Decorative CD Cases

I like to make CD's to play in the car when we are driving, and sometimes make one for a friend or family member. I found these CD holders on sale recently and thought it would be a fun thing to make and use some of my new Quickutz Travel dies.


First, I covered the CD cases with Crate Paper "Static" collection, which I also got on sale.
Then I stamped on the luggage tag die, then hung it from some ribbon with a mini safety pin.
I couldn't find any affordable ribbon to go with the Static paper, so I made my own using Adirondack Color Wash and some cream gingham ribbon from Bazzill (yep, another sale item!)
The Denim was a little too blue for the paper, as you can see from the sample on the far right, so I filled a mini mister 2/3 full with denim color wash and then spritzed in about 5 shots of the butterscotch colorwash to make it just the right green/blue for the paper.

Then decorated each license plate a little differently. The sign shape in the center of the license plate was made by cutting out the shape with the QK sign die from a piece of Tim Holtz Mask, and then centering it over the license plate and inking it with distress ink.


I can't help it, I had to do some sewing on each one of them, even if it was just a little bit. This was a really fun little project and I'm looking forward to making a few more!

Supplies:
Crate Paper - Static
Adirondack Color Wash
Bazzill Ribbon
QuicKutz:
license plate CC-SHAPE-078-1
road sign RS-0992
license plate mini 4x8 alphabet 4X8-LICPLATE-M

Orchard House - Home of Louisa May Alcott

In November, when I was back in Boston with my mom and sister for my sister's treatment at Tufts Medical Center, we took a day a went out to Concord. Having never been there, we took our time meandering though the town and then finally out to the Orchard House. This was the home of the Alcott family and was where Louisa May wrote her famous book, Little Women. Her father held classes on philosophy in a building in the back, and they were great friends with Emerson and Thoreau.

Last week when I was at CHA, I got some complimentary Scrap Within Reach paper (thanks Heidi and Nancy!) and on the way home in absolutely horrendous traffic, I spent the time planning what I would do with the paper. I decided that the Urban Garden line would be perfect for my pictures of Orchard House.

Then this week, my friend Susan Stringfellow made the template below and challenged us to complete a layout using the template and cutting the pieces out of patterned paper. I thought it would be a great addition to my Orchard House layout, so I gave it a shot.

Here is the template:

Here is the layout using the Urban Garden. I included a picture of me in front of the house, the sign, Mr. Alcott's philosophy classroom, and a picture of me with my sis in front of the door. Part of her treatment included a shot that made her quite photo sensitive and she had to stay completely covered, thus the hood and glasses in the pic.


It was a terrific tour, we really enjoyed our tour guide, learned a lot about the Alcott's, and then when it was over, out of concern for my sister, the sweet tour guide gave us a ride back into town to the famous Colonial Inn.

If you're ever in Concord, Massachusetts I highly recommend a few hours at the Orchard House!

Supplies:
Scrap Within Reach: Urban Garden
Black brads
Susan Stringfellow template

Happy Haunts

I made this layout for a class a year and a half ago, but I've never gotten the pictures put on it. I finally decided to sit down and order the prints and stick them on. I mean, how hard is that?

I absolutely love the purple and orange colors of the costumes Mickey and Minnie wear for the Disneyland Halloween Time Celebration. I thought they would be perfect pictures to go with this layout.


The funny thing about this layout is that it is Cosmo Cricket Love Notes paper. That's right, I used Valentines paper for a Halloween layout. The first thing I did was take a peachy orange cardstock and color is with purple and orange Distress Inks from Ranger. Then inked the edges of the paper, and there you go!
The vintage Halloween postcard images I found online and they were inspired by the vintage images in the shop windows all down Main Street in Disneyland.

It's a little difficult to see, but I put some Ranger Glossy Accents on the yellow brads and then dipped them in Dusty Concord Distress Embossing Powder to give them a little texture.

I can't tell you how great it feels to have this layout finally finished after a year and a half. ;-D

Supplies:
Cosmo Cricket Love Notes
Purple Ribbon - May Arts
QuicKutz - title font - Eliza, pumpkin and flourish
Flowers - EK Success punches
Ranger Distress Inks
Ranger Distress Embossing Powder

I'm a Raging Ball of Brown Fur!

Last March, Mom came down to give a couple of Cricut classes to some of my friends. It was fun, but she worked hard on Friday night and all day Saturday. Since she was staying over on Saturday night, we talked her into going down to Disneyland with us on Sunday and having breakfast at the Storyteller's Cafe in the Grand Californian. It was her first character breakfast, and since it was very last-minute, we got the last spots during the character time. Consequently we barely got pictures with Koda and Kenai from Brother Bear, but we got them!

For some reason, Mom made this funny face when I first took her picture with Koda, so I thought it would go perfectly with this Koda quote from the movie.




Supplies:
Rusty Pickle Paper (and a little Daisy D's)
Doodle Bug brown flocked paper
Inque Boutique/Darice Boho Chic Stamp
QuicKutz: Dragonfly, Khaki, scalloped border

CHA January 2010

Thanks to my friend, scrapbook designer Nancy Burke, I was able to go to CHA in January and see all the new fun stuff! I had a great time.

Here is a slide show of some of the pictures I took, if you would like to see all of them, click on the link below it and you can see them all.

All the CHA photos.

Enjoy!!

Some Frames

I wanted to try my hand at decorating some frames for a project. I looked around and checked out some different blogs, and a fellow pea at Two Peas in a Bucket, Tammy Tutterow, shared some pictures of some a.maz.ing! frames she has made. You can see them here.

Well, after looking at her gorgeous frames, I was rather intimidated. But, I decided that my frames, although not the pieces of art that Tammy creates, would be fine if I just enjoyed myself and used what I had on hand.

Here is one I did using Nancy Burke's rose technique. This frame was made with some older DCWV shimmer paper, a couple of Prima leaves, and a Basic Grey pink pearl embellishment.


Then I had to make some frames for a few friends using some girly paper. This was the outcome.




Last week I got the chance to meet up with Nancy Burke at CHA and then to meet Tammy Tutterow at the Prima booth. After walking the CHA floor for two afternoons, I came home inspired to try at least one more frame. A masculine one this time, so stay tuned!

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas 2009!

If you haven't already been following Tim Holtz on his 12 Tags of Christmas for 2009, you are definitely missing out! As always, they are fabulous and challenging. I have been making a list of all the supplies and gathering things I need so I can give all 12 tags a shot this year.

As usual, it is a little busy in December, but I really wanted to make time to try and do this if I could. Since several of my scrapping friends are interested in giving this a try, we decided it would be fun to try it together and to kind of spur each other on. So, we're all getting together at my house next weekend and having a Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas Extravaganza! (it will probably be more a chaotic mess of distress, but it will be FUN!)

As soon as I start getting them done, I will post them for you to see.

If you haven't already - click the logo above and head on over to Tim's blog to check out his tags. and while you're at it, leave a comment. You just may win something from him. I did!!

Tim Holtz Twelve Tags of Christmas 2009

I only got 9 of the 12 tags of Christmas completed, but I think that is still pretty good! Below are the pictures of my Twelve tags. I tried to follow Tim's examples as closely as I could. Be sure and stop by his blog to see the amazing originals!

Tag #1

Tag #2

Tag #3

Tag #4

Tag #5

Tag #6

Tag #7

Tag #8

Tag #9

An Album for Malachi

My friends Wes and Rachel had a little boy, Malachi, who was battling a form of leukemia. Almost three weeks ago he quietly passed from his mother's arms into the arms of Jesus. He had a wonderful smile and his mom posted so many adorable pictures of his happy face on her blog that I really wanted to make an album for Malachi and Wes and Rachel so that they could cherish the wonderful memories they had with him. This was a task I knew I could never complete alone, so I called on my scrapbooking friends, some of whom called on their scrapbooking friends, and together, we made this album of memories for Kai's family.

Many thanks to the ladies who contributed pages to this album.
Sandy Kim Tiffany Noli Janice R Suzy
Janice L Susan Sue Colleen Dawn Alisa
Linda Allison Brenda Jan Terry Heather

Kai had an amazing way of affecting people he never even met with his sweet spirit, and Wes and Rachel touched many people they never met with their strength and courage. If you would like to read more about Kai and his journey, please visit their Caring Bridge site and follow their story there.

More Halloween!

I am always so inspired by Disneyland's Halloween Time decorations, especially the ones on Main Street, that I took lots of pictures last year and decided that I wanted to try and replicate some of them in my own home. I had several parties planned for different things here at my house, so I figured that this was the best year to give it a try!

Not only did I decorate for Halloween, but I made name plates, a mini book and some treat giveaways that I learned to make from a friend who has a CTMH business. (Thanks Janice!)

First, here is the mini book I made using Tim Holtz Distress inks and crackle paints, QuicKutz dies and Teresa Collins bracket book covers and Halloween die cut pages. It was such fun to make and we even used the Bind-it-All to put it together.



I made place cards for everyone with the QuicKutz Haunted House die and Haunted alpha, abd my friend Noli made the treat bags.


I learned to make these adorable treats from my CTMH friend and consultant, Janice. Rather than stamping, I added the vintage postcard to the front of the treat (I used several different styles of postcards) and then in various spots, for a little shine, I added some Rock Candy Distress Stickles. It looks like that old glass glitter.



When you open the folder, the treat pops out! So cute and fun!



Now for the decorations. I wanted to keep that vintage Halloween feel, so i continued with the antique postcard theme, just like Disneyland.
Here is this year's front door wreath....but I already have plans to change it for next year.


This is the wall over the entrance table as you come in the door.


Coffee table in the living room.


And I didn't make this, but I found this adorable pumpkin at Vons! Couldn't pass it up, so I included it here b/c it is just so darn cute!


Well, that was it for my Halloween decor for this year -- but you know me, I'll be adding to it next year!

Disney's Halloween Time!

I decided that I needed to plan some Halloween Time Disney pages because I have so many Halloween Time pictures, so here are two I finished this month. I had a couple of problems, one being that some of the paper I ordered from this Making Memories Spooktacular Halloween line didn't come in, so I had to come up with an alternative for it. I have the techniques I used at the end of this post, but for now, here are the two layouts I came up with.




For this layout, I borrowed the tag design from Tim Holtz's Technique Challenge for October 2008.


I didn't want to use ribbon for the tag, so I dyed some cheesecloth using Ranger products. I also got inspiration from a funny layout by my friend Susan Stringfellow. She used google eyes in a circle on her layout about antique fake eyeballs. I loved it and wanted to used it on a Halloween layout, so here is my version of her google eye circle.




The second layout uses some of the new Halloween QuicKutz. The title and adorable curved swirly border and from QK. The rest of the embellishments are either stamped, or the ticket I created on my computer using Microsoft Word.



The medallions on both pages were made by adhering circles to colored paper clips and then tying some dyed cheese cloth to the tops of each.





Because part of my paper didn't come in, I had to adapt. So, I ran to JoAnn's and found this wedding paper. I got out my Ranger Distress Inks and inked the paper so that it looked dramatically different once I was finished.



And just like that, wedding paper becomes Halloween paper!



Then I needed some colored cheese cloth for my tags on both pages. I used Adirondack ColorWash to dye the white cheese cloth, then as I dried it with a heating tool, I spritzed it with Ranger Distress Re-inkers to add depth to the color and to make them look a little more uneven. I loved how they turned out.




Supplies:
Making Memories, Ranger Distress Inks, Adirondack Color Wash, QuicKutz, Cricut (Arrr Matey font), Martha Stewart edge punch, Stamps - Close to My Heart, Inque Boutique - Darice, Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous, cheese cloth, paper clips, google eyes