Five & Feisty

With Valentines day just around the corner, a layout with hearts is in order.

I used papers from the CTMH Roxie line. Such a feisty paper line, perfect for a feisty five year old. How about the fun little stamped accent in the upper left corner? Not to many stamps say "we" on them. This one is from the February Stamp of the Month set Thoughtful Tidings that will be available tomorrow along with about a gazillion other fabulous scrappy items!!! Okay, maybe not a gazillion :)

If you are not familiar with the Stamp of the Month. Each month CTMH features an exclusive stamp set that you can get for just $5 with a $50 purchase. This one is perfect for little personalized gift bags and boxes. I have a few fun ideas rolling around up in the noggin for this one.

Notice the little fold down journaling book to hide the stories about how feisty Emily was at 5. She's still full of spunk at 12! I didn't feel like there was enough space on the layout to say what I wanted to say. When all else fails, make more room!

I know I usually do a Technique on Tuesday's, but the little technique I am working on isn't quite ready for posting yet.

Since today marks day 31 out of 365 with keeping up with the blogging, I have a little surprise tomorrow. Keeping up for 31 days is a HUGE accomplishment for me, considering I only posted 62 times in 2011.

Stickle Holder

The organizer in me strikes again. I have been thinking of a way to store stickles upside down and still be in the ink tower tray. (Translation for ink pad tower = the creation station = the hub of creativity).

Here is what I came up with....

I designed a cut on the Gypsy that was 9" x 7.25" rectangle with a 3/4" circle in each inch on the mat grid. Once cut, I placed over chipboard, then used an exacto knife to make slits like cutting a pie in each circle. I extended past the paper a little because the 3/4" was just a tad small.

Next I trimmed the chipboard so that there was 1 1/4" around all sides of the rectangle template. I scored the chipboard flush with the template edges, folded them down, trimmed and taped the corners. So then I had a box looking lid to sit in the top of the tower.

This whole process would have been much easier with a deep cut Cricut blade. (Note to self.... add to "need" list.)

Ta-da!!!!

Exactly what I was looking for and free!

Since I was photographing the tower, I thought you may like to see how I store my sponges.

This side of the tower is just an empty space wanting some love. Each ink color has its own sponge. For sponges I cut up a big auto sponge that you can pick up at the dollar store. Clipped a binder clip on each one, then added a color label to one side of the binder clip and a little piece of velcro to the other. There are strips of velcro on the tower to stick the sponges onto.

The other side of the tower....

The binder clips make handy little handles. Just flip them open and no more inky fingers.

So there you have it "The Creation Station".

On the family note today. Drama rehearsal started for Emily. We have a great drama program for such a small school. This is the 4th play for her. But, oh man did she come home cranky! With volleyball after school for 2 hours, a 30 minute break, then 2 hours of drama, throw in a little PMS and Cranky is the word. She likes to do all these things, but when is it to much?

Tyler lost another book for English. Actually as he told me, "I lost my backpack, and my book was in there". Even better. Since I am always looking for the positive in things, at least it is a $13 book he needs to replace and not his actual English book. Plus, looks like he has 90 minutes of cleaning to pay for the book. Hmmmm..... we are off to a grand start for the second semester. :)

Just another day in the Highland house, Happy Crafting :).

MoJo Monday Sketch #225

Continuing on from my last post....... the second project I did these wee hours of the morning is a Sympathy card for a friend who recently lost her sister. My heart goes out to her and her family. I wanted to make her something extra special during this very difficult time. I chose to make a large 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 card.

The pattern papers are all from the new CTMH Pemberley collection. (Another little sneak peek for you!) The beautiful rose is from my absolute favorite stamp set in the new Spring / Summer book. Card Word Puzzle (C1494). For $13.95 this gem of a set has so many possibilities!

I hope you enjoyed my creations today. Off to catch a few hours of zzzzzz........

It is 3am........

Why oh why do I start creating at 11:00 pm? I should know better. It seems my creative juices always flow better in the middle of the night.

I did manage to finish up the layout inspired by a sketch from My Little Sketchbook. I recently discovered this blog and am loving her sketches. The blog is over on my reading list to the left. I am looking forward to starting the latest sketch posted. After I sleep of course.

Here is the sketch:

My take:

For the background I used a piece of pattern paper by American Crafts I have had in my stash for a while. The banner and border are cut from the AP cartridge, then stamped with one of the pennant stamps that come with the Elemental WOTG kit.

The saying is from the Take A Picture (C1440) set. Notice the ink stains, that means it is well loved. :)

Stella WOTG bonus layout

Have I said yet that I love this paper? Here is the bonus layout for the Stella WOTG that will be available to the you on February 1st.

Left side:

Notice the lacy flowers up in the corner. They are in the new Bohemian assortment pack. Very pretty!

Right side:

The tulips in the bottom left hand corner are actually stamped with the lampshade stamp that comes in the WOTG kit. What a clever idea! I would have never thought to do this.

Both pages together.

Lately I have been into scrapping older pictures. Hence the photo quality. These pictures are from 10 nearly 10 years ago. It sure feels good to get them out of the box and into a book!

Thanks for stopping by :). I think tomorrow a card is calling my name.

Love Your Layout: January 2012

Today we found out what the special is in February! Buy a Studio J - 5 pack and get one free. That is a value of $55! If you have wanted to try the CTMH Studio J digital scrapbooking program, February is the perfect time. Here is a quick video showing you how to make a layout in Studio J.



I hope to have some creative time tomorrow evening. I am dying to play with the new Pemberley line and Word Puzzle set. Maybe another sneak peek tomorrow???

Sneak Peek #2

Okay, so this is a seriously crooked picture. Sorry, but it is very late and my eyes are barely focusing.

Introducing.................. Stella! I know, I showed a layout made with this line before. Do you recognize the letters from yesterday's post?

This layout is one of the layouts for the WOTG (workshop on the go kit). I am in love with this pattern paper. As soon as I spotted this paper in the new book, I knew it would be the first I worked with.

I bet you would never guess the accents are stamped from lamp and chair images. Very cool! Oh, wait! According to Emily I shouldn't say "cool" anymore. She has been filling me in on what is acceptable for me to say in my "old...er" age.

Good night all!

Technique Tuesday Week #3

Make your stamps work for you.....

I worked on putting together the new Stella WOTG kit that will be available February 1st. over the weekend. I don't own the Token alphabet set they used, but liked the looks of it. I thought "self, what can you use to get a similar look"?

I found a 1 1/4" circle sentiment in the Blue Ribbon set. Here is the stamp before I did my handy work. Pretend you don't see the cut lines.

I only wanted the circle frame so that I could stamp the letters in the middle. I took an exacto knife and carefully trimmed out the inside caption. This is easiest if you stick the stamp on a glass mat. Then I had this....

I saved myself $30 by using a small alphabet set I had and doing the little trick above. The stamp can still be used the way it was originally intended, or now I can use the caption by itself, or the circle by itself. 3 looks for the price of 1!

Whenever I am looking at which stamps to buy, I really focus on the shapes, edges, etc. I like to know I will be able to use it for several projects. I can hardly wait to finish up the Rock the Block workshops so I can cut them ones apart. There are some really cool frames in that set.

I will show you the rest of the layout tomorrow. If I am ever going to keep up with my goal of blogging EVERYDAY in 2012 I have to think my posts through.

I want to throw this little story in here, so I remember to scrapbook it. You see, this is my little journal as well. We were sitting at the dinner table a few evenings ago. Zane found a stack of fishing pictures. I am sure you can imagine my excitement.... He was telling Tyler, Emily, and I all the details of the photos. Where this one was caught, how long this one was, how much this one weighed, you get the picture. All of a sudden, Emily looks at me with a little smirk on her face. She says "Daddy, how much did I weigh and how long was I when I was born?". I about fell off the chair! Emily giggled as he threw out some numbers that she and I both knew were incorrect before they even came out of his mouth. Poor Zane, Emily beat him at his own game. Now I have a perfect story to go with that big Walleye!

Thanks for stopping by. :)

Rock The Block Workshop

I had a very hard time deciding what to do with the collage cubes for a workshop. Thanks to a fellow consultant, I finally came up with an idea. Thank you Susan Daniels!

We will be making a "one sheet wonder" piece of pattern paper using the Rock the Block stamp set for our cubes. This was a total lift from Susan.

The workshop is February 10th if you would like more information, shoot me an email at angiehighland@gmail.com

Moving on.....

We have had 4 snow days in the last 2 weeks. It's not looking good for tomorrow either. Last night it thawed, creating water over ice on the country roads. Now it is snow, rain, sleet mix,temperatures are dropping and the wind is picking up. Which means, the water covered roads are turning into an ice rink.

Tyler is sweating it because he has exams starting Wednesday. They haven't received any study guides, etc. due to no school. Emily is upset because Drama and Volleyball were supposed to start today. No school, no sports. Bummer.

Emily was thrilled when she went for her PE today. She is officially 2 inches taller than me. I saved the sheet that the nurse wrote her vitals on so I could add it to a scrapbook page. Emily told the nurse, "see what I have to put up with". Someday she will thank me. After all, it could be very valuable information. On 1/23/2011 she was officially taller than her mother. Tee Hee. :)

Okay, Rambling again.

Have a great evening and thank you for stopping by. :)

A fun little project

I put together the block collage for the "Rock The Block" special that is going on this month a few weeks ago. I just realized I never posted it.

Sorry about the bad picture. I am tired and today was a very lazy day in the Highland house. In fact, it was so lazy that my phone has been on the charger in the bedroom all day. Emily and I laid on the couch and watched movies for most of the day. Every now and then you just need a day to recharge.

Sneak Peak #1

Just getting home from a fun filled evening. It was great night spent catching up with old friends. I did manage to complete 1 full page and most of another. This is also for the Creative Scrappers challenge sketch #189. Love all the layers in the sketch, right up my alley!

As soon as I opened the box of new goodies that arrived today, I knew what pictures I wanted to scrap. These set of pictures of Elliana went perfectly with the new Stella paper pack to be released February 1st!. The Flower is stamped with a new set called Just For You that will also be available on the 1st. Best of all, it coordinates with the AP cartridge.

The butterflies are Flutter Paper Shapes with some inking, shimmer spray made from pearl paint and waxy flax for the antenna's. They really shimmer and sparkle in real life.

Of course since I had more pictures than the sketch called for, I used the Handy Dandy Flip Flaps to make a little flip book on the page.

I am exhausted, time to get some sleep. Good Night All :)

Decisions, Decisions...

I am heading to an old friends tomorrow evening to scrap the night away with a group of girls I haven't scrapped with in a very long time. I am having the hardest time trying to decide what to work on. While browsing through pictures on the computer, these little gems caught my eye. Since I don't scrap well away from home, I know taking all of these is pointless. I will likely complete 1 page. MAYBE????

How about this group shot from the Halloween party Emily had.... Can you believe we took this crew to a haunted maze after the party. Talk about screaming and loud! Such a fun night though!

Or the mummy wrapping...

Or sweet Elliana (they will be visiting from Hawaii in March! Yay!!!!)

Or Ruby... My niece sent me this picture of Ruby. Sean found her with "humpty dumpty" as her makeshift pacifier when hers was taken away. She improvised! Love it!

Here is the Bestie crew... Tyler and Emily with their good friends Kylee and Brendon on our weekend shopping trip before school started.

Or some silly pics from a girls night sleepover... Kylee being her silly self, that's why we love her!

Or Tyler and Murphy catching a cat nap. Poor Murphy, I am pretty sure he wanted to get up.

So many pictures, so little time. Hmmm..... Maybe I should get off the computer and get to packing! Have a great night and thank you for stopping by my little blog. Your comments truly make my day. :)

Remember the texture piece

I finally finished up the page I started a couple of days ago. People often ask me "how do you have time to scrapbook". I reply, "I don't have time, I find time". For starters, I got rid of my fancy scrapbooking room, downsized my supplies, and set up an area in our family room. This way, I can be with the family and sneak in a few minutes of crafty time here and there. I almost always have a project on on my work area. For example, this page took me 3 days to finish. I didn't sit down and do the entire thing in one sitting.

I often think of the next thing I want to add while I am doing something else. Blogging and computer time is always the last thing I do before crawling into bed and after Tyler and Emily are settled in.

Granted, a scrapbooking area in a family room may not appeal to everyone, but it works for us. Scrapbooking is much more a part of my life than the T.V. and we allow that to be in there, so why not the "crafty corner" as I like to call it. :)

I love the texture on the strips of Elemental paper! I used this months stamp of the month set for the date. At first, I wasn't crazy about this set. Now that I have used it on a page, I love the looks of it. The "cold" is from my favorite alpha set Posterboard.

Here is a little better angle for the texture and dimension. Love it!!!

Make A Miracle Challenge

I don't know if you know this, but a portion of every Close To My Heart stamp set that is sold goes toward operation smile. Last year, medical volunteers provided free surgeries for 9,221 children through international and local in-country medical missions.



I love this "job" in so many ways. Not only do I meet great friends along the way, but knowing that every stamp set I buy and sell helps such a great cause! Amazing!

It's Tuesday! That means another Technique How-To

Last night while pondering what to do for the Scraproom sketch challenge, I came up with this fun idea! I am sure I am not the first to try this out, but I have never tried or seen this done. It kind of continues on from last week on making your own pattern paper, only this is with dry embossing.

First.... Cut a few random strips of paper in various widths. I chose scraps from the Elemental papers and used 1/2" to 1" strips.

Layer and adhere your strips together.

Run them through your cuttlebug in an embossing folder. I chose a stampin up' one I haven't used yet and have been dying to play with. You may need to run it through from both ends to cover the length of your strips.

Here is what it will look like after your piece is embossed. It is a bit tough to see the texture in the picture.

I then sponged Lagoon ink lightly over the surface to ink the raised parts.

I am so excited to use this on my page! Hopefully, I can finish it up tomorrow. I love the look of this!

Heart2Heart and Mojo Monday challenge

Whipped this card up today for a couple of challenges. The Mojo Monday blog has a new sketch every Monday. Great inspiration! The challenge on the Heart2Heart blog was to use the colors Amethyst, Crystal Blue, and throw in some glitter.

I am normally not a purple person, so this was a nice challenge to mix it up a bit. The surface of the the Amethyst paper is covered in prisma glitter. Note to self....this stuff is messy, be more careful next time. I now have glitter everywhere and am pretty sure my shoes will be sparkling while I walk for a while.

Emily is always in need of fun birthday cards for her friends, she is thrilled with this one :)

Off to totally blow the diet today. We are having big juicy hamburgers and homemade fries for dinner. I will likely throw in some cauliflower or something to balance things out. YUM! Love burgers on toasted buns with all the fixings!

Creative Scrappers Challenge #191

When it comes to creating a page, I like to push myself out of my normal comfort zone. This is when I turn to challenges. I especially like sketch challenges. The sketches over at the Creative Scrappers blog do just that. They always make me think outside the box.

Here is my take on sketch #191. You can find the blog in my blogroll over on the Left.

The colors look better in real life. It is a bit of a challenge photographing pages at 12:30 am. I used a lot of different products here. All CTMH except the stitched ribbon. The little flaps at the top are the A-Door-ables that I recently discovered. These little buggers are FUN, FUN, FUN! Under the little flaps are little pictures. I love that you can color them any color you want by sponging on a little ink.

Aaaah..... These were the days. Tyler and Emily always doing something silly to make me laugh. Now, they are equally fun, just not in the same goofy sort of way. We are learning that teenagers are odd creatures that like to leave their clothes on the floor, drink out of the milk carton and lose everything from coats to phone chargers. You would think they would get tired of being told not do these things, but they must not..... I keep telling them I can't wait for them to have a house of their own because I am making a list of things I am going to do when I visit. Tee Hee :).

Enough Rambling. Sorry, sometimes I do that. Just ask Zane.

Deal of the day!

I stopped by The Scrapbook Nook yardsale today and scored on lace ribbon.  All this lace for only $3!  It looks as if some lacy projects are on the horizon.  Now the dilema is how to organize and store this ginormous pile of goodness!

A wonderful workshop night.

A big shout out to my peeps who weathered the storm and came to the believe workshop tonight. We had a fun time putting together the 6 pages that I shared a few days ago. Thank you! I always enjoy our monthly workshop nights.

I wanted to share the card we made at a home gathering last Monday. I wanted to show the ladies how to do heat embossing, so we embossed the winter berries with CTMH Cranberry embossing powder. With Valentines day creeping up on us, this little gem will make someone's day.

The card base is one of the card shapes on the AP cartridge. Even after having this cartridge for 6 months, I have barely touched the surface of what it can do.

Oh yeah, it is a good think I didn't change the time on my blog yet. Technically I missed the deadline for posting today, but since I haven't been to bed yet and the date still says 1/14 in blogger world I am still on track! Yay!!

Heart 2 Heart Challenge

I have had this pictures pulled out for a couple weeks waiting for some inspiration to strike. Today was the day. I just received the Elemental WOTG kit and the challenge happens to be to use a stamp you haven't used yet. If you haven't checked out the Heart 2 Heart blog, you should.

I used Elemental papers and WOTG stamp set. The title was cut with the AP Cartridge. The letters look like a different font because I adjusted the Height and Width to fit in the space. Love how this changes the look of things! The red border accent is from the Rock The Block set.

These pictures take me back to when Cricket was a happy healthy dog, sadly we had to put her down this past summer. The picture below literally breaks my heart. This was the morning we took her in. She had lost 20 lbs. and was going downhill fast. It was one of the toughest decisions we have had to make, but we really didn't want her to suffer. Tyler was such a champ and went with me to the vet. Here is her last stroll around the yard. We sure miss the old girl, she will hold a special place in our hearts forever.

Technique Tuesday Week #2

Well after 5 hours of messing with 2 laptops and our PC, I finally figured out the computer problems I created last night.

On that note, onto the post which was meant for yesterday's Tuesday Technique how to. Heat embossing and making your own resist pattern.

First gather your supplies:

You will need....
*Embossing Powder (I chose clear so the Colonial white paper would show through).
*Embossing Buddy (powder filled satchel that removes the static from your paper so the the embossing powder only sticks where you want it to.
*Heat tool (Embossing gun)
*Versamark (I prefer versamark over embossing ink).
*Stamp of choice
*Ink and sponges if you want to color some ink on your resist pattern. (I chose Vineyard Berry, Creme Brulee, and Juniper. One of my favorite color combinations).
*Something to catch your embossing powder. You can use a tray made just for this or a piece of copy paper works fine too. Easy peasy to dump the excess back into the container.

Dive in.......

1. Rub embossing buddy over surface you will be embossing.
2. Stamp image using versamark ink randomly on paper. Versamark is like a clear tacky ink, so you will want to pay a little extra attention where you are stamping.
3. sprinkle embossing powder over stamped images.
4. Tap off excess into catch tray or copy paper. I then dump it right back into container. You don't want to accidentally aim your heat tool at it while embossing your image. Trust me, I have done this. It's not a good thing. ;)
5. Heat your image(s). Careful here!!! The heat tool gets very hot quick. you will see the powder melt as you move the heat tool over the image. As soon as it melts, move on to a new area. You can burn the powder creating a "burnt" image. Yup! Done this one too. ;)

The picture above is after embossing. Hopefully, you can see it okay. It is not easy photographing clear embossing powder.

The final step.. Adding a dash of color.

Sponge your ink onto the embossed images. The image itself will resist the ink so only the paper absorbs the color. After applying your random ink sponging, wife entire surface with paper towel. This removes any loose ink on your embossed images.

I used the paisley stamp that is in this great Rock The Block set. This is a E sized set, so that is a whopping 8 x 10 sheet of stamps! The only way to get this set is to buy $25 in items from the Autumn / Winter idea book. Plus, it comes with the set of chipboard blocks that I showed a few days ago. The bundle is only $15 which is a savings of $29.90!

That is this weeks's Technique how - to. Thanks for visiting my humble little blog :).

Computers ugh!

So no real blog post today.  It seems while trying to set a password for our wireless internet I have managed to lock myself out of the router.  Now our main pc is not connecting. Ugh!  So here I am blogging from my phone so I don't mess up the resolution to post every day. 

Hopefully, I can get this figured out soon!
Good night all:]

Heat Embossing

Just getting home from grocery shopping and Nancy's home gathering. A shout out to Nancy for inviting me over to teach her and her friends some crafty goodness. I surely love this job! This is the card I originally had planned to do, but decided to change it up to another that I liked better and was a little simpler for a home party. I will show that one tomorrow along with a technique how-to on heat embossing

I used the Paisley and sentiment from the Rock The block set that is on special this month for the background. The hearts are from Love Life.

Okay, down to 8 minutes before the midnight deadline for post a day in 2012. Gotta Run! I know my time is off on here, just haven't figured out how to fix it yet. Techy Schmecky.... Yes, my own word.