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