My Visions

So now that I've waited a day and thought about it, I guess I'll be okay if I expose my inner visions and feelings with you.  I would if I saw you in person, so I guess it's okay if I do on the web!  Here is the project I was working on over this past weekend.  I'm not going to tell you much about it - so enjoy the pictures and the view of "My Vision."

A weekend I enjoyed

Although there are many weekends I enjoy that include my family, this weekend did not.  This weekend included some of my best girl friends.  It included some time to rejuvenate.  It included some good food.  It included some great memories.  It was a scrapbook weekend!!  And I loved every minute of it!  Most weekends, I end up leaving or getting distracted and not getting as much done as I'd like; however, this past weekend I went to at the end of January with Kristen was absolutely amazing. 

 There are a large group of girls who get together with Kristen, my Creative Memories Consultant, who rents a house on the lake for us to get together and be creative.  Here are just a few of the memories we shared.

This is one of my friends, Laura.  As you can tell by another of my friends pictured on the left - not many of us are wanting our picture to be taken.  We are in the zone, and not looking our best.  Although, my girl Laura, is looking wonderful while working hard.

 So many times, people ask me what I bring to a weekend.  I bring everything, including the kitchen sink.  Because if I don't, I always want what I left at home!!!  So, here's my work space from a distance.  I have a lot of junk on the table - and there's some of Laura's and Kate's!  Since we have so many people, I also bring my lights.  I can't expect the CM consultant to have 2 lights for all 17 to 23 of us!    

And, I even use the shelves from the house we rented!!  I like to make sure everything is organized, and believe it or not I like to make sure that things are about where they are when I'm scrapping at home.  It makes it easier to find things, I don't have to think, "Now where did I put that THIS weekend?"  So, on the shelf are the things I don't need at the moment, which include the completed parts of my album, the album pages and page protectors.  I, sadly, even bring my mini shelves from home and put the little shoe boxes of things on them that are the same things I put on them at home.  Organizing in children's shoe boxes is very easy.  Each shoebox is large enough to put a few things in, but yet small enough to keep them from floating around and becoming a disaster.  For instance, one box has my glitter containers, one box has my velum quotes, and one box has my heat embossing powders.  Moving left to right (if facing the table) is my pages to do, the bag of letters and eyelets, markers, and can of necessities, tub of letter pages, carton of mat stacks, and then in the middle is my work space (with work in it at the time).  I really try to utilize all of my space.

I even use the floor space!!  If I were sitting there, to my left is my three drawer cart, which fits under my scrap table.  Then behind me is my big shot.  In the black cart is various colors of cardstock.  The shelves I had already mentioned includes a craft sewing machine, and an iHome on the top.  You have to have your tunes, and a place to charge your iPod!  It also has three "book" organizers of metals, buttons, and ribbons.  On the bottom are clear "envelope" type folders that are 12x12 that hold random papers, tags and stickers.  Those make organizing by theme or kit so easy!

What do you bring on your weekend crops?  You'll have to let me know. 

A little storage situation solved!!

 I LOVE ACRYLIC STAMPS!!! I love to buy them here, there and everywhere!  But, to say the least, they were a pain in the bum to go through and keep organized.  SO, I thought to myself, I need to solve this problem!!!  Well, I got some free credit from my last Stampin' Up! show, and ordered the empty stamp cases for their clear mount stamps.  I didn't know how exactly to put them in there, but I solved that problem, too!

 Here are some of my favorite stamps.  I took them out of the big packaging and adhered the printed on plastic to the new stamp container.  So this stamp case now holds six of my stamps.  I kept the cover to the stamp and they stick inside on the stamp, even when the case is closed. 

So now, here is one of my two stamp drawers all organized.  These cases truly made life a little neater!  :)

I really love to have all of my things all neat and organized, so if you have a storage/organization problem or solution, please share - it will help all of us scrappers!

Enjoy!  :)

I'm off!

To Scrapbook that is!!  I'm headed with a couple of my besties to go to a condo for the weekend and scrap!  As I copy off of Ali Edwards, these three things are the new purchases I have made to make my weekend fun.  First, a storage unit for my ribbon.  It is from Michael's.  And unfortunately, I cannot find a picture of it anywhere online, so sad for you :(  It is made by Store in Style, and has 20 compartments for ribbon (if you buy extra dividers).  I am quite excited about it because, although earth friendly, I need more  space than the kids shoe boxes I have the ribbon stored in currently! 

Second:   Dymo Caption Maker.  I am quite excited about this one as well.  I have often wanted to add this piece of flair to my embellishment bag of tricks.  So now, I have this pretty cute little tool that came with three different font thingies (how do you like that for technical?) and I added the primary colors to my purchase so I have four colors to choose from!!  Now, let's see how many pages I have that can boast this product!!!



And finally: Creative Memories Cheerful Seasons Cricut Cartridge I am looking forward to using this wonderful cartridge for my Cricut.  This new cartridge offers some wonderful things to the line of designs I have.  I am so excited!!!  I purchased this through Kristen and her website is linked.  Since I was her "down line" when I was a Creative Memories Consultant, I stick with her still.  Her website does offer shopping and can be shipped right to you.  There are two cartridges that are Creative Memories exclusives, and this one was my favorite! 

So now, you'll have to wait until I post about the weekend!  Have a great weekend yourself!!

It's a guy thing - really

A new cricket cartridge = a page embellished in it's honor!!!

Here's the story, my Graham was playing at his Great-Aunt's house and came across a safety helmet.  I have a few electricians in the family, and a few engineers, and thought how cute it would be to make it a guy thing. . . and that it is!  The paper is from DCWV, a stack of course!  And the card stock is random things I have.  Truly from the scrap pile.  The ribbon is from Stampin' Up!, I love their ribbon!  The eyelets are from Oriental Trading (I know I have mentioned that I don't like the quality of their things - so please understand that I abhor their scrapbooking items' quality!!) and the vellum quote is from DCWV - "Quotes Stack," I have quite a few of the stacks so I don't honestly know which one it is from.  I use a lot from the home and family stack and of course the all about boys stack as well.  And here, my friends, is my favorite part!!  I got a new cricket cartridge (and I have loaned out my cartridges, so I don't know which one it is from, and it may even be one of the new ones a friend got - but it still rocks!!) and love this thing!!! 

 Feel free to comment and leave a note about which cartridge it is - if I figure it out, I will comment or add the info as it comes to me. 

Again, thanks for popping in and checking things out! 

So, I've tried a little harder on the photos. . .

Well, I've done it - I've tried a little harder and have accomplished better photos for my blog.               Reasons will be posted later. . . . suspense!  :)      This picture is of an embellishment on a page I don't feel comfortable sharing. There are children in the pictures that I don't have parent permission to post.  Anyway, it was a birthday party and I just loved the idea of this "p" for party that I inked.  The letter is by Chip Chatter and the ribbon is from Close to My Heart.  I wrote the rest of the word party out in a Creative Memories silver ink.  Simplicity this is! 

So this is the page I will feature of my boys.  This was taken in October of 2009 and I adore these pictures. 

I do an album for each of the boys with the similar pictures, just featuring the one who's album it is.  This one is Gabe's album.  I just love fall and sunflowers and leaves changing, so this paper from  a DCWV stack - one of many I own.  There are no other embellishments on this page, other than the writing, which I adorned to compliment the existing design of the paper.  This was a SIMPLE layout that met the needs of the photos. 

The Children's Muesum!!

I love to take the boys to the Indianapolis Children's Museum!!  It never fails that we learn something new, have an unbelievable adventure and are exhausted by the time we leave.  This layout features pictures that are actually taken at the end of our trip - so smiles are forced! The layout is so simple because I used things from Close to My Heart's Stardust Paper Pack.  The green background paper, card stock to mat the pictures and quote as well as the border sticker at the top, line sticker at the bottom and the Discover sticker.  I chose to "hang" the quote sticker by using Stampin' Up's Hemp twine and two brads.

 I adhered the twine in the middle of the quote with a glue dot (which I would not advise to do again) that is still sticky where the twine doesn't cover.  I learn something new with the things that don't quite work! 

These pictures are from the glass exhibit.  I continued using the Stardust package.  The border sticker and the star sticker in the center is from the package or the coordinating stickers that go with it.  Because the pictures were so busy, I didn't want to do too much, but yet wanted to keep the "theme" of my paper the same so the pages flowed together as you look through my album. 

The last page features pictures throughout the museum and again uses paper from the Stardust Package, just a different choice of paper than the green.  I again used the coordinating stickers to embellish the layout.  These pics are also matted in a card stock from the same package.  I love using packages from CTMH - they've got everything you need. 

Here is a close up of the stickers I layered on to my page.  These stickers are not as thick as chipboard; however, they are about as thick as some of the thin cardboard packaging you get with some products.  I'd like to think of these stickers as "thickers" because they're heavy duty.    I can't say it enough I love me some CTMH. 

First Day

As the start of school approaches, I thought it would be a good idea to share what I did with my oldest son for his first day of Kindergarten.    This paper is from the DCWV premium "Grade School stack."  I like to pick these up from Hobby Lobby or Jo Anne's when they are on sale.  Because my loving son has Aspergers, nothing can be too serious at our house.  He loves to play - so that is why we have quite a few silly shots of him.  Since they so encapsulate who he is, they're quite appropriate to document his life. 

I used some of my old Creative Memories star stickers from a random package as well as a school bus sticker.  Kindergarten was preprinted on the background paper above; however, I used letter stickers from the beach layout I did previously to title the page on the right.  I also used some of my old phrase stickers that I bought from Hobby Lobby a few years ago.  I'm trying to use up the old so I can buy new and tell you where I've gotten it at!  :)

This layout will go opposite the previous one.  The stickers are from the old School days package from Creative Memories.                                                I hope you have enjoyed my layouts.  Feel free to copy them, or deviate from them.  More soon!  :) Melissa

A few of the most recent 10

These following pages are some recently done work.  I am only "a year behind" with my boys' albums.  I really take pride in that.  Sometimes, it is because it is the simple stuff I do, sometimes it is because I don't take pictures for a few months.           Sadly,  I have discovered though, that my camera is HORRIBLE for taking these kinds of pictures.  I am half way there now to a good camera; however, that means I still have a LOT of saving to do.   

This two page layout was "my creation," but probably scraplifted from somewhere, it's pretty traditional.  However, it uses my new stamp set from Close to My Heart! 

The little date marker there, yep - that's a good one!!

I used a kit from Hobby Lobby to complete this page.  The yellow card stock was supplemented from a pile of scraps.  The stamp in the top right corner on this page was one I picked up from Stampin' on State Street.  I drove by there last week, and I don't know if they're still open :(  I liked them for my little business.  Anyway.  This was just an easy done page, I do a lot of my own journal writing.  My mom passed away almost ten years ago, and I cherish what papers she wrote on (call me crazy, but I do), so I feel it is important that I write on my pages and journal. 

This paper was from Target's Dollar Spot last year.  I love shaped paper, but don't often use it in my layouts.  I used up some old stickers from when I first started scrapping to embellish and then just used the alphabet stickers from the Summer Fun Packet featured above from Hobby Lobby. 

To feature this picture, I matted it and then inked the edges with a Close to My Heart Ink called Star Spangled Blue.  I love to ink edges of things and purchased a small set of stipple brushes today from Michael's that I am sure to use.  I love inks!!!          

I hope you have enjoyed these samples of my recent work.  Feel free to leave comments.  Let me know what you think, what's missing, what I should add, or a product you're interested in seeing.