Preemie Pages

I have a friend that lives in Nome who's second son was born premature and ended up having to stay in the NICU in Providence for a couple of months. To give back, she asks the Close To My Heart consultants to make 100 preemie pages with the word "miracle" in the title, both for Mother's Day and Christmas. This is my third round and it always amazes me that I am able to find new sketches to meet her criteria which includes photo mats for 2-4x6 photos, a journaling spot, and a title. It's so much trickier than it sounds!!

This layout is one of the Basic Grey Maps from Pagemaps by Becky Fleck. I can't figure out how to post the actual sketch, so you'll have to check out the website to see it.

I used White Daisy Cardstock for the base and paper from an old Christmas DCWV stack for both versions of the layout. For this page, I used Holiday Trinkets, Comments, Baby ("our little"), Sans Alpha, Playful Flourishes ("Love" on the small tag), Botanical Borders and the Works Alpha stamp sets. I also used Buttercup and Sweet Leaf cardstock, lots of silver and yellow Stickles, and various ribbon from JoAnn's. The tag was cut with my Cricut and the stickers on it are Jolee's Boutique. The small tag on the left is chipboard from one of CTMH's retired collections, although I believe there are some tags one one of the newer chipboard collections as well.

This version also uses Comments, Baby ("our little"), Sans Alpha, Playful Flourishes ("Love" on the tag), Botanical Borders and the Works Alpha stamp sets. The flowers and leaves are from Prima and the drops in the center are Robin's Nest Dew Drops. The cardstock is Tulip and Sweet Leaf and the ribbon is again various ribbons from JoAnn's as is the poinsettia sticker on the tag, although the leaves are from the Summer Posies paper flowers. I used tons of gold Stickles on this one and another chipboard tag.

Last of the Hawaii Pages!!!

So, after months of working on these (well, more like 6 weeks), I finished the last of the pages for Shawn's scrapbook. They aren't prize winners by any means, but I am so glad they are done!

I didn't have a particular sketch to go off for these first two. Although, I think I did start out with two different sketches in Close To My Heart's "Reflections" book and then adapted it to make it work for my photos.

All of them, of course, use paper from the Boom-Di-Ada kit. This one also uses some hemp, letters cut with my Cricut for the title, hemp, eyelets from Joann's, Jolee's stickers, one of the owls from You're a Hoot stamp set, the smallest flower from Cottage Floral (for the owl's lei), and lastly the bitty pearls from Recollections. I just realized the dot above my "i" in Paradise is missing. I'll just add an adhesive pearl to that to finish it off. This is my favorite picture of my little man from that trip. How cute does he look in his Aloha outfit! ;O) That was definitely a great trip for a toddler.

This page uses lots of sparkles on the Martha Stewart butterflies, hemp, an arrow from Star Struck stamp set and hibiscus flowers from the Extreme Happiness set. The leaves are from Summer Posies paper flowers and the hibiscus stem thingy has lots of yellow stickles for some extra sparkle. I love that Extreme Happiness stamp set, it was exactly what I was looking for before I started this page. Great timing CTMH! ;O)

I used Sketch #28 published by Inspired Blueprints on August 17th. I crammed too many big photos onto it, but, I think it worked out o.k. For this one I used the Field Trip Alpha, more hemp, and various Jolee's Boutique stickers. This one actually went together pretty quick after I quit fighting with the photos. Owen is kind of the center of the world for everyone in my family, especially since my sister isn't supposed to have kids (She cracked her hip in 3 places and lost her spleen which is the basis to your immunity, in a car accident. Plus, she has a really bad back due to rolling in a school bus in junior high...she's a mess ;O)!!) So, these pages won't seem as out of place to her as they might to you! I looked up some Hawaiian words for the title and this one seemed to fit the best!

This final page was so much fun to do and use up lots of scraps! I was probably supposed to use just one piece of scalloped paper, but decided it was more fun to use circles from lots of different papers! I also used the Field Trip alpha again, Star Struck for the arrows, and the big hibiscus and leaf stamps from the Extreme Happiness set. More Stickles, more sparkles on the Martha Stewart punch butterflies, and some flower sparkles from Hero Arts.

Phew, I feel like I can move on with life now!!! No more Hawaii pages for a while anyway. I still have to do them for us though!

Snow Angel

This was another Inspired Blueprints layout that I just couldn't get enough of!!! It's so out of my box, but was so much fun to try! I used my Cricut to cut the huge vellum snowflake...what a pain!! I used tons of the little mini sparkles I have been hoarding from Close to My Heart. I embossed snowflakes onto vellum using Versa Mark and CTMH's white embossing powder using snowflake stamps from Holiday Trinkets, Snowflake Kisses, The Beauty of Christmas, and Winter Wonderland and then spent forever cutting them out!! The journaling block is from Winter Wonderland, "Snow" was stamped and embossed using Small Friendship Alpha, and "Angel" is Rustic Alpha. I used Liquid Applique to make the snow and lots of Stickles for sparkle even under the Robin's Nest Dew Drops on the snowflakes. The journaling was done with Classmate Alpha and Express Postage. Oh, and the background is Dutch Blue and Outdoor Denim cardstock with Dutch Blue ink for the stamping. Super easy, but my whole family asked if I was going to add any more pictures. This is not their favorite layout. I was proud of myself for working outside the box!! ;O)

Phew, I think that's the last of the projects I made prior to my computer crashing. So, I'm all caught up. Thank goodness for those "Computer Geeks" here in town. They recovered everything off of my hard drive including 3 months of pictures of my little one that I forgot to back-up and the timeline I had kept on the computer of all of his firsts!! Now to take photos of my latest work!!

Christmas Already?

Digital Delights by Louby Lou had a Design Team call last month. I considered applying, but then with all the illnesses we had last month, I never found the time to complete the projects. I was so glad to stumble across her website however! She even has "Freebie Friday" where she gives away a new image every week. How great is that!!! Anyway, this is the image she was giving the week I found her, Maggie. Isn't she too cute? Anyway, it got me in the Christmas spirit and I used the current sketch on the same website to put it together. The paper is an old Christmas stack from DCWV and I added Tulip cardstock and a green cardstock from an old DCWV Spring Cardstock pack. The ribbon came from the Animal Cookies Creative Basics kit and the sentiment is from Say It in Style stamp set. I colored her in with Copics, added lots of stickles, and Robin's Nest Dew Drops. That's it! I look forward to Friday's and Louby Lou's latest give away now!!! Not to mention my ridiculously long wish list...she has tons of cute owl images!!!! ;O)

Aloha!!

I'm finally finished with my sister's Hawaii pages!!! I will have to take pics of the last four pages I did, but I will cram them all into one post as I am so tired of looking at them!! ;O) Thank goodness I started way back in July or I would have been scrambling to finish by Auntie Shawn Day!!! We typically celebrate on the last Saturday of October. However, we since we always do our pumpkin carving that day, we've moved the celebration up to October 24th instead.

This is another Inspired Blueprints layout, I managed to use their layouts for 10 out of the 13 pages I did! Not too shabby! ;O) I love their sketches so much, I thought it was a fun goal to try and use as many of theirs as possible. I think they are up to 30 sketches on their blog, so I've used just about half of them counting my non-Hawaii layouts. So fun!! This one in particular was a new challenge for me, I've never done my title in a circle before. It was a blast to try and figure out. ;O)

Anyway, as usual, I used the Boom-Di-Ada paper pack from Close to My Heart and Barn Red cardstock. The hemp is way old from my college days that I still have hanging around. The chipboard letters are also really old and I don't have the packaging anymore. I cut the circles with my Cricut and then used my corner rounder for the scallops. The bigger butterflies are Martha Stewart punches and the littler ones I'm not sure about. I stamped the chipboard letters with Spot On Backgrounds, Versamark, and Kaleidoscope embossing powder from Craft Essentials for some texture and sparkle. The tag is from Walk With Nature stamp set and the hibiscus is Extreme Happiness with leaves from the Summer Posies (retiring this year, boo!!). I also added lots of sparkles to the butterflies, Jolee's Boutique stickers to the tag, and a couple of Craft Essentials (Joann's brand) eyelets to finish off the photo corner.

Happy Birthday Uncle Doc!

I had to whip up a birthday card for my uncle right before heading out to his birthday dinner a while back. This one is a little plain, but it did the job! The sketch is from the Mojo Monday archives, but I thought it was perfect for the cowboy image I had already cut out with my Cricut.

This is actually a digital image from Pink Cat Studio, they developed it in honor of a little boy named Ethan that passed away from Neuroblastoma earlier this year, he was just a couple months shy of his 5th birthday. The money they raised with this stamp was given to the Make-a-Wish foundation. It breaks my heart to read his story, he was a beautiful little boy and I can't imagine losing him so early. I believe the stamp set is no longer available for purchase, so I am really glad I was able to get in on it and help an awesome cause at the same time.

I bought the full set and it came with a little girl cowboy and several sentiments. But, I decided to download a Western font from a free website and print it out for both the "Howdy" and the "Happy Birthday". I believe the font came from 1001freefonts.com, but because my computer crashed, I can't tell you exactly which one I chose. I love that website though!! The image was colored in with Copics and added some Robin's Nest Dew Drops for a little sparkle. (I meant to make it even more sparkly with some Stickles, but got in a hurry and forgot!) The paper is all from the Animal Cookies Creative Basics kit. I just love the colors!! I also added some Western Flourish stamps to the inside, that stamp set is something else I love!! It seems to add just the right finish!