21st Century Pillow Book

Happy Hump Day! I am participating in a Color Throwdown Challenge for the first time. I had stumbled upon it last week, and I thought it was such a cool challenge blog! Each week, you need to create a project using the required set of colors. This week, you need to use Grey, Rust, Olive and Razzleberry. Perfect for Fall! I have had this stamp for years. It’s from Stamps Happen (coincidentally, it isn’t Tonya’s shop!). I love to use it with all different color combinations. I used a grey cardstock from Prism for the card, and I colored in the stamped image (which I embossed) with my EK Watercolor Markers. I threw on a couple of Dew Drops and voila! It’s a simple enough card, but the image really makes a statement. These markers blend so beautifully, as you can see from this close up. I decided not to color in the background completely, I think less is more in this case. Inspired? Maybe you should check out Color Throwdown too! I will certainly be participating in this awesome challe...

Happy Tuesday! It’s time for another fantastic Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge! This week’s challenge is brought to us by Jacquie. Here’s the scoop: As New Moon movie release approaches we are seeing amazing pictures of the Wolfpack who become Jacob's Brothers. In New Moon the wolf pack play an important part in Jacob's life and the effect they have on the Quilute community. This also affects the Cullen family, they have a treaty with the Cullens and in time see that they all need to work together to rid Forks of the bad Vamps. This week we will be focusing on the Bond between brothers and how we apply that to our human lives. Women can lean on each other and we are strong all on our own but now and again we need that males presence as a brother, husband, best friend as a grounding force...as a safe place to be. We see that in Bella's need for Jacob. Craft Portion : Make something that refects brotherhood... Be inspired by the wolf pack, Edward and Jasper/Emmitt, eve...

Rhiannon’s Baby Blessing is tomorrow! I am so excited. Gene and I worked very hard (along with our fabulous minister) on her ceremony, invitations and favors. Those that are attending are certainly in for a magical celebration in honor of my baby girl. So I mentioned her favors. I have to say, they caused me a great deal of stress. I knew that I wanted to create favors similar to the ones I made for Phoenix’s Blessing… so that part was easy. I had originally used pressed wood disks (intended to be a mini scrapbook) by Kaiser. I had edged the disks with a paint pen, and Mod Podged patterned paper on both sides. Then, I glued on a photo of Nix on one side then I stamped this awesome image of a dragon and phoenix on the other. They were super cool. For Rhi, I started off the same way… everything was fine until I got to the stamped image on the other side. What could I use for her? Her name is too long to spell out, even if I used a tiny font, because then it just looked super small wi...

Diana is my family’s “adopted” sister. She lives 5 houses away from us (4 from me actually), she was born 1 week after my middle sister Pam, and the 2 have been best friends practically since then. She is one of us. The closest thing to being a sister without actually being one. I usually give her gifts from The Pyramid Collection catalog, because of their unique qualities, their bit o’ magic and their pure coolness factor. But this time, I decided to make her a gift. I had shown you these crystals in a post a week or so ago in a necklace that I had made for Julie. I had shown these crystals to Diana many moons ago when I had first bought them, and she loved them. I had wanted to make her something with them since then… but just never sat down to do it. Then I misplaced them.. and so on and so forth… But, I finally made it for her and I am happy to say that she loves it. Her birthday is in August, hence the peridot colored beads. I used orange beads as well, because I liked the contr...

Happy Tuesday Everyone! This week’s challenge is brought to us by Julie. Here is the challenge : Today’s Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge is about the character that every Twilighter seems to love — Alice! Our theme is specifically about Alice’s past, before she met the Cullen family and was known as Mary Alice Brandon. We don’t know too many details about Alice’s life before the events of the Twilight saga occur, but if you would like a refresher on her past, visit the Twilight Saga Wiki here and read! The craft portion is to depict an aspect of Alice’s history. You can take your inspiration from what we know from the actual Stephenie Meyer text, or you can use your imagination to depict something that could have happened in Alice’s past. The comment portion – talk a bit about Alice’s gift. Would you like to possess her ability to see the future? Do you think that that would be a blessing or a curse? So I had so many ideas for this challenge. Originally, I wanted to do somet...

I am really excited about this! Beth, one of my many Book Buddies over at Twilight Tuesday , recommended the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward to me a few months ago. Well, let me tell you!!!!! This is one of the greatest series of books (if not THE greatest…shocked, I know you are… I DO believe that there is more to life than Twilight ya know! ;} ) that I have ever read. It’s a vampire series, and my is it YUMMY!!! Here is what Beth about the new goings-on for Fridays at the TTIC site: Welcome to our first installment of FANDOM FRIDAYS here at TT.  We will be visiting various areas of Pop Culture that are reminiscent of The Twi Saga, and then some other things that we just think are cool and you might enjoy given our similar tastes.  Come back each Friday to see what we have in store for you! This week we have a new challenge, and an amazing book recommendation!  Read on: Twilight did a wonderful job at capturing our hearts and minds, and bringing us ...

Today is my Dad’s Birthday. He would have been 62 today. As I mentioned in yesterday’s TTIC post, it’s a wonderful coincidence that the theme was motorcycles, since my Dad was SO into bikes. I got this sweatshirt for him on what was his last Christmas with us. My Dad was really tough to shop for, but that year, I found so many wonderful things for him… My Dad had a ton of biker buddies. And they all LOVED my Dad. I mean LOVED. If you ever wanted to see a bunch of grown tough guys cry, talk to these dudes about my Dad. They tear up like they were cutting a bunch of onions. My Dad was so much to them… I’d like to think that he still IS so much to them. About a year and a half after his passing, many of his buddies decided to do a Tribute Run for him. They gathered together and rode around our block three times in memory of him. Forgive the pictures, they are all pictures of pictures. Scanners are not usually my friends!  There are over a dozen bikes out in front of our ...

It’s Twilight Tuesday Challenge time again! This week, we have a challenge that I could write and scrap about for days… It’s brought to us by Dani and here is what she writes: Have you ever worked with someone and an unexpected friendship developed? In New Moon by Stephenie Meyer we watch such a friendship bloom between Bella and Jacob as they rebuild a pair of old motorcycles. I love seeing them change from good acquaintances to having a deep, loving friendship. I also love hearing about the motorcycles! There is just something them. While the Cullens had their fast cars, Bella and Jacob had their motorcycles! Now for the challenge of the week! The challenge portion: I am going to do something a little bit different today. You can choose between these 2 challenges: 1. Make a project involving motorcycles. or 2. Make a project that you work on with a friend. The comment portion: Again you can choose either of these 2 to comment on: 1. Tell us about any motorcycle experience you have! o...

Making jewelry has always been a passion for me. It is my favorite thing to create. Yes, even more than cards and scrapbooks (although they are very close behind!). I love that you can show off the craft wherever you go. Carrying a 12x12 scrapbook isn’t easy to do! But a necklace, you can wear proudly and exclaim “I made this!’ So sometimes I don’t have the “mojo” as so many of you call it, to play with jewelry… and other times, it’s just not a good idea to lug my bead boxes downstairs to try and create while my son is playing with his trains and my daughter is trying to stick her hands in to everything that she’s not supposed to. So sadly, my beads and things have to sit in my craft room and wait for me to find a few spare moments to play with them. But yesterday, not only did I have inspiration, but I had the time and energy to make a couple of pieces! Here’s one of them: Those are real pieces of quartz crystal! Aren’t they stunning? I have had them for years… and never got around...

I wanted to make a necklace for one of my friends. Sorry, once again, I cannot tell you who as she has not yet received the gift. The last necklace, by the way, (the blue and purple one) was for Donna. She’s got it now and I think I picked out the right colors for her! :} Anyway, I had a basic color palette in mind… I just needed the beads. I borrowed some from my sis Pam, since I surprisingly didn’t have what I needed. Here’s what I came up with. The color is slightly off in the photo…not sure why. The colors really look nice together; the have a nice contrast. Here the orange looks a bit brighter than what it is. For this piece I used Aventurine nuggets, Moss Agate, forest green glass pearls and orange glass beads. The orange beads is what I needed from Pam. I especially love the Moss Agate. The range of colors you can find from this stone is marvelous. Here’s another shot to show what I mean. See all of the beautiful hues that differ so greatly from one bead to the nex...

I know… I said in my teeny tiny post yesterday that I was going to try and have up another one of the TTSC challenges… I’m sorry. I just couldn’t get to it. But I have a reason! It’s a good one I promise! It’s actually the subject of this post. Gene and I have finally set a date for Rhiannon’s Baby Blessing…we even have a place! My wonderful friend James (he was the second friend I ever made! We go waaaaayyy back!) has come through for us yet again and managed to squeeze us in to have our little ceremony at his beautiful country club. So, since the event is coming up fast, I needed to quickly come up with and create the invites for this very important event. I think it came out really nice. If you’re thinking… this doesn’t look like a Baby Blessing Invite… well, then you should go back several posts and check out what other “baby” stuff I do… no baby pink here! This invitation is very much our (gene and my own) style. We love the rich colors of Fall, celtic knots are huge for us… and...

Hello all!!! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I just wanted to remind you that Twilight Tuesday is taking a week off from challenges, but we will be back next week with a new one for you! Meanwhile, I will try and get a post up of a TTIC sketch challenge later today. But in the meantime, please visit www.twilighttuesday.com to catch up on any challenges you may not have seen!

Fall is fast approaching, my favorite season. I was inspired to play with a few items as I was cleaning up my craft room. One, my favorite brass template. Two, Glimmer Mist, though I never need an excuse to work with that! Three, I had a cardboard box that had one of the flaps ripping off… I saw it hanging there, and I decided to rip it off and create some altered art. It’s something that I love to do, but never get around to doing it often enough. So I made something that I think came out quite magical. I love it. I could see it just sitting on a shelf to celebrate my favorite season, or perhaps I may make it in to a book cover. I used FIVE colors of Glimmer Mist for this piece! I also used some Amazing Glaze, a Glimmer Screen (also from Tattered Angels), some fibers, a brass corner piece, and a couple of beads hung from jumprings. Here you can see the beads. A loopy brad holds the fibers in place. It looks much prettier in person… When you see all the amazing colors of Mist blend ...

So, After making Tuesday’s Card with TTIC #10, I felt inspired to do #9. Dani is always coming up with wonderful sketches for us to play with, and there are several that I have not yet tackled. So, I am trying to get to a few of them this week. Here’s the sketch for TTSC #9: And here is my version: I made my dimensions a little different because I wanted to base the sizes around the stamp I used. All of my paper is from Prima (so in love with these papers!), except for the turquoise, which is from Prism. The ink is from Color Box, rhinestones from Westrim and I cannot forget to mention that I used Amazing Glaze from Judikins. That’s one of my all-time favorite stamp/scrap items. Can’t live without it! Here’s a close up so that you can see why I love it… See how thick it is? After just one application! It’s so glassy… absolutely my favorite embossing powder ever! But back to the sketch… I think it was a great one and I look forward to completing them all! Wanna play along??? Twilight...

After almost being on a computer hiatus last week since my husband took off some days from work, I am back now with a new Twilight Tuesday Challenge! But first off, some completely AMAZING news!!!! The fantabulous girls at Twilight Tuesday have asked me, Donna and Jacquie to become PERMANENT designers for the team! Yes, I said permanent! Like…forever! I cried. I really did. No, you may not laugh. The girls in this group are so incredible, and I have had the absolute BEST time working with them. I did NOT want it to end. So when they asked me to stay… it was like…DUH! Does Edward love Bella??? Of course I want to be a PERMANENT Designer! So, to all of my Twi-Girls… I love you, you all rock my world and I am thrilled and honored to not only work with all of you, but to have you chics as my friends. Truly. I don’t know what I would do without all of you. But, before I make this entire post about me gushing about how happy I am (oh, don’t worry, I will be gushing in other posts!!!), here...