DIY chandeliers for paper crafters

I’m really loving these chipboard and paper chandeliers. Patti over at the Talk of the Town makes the most fabulous DIY chipboard chandeliers. What a fun and unique home decor piece. I totally want one. Good news is…she’s giving one of her chandelier glitter kits away on her blog. She also has an Etsy shop with several really cute DIY chipboard mobiles.

On a smaller scale, check out this super cute chandelier ornament from the Cheeky Magpie. For you Cricut owners, she even gives you the svg file to make them!

Friday Freebie - Unity wallet photo book

I’m hoping to make a lot of my gifts this year and today’s freebie find would make an awesome holiday gift to give. My super talented friend Lindsay just posted templates on how to make a wallet photo book. You can get the instructions on her blog and download the pattern to make this way-cute Unity wallet photo book. Shown below is Lindsay’s adorable creation.

Get the Friday Freebie

As an added bonus, Unity Stamp Company is having a 20% off sale {today only}. Go check out their stuff, lots of great stamps.

Fall “thank you” card & Michaels coupons!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow U.S. friends!! Little Nika and I have been sick all week and I haven’t done much crafting. I wanted to share this lovely fall-themed “thank you” card my friend Aims sent me. She always makes such nice cards.

Oh and for all your upcoming holiday projects here’s some printable coupons for Michaels. These are good today, tomorrow and Saturday. 20% off entire purchase and a 50% off one regular priced item! Print the coupons here. Hope everyone has a fun turkey holiday!! XOXO ~ Cathy

Show & Tell - Nika layout

I had fun making this layout as I did a lot more layering than I normally do. I also stamped on my background paper and sanded the edges on some of the papers. I like how it came out, something a little different than what I’ve done in the past. Always fun to explore with different styles. Hope you like it. XOXO

Products used

• Background paper {Basic Grey}
• Pink paper {My Minds Eye}
• Paisley patterned paper {My Minds Eye}
• Teal patterned paper {Little Yellow Bicycle}
• Cardstock {Stampin Up!}
• Flowers {Prima}
• Flourish stamp {Stampin Up!}
• Date Stamp {Staples}
• Inkpad {Anna Griffin}
• Decorative ribbon {purchased at Joanns}
• Pink Rhinestones
• Letter ‘N’ sticker {Creative Imaginations}
• Adhesive {Scrapbook Adhesives & Aleene’s Tacky Glue}
• Pink Brad {SEI}
• Journal diecut {SEI}
• Heart stick pins {Heidi Grace}
• White mesh {FibaTape}

Show & Tell - 6 Gossies ATCs

I finally finished up all my ATC swap cards. This last batch was for the 12 Days of Christmas swap. There were 12 of us and each had an assigned day. My day was for 6 geese a laying and here’s my creation.

For the geese image I scanned one of Nika’s Crocodile Creek placemats and altered the image in Photoshop Elements. I also added the text and the striped background paper using Photoshop. I printed this out and then added frost color stickles to the white stripes. I used my Stampin Up scallop border punch to make red and striped borders. For the striped scallop borders I also added pearl glimmer mist for a little sparkle. I layered these two borders and adhered. Then I embellished the borders with gold circle Stampendous stickers. For the back side of the cards I used red cardstock and stamped a journaling image to write-in my trading info. Pictured below is how I packaged the cards.

I also made this mini notebook for the swap host. Here’s the front and back.

I’m going to hold-off until after the new year to do any more ATC or inchie swaps. I want to focus on some holiday projects. Thanks for stopping by today. XOXO ~ Cathy

Friday Freebie - A Snippet for you

Hello and Happy Friday! For today’s freebie find I thought you might like a little sneaky peek of Lain Ehmann’s new book, Snippets: Mostly True Tales from the Lighter Side of Scrapbooking. You can download a PDF excerpt here and you can listen to a reading from Lain here.

Want more Snippets fun? Stop by Simple Scrapbooks for the virtual book launch. There are challenges, contests, prizes and party favors!!

Get the Friday Freebie

Oh, if you missed out on the live chat with the author yesterday don’t worry. Leave a comment on this post and I will let Lain know to stop by and answer any questions you have for her. Have a fun and crafty weekend! XOOXO

Animal Spirit Stamps

When I got to CKC last Friday I was so excited. When you walk into that big haven of scrappy shopping it’s hard to know where to begin. I was immediately drawn to the booth of Animal Spirit Stamps and it’s the 1st place I spent my money. Check these out (you’ll want to click the image to enlarge and see all the details).

These amazing stamps are the designs of NW artist Sue Coccia. She was debuting her stamp line to the scrapbook industry at CKC Seattle. I talked briefly with Sue’s husband, Frank while at the show. Sue’s animal spirit designs are inspired drawings that depict animal images and totems from around the world. A lot of her inspiration comes from her travels, fascination for animal totems, and Cherokee ancestry. Look closely at these designs and you will see infused in her images is the symbolism of Native American, Polynesian, aboriginal, and Asian cultures and basic elements like water, sky and moon. Sue also hides a ladybug in each of her designs. Ladybugs represent good luck, happiness and prosperity…how cool is that? The longer you look at these works of art the more you see.

The stamps are large too about 3 1/2 ” by 4 1/2 ” in size. There are currently 20 different designs, you can see all the different ones here. Oh and the goal of Sue’s artwork is to promote the protection for the habitat of endangered species. Love that!!

Here’s a couple photos from their booth at CKC.

CKC Seattle make & takes

This was my 2nd year attending CKC Seattle. This year I did some of the make and takes and so glad I did! Now that the show is over I also realize the booths that I did make and takes in were also the same ones I spent the most amounts of money!! Some of them also gave a coupon for purchases as a thank you for doing the project too. Here’s what I got to make at the show.

This is the project from the Tattered Angels booth. They are the makers of the fun Glimmer Mist sprays. I really enjoyed this one as each project was unique to however you designed it. They had all of their stencils/masks (Glimmer Screens) to try and all the different Glimmer Mist colors. They also had Glimmer Glass you could add to your creations. I used a dragon fly and was also shown how to take a heat gun to heat-up the embellishment and bend the wings to give dimension. I also added a little Stickles to the embellishment.

This was a nice and quick card to make. Boxer Scrapbook had all papers, ribbon and diecut ready for you to put this together. The instructor showed how to do simple doodling on the diecut to make it more cute. I used a white Gelly Roll pen to decorate the gingerbread man. They also gave a discount coupon for shopping in their booth. You can also purchase a kit to make these cards on their website.

This project was from Timeless Touches. I thought these paper piercing templates were pretty cool and haven’t seen them before. This was a 2-part technique, stamp and stitch. The image is stamped on the paper and then you use a template to pierce holes over the image. Then you do a simple backstitch to fill in. They did a demo on how to use the Home Pro tool, which was used for the silver corner embellishments. They also gave out a discount coupon to purchase the stamp and stitch set in their booth.

Another of my favorites was this tag made at the Crafty Secrets booth. I love all their products. You could create a tag or card, pick out a vintage image from one of their booklets and also pick out a one of their papers. On the tag I stamped my snowflake image using a clear resist pad and then chalked over the image with pealescent chalk. I also inked around the edges of the tag.

For free make and takes I thought these were really great! I particularly liked the ones offered by Tattered Angels and Crafty Secrets as they allowed me to try the products that I was interested in. I also noticed there was a lot of booths offering makes and takes for a fee ranging from $2 - $8. I didn’t purchase any of those.

Check back later I still have more CKC stuff to share. I want to tell you about a new stamp designer that I think you will like. She debuted her stamp line to the scrapbooking industry at CKC Seattle. Really awesome stuff!! Chat you later. XOOXO

CKC Seattle pics

CKC Seattle was so much fun!! Two days of scrappy shopping, make and takes, classes, friends and inspiration overload. I took 3 great classes and got to meet both Stacy Julian and Wendy Smedley! And I bought tons of scrappy new things to play with.

The Crafty Secrets booth, love their stuff!!

Stacy Julian and me. I took Stacy Julian’s Photo Freedom class and loved it!! So inspiring, tons of awesome ideas. She’s a really great speaker. I also won a door prize from her for an upcoming class at BPS!

Tona (in the blue shirt) doing a make and take at my friend Jennifer’s Stampin Up! booth. She had the cutest make and takes.

Nancy, Don and me. Shopping around and goofing off (just Don was goofing off).

My fun scrappy purchases. I’m officially on scrapbook shopping restriction **again** (according to my honey).

Me and one of my good friends, Aims. We always have so much fun together when we hangout. We took the Simple Scrapbooks Scheming Around class together.

Me working on my Scheming Around layout. This class had really useful content. It was based on some ideas from Donna Downey’s new book A Photos-First Approach to Designing Layouts.

Wendy Smedley and me. Wendy taught the Scheming Around class. Super nice and a great instructor.

Don and Aims. Two of my cute friend posing for me.

Tona and me having some lunch.

Stop by tomorrow for more CKC pics!!

Friday Freebie - Hit the books kit, QP & card templates

Today’s freebie find comes from the Shutterfly Celebrations blog and was designed by Robin Carlton of Sweet Shoppe Designs. This is a very cool school themed kit, quick pages and card templates. It’s a very versatile and would work for other non-school projects too. I love the papers in this kit!!

Get the Friday Freebies

• Hit the Books kit
• Hit the Books quick pages
• Hit the Books 5×7 card templates

CKC Seattle

The Creating Keepsakes Convention (aka CKC Seattle) is here!! I’ll be there tomorrow and Saturday. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends, meeting some new ones, and taking a bunch of classes. Let me know if you are going so we can meet-up.

A tour of Don’s workshop

Yesterday Nika and I went to visit my crafty friend Don and his family. I brought along my camera this time to take photos of his amazing craft studio. It’s such a fun and creative space.

Shown at right is Don at the entrance of his workshop. I love the altered letters and door knocker. You know with a door like that there’s gotta be some serious crafting space behind it.

Here’s a couple of the many projects he was working on while I was there.

Click the “play” button on the image below to take a tour of Don’s workshop or go here.

And some random interview questions just for fun.

How long have you been scrapbooking and paper crafting?  Since 1998

How many hours a day on average do you spend in your workshop?  It varies. In the shop maybe 2-3 hours on average. On the computer, another 3 hours. “Meandering” (guys don’t shop) about 8 hours a week.

You find a lot of your items going to garage sales and thrift shops. What kinds of things do you look for when you go to these places?  Pins, buttons, badges, toys, postcards, scrap & stamp supplies. Mostly just stuff I can use in a 2 dimensional way.

What’s your creative process for making a layout? I look for a way to make the page or project interesting. My favorites are interactive devices or optical illusions. I just love the “WOW THAT’S COOL”.

Tell us in dog years how old you are? I am 39 (with 39 years of experience).

You hangout in the Fisk-a-teer and Memory Makers forums, anywhere else?  My forum list in favorites is Memory Makers, fiskateers, and Creating Keepsakes. I visit a lot of other forums too.

What’s your favorite sweet treat? Chocolate. Actually that is not a treat, it’s a staple. I like fig newtons.

Any parting words of wisdom you like to share?  “There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

12 Days of Christmas Workshop

My sweet friend Beth signed me up for Lisa Pace’s 12 Days of Christmas Workshop and so glad she did!! It’s a month-long event of project tutorials, templates, downloads, recipes, vintage goodies and all kinds of Christmas goodness. It lasts the entire month of November and registration is still currently open. If you like tinsel, glitter, and vintage come on over and check it out. Lots of great stuff going on!! Thank you so much Beth for sharing this wonderful workshop with me!! XOOXO

Show & Tell - Christmas ATC houses

I finally finished up my cards for the Christmas house ATC swap. I really like the ATC house template there’s a lot of creative things you can do with it.

For these cards I traced a house template onto the back of patterned paper and cut out. Next I stamped the Italian script onto the patterned paper with black ink. Then I cut out the roof pieces and scalloped with a border bunch. All the roof scallops were spritzed with Glimmer Mist and then chalked with brown around the edges. The chalking on the scallops is a tiny detail but I think it adds to the piece and makes for a cleaner look. The base piece of the roof has a couple of dimensional pop-up dots under it. The girl and boy image are from a vintage Russian postcard. I re-sized the image in Photoshop Elements, printed them and cut out the images. For the chimney I used a phone book page. I like using phone book pages on my ATCs. I tied a piece of vintage craft string onto the embellishment and adhered everything including the papers with Zip Dry. BTW, I love Zip Dry it didn’t bubble on the papers!!

Products used

• Patterned paper {My Minds Eye}
• Patterned paper on back {Christina Renee Designs}
• Italians script stamp {Hero Arts}
• Scallop border punch {Stampin Up!}
• Phone book page
• Brass embellishment {Stampin Up!}
• Vintage craft string
• White Mesh {FibaTape}
• Brown chalk {Powder Puffs}
• Adhesive {Zip Dry}
• Paper trimmer & Micro tip scissors {Fiskars}
• Glimmer Mist

Trick or treat 80s style

I don’t have any fun Halloween photos to share this year as Nika and I were both sick. However I just came across this embarrassingly funny photo of me and some friends taken way back in the day. This is early 80s trick or treating and I’m 10 years old in this photo. I’m the one on the bottom left, with the dark curly hair and too much makeup. Yes, that is my real hair color. We were going for the punk rocker look and this is what we came up with. Hope you are having a fun weekend!! XOOXO

Photo credit: The cool punker with the rad shades shown top left, thanks Amie!! XOXO