A Card For A Friend

I made a birthday card for one of my closest friends.  She doesn't read this blog so I have no fear posting it already!  I just really like it.  We both love cats so I think is puurrrrrfect.  Sorry for the bad play on words.  I couldn't resist!  I also used a lot of pieces from the Paper Pumpkin kits that I'm still digging through...

Just Pushing Through

Still trying to get through some scrap papers before the haul out.  I'm also trying to get through some photos that I haven't ever gotten around to scrapping that really just need to get done.  I made this page to do both those things and I'm loving how it turned out!

Finding A New Challenge Blog Is Like Finding A New Friend

I found a new challenge blog yesterday that I really liked and look forward to participating in in the future.  This month's challenge on 123 Challenge was to use black and white, the word 'perfect', and stamps.  I decided to not add anymore text to the page because I've always been drawn to one word pages that don't distract from the photo.  I stamped hearts that I then cut out and embellished which ended up giving me more difficulty than anything else because my black inks were all drying up or else in the case of one them, exploding and leaking everywhere.  Otherwise it was a really quick page to make and I really like the way it turned out.

Too Many Kit Pieces

I like getting Paper Pumpkin kits mostly so that I can use the pieces in them for other projects than the ones they were intended for.  That being said though, as I'm preparing to move out of my apartment, I'm realizing how many kits I never even opened while school took over my life.  With that in mind I've decided to try and use as many of them and as much scrap paper as I can to help pair down my stash before I'm out of here.  I made a really quick birthday card to start off the marathon.

Quick Time

I found a card in my crafting room that I for some reason had stuck a sticker that said "Happy Birthday".  I have no idea what my original intentions were for this card, but I went ahead and completed it anyways.  I made it so ridiculously simple that it only took me about 10 minutes to assemble.  It's nice to know that if I ever need to quickly make a birthday card, I can.  I'm prepared for my inevitable future procrastination of birthday card making.

Leaf Love

On Black Friday the Brauer girls went to a massive scrapbooking store and I found some metallic markers on sale.  I made this super simple thank you card as an excuse to play with them.  I also got to use another one of the stamp sets my mom dropped off for me!  Coloring is one of my favorite things.  I stayed in the lines pretty well!

Non-Traditional Minimalist Holiday Card

I tried again to get rid of left over things from Paper Pumpkin kits.  I decided to try and make holiday cards that are a little funky and unexpected for the season, but also so easy that someone could theoretically make a lot of them since "a lot" seems to be the average number of holiday cards needed during the season.  I came up with a shiny little card that I think is not only easy but something pretty decent to look at!

Cruisin' Through My Pile

I worked a little more on chipping away at the pile on my craft table again today.  This time I found a stamp set that I really loved when I saw it in the catalog for Stampin' Up that my mom just dropped off to me.  Everything Eleanor is just such a pretty design to me that even though it's a flower stamp set (of which there are an over-abundance in the world) I still am drawn to it.  I chose to scrap a picture of myself when I was very little sitting on my grandpa's golf cart which I've always loved going for rides in.  It's a simple page, but that's mostly because my hand got tired from cutting out all the flowers with fairly dull scissors.

Pile Picking

I have quite the growing pile of various crafting supplies on my craft table and as disorganized as I am, even I am finding it difficult to work with.  I've begun digging out stuff to put away but of course that's no fun so I've started a new game with myself.  Every time I find a stamp set or embellishment calling my name in the pile I stop and make something with it (putting away everything once I'm done of course to keep the pile from growing).  This time I used a stamp set that had yet to be experimented with and made this super simple birthday card.  I challenged myself even more on accident by stamping it in a color that I had surprisingly little coordinating paper, buttons, or anything else really.  As always, a little glitter was definitely necessary.

Funky Fall

I was looking around at other blogs that I've fallen behind reading and I stopped by Pixels and Paper Challenges for this challenge.  I really liked the inspiration photo for this month because it was fall but not the traditional fall colors.

I decided to focus on the far right panel of the painting in the photo with the purples, yellows, and blues.  I also like the idea of falling leaves and the vertical orientation of the canvases that reminded me of stripes.  I  scrapped a photo of one of my friends and I that was taken when we got back from the Jelly Belly factory in the hats they give out.

Freedom Feels Like Flowers

It's been a long time since I've been able to make any cards or scrapbook pages.  I've had way too much course work to do, but the bulk of it is done with and I graduate in a little less than a month so I'm feeling pretty free (asides from realizing this means I'm basically an adult).  I've been on break for the last few days binging Netflix but I decided to actually move and make some cards and things.  I made a summer-y feeling birthday card mostly because I know that unfortunately winter is on its way.  I got to use one of the old di-cuts my mother bequeathed me so I also was able to chip a super small piece off of my all too quickly growing stash.

Happy Holidays

I'm still making my way through Paper Pumpkin boxes and so, once again, I decided to pull some pieces from one and make a new card only this time I decided to go with a winter holiday card.  I also took the opportunity to play with glitter again because I love it so much.  I like the way it turned out and surprisingly, all but tow of these pieces were pulled from the same kit in the making of the card.

Re-Purposed Halloween Stash

Don't think I forgot about my goal to make 8 1/2" x 11" pages for awhile, I just haven't posted on the blog in a bit is all.  I made this lovely page as a challenge to myself to use scraps and especially as many Halloween themed elements in a way that didn't scream the holiday all over it.  Its a theme that I have way more pieces for than opportunity to use them.  The green polka dot paper and the black "haunted house" re-purposed as just a normal house are both designated Halloween pieces.  I think it still has a bit of a Halloween vibe to it but maybe not as much if I didn't know that it was Halloween stuff.  The pictures taken in the scene shop that I worked in one summer fit the colors well.  

THANKS for the Pieces

Recently I have been working on cleaning up my craft room which currently includes going through many of the Paper Pumpkin kits I have piled up that I don't want to do the actual projects for but want to keep the elements from.  I found one that has a ton of these big felt letters that spell "Thanks".  However, I didn't really care for the project that it came with so I decided to try and re-design a simple way I could use the letters on a card that would actually have a chance at being sent someday.  With a some punched scrap paper and a couple of brads strategically placed, this was what I came up with.  Once again, its a super simple card, but I think it suits the bold, over-powering letters nicely.

Simplest of All Birthday Cards

Today I finished my first week of classes for my last semester and decided to celebrate with a little card making.  I found tiny scrap squares of paper that for some reason I had decided to keep and used those as the basis for this card.  It's really easy and requires next to no skill but I still think it's pretty cute!

Cards Are My Current Weakness

I know I said I was going to stick to 8 1/2" by 11" scrapbook pages the next few days but I found more pre-made cards and I couldn't resist designing a few cards.  Once again I used a lot of leftover and scrap elements to make these and yes, I'm still making birthday cards.  I usually would make thank you cards but in recent years people have given me multiple sets of store bought thank yous that I still have waiting to be used so I making fewer thank yous to force myself to get rid of those.

These two cards pulled from multiple paper pumpkin kits as well as my personal hoarded collection of scrapping materials.  I'm finding that cards are a good way to get rid of things that I don't have enough of to make a scrapbook page or that I'm just sick of using/seeing on pages.

That's Not My Name

This page was more or less made just to get the old newspaper out of my room.  I made the cartoon for the newspaper at my college and true to the stereotypes surrounding the publication they put someone's name on my work on accident so I skillfully crossed it out.  True to my goal of making the next few pages be of the 8 1/2" by 11" genre I made this page those dimensions as well.  The biggest excitement with this page was the tiny glitter glue dots.  I'm really getting hooked on glitter, one of the most dangerous and often times messy scrap-booking addictions around.

Sidenote:  Did anyone notice that I finally noticed there's a spot to title these posts?

There's More Than 12"x12"?

Last night I decided to funnel my creativity back to scrapbooking for a bit.  I made a page for my 8 1/2" by 11" album.  I often find myself forgetting I have albums with different dimensions than 12" by 12" so I made the conscious effort to make the next few pages I do for that album.  this one features pictures from my birthday in 2002 which after doing some math I found makes me 9 in the pictures.  I used some scrap elements for this page and I like the way it turned out!

New Glitter and Old Stash

I was awoken early this morning by my cat who is apparently still not used to being back at the apartment and unfortunately I could not get back to sleep.  Since I was up against my will I decided to make the best of it this morning and alternate cleaning and working on cards.  I managed to make these two cards out of scraps from kits and just my stash in general.  I noticed a bit ago that I didn't have many birthday cards on hand which explains my birthday kick. I also got to play with some glitter for the cherries card that was discovered when cleaning the "craft cabinet" back home.

Today I thought I'd try my hand at card-making,  I've been getting paper pumpkin kits and while I enjoy their elements, sometimes I don't like the card designs very much.  I usually end up taking the pieces of the kits and using them in scrapbook pages instead of the intended projects.  However, today I decided to take two of the pre-folded cards from one of the kits and design my own birthday cards.  I used a lot of scraps and left over embellishments that I was looking to clear out of my stash and came up with these two beauties.  They're both really simple but I really like the way they turned out!

I finally made it back to Charleston after spending the last month at home which meant I was free to scrapbook!  I made this page of when my grandmother came to see the production of Little Shop of Horrors where I was a props crew head and also one of the manipulators for the little Audrey II puppet.  The role required me to sit in a box onstage for the first 20 minutes or so.  It was a little hot in the box and I look like I worked as hard as I did.  On the upside I got a "costume" which is the tshirt I'm rocking in the photos!

I made the texture in the background by just rubbing my ink pad around the paper which was pretty fun to do!

The page I decided to scrap today was less about the scrapbooking and more about getting rid of items in my "to-be-scrapbooked" drawer.  This is the first article I ever wrote for my campus's newspaper and I decided to scrapbook it to keep it from getting lost and eaten by my room.  The page is simple and to be honest, just tossed together, but it serves its purpose.  And I got to use a bunch of scrap paper and paper that I'd totally forgotten I even had, so yet another bonus.

I had fun doing this page today because I was able to use a lot of different textures.  I made this page for a Pixels and Paper challenge.  The challenge was to use the following image as inspiration for your page.  I was mostly inspired by the way that the balloon in the photo really stood out and popped with fun colors against a much more neutral background.  I took that concept and started playing around with different papers and such that I had and created my page which features pictures of a girls night from a year or so ago when we went bowling.  Of course, being the nerdy English major I am, I couldn't resist making a pun for the title.  The page isn't very fancy embellishment wise or anything but I did like playing with the layout a lot.  I am pleased overall.

I made this page a week or two ago but haven't had time to post or update this blog really so I thought I'd share just to get back in the habit of blogging again.  The items featured on it are a ticket and the sleeve that held all the tickets from when my family went to see I Don't Need To Show You No Stinkin' Badges at my college after I helped work on the set and props and such.  It was a very odd show and very...interesting?...but I was still quite proud of my contribution.  The plot and directing may have been bizzarre but that set looked awesome!

I hadn't scrapbooked in awhile and had quite a busy weekend but I did get to cleaning out my room which is where I found a newspaper from my school with an article I wrote in it.  I had the most fun writing it out of all the ones I did and I decided to scrapbook it!

Another day, another challenge!  This time I got to use all the bright, over-bearing, slightly gaudy colors that I love!  This Paper Girls challenge was to have some summer fun.  One of my favorite things to do in the summer is go to county fairs.  I love rides and games and most importantly, I love the wonderfully calorie-packed food!  So good!  This photo was taken in front of one of the rides at the Effingham County Fair from one summer that had Thor, my favorite Avenger, painted on the side.  I was really excited.

Once again, I usually don't do sketch challenges but I wanted to try this one from Challenge YOUrself because I was intrigued by the circles.  I don't get to use large circles very often so I was  pretty excited to try and make a couple myself.  My end product is a loose interpretation of the sketch but my favorite elements from it are still there with some circles made of twine, the long blocks of paper behind the photos, and even just the idea of overlapping multiple photos.  As with every challenge for that blog, yes, I am in the photos.  I'm the one in the back with the guy in the stripes.  We had a fun time right before the end of our junior year at my apartment and took silly group pictures to commemorate it!