Come out and play!!

~~~National Cardmaking Day~~~

Scrappin' Great Deals is hosting a fabulous event to celebrate!!

When: Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010

Time: 10:00am - 3:00pm

What: Make n' Takes, Demos, Door Prizes

Lots of fun, and it is all FREE!!

Join our designers, play with some great products!! Learn a new technique, experiment!!

I am playing with layered embossing, with distress inks and powders. I have a couple of tags that I am working on, here is a sneak peak of one of them: (an earlier post had the other!)

Come join us celebrate this wonderful craft of ours!!!

Birthday Fun!!

9 kids descended upon our house on Saturday to help Malcolm celebrate his 6th birthday. Add my two to the count and we had 11 kids ranging in age from 2 to 7. It was a riot!! Thankfully the weather held out, a bit chilly but the kids were too busy to notice! So we had a lot of free play running around, amazing how much fun big cardboard tubes can be:

Then we organized a follow the leader obstacle course, on your hands and knees:

pin the tail on the ankylosaurus:

They dug for some dinosaurs buried in the sand box, just like a real paleontologist. Then we did a science experiment, baking soda, vinegar, and food colouring:
Presents and cake:
Thank you bags for the kids to take home!

I think they all had a good time, lots of laughter, only a few tears shed over the course of the afternoon, one pout by Malcolm, it was a dino-rrific day!! And thank goodness it is over for another year!!!

National Card Making Day!!

Saturday October 2 is National Card Making Day!!! And to celebrate Sheila at Scrappin' Great Deals is hosting a FREE Customer Event!! From 10:00am until 3:00pm, come out and enjoy a ton of make 'n takes from her Design Divas!!! For FREE!!

The focus is on techniques. We are all using manilla shipping tags as our base. Some of the products/techniques to be demonstrated include:

Embossing with Distress Ink/Powders
Glimmer Mist
Heartfelt Creations
Burnished Velvet
I-Rock
Rock Candy Distress Paint
and more.....

You will create a ring full of gorgeous tags to take with you!! How cool is that??!!

Here is a sneak peak of my tag:

I am still tweeking it, so it will change a bit but this is the gist of it!!! Save the date and come out and play!!! (Did I mention it was FREE??!!)

"Donna Downey Loves Pan Pastels"

Okay I totally love this lady's style, her projects are such an inspiration!!!

And she just discovered Pan Pastels. Here is the link to her blog post from Wednesday:

Donna Downey Blog Link

And here is her creation in her art journal (something else I am so interested in starting!!)


I am really impressed with this media (if you can't tell...this being at least my third post raving about them!!) I have a couple of layouts in the works using them, I hope to post them soon!!

Take care, have a great day!!!

October Sneak Peak

Can you believe fall is here already?? Lovin' the sunshine outside my window right now!! October is fast approaching and with it comes the next scrapbooking kit from Scrappin' Great Deals!! October is the month of monsters, witches, ghouls.....of course, Halloween!! Here's a sneak peak of our upcoming kit:


Why is Halloween not a holiday??!!

Pan Pastels

A great new product is available at Scrappin' Great Deals...they are Pan Pastels. A very versatile colouring media with lots of different ways to use them in paper crafting. Here is a great little video from Scrap Time that demonstrates several ways to use them:

Pan Pastel video

A lot of similarities to distress ink techniques, with brighter colours, and fast coverage!! Go experiment with them today!!!

Check this out!!

A new logo for Scrappin' Great Deals.....

How cool is this??!!! .....Seriously amazing!!

Happy Birthday Benny!!

My baby is not such a baby any more. He turned two yesterday, and here he is with his cake as we try to teach him to blow out the candles! Where has the time gone?

Gotta love a vacation!!!

We just got back from our annual vacation up to cottage country. While the weather wasn't as warm or sunny as it has been the last few years, we still had an incredible trip. We stay at an amazing place called Cedar Grove, in our own little log cabin, with a stone fireplace. Our meals are all provided in the main lodge, and man, is it GREAT food!! It is right on Penninsula Lake outside of Huntsville, close to Algonquin Park.

We did some water tubing, hiking, biking and a whole lot of eating!!! Campfires in the evening, toasting marshmallows, and the sunset views from the beach outside our cabin were stunning!!

Now I am recharged and ready to go!!!

Multiple Card Week...

September is a super busy month, a TON of birthdays, (including mine :) !!), our anniversary, school starting, vacation..where to find time to create the oodles of cards I need to make!!! I have been busy colouring the last couple of nights, one with my good friend Angie who is always ready to colour! I had a couple thank you cards to make for my boys' daycare providers, Ben is moving up to the next level (AAAHH, my baby!), and Malcolm is leaving completely as he starts Grade 1. I didn't get a picture of Ben's thank you card, it was really sweet too. Oh well, can't share them all!

But here is the card Malcolm will be giving to the great ladies that have taught him so much over the last couple of years:
Surprise, surprise... orange and dinosaurs....I know, no surprise really!!! I embossed the Greeting Farm image with black ink and clear powder, than coloured it with chalk and distress inks. And I love my EK Success dinosaur punch.

Next up is my niece's 10th birthday card. I popped it in the mail this morning, hopefully it makes it to Winnipeg in time!!
Love this High Hopes stamp! I coloured her in with my pencil crayons and mineral spirits. There is both Creative Imaginations paper and Basic Grey, some Kaiser pearls, Prima flowers, and a Martha Stewart edger punch.
A bit hard to see but I also added a bunch of sparkle using my clear star gel pen. My niece loves horses, she has a couple as well as a couple miniature ponies. I really wish they all lived closer!! Happy Birthday!!!

I have lots more to create!! FIL, SIL, my 2 boys, my anniversary, birthday invitations, and still manage to put together some layouts for SGD!!! Wow,what am I doing at work? Oh yeah, paying for my hobby!!

Have a splendid day!!

September Scrapbooking Kit Reveal!!

I was thrilled to be asked by Sheila to join Sarah as a resident designer at Scrappin' Great Deals!! So I get to create layouts every month with her fantastic kits. As a bonus, I get to help her select the incredible products we put into the kits. The kit is on the website now to purchase so I guess I can show you what I created with it!!!

Here is September's kit:
Lots of gorgeous double sided patterned paper, cardstock, ribbon, title cards, designer Tim Holtz key, glitter alpha, buttons, brads, dew drops....and the potential is there for either boy or girl layouts!! What is not to love!

Layout One: Memories
I used PanPastels to colour in the leaf stamps on this layout, distress inks from Tim Holtz, dry embossed some of the paper with my Cuttlebug, heat embossed the title card and journal tag, used my scor-pal to add some texture to the cardstock base.

Stamped directly onto the photo with Black Soot Distress Ink.




Layout Two: Nature Boys

Lots of distressing, stamping and embossing on this one!! Went a little nuts with it! I used a resist embossing technique on the tag which is just a manilla packing tag from Staples.

The leaf embellishments were made from Shrink Plastic, alcohol inks and my maple leaf Nestabilities. Very cool technique!! And the little red dots were made with a marker and glossy accents, little black dots are an embossing marker and clear embossing powder. Both types of dots were added once the rest of the layout was finished.


Layout Three: First Day o' JK!

SO many layers to this one, it took forever to place it all, then remember what I did when I took it all apart to glue down!! I used a technique that Kim showed me: using ink inside a Cuttlebug folder before you run it through the machine, ink and emboss at the same time!!
I added some Bo-Bunny Mama-razzi alpha stickers to this layout. A couple extra sheets of the Vanilla cardstock were used as well, I just loved the reds and greens with the creamy tone of the cardstock. I also coloured some chipboard circles with ink and added them as well for extra dimension.

I am really loving the distressed inks by Tim Holtz: I used Barn Door, Black Soot, Tea Dye, Peeled Paint and Pine Needles.

I have another layout in the works as well with some more of the kit, using more of the PanPastels.

Please pop over to Sarah's blog to see her creations. (She might not post until tomorrow though!!) Any questions on the techniques I used please leave me a comment and I will get back to you!! Stay cool!!

New Media: Pan Pastels

Scrappin' Great Deals has a new media in stock....PanPastels. A solid pastel that applies like paint, really fluid, blends great and erases easily. I really liked the results I got. Can't wait to play more with them!!

Have a fabulous day and go colour!!! :)