XOXO Blog Hop (winner posted)

Do you feel the love? Only two more days until Valentine's Day, and to celebrate, Pretty Little Studio is having a blog hop, a one-day sale and lots of giveaways!

To shop the sale, visit the Pretty Little Studio store and enter the coupon code bemine to receive 14% off your order. This code is only valid today, February 12.

Now for my project. This is a very old photo of us, but it kind of fit with the theme of the layout. The days of the week flashcards were the inspiration, and it came together from there.

The most interesting thing about this layout is that it came together entirely from 4 x 4 sheets of paper. Except for the kraft cardstock and flashcards, all the other papers (including the heart shape and the vintage cutout) were from a Love Notes 4x4 paper pack from Pretty Little Studio.

I pieced together scraps around the outside to form a patchwork border, and I brought in more of the patterns with the flags on the left of the photo. 

Ready for some more lovey-dovey projects from the Pretty Little Studio girls?

Visit each of these blogs for additional Valentines projects, and be sure to leave a comment at each stop. Each of us will be giving away our favorite Valentines product from Pretty Little Studio.

Leanne Allinson 

Katie Cavanaugh 
Jen Chapin

Elise Lindsey 

Celine LeGuay

Robyn Schaub  YOU ARE HERE!
Irit Shalom

 Keri Babbit

Pretty Little Studio Blog

I'm giving away the Be Mine Shipping Tags. Aren't they adorable?!

And the winner is...

Congratulations!! I will be emailing you today for your shipping address!


I've had such a great time working with Melissa at Pretty Little Studio for the past few months, and I can't wait to see what the new designers do when they take over next month. There are so many exciting things in store at Pretty Little Studio...I know I'll be watching!

FINE PRINT: If you don't have an email in your blogger profile (or you aren't sure what I'm talking about), please be sure to leave your email addy with your comment. After 5 p.m. Central on February 13, I will randomly draw a winner from the comments  on this post and list the winner's name/ comment at the bottom of this post. I will also contact the winner by email if possible. This giveaway is open to international entries. Thanks for reading! 

Hot and cold

It doesn't feel anything like winter here. Not that I'm complaining. I'd gladly take this over the ice/sleet/snow mix we had around this time last year.


Ironically, after taking bunches of snow photos during that big, nasty storm, the last thing I wanted to do was scrapbook them. I was sick of looking at snow and ice and ready to see some green grass and spring flowers.

In the spirit of catching up, I dug out (no pun intended) last year's icy, snowy photos for a couple of pages about what winter really should feel like.

I used Little Yellow Bicycle's Winter Twig collection, and I mixed in some die-cuts -- doilies and scalloped circles to play off of the snowflakes in the collection. I don't do a lot of black and white photos lately, but I liked the way the snowflakes really stood out in Cecily's hair in the black and white version. 

This is a page I did for the Pretty Little Studio blog, using the new Winter Wonderland collection. I don't use a lot of pale colors, but I have to say that the soft pale shades in this line have made me rethink my need for color. I love the way this turned out!

The layout was for an inspiration challenge, and the photo I was working from was gray-striped straws. I translated the straws into the diagonal strips of paper to form the background, and I mixed in a few strips of washi tape.

On top of the doily tag is an Epiphany Crafts Scalloped Circle, topped with a button. I think that Scalloped Circle has become my favorite Epiphany Crafts tool. It's a great shape!

Thanks for stopping by!

Quiet time

With the exception of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, my house was pretty quiet for most of the holidays. My mother graciously offered to take the girls to visit my aunt's house for a few days before Christmas and for a week of camping in South Texas after Christmas.

I have a love/hate relationship with the girls being away. Of course, I love how quiet the house is and how clean it looks without toys strewn every which way. But I also hate how quiet it is. It's too quiet. And it's kind of sad walking by the toy bin, seeing all the things so neatly put away and not being played with.

So what do I do with all my free, quiet time? I scrapbook. Photos of the girls. Naturally.

I wanted to do something fun with these photos from 4th of July, and when I saw the "it's a banner day" sticker in this collection from Lily Bee, I knew immediately what I wanted to make.

And of course it has a banner -- I'm so predictable.


More fun summer photos that I hadn't put to good use...this layout was up on the Pretty Little Studio blog earlier in the week. I used paper and vintage tags from the Antique Store collection. The patchwork pattern reminds me of one of my Granny's handmade quilts.

I hid the journaling inside this Maya Road envelope on one of the Restaurant Receipts from Pretty Little Studio. I think it's cool that these receipts were modeled after original antique receipts from the 1930's and 1960's.

Have a great weekend, and be sure to stop by on Monday, when I'll be sharing a fun announcement!

Wrapping It Up

Just a few more days until the presents under the tree transform into a mound of shredded wrapping paper, busy kiddos and happy faces. It's always right about this time each year when I'm feeling pretty confident about having all the gifts bought and wrapped, that I realize: the stockings are completely empty. Oops.

I whipped up this stocking stuffer idea for the Epiphany Crafts blog. It's quick. It's easy. And hopefully, it will bring a smile to my mom's face when she finds it in her stocking.

You can use them as paperclips or bookmarks. Coupons, stacks of bills, homework assignments...wherever you need a clip or placeholder. 

Full instructions and supply lists are on the Epiphany Crafts blog, but if you don't have the Epiphany tools and charms, feel free to be creative with bottlecaps, scrabble tiles or whatever else you might have on hand to top your clips.

I also made a simple foldover card with a wrap to package the clips (for easy stocking-stuffing). 

One last bit of holiday cheer...a card I made for the Pretty Little Studio blog's Outside the Box challenge this week. I used papers from the Scaredy Cat collection. (Who says you can't use Halloween papers for Christmas cards? Certainly not me!)

I hope you have a very merry Christmas, happy Hannukah and joyous holiday with your loved ones!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

On my blog and in my craft room. The crafty projects are piling up...and I haven't even started the cards yet. (Uh oh)

Before the month flies by and everyone has O.D.'d on red and green, I figured I'd share a few of the projects I've been working on for the past few weeks.

This is a gift tag that I'm planning to attach to a wine bottle for a hostess gift. I used a Pretty Little Studio shipping tag and added some of the vintage embellishments, like a bingo card, train calendar tag, ornament journaling tag and small vintage tag. I finished it with a sentiment stamp from PaperTrey Ink.

A new ornament for my tree, using a Maya Road mega bottlecap and pleated ribbon, paired with paper, vintage tag and bingo card from Pretty Little Studio. 

And finally, a layout. (Yes, I still do layouts.) This one features the Imaginisce Santa's Little Helper line, with some iRock details on the ornaments and package.

The photos are from last Christmas -- by the time I got them uploaded, I was out of the Christmas mood and wanted to scrap other stuff. Now I'm happy I waited. It reminded me of how much fun Christmas morning is and I'm really looking forward to experiencing it again in a few more weeks. (Wow...really? A few more weeks?) 

I really need to get going on those cards.

A Holiday Blog Hop (Giveaway Closed)

Jingle bells...jingle bells...it's offically December and what better time for a holiday blog hop! The Pretty Little Studio team has been busy creating some beautiful projects to ring in the season, and I'm excited to share in the fun!


So onto my project...a December (gulp!) Daily.

I said I would never do it. You see, I'm a realist. I know myself. A few years ago, there is not even a tiny smidge of a chance that I'd take at least one photo a day in December. But things happen.

Like the invention of the iPhone, which means I have a camera with me at all times. And then there are apps like Instagram, which makes my photos a nice square size and adds all kinds of cool actions right on my phone, and PostalPix, which delivers reasonably-priced 4x4 prints from my phone straight to my mailbox.

But the thing that really convinced me? These awesome pre-made December Daily journaling cards from Pretty Little Studio.

This year, a December Daily seemed -- dare I say it? Do-able.

I spent most of my free time over Thanksgiving putting together the pages, and I learned two things:
(1) It's hard to scrap without photos. (Ok, I already knew that one.)
and
(2) When you're doing 25 pages, you really need to KEEP IT SIMPLE.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn #2 until somewhere around page 10.

But I still finished it!

I'm not going to bore you with every page, but I'll share a few of my favorites...

All the papers, tags, flashcards, journaling spots, garland flags, etc. are from Pretty Little Studio -- mostly from the Jingle Bells collection.

I adhered pattern papers back to back and mixed them with Kraft and red cardstock pages. Because there are so many pages, I didn't want to add thickness with chipboard.

Here's where I figured out the "keep it simple" mindset...

Oh yes, it's going much faster now...

I adhered the December Daily journaling pages back to back and bound them into the book with my Bind-It-All. You could also use binder rings if you don't have a binding machine.

I tried to lay out each page to accommodate a 4x4 photo, so (hopefully!) I can just paste in the prints from PostalPix when they arrive.

To mix it up a little, I threw in some half-pages and a transparency page. I'm kind of loving the trend of different-sized pages lately.

Here's where I decided to get a little tricky. I knew there would be a lot happening on Dec. 24 -- like baking cookies for Santa, wearing Christmas jammies, etc. So I gave myself a little extra room on this day by adding an envelope.

I figure I can tuck a photo or some extra journaling inside.

And that's it. My very first December Daily. Now I have to remember to take the photos!

Ready for some more Christmas inspiration from the Pretty Little Studio girls?

Visit each of these blogs for additional holiday projects, and be sure to leave a comment at each stop. Each of us will be giving away a $10 gift certificate to the PLS store, and there will be a grand prize $25 gift certificate awarded to one lucky person who comments on the PLS blog!

Leanne Allinson 

Irit Shalom 

Elise Lindsey 

Kate Codina 

Robyn Schaub <-- YOU ARE HERE!
Jen Chapin
Katie Cavanaugh 

Karen Lim 

Laura Achilles 

Celine LeGuay
Mary Jo Johnston 

PLS Blog

Happy hopping, and happy holidays!

Chasing butterflies

There's a new sketch challenge on the Pretty Little Studio blog this week. All you have to do is create a layout based on their sketch by next Monday and link it up to the Pretty Little Studio blog post.

Here's the layout I created:

I discovered that this wavy line paper makes a great journaling block. I added Half Circle Number Tags as my bullet points.

Hope you'll play along for your chance to win a $5 coupon to the Pretty Little Studio store!

Traditions

It's nice to see that I still have some blog followers after my little hiatus. Thanks for sticking around!
 
So in a few short weeks, Thanksgiving will be here. And for us, that means a trip north to our lake cabin. (Or as Avery calls it, "The Cabinet.") My in-laws come and stay there with us, and my Dad and stepmom live on the adjoining lot, so it's the one time of year that almost every member of our family -- both my side and Adam's side -- are all together in the same house.

I think this year will be our sixth Thanksgiving at the cabin, and that's significant because, for both of my kids (ages 7 and 5), every Thanksgiving they can remember was spent there.

Of course, there are other traditions that happen during our annual trip to the cabin -- traditions within the tradition -- and I finally got around to documenting one of them.

I used patterned paper and garland flags from the Apple Cider collection from Pretty Little Studio to add some color. (The only downside of visiting the cabin so late in the year is that we miss the leaves changing color. But on the upside, it also means it's usually cool enough to build a fire in the woodburning stove!)

Have you noticed that I use bakers twine on everything lately? I'm in love with the stuff. I can't help it.