Blending Pen

In the image of the flower, I used CTMH's blending pen. I just dipped it in the Sweet Leaf and Sorbet ink pads and colored in the flower. Super simple and it looks amazing!

Veranda Card Workshop

I love these!!

Veranda Workshop Cards

These cards were made using the guide in the Veranda workshop on the go. I actually was amazed how I got all of these done in one night. I cut out the pieces at my mother-in-law's house while the kids played and then put them together when I got home after the kids were in bed. Super happy with the results!! It's so nice how your cards look when you just follow the guides!

Loving Cards!

Same, but Different

Not sure if you have noticed yet, but these layouts have the same page design. It's a fast and easy way to make a lot of pre-made layouts and add photos later. This is espcially good if you're like me and go to a crop and forget your photos! CTMH makes some amazing idea books that show you different layouts like this and you can make so many and even make the same one over and over but using different photos and paper, they come out looking different!
These are some older layouts I had tucked away and just needed to finish off some details.

Super Sweet Wedding

So I say this was a super sweet wedding because they had an amazing and fun "candy bar." It's a table full of different jars filled with all kinds of different candy and you can scoop out your selections into bags and enjoy! Now I don't really have sweet tooth but my husband does so this was by far, his favorite wedding we ever attended. (except for ours hopefully!) I love to scrapbook about weddings because they are so beautiful and in so many ways, weddings are like scrapbooks. They are full of memories, and all these little different elements and phrases that make up one beautiful event. The cake, the venue, the flowers....they all compose a great finished product. This wedding was my childhood friend.

The paper is CTMH's Veranda collection. The stamp set was included with the Veranda kit and I wasn't so excited about it when I saw it, but it turned out that I love this stamp set because of the great variety of flowers you can make.

You can't scrap it all!

So it's true - you can't really scrapbook every photo you take. There's not enough albums in the world to scrapbook all the photos I take. I have a good suggestion for those who feel overwhelmed by too many photos to scrapbook. I suggest choosing a few topics and then keeping an album on those topics. So an example would be Christmas, birthdays, and vacation. Scrapbook all of your children's birthdays, your family holiday memories and just your vacations. The rest of the photos can be stored nicely in our 12x12 page proctectors that hold six 4x6 photos in a sheet or any other album you choose. There are lots of great products to choose from. This a layout ready to go in my Christmas album. It's 2008 photos of the kids with various friends and family we visited.

The red circles are CTMH's dimensional elements. They are plain white chip board and you can make them any color you choose with your ink pad! Super fun and easy way to highlight photos on a page.

Current Project

Here's a little something I'm working on using a stamp I thought I'd never use. Funny how that works!!! The great thing about stamps is that when you can find the perfect patterned paper, you can make your own!

Baby Shower Cards (TWINS!)

I made these cards today for a baby shower tomorrow. The mom-to-be is expecting twins!! Two cards are twice as nice!!

Simple Kids Valentine

The preschool class is handing out Valentines. I let Joseph stamp his name. We started out with him trying to write it but neither one of us had the patience for that. I've seen him write his name a ton of times but not in a high pressure situation like this!! But it's fun to involve the kids in paper crafts. This is the perfect age where he still wants to do everything I'm doing.

Santa Encounter 2009

Each year I do a layout of the kids with Santa and instead of their wish list, I include what the kids did get for Christmas so we can look back and remember what they got when the toys are long gone and recall the memories we had along the way.

Hearts for Haiti

Double Sided Paper

Recently Close to my Heart made all of their paper double sided. It used to have background and texture on one side and then the back was a solid corresponding color. Now they have made background and texture on both sides. This is just amazing because one paper collection can be so much more versatile. This is the same paper I have used for Halloween layouts but I'm using the colder colors in the pack (greens and blues) to give it a completely different feel.

Halloween Pro Pics

I made this layout before having photos in mind and it took me a long time to decide what photos to use with this paper!!

Piercing Technique

It's diffucult to see in this photo (try clicking on it to make it bigger) but I used a technique and pierced the brown card stock on the second page. The holes give it an interesting texture. Try this in your next project!

Perfect Day for Turkey

In 2008 we spent Thanksgiving at my mom's house in Tahoe and Joseph had a blast cooking with my mom. He also had a great time playing on the stairs and saying "I SEE YOU" peeking through the banister. I love the way this paper has such a light feel with the fall colors. It reminds me of my wedding colors.

Private Journaling

Don't avoid journaling about your photos in your layouts because you don't want people to read your inner most thoughts. You can safely tuck journal cards away out of sight and bring them out later in your own time to look back on your thoughts. On this page, I have tucked away a card that pulls out at the bottom. It has some personal thoughts on my five year anniversary, and the few months that followed. The thoughts are there for me in the future when I want to look back on them but I can share the album with anyone and they'd never know the writing was there unless I told them.

Adventureland

I've been rushing through a bit trying to get pages cranked out. This was a page I started using scraps from another layout in the Animal Cookies collection of papers.

Quick Card

I think I ordered this set of stamps on accident somehow!! But I enjoyed using it to make this simple card.

Top Stitch Layout

Happy New Year! and it has been happy because I've gotten two layouts done this week and with CTMH's newest papers, they are beautiful and easy to do with the helpful workshop guides. I am loving this paper and the way it goes with Amanda's photos from May 2009 when she was 11 months old.