A Little Buggy!

Ok, nothing about scrapbooking, nothing philosophical, nothing life changing, just a sweet little visitor this morning.  I wanted to share him  (her?) with you.  I was watching Buddy run in the back yard this morning.  Steve brought all the plants in because of frost last night, and he wanted his peppers to grow a bit more. 

       Well, he had a hitchhiker on his plant.....



Pepper Picker

I love this second picture.  After I snapped the first, his head jerked toward the flash!   It was as if he is saying, "I got my eyes on you!"  And as I moved around the plant, he would pose for me, but never turned his eyes away. 

I know some people think bugs are

creepy, but I thought he was magnificent.  But, I did put the plant out as soon as it warmed up a bit, cause he is not cute enough to live with me all winter!

Hope you scrap this weekend or at least keep dreamin'!

Blog Candy and A Nerdy Bird

Good Monday Dreamers!
Some o you know I do blog hops from time to time.  Well I have found several great, and a few not so great blogs doing this.   I have to tell you all about this Blog Candy I found!  It is being offered over at Scrap with Stacy , on blogspot.  She is giving away..

All of this stuff -

1 pkg Grungeboard (plain elements 94 shapes)
1 pkg Grungeboard (alphas- 234 letters, 9 fonts)
1 pkg Ranger Enamel Accents (black & white)
1 pkg Fragments (48 pieces- rectangles & squares)
1 pkg Sprockets Gears (12 pieces)
1 pkg keyholes (5 keyholes, 10 fasteners)
1 pkg Word Keys (7 keys)
1 pkg Muse Tokens (12 tokens)
1 pkg Swivel Clasps (6 small, 6 large)
1 pkg Trinket Pins (15 pins)
3 Mini Masks- 1 Floret (7 pieces)
1 Compass (1 piece)
1 Regal (2 pieces)
1 Ranger Distress Crackle Paint - Clear Rock Candy
3 Ranger Distress Ink Pads - Worn Lipstick, Spiced Marmalade & Wild Honey
 Hop over there and find out how you can win! 

I have been struggling to crop with the thumb splint on my right hand (looonnnnggg story!), so I would have something to blog.  A week ago Patty challenged us in our face book group to finish a project from any class we took at CKC.  I took a class from one of the 2 best teachers there, Darby, and love it.  We used Sassafras Lass paper kit Nerdy Bird and Nikki Sivils Tree chipboard album.  Wonderful products!  Her chipboard is somehow different, and doesn't puff up s much when you use wet adhesives.  And the edges don't fray as bad when you sand them! If you haven't seen her products you should visit them on her site, http://www.nikkisivils.com.

So I never do the original kit, don't follow instructions at all! Hers said, "I'm a nerdy bird"  and I have 2 nerdy birds so I changed it.  The ruffle around the edge is 24" of paper that we fan folded, then stretched around the edges, glued it, and held it in place.  With only 2 hands, mind you!  Challenging for me.  The little bird and books  were fussy cut from a piece of the patterned paper.  Oh, and the ruffle is "sandwiched" between the cover and a piece of oval chipboard.

 
 
 

Because the book was intended to be about a studious child and their school journey, I pretty much threw her directions aside and branched fully out on my own!  (Sorry the picture isn't very good, but it was taken at 1:30 am, with my left hand!)  The stickers in this set are very very strong.  I love it when I know they will hold up to handling. 
   My twin grandsons love to be silly in front of a camera.  So it was hard deciding which ones to put it.  These are the the only fully completed pages, as my hand started aching quickly, and without the use of the right apposable thumb, small pieces were almost impossible!    I hope you enjoyed the pages, and I promise to finish up the other 3 pages as quick as I can (going for the sympathy vote with a little wine!)
 
I'm dreaming of  a healthy thumb.  You keep dreamin' too

TGIF!

Am I the only one that has an annoyingly long week?!  I know Patty has, with her sinus infection...always fun!  Well, let me tell you...no, it's not about scrap booking...ok,  a short version!  I am DEADLY allergic to strawberries..Tuesday evening, I starting breaking out in hives..normal berry reaction.  Seems that at church Tuesday there was this conference, and they served Strawberry Lemonade.  When at singing practice at church, I touched the counter top in the cafe, where the drink had, I guess, spilled!  Touched the counter only, it wasn't sticky. they had cleaned it, didn't grab a deadly berry, just residue on the counter!  So Thursday I went to doctor for an EpiPen.  And to have them look at my hand, which is still sore from jamming it while trying to catch an elevator at Kansas City CKC!  Three weeks was long enough to be in pain.  Nothing broken (YEAH) but she is sending me to an orthopedic Dr to examine it.  Xray did show minor arthritis , so it that is a good thing to know for further reference.  So wearing this splint on my right hand may goof up some of mt crafting, but I'll find a way around it.
    So, between Dr's appointments and calls, pain in my right thumb, hand & wrist,  and sleeping WAY too much cause Benadryl knocks me totally out, I haven't down much crafting.  But I have a friend Luisa over at Creative Scrapbook Divas who it heading up a group about organizing your crop space.  (You should go here and see it all)  She posted about making kits to take to crop night.  It is almost exactly what I do, but since my wrist hurts, I am cutting and pasting it below. 
PAGE KITS
YOU WANT TO BE PRODUCTIVE AT CROPS AND AT HOME RIGHT? PLANNING IS THE KEY!!!     I have been practicing this for my last 3 years and it works (for me): PAGE KITS!
A Page Kit is an Envelope, Ziploc Bag, Planner Folder that contains the majority of stuff you need to create a layout.
Here are the steps to create your own page kits:
1) Gather your photos and sort them according to how you want to scrapbook them (1 or 2 pages layout).
2) Take a look at your stash of card stock and pick the color that match your photos.
3) Select pattern paper or theme paper you want to use with these layouts.
4) Add ribbon, buttons, paper clips, tags, stickers, die cuts, memorabilia and other embellishments you know you want to use with these pictures.
5) Store everything in a Page Planner Folder, Ziploc bag (or accordion file assigning one layout per slot). You can also use the Power Sort Box from CM or the CTMH My Legacy Pages-in-Progress Album.
 (Note from Pam:  I have a shoulder bag that I take to crops and I automatically put 2 or 3 into it, so I am packed and good to go on Friday night)
6) If you have a layout idea for these  pictures, for example a layout you saw in a magazine bring the magazine or tear the page and store it in  your page kit or if you design your layouts on your own, do a basic sketch in a piece of white paper or in your sketches notebook.

When packing for your crop, pack your tools, page kits and any stamps, ink pads, acrylic paints, stickles, you want to use for these specific layouts. You don’t need to take all your stamps if you are only going to do BD and Bridal pages! Take your BD and Bridal stamps and the inks that match your page kits… future layouts!!!

Don’t worry to pack everything If you don’t finish your layout because you didn’t bring the “whole kitchen Sink” to the crop, you can finish the details at home!!! Yes, this is an option! lol

With this pre-planning I have been able to do from 8 to 10, 2 page layouts in a 10-12 hours crop (discount the eating, chatting and going to the SB store time)

This works for me, hope you find these tips useful. Almost forgot.

IT WORKS FOR SCRAP BOOKING AT HOME TOO!!! Why?
Because whenever you have 30 minutes and want to create something you just need to grab a Page Kit from your stash of Page Kits and start creating. Isn’t this fun and easy?

Hope you enjoyed this.  I am going to try to do some scrapping tonight, if I can figure out how to it with this splint!  Well my dream for the weekend is to feel better and maybe scrap.  Hope you have a big dream for your weekend.

I WON!!!

I love to read blogs.  If I read less I would have time to do my own!!  Any way, that's enough guilt for one day!  I have some new friends at a forum site called Paper Secrets.  They hosted a Haunted Blog hop this weekend.  WHAT!! YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO A BLOG HOP!!!  GET OUT! 
   Ok, here's what it is, for you blogging newbies.  The host sets up a list of different blogs who want to participate, complete with links and URLs.  Then you have a limited time (a weekend to a week usually) to visit each blog.  The blog owners following the theme, create projects, do a tutorial, create layouts or cards (they don't do all those, just their choice.  I don't want you to be expecting too much!).  Sometimes they offer you a challenge or a prize for signing up to follow their blog.  Leave a comment on all the blogs and then report back to the forum to tell them you visited them all!  Clear as mud?  Good.
   There were a total of 30 blogs and none were disappointing.   I got some really cute ideas to spook my neighbors and found some new places to go for challenges.  And even better...I WON A PRIZE (Blog Candy!)!  You read right.  And it is a nice prize from a very creative lady named Nancy.  Her blog is Dare to be Unique and she is.  Click on this link and go see her stuff.  Go on, I'll wait for you to come back  Welcome back.  Wasn't her Wonderland Box marvelous?!  If you read past her post, she got to go on the scrapbook cruise ship with Tim Holtz!!  SOOOO jealous.  Can't wait to read about her trip.

   Here's what I won . . . a Cosmo Cricket Haunted Paper Pack.  Isn't that scary?  No of course it isn't!  I have some little grand spooks that I will need to scrap. Thanks Nancy!

     I have a new toy...here's a hint...it cuts out paper, connects to my computer...oh, you'll just have to come back tomorrow!  Until then, I'll be playing with my toy and dreaming of the great things I can make.  Hope you keep dreamin' too.

Such a Bad Blogger

So why have I not posted in so long? I seem to do a good job for awhile, and then just disappear. August was full....although I have nothing to prove that. I walked the dog, sat in the sun, hmmm that's about it! Wait! No, I made an album. OK, almost made one! In the 70's I worked at Lutherhoma, a camp in NE Oklahoma. I had all those photos in an OLD album, and took them out (what few were still stuck) and started a proper album for them. Here are a few pages...

This is the 2nd page of a 2 page layout (I always do 2 page LO, I feel it makes my albums read like a book would...not fragmented) about Emerge-N-See, a Friday night staff talent show.  Friends of mine made a parody of the song "Why Me Lord" by Kenny Rogers to whine about how tired w were from all our camphand duties.  I had the original hand written (by my friend D'Anne) in my Bible..yes 37 years later!  It was too large for the page (and not acid free) so I scanned and shrunk it on acid free white paper.  Fussy cutting makes it look like the original. 

   My next layout is more of an example of what to do when there are no real pictures!  This story was so fun and worth retelling that I tried to make the journaling the main focus.  I know many don't agree but I feel that the story is what I am trying to capture most from this layout. And I have only cruddy 110 camera pictures!  I had a sheet of different sizes and shapes of arrows. 

The one I wanted was used already (don't remember where..hmm) but the negative of it was still on the page. I merely traced it onto the back of some patterned paper that fit with pg 1. Don't forget when to tracing to always trace on back of your paper. That way your pencil marks won't show. And remember to reverse your stencil.

 
 
Hope you enjoyed my scrap ramblings today.  I enjoy doing this (journaling thing) and still am not sure why I don't do it more often!?!   I love comments, so let me know what you thought. 
 Until next time...keep Dreamin'.