you bring in your priced items, they sell it for you, and you get store credit equal to the amount you sell. How great is that?!!! Yeayyy!!! So, I am going to be spending some time this week purging and organizing and pricing. This will be fun!

Alrighty then, I am off to clean up my scraproom and put the finishing touches on my other projects from yesterday. I will be back tomorrow with more to share!

I hope your weekend is wonderful!

Art Journal Pages...

I had a lot of fun playing in my scraproom last night! I think I have my SiSversary charms all figured out! Yeayyyyy! When I get a few done I will post them. Can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with!

I got a chance to do The Next Step's first challenge tonight too. I had another art journal page that I started in Dina Wakely's class, and I thought it would be the perfect chance to try out the "painting using stamps as a guide" technique. I had already stamped the eye of horus on the page with this stamp:
so I painted over it with acrylic paint and a tiny brush. So fun! Other materials used on this page include spray ink, magazine images, black oil crayon, colored pencils, and a sharpie. The words are a reminder to myself...

I finally made my "H is for Happiness" page in my "Year in the Life of an Art Journal" project. For this I used my "Oh Happy Day" collection (designed by my awesome sister Renee), plus a paint chip, pom pom trim, a magazine image and a handmade yoyo.
Journaling reads:
One thing I've learned is that I can't expect anyone else to "make me happy." It's too much pressure to put on another person, plus it puts it out of my control. I choose to make my own happiness and I'm loving my choice.

The red dymo labeling is a quote by Melody Beattie that reads:
"each moment in time we have it all, even when we think we don't."

Tonight I am preparing for a 12-hour crop on Saturday. I'm not sure what I'm going to work on - I've got to figure it out quick because if I go to a crop unprepared, I end up getting absolutely nothing done. Either way it's good girl time tho!

Are you getting crafty this weekend? I'd love to hear what you are working on!

How It's Goin...

So, it's been another five star day! I've been working on designing my charms for the SiSversary charm swap. It's fun playing around with ideas - I've never designed a charm before, and I'm going through a lot of trial and error, but that's how you learn something new, right?

I've also been working on a number of other projects, but nothing is finished so I can't show you yet! Hopefully tomorrow!

I did finish a new art journal page. This was the first action exercise in the "Life is a Verb" book I'm reading. I know, I am an INCREDIBLY SLOW reader. Anyhoo you were supposed to write about the things that bring you joy. I started the background for this page during Dina Wakely's art journaling class...
And for Project 52 I decided it would be perfect to use the four ATCs I made for National Scrapbook day for the four weeks in May (National Scrapbooking Month). So I will just add a back to one each week and ta-da I'm done! So, I already posted this when I made it, but I'm posting it again - now with the back completed...

I hope you are having a fantastic week! I can't believe tomorrow is Friday already - eek! Where does the time go??? I will be back then with another update - thanks for stopping by, and for your comments - they truly make my day!!!

Patterned Paper Tutorial...

Greetings my scrappy friends! It's Wednesday and I'm excited to share my second tutorial from the Project Catwalk Finals. This one is all about how to make the most of your patterned papers. I wrote this specifically for SiSTV, but (of course) it would work with any patterned paper.

Making The Most of Your SiS Patterned Paper
With the beautiful papers included in the SiSTV collections - you don’t need a lot of fancy pre-made embellishments to make a great page! I’m going to share with you some tips I used to make a layout with the SiSTV Romantic Collection papers - and nothing else but a set of alpha stamps and a doodling pen.

#1
Use the images that are already there to make your own embellishments:
Here, I just outlined the flowers on the paper with a black journaling pen and cut them out.

#2
Draw your own images on the papers with a more subtle print, and cut them out:
#3
Turn an image that you don’t need into one you will use:
For my layout, I didn’t need the image of the couch, but I love the black and white vintage pattern, so I drew my own design onto the couch and cut it out!

Put all these ideas together and here’s the page I came up with:

These are just a few simple ideas that can create a lot of variety for your page without having to use anything but your patterned paper!

I hope you enjoy these tips!

Have a super groovy Wednesday and I will see you tomorrow!

Project 365 - Week Eighteen...

I'm still tired from the weekend's festivities, but filled with inspiration at the same time! I'm excited that the first challenge at The Next Step is up, and it looks like a really fun one - check it out here! I also noticed that the challenge over at The Design Experiment right now is related to Music, and I really would like to participate in that challenge too. Check that one out here.

So, here we go with Project 365 for Week Eighteen...

Monday, April 27: Here's the pic of the deer at the bird feeders again. It was so exciting!

Tuesday, April 28: The famous Wilbie yawn...

Wednesday, April 29: My daily breakfast...

Thursday, April 30: I really need to work on my laundry management skills...

Friday, May 1: Wall Art at the St. Paul building where I attended training for work...

Saturday, May 2: Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Sunday, May 3: My final challenge layout from the online crop...

and here's how the layout turned out (click on the image to see more details)...
For more info on Project 365, check out this post.

I can't believe SiSversary is already next month! I'm so excited so excited so excited! I can't wait to meet so many of my SiSters in real life! Yeayyyyy!!!

The new song is up at Scrapping The Music! It's "Secret Valentine" by We The Kings. Come on over and play along!

I'll be back tomorrow with the second of three tutorials based on my final Project Catwalk projects. Tomorrow's topic is "Making the Most of Your Patterned Paper."

Take care and have a super groovy week!

15 Challenges In One Weekend and I'm Happily Exhausted...

The National Scrapbook Day party at SiSTV was so much fun! I really enjoyed hosting two challenges, and ended up participating in 15 of the other ones! This is my second year participating and there are so many things I love about it. It really helps me get out of my box and try some new things. It also helps me not overthink things. When you are doing so many different projects in such a short time, you really have to just have to let go and trust the process. There is no time to start over or take hours to decide where a photo should go or which papers to use. You just do it and move on! And in the process I ended up with tons of new projects to add to my scrapbook! I highly recommend it. So anyhoo, here's what the challenges were...

1. Stacey's Photo challenge was to make an NSD sign and take a pic of yourself holding it. The pic is above, and here's the sign...
2. Angie's ATC Challenge #1: We were to draw inspiration from a beautiful floral painting...
3. Angie's ATC Challenge #2: We were to take inspiration from the poster from the movie "Hairspray" and use a quote from the soundtrack on our card...
#4 & 5 & 6: Corinne's Not Your Ordinary Thing Challenge and Becca's Write Now Challenge and Angie's Lift Me Up Challenge: For Corinne's challenge we were to scrap a photo that is NOT of a person. For Becca's challenge we were to do some real journaling - no quotes or song lyrics - just real thoughts and feelings. (click to read). For Angie's Lift Me Up challenge we were to scraplift a particular layout assigned to us in the gallery...
#7 & 8 Corinne's Love Yourself Challenge and Angie's Lift Me Up challenge no. 2: We were to scrap ten positive traits about ourself (kinda embarassing but really empowering - everyone should do this)...
#9 Angie's ATC Challenge #3: We were to take inspiration from a gorgeous outfit worn in the movie "The Devil Wears Prada"...
#10 Angie's ATC Challenge #4: We were to take inspiration from a gorgeous drawing of a bird on a beautiful background... (for this the drawing I used is one that I did many years ago and the background is a leftover paper towel that is a backdrop/blotter for my art journaling)...

#11 Jody's Mini-Album challenge: We were to make a mini-album out of those papers that we've saved because we love them so much we are afraid to cut into them. LOL. So true...
and here's another view of the mini - I will be filling it up later...
#12 Jen's Get Messy Challenge: We were to just get messy and inky and put things down without thinking too much about it. Just have fun and trust the process... (sooo hard to let go, but very freeing!!!) This is also my submission for Creative Therapy this week - which is to scrap about your favorite vacation.
#13 Angie's Complete this layout challenge: We were given a basic design and had to complete it in our own way, making sure to use five things (I'm blanking on what they all were - I think I'm a bit fried - ha)...
#14 Jan's What's Old Is New Challenge: We were to use only our oldest stash...
#15 Divv's challenge was to link her up with a clip from one of our favorite movies or tv shows. Here's what I linked: Garden State such a cool movie - loved it.

So now I am happily exhausted and my scraproom is a mess - LOL. Can't wait for a good night's sleep...

I hope your weekend was wonderful! Thanks so much for stopping by!!!

Still Rockin the National Scrapbook Day Party!

OMG yesterday's party was so much fun over at SiSTV! So far I've done 11 challenges, and alot of them aren't due til tonight at midnite (including mine), so I will be over there all day again! Stop on by and play along with us! We're having an after-party!

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

I will be over at SiSTV's online crop all day - there will be new games and challenges every hour starting at midnite! I will be hosting at 1:00 am and again at 6:00 pm. Click here to come on over and join us!

Catching Up On Project 52...

Happy May! It's calendar-changing day again!

I'm all caught up with Project 52 again! Yeayyy! Since I was three weeks behind, I decided to do a three-card series using the "Drama Queen" collection from SiSTV. This project was inspired by Angie Backen who does alot of three-card ATC series, and they are always amazing! Thanks for the inspiration Angie!
The only things not from the collection are the word stamps (Stampin Up), and the brown paper (Basic Grey and another unknown mfr). For more information on Project 52, click on the icon in the right hand column --------->

Plans for the National Scrapbook Day crop at SiSTV are coming along nicely! It's gonna be a lot of fun and it all starts tonight at midnite so come on over and join us! There will be new games, challenges and prizes every hour, and I will be hosting at 1:00 am and again at 6:00 pm!

Also, remember you have til next Tuesday to participate in my gaffer tape mosaic challenge - link your creations in the comments section of Wednesday's post below. It's a fun and easy technique - why not give it a try?

Thanks for stopping by, and I will see you tomorrow my friends!

Project 365 Week Seventeen and National Scrapbook Day Festivities...

It's National Scrapbook Day on Saturday (May 2) and SiSTV is having an online festival! Yeayyy! It goes for 24 hours and there will be games, challenges and prizes! It's gonna be so much fun - I hope you come and join the fun! Each hour, starting at 12 am Eastern time, there will be a new host with a new activity! I'm going to be hosting twice - once at 1:00 am for you nite owls (like me!), and again at 6:00 pm. I haven't decided what I will be doing yet - so if you have ideas or suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

On to Project 365 - It's week seventeen!

Monday, April 20: Johnny totally digs my new roll of kraft paper...

Tuesday, April 21: Happy Earth Day! I got this beautiful art in an email from the Ministry of the Arts. The artist is Mary Southard. Ministry of the Arts is an online store that is run by the Sisters of St. Joseph and they've got some really neat stuff. I especially love their calendars which are full of beautiful art. - check out their website here...

Wednesday, April 22: Evidence of my road trip to Buhl, Minnesota for work. I loved their water tower...

Thursday, April 23: Happy mail from my SiSversary secret sister!

Friday, April 24: Urban Art on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis...

Saturday, April 25: Michael finished painting our entryway today and I LOVE how it brightens up the house!
this will be the journaling spot for Saturday...

Sunday, April 25: Saw an awesome movie...

and here is how the layout turned out. Click to see more detail...
For more info on Project 365 - click here.

So that's it for today. I will be back tomorrow with another update. Don't forget - you have a week to participate in the gaffer tape mosaic challenge - link up your creations at the post below for a chance to win some SiSTV gaffer tape!

Thanks for stopping by!