Hip kid-friendly tunes & a give-away!

I’m always on the lookout for creative and unique music for little Nika to listen to. She loves to dance and sing. We’ve been rockin out to our latest discovery from the Brian Waite Band “20,000 Volts Under the Sea“. I just love it! I never knew kids music could be so hip. Even my honey was surprised to know it was a kids CD. Really fun songs and definitely not your typical kid tunes. 

There’s a a great rock base with a wonderful blend of funk, blues, and even reggae. It’s not often a band can accomplish several styles of music well and these guys go even further by combining these styles into a playful and fun collection of songs.

This dad trio writes, plays and performs all their own stuff. You can download free samples of their music here.

** Give-away **
I have one extra CD to give one of you! Just leave a comment on this post. For fun tell me about the special little someone you’re going to share these rockin tunes with. I’ll leave comments open until Thursday 5/28 and pick a random winner. Please only one comment per person, open to US mailing addresses.

Check out how fun these guys are in concert! I’m totally going to take Nika to see them this summer

For those of you in the NW here’s where you can find them…

Friday, July 17th @ 12-1pm and 1:30-2:30pm
King County Fair
Enumclaw Expo Center – Main Stage, Enumclaw, WA

Wednesday, July 22nd @ 10-11am
Kirkland Family Concert
Marina Park, Kirkland, WA

Thursday, July 30th @ 10-11am
Everett Family Concert
Thornton A. Sullivan Park, Everett, WA

Sunday, November 8th @ 11am – 12pm
The Buddy Club Children’s Show
Randall Museum, San Francisco, CA
Tickets call 510-236-SHOW

Hope you are having a fabulous day. Check back tomorrow for Friday’s Freebie, it’s a good one! XOXO

Mixed media goodness

Look what I got in the mail this weekend! I’m so excited to play with the new Claudine Hellmuth Studio paints and sticky back canvas. I signed up for Claudine’s online mixed-media class “Home is where the art is” at Scrap in Style. The class starts today and looks super fun. We’ll be learning 3 techniques a day over the next 5 days and then assembling all of them into this cute wall hanging, shown in the image below.

I purchased the Claudine Hellmuth Studio products from Stampington & Company. I didn’t have any luck trying to find them locally. I called all the local craft and stamp stores and checked Michaels too. I’m so glad I purchased them online as I wouldn’t have discovered my new favorite mag! Am I the only one that didn’t know how cool Somerset Studio is…where have I been and why didn’t you tell me about it? I just got the May/June issue and totally loving it. It’s filled with eye-candy galore, techniques, tons of info and just all kinds of mixed-media goodness.

You can take a peek inside the current issue here. It’s truely a beautifuly done magazine. It’s on the spendy side, but I say definately worth it. If you like collage, stamping, and mixed-media you will love it. With the 2 year subscription you get a free vintage clip art CD with over 500 images too! I figured with all the other mags shutting down the presses this was a justified purchase, lol. Hope you have a wonderful week. Chat you later! XOXO

Friday Freebie – Journaling & Title Fonts

Check out this cool font I just downloaded from Creating Keepsakes. They are going to be having a free font download every Friday! Shown in the image is today’s free font, ckJacque. Perfect for titles and journaling!

Just in case you haven’t stopped by Ali’s blog yet. She also has a free download for the document your weekend challenge. I used Ali’s “Saturday” word image on the photo below. I took this today while we were at the Issaquah Farmers Market. Nika and I love going to the local Farmers Markets!

Get the Friday Freebies

• CK Jacque Font
• Ali Edwards Weekend Freebie

Paper Casting with Toilet Paper…really!

Yes, I’ve been playing with toilet paper and look what I made! It took maybe 5 minutes not counting the drying time. My friend Michelle had a blog post about paper casting recently which led me to this tutorial here. I had to try it and it really worked and was so easy.

For mine I used our household toilet paper (the Costco Kirkland brand) and tore off 10 squares. I wasn’t fancy about my process, I took the 10 squares and let water drip on them from the sink faucet. I wanted the paper good and wet. Once soaked I put them on the counter and stamped the butterfly image (use a good amount of pressure when stamping). Next I flipped over the soggy TP stack with the stamp still squished in it. I used a hand towel to put more pressure onto it and also to start soaking up the water. I found using a paper towel to soak it up didn’t pull out the water as well as an actual towel. Next I used my fingers to squish down on the image some more and then removed the stamp. I left the paper cast to dry overnight. It turned out great! To finish it one off I used Key Lime Pie Glimmer Mist and some Lime Green and Magenta Stickles.

I think this would be a fun project to do with kids. Toliet paper and water…fun and easy! XOXO

Show & Tell – Mini Ephemera Altered Houses

I’ve had this super cute “Funky Little Ephemeriffic House Charm Kit” for a while. I finally got around to putting them together over the weekend. This was a fun project to make. Here’s some photos of my completed house charms.

I purchased this kit from Ha! Designs and highly recommend it. For $12 you get everything you need to make 4 house charms. The kit comes with a bunch of great ephemera to play with. The roofs even come pre-drilled for the screws too. Check out Heather’s Etsy shop lots of fun stuff. She also has a shop with really cool vintage art supplies too!

The Tulip Festival

We went to the Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon Washington a couple weeks ago and had the best time. I’ve always wanted to go and so glad we did. I had no idea how amazing all the flowers would be. Over 1,500 acres of tulips and daffodils everywhere. Spring goodness at it’s best! Here’s some pics from our trip.

We also made a stop in La Conner to one of the cutest stores ever, Bunnies by the Bay. Nika’s cherished little Nay-Nay bunnies are made here. This store is filled with delightful baby things. Lots of softies, baby clothes and just the most adorable things imaginable. Check out all of this scrappy loveliness they had too. Some really gorgeous altered books, wall hangings, and tags.

The Tulip Festival takes place during the month of April every year. It’s about an hour drive north of Seattle. The neighboring towns of La Conner and Anacortes have lots to see and do too. We’re already planning another trip as there was so many places to explore. A really great place to visit. Thanks for stopping by today!

Friday Freebie – moms day digi kits

Here’s a couple kits I found that looked pretty enough for your moms day projects. See last weeks freebie for some free moms day vintage images too!

Get the Friday Freebies

• Crush mini kit
• Feels Like Home

The Crush mini kit is designed by LaWanna Desjardin for the Shutterfly Celebrations Blog. Feels Like Home is designed by Sarah Bennett.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and a very Happy Mothers Day! XOXO

Friday Freebie – mom’s day vintage images

I’ve been looking for some vintage Mother’s Day images to play with and found two fabulous places to get freebies. Lots of pretty vintage images to be found at both these sites.

• The Graphics Fairy
• The Vintage Moth

Here’s a sampling of what I found.

Have a great weekend! XOXO

Where have I been?!?!

Hello May and where have I been?!?! I took a bit of a hiatus during April. It wasn’t planned. Now that I’m in my 2nd trimester my energy level seems back to normal and it just turned out to be a busy month. Many of you were so sweet to reach out and see if I was alright (thank you). Yes, I’m perfectly fine and baby’s doing fine too. Here’s a short list of what my April was like and a few pics.

• Celebrated little Nika’s 2nd birthday (over 3 weekends) and hosted a 40+ person party at our house.
  

• Finally finished my taxes!
• Had 2 Easter celebrations.
• Finished up the last of the remodel projects on our old house. Getting ready to put it on the market next week. Woo hoo!!
• Been doing a lot of work in our dirt yard (aka the front yard). Trying to get it weeded so we can put down some grass and landscape.
• Put in a new Rainbow play structure for Nika in the backyard.

• Getting ready for these two cuties to come visit and mapping out our summer plans.
• Took a trip up north and went to the Tulip Festival. This was such a fun little get-a-way. I’ll share more of these pics and details with you next week.

• And a baby update…had the 20 week ultrasound and it’s confirmed we are having a boy! He is doing great and looks super healthy. Feeling lots of little baby kicks now too, so exciting!

That’s just the short list from last month. I’m sure now that the weather is getting nicer a lot of you are spending more time outside, spring cleaning and planning summer fun! I have missed my online friends and hope to get back to blogging more regularly. Thank you again for the emails and comments. I always appreciate hearing from you. I’ll post a great freebie find for ya tomorrow. Big hugs and kisses XOXO ~ Cathy

Easter ATC

Here’s an Easter ATC I just finished making for one of my friends. I really like how it came out. I’m going to use this same image to make some Easter tags too. I got this adorable vintage image free from Vintage Image Crafts monthly newsletter. I highly recommend signing up for this e-newsletter lots of great projects, free downloads and it’s totally free!

To make this I resized and printed out my image. Instead of cutting out the image I just tore around the edges. I think the tearing adds to the softness/vintage look of the card. Next I sprayed Pearl Glimmer Mist onto the image to give it a little sparkle. I adhered the image to lavendar cardstock using Kokuyo, Dot-n-Roller adhesive (love this adhesive)! The pink ric-rac ribbon is from American Crafts and I wrapped that around the front and back of the card using Aleene’s Tacky Glue. The lace (purchased from Joanns) and pastel circle confetti was applied with Aleene’s too. To finish it off the silver piping was adhered with Zip Dry. Thanks for stopping by today! Hope you like the card. XOXO ~ Cathy

Meeting online friends

This weekend I got to meet a couple more of my online friends from the Fisk-a-Teers forum. All my fiska-friends I’ve met in person have been just as fabulous in-person as they are online. It’s always so fun and exciting to finally meet people whom you know online. On Saturday Angela was in town for the NW Paper Chase and we met-up at Ben Franklin in Redmond.

Here’s Nika and I with Angela and her giant orange Fiskar scissors! She came into town just for the Paper Chase.

I also got to meet Amanda (pictured below) who was accompanying Angela on their massive Scrapbook store tour of the NW. She was also fantastic and super sweet! The girls drove about 600 miles, visited 21 of the 28 stores in the Paper Chase, participated in 5 store events and spread all kinds of Fiskar-cheer and goodness to hundreds of scrapbookers. You can read all about their trip here and there’s some fun videos from their trip too!

So great to meet both of them!

Friday Freebie – Easter projects galore!

How was your weekend? Here’s Friday’s Freebie find, some fun Easter projects for ya!

Chick egg with mini album
I love this one!! Such a cute little chick and the album inside is adorable. This is from the Fiskars Crafts Australia/New Zealand site. There is a ton of great tutorials there.

These next projects come from Martha Stewart. Always lots of pretty ideas. Here’s some of my favorites.

Thread wrapped eggs

Flowered baskets
How about making a basket with Prima flowers? Or buttons!!!

Elegant eggs
This would probably be easy enough to do with plastic eggs and scrapbook paper too!

Have a great week. XOXO

Crafty coupons and a butterfly project for kids!

In case you have crafty shopping coming up…here’s some printable coupons for Joanns and Michaels.

Michaels 50% off any one regular priced item, good through March 28th

Joanns 40% & 50% off any one regular priced item coupons, good through March 28th

Craft project for kids: Check out this easy butterfly clothespin project for kids. There’s a printable pattern to color and cutout and you could use some patterned paper scraps to alter the clothespins too!

Friday Freebie – Nature themed kit

Happy 1st day of Spring everyone! I’m so ready for nicer weather, flowers and butterflies. I thought this freebie find would be perfect for today. It’s a wonderful nature themed kit created by Little Dreamer Designs for Memory Makers Magazine. You’ll find 9 textured/patterned papers, 1 alpha, and 10 embellishments including journaling spots and word art!

Get the Friday Freebie

Have a great weekend everyone! XOXO ~ Cathy

Friday Freebie – Fun find

Hello friends! I thought this free photo effects tool would be a fun find to share this week. Dumpr is a neat website with a bunch of different effects you can add to your photos. Just upload a photo, click a button and magically transform your image. Super fast and easy! I particularly like the sketch effect. I think you could use this to make a unique gift for someone. To test it out I uploaded a photo of my brother’s house and viola it’s now a cool sketch.

Get the Friday Freebie

Check out the other photo effects here.