Little Red Wagon #4

Deanna's challenge at Little Red Wagon this week is to use buttons on our creation. Yippee! Buttons are one of my all-time favorite items in paper crafting!

Since I almost always use buttons on my projects, I decided I would dig into my wagon of buttons and try to use them in a new way. I looked at all my buttons (hundreds of them in different sizes and colors) and a few ideas went through my mind. After a couple of false starts, I decided on this Christmas tree design.

Supplies: Cardstock - American Crafts, Prism, Doodlebug Designs; Patterned Paper - PTI; Rhinestones - MAMBI; Ribbon and Buttons - from my wagon.

Be sure to check out Little Red Wagon and give this weeks challenge a try!

I am also posting my card to the Cards Blog as their challenge is to create a card with 5 or more buttons on it. I think mine qualifies :)

Little Red Wagon #3

For this week's challenge at Little Red Wagon, Karan challenged us to distress our creation using an ink blending tool and our favorite ink color.

Luckily my wagon has lots of Tim Holtz Distress Ink, especially in my favorite color - Vintage Photo! It was easy to incorporate this into my card by inking the edges of all my papers.

I used some leftover scraps of paper from the Time to Travel line from TPC. I just love this color combination and the brown ink worked perfectly with it!

Thanks for the challenge Karan. Now let's see what you come up! Just create something special, post it on your blog and leave a comment on Little Red Wagon.

Have a great day!

Bellarific!

I had the wonderful privilege of attending a Stamping/Coloring Class at Stamping Bella this past Saturday and none other than the one and only Linda Heavens taught our class and she is absolutely amazing. Her artistic talent is something that I could only dream about having.

We worked on 3 images in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. I almost finished coloring 5 of them and I am slowly creating cards as I put the finishing touches on each image.

With my first image, I decided to play along with this week's challenge at Cards Blog. We were challenged to use 'big ol’ ribbon bows' on our card!

I wanted to keep the focus on the colored image and bow so I just matted the image with red cardstock and mounted it on white cardstock embossed with Swiss Dots. Then one big, red bow was my finishing touch! I just love the simplicity of this card.

Supplies: Cardstock - American Crafts, Prism; Embossed Cardstock - Doodlebug Designs; Stamp - Stamping Bella; Markers - Copic; Glossy Accents - Inkssentials; Glitter - DecoArt Glamour Dust; Ribbon - my stash.

Thanks for looking!

Blog Award

Yippee! I received a blog award.

A big thank you to Deanna from the Little Red Wagon challenge blog. She sent one out to everyone on the design team and I am sending it to each of them as well!

Cards Blog

When I went to the Cards Blog to see all the great creations for the challenge this week, I was so surprised to see my place card featured! Very exciting!

Be sure to stop by their blog to see the different ideas for making place cards and maybe you can add some to your table for your next holiday dinner.

Blessings ~

Our Retreat Weekend

We are back from another fantastic weekend at the Oakwood Inn Golf Resort and Spa in Grand Bend, Ontario. Carolyn and I were joined by 140 scrapbook friends along with Carolyn's mom, Audrey, and my sister, Mary.

There is always so much that takes place during our weekend that it is almost impossible to take as many pictures as I want or to blog about everything that happened, but I managed to capture a few snippets of the fun we had.

Carolyn, Mary and I arrived on Thursday to unload and set up the store. That takes the most time and we were glad that we had an extra day to spend doing it. On Friday morning, we went into Grand Bend to pick up a few things and we stopped down by the beach for a fun photo shoot.

A kind gentleman came by just in time to snap this photo of the three of us. It was a beautiful day, very sunny and fairly warm, and we had fun with this little diversion before our guests arrived.

I always enjoy when Mary joins us because the only time she can scrapbook is when she comes for a visit. Plus, she gets all excited about any new products we have. This weekend, her biggest thrill was the Copic markers and Stamping Bella stamps we had. When our friends, Deanna and Regan, came by to do some demos with them, Mary was hooked!

She took in every bit of information she could and even came away with a sample that Deanna gave to her. She was thrilled!

The food was exceptionally good, especially the desserts, and we were surprised by a special treat on Saturday night - a chocolate fondue!

Everyone loved it and yes - I did eat dessert first! I couldn't help myself! But, I made sure I went back for the roast beef, vegetables and salads.

Besides scrapping and eating, we had some silly fun with 'Steal, or No Steal' a game Carolyn and I made up, plus some fun with the plastic pumpkins we had on each table. At the end of a warm-up exercise with the pumpkins, each table had to decorate theirs.

One of my favorites was Fannie, the Scrapbooker. Isn't this clever? Sporting her hip-hugger jeans and tattoo, she is totally absorbed in her scrapbooking magazine. Too cute! You can check out the Two Scrapbook Friends blog to see more photos of the crazy fun we had and the winning entry.

The weekend came and went all too quickly, but it was another great time of sharing our love of scrapbooking with everyone who attended. I can't wait until next time!

Card Trends Challenge

The Card Trends blog has a challenge to make a place card so I decided to give it a try.

I used some scraps of paper I had from MME and I thought it would be fun to add a little pocket for a tea bag. You could also put a wrapped candy in the pocket or a personal note!

Supplies: Cardstock - Prism; Pattern Paper - My Minds Eye; Alpha Stickers - Pink Paislee; Decorative Pin and Twine - Dollar Store; Buttons - my stash; Tea Bag - President's Choice.

Thanks for looking.

Little Red Wagon Challenge #2

This week at Little Red Wagon, Rosanne challenged us to use last year's Christmas scraps to create a card, tag, layout, etc.

I had to dig deep in my wagon, but I found some Basic Grey Wassail papers and some embroidered stickers from EK Success and I decided to make a gift tag.

I created the flower by folding a strip of paper, then added a sticker and button to the middle. Then I cut out the leaves and stem to finish the flower, added a JOY sticker and created the tag top by punching circles from cardstock. For a finishing touch I added some detailing with my glitter pen. The idea for my tag was inspired by a card I saw in the latest edition of Cards magazine.

Thanks for a great challenge Rosanne! Now I have one gift bag ready to go for the holidays!

Sketchabilities

I loved the new sketch on Sketchabilities so I decided to use it to create a layout. I also looooove the new Pink Paislee Christmas line and I have been wanting to use it ever since it came into our store. I think the combination of the two turned out great!

I added a bit of stitching, a chipboard '25', photo turns, some buttons, and twine. I also used a border punch to give a scalloped edge to my paper.

Well, I am off today to scrapbook with 140 of my scrapbooking friends for the weekend! I will see you when I get back!

Little Red Wagon Challenge #1

I am very excited to be playing along with the very first challenge on our new blog, Little Red Wagon! Regan has challenged us to use packaging to create a card, layout or altered item. I have often admired the sweet packaging used for some products, but have never thought to actually use it to make something!

For this challenge I had this cute little stamp that came with adorable packaging.

I knew it would be super easy to work with so I just cut off the wording and used the rest as a background for a card.

Then I used a circle punch to punch out the small flower image that was next to the wording, put a slightly larger paper circle behind it and I had a perfect element to add! Thanks for a great challenge Regan.

Supplies: Cardstock: Prism; Pattern Paper: PTI; Stamp: Stamping Bella; Markers: Copic; Ribbon: From my stash

Why don't you give this challenge a try? Head over to Little Red Wagon, dig into your scrapbooking supplies and have some fun!

Halloween Fun

I worked a full day on Halloween and when I got home shortly after 5:00pm, my dh and son proudly announced that they saved a pumpkin for me to carve. As sweet as that was, the last thing I wanted to do was carve a pumpkin. I was tired and hungry and I knew the neighborhood Trick or Treaters would be coming very soon. So I did what any tired and hungry person would do in my situation - I grumbled and complained! But I also gave in and carved the pumpkin.

My son got me started by suggesting a couple of ideas, like a spider or a haunted house. I thanked him for his elaborate and complicated ideas and then I carved a 5-minute happy face instead.

With a hat on top and a candle inside, it didn't look too bad. And I will admit, it put a smile on my face and got me in the spirit of Halloween.

Spencer went out trick or treating with a couple of his friends, even though I tried to explain to him that once you started driving a car you were a little too old to go out begging for candy. He did say that a lot of his friends were just going to go and buy their own candy from the store, but "Why do that when you can just dress up, have fun and get it for free!"

So, of course he went. He was dressed as a Woopie cushion (how to make a mother proud!) and his friends were a cupcake with a cherry on top and a paper bag princess - very adorable.

When he returned home later that evening he dumped his pillowcase full of candy on the table and started sorting everything.

As he did, he told us all the funny stories of the different houses he went to and some of the comments they got. It sounded like everyone enjoyed seeing some older 'children' having a good time and it made me realize that life is what you make of it. Carving a 5-minute pumpkin or still trick-or-treating when you are 16, a decision to have fun and enjoy the day can make all the difference.

Have a good one!

Little Red Wagon

Do you need some inspiration for your card making or scrapbooking? Do you have an endless supply of 'have-to-have' paper crafting products just waiting to be used? Are you up for a challenge?

There is a fun new challenge blog called Little Red Wagon that you will have to check out! Each Wednesday one of The Girlfriends on the blog will post a new challenge that will hopefully motivate you to try something new with your wagon full of paper crafting goodies. The first challenge will be posted this Wednesday, November 4th, and we hope you will play along.

Get ready to have some fun and enjoy the ride!