Friends and Family effected by Hurricane Sandy.

             A big warm hug to all my scrappy friends. My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to all those in the North East and everywhere that have lost their homes and loved one's due to hurricane Sandy. I have been crafting but I don't want to post anything I have done. I just want to reflect upon and post about the last couple of days here, which I have spent mostly in my craftroom  cutting, painting, gluing, scrapping and doing anything that will keep me sane and focus and not tuned to the Television. The News has been on all day for the past three days and has not stopped giving me a play by play of all the loss and destruction left by Hurricane Sandy.
             I know in a natural disaster we don't get to choose who stays and who goes and we are no match for Mother Nature's fury when she is upset. It hurts to see so many innocent live's lost and many people without homes. Having lost everything they have ever worked for. It hurts to hear the horror of people being crushed by tree's and other's having lost everything down to their precious children's photographs.
             My husbands job has shut down because of loss of power, so he's out of a job  until further notice and my children have not returned to school because many of the school's have been turned into shelters for those in need. My oldest daughter and sons have also been out of work for loss of power The buses have limited service and the subways and trains have been shutdown until they can be fixed (water damage everywhere).
               I Live in the North East and I thank the Lord on bend knees's for having spared us, for we still have a roof above our heads and are still together. To all those that have not fared well my heart goes out to you, I will keep you in my prayers. Please keep the faith and be strong the lord will light the way. Hugs and much love to all! 

New tags,small tiles and a cubby update.

                        Hi Everyone, hope you are all doing great this time of year. Autumn is my favorite time of the year.The leaves have begun to fall and they are changing from there green color to the beautiful fall colors like orange, red, brown and yellow and some leaves have turn deep burgandy. I like that the weather is not to hot and it is not so cold. You really just need a light jacket and not heaps and layers of clothes like in winter.   Okay, enough weather talk, Sorry I was in my news reporting mode LOL.  Now lets get back to what this blog is about (Crafty Stuff) and some blogging.

                 Well, I have been gone for a while trying new stuff, like embossing and crackle paint and Mod Podge, sealers and lacquers and I'm trying to water color on canvas (but that will be on another post). Here are four tags I made using some of these mediums.

I changed the tag on the top right and you will see that on one of the pics below.

I distressed an arch shaped piece of card stock and added  flowers in  silver, peach and beige. 

                             .

The tag in the top left needed a lot of work because at the time I did not have Gesso to cover the  kraft like paper. I had to  color it with white acrylic paint in order to be able to use distress ink on it. I also did not want to mess up the embossing of the couple I had done. following are a few pics showing a little of the procedure I used.

Here I stamped an Anna Griffin  vine stamp all over the tag

Adding ribbon, decisions decisions  

I like the way the butterflies came out and I stamped some trees to the card . She looks like she's soaring above the trees.

Now, This idea I got from watching Jennys644 from Youtube. She has a website called Freestyle Crafts (It's awesome and has more then 2000 videos). Well, her name is Fiona  I saw her video on making tiny tiles by cutting up regular chipboard into small tile size chips and painting them white. You can use any type of stamps on them or you can cut small pics from your paper pads ( I used pics from the Graphic 45 paper pads). If you decide to stamp them you can use any type of distress colors on them. You then have to use a sealer ( I used glue and seal from ranger). after letting the tiles dry you can add a generous layer of glossy accents or 3d lacquer to get a glossy dome layer effect on them. let them dry overnight undisturbed and they turn out like old vintage tiny tiles. They turned out great!

They have the lacquer on and they have not dried to the clear  stage yet.

Here they have the glue and seal and  are waiting to dry

Here they have the final layer of lacquer and are almost dry and clear.


Up now I want to show you  another foam board cubby I made for my craft  table. I also took out the  last cubby holes from my older one and redid it with drawers at the bottom. This was not my idea, I want to give credit to Robin from RobinCreativeCottage. I was viewing the storage other crafters do on you tube and came accross her video of her storage with drawers and I decided to make  a new craft storage with drawers and I also updated my old storage  cubby with drawers on the bottom.I added paper from DCWV and gaint round brush silver brads as drawer knobs. I have been having my older one for a while now and it has held up just fine. Untill I find something suitable in wood, these will do just fine. They are easy,simple and inexpensive. If you need storage for light items and are on a budget try these. There are all over You tube and many crafters have done wonderful videos explaining the procedure that goes with creating one of these storage units. The units are simple, just be careful with the hot glue gun it gets hot and a little messy. besides that they are fun to create.Well here is the end of my post.  If you have made your way down this long post  I want to Thank you  so much for reading and viewing this post. Lots of hugs and as always may God bless you all!

Everything is withen reach and I like that.

My desk is much more organized now.

In these drawers I keep washi tape and glue sticks double daubers and clear mounts.

I keep small jars of flocking and perfect pearls, ink pots, embossing  powders and  perfect mediums  in these  drawers.     Thanks for taking the time to view my post.

A Peace Birthday Card

                 Hello to all you wonderful blogging buds.  The peace card is below, Just in case you want to by pass all this wonderful stuff I'm writing about which has nothing to do with the card. I just felt like doing a little blogging today. Well it was my children's first day back to school. I always get a little misty when they have to go back, after having them with me all summer long. I know school is good for them and I'm happy to have some more blogging and crafting time.

              I want to tell you about this store hubby took me  Over the weekend  called Amazing Savings. I had heard other scrappers talk about this store, but I didn't know if I had one nearby. Well, it so happens that my hubby was helping our son move into his new place and found one about a block away from him. I was overjoyed to go visit our son and take a look at this store. besides all the regular house wares and lots of Mikasa glass pieces and an abundance of kitchen gadgets and cutting boards and some furniture storage pieces. There is an area of school supplies and on the other side it's crafts and scrapbooking. they have lots of K and Company stickers as well as paper packs. lots of Making memories paper packs and pebble brads. lots of Page kits from colorbok, stamps from image tree and DCWV epoxy brads and they also carry stuff from Stickopotamus and many more embellishments. Needless to say, I left with a lot of stuff with out breaking the bank, because most things were a dollar and the paper packs about 3.00. I think they are over stocks but the prices sure are amazing. I would ask any one with a low budget to go check these stores out. I saved a lot for the same items I buy at my local craft store.they don't have everything but you usually will leave with a few good stuff.

                   Okay, sorry if the post was too long. But now for the Peace card, I went to my little niece's birthday party last week. She wanted a peace party, so beside's buying her some cute shirts with peace designs on them. I made her this simple peace card in her favorite colors lots of pinks and purples. I used one of my favorite embossed cards in white. I also  used Peace stamps  and peace ribbon a lot of Copics in pink and purple. I also use Martha Stewart glitter glues and spica glitter pens to dot the inside of the flowers, I used a giant circle punch and scallop decorative scissors to go around the circle.

Yay, here is the finished card fast and super simple and cute.

My first altered box creation

               Good morning  to all my bloggy friends. I have been so super busy this month, with all the getting back to school shopping and the countless birthdays and barbecues on the weekends, it's been very hectic around here. But I did take a few hours here and there to  do some crafting, and I'm finally posting it this morning.

                  I have been doing some cute pages shaped like a baby's bounty blanket and embellishing them, I will fill them up with baby tags and later put into a baby mini album.   I also made a very simple mini album out of  K and company paper and I am still in the process of filling it with tags and embellishments.

                                      I also have a lot of clip art and images that I print out or fussy cut from some of my older paper pack called Hot off the Press. I wanted to preserve them for when I need to use them. So, what I did was fussy cut a lot of the images and with removable adhesive I paste them down on two 8X10 paper and putting two sides together with images facing outward, I then pass them through the sticker machine with two sided lamination. When they come out you just cut around the paper very close to the edge and pull apart the two sides. After that just cut all the images and you will have them all laminated and protected from wet hands .

                             Okay, now for the box, I  had notice that my desk was slowly piling up with pop dots and other adhesives, but not wanting to get up and go to my nearest crafting store for yet another small plastic bin and not wanting to store the new pop dots I purchased into my adhesive drawer.  I decided to alter a small cardboard box I had and store my pop dots there at an arms reach. I am not going into a long detail explanation, I will let the pictures speak for them selves. What I did was cover the box in and out with some K and Company paper called Madeline, and I fussy cut some butterflies from the flora and fauna borders  and paste them on the box top. The man and woman silhouettes are from the Victorian Romance cricut cartridge, I also used some music paper from the colorbok paper pad and I cut the image on the fold down tab from Graphic45 Le Romantique paper and I put small round velcro as the closure underneath the fold down tab. I used stickles on the woman's headband and on her waist ribbon and bow and on the mans shirt. It was pretty easy and simple and I enjoyed myself. Now I have to run off and make some more Birthday cards and I will post them later in the week. Thank you so much for visiting my blog and reading this post, have a blessed Sunday!

This is the cardboard box I altered.

Here I am matting one of the pages from the simple mini.. Please click the Pics to enlarge.

Here is the simple mini album and the box covered in paper.

Here is another of the pages matted. They also have pockets to put tags inside.

Now that's what I call filled to the brim. They fit nice inside when the box is closed.

Here you can see the image on the fold down tab a little better. I did the star shaped crochet underneath the box about 15 years ago and it still looks good.    

You can see the top of the box much better here.

These are the baby blanket pages I  did that will go in a baby mini album.

The two papers with the pasted images go into the xyron .

The two papers are laminated cut and pulled apart.

now they are ready for fussy cutting.

I made a bunch of them at one time.

Here are a few of them all cut and laminated, waiting to be put into projects.

Project Life core kits in the house

Hello  to all my fellow Crafters.  I know many of you know what  Project life is, but for those that may not be familiar with it  I wanted to give a small review here. I love the look of traditional layouts but we all know how traditional scrapbooking is, a little time consuming and depending on how much embellishing you do, it can take even longer to create one beautiful scrap layout page.  Well this incredible woman  (Becky Higgins) came up with a plan that is  foolproof to fill up your albums quickly and beautiful.  This system she calls Project life (and us diehard fans call it a blessing). It is made up of binders core kits and plastic pocket pages, all you will really need after you have these components is a pen.  You will put the decorated cards that come in the core kits into the pocket sleeves, then you slide in some photos and you journal about the photos on some of the journaling cards in the core kits and add those into the right pockets and call it a day. Your album can come together quickly and simply, or you can do your own embellishing  and add memorabilia and make it as extravagant as you want it to be.  Yesterday I received  four of the core kits ( birthday gifts from my sons). I already had a colbalt kit, two binders and a ton of plastics. I am set for this year and next year. If you are interest in learning more of this way of filling your albums please go to http://www.beckyhiggins.com/blog/     There you will find all the information you need and Becky is always updating her blog with the latest on her products and where they are for sell. She has lots of videos to help you out too and lots of photos for inspiration. She has just come out with new plastics in different configurations for your albums.  Following are a few photos of my core kits.   Thanks for taking your time and reading this small review and Hugs always!

Here are the four editions I received and the top is  an older one I already had. Notice the  new boxes are  so cool.  

This is the top design on the  amber box.

I opened two of the core kits, see how neatly they are in there new plastic tray. I'm very happy with the new look.

Another Birthday Card

            Hello Everyone and happy Tuesday. Hope you are all having some summer fun. I was invited to another of my niece's birthday party ( I have a lot of niece's).  Well, you know what that means have to make another card lol ( I enjoy it).


            She wanted a princess party, so I took some Disney paper and cardstock and made a card for her.  I fussy cut the bottom of the princess dress ( I think this is princess Belle)image and I added the paper flowers and leaves and some brads to hold the flowers together ( the flowers and leaves are from K&Company and you put them together. I also  used distress ink (worn Lipstick) on all the edges and stamped a dragon fly and added a butterfly bling  and last I cut around the princess celebration sentiment with decorative deckled scissors  and inked it all around and added a stitched pink ribbon with glitter dots and Viola  the card was done.  Hope you are all taking some time to craft,  Thanks for viewing, Hugs and God bless.

The card is finished (yay).

Here I almost forgot to stamp the dragonfly and add the butterfly bling ( you can see the above card has  it).

I always like to stamp  handmade  on the back ( I have several different  one's I use ).

A big hello, to all my crafty blogging friends.

Hi  Everyone, hope you are all having a happy Tuesday.  I'm back with a birthday card I made for my niece.
I have a kit I bought years ago from HSN ( or maybe it was QVC) cant't remember now. Anyway it's old and vintage looking, and I did not do any thing with it for a long time, but from time to time I pull out papers and embellishments from it and create something. So last week I pull one of the cards in a peach color and I embossed it and added some flowers and glued some papers from  K and Company. I also added a pretty diecut from an EK success punch. I took a lovely velvet ribbon,  from  a Anna Griffin collection (love all her stuff). and added it the the front bottom of the card.
                         On the inside of the card I used a technique  I learned from  StampwithBernie  on you tube. She calls it floating butterflies. You take a piece of acetate and you cut it round and round in a spiral and you paste it to the inside of the card both sides with glue dots and you add butterfly cut outs or punches. When you open the card it stretches the acetate and the butterflies look as if they are flying or floating inside the card ( real cool effect). Please view her video for a more detail look. This was my first attempt  at creating a card this way.  Please don't forget to comment (remember your comments good or bad are what keeps me growing in this craft and I welcome them all). Thanks for viewing and hugs always!

Here is the finished card ( I was happy.  It came out  good for a first  try)  making this type of card.

Here you can clearly see the spiral acetate through the front cutout  on the card.

I was trying out the spiral acetate before putting the inside papers to see if it worked  ( it did).

The inside of the  card, you can see the acetate cutout I did with the spellbinders die. I did the front of the card cutout and then used a bigger die to cut the acetate.

You can slightly see that opening the card makes the butterflies  seem a little like flying.

The card is ready and I lined and envelope with the same paper line as the card.  I purchase a matching color gift bag to put the other gifts I had purchase for her. 

I pasted a small cutt out from the inside paper and  added the stamp image.