Is it Fall yet?

It is hard to believe it is Fall already! With temps in the hundreds the past few days, it is more like a summer heat wave around here. But it is Fall and Halloween is just around the corner.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, especially for decorating.
Halloween is spooky, silly and scary all at once.

This year to start off my decorating I went to a fun Halloween only craft faire.

Halloween and Vine

This is a juried show and all the crafters/artists displayed amazing Halloween art. Some silly, some fun and some downright spooky.  If I had a bigger pocketbook, I could have bought a lot more. It was so hard to decide what I could afford and not live with out.

This silly little witch below had to come home with me. She is so ugly she is cute!



The artist I bought her from is Kerry Howard Schmidt.
Paper Moon
Lots of fun, felted goodies!


This little kitty came home with me too. I will be hanging it on my Halloween tree. But first I will need to make a fake candle, as my tree is in our sun room, and candles don't do well out there. It can get a bit toasty out there on a hot day!

Len Bentham created this little kitty and "Jack"
Happy Holidays Blog



This artist had some amazing Halloween figures, I wish I could have spent more money!!!


It was really hard to decide what to buy, but I think these too will fit right in my Halloween decor.
As I get it all set up I will share some of my crafts and some of the Halloween decor I already own, some I have had for years.

Thanks for visiting!

Happy 5th of July

 Happy 5th of July! 

I have not been here for over 2 months!!!! Life has just gotten in the way of my crafting and blogging. 

 I decided to re-arrange my craft room, move my sewing stuff to another room. It has taken me a lot longer than planned and still I am not finished. But I will save that for another post!

I did get my 4th of July tree up! I made a few new ornaments and also fixed one that did not survive the heat and sunlight of the solarium. I made a loopy chain garland from chenille stems in red, white and blue to circle the tree. I also made some little barrel ornaments I will share in another post. 

The ornament on the left started out with some patriotic crepe paper that disintegrated but the collage stayed intact. I added it to a vintage red Christmas light reflector. All shiny & new. 

I also finally scrapped my photos from my Newspaper article post about my 4th of July tree. 

I bought the photos from the Press Democrat and scrapped them on the lay out below. In my album I will have the layout on one side and the newspaper in a page protector next to it.

I used lots of red, white and blue of course! 

Thanks for looking!

Easter Sneak Peek

The Easter Bunny had a little accident at our house today 

and made a mess in our yard. 

I wonder what he will bring on Easter???

Today I put all my Easter decorations out around the house and will decorate my Easter tree tomorrow evening. I am a little late in getting my Easter decorations up this year. 

My free time has been drastically reduced! 

I started a new job last week and it includes some "mandatory" overtime. I knew that going in, so I was expecting it. Overtime will be great for my crafty "spending budget", but bad for my crafty "spending time" :) I am hoping I can find a balance I can live with and still have a relatively clean house! 

I am glad to have this job, but while I was looking for my work, I did have a lot of free time and sure enjoyed the chance to relax and craft when ever I wanted. 

I hope to take some pictures of my Easter decor and post them soon. Plus, I went to Michael's today and bought some supplies to make a couple of new Easter crafty decor items that I will post as soon as I complete them. 

A Little Bit of 2011 in Review

I belong to the Jenni Bowlin monthly scrapping and paper crafting club. Each month I receive a box of paper crafting goodies in the mail. Each kit in 2011 contained a calendar Bingo card that matched the month of the kit. They were exclusive to the kit until this year.
About the time July rolled around I was wondering what I would do with them. I thought a mini album would be fun. But I had to wait until December to get all 12 months. Now you can buy the whole calendar set from Jenni Bowlin.

This last week I put the album together.




I started by adhering pattern paper to the back of each Bingo card with decoupage medium. The back side of January became the front cover. The back of February became the opposite page of the January pages and so on. The final page was a piece of thin chipboard covered on both sides with pattern paper. Between each double page spread I inserted a smaller journaling card, postcard or tag. An extra spot for journaling, photos or embellishments.

I printed four photos for each month, except for August,
as I guess I had nothing to take photos of??
I only had two to choose from!
I was busy with work that month, and I guess we didn't do anything
or go anywhere.

I sized and printed each photo for the mini to 2x3 inches. 

I placed the photos on the bingo card, patterned paper pages or on the center tags.
I went through all my word phrase stickers and small journaling spots and used them as accents on the pages. I usually don't use these much on my regular scrapbook pages.

Most of the journaling was written on center inserts.

 

To hold the album together I used my new Bind-It-All. I used just a short 6 post long binding coil, as I did not want to limit my photo or embellishment space. 

I had fun creating this mini, and since I will not get around to scrapping 2011 anytime soon, this will be a quick way to look back on the year.

I have another two mini's I made recently, one using my Bind-It-All again. I never really thought I would use a Bind-It-All, but I found a deal at Tuesday Morning and am loving using it! 

Card Crafting

Recently my sister asked if I could make some cards for her as she is always needing cards for the clubs she belongs to and she likes to give out hand crafted cards. Her card supply was running low and she likes to knit and garden more than papercraft. I like to papercraft more than knit and garden, so I said sure. Plus I was going to be going on a crafty weekend away, so I had the time. 

I ended up just creating a few cards at my weekend away, 

but made a few more last week. 

They are all in the mail heading to my sis in Oregon and if she sees my blog post before they arrive in the mail, she will get a sneak peek :)

On my craft weekend away, my friend Narda and I went out to dinner on Saturday and stopped by JoAnn's on the way home to Narda's. I bought a DCWV Springtime mat stack (4x6 papers) in a lot of pretty floral prints. These are the perfect size for cards! I used three of the papers for the card above, and lots of edge punches. 

The card above was stamped and colored in with Copic markers. I love this stamp from Stampendous! I have  three stamps in this line, all with Tuscan inspired images. 

Great to use on cards in wine country where I live. 

I made a sewing themed mini album on my weekend away, so before I put all my supplies away I made this card. A mix of Stampin' Up papers and Jillibean Soup. 

Another paper from my mat stack and a dimensional flower I cut from my
"Art Philosophy" Cricut cart from CTMH.

More paper from the mat stack and a label and stamp from Stampin' Up. Cute little brads from Making Memories are the centers for the Prima flowers. 

And yet more paper from the mat stack. The bigger cherry paper from Crate Paper is a scrap I had on my desk, so I put it to use, since there was a cherry paper in the mat stack. 

I did not have a stamp that said "Thanks a latte", so I combined two different sets and made my own sentiment. "A Latte" is from Hero Arts and "Thanks" from a Studio G $1 set. I love how I can cut clear stamps apart and use certain elements and make a "custom" stamp. And still be able to put the original stamp back together. Papers are all Stampin' Up. The mug punch is from Martha Stewart.

I made these two cards using a Hero Arts stamp and die set I bought at Archivers when I was in Colorado in October. I first stamped the bicycle and placed the die over the image and used my BigKick to cut it out. So quick and easier than "fussy cutting". The basket is an old All Night Media stamp from my early stamping days, and it is filled with "FlowerSoft". I think I still have almost every stamp I have ever bought. You never know when you will want a certain image!

This card is stamped with a CTMH stamp set and I used pens to color the flowers and stems to get a watercolor look. The edge punch was a gift from my friend Narda, a new Jenni Bowlin punch. 

Cute little crown points. 

A Prima flower explosion on this card. I have several bottles of Prima flowers and even though I have used them a lot, there are still lots of little flowers in each bottle. For this card, I dumped out a bottle of flowers on my desk and just glued them down in rows until the front was covered. I stamped out the greeting and punched it out with a Stampin' Up label punch. I use this punch a lot. 

It was fun crafting a variety of cards, and from now on, when I have the supplies out to make a card, my sis wants me to make two, one for me and one for her. 

I hope to finish up all my crafty projects from the last two weekends. Two scrapping, crafting weekends in a row for me! 

But first I need to unload my car!  

Thanks for looking, and as always, any questions about my projects, leave a comment.

Berta

Scrappy Time

Today I am heading to my friend Narda's house for our mini scrappy retreat. She has her house all to herself this weekend and she invited me to come over and scrap. I of course said yes!

I have my car packed to over flowing, but don't want to forget something. We have a little collage project we will both be working on and I have lots of stuff packed for the collage, two mini albums, cards and some scrapbook layouts. I know I will not get it all done, but I will try my best!

Below is one of my latest projects. I needed a backing board for taking photos of layouts, cards and other crafty stuff. One of my favorite bloggers, Lisa Tutman Oglesby, posted this tutorial here, about photo styling. She made a similar photo board and that is where I got my inspiration. I made mine into an easel and only used recycled boards (we have a barn full) to create it.

I used existing tongue and groove scraps already cut to this length. About 20 inches.

I laid the boards out upside down on my table, locking the tongue and grooves together then laid two lengths of 1 x 4 on top and screwed all the boards together. I then added another 1 x 4 attached with a hinge, so I can use it as an easel. 

On the front I added a single strip of tongue and groove to the bottom as a rest for my layouts. 

A good wire brushing to clean up dirt and splinters and I was done. I think I will be adding a handle to the top, at the back, for easier carrying. I can use it flat or pop out the hinge and use it as an easel. 

I practiced taking photos and photographed my little Valentine greeting I display. 

This card was my recent birthday card from my friend Narda. Isn't it beautiful? 

I love having crafty friends!

Since I finished the board I wanted to try it out. And I am going scrapping this weekend and wanted some inspiration so I went through some layouts I have made. 

My hubby after shoulder surgery in his red felt tree skirt cape. 

He could not put on a shirt so I bought this cape as a joke.

My hubby turned 60 and we found this t-shirt in Old Town Sacramento just before his birthday and decided it would be his birthday shirt. I love when I have an easy title to come up with!

I scrapped some older photos recently. This one is two of my nephews back in 1961 or '62.

This photo is my sister Sally playing in the water in our front yard. 

The journaling is a scan of the back of the photo, written by my mom. 

This is one of me and my mom when I was small. I loved to hide behind my mom's big skirts. I used a sketch from Becky Fleck's Page Maps for this LO. 

My nephews Steven and Gregg playing cowboys in our front yard. My little nephew Gregg always was a very dramatic victim. He "got shot" with style! 

Another of my nephews at Christmas. 

My sister Sally and me with our Uncle Chester. He really was our favorite!

The candy aisle at Winco! There is every kind of bulk candy you could want!

Me and my sister Lou (the mom to the boys above). We were out shopping one day and found this card, and each secretly bought it for the other. We had a great laugh that night as we exchanged our cards. We both had no idea we had both bought each other the card. 

My son Henry and my hubby, back in 2000. I don't know what was so funny to Henry,
but I am so glad I caught this grin on film!!

My laundry is done and now I am off to scrap!!! Have a great weeknd, I know I will!

Winter Wishes

Now that the Christmas season is over, even though my Christmas tree is still up,
I have taken down most of my holiday decorations.

One of the holiday decorations I have for every holiday or season is my Holiday Collage. I have a 12x12 scrapbook shadow box frame that I bought at Michael's.
Each new holiday or season gets a collage.

I wanted to take down my Christmas collage but was not ready to put up my Valentines collage, so I made this "Winter" collage. A snow and New Years theme. I got the idea for a holiday collage from my friend Jenny. She has a frame she changes out each holiday and when she made hers, she inspired a bunch of her crafty friends to make holiday collages of their own.

I went through my stash of crafty/scrappy supplies and put together a big pile of stuff to work with. All   the papers have a blue/teal color range. Lots of glitter papers too.

I used a clip art of a 1907 New Years card and a little card board ornament of a cherub that I have had in my stash for over 25 years for my "New Years" part of the collage.

The Bingo card is from October Afternoon and the little snowmen are left
overs from my snow globe project.
The white deer is from Martha Stewart, I covered it in glitter.
The glitter trees, bird and house are cut from Sizzix dies.
The felt snowflakes are from Stampin' Up. I layered the snowflakes and added rhinestone/pearl brads from Michael's in the centers.
"Snow" is cut from my Cricut and "Day" are Making Memories letter stickers.
The "winter wonderland" cut out is from My Minds Eye.
The little cameo is from Websters pages and the silver star is an ornament from Target.

Because my scrapbook frame is also a shadow box I could use some very dimensional elements like my snowmen on the Bingo card. I just had to trim a little from the backs so they would lay flat. 

Lots of glitter glue, pearls and glitter added sparkle to the collage.

Below the collage in the frame. 

I have made a collage for every season and will share them all as I change out the frame.

Now to put away all the stuff I pulled out to make the collage :)

Thanks for looking!