An Altered Recipe Box (and a funny video)

I thought I would share a recipe box I made for my sister-in-law for Christmas. I had originally planned on submitting it for my Craft Warehouse design team entry, but when that time rolled around I completely forgot all about it.

When I made it, Craft Warehouse was all out of their traditional, smaller recipe boxes so I substituted a larger box that will only fit the smaller recipe cards. If I had to do it again, I think I might hold out for the correct box, but as it is, she will be able to fit a lifetime worth of recipes in there. LOL! :)

Papers, Rub-ons and buttons by Basic Grey's Nook and Pantry, Large Label by Spellbinders, Fruit Stamps by Hero Arts "Simply the Best", Glossy accents, etc.

Now for a silly video. Please excuse the poor lighting (my daughter forgot to change the setting), but I came across this video that my girls had filmed without my knowledge of my youngest lip syncing to Taylor Swift's song "Mine". Totally cracked me up! Looks like I have a drama queen on my hands...



This post goes out to my husband who I celebrated 15 years of marriage with yesterday--Too bad neither of us realized the special day until about 7pm at night and we already had separate plans for the night. LOL! Thanks for stopping by!

A "White Out" Layout Challenge

I have a final challenge today for Craft Warehouse's Weekend Blog Party. If you are interested in joining in the fun it's not over yet--You have until midnight PST on Tuesday to still enter for a chance to win some awesome prize packages. Make sure to check it out HERE.

For this last layout I was challenged by Rayette HERE to create a white layout with only the use of one additional color (sparingly). This was definitely scary as I'm all about mixing things up with bright colors and never just one, but I gave it my best shot. I'm guessing I used a bit more of my one color than I probably should have, but I realized this was also one of my first tries at a monochromatic layout so it was all around a good and difficult exercise for me.

For my background I used 9 different scalloped border punches from every brand on the market. I've always wanted to do this so I was excited to find the perfect pictures of my daughter in her white scalloped dress when we went to see the cherry blossoms last year.


Patterned papers are by Jillibean Soup. Layered butterfly diecuts are a combination of Sizzix (Large), Papertrey Ink (Medium) and Martha Stewart Punch (Small). After using the silk flower, regular cardstock butterflies looked too stark and unbalanced so after fidgeting with a dozen different combinations I settled on adding vellum to the top to give them the same soft look.


Thanks for stopping by and THANK YOU Craft Warehouse for such a fun event! I never would have completed 3 layouts and a card this weekend without your inspiration and motivation! :)

Two More Completed Challenges

Welcome to another day of fun and inspiration with Craft Warehouse's Weekend Blog Party! You can read more and join in the fun by hopping over HERE

I have had so much fun spending my weekend papercrafting as my hubby has is sleeping off his jet lag from a recent business trip.

For this first project I was challenged by Rebecca Grinder HERE to use this sketch for either a layout or a card:

And here is my take on it...

Papers by My Mind's Eye "Lime Twist" Life of the party 6x6 paper pad and stamps by Papertrey Ink.

For my second challenge found HERE we were inspired by Laura Cook to create a layout all about ourselves, more specifically about our favorites. I love this concept, but unfortunately I have done several layouts on this already and am out of new favorite things to scrapbook about so I decided to do an anti-favorites layout and scrapbook about some of my biggest pet peeves in life. It's something I've wanted to do for years so I was excited to have a reason to finally do it.

I felt really silly about taking these photos, but thought the happy, smiling pictures I had on hand didn't fit the bill so I staged a photo shoot in my bedroom with the help of a piece of black fleece, a tripod and my camera's self timer. I felt so silly about it that I locked my husband in the bathroom who kept trying to walk by while I did it. Anyway, luckily we have a new Costco just 2 miles from our house so I was able to run there real quick to finish this one. Yeah for Costco! :) Anyway, here it is...

Papers by Girls Paperie, Pebbles and Jillibean Soup. I custom made the number border on my Silhouette which had been inspired by some Girls Paperie paper, but sadly was just too busy to tie into my layout in the end...

Just in case this layout doesn't fully qualify me for the favorite's challenge, here are a couple of older layouts I created on the subject too...

Thanks for stopping by and make sure to hop over to Craft Warehouse's Blog HERE to join in on the fun and prizes. :)

A Scraplift Challenge

Back again today for another creative day playing along with Craft Warehouse's Blog Party! You can join in the fun HERE

For this post I am sharing a layout I scraplifted from Elizabeth Widerspohn. You can see more about the challenge at the link HERE. I had so much fun lifting the layout design of Elizabeth's page! After finally finding a trio of small photos, the page fell together really quick and I had a blast working on it!

This was Elizabeth's inspiration layout:

And here is my take on her fun challenge:


Papers are from various Fancy Pants collections: Mostly "About A Girl" with a bit borrowed from "About A Boy" (sunrays) and "Celebration" (pale blue). I also made use of a stamp set from their "Summer Soiree" collection for the waves.

Thanks for peeking! I can't wait to see what inspiring challenge pops up next! :)

Handmade Flower Challenge

Craft Warehouse is throwing a very fun and festive blog party this weekend with lots of great challenges and prizes. Make sure to hop over and try to make some time to play along. I thought I would join in the fun and share a couple of handmade flowers I've made... To see more inspiring Handmade flowers click on the link HERE

I made the handmade flowers on this project last year just by layering and crumpling several scalloped circles which were secured in the center with a brad and then hidden with a more decorative button on top.  Most of the papers on this project were made from various My Mind's Eye collections.

This is probably a stretch, but for this project I diecut my "handmade" flowers on my Silhoutte machine and then crinkled and distressed the leaves which were cut from a patterned paper. This layout was created for a past Craft Warehouse Scrapbook Club in which we were challenged to use the leaf button and a leaf print paper (which turned out to not really be my taste, but after some alterations I was pleased with how well they blended in with my other Basic Grey papers used).

Thanks for peeking! I'll be back tomorrow to share a layout I created for Elizabeth's scraplift challenge. :)

I'm so excited!

I'm so excited! I have been invited to join this year's design team at Craft Warehouse! Last Thursday they posted on facebook that they started making calls at 4pm. Of course my phone never rings, but it rang about a half dozen times that day and of course it was never Craft Warehouse.... :( By the time 7pm rolled around I was feeling pretty down that I hadn't made the cut. I was so sure they had already called everyone for their 11-person search. Anyway, when the phone rang at 7:30 I thought it was one of my sister's calling me back and I was completely speechless when it was Jeanean on the other end. I stammered over my words and made a complete idiot of myself, but I've been secretly floating on a cloud ever since. I'm not sure why, but I've been sort of savoring the invite and have only shared the news with like 3 people so far (two of which include my husband and oldest daughter). :)

Anyway, I thought I would share my winning enteries...

We were asked to submit 1 altered project...

Used mostly different My Mind's Eye paper lines on this one. Tried to mix it up a bit because I knew I wanted to use the bird from the Quite Contrary line, but I also wanted to tie in the blue color from another home decor pieces I had made for my room. The yellow floral paper is by Echo Park. I couldn't find the right blue flower for the top that I had in mind so I ended up buying a white one and adding chalk ink to achieve the color I wanted (Stamped Home phrase by Papertrey Ink Boards & Beams). :)

Two Cards...

A cupcake Card using Echo Park's Little Girl line. Embossed the folds in the wrapper using Martha Stewart's Scoreboard tool and inked with chalk inks for added definition. Applied glossy accents to pink polka-dot paper to give the "sprinkles" extra shine.

Made this card using My Mind's Eye Alphabet Soup Collection, Martha Stewart border punch, Basic Grey Buttons.

And Two Layouts...

For this one I used Echo Park's Be Mine collection and wove the paper and glued between each weave. I then used my spellbinders to diecut the woven paper into heart shapes. :)

For this one I started by trying to sew a running stitch on the outside of the paper circle to gather it into a flower (like you would with fabric), but I quickly realized this technique was for the birds so I had the bright idea to wrap my paper around a quarter for a perfect circular flower everytime. Just remove the quarter template, glue down with my favorite Beacon's 3-in-1 glue and top with a brad. Would also work with a spellbinders template for different sizes. It was a major Woo-hoo moment! :)

(Papers by Basic Grey's Hello Lucious)



(All paper and most supplies can be found at your local Craft Warehouse store). Thanks so much for stopping by and peeking. :)

A couple more Spring Cards

OK, so I completely dropped the ball on having a new post for each day of the week last week so today I have two cards to share. :)

I made this card for last month's Card Club using Unity stamps to match Cosmo Cricket's Pixie-Licious Mini Deck. We were challenged to use the green ribbon and little "beads" on our card in some way...

This second card started out as a Craft Warehouse make-n-take at Card club this month, but it was a bit too simple for my taste, so I dressed it up to put my own mark on it. I added the pink stripes (using Impression Obsession background stamp), cut out a scalloped frame (using Spellbinder dies) which I stiched on, added the fun little white enamel dots to the berry (by Ranger) and added the bow, button and baker's twine for some extra flair... Between the two of us I think it turned out pretty cute--Marilyn had the most clever idea to use flower petals cut apart from a daisy punch to use for the green part of the strawberry! (Other supplies: patterned paper by Doodlebug and Itty Bitty Stamp by Unity).

An early Mother's Day Card

I was so inspired by this card I found made by my scrapbook idol Jennifer Gallacher (you can see her blog here)...

...that I made my own version on the Silhouette as early mother's day cards. I ended up making four of them for mothers and grandmothers in my life this year. :)

I used the teacup card shape found here
that I stretched and pulled the dimensions on so that it would perfectly fit an A2 sized card (4.25 x 5.5)


Additional Supplies:
My Mind's Eye "Luscious" patterned paper
Hero Arts "Elegant Brocade" wood stamp
Papertrey Ink Sentiment Stamps
Spellbinders Circle and Scalloped Circle Dies
Sizzix Original Tag Die
Colorbox "Creamy Brown" Chalk Ink
Baker's Twine and Button
Prima Flower

Thanks for peeking! :)

A Lollipop Birthday Card

Today I'm sharing another card which I made when I was challenged by my local scrapbook store to make a card using the pinking circle diecut and this hot pink brad on a card somehow. I chose to create a cheerful and fun shaped card using the Sweet Lollipop card template by Silhouette America.



After I cut out and adhered all the pieces, I went over the swirl with Stickles glitter glue. The inside Spellbinders pinking circle was stamped with a Hero Arts Scalloped circle stamp and the cute sentiment is from the Fillable Frames #1 series by Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow I will try to set a new personal record by posting yet again. For those friends and family that subscribe, but don't scrapbook (wink-wink) I apologize in advance. :)

Some Spring Cards to share

Thought it was about time to dust off this blog and share some fun new stuff I've been working on. I have finally pretty much finished selling off my mountains of Ebay inventory (sold 1700 articles of children's clothing in 2 months time, working about 60 hours a week plus some for a good long time). I am so burnt out on that and so very excited to be back doing something creative. I'm going to try my best to update this blog once each day of this week with some new cards I've been busy making.

Today I'm sharing a couple cards featuring a cloud kick I was on. My local scrapbook store challenged us to make cards with the theme "things that fly". I got so inspired I made three cards. Here are two of them...

We were required to use an ivory card base (something I found very challenging with the bright, cheery "things that fly" theme so I added an ivory banner behind the plane to tie in the card base. We also were required to use the brad I used on the propeller (which proved to be another huge challenge for me).

This card is my favorite. I made hand cut the sunrays and used my Silhouette to cut out the fun hot air balloon. It's not to often that an idea in my head actually works out on paper, but this one did. :)


Thanks for peeking and hopefully I can stay on top of my schedule to be back tomorrow to share another card I've been working on. :)