Bella Blvd. Fun

Well, no official love for me from Bella Blvd. No worries though. I loved all the creations I made for them and will plan to give it a go next time. It's been crazy busy with school and whatnot, so I'll just share my layouts I created for the call :)

Like I said, next time, right?! Just gives me more opportunity to use gorgeous product I guess :)

Be sure to stop by later this week...

Way exciting stuff and goodies to be won!



Til next time,

~ C <3

No, Really... I'm Still Here!

Dang... I didn't realize that I hadn't blogged in nearly two weeks! I guess in looking back at the time, it makes complete sense. Between finishing the patio (seriously, we did finish! Pics coming soon!), Paul's family being here and celebrating the big 4-0 with them all, topped off with the official back to work official mark of summer's end, yeah, I guess I had other things going on. :)  I promise to get some pics of all of it up soon. Just stick it on the list of things that still need to be finished!

I actually did check off some stuff from my list today. Last month I remembered to submit some work to Scrapbook News and Review (and was fortunate enough to have them pick up both layouts I sent in!). But I had also been meaning to get back into submitting to the paper mags as well. So, today I finally sent in submissions for about a half dozen layouts to Scrapbook Trends. Now I remember why I don't do that more often. It takes a LOT of time. No, really. If someone out there in ScrappyLand had a better strategy on how on earth I can not spend the better part of my afternoon doing all of that, I seriously need to hear it! Anyhow,  we'll see how it goes. I think it's usually a couple of months until you hear. Ugh. I hate waiting. Patience is definitely something God gives me many opportunities to practice with.

In between all that's been going on outside of my craft room, I have been able to work on a few things. The projects are going into a few new DT calls though. Bella Blvd. is the big one I'm working on. All items must be "never-before-seen," hence the lack of reveal here! Once I hear, I'll share them with you all. Besides that, there are a couple of others I'm gonna give a shot to. Wish me luck (and patience!) I'm working on that whole "glass is half full" idea. I'm tired of the cup getting empty, so I guess it's my job to start filling it up if I want anyone else to fill it :)

Thanks for stopping by- til next time,
~ <3

Monday?? Hmmm... Yeah, Monday

I'm pretty sure it's Monday :) That's one of the funny things about having the summers off. You often aren't quite sure of what day it is. I haven't completely decided if that's a good or bad thing! It must be Moday though, since yesterday was church and our first meeting for our mini book club on the book Grace Based Parenting. It was a great day yesterday, filled with friends and conversation. We didn't get too far into the book, but it was so nice to talk about our own upbringings and how those affect how we are/did raise our own children. I'm truly looking forward to where this all heads. I know it won't give me all the answers to millions upon millions of questions I have, but having something to force me to slow down and think about what and why I do what I do will totally help.

The patio work continues... I don't know if it looks like much work has been done, but it certainly feels like we've been working non-stop on it.

This is where we began- cutting about 20 square feet of sod, relocating some, and bringing some to the dump.

Then the retaining wall started going up. LOTS of leveling going on here. Blechh... so time consuming! And talk about feeling like you're getting nothing done!

Then all the walls were up and packing gravel started going in. (This is where we are currently- we didn't get enough gravel ordered, so working has stopped for now since the local landscape material place is closed today.)

Since the patio plan included a firepit, the kids had been asking for days when they'd get to make some s'mores. So who would we be to deny them of that treat when the pit itself was finished?? We simply put the camp chairs on the dirt and roasted away :)

Wish us luck that we can finish it all up by the big party Thursday! I'm off to do some more party shopping. Patio or not, I should probably feed and water these people who must love my dear hubby!

Thanks for stopping by and leaving me some love- it makes my day to read your sweet comments!
<3  C

Some Randomness for Wednesday

Not a ton going on around here... P has already headed back to work for the school year. And me... Well, I'm just in complete denial that we are now less than 1 little bitty month away from the first day of school. Wow. It always goes SO fast. Camping trips have been put on hold the last several weeks, and it appears as if it may stay that way until Labor Day. We've started a rather large yard project that's sucking up a good amount of time and a HUGE part of our cash flow. (Do you even know how much $$ it costs to take sod to the dump?? More than we thought!) In hopefully under a week, we'll be the proud owners of a beautiful brick patio, complete with firepit. We're having a big "40" birthday extravaganza next week for the old guy, er... my beautiful husband, and we hope to have it all done by then. We'll see how it all goes. Some of our family may have to be sucked coerced bribed into helping a bit to make it happen.

There's a ton of cleaning to be done today. I think we're going to have someone out soon to clean the carpets, so I figure I need to get a few rounds of vacuuming in before the appointment :) Once P gets home, it'll be back to the patio work. The temps are a little cooler today and tomorrow, (low 80s) so that will bring huge relief and make the work loads easier. Once the first round of vacuuming is done, I'm hoping to get a lil' scrappy again. I'm still waiting on my latest Punky Sprouts box to come, but in the meantime, I figure I'll play around a little with some Jillibean Soup and Bella Blvd.

Speaking of Jilllibean... Here are a couple of layouts I did recently.

This one is extra special, as it was one for my PageMaps assignment for July. I love Becky's maps, and it is such an honor to design for her. Once again, I was especially honored as one of her top picks for the newsletter! The background is Punky Playground (currogated cardboard) that I exposed and then painted. The rest of the papers are Jillibean Soup Watermelon Gazpacho from my PersonalScrapper kit for June.

I love this one too! Something about those papers just makes me swoon and think of everything summer. I'm going to have to buy some more of this paper soon, cuz I'm not sure how much more of my PS kit is left :(.  This was based on a Sketchy Thursdays sketch. Since we'd been on vacation, I missed the deadline to qualify for the week, but I'm planning on spending some more time over there soon!

Well, the vacuum is not magically turning itself on (anyone got one of those cool Roombas?) so I suppose I should go take care of that. I just need to remind myself that I can play, er-um. work, in my craft room when I'm done :)

Thanks for stopping by! Make sure to say hello! (I'll go surfing some of your blogs tomorrow, I promise!)

<3  C

Some Fun with Best Creation

So I have to admit that I'd never really noticed the glittery company that is Best Creation until Punky Sprouts got to do a product swap with them last month. So imagine my surprise when I saw a design team call come up on ScrapCalls a few weeks back! The bad news was that it was right in the middle of all of our camping adventures. And the extra bad news was that I didn't have any other lines than the Back 2 School line I'd used for my Punky album. So... I decided I would double-duty my usual visits to LSSs while on vacation as a search for the latest and greatest in Best Creation goodness. Fortunately, I had some luck at an LSS I'd been to before in Warrenton, OR called Scrapbook Connection. Once I had some papers picked (so sad that they didn't carry any embellies), I could start planning out in my head some picture possibilties to scrap. Here's what I ended up creating...

From the gorgeous line, Travel Forever

Yeah, I totally staged those photos... Wouldn't you?? :) I think this might be my favorite line of theirs so far. But then again, I'm pretty partial to aqua and brown :) I even snuck in a little Punky with the canvas flower made from a Punky Stem!

photos by Jeff Tibeau

This one was one I acutally realized I had paper for. I can even find it listed on their site as a paper line, but it's theirs! This one is from Mr. & Mrs. I feel terrible, because I'd actually purchased this a couple years ago to scrap photos of my brother's wedding. Well... technically, these are from the wedding, just not of the bride and groom... *blush*  Guess now I'll have to go back and do some more! It's also using another amazing sketch from my favorite sketch artist, Ms. Becky Fleck! Love her stuff <3

Thanks for stopping by!

<3 Carly

*note- I've been working on this silly stinkin' post for quite some time... Either Blogger is having issues, or something's up with my laptop. It's time to LET IT GO and just push "publish"!

Home Again...

And it feels so nice! We realized once we made our way home, that we've never been away from home (vacation or otherwise) for this amount of time before as a family. We had an amazing time in the beautiful state of Oregon, so much that we said we could easily imagine ourselves living there. I don't think the rest of our family would be very encouraging, but it's still a gorgeous place...

My scrappy endeavors are going to need to wait for a few days, so I thought I'd post a few of my favorite pics from our trip instead...

I've still got a ton of editing to do, but I wanted to share a few anyhow. One of those pretty blondes doesn't belong to me, but the expression on her face when I took the pic of her and the sea star was just too cute! (She belongs to the family we always camp with!)

It was an awesome trip, but it really does feel great to be home. Now it's back to the normal grind... Sometimes normal is good :)

Thanks for stopping by!
C

Oh My! Summer is Here!

And boy did it come on fast! It's been wild and crazy- it always is these first few weeks! Between getting school wrapped up (two kids and two adults worth this year), Miss A's birthday party, and the 4th of July festivities, it's a bit chaotic... I always want to blog more than I do, but when I finally get home and the computer is near, it just doesn't seem to happen.

Fortunately, I have been able to get a bit scrappy lately (for this slow-poke, anyhow!) During the month of June, the Punky Sprouts girls got to do a product exchange with the girls over at Best Creation. Like so often happens, I start out having nearly no idea of what to do. That smart chic Shelly sent me the Back 2 School line from BC, but unfortunately, since I work, I literally have first day photos only for J, and the same for A. That didn't quite scream mini album. So finally the idea hit me. While I was looking at the cute little chipboard embellies, stressing, because I don't HAVE pics for all these cute things, I realized it... Just have J journal his OWN stuff! What a concept! a book without pictures?? I am a genius! (ok, maybe I just finally let some of those other blogs soak into my rather thick skull...) I'm still working on getting him to finish up the journaling, but here's what I have for now.

For anyone not familiar with Punky Sprouts albums, the are multi-media. The pages included in this Trunk Punky album are chipboard, currogated cardboard, canvas and acrylic. There is just so much you can do with them! I am learning so much about misting and painting, and loving every bit of it!

Now, I do have every intention of blogging more often this summer, but I need to find a good iPhone app that works with Blogger and lets me upload my pics too. If you happen to know of something, leave the info here for me please!

I hope you're all enjoying your summer (or winter for my southern hemi friends!)
Much love~ <3

Scraptivations Challenge 6!

I feel so happy when I get to play along at Scraptivations! I always have high hopes to join in all the challenges, but since I have a spectacular DT to help out, I guess the pressure to create is off a bit... This LO is all the more exciting since I made it on a little getaway I went on this weekend. Some friends and I went up to a cabin on a lake just outside of town and had our own little scrapfest :) I got a  few other things done (and I also have some pics to share from the last several weeks) but I just have a minute to share this one for now! Be sure to head over to Scraptivations to see the challenge, the other girls' projects, AND to check out the fabulous June sposor! *happy dance*

Here's my LO...

This gorgeous Echo Park paper from the For the Record line is from the PersonalScrapper.com April kit and the pics are from our first camping venture of the season.

Alas, I can almost taste summer... 9 school days. 8.5 since the last day is a half day. Scratch that... 8 and a third- we only go for just more than 2 hours... not that I'm counting or anything... :)  Hopefully blogging will be less of a chore then. It's not that I think of it as a chore. It's just not been priority for a bit. Well, we'll see if a touch more free time will fix it :)

Happy summer to all of  you!
~Til next time <3

Welcome TaDa and Punky Friends!

Hello all! Welcome to my stop on the Dynamic Duo Blog Hop! So glad you've stopped by to get a bit more info on my layout using Punky Sprouts elements teamed up with TaDa.

 (And if you happened to stop by just because, I hope you'll check out the rest of the hop!)

For my project, I was able to use the TaDa Creative Studios line Big Top and add some Punky fun to it.

At first, I was a bit nervous about using this line in the traditional sense. It has such great, fun circus pictures on it, but all of my circus pics were a completely different color set. So I started looking closer at the B sides. The patterns and colors are just gorgeous and ended up matching so well with some of my summer/water pics from a couple of summers ago!

I thought I'd give you a few pointers on how I added my Punky embellishments to this LO. I used the Punky Petals as the banner. Here, I simply misted them with some Tattered Angels Mist in Key Lime Pie. If you haven't misted much, this is so simple on canvas. It can take a bit of time to dry, but you can also blot some of it and make some cool designs (see my album in the post below this one.) Then I lightly adhered them, mostly at the points, and ran it through my sewing machine.

I also played around with a little Punky Playground. See the stars? Those are punched out of the Playground! Now, it doesn't work with all punches, but the trick is to squish down the section you are working with. If it goes in and your hands can make it happen, you've got some cool cardboard embellies! I also misted these in Key Lime Pie, Patina, and my new favorite, Tiger Lily! Don't forget that you can distress the Playground too. I think you can see that on some of the other projects!

Now if it's a blog hop, it wouldn't be right not to have some goodies, dontcha think? And what's a blog hop without some chances to win free goodies? So here are the rules:

Rules for a chance to win FREE products

Each day go to the following 2 blogs:

TaDa

Punky Sprouts

Post comments to show your participation. New inspiration will be posted daily. At the end of the 12 day hop, please go to each manufacture’s blog and post a comment telling them your favorite album style and favorite paper collection used in the samples shown during the hop. Your name will then be entered in a drawing to win both! 3 winners will be picked!

Good luck and thanks for stopping by!

My First Punky Sprouts Album :)

Hello bloggy friends! Yes, I'm really sucking it up with the blog lately... (funny, didn't I say I would give it MORE attention??)Well, if nothing else, at least I've been a bit scrappy :) There's loads going on as spring has finally sprung around here-even if a lot of that happened to be the April showers, so I'll get straight to the scrappiness...

My latest scrappy endeavor is my very first Punky Sprouts album! For the month of April, the Punky gals got to team up with My Little Shoebox- is that a fabulous treat, or what?! I am still debating whether or not I can part with this album, so I haven't put pictures in it yet. I thought it might be a great album for one of the new moms I know, but right now, I'm just being a bit greedy!

Here it is featuring Home Sweet Home...

Got to get messy with some paint and lots of mist!

I used my VersaInk pad to stamp the mls acrylic stamp birdies on here, sprayed with mist, then gently blotted the canvas.

More misting with some Tim Holtz masks...

Painted the edges of the acrylic, then stamped the branch and bird with StazOn...

Another Tim Holtz Mask

I loved that I could still stay "clean and simple" even with messy things and mixed media like the acrylic and canvas :)

My very fave page of the whole book!

I so completely stressed this project, but now that it's done, I can't wait to get started on the next one! We are teaming with another great company, but that's not until June! I promise to blog before then, okay? :)

Thanks for sticking with me!
~Til next time <3