Friday Freebie - CD album template

I’ve been wanting to make an altered CD album and came across these awesome templates made by Digital Scrapbook Memories. There’s a total of 10 PSD files to download and customize. There are also template instructions, display, and mounting ideas too. Note: You don’t need an account to download these, but if you are trying to view the samples you do need an account. Shown in the image to the right is a sample I made using today’s freebie and papers and embellishments from this freebie here.

Get the Friday Freebie

Happy Friday! XOOXO ~ Cathy

Show & Tell - Altered chipboard tags

Here’s some altered chipboard tags I made for a couple of my Fisk-A-Teer friends. These were fun and quick to make. These were very similar to making the ATCs.

The blue bird tag is from the VersaMark tags I made the other day. I had a little more fun playing around with those and sprayed Glimmer Mist on them and they look really cool. It’s hard to see in the photo, the Glimmer Mist added a nice sparkly sheen. I also sprayed the top flowers on both tags with Glimmer Mist too.

Products used

• Chipboard {Repurposed from my recycling bin}
• Die cut tags {Sizzix}
• Chipboard bird {Collections}
• Flowers {Prima}
• Glimmer Mist {Pearl}
• Yellow Brad {Kimberly Polson}
• Pink flower brad {Portafolia}
• Ribbon {Really Reasonable Ribbon}
• Flourish stamp {Stampin Up}
• Boho stamp {Stampin Up}
• Bird Stamp {Rhonna Farrer}
• Date stamp {Staples}
• Pink Cardstock {Stampin Up}
• Monogram Stamp {JustRite}
• Fiskars pop-up butterfly punch
• Versamark pad
• Adhesive {Gluedots}
• Crackle Paint {Tim Holtz}
• Mesh {FibaTape}
• Stickles {Cotton Candy}
• Raffia {repurposed from some packaging}

What’s coming up…

Here’s what’s going on with me this week…

• Helping my honey get ready for his big photography outing with this guy. So cool and very excited for him!!

• Got a new scrappy book that I’m loving. I’ll do a review later this week.

• Going through my big 30 pound box of Stampin Up goodness {I recently signed up as a demonstrator}!! Woohoo

• Working on my Scrap-a-Latte layout and a layout of my niece Alexia.

• Oh…and today is Grandpa’s birthday!

What’s new with you?? XOOXO

Fun with VersaMark

I’ve been experimenting with the VersaMark ink pad. Check out these tags I made.

I just inked up my stamp with VersaMark and stamped directly onto the chipboard for a watermark effect. I’ve seen this done on cardstock, but not chipboard. I really like how this looks on the chipboard and loving this ink pad right now. Check out all the cool techniques for using it.

Not sure what I’m doing with these tags yet. I’ll be sure to show you them when they’re done. XOOXO

Friday Freebie - Clipart from Allison

I’m a big fan of Allison’s blog, Stampin’ When I can. She has lots of great stuff, inspiring projects, love her {newly discovered} lists and most recently she has been sharing some super cute clipart. Stop by her site and get these adorable little girls and guys! All the images are black and white so you can color them in. So many cute possibilities with these fun pictures.

• Everyday Boys
• Boys of the World
• Everyday Girls
• Girls of the World

Thank you to everyone who has left sweet comments about my Girls of the World mini board book. I love hearing from all of you!

Have a wonderful weekend! XOOXO

Show & Tell - Girls of the world mini board book

I made this mini {Girls of the World} board book for my 3 year old niece. I intentionally left this as a picture book so she can make up her own stories. I like how it came out and it was a ton of fun to make.

I didn’t do any prep to the board book and used my Xyron for adhesive. I’ve done several board books before with different types of adhesive and find that the Xyron works best for me when adhering paper to the chipboard. I also used the Xyron 150 to adhere the girl images onto the paper. Next I painted the edges of the pages with metallic gold paint. I remember when I was little having books with gold pages and thought that would be fun for this book too. I finished off the book by applying modge podge to the pages and black book binding tape to the seam.

Products used

• Chipboard book {Creative Imaginations, Melodee book} **awesome book for altering, love it…great quality and going to buy more of these**
• Paper {My Minds Eye}
• Girls of the World Images {free download from Stampin When I can}
• Adhesive {Xyron 900 & 150}
• Yellow cardstock {Portafolia}
• Gold Paint {DecoArt}

Show & Tell - Hattie’s Butterfly ATC

Here’s the ATC I made for my friend Lisa. This is my first attempt at making an ATC and was really happy with how it came out. I love how quick and easy these come together. You can see the envelope I made to go with this here.

I sprayed the image with pearl Glimmer Mist to give it that sparkly sheen you sometimes see on vintage cards and such. Other than the image everything I used was scraps and extras I had in my stash.

I want to make some more ATCs!! Email me if you want to do a swap. XOOXO

Check me out here…

I’m so excited, today I’m one of the featured bloggers on the Queen Kat Bloggers site. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the post here. This is a really great site to visit for inspiration and see other people’s scrapbooking and stamping projects.

Have a wonderful day! XOOXO

Ribbon Ring RAK **winnner**

Thank you to everyone who entered my Ribbon Ring RAK…the winner is Jo-Ann!!

Jo-Ann # 3830 on May 15, 2008 12:31 pm

what luck to come up with something like that! all your ribbons look so neat and tidy! great idea!

Congratulations Jo-Ann!! Please email me your mailing address so I can get your goodies to you.

Show & Tell - Altered baby wipes box

I made this altered baby wipes box to hold my daughter’s hair clips. I had been keeping the clips in here and it has been a good storage box so I decided to try and make it a bit more pretty.

This was an easy project. I used a ruler to measure the areas of the box that I wanted to cover with paper. Then cut out the paper and sprayed it with pearl Glimmer Mist for a little sparkle. Next I ran the papers through the Xyron for adhesive. The brown ribbon was adhered with wet glue.  The blue ribbon was just wrapped around and then tied a knot in the back. The pink flowers were put on with glue dots.

For the clear flower layered on top the pink one, I made this using my Sizzix Bigshot. I ran some acetate {it really was old transparency film, the kind you get at the office supply store for making overheads} through my Sizzix and then used black StazOn to stamp a French script stamp on the die cut flower. I like how it came out. I’ll be using more of these transparent flowers on future projects.

Products used

• Baby wipes box {Huggies}
• Adhesive {Xyron & Ultimate Glue}
• Patterned paper {My Mind’s Eye}
• Flowers {Prima}
• Mesh glitter ribbon {Really Reasonable Ribbon}
• Brown ribbon {repurposed from some packaging}
• Blue ribbon {Portafolia Gifted Memories}
• Pink brad {SEI}
• Clear flower {die cut using Sizzix}
• Glimmer Mist

ATCs

I received this awesome ATC from Lisa today. It’s so fabulous, I just love it. She also sent me this way-cool card. Her designs are so fun!

Here’s another ATC I received from my friend Don. He is super crafty! I love the Asian theme and embellishment he added to it.

ATC sneak peek

I made my very 1st ATC this weekend. I had no idea how fun these are to make and so quick too! My sweet friend Lisa offered to send me an ATC. I figured this was a good time to learn about ATCs and make one for her too. I can’t show the card yet as Lisa reads my blog and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I love how it came out and excited for her to get it.

This is the envelope I created for the ATC. I made this in Photoshop and used this freebie kit for the papers and embellishments. You can get the Photoshop template I used to make the envelope here. Inside the envelope I stamped it with a pretty French script stamp. The ATC is not digital, just the envelope.

I’ll post my ATC creation this week after she receives it. If you are interested in swapping ATCs email me, I’d love to make one for you. XOOXO

Playing in the pool

We had a gorgeous weekend here in Seattle. Hot sunny weather in the mid 80s-90s! Nika has been playing in her kiddie pool. Today, Daddy took Nika into the big pool and she had a blast.

Friday Freebie - Mother’s Day goodies

Today’s freebies are some lovely goodies made for Mother’s Day. All these freebies are very versatile and would be great for other themes too.

Nicole at Sugarplum Paperie always makes beautiful kits and generous freebies. You can get her Mother’s Love freebie kit here. While you’re there be sure to get these cool word art frames too.

MGLscraps also has a wonderful Mother’s Love kit that coordinates with Nicole’s freebie.

Over at the Shutterfly blog they have some fun Momtourage papers and a quickpage designed by Emily Powers, of We Are Storytellers. Kitty Chen, who is also a designer at We Are Storytellers created these Momtourage elements to download too.

Happy Friday!! XOOXO ~ MamaSheg

Ribbon ring review & RAK

I’ve been looking for the ideal way to store my ribbon and have finally found a solution that works!! Here’s my review of the Ribbon Ring.

What I’ve done in the past
I’ve tried the cute approach of using wood bobbins and storing the ribbon in jars. This was not practical, nor could I see all the ribbons easily. And it was just a pain to get in and out of the jars. It looks pretty. This option seems best if you don’t really want to use your ribbon. I also tried the Pull-ez. I didn’t buy one, rather I opted for trying to make one myself. I didn’t like having to smash all the ribbons down to add more and sometimes they came out of the holes. The whole thing was really messy. I even tried wrapping the ribbon around cards, but the ribbon would get wrinkled and I then would have to iron it.

Ribbon Ring to the rescue
Simple, practical, and pretty. You hang your ribbon on little plastic {pull-through} tags and put the tags on a metal ring! I purchased the 60 ribbon tag bundle and 3″ metal rings from Ribbon Ring and absolutely love it!! This was more than plenty to clean up my mess of ribbon. I was able to thread small scraps and really long pieces of ribbon, up to 5 yards on a tag. They recommend you cut your ribbon into 1 yard lengths and use the inventory dots as an indicator that you have more of the ribbon. But I didn’t use the inventory dots as the tags hold a lot and you can put more than one piece of ribbon on a tag. I love how the ribbons look just hanging there, a nice rainbow of inspiration. I can easily grab all my ribbons and thumb through looking for what I need. The pull-through tags are high-quality and the plastic is flexible yet sturdy. Good stuff!

How I use it
I sorted and hung my ribbon by color. For each color group I used a 1″ ring. After I had all my ribbon sorted I put all of the 1″ rings onto the big 3″ ring. Having everything sorted by color makes it so quick to just grab the particular color{s} I need. I can lay the ribbons onto my project looking for the ones that look best without having to take them off the tags. It’s so efficient and organized, I love it!! The ribbon also doesn’t get bent and wrinkly. It’s also very portable, I can easily toss a couple rings into my crop bag and the ribbons stay in place on the tags.

I love it!!
I highly recommend the Ribbon Ring. Simple, practical, pretty, and affordable! The starter set is just under $10. To clean up my mess was only $20 and I still have a bunch of tags left for when I buy more ribbon. And now that I’m organized, I see that I’m lacking in the area of green ribbon, LOL.

*** Win a Ribbon Ring starter set ***
Guess what….I have a brand new Ribbon Ring Starter Set to give-away! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post to be entered. The winner will receive one 2″ metal ring, 30 ribbon tags and 15 inventory dots!! I’ll draw a winner next Wednesday, May 21st. Please only one comment per person, open to US & Canadian shipping addresses.