Hello.  I'm so bad at this blogging thing.  But I will try to get better and post more things.  One of my friends was going to help me make a facebook page and she asked to see my website.  She liked the retirement book that was recently posted and wanted me to make her one for her adopted daughter's graduation.

My friend wasn't exactly sure what she wanted on it. She just knew that she wanted the main color to be purple because that was the colors for UCSF and her daughter's wedding colors.   She had made a montage of all of her adopted daughter's accomplishments and pictures and set it to music.  She sent it to me to give me some ideas of what her adopted daughter liked.  While I watched the video, I was taking notes about what I could possibly use for titles.  One of the songs on the video kept resounding in my ear while I wrote stuff down.  I had an idea of using the song title for the photobook with phrases from the song as the titles in the word book.  I made a sample sketch and presented the idea to my friend and she loved the idea.  I origional wanted to make it white and purple, but it was too much of a contrast.  So I went with a couple of different shades of purple and I couldn't be more pleased with the way it turned out.  I put some graduation stickers on it because it was a graduation gift, and some music notes on it because it was part of a song and then just started using some stickers I had around to embellish it.  I got frustrated cutting out the words for the titles, so I just ended up printing them on white cardstock and it turned out fine.  My friend really liked the end product and I enjoyed making it for her.

Have a great day and I hope to be back here soon.  Take care and remeber to keep it crafty.

Good Morning.  I am going to attempt to post this again.  I tried 4 or 5 times unsuccessfully to get this blog post to stay up.  I hope it works today.

This is a retirement word book that I made for a customer.  Her mom was retiring as a 4th grade teacher.  They found a similar book that I had made on pintrest.com.  The only thing that the customer requested was that the colors be changed to red, black, and white and that it was for a retiring teacher.  So with that much info, this is the design that I came up with for this retirement gift.  There are a total of 8 pages front and back.  There are several spots where they can insert pictures or it can be used as one giant card that everyone can sign.  It is a great conversation piece and a wonderful way to thank an employee that will be deeply missed as they enter into the new phase of their lives.  When I sent this to the customer, she wrote back and said it was beautiful and she couldn't wait until the party to give it to her mom.  Her mom loved it and I think it will have even more meaning once everyone has a chance to sign it. 

Have a great day and I hope to show you some of more newest creations soon.

Hello!!!  I am really enjoying my new Cricut Expression.  Some of the cartridges like Wild Card and the Boxes and Tags catridge work a lot better on this machine.  It's also saved me time, because I don't have to cut the papers in half any more.

This week I worked on putting together another name book.  I met a lady at a craft show and she wanted me to make some stuff for her grand daughters.  I just finished the name book for her.  She said that her grand daughter liked butterflies, pink and purple.  So I designed a book that incorporated those ideas into it.  I like the way it turned out.  I met her grand daughter at the craft show and she liked arts and crafts a lot, so I decided to include some butterfly stickers that she could add to her book herself.  I think she is really going to like it.

I need to start getting more Easter stuff together.  I'm going to try to the craft show at the Escondido Humane Society again the first Saturday in April.  Hopefully it doesn't get rained out again.  We've had more rain this spring then we did all winter. 

Here's the pictures.  I got to go get dinner ready.  Have a good week.

I'm still making as many crafts as I can.  I've booked 3 spring craft shows and I want to make sure that I have something to bring with me.  Here's the shows I've booked so far:

Escondido Humane Society Craft Fair 2/6
The Elks Lodge Flea Market in Vista on 3/21
and hopefully Foothills Church in San Diego on 5/29.

Thank God I have a 3 day weekend.  I have a lot of paperwork to do for the school, but after that I'm going to craft to my heart's content.

Today I will share the Butterfly Chipboard book.  I made it, and then I read an article in Scrapbooks Etc. and apparently I did it wrong, but it worked for me.  I just traced out the shape on paper, cut it and glued it down on the chipboard.  The right way is to glue the paper to the chipboard, use a craft knife to cut out the shape and then use an emory board to smooth out the edges.  I bought an emory board today, I'll try this method on my next book and see if I like it any better. 

Here are the pictures...enjoy and make sure you hit Michael's this weekend because they are having a huge clearance sale this weekend.  Enjoy your weekend!!!

Sorry I haven't been posting as often.  I have been splitting my time between working full time at the school, trying to find time to do my crafts, trying to update theis site and the Etsy site, and trying to find craft shows to show my crafts at.  I feel like I'm splitting myself in too many directions, but I am staying grounded by completing some of the craft projects.  The craft room is a mess because I have so many projects going on at the same time. 

I'm trying to get ready for another craft show.  I just signed up for a show on March 13th at the Vista Elk's Lodge.  If you are in the San Diego area and would like more information about the show or if you'd like to be a vendor, just contact me and I can e-mail you the information.

I have actually completed several different projects.  Yesterday I went to JoAnn's and found some really cute Easter, St. Patrick's and Valentine's stamps and cards all for a dollar.  A few weeks ago I found some chipboard books at Michael's for a dollar.  So I have started making several different projects in addition to finishing up those pirate baby shower invitations for my SIL.  I finished this photo purse a few days ago and I just got around to uploading the pictures.  I finished a butterfly chipboard album, but I still need to take pictures of that.  I also finished up some Valentines, some St. Patrick's and some Easter Cards and I will be taking those pictures over the weekend.   I also started making what will become flower lolipops.  After looking at this list, it is no wonder that my husband thinks I'm ADHD.  LOL!!!

For the photo purses, I just kept repeating a pattern.  On the front of the photo purse, I glued a giant purple flower.  For each page I traced and cut out the purse shape from some designer papers that I had lying around here.  I glued on a 3.5 inch mat to each page and a chipboard tag that had a saying on it.  On some of the purses I glued on ribbon.  On all the pages I added a round rhinestone to the top of the mat to make it look like each purse had a clapse.  I thought it turned out cute.  I hope other people like it too.  It would be a great gift for a friend's birthday or just because.

You can probably tell I don't have kids.  I would never be able to get this much done if I did.  Since my hubby gets off late, I pretty much have the afternoon to myself to do all these crafts.  I used to complain about my husband getting off late, but now that I think about it, if he came home sooner I'd never have time to play with my crafts.    I better finish this up so I can go start dinner.  Have an excellent week and remember to keep it crafty!!!

Good Morning!!!  Yesterday I decided to make a mini breast cancer survivor chipboard albumn in honor of my mom.  She was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 2006.  She's been through all the chemo and she is still living with all the side effects, but I'm just greatful that she's still here with us.

I went to Michael's the other day and I found all these great little chipboard books for only a $1.00.  I wasn't exactly sure what to do with them, but I knew I wanted to try to make a scrapbook out of them.   I removed the ring, traced the shape on to my paper and then I  cut it out.  I tried to cheat and do more than one piece of paper at a time on my second try, but I found out you can't do that.  Then I marked where the hole would be and punched it out with my Crop-a-dile.  I got all the pages covered in paper, then I went back through and added a 4x4 mat and the stickers.  When I flipped through it, it looked kinda plain, so I went back through and put on some bling--those little crystal rinestone things. 

I think she's going to love it.  But I don't think she's going to want to see those pictures again or re-live those moments again.  I believe that we still need to erect milestone markers in our lives to remind us of all that God has brought us through so that we never forget to celebrate the blessings of today.  Seize the day, enjoy spending time with your family this year, and create something that will bring a smile to someone.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.  I was off this week, so I had some time to catch up on some projects that I've been meaning to do.  I finished up the bookmarkers that I made for a customer on Monday, then I put up all my Christmas decorations and borrowed my friend's kid to help decorate the Christmas tree, and yesterday I worked on this retirement book.  A friend at work will be retiring next month and I wanted to make her something special.  So I made her this retirement word book.  My husband said it would make him feel old.  I think he equates retirement with old age.  I think of it more as an accomplishment to finally enter into a new stage of life and to celebrate all the good work you've done in your lifetime.  At least that was what I was trying to go for when I made this.  I used the Cricut Design Studio Software to make the word book and most of the images came off my new Child's year cartridge.  I've been having a lot of fun playing with this new cartridge.  It is becoming one of my favorites.   I have to go to the store to buy some stuff for tommorrow's dinner, so without further ado, here are the pictures.  Enjoy and have a blessed week of thankfulness.

I went to a craft store the other day and they had these super cute mini scrapbooks that had a letter on each page and it spelled out a word when they are closed.  I really liked the one that said sisters.  I didn't buy it because I don't have a sister.  I'm not sure if they're called Word Scrabooks or not---but that's what I'm calling them today. 

I was on cricut.com earlier in the week and I found the instructions on how to make these books.  So I decided to challenge myself and attempt to make one.  I had a lot of fall type stuff lying around, so I decided my word would be AUTUMN.  This happens to be my dog's name, so I might eventually put some of her pictures in there or maybe I can sell these little books.  It wasn't that hard to make when you welded the letters together with the Cricut design studio software.  It was kind of time consuming.  I think with more practice I could get faster at making them.  I binded my book together with eyelets and ribbon, because I don't have one of those Bind-It-All things yet....that's on my wish list too :)  BTW I used my Cricut to cut out the base of each letter page so it wasn't so flimsy.  You could probably use heavy weight cardstock, but this was easier for me.

The day after I made this book, my sil wanted me to mak her a scrapbook for a baby shower.  I thought it would make a cool brag book by personalizing this word book with the baby's name.  So I sent her these pictures and I'm waiting to see what she wants to do. 

Hope you enjoy the pictures.  Tell me what you think.  Have a great week and happy crafting to you!!!

I came home from work today and I just decided to sit down and actually do some crafts.  I had some sticker packets lying around, so I just put together some really quick pages.  These 8x8 pages are pretty simple to put together.  It is basically a contrasting 2x8 strip of paper glued on the side of an 8x8 sheet of paper.  A 4x4 square is glued in the middle, with a title above the photo mat.  Three stickers are placed on the 2x8.  That's all there is to it.  These 8x8 scrapbook pages can be used by themselves, or they can be mounted on a 12x12 page with more 4x4 photo mats surrounding it.  It's a quick, easy, and simple way to make a pre-made scrapbook page. I think it took me less than an hour to complete all these pages...I wasn't paying attention to the time. Hope you have a great week and happy scrapping to you!!!