I am taking advantage of WordPress’s ability to publish on command even when I’m not in front of the ‘puter {::SMILES}.

Just a little happy fourth post. Hope you all, in the U.S., are having a fabulous day and (long) weekend. Stay safe and take care!!!

Here’s a page that I did for my lss.

Material:

Elements: Prima rhinestones and My Mind’s Eyes rub-ons
Pattern paper and stamp set: Sassafrass Lass
Cardstock is… hmm… starts with a C… ha! I am so helpful, huh? It’s not as heavy as Bazzill.

I also want to share a video. It’s another extraction video. My first one was using a pen tool. It’s my favorite method. But, here’s another method I use when the area I want to eliminate isn’t so busy but still busy enough that the regular magic wand tool will not do. You try it out and tell me if it’s worth it.

Hiya! It’s like a Friday to me at work since tomorrows the fourth. YEAH!

I just want to share this card with you today. It’s based on Kristina’s color challenge and this time it’s monochromatic-ish with a splash of color. It’s for my MIL. It’s her bday soon and this is the front. The inside is going to say (I think in the bottom right corner) something like “or 45.” That’s what hubby said. I thought that was cute {::SMILES}.

This card is super easy. The hard part was the circles. I have those old Creative Memories punches (not sure if they still sell the same ones or not) and they are so hard to push unlike the SU or EK ones. But, I only had a few to do so it wasn’t bad. If this was a swap, I’d probably buy a new one, heee…

Everything is SU except the ribbon (Martha Stewart) and the chipboard (American Craft). I am the owner to many chipboard alphas and I don’t use the numbers so much and thought this was a perfect way to use them. I used a lot of dimensionals too. I used SU for the thinner ones and Making Memories for the thicker ones.

So what’s this Kiva deal? Well, it’s basically you helping people in developing countries live better by giving them a loan for their business or personal needs (so far I only want to lend to businesses). I did my first lending ($25) some months back and just recently she repaid her loan. She was a trash collector in Indonesia and asked for a $75 loan. Hopefully her business is doing well! This time around (with the same $25 I donated months ago) I picked a young gentleman, a cattleman, down south. I can’t remember what country in S. America it is and at this time the login for Kiva is down.

Kiva, FINCA, etc. do the same thing… micro lending to help rid of poverty by enabling/giving these people the finances to do better. What I like about Kiva is that I get the money (sometimes people do default though) that I lend back to me and I can reuse it for another person, donate it to Kiva or cash it back. FINCA I think seem to reach out more. Check out their calculator and see what $30 can do.

Have a great 4th everybody! I’ll be hanging out with friends tomorrow. I’ll probably be gone until later in the weekend or next week. We need some family and house time. Happy birthday America (that’s what M said)!!!

Great Swap Girl! Wow!!! Over the weekend I received an invitation to join this swap group. I felt so honored and at the same time intimidated. I’m going to be swapping with some of the most awesome card markers from SplitCoast who are also Stampin’ Up! demos. I’ve seen other ladies being asked and see the cards when they’re posted on the individuals’ blogs but never thought I’d actually get an invite. So this is super, super exciting for me and I can’t wait to actually join in on one. I hope I can keep up and that the other girls will like my cards. I know it’ll be nerve wreaking the first time around.

Now I want to share a card…

This was another card that I made at my scrapbook store using their stuff. I think the stamp’s the Angel Company’s stamp but not sure. They’re old though, I know that for sure. I just love the sentiment and because I want to focus on the verse and nothing else, I just used this one stamp on this card. This is the first time I used big rhinestone brads for a card and I like. I’ll be using this more… well after I get some that is {::SMILES}.

Well, if you need more details, ask me and I’ll ask them. I should have paid more attention but I was just rummaging through their bins full of scrap this and that and just had to much fun playing than paying attention to brands. Don’t you love the ribbon though? I have no idea what it is called but I love it. It’s so au naturel if you know what I mean {::SMILES}. Now I want to go to fabric store and just buy random pretty fabric that won’t fray at the edges to make fun ribbons.

Besides cards, within the last few days I received two awards. Yeah! Thank you Mercy for the Kreativ Blogger award and also Kerry for the Arte y Pico Award. There are sooo many bloggers out there and I feel special each time somebody thinks of my little ‘ol blog. So here are the two awards below.

Hey gals (or guys), Clear and Simple Design has a July challenge for you and if you win, you can get a $25 gas card. How great is that? Anybody can use some extra $$ for gas, right?

What are the terms, conditions, and deadline? Check out their website –> HERE.

This card is the first item that I made with the popcorn set or Bucket-o-Popcorn Fun. Seriously this is a fun set. I took this set to my lss and the ladies there thought it was the cutest thing. I did a lot of cutting on this card. The popcorn was on white and I used Copic markers to color them to what I hope looks like real white popcorn with butter on top. The container was stamped on the same pattern paper as the background pink stripe paper. Then I used my scrap white paper, stamped the container again ad made sure the sentiment area is crispy clear and stamped the Thank You on it. I cut it out and used my dimensionals to glue it on. This card is quite layered actually. I should have taken a side photo. I used the thinnest dimensionals (the SU ones) for the container then a thicker one (Making Memories) for the popcorn and the SU ones for the Thank You. I don’t use my Crop-a-dile much, I probably should, but that’s what I used to set my eyelets.

I’ve been liking the bigger stamped image than the background solid paper, like the popcorn and the white cardstock behind it, because I think it makes the stamped image stand out more. I probably saw this somewhere and that’s how the idea came about but as far as my conscious mind knows, I did come up with this idea on my own {::SMILES}.

I just want to share a few easy to do (even when you’re sick) items. Yes, I got bored and so I had to make something, ha!

The first is super simple as you can see. I used Tara Sroka’s tag that I printed out from her Queen of Green kit. The sentiment… handwritten by me. Now and then I enjoy doing this on my cards. For the card stock I used SU’s card stock. I also did some paper piercing, to give it a little more umpf. What do you think and oh… notice, no ribbon? {::SMILES}

The next one is a bookmark. It’s for M. She’s still napping and I made this while she was in the room with me. My girl can sleep!!! She’s so funny, every weekend nights, I’d tell her before bed time that she can sleep in tomorrow. I said the same thing last night too and she curled up and said, “ahhh…. thank you mommy.” It doesn’t matter what time she sleeps, she won’t wake up earlier than 7:30 a.m. Our weekend sleepy time is 10 p.m. and on average, she’ll wake up at 8:30 a.m. at the earliest. A few times I had to wake her up at

close to 10 a.m.! Can you imagine how my life will be when she’s a teenager? I can imagine Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan (when she was still cute and sweet it seemed) when what’s her name, her mom, was pulling her out of bed. That’d be me.

This bookmark I created using paper from TheDigiChick called Promise Paper Pack by Danielle Engebretson. Such a cute pack and I can’t wait to use it on some layouts.

I hope she likes it. I think she will. She usually LOVES it when I make her something. She loves to read and her school started a reading club. I think this will be perfect for those long nighty night time stories. We’ll know for sure where we stopped instead of just laying it down on the floor face down.

It is gorgeous outside. When M wakes up, we’re going to play outside a bit. I am sick of blowing my nose at this point and hacking. If I can get a good night sleep tomorrow then I’ll be just fine.

Here’s the first thing I want to share with you from the crop. My new stamp, a Sassafrass Lass Oliver and Friends set, that I actually purchased from the stamping store in Shawnee Mission, KS… a suburb of Kansas City. My lss sells Sassafrass but not this particular set. They said that they’re going to try and get Olivia for me. Yes!!!

This is my first Sassa stamp set and I am quite happy with it. It stamps crispy clean. I think you should try some {::WINK}.

The background paper is Basic Grey and the ribbon… uhm, not sure, it just coincidently matched. It was at the lass. This was one of the display items that I did. They didn’t care what stamp set I used.

About the picture. My lss has white walls and I took the pictures for the cards on top of white plastic bins. I set my aperture to super low, I think 2.2 for this, and the lighting was really bright too and set my camera (Canon XTi with a 1.8 50mm lens) in RAW (I always shoot in RAW and I have a tutorial of this in my digi tutorial page) and edited it in Photoshop. Except for the paint dark line of the bins the picture looks like it was taken using a studio kit I think. I’m going to see if I can find white and gray fabric on sale and try this at home.

Right now I’m home sick. I thought I had a sore throat Friday evening due to talking to much when I was in my training session but I guess it’s just a plain old cold. Saturday I had the most horrible sore throat and Sunday everything began. I think I’ll be much better tomorrow, usually it’s how it works, two days of hacking and sneezing and it’ll calm down. Just during those two days I can’t sleep much and that’s why I stay home, to try and catch naps here and there. M’s “sick” with me. She’s fine but I’m not motivated to take her to school/daycare. I was messing with her and told her that she’s not sick and she let out some pathetic coughs and sniffles. But then she said that she wants to be with me to “help” me feel better. Ha, we’ll see. Right now she’s happily watching Bambi AND scrapbooking. Alright, laters… nap time.

Wow, great scrapbooking day yesterday and today, I am hosting VSBN at SCS from 1-3 p.m. CST. Come play with me!!! Upload your page to SCS or post a comment to a link on your blog. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!!

Yesterday I got four cards done and five scrapbook pages. Two were digital. Yes! I was and am quite happy with my accomplishments. I’ll share them with you throughout the week.

In two weeks there’s a two day crop but I’m not sure if I’ll go the two days. I might just do the Saturday. Two days seem too many! I did it a few months ago at two different places and I wasn’t very productive the second day. I wasn’t inspired. But, we’ll see.

This card was a card that I made for my scrapbook blog sisters’ swap. The theme was summer. What do you think? Summery enough?

Well, I better go. I need to chat with the other ladies in the forum. Hope to see you there or see your work uploaded to SCS with JUN08VSBNN as the keyword or link here.

Laters and have a great rest of your weekend!!!

Why not use a few on your layout? Here’s my sample. Also, got a lot of scraps? I used a few of my scraps here too.

Just a quick simple page that I did, strips of paper, a flower cutout, and the title. I also did some doodling with those embossing gel pens. It looks likes you’re just wetting the paper with these pens but after it dries, it gives your paper an embossed feel. I love it. I purchased mine at Hobby Lobby but I’ve also seen them at Archivers and Michaels.

Today was a great day. I had a training session at the other campus and everybody really liked my presentation (Web 2.0 and OpenSource plus Second Life). So it’s nice, I’ve enabled a few teachers and I hope that they’ll use at least one item from today. I have to admit the SL we could have done without but hey, that’s what was asked of me to do.

Then after that, I went to Hobby Lobby, bought some Copics (25% off) and a scrap book (50% off) and gesso. I’m going to experiment with it this weekend, I hope. There were a few other items like stiff felt, more brushes, etc. Nothing too exciting, just supplies. Then I went to Shawnee, a suburb of Kansas City and found the stamping store. They have A Muse stamps! Woah! But I did’t get any. I got some Sassafrass and something else… oh I forgot… and gamsol. After two months or more I’m finally going to use my Prismacolors. It’s a neat store and in October I’ll go back - I have another conference I’m attending maybe 10 miles from there. I’ll get some A Muse then unless I see something more interesting.

Last but not least, Archivers and I bought…. a Scor-It! I am sooo glad I didn’t buy the Scor-Pal at the stamping store. First I have a 30% off Archivers coupon and second, I tried both at Archivers and the only thing I like on the Scor-Pal was me not having to move my paper. But, since as you know I don’t do a lot of fancy boxes, I’m ok with that. The Scor-It is so much more crisp and I get a good fold each time. The Scor-Pal was weaker. It might just be me but I ended up with t he Scor-It for $35. The manufacturer lowered the price to $49.9 instead of $59.99 and I do have a coupon. Sweet!

Fun, fun weekend. I’ll be cropping ALL day tomorrow and I have a few toys to play with. Also, I am the DT at my LSS and half the time there I’ll be working on some display items. Yippee!!! I need to remember to bring the camera so that I can take pics of my work after since I won’t see it again for a month or two. Have a great weekend. I’ll be cropping tomorrow and so see you Sunday! Oh, I am hosting Virtual Scrapbooking Night at Split Coast. I think my time is 1 p.m. EST. Come play with me!!!

Just a super quick post before I head out to work. This is a card that I did last night when I was super high on caffeine {::SMILES}. Last night was Wednesday card night at my upline’s and I couldn’t help but drink some coffee. I think I shouldn’t but she makes the best coffee! So I was up until 2:30 a.m. BUT, that’s probably just a little bit more than when I’m not on caffeine, ha!

I’ve been into layering my cards lately. I still like to keep it clean but me likey the randomness. If you haven’t checked out the card I did for the PaperTrey Ink blog hop yesterday, I did some layers there too… a bit more like my scrapbooking style {::SMILES}. You might not noticed but used a transparency sheet behind the ripped notebook paper.

The colors was from Kristina’s color inspiration for this week. Very pretty! You should play if you haven’t. Very fun! The colors are purely pomegranate, regal rose, wild wasabi, river rock, and white.

I have an announcement too… I am a new Creative Team for Lydia Kurniawati at Shabby Pickle Designs. First I love SPD and second, I love what Lydia’s created for them. I’ve just downloaded a couple items and I can’t wait to use them for my digital and hybrid stuff! Very excited AND, the best part, she’s Indonesian too. The very first time I’ll be working directly with somebody from Indonesia. So cool! I’ve also received an award but I’ll post that later… I really got to go to work {::SMILES}.

Anyhow, have a great day and I’ll share more later (with less caffeine).

If you’re a regular here, you know that I like all sorts of scrapbooking and card making. But since this post is specifically created for the PaperTrey Ink June (transparency challenge) blog hop, let me tell you this: I am a hybrid crafter (besides the regular paper scrapbook and card making).

What is that? Besides using the regular paper and glue I also use digital products. In essence hybrid crafters are those who combine digital and traditional methods of paper crafting. So for today’s blog hop, I hope that I can inspire you to try hybrid out. It’s super easy and you might already be doing it (printing clip-arts or printing out your sentiments).

The tutorial and the method I used today was done in Photoshop CS3 and I used a Photoshop brush for one of my element BUT, you don’t have to have Photoshop to print on transparency (you do need Photoshop though to use Photoshop brushes). You can just uses Word, WordPerfect, Neo (Mac only)/OpenOffice (FREE!), etc. and print on to a transparency using images, text, dingbats, or clip-art (use your favorite search engine to find many free fonts, clip-arts or dingbats — check out DaFont or ScrapVillage, they are two of my favorite free font/dingbat sites).

This first card, Hello Thinking of You, I used four pieces of transparencies. The first is the bird and that’s from My Mind’s Eyes, the second is the greenish white piece of painted transparency, the third are two stamped PTI images from the Shape by Design set, and the flowers. The other elements… well… uhm… they’re scraps from other projects. I have here some Stampin’ Up! paper, Tinkering Ink, PaperTrey, and Sassafrass Lass. The lace was from WalMart and the staples are just good ol’ regular staples (notice there’s a PTI transparency on the top right behind those layers).

For the transparencies, let me start with the bird since it’s the easiest part {::SMILES}. All I did was cut. The material is thick so you got to really mean it and be careful but it wasn’t hard, just need some patience. The transparency background, I used a coat of yellow acrylic paint, a coat of crackling paint, a coat of green and then I caked on (on some parts) some white. The paint I used was half Making Memories and the other just a less expensive brand from WalMart. I think they’re the same but who knows but, for this type of projects, any acrylic paint will do. If you look close, the crackling only occurs on the area that has more paint, which I wanted it to do, so I’m ok with it but if you want full crackling, make sure you cover it well with paint and wait for each coat to dry before moving on (I used my embossing gun to speed it up, ha!).

The PTI stamped image. I just used my black Stampin’ Up! stamp pad for this. You really need to let it dry before touching it. I stamped this image Monday night, I was in no hurry so I just let it air dry. Then the flower… I used Photoshop’s brush for this. Unfortunately I have no idea which brush it is or where it is from but if you Google for Photoshop brushes, you’ll come up with a lot of them (or go to Brusheezy which is one of my favorite free brush site). So, for this one (unless you’re familiar with Photoshop and brushes) please watch the video.

The second card is pretty simple and I created this for those who just says NO to any computer stuff {::SMILES}. I had one extra circle stamped transparency and I just modified the card that I did yesterday for the Split Coast color challenge. If you look at the butterfly, you can see that it has the same stamped image as the transparency. I used Martha Stewart’s (EK Success) butterfly punch to create this butterfly. First stamp then punch. Put it all together and you’ll get this card.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great blog hopping night and I hope to participate and “see” you all again next month! Oh, if you have ANY question, please feel free to either comment here or send me a personal email using the Contact form above. I’ll reply back as soon as I can!