Got to keep moving!

Let me introduce you to the twins. My husband and I have matching bikes and we have been going on Saturday morning bike rides. Why is that noteworthy, well because it has been many, many, many years since I have been on a bicycle. I am trying to boost my confidence (even though I am still afraid to ride in the street). We follow a bike trail through our section of the city, which is pretty cool but it is a long ride. I do have one tip for the ladies though that I learned the hard way - maxipads and bicycle seats do not work well together, lol.

I haven't posted pictures in a while but my hubby has stepped up his flower game. He has gone from every other week to every week, lucky me! It is nice having fresh flowers in the house all of the time. I really, really love my orchids. They last a long time and are sooo beautiful.

And finally look what my daughter bought for me! We were in Michaels getting ribbon for my next diaper cake and we saw this. I am on a self-inflicted spending freeze so I couldn't buy it (even though it was 40% off with an extra 20% off coupon) so she offered to buy it for me. I have been looking for a server for my dining room and I can display this holder on top of it. This will be a good way to share some of my favorite layouts with my family.

A dime late and dollar short

I know that I said that I would post this a while ago but you know how that goes. I really didn't add too much to the WIP, and for some reason I am stuck on white backgrounds right now. I did get a chance to use some of my alphabet beads on the word family and some of my glittered black cardstock as a border strip. Look for this Echo Park Yours Truly again soo, I absolutely love this collection!


I hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Little Mustard Soup

Trying to attack my WIPs. Here is a layout of my daughter when she was five years old. I tried to use a little canavas too, didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned it but hey, it is done right?

A little Randomness

In an effort to ease the guilt of being chronic shoppers, Mika and I decided that we were going to work with a particular collection this weekend to at least break the seal, lol. We chose Crate Paper Random. This collection works great layered. The colors are bright and funky and were the perfect compliment to this picture of my daughter on New Year's day - ready for 2012.

And the biggest news that I have from this weekend is that I received this in the mail on Friday. It was a gift from my very best friend (better know as my twin). I was so overwhelmed that I started to cry and then kept crying every time I thought about it on the way home. This is such a big gift! She better not buy me anything else for two years!!!! My hands were shaking when I took it out of the box and I spent a lot of time this weekend reading tutorials. I set everything up on the computer and I am ready to go. Between this and my Expression, I feel like a mad scientist, just ready to create!!!!!

Tag, I am it!

Today my layout is featured on the Platinumscraps blog. I have always been hesitant about applying to design teams because of the amount of time I would have to dedicate to it but I must say I am enjoying every minute. I feel like I am really being stretched creatively. We are going through some changes but stay tuned as there will be more tutorials, games, and giveaways. This week's sketch came from Pagemaps and you can see the full reveal here but I wanted to point out a few of my favorite elements. The two white flowers were cut using the Flower Shoppe cricut cartridge. You cam make a variety of flowers wtih this cart but I kept it simple. the green flower I made freehand and I finish all of the flowers off with a little bit of stickles for a sparkly effect.

The butterflies were cut using the Martha Stewart punch and instead of gluing them down flat, I used one mini pop dot per butterfly and pulled up the wings to give that "fly away" look. I also accented each one with some bling.

And finally after surpassing the learning curve I must say that I am in love with the Cricut Craft Room. You can use it like the Gypsy and weld your letters and customize your titles. This font came from the Quarter Note cartridge; I changed the slant of the letters, the width and welded them together to cut one beautiful title. Then I topped it off with Paper Glaze for a glossy effect.

You can see the entire layout on the Platinumscraps blog and be sure to become a follower, there is a group of talented designers there ready to inspire you!

An Outpouring of Love Request

Hi Everyone, I don't talk about him often but my husband is a very giving and charitable man and when someone is in distress he does everything possible to help them. I told him one day I am going to come home and find out that another family lives there because he gave our house away, lol. Well he just sent me an email from a dear family friend whose very young niece-in-law is battling cancer. She is requesting an outpouring of prayers and cards and I thought who better than my crafty family to help. Here is a copy of the email, please fee free to spread the word. Thank you in advance for your support.
Tamika aka Phillyscraps

My nephew's wife in ATL who's thirty with seven girls is fighting for her life. My nephew is only 26. The youngest girl just turned one and the oldest child is eleven. She has already undergone an aggressive treatment of cancer. At one point she received chemo and radiation at the same time. The chemo made her very, very ill. Now she has kidney failure. At this point the doctor's want to do chemo., 3x week, every 3 weeks for the next four months. She doesn't want to do it, I guess remembering what she went thru the first time.

Everyone that I know is so, so, so, blessed. If we could begin praying for their family because GOD is a miracle working GOD. Also, I was thinking if they were to receive an uplifting and encouraging card from my circle of friend's and family oh how wonderful it may make her feel. An outpouring of LOVE even if you just write a note and drop it in the mail I'm sure it would help. Here goes the information -
Mr. & Mrs. Charles & Shawnita Dyson
6856 Maddox Road
Morrow, GA 30260
I would be so grateful and they would as well. Thanking everyone in advance.
Veronica Dyson, Social Worker

No End in Sight

To the busy weekends! I hope everyone had a great weekend and gorgeous weather like we did here in the Northeast. My grandson came over this weekend and since he is walking at 10 months he does not like to sit still. I forgot how much energy it takes to keep up with little ones. Here he is hanging out in the scrap room with me. I gave him a paint brush to hold so he would stop grabbing my papers, lol.

By the time he left I was too pooped to party, and so was he. He fell asleep while I was feeding him. He was in the middle of chewing when his eyelids dropped.

I also had a couple of diaper cake orders and still have three more to complete this week. I also had 40 baby shower favors to do at the very last minute (not my fault this time, lol). I have to admit though, this kind of busy is a happy busy!

A Few Cards

My body can't keep up with the weather changes here in the Northeast so I stayed home from work yesterday to recuperate a little. I received some Happy Mail containing my new Papertrey Ink stamps and I was able to crank out a few cards (the Best Wishes card uses a stamp from My Time Made Easy) for my stash. I used Making Memories and SEI papers and a few of my punches.

A Ray of Sunshine

First let me say thank you for all of my blogging sisters that reached out to me with love, support any prayers. If only I could tell you how much that means to me right now. Even through the storm there is a ray of sunshine - remember when I said I had big news coming, Well here it is! I am now a designer for ! Today was my first post and I am so excited. Make sure you stay tuned because we have a lot of things planned in the near future over at Platinum Scraps, including a blog hop. I will definitely keep you updated.

My first project was a Page Maps sketch layout I did of my Stepson, his wife and baby boy. I used Echo Park Little boy papers and really had fun with this layout. I did a small banner using my Dilly Dally stamps from Making Memories, and used some of my favorite embellies like my brown and white bakers twine, variety of buttons, stars by making Memories, some adorable red and white ribbon and the tag is being used for hidden journaling. I used my Slice to cut the word family, curled the ribbon banner and popped circles on the patterned paper for a fun look.

WIP Monday

The good news is that I started a lot of layouts this weekend. The bad news is that I didn't finish too many of them, lol. the past five days have been very tumultuous for my family as we receive some really devastating and potentially life changing news and we are trying to weather the storm. I went into a very deep funk and I am only functioning right now because of my bestie Mika and scrapbooking. Mika keeps me grounded while scrapbooking keeps my mind occupied. It felt good to get into the scrap room and I felt semi-productive. Here is the WIP I plan on finishing this evening and posting. It really only needs journaling and a few accents so I am pretty confident that I can git 'er done! I will update this blog this evening with the results.

Look Up in the Sky..........................

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's.......................................an actual layout, lol. I know, i can hardly believe it myself. I don't know where all of the time goes but I wish I could get it back. Hopefully in May things will get a little better. I might be going on a compressed work week at work which will give me every other Friday off from work, giving me a little more creative time alone. But right now everyday is just busy. here are some pictures from this weekend.


layout of my niece using Echo Park Happy Days

My henna tattoo from my nieces birthday party


kahlua cupcakes I made for the party, yummy!

Diaper bike for my cousin's baby shower

My cousin is such a good sport, lol.

I saw this on JoAnn's website and just loved the photo, lol.

Busier than Usual

I am sorry to be M.I.A. but it has gotten a little busy, I have to finish a website for a friend of my husband's, twenty five martini glasses to decorate, 100 cupcakes to make, make seafood salad for 50 people, finish two diaper cakes and still do laundry, food shopping, work, etc, etc. And through it all my heart wants to SCRAP! I will figure it all somehow, in the meantime here are the favors I did this past weekend for a red and silver baby shower. Each pillow box contained a package of microwaveable popcorn.

Siri is gonna get her butt kicked!

So my husband  and i are messing with his siri feature on his iphone tonight so he said good night to her she said good night to you too. So i said do you want to sleep with my husband and she was like i dont understand that question so i said bitch do you want to sleep with my husband, she said i'd blush if i could. Then i told him to tell her he loves her and she said oh, i bet you say that to all of your apple products! What kind of craziness is this!

Free for All Fridays - My Opinion on Scraplifting and Giving Credit

I said to myself that I was not going to comment on it because of the draining effect of negativity but it has been nagging at me and I wanted to express my opinion and see how others felt. So without going into a ton of detail and naming names (some of you are already familiar with this controversy) there is a bit of a blog battle of words going on between two very talented ladies over scraplifting. Let me be fair because it is a little deeper than that. These ladies are on design teams and you can tell by the quality of their work they put a lot of time and effort in their designs. I think that part of the dissent is the fact that one lady seems to be even emulating the other's style of decorating her home, photography, and blog style. Now it is true imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I have to wonder where is the line drawn?

I don't think I have a particular "style" of scrapbooking. When I look back on my layouts and cards they seem to run a gamut of styles to me and there are other scrappers that I think are like me like Gemiel (I see a lot of my style in her layouts), my bestie Mika (although I believe she definitely thinks more out of the box than I do), My West Coast sister Tricia and many others. I am influenced by other peoples layouts but it may be something simple like a flower they used, am I suppose to give them credit for that?

But on the other hand there are scrappers whose work I would recognize instantly like Thomisia - her layout pages are unmistakably creative, she uses a lot of photos and usually does two pagers and has been doing so for a while (back to the african-american scrappers website - remember that?, lol). Ms Kat Blue is another person who generally uses white space and embellies to make her layouts pop and has developed a certain style. And then there is Miss Essense , a scrapper with a clean artistic style that I think she has developed into her own over the years and I tend to know her work instantly so if I "copied or scraplifted" a layout to the point that I was using their style I would definitely give them credit.

I can't profess to know what is proper ettiquette in scrapbooking but for me it all boils down to this just being paper and glue. Either way it is not that deep. There are so many other ills of the world I would be ashamed to make a big deal out of someone scraplifting my work and if I felt like someone crossed the line into my personal world I would probably just come off of the internet and share my craft only with those close to me. The only thing that would actually make me angry would be if someone copied a picture of my layout, with my family in the photos and claimed them as their own, that is just too much. I really don't do this for the glory, just for the love of crafting, the social part is a perk to me.

Disclaimer: this is just my opinion. I am not taking sides in the above mentioned dispute as it is not for me to say who is wrong or right.

Thirsty Thursdays - Must Have Products

WRMK Luck 8 Punches - I remember over a year ago when i saw these punches I immediately put them on my "must-have" list. I love the concept of these punches, but rumor has it that there have been some serious technical difficulties with these punches so before I invest over $30 a piece for them I am going to wait to hear the feedback when they offically hit the market.



The Blues - I am really ejoying the blue color combinations from this CHA and I have several collections on my list -
Heidi Swapp's new line (always been a fan, I was so excited to see her products!)


Teresa Collins - not always a favorite but I have my sister's wedding photos to scrap that will match this collection perfectly.

And Colorbok - this line is being released through JoAnn's stores. I popped in there last week to pick it up but the papers weren't in stock, just the embellies and you know I have to have it all so I will try again this weekend.

Again not usually on my list, but I adore these Tim Holtz stamps.



And I MUST HAVE these buttons, they are sooo cute and soooo out of stock at most of my favorite retailers, lol.

SMASH Wednesdays - My Inspiration

So the question for today is "The thing that most inspires me to actually sit down and create is....." but instead I have a person. I know I mention her a lot but Mika is such a big part of my life. Not only are we scrap buddies but we are very good friends. My day doesn't start off right unless I talk to her. When I am having a good day she makes it even brighter and when I am having a bad day she is a non-judgmental sounding board. She and I are close enough to tell each other when we are wrong without any hurt feelings. We have had minor bumps but trust me I wanted to get past them fast, she is the last person in the world that I would want to be mad at me. We are a little competitive too, we try to keep up with one another with creating layouts and we are always comparing booty size, lol. She inspires me in so many ways, especially to be a better person and a better scrapper, I love you girl!

We Interrupt Our Regulary Scheduled Blog Post.....

For an important announcement! But I can't tell you what it is!!!!!!!!!! Well not yet anyway but I have some big news coming. It is something new and exciting and I am super happy to be a part of.....................oh crap, I almost gave it away. Keeping a secret is harder than I thought! Stay tuned and I will keep you updated! But it is going to happen soon, I promise!

Technique/Tool Tuesday - A Sticky Situation

I love my Xyron Machines! First of all I love any machine that does not take batteries and does not need to be plugged in. Just some good old-fashioned manual power does the trick. Here is my family of products and each machine serves a specific purpose for me.

So as you know the number on the xyron represents the size of the paper it can take, like these 150's can take paper up to 1.5 inches in width. I use these the most especially when working with my cricut or slice machines. I get total even, non messy coverage on the smallest of cuts.

My 510 can handle paper up to five inches in size and comes in handy when I am doing craft fair projects. I have a variety of cartridges for this machine including the two sided lamination and the one side lamination and other side magnet cartridges.

My 250 is great when making cards, again I get all over coverage and this one is big enough to put a couple of cuts through at a time but small enough to not be bulky or in the way when I am creating. One of my favorite tricks with the xyrons is to put an image in right-side down and then cover the sticky part with glitter for a quick and easy sparkly accent.

WIP Mondays

So rumor has it in blogland that I have indavertently contributed to the number of Mika's WIPs and I must say that I am guilty. I have a tendency to start a layout and not post it because it just needs something....................................what I don't always know but I will not mark it complete until I figure it out. Case in point this layout, besides the obvious missing journaling I feel like there is something missing. I may add some rolled flowers or some swirly acents and some bling but I haven't committed to anything just yet but I will by Friday, just you wait and see!

Woohoo! It's Friday Baby!

Ummm....................yeah this is my hubby celebrating in his new SpongeBob pjs, lol!

I have my five year old niece's birthday party to attend and my crafting class to teach this weekend but I do still hope to return with a ton of scrappy goodness.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Inspiration Bullseye

Me and my daughter were in Target this week for a few items when we ran across this display. I was immediately drawn to the colors and despite her pleas of "Mommy please don't take a picture of that in the store!" I did anyway to use as inspiration for a few cards.




The bag with the butterfly was my inspiration for this card-

The next card was inspired by the colors but with a twist. I used the backing from one of my clear stamps as a transparency (see below), trimmed the excess and then ran the transparency through my xyron to adhere to the card, The results are fabulous.

College Bound

So the reality that my baby is no longer a baby is settling in. It was hard to accept and I have had my moments of still trying to hang on to those aprons strings but it is really out of my control. Tuesday we made a 4-hour round trip to Hershey, PA to interview for a college. I sat in on her interview and it was hard not to interject. She did a good job but I wish she would have highlighted more of her accomplishments. As in the quote from Marianne Williamson (or Nelson Mandela depending on who you believe) "Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine". ....................I feel a layout coming on, hmmmmmmmmmmm.