Thursday, September 29, 2011

Where's Tessa

I was able to create a rare layout tonight after work. I followed this week's challenge at Lasting Memories. The challenge is to create a layout with Frames and Flowers. I don't think I have ever used a frame on a page, but I was up to the challenge.

I used Artful Delight's September kit again, and photos of Tessa.

The sketch I chose is one that Theresa Neubaum created for the SnC's Monthly Sketch Challenge. I am so excited that Theresa is creating sketches for us to use. They are awesome.



The colors on my page are a little off. I had to take this photo at night, with the light in the scraproom.

The flower in the center is from Tessa at Precocious Paper. I love her flowers. Make sure you check them out.

I am also entering this layout as my 52 Weesk Challenge entry at SnC. I can't believe it's Week 39 already. I am so happy that I have been able to keep up.

Thanks for looking.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I Don't Know About This

Good Wednesday morning. It's been very strange weather-wise here in NY for the last week or so. It's been pretty warm, now it's rainy. It's supposed to get more fall-like toward the end of the week.


It's time for another great challenge at The Paper Variety. And we have a great prize for one random winner - an assortment of papers and embellies from Fancy Pants' To The Moon collection.





This is such a fun collection. And the challenge is super fun. We have an exclusive sketch created for us by Aphra Bolyer. I absolutley love it!!



I used some more photos of my doggies to create this page. These are photos of the 4th day with our new puppy Tessa. Willie is very leary of her, but curious. He was this way for several weeks. I was worried he wouldn't warm up to her.



I used papers and embellishments from the September Artful Delight kit. I really enjoyed this kit, and the pages I created with it. The alphas are some Thickers and bubble letters from my stash.


I hope you will give this sketch a try. I look forward to seeing lots of wonderful entries.








Sunday, September 25, 2011

Birthday Sundaes Challenge #28

Good Sunday morning. I hope everyone is enjoying a nice, leisurely weekend. We have a trial this weekend, a very wet one. It's been very challenging.

It's time for a new challenge at Birthday Sundaes. This one is very versatile.... Create a birthday card with buttons. Make sure to include a birthday sentiment on the front of the card.

For my card, I cut the card base and the sentiment from the Birthday Bash cartridge. There is so much great stuff on that cartridge.


I cut the colorful scalloped oval with my Nestabilities. I included some more of my dimensional birthday stickers, and of course some buttons from my stash.

I hope you will share your birthday card with buttons with us this week.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Save the Date Card

Good Wednesday morning. I have a card to share this morning. My son Pete is getting married. He asked Jenna to marry him over the summer, and now preparations have started for the wedding. The big day will be in May next year, but there is so much to get done.

I created this Save the Date card to show her. She really liked it, so she, Jackie and I will be getting together to get them all made up.





I am going to enter this into a couple of challenges. Wee Memories Challenge #68, which is to use no patterned paper. On this card, I used a large wood stamp to create the background on the pink paper. The image is flowers and butterflies. The wedding colors are going to be pink and black and the theme will be butterflies.

Flutterby Wednesdays' challenges this month are open, you just need to include a butterfly, fairy or angel on your project. Perfect.


Thanks for looking.

Wait

Wow, 2 posts in one day. I have gotten quite a bit done. I completed 3 pages and 1 card. Pretty good for me.

I have missed making pages of the doggies. So that is what I concentrated on today. This one is for the September Artful Delight sketch challenge. I wasn't sure I liked the size of the photos in this sketch, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it.


I used papers and embellishments from the September Artful Delight kit on this layout too. It was so fun to create different pages today with the same kit.

I have been trying to get some good photos of Tessa. As soon as I aim the camera at her, though, she takes off. She obviously does not understand this is not acceptable.. lol. I will keep working at it. It's so fun to compare the photos of her to those of Willie. She is really starting to look like him now.

Stealth Mode

Good Tuesday morning. I had to take the last 2 days off to go to doctors' appointments, so I am also trying to get some scrapping done as well.

I really wanted to get the Lasting Memories challenge done early this week. Willie has a trial this weekend, so I will not have time to craft. I love the challenge this week. It's a sketch, and you are to use fall colors in your layout. Here is the sketch, again a very versatile one.


I used papers and supplies from my September Artful Delight kit. The colors are very fallish and perfect for the LM challenge. The buttons and ribbon were the only items from my stash.


When Willie doesn't want to come in, he honkers down and gets ready to pounce when you approach him to pick him up. It looks really funny when he flattens himself down to the ground.

Be sure to check out the challenge and the great projects the design team created at Lasting Memories.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Good Sunday morning. It's been a beautiful weather weekend here. My boyfriend rented a backhoe for the weekend to start some of the repair to our storm damaged driveway. He got done with it early, so he was playing and removed some wild roses around our nursery area in the backyard. He's going to do a little more today. So this will expand our gardens a little bit more.

And since it's Sunday, it's time for the new challenge at Birthday Sundaes. The challenge this week is to create a belated birthday card. Check out the cards the design team created. They are all so cute and creative.

For mine, I went simple. That is really my style. I followed the September Card Sketch #1 at Sassy Lil' Sketches for my card. I am really loving using these sketches.

I used one of the new Nestabilities that my son gave me for my birthday for the large, scalloped circles. All of the papers were scraps from my stash. I added a little bit of bling to the center of my stamped flower and the sentiment spot.


I hope you will create a belated birthday card to share with Birthday Sundaes this week.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

1954

Today I created a page that is not for a design team. I am using it for several challenges though.

I really wanted to join the Lasting Memories challenge this week. The challenge is Black and White - including the photos. I decided on Sunday when I saw the challenge that I wanted to use an older photo. I picked one of my father from 1954.

Next, I needed a sketch. I hadn't been able to do a layout for Sketch Inspiration in a while, so I checked there first. This will work.


Now I needed to come up with some embellishments. I checked other challenge site for some inspiration. On Frosted Designs, the Fabulous Friday challenge is to use punches on your project. I used 3 of my scalloped circle punches to create the lollipop flowers on the page.

And here's my page......


The photo was taken in Indianapolis. I don't know the circumstances. My aunt had given me a number of photos of my father when I was first married. I am so glad to have them.

I am also going to use this page as my 52 Week Challenge entry at the Yahoo Group Scrappin'-n-Chattin'. It will also be entered into the monthly challenges there as well. We are being challenged this month to enter layouts at challenge sites.

Thanks for looking.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Boo

Good Wednesday morning. What a great blog hop and week of challenges we had last week at TPV. It was great to see so many participants and all of the projects were amazing. It's time for a new challenge at The Paper Variety. The challenge this week is to create a paper project using stickers. It can be any type of sticker - flat, chipboard, 3D.... Our sponsor this week is SRM stickers, and one lucky winner will receive a prize package. They provided a wonderful package of stickers to each member of the design team. So much variety. Be sure to check out the wonderful products they sell.

I really wanted to create a layout using some of the stickers that we got, and as I was going through them the Halloween stickers really sparked my interest. To create my page, I used this week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays.


I used photos of my nephews from quite a few years ago. It feels good to get some older photos scrapped. I used the SRM stickers as the title, along the left side, on the orange and white paper strips and along the bottom. They are so much fun to use.

I am also entering this layout into the current challenge at Paper Cutz which is to create a paper project that incorporates Cricut cut, hand stamped or digital stamped pumpkins. I cut a pumpkin from the Create-a-Critter cartridge.

Be sure to surf on over to The Paper Variety and check out all of the great projects the design team created. I hope you share your sticker project with us this week.


Tuesday, September 13, 2011

TPV Blog Candy Winner!!

Wow!!! What an awesome birthday party we have had at The Paper Variety. How about all the great challenges?? And all of the projects. Just wow!!! Thanks so much to everyone for the sweet comments that were made on my blog. And thank you to my new followers.

I have really enjoyed reading all of the sweet comments left on my blog. If you recall, I am offering a gift to one random winner who left a comment on my 1st party post.....


And the winner is.....



Lisa Watson said...

Those birds are tooo cute on your card!! What an awesome prize! I'm a new follower!


Congratulations Lisa!! Send me an email at ssedlak815@gmail.com with your address. I will get the giftcard in the mail for you.

If you wanted to submit a project, you still have a few hours. The projects are due at noon today. Hop on over to TPV and enter one or all of the challenges.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Birthday Sundaes Challenge #26

If you are here for the TPV blog hop, click here.

Good Sunday morning. I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. I am making great progress in the scrap room. I am hoping to be done very soon and make a blog post with the before and after photos.

It's time to reveal a new challenge at Birthday Sundaes. Kristie really challenged me this week. She wants us to create a Criss Cross card. I had never even seen one before. She has a link to a tutorial up on the blog. This card was really so much fun to make. I will definitely be making more.

For mine, I used Echo Park's A Walk In The Park Collection and the Beary Cute image from Doodle Pantry.



Here's a photo of the inside and outside of the card side by side.

Be sure you check out the beautiful cards the other DT members created. I hope you will give this technique a try too.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

TPV Party - Day 4

If you are here for the TPV blog hop, click here.

Good Saturday morning. It's time for Day 4 of our "favorite things" celebration at The Paper Variety. I hope everyone is enjoying our birthday celebration and all of the wonderful inspiration that the dt has been providing.

Today our challenge to use your favorite color in a paper project. The project should be monochromatic, and contain at least 2 shades of your favorite color. You can use some neutral color in your project, but it must be mostly your favorite color.


We have another awesome prize for one lucky winner of this challenge too. A random participant will win Cosmo Cricket's "Upcycle" collection. Such wonderful designs.

I created a layout with a photo of our 3 oldest dogs. At the time the photo was taken, that was all of our dogs. I took this photo to create a Father's Day card for my boyfriend. It was actually a TPV project, which you can see here. He really loved it and really, really loves the photo. I used the 2nd sketch from the Sketch Rerun post from Sassy Lil' Sketches.


Right now I am really loving the color brown. Weird, I know. I really, really love brown and red together. I used my Crate Paper Prudence collection to create this page. There are a lot of shades of brown in the collection, so it was pretty easy to put it together.

Sorry the photo is not the greatest. Since my room has been out of service, the spot I usually take the pictures is not available. I hope to be back to normal, maybe even better, by the end of the weekend.

So I hope you have participated in our blog hop. If not, go here to start. Be sure to check out all of the challenges we have revealed during this celebration. There will be one more tomorrow.


Friday, September 9, 2011

2nd Trail

If you are here for the TPV blog hop, click here.

I had to create a page for my 52 Week Challenge layout at Scrappin'-n-Chattin'. It's been very difficult to create with my scrap room being trashed. I actually started to clean it up yesterday, washing the walls and the bottoms of the furniture in the room. I was able to get enough stuff off of my work desk to be able to use it to scrap.

So I searched for a sketch and some challenges to inspire me on what direction I wanted to go. I found the monthly sketch at Let's Scrap and fell in love. It's a Julie Bonner sketch, and it was absolutely perfect for the photos of Willie I purchased from our trial from last weekend.


I am still so excited about doing agility with Willie. It just make me so happy to be out there with him and have him having so much fun. It's something that I always wanted to do, and now I can.


I used Me and My Big Ideas Boy pad. The colors work so well for these very colorful photos. I included Willie's results and some journaling about how much I love doing this. Here are the pages separately.....

Page 1

Page 2

I am going to include this layout into this week's challenge at Lasting Memories, which is Simply You. Though the pages are not about me, it is something that I really enjoy and have fun with. And by the way, congratulations to the new members of the design team. You are going to have a great time. All of the layouts are awesome this week.

I am also entering this layout into the ScrapFit challenge from Weekend-Warm Up #13, which is to include strips of patterned paper on your layout. There are strips on Page 1 along the left side and bottom, and strips along the top and right side of Page 2.

Thanks for looking. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

TPV Party - Day 2

If you are here for the TPV blog hop, click here.

Wow, what a fun blog hop we have going. What do you think of the awesome projects the design team created? They always amaze me. Such awesome work. If you haven't checked out the hop, be sure to head over to The Paper Variety to start. In addition to the hop, we have 5 challenges this week, with a prize for a random winner of each.

Today is Day 2 of our celebration. And here is the awesome prize for this challenge - Nikki Sivils "Blueberry Hill" collection.


The theme of our celebration is our "favorite things". I was so excited about the challenge for today. The challenge is to create a paper project using your favorite paper crafts company products. Of course, my favorite papers/products come from Echo Park. I used the Little Boy collection to create a layout.

As I tried to find a sketch to use for my layout, I checked out Sassy Little Sketches. I used one of the August 30th sketches, though I didn't enter the page into the challenge. I thought this sketch would work well with the photo and the papers.

The layout contains a photo of my nephews when they were babies. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but they are now 12. Where does the time go? I also included an image from My Favorite Things stamps, Cuddle Up Carter. I love that you can color the images to match your project.


I hope you will show us a project created with products from your favorite paper crafts company. Be sure to check out the rest of TPV's Design Team A's favorite paper company's too. And if you haven't hopped yet, please do. There are several dt members offering blog candy along the way. And be sure to check The Paper Variety tomorrow for another new favorites challenge.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Happy Anniversary TPV!!

Welcome to The Paper Variety's one year anniversary celebration! We will be having 5 daily challenges this week throughout the celebration. And there will be 5 great prizes awarded to 5 random winners. Our theme this week is all about our "favorite things"! Please join us each day to see the great projects that the team came up with.

Today's fun starts with a blog hop. If you have come to my blog from
Rachel's blog, you are right on track. If you are just visiting my blog, thank you, but you will want to start at the beginning at The Paper Variety's blog. Our 1st challenge is sponsored by My Favorite Things stamps. Each designer chose an image or stamp to create their project for our hop. Make sure to hop to all 12 designers on this hop and check out the awesome projects that were created using MFT stamps. There are also many dt members also offering blog candy of their own.

Our first of the 5 challenges is to create a paper project including stamps - clear stamps, rubber stamps, image stamps, sentiment stamps. My Favorite Things stamps is awarding a random challenge winner with a $25 gift voucher to their store!


You'll have until Tuesday noon to enter your project TPV for a chance at the voucher prize.

For my project, I created a card. I chose a digital image from
MFT called Amanda Baird's Love Birds. These birds are just so cute. I couldn't resist. Thank you, MFT!

I have already given this card to my boyfriend. We have had a tough week, with not much going right. It was a nice pick-me-up for him.

Now, before you head to the next stop on the hop, I have some blog candy to giveaway!


I am offering a $15 Michael's gift card. You do not need to enter the challenges at TPV to win my blog candy, but I do hope that you will help us celebrate by creating a project. To win my blog candy, all you have to do is become a follower and leave a message on this post. I will choose and announce a random winner on Tuesday, September 13. Dont forget, there will be other challenges and prizes daily until Sunday at The Paper Variety inspiring you to use your favorite things! Check out TPV at our Facebook page for an additional giveaway there as well.

To continue on our hop, head over to
Sandi's blog. You are going to love the project she created with her MFT stamps.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Birthday Sundaes Challenge #25

Good Sunday morning. I hope everyone is safe and sound this weekend. Things are starting to get back to normal in my world. Our basement flooded, along with my scraproom, thanks to Hurricane Irene. I will probably not be able to get my room back into working order for about a month. But the dehumidifier is working well, and I didn't loose any scrapping stuff.

So, it's time to reveal the new challenge at Birthday Sundaes. This week's challenge is to create a birthday card with a birthday sentiment. Nice and easy, right? We are being sponsored this week by Whimsie Doodles. Our lucky winner will receive a $10 gift certificate to the WD store. Make sure you check out all of the cool images they have. And their blog has so much inspiration.Whimsie Doodles provided the design team with a couple of images to choose from to create our cards this week. I used Party Fish and Birthday Sentiment. I think he is so cute. I used Echo Park's Splash as the background paper. I love the colors, and think it went well with the little fishy.


Make sure to check out the adorable cards the other members of the design team created with the images we were provided.

I hope you will show us your creation this week....

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Happy Birthday

Good morning. Sorry I'm a little late with my TPV post. We were without power due to Hurricane Irene, and have sustained quite a bit of damage to the property and my scraproom. Luckily the power is back on. Hopefully we will be back in business by the end of the month.





This week's challenge at The Paper Variety is super fun. It's all about birthdays, and banners.



And we are providing an awesome prize to a random winner this week. We are offering 2 My Mind'e Eye "Hip Hooray" collections - boy and girl!!






I decided to create a birthday card for this challenge. And since my birthday was a couple of weeks ago, I had a Michael's gift card burning a hole in my purse. I passed by the Cricut cartridges and decided to finally get the Birthday Bash cartridge. I love this cartridge. So many cute and versatile cuts. I cut the banner, the little bird and the sentiment all from this cartridge. I love the layers on the little guy.




Hop on over to TPV and check out the projects our guest designer and the rest of Team A came up with. So very inspiring. I hope you will share a birthday project with us this week.