Looking for a fun place to hang out?

Join me at Sisterhood of Scrap (SOS)!  This is a no pressure, low key, great forum that would love to have you as a member.  We are not a kit club, online store, nothing commercial, group of gals joined in friendship by our common love of scrapbooking and the pursuit of other crafty endeavors! 

January happenings at SOS:

• We are going to be having a photo challenge by our esteemed photographer Sonya!! (Can't wait foir this one!).
• I am going to present a PhotoShop Elements (PSE) Challenge along with some tuts!! this best part about this challenge is that I am pretty clueless when it comes to PSE so I have to learn before I can post my tut and challenge.  Now that will keep me motiviated!!
• Colleen, our culinary queen, is going to host a Recipe Challenge of sorts!!
• We are going to be presenting a "Sister Blog" of the month!! Not telling you who the first one will be 'cause I don't know!
• We are going to be having a one-hour crop on January 23d hosted by Helen!
• We are going to be holding a "January White Sale" Contest (that will be flipping amazing!) wth a prize to be won.
• And there will be a few other things too, but Helen, our esteemed moderator, won't tell me what those other things are!

Come join us, I promise you'll have fun.

 

 

 

It's snowing!!

Hard to believe we have nearly a foot of snow on the ground here in eastern NC.  That's really unusual! 

Christmas has come and gone again for another year.  I love Christmas but must confess it was nice to have lots of quiet time today with absolutely nothing to do!!  So I scrapped this photo me my mother and me which I think is a great picture of the two of us!

I used the beautiful Swirlydoos Dec kit for this LO.  The dark green pp is Bo Bunny NOel Stripe and the floral is IOD Night Divine collection from Creative Imaginations as are the two tags.  The cardstock is Bazzill.

I used fired brick distress ink to ink the edges of the circle cut which I made using a Martha Stewart corner punch.  Got this tech. from Lisa at Swirlydoos, TY Lisa!  The 4 red flowers are small roses with layered with 2 hydrangea flowers sprayed with red shimmerz. The red flower with the white stamen is a Petaloo, Magnolia and berries pick.  The holly leaves are sizzix cuts inked with olive and green Cat's Eye pigment ink and Forest Moss distress ink.  The butterflies are some I scanned from the IOD design and painted with Diamond Glaze to give them a little shine.  I distressed the edges first with my Distrezz it all and then dampened the edges with water and bent and shaped.  This was a great way to spend my day!!

Meanwhile the spoos were outside having a ball in the snow.  This was Nika's first snow and she was a little overwhelmed at first but she soon was right in the middle of it playing with Chena.

Today...

Well I should be getting ready for Christmas but what the heck, thought I'd sneak a quick layout in!  I am tired of Christmas LOs, tags, etc so I did this page of our 2010 Alaska trip SB.  This is a scraplift of an awesome LO done by Helen at Sisterhood of Scrap.  It is one of my favorite designs ever!

The journal says:  Are we there yet?

We crossed the border into Alaska on June 12th with the biggest smiles on our faces you will ever see! Ever since we left Alaska on July 17, 2000, we have talked about returning in the motorhome. There is something about Alaska that calls to us; we love it there so much. It is such big country, the vistas are incredible and we love the cool weather!    ...................YES!


I love this paper too.  It is MME So Sophie  - Peaceful Plum for the back, the striped is Happy for You and the plum flowered is Circular Bliss.  I made the flowers with T Holtz's rosette die from the same MME pp collection.  Used Ranger distress ink Wild Honey and Brushed Corduroy.  Rubons are some old K & Co "Classic"  Chipboard numbers are KaiserCraft

Guess I'd better get at my chores now!  There are two poodles here in desparate need of a bath, though they don't seem to think so!!  TFL!

White Christmas

It is snowing outside here in NC and that is kind of unusual!  Just a dusting, but still it was fun to watch it coming down.

Here's another LO of the dogs, Chena and Chili, from when we lived in Denver.  We had one heck of a blizzard starting on Dec 20th and it was just a real mess.  The dogs loved the snow though so thought it would be fun to do a Christmas snowy page.  I used the Dec Swirlydoos kit for this and these papers are IOD.  I just tore the trees from some Bazzill cardstock.  The flowers are layered Primas.

More challenge LOs!

This was another challenge at Swirlydoos to scrap a Christmas LO with a non Christmas photo.  I chose this photo of Dick just cause I like it.  I took the photo this summer while at Denali Nat'l Park at Polychrome Pass.  It was really windy which is why he is holding onto his hat!

This gorgeous paper is from Bo Bunny's new Christmas collection, Noel.  That tag is from IOD's Night Divine collection, both being featured this month in the Dec Swirlydoo's kit.  I love using corner punches to punch around circles and make "doilies", they are so gorgeous!  This really was a fairly simple LO but the techniques I used took a little time.  The distress the edges, I first ran the pp thru my Distrezz it all and then moistened the edges with water and curling and scrunching   the paper as I went along.  I keep a spray bottle at my work table so I just spray some water on my craft sheet and boogie right along!!  I was in a shiny mood today so got out the gold Perfect Pearls to make the circle on the doilie and just add some shimmer here and there.  Also used gold stickles to highlight the ornaments amd holly berries.  Thanks Lisa and Robin at Swirlydoos for the lessons on circle punching and edge distressing!

Thanks for visiting!

Christmas is fast approaching!

Are you ready?  I'm not, I still have a gift to make for dh, hope to get that started today. 

Here's a layout I did over the weekend for a RR challenge at Swirlydoos.  I love how this turned out and I wish the photo were better.  It is dark and rainy here so no chance for a nice sunny shot today! 

The journal reads:  I was such a girly girl. I loved dolls and always got dolls for Christmas. My dolls always came complete with wardrobes of beautifully hand-sewn garments made with love by my Mom. My favorite doll was Judy. She’s a big doll, the size of a 2 year old. After I grew up and moved away, I came home for Christmas one year to find Judy sitting under the Christmas tree wearing a new red velvet dress that my Mother had just made for her. I was so surprised and moved that Mom had gotten Judy out and made her a new dress. Every Christmas after that, Mom always dressed Judy and put her under the tree.

Another little story about my dolls and the clothes Mom made.  Like most little girls, I had Barbies and similar dolls and you know their clothes are quite tiny.  Mom made clothes for those dolls too but for the most part they never had buttons or snaps.  She just never had time to sew those on so I always kept lots of pins around!!  Too bad they didn't have velcro back then.  I do think she would have used that!

I used lots of glimmer mist on this.  First on the background cardstock, two colors, Snow Queen and Cinammon.  The the chevron is cut from a template I have and has patterns in the template so I glimmer misted that too so the chevron has a beautiful shimmery pattern that doesn't show up in the photo, oh well, use your imagination,  LOL!!  I purposely adherred the circle so that it would no lay flat and painted it with gold Plaid Sparkle Gel.  The dress form is a Dusty Attic piece painted a soft beige and again glimmer misted with Snow Queen.  I love the venetian lace near the bottom.   All the flowers are Prima and the pp is from the Bo Bunny Noel collection.  I also used some gold ink and gold metallic rubon around the edges.    The letters are painted with Shimmerz Grammie Berrie paint and then painted with gold Plaid Sparkle Gel. I added some burgundy stickles on the holly berries too. 

I love this picture of Mom although is is not a great image.  It came from a really small photo that I scanned and magnified quite a bit.  I just don't have many pictures of Mom from this time in her life.  I was either 15 or 16 when this photo was taken.

Thanks for visiting!!

Christmas tag!

Checkout the Swirlydoos blog for a chance to win a great prize from Prima!  Today's tag challenge was to make a monchromatic tag in red or green.  This was easy.  I just cut a circle and used a corner punch to cut around it.  Then I stamped the ornament and embossed it, added some rock candy stickles, and  a little smooch red spray.  I cut the scalloped tag with my Sizzix from paper that already had the words printed on it, inked with Fired Brick and stamped some snowflakes.  Then I tied a ribbon and used hot glue to adhere the ribbon and berry spray.  Assembled it all and called it a tag!  Easy and fun!

Angels at Play

Lisanova at Swirlydoos posted a great challenge, do a winter themed LO using a summer or spring photo!  I ran across this photo of Chili and Chena playing and thought it would be perfect.  Its such a great picture of Chili.  After Chili was gone, Chena was in a funk, I know she was missing her sister.  It took several months for her to be herself again and now that we have Nika, Chena is overjoyed.  They adore each other!

For this layout I used 3 layers of white paper plus the silver die cut.  I glued a large Tim Holtz fragment over the photo and then misted part of the fragment and the photo moreso over Chili, the white poodle, than over Chena b/c I was trying to evoke the feel of the heavens.  I also misted the top two layers of paper.  Here's a closeup of the photo:

The corner pieces are from Pink Paislee and are really fun as you can color them with inks or paints.  I used Glimmer Glam to add a silver shimmer to them.

I love randomness and so I added the tulle and the silver beads and let it play randomly over the page.  I like how it subdues the title which I printed on cardstock and traced over it with a gray Glaze pen.




Supplies list:

Paper - Bazzill dotted swiss
  Pink Paislee House of 3 Darling Doilies
  Not sure about the 3rd piece, its a scrap that was laying around.
  Silver diecut - Anna Griffin
Prima roses
Petaloo layered flowers
Memory Makers silver and pearl brads
Photo corners - Pink Paislee Artisan Elements
Tim Holtz fragment
Collage Trims -both fibers
Glimmer mist - Marshmellow and Silver Bells,
Glimmer Glam - Tinsel Town
I glued silver foil paper to TH's grunge paper and then used an old Sizzix die to cut the leaves from that.
Snowflakes cut with an older Sizzlets die from foil paper.

The jounaling is printed in gray onto vellum paper and adhered to soem of the Pink Paislee paper.

The journal reads:

The ivory angel waits patiently at the Rainbow Bridge for her ebony angel sister to join her, knowing that someday they will reunite.  I can picture their happy tails wagging and the fur flying as they romp through the meadows waiting for their humans.

Thanks for visiting!!

New Beginnings

I was honored when this layout was chosen LOTW at Swirlydoos!  It is my stepson and his bride on the day of their marriage.  This photo was taken as they were doing a shell toss into the Atlantic.  I love the looks on their faces and the way that everyone seems to be looking out. 

This LO was done with Pink Paislee's House of 3 resist paper.  Fun, fun stuff!  I inked the paper and in so doing brought out the background flora images which are coated and therefore do not absorb the ink thur revealing the designs in the paper.

My Dad

This is one of my favorite layouts that I've done lately.  I think its because I love the picture so much.   For me, it really the essence of Dad, a big grin and laugh.  I can be seriously silly sometimes and I know I got that trait from him.

Most of the papers I used are from G45, A Proper Gentleman.  The silver paper behind the photo is Coredinations embossed with a Cuttlebug argyle folder and then inked with silver ink.  The heart is an image from Printmaster graphics program that I printed, cutout, and coated with Glossy Accents.

I made the tag using a technique found in the Composite of Compendiums book.  I stamped some ink on my craft sheet, sprayed with water and then dragged the
tag through the ink.  The two circle stamps are Tattered Angels Traveler stamps and the Smiles and Laughter stamp is Stampology.  The Metal clock face is a Tim Holtz piece.

Thanks for visiting!

First Denali LO for 2010

Ah, it's nice to be done with the gifts and doing something for me now!  Here's my first LO from our summer at Denali National Park. 

Journal says "

We saw this sow and her two cubs frequently during our 6-week stay at Denali.  On this day, the cubs were following Mom on the road when all of sudden the dark brown cub turns around to approach his sibling, hauls back his paw and smacks the other cub “upside the head”.  Notice the angry look on his face in the bottom photo.  I have no idea what provoked the smack, but it was classic sibling rivalry!"

Used Basic Grey Capella papers that I received in my awesome July Swirlydoos kit.  The chipboard is old, Fancy Pants I think.  I covered it with bronze UTEE and then added  TH walnut distress embossing pwdr to give it a worn look.  That's a Tattered Angels Glimmer Chip in the left top corner.  I made the biggest mess doing this.  I currently have embossing powder all over everything!!  I got a Zutter Distress it All recently and used that for all the ragged edges.  I really like that tool, takes the work out of distressing edges for sure.  I did discover something, it's made for right handed people!  LOL, I finally figured out that I need to turn my paper around 'cause it always seemed like the back of the page had the proper distressed look rather than the front.  Duh....the trials and tribulations of being a lefty.  Well at least I'm in my "right" mind, ;-)!!  TFL!!



Swirlydoos kit - La Chienne

Here's a LO I did using the November kit from Swirlydoos.  It is a really awesome kit featuring Pink Paislee's House of Three Parisian Anthology resist paper.  This paper is just awesome as it is white with lots of resist designs on it.   So you get out your inks and mists and make the paper whatever color you want.  This is Nika, our 7 month old standard poodle.  She is such a love!  She and Chena adore each other and are constantly either playing, eating, or sleeping together.

ACK!

it's been forever since I've updated my blog. shame on me!  All the projects I've done lately are gifts so I don't want to show them off!  Dear dear!

I did join the Swirlydoos kit club back in May and have to say that that was a good move on my part.  The kits are SO SO awesome and such a good buy.  Each kit is packed with the latest and greatest in products.  And visit the forum and gallery for plenty of ideas and tuts on how to do "stuff".  Love it!!  Click HERE to go to Swirlydoos. 

Finally back home

We spent a wonderful summer in Alaska.  See our travel blog if you want to know more about that.  Road trip - Alaska Bound.

Now that we are home, we have adopted a poodle puppy.  She is delightful and so, so pretty!!

What happened to my blog????

Geez, while I was running around in the wilds of Alaska, some gremlins changed the look of my blog!  Looks like blogger has changed the templates - I need to reformat and I will one of these days! 

Not much scrapping going on!

I've been a crazy woman lately getting ready for our trip to Alaska!  We leave tomorrow.  First we'll have a few stops in the US and then we'll head north.  I am taking scrappy stuff with me but I don't know how much time I'll have for it.  We'll be back mid-August.  I hope everyone has a great summer full of fine weather, friends and family!

Visit our travel blog to see pictures from our trip and find out where we are!

http://alaskaroadtrip-maggi.blogspot.com/

Another paper bag album

I just love making these little PBA's.  They are just so fun!  This one was a real challenge as I chose to feature the artwork of Salvador Dali.  So no lace, no flowers, I didn't think that look was right at all for Dali.  I did use G45 pps and thought they worked quite well. 

Cover:

There are tags tucked into a pocket on the left.

The right side has a flap that opens up.

Flap opened.

The left side striped pp is a pocket to put tags or photos into.

The right side has a pocket for holding photos.

The left side has a pocket.

Sorry, this is a bad photo, the blacks are appearing as gray.

Tags to put in the pockets.

Thanks for taking a look !!

Me at 20!

There aren't that many pictures of me that I like but I really do love this one and was quite amused when I came upon it.  What you can't see is a bottle of Chianti tucked in on my left side, and the cigarette. oh my, glad I gave that up in my 30's!  This is me on the train in Europe bumming around.

When I was twenty…

Life was a box of chocolates for sure!! I did find the occasional nutshell in my chocolate because like any 20-year-old single gal, life had its ups and downs with boyfriends and all those things that are so important at that time in your life.

At twenty, I was just drifting through life absorbing all that I could and having a good time. I was in and out of college; I just couldn’ t figure out why I was there so I quit, numerous times! I started out as an art major at East Carolina University and it took about six weeks for me to discover that I was not going to make it in the world as an artist so I dropped out before I flunked out and moved in with some girlfriends in Raleigh. I worked at Hudson Belks through the Christmas holidays in the hosiery department. Then I took a temporary job at the Department of Motor Vehicles checking annual vehicle registrations. Talk about BORING! It was a proofreading job and I hated it but it was a paycheck! After that job ended, I became a telephone operator and that was kind of fun especially in a college town where the drunken college students would call in to call the White House or something equally silly.

However, my heart was in the mountains and after only a short time as a telephone operator I moved to Cherokee, NC. I went back to college at Western Carolina, this time as an English major I think. That didn’t last long either. Then I think it was history. In 1974, I finally decided to be a business major, but that’s another story.

I met a great gal, Susan, in music class and we became fast friends. She and I decided to save our money and go to Europe to see the sights. Europe was crawling with American young people as the Vietnam War was raging and there were lots of draft dodgers there. In retrospect I’d have to say we were probably an embarrassment to our country but, oh well, we were having fun, making love not war and all that.

So, I spent $600 for a six-week stay in Europe. That’s hard to believe isn’t it? I bought a Eur-Rail pass for $125 that gave me unlimited travel in most countries in Europe for 2 months. Susan took this picture of me on the train. As you can see, I am diligently studying my Europe on $5 a Day book. That really was an invaluable aid as it told us where we could get cheap eats, safe lodging, and student discounts. Of course, there were youth hostels but you had a 10 pm curfew. Hello?? At 20, I want a 10 pm curfew?? I don’t think so!

One thing that helped us out was that my Dad was stationed in Augsburg at the time so we had somewhere to go to get our laundry done, a nice long bath, a good hot meal, and a refill for the peanut butter jar.

Being twenty was not easy, but it was fun!

 I made the little travel journal in the right corner using some bazzill cardstock, lots of distress ink, Karen Foster stickers, and crackle paint.  I added journaling pages inside.  The rest is just different things from my stash, K & Co, Little Yellow Bicycle, TPC Studios, Jenni Bowlin letters, MME letters, Tim Holtz film strips, Stickeroos,

God has Another Angel

Thank you my dear friends that have sent us messages about our sweet Chili.  You'' never know how much we appreciate your caring words.

Our angel has gone over the Rainbow Bridge

We had to say good-bye to our dear Chili today.  Her pain was more than she should have to bear and her body was so debilitated by the autoimmune diseases.  It was time to let her go to the Rainbow Bridge to be with our other animal friends that passed before her. We miss you and love you Chili.  You brightened our lives for 7 years.  We will miss you always.

Cards for Lennon

Please take a moment of your time and brighten the life of a little boy, Lennon, and his family.  Lennon has 3 cancerous brain tumors and has a 20% chance of living.  Lennon is the grandson of Karen, at Pages in Time, and we are all banding together to spread the word and bring a little cheer into all of their lives.

Lennon has had a tumor removed but unfortunately, when he went for his MRI and check up, they found 3 new tumors.
The DT at Pages in Time is starting a project, "Cards for Lennon". I don't know if any of you have seen the movie "Miracle of the Cards" which is a true story, but it shows what just a card can do to make someones day. Just to know someone is thinking about you, praying for you, giving you hope is a blessing in itself.

Please take the time to purchase or buy a card for Lennon and his family so that they will know that people everywhere are praying for him. Let us ask God that Lennon be in that 20% of survivors!!!
You can send your cards to:
Amanda and Lennon Hunt
c/o Pages in Time
5221 South 48 St
Lincoln NE 68516

I truly hope you take the time to touch this little boy's life. It would be greatly appreciated by his family.

Chili update

Well things are not looking so great right now.  It appears that she may have 3 or 4 different auto-immune diseases, although we are still waiting for test results to come in.  She is really weak in the rear and has to be helped to a sitting or standing position.  Once she is on all four paws, she walks fairly well but has to helped up and down stairs.  the doctors so far are saying that cortisone treatments will change things for the better for her and that we need to give it a month to see how it goes.  Right now I am not feeling like she's improving much but I must be patient.  she's such a little trooper as she very seldom vocalizes her pain but I know she is experiencing some degree of pain.  Hard to say how much, dogs are absolute masters at masking their pain.  Please say a little prayer for our little girl.

Update on our sweet Chili

We went back to NCSU vet school on Friday for a follow up visit and had a much better visit I think.  We saw one of the neurologists there whereas last time we saw an intern and a resident.  The nuerologist has decided that the cerebellum problem is just something she's always had and is not related to her current problem. We go back next week for a spinal tap, joint taps and muscle/nerve electrodiagnostic study. They are thinking it is most likely polyarthritis which is different from osteoarthritis. More like RA I think. Anyway, onset can be quick (it was), often doesn't show up on Xray or MRI - it didn't, Can be autoimmune or infectious. Treatment will be either steroids or antibiotics. I'm betting its auto immune as she has allergies which are autoimmune. If it is polyarthritis, it is manageable and she should have quality life again. Could also be some other itis, meningomyelitis, or polymyositis/polyneuritis, although the doc is guessing polyarthritis.  So I guess things are looking up if this is what the diagnosis turns out to be. I think they got side tracked initially by the weird brain scan that they were all amazed to see.

I feel so badly for my sweet Chili as I know she is in pain.  The vet described it as just generally feeling very miserable.  I can relate somewhat when I remember the summer I went through before I had my back surgery-I was in pain most of the time and quite miserable. 

Do pray that we have found the cause so we can work on the cure now!

Bark!

Of course I can't go very many days without scrapping the dogs!  So here's one of Chena to go with a page I did earlier of Chili.  It is really hard to get a decent picture of a black dog and I have  gotten several good ones of Chena lately so you know what tht means?  LOL, more Chena layouts!!

The papers are BasicGrey Sugar Rush and I do love them!  I especially love those glimmer glass wings from Tattered Angels.  Thanks for stopping by!!

More vintage scrapping

I'm on a roll!  Did these 2 pages using the fabulous Feb kit from Pages in Time! 

Papers used include 7 gypsies - Walk and Pandora, Graphics 45 (blue from On the Boardwalk collection), BasicGrey Lucky, Prima Firefly, Adornit tags. 

This is my mother's side of the family.  The journal is long, but here it is if you want to read it:
I have so many fond memories of times spent at my Grandparents house. We were a big family and it was so fun having so many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Aunt Elsie didn’t have any children and so she, in particular, really doted on us. Her husband, who we called either Uncle Alex or Uncle Everett, would bring us silver dollars or 2-dollar bills and of course, we loved that!
Papa Greene had a country store and in the summers, we would play kick-the-can or hide and seek down by the store with the other children who came to the store with their folks. The store was a meeting place and you’d always find someone there sitting on the bench dipping snuff and talking about their crops.
Papa Greene was such a fun grandpa, he really loved his grandchildren. When we’d leave from a visit, he’d give each of us a small brown paper sack filled with penny candies. He was never too busy for us.
Mama Greene loved us too but she was always busy. In the summers, she cooked all the time as she made dinner (which is lunch to most of us) for the tobacco hands. I remember the help coming in from the fields so well. There was a big dipper out by the well; they’d all go there and have a big drink of water. Then on the porch, she had several wash pans set out, one to wash the tobacco gum off their hands and another for rinsing. Now they were ready for dinner! Dinner was usually lots of fresh vegetables from the garden and cornbread. She always had snaps – those are green beans that she always cross cut after cooking so that they pieces were about a half inch in size. My favorite dish was Grandma’s potatoes, which were chunks of potato in a cream sauce that she made from the cooking broth and butter. They were so good and I make them now but they aren’t as good as Mama Greene’s. There might have been a little pork but usually there wasn’t much meat. Of course, no meal is complete without dessert and she always had one.
Before we ate, she always announced what was for dinner. I can still hear her in my head, “Now there’s Irish potatoes, snaps…”. For years, I thought she was saying ash potatoes! She was distinguishing between Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes.

When she wasn’t cooking, she was working in the garden or canning and freezing for the rest of the year. There was always something from the garden that needed to be shelled. Sometimes we’d sit outside under a big shade tree and shell field peas and butter beans.

Vintage

Several years ago I got into a pile of photos of my family that dated back to when my parents were teenagers.  Ah - ha, I thought, let's do these photos in a vintage style.  Well the market was seriously lacking in vintage type materials so I didn't get too far....
Fast forward several years and wow, vintage is the absolute rage.  I was ahead of my time, LOL!!  Graphics 45 does some awesome vintage papers and so I've done these two pages using G45 collections:  A Proper Gentleman, Domestic Goddess, Le Romantique and Fashionistas.  I loved doing these two pages, its so fun trying to imagine my parents as young adults!!

journal says:

This man grew up to serve proudly his country in the US Army. His service began during WW II where he went to the European theater. He spent 28 years traveling the globe, sometimes with his family and sometimes not. He served in South Korea, Nepal, and in Vietnam twice.
This man married a beautiful woman and together they had three children who are so grateful that their parents have such an enduring love for each other. They dote on their children and have given them the most important gift of all, unconditional love.
This man is my father and I am very proud to call him my Dad.

Journal on this one just says that Mom and Dad were married in WWII and then Dad left for England to prepare for D-Day.

I had some fun making the title for both of these pages.  First I painted grungeboard circles with copper alcohol ink, then dabbed a bit of mushroom alcohol ink to age the copper.  Added the letters and then  painted the whole thing with Ranger Crackle Accents.  I thought it made for a nice finished looking embellished title.  Thanks for visiting my blog!

ATCs - Artists Trading Cards

These are so fun to make and I 've done a couple  vintage ones.

This first one is using Graphics 45 Romantique papers, I just laove the old fashioned ladies.  I just layered several pieces that I cut out.  Then I added some Frosted Lace Stickles to the bodices and gold Stickles to the butterfly, the button is Dress it Up.  And of course, lots of inking.  Hmm, just looking at it, I might add some crackle finish to the rose picture in the background, what do you think?

The Ladies

This one was for a challenge at SOS to do a spring ATC.  Its been so cold and rainy around here I just felt dark and vintagy!  LOL, is that a word?  Anyway here is:

Vintage Spring

This is real simple, the bird is a stamped image that I covered with a Tim Holtz fragment, embossed the scallop which is a Martha Stewart punch, added the Prima flower, K & Co paper image and MM flet rick rack.

Thanks for visiting my blog!!  Appreciate it!

Now I must go do something creative, like dye my hair, LOL!!

Chili - my princess

I was at the vet school yesterday until 2 pm and I guess things look a little better, at least for the short term.  Seems Chili has some fluid on the brain from a condition that may have been present from birth.  There is no way of knowing if the fluid is forming now or if its been an ongoing slow process throughout her life.  They think this is what is causing the weakness in her hind quarters.  she also is having some neck pain and they think that is unrelated.  She has a new pain med to take for 2 weeks and we'll see how that works for her.  One day at the time, who knows what tomorrow will bring. 

With all my worries of my sweet Chili, I was compelled to scrap a picture of her.  She is so pretty and girly looking so I thought she'd look good in pinks and laces!

This is the BasicGrey Sugar Rush line and I do love it!!  The scan is a little wonky 'cause that flower is so bulky....sorry.

I'm a Southern Gal

I issued a challenge to all the gals at Pages in Time to step out of their comfort zones and do a LO that was not in their customary style.  And I gave that challenge to myself as well.  I had a tough time with this, I just have a hard time keeping in simple!  After messing up several sheets of paper and wasting a lot of time, I finally met the challenge and came up with this.  I really like the simplicity of this.  I have a wide carriage printer so I was able to print my journaling directly on my cardstock.

The background CS is BasicGrey, the embellies are K& Co Tim Coffey and the rose colored mat is also K & Co.

We moved back to Nc in 2008 and I just love being here and I'm a little suprised by that.  The journal expresses my feelings about that.

The journal says:

I’m a Southern Gal
I don’t think I realized how much I love red clay dirt under my fingernails until we moved back to North Carolina. I’ve always claimed the world as my home since Dad was in the Army and we lived on 3 different continents while I was growing up. However, I recently realized how much southern blood runs through these world-traveled veins of mine.
I wondered if I would like being back here in the south where the pace is just a bit slower and people are just a little different. However, the decision was based on a need to be close to my parents in their final years so the decision was really a no-brainer. This is where I belong right now, I reasoned with myself, because my parents need me.
From the moment we moved into our home, I fell in love with my south all over again It has been more than 30 years since I called this place home and yet it felt so right from the very beginning. How I loved it when the FedEx man delivered a package to me and called me Shug. Now you may think that silly or disrespectful, but it’s not, it’s the south. It’s how we love each other, just because we are friends and neighbors. How I love going to “town” and I still marvel at the gentle smiles from strangers who say good morning to me.
And I love that age-old southern question, who are your people? I’ve been asked that so many times when I mention the name of the small southern town near here where my parents grew up. Do you know so and so? Yes, I know them, I went to school with them or my brother did. We are bound by tobacco fields and pig pickins. Our grandparents dipped snuff, we all know what real barbeque is, and they don’t make it in Texas! Basketball is a religion second only to being a Baptist or Methodist.
When I think of the south, I see rafts of azaleas seeming to float around the ancient live oaks and tall pines that they surround. I see white and pink lacey dogwoods dressing up the understory of the tall trees. The first fall I set about turning our house into a southern oasis by planting 30 some azalea bushes. I was rewarded the following spring with beautiful pink, white and red blooms. When the first azaleas bloomed, it brought a smile to my heart and I knew I had found my forever home after 30 years of wandering. Those bright flowers just wrapped their blooms around my soul and vested it with a calming peace.

Thanks for visiting my blog!!

Paper bag album

Oh this was a fun project and I can me definitely doing another one!  Its a mini book made from lunch sacks!  Now I didn't put together my own lunchbags, I got this one from Karen at Pages in Time.  Its easier to use as its already been sprayed protection and stitched together.

This is a mini photo album and recipe collection that I will take with us in the RV.  It has all my favorite travelling recipes in it.  The book has lots of openings where you can tuck recipes away.

I used my DT kit  from Pages in Time to do this.  Most of the papers are Bo Bunny's Kitchen Spice collection with a bit of Bazzill cardstock thrown in, Prima and Fancy Pants flowers.  Most of the laces are stuff I had laying around, who know how old they are!  Also used some MM trims.  Thanks for taking a look.  Go to the gallery at Pages in Time to see more great paper bag albums.

Update on life

Gosh, I have been remiss in not posting in a long time! February was not a good month.  Chili, our white poodle, has been having undiagnosed  problems with pain and mobility as well as two really bad UTIs.   We've tried different meds and they seem to help for awhile but then the symptoms  come back.  Most noticeable is that she has a difficult time rising to a standing position.  Once she is on all four feet, she moves around well other than she is a bit unstable going down stairs.  She also only lays on her side if she is not standing, she does not sit any longer.   A week ago we decided to bite the bullet and take her for an MRI.  Our vet suspected a brain problem because she has had seizures and because she was holding her head to the side just a tad.  Anyway the MRI is showing a vascular problem of some sort that is affecting the cerebellum. (no idea if I spelled that right!)  It is an uncommon thing and now we are going to see a neuro specialist at NCSU vet school March 8th.  Mostly I want to find out what the problem is, what the prognosis is, and what, if anything, we can do to control it and make her more comfortable.  We will not prolong her life if she is in pain.  It is sad and it hurts our hearts, but it is the reality of having a pet and a responsiblity that every pet owner should face and accept.

Dick will be retiring mid May and he is getting excited about that.  We had planned  to go to Alaska just after he retires but now we will have to wait and see if Chili is able to travel.

Better days ahead, putting one foot in front of the other, life goes on.