Card Kits

I know Christmas is over but I just came across this picture and I wanted to share what I made for my sister-in-law. She is a card maker but I'm not sure how much she likes to get out supplies and actually spend 30 minutes to an hour creating a card (like I do)! So I created card kits that require some assembly!

Each card kit had: cardstock bases, patterned paper, and an embellished, stamped scallop. Dimensionals were even applied to the scallops so all she has to do it match up the colors that she wants, stick the patterned paper down, and adhere the scallops! I tried to do a variety of card types because I know there are a lot of occasions throughout the year. And some could even be masculine!

I created a sample of each card set so that she could see what they should look like. But I didn't get a very good picture of those! I was too excited and packaged them all up way too fast!

Do you have someone in your life that would love this as a gift?! You should try it!

Sale-a-Bration

Well it's that time of year again! To learn more about Stampin Up's great promotion click here.

This year one of the FREE Sale-a-Bration rewards is a CD full of digital papers, ribbons, embellishments, and stamps! This was first on my list because I love to create using My Digital Studio!

I sat down today and made this card quickly to showcase a few of the free rewards you could be earning!

New items used: So Happy for You stamp set, Ice Cream Parlor Paper and Accents pack, and Ice Cream Parlor Ribbon and Button Pack. So many fun items to earn for free now through March 31st!

Finished 2011 Calendar

Well I finally finished it. I'm posting the full calendar because I changed a few things on all of the pages before I sent it off to be printed. I think it's really silly that I left January 2011 in there (since I sent it to the printer around 11pm on January 31st! Ha ha!)! But I have a plan to get it done on this this next year!

I plan to complete it throughout the year as the months are completed. So I need to get on creating for January already!

Anyway...here is the calendar. Hope you enjoy!

Cover Page: One thing I love about My Digital Studio is that you have unlimited use to old colors that you can no longer purchase from SU! This page is Melon Mambo (current color) and Kiwi Kiss! Remember that old In Color?!

I also love the ribbon bows! I can never get mine to look that perfect but I don't have to worry about it with MDS! It's always perfect!

January: I love the stamped images that SU provides with MDS. The texture in the background is a stamp! You can change it to whatever color you want, make it lighter, darker...anything! I think it just adds to the depth of the page!

February: Can you believe my baby is going to be 2 this month! WOW! Just 15 more days and we will be having her Abby Cadabby birthday party!

This page is pretty plain...just some DSP, buttons, and a ribbon with a bow!

These pictures were taken at Brooke's 1st birthday party by Jessica Strom. If you are in the Kansas City area, she would love to photograph your child's birthday too!

March: This month marks our 7th anniversary! WOW! I love this picture of us both!

When creating a page in MDS it is VERY EASY to stamp on your pictures! Not so in real life! This stamp on our picture comes from the stamp set, Define Your Life. Love the little definitions for picture embellishments!

April: One of the other great things about MDS is that you get all of the punches and you can size them to any size that you want and make them any color you want without ruining a full piece of cardstock! WOO HOO!

Isn't my little girl cute? These are pictures of her presents from Easter. My family went a little crazy this year!

May: This page was changed a little from it's original form that you can see here. I just felt like the heart got a little lost on the first page. But you can see it now!

June: MDS gives you access to a bunch of kits, just like Simply Scrappin Kits in the catalog. You get papers, border stickers, stamp sets picked out to get with them, and other stickers for embellishing! They all coordinate!

And you can even stitch and staple without the tools needed to do so!

July: With MDS you get a lot of embellishments too! I have glimmer brads, rhinestone jewels, and regular brads all on this page! So fun!

August: Pictures again by Jessica Strom! Isn't she great!

September: Using an old color again. Who misses Really Rust? It goes really well with More Mustard for a great fall look!

Pictures by Jessica Strom again!

October: Another thing I like about MDS is that you can easily copy a layout to use in another project. This is a page that I made for my Mom's 2011 calendar (she gets one every year for Christmas). I love it so much I copied and pasted in my calendar too! So EASY and no extra supplies needed!

November: I love all of the DSP that you get with MDS...and you never run out of it! There's always more! And whenever SU comes out with a great new paper that sells well, they often offer it to MDS users for approx. $4! Love it!

December: You also get the chance to use old papers and kits still when you have MDS. This kit was from a few Christmas' ago but I just LOVE it!

If you are interested in purchasing MDS, you can find it here on my website! The cost is $79.95 USD. With the Sale-a-Bration Special going on right now you would also get to choose a free item! And there just happens to be a MDS CD with all of the SAB stamp sets and papers that you can choose! (That was the first one I got!) Please let me know if you have any questions: demokimsu@yahoo.com.

18 Months

Here is my layout to showcase Brooke at 18 months old! She was so stinkin cute during this mini photo shoot!

All of the cute papers came from American Crafts. I just love their papers!

I also loved matting all of the pictures in a different color to match the designer paper! This is what scraps are great for!

You can read the journaling in this blog post on our family blog.

17 Months

Wow! It's been a long time since I've blogged. SORRY!

But I have a cute layout for you all today and hopefully that makes up for it a little bit...maybe!

This layout is to highlight all Brooke was doing at 17 Months. You can read all of the journaling if you click on the picture to enlarge it or you can go here to read my blog post on my family blog.

The things I love most about this layout are the tickets and the bingo number!

The little birdie paper from American Crafts is another favorite of mine! So cute!

Coming back tomorrow to catch you up on her 18 Month layout!

Goal #4...

Create Something for Myself weekly and blog about it! If you haven't checked out all of my goals for the year, you can find them here.

This project is from last week and this week. I am creating a calendar for our family using My Digital Studio. I love how it's turning out so far but I still have 7 months to go!

I am making most of the layouts pretty simple! I'm just trying to get it done and printed so I can hang January on my fridge for at least a few days!

When I create my calendar I use pictures from 2010. So this year I decided to challenge myself to create my 2012 calendar, one month at a time DURING the year. This means that once January 2011 is over, I can start working on my January 2012 calendar page!

Won't it be nice to just hit print after I add Christmas pictures in after Christmas 2011!

Hope you all are enjoying the calendar pages I have so far!

I will post the remaining months as I get them finished.

Bleaching Backgrounds

This month in my stamp club we focused on bleaching. I have never done this before...probably because I don't have any in the house and I'm afraid of ruining all of my clothes! Ha ha! But I got over that to learn a little and create a few projects for my club members.

This is the card we made using bleaching. I think the best way to use this technique is to make a background. That way it doesn't have to be perfect and it still looks awesome!

Each cardstock color will turn out a little different when bleach is added to it. Old Olive gives off a yellow color, kinda like Daffodil Delight.

I just love the texture that bleach adds to a background. Don't you??

Valentine Defined

Well Christmas is officially over. The decorations are down (even if it only happened 2 days ago), the presents are being played with, and the food has helped me to gain a few pounds. What a great Christmas it was!

Now that Christmas is over it time to start talking about Valentine's Day! It's the second biggest holiday for card making and I love it! Stampin Up has a lot of new goodies that just came out in the Occsasions Mini that you will just LOVE!

This is a card that I created for a demonstrator swap that I will be attending tomorrow morning! I'm so excited to go and can't wait to show you all of the other creations I will be making. But back to this card...

It features a ton of new products like:

*Valentine Defined Stamp Set (WM #121941 $26.95, CM #123057 $18.95)

*Love Impressions DSP (#121780 $11.95)

*Glimmer Paper: Real Red (#121790 $3.95)

*Seam Binding: Crumb Cake (#122332 $6.95)

WOW! Don't you just love all of the new stuff??!!!

I love all of the different textures that this card shows off. I started with just the DSP and just kept adding layers upon layers until I was satisfied! I hope you all like it!

Along with the new Valentine Defined stamp set I also used the I {Heart} Hearts stamp set. This has been a favorite since last year! I think this woodgrain heart if my favorite of them all!

What are you doing to get ready for Valentine's Day??

2011 Goals

Here they are...without any further delay, I sat down tonight and I figured out my 10 goals. My problem this year was that I had too many floating around in my head. And you will see the results of that below. I wanted to stick to 10 main goals but there are a few extra that I hope to stick to also. Here we go...

Goal #1: Move More, Eat Less!

What a concept! Ha ha! If you don't already read Cathy Zielske's blog, you should hop on over there and check her out. She adopted this concept at the beginning of 2010 and she looks amazing now!

Last year I put a number on my weight loss goal and I didn't want to do that again this year. I will just say that I want to end 2011 at least one pound lower than 178 and I want to feel good about myself and my body!

Goal #2: Read 16 Books.

Last year my goal was to read 12 books. I surpassed that with 15 and a half books. Basically, I read my 12 books and then I just kind of relaxed and got lazy, watched more TV, you know! So this year I'm challenging myself even more!

Goal #3: Go on two dates per month with my handsome hubby.
One date where we go out and one date where we stay home. Obviously I want to get out the house with Sam and be away from parenting duties at least once a month. But on top of that I want to be intentional about enjoying our home together after our little one is fast asleep.

We may play games, watch movies, fix fancy dinners or desserts...who knows?!

Goal #4: Create something weekly that is just for me! (And blog about it!)
I was to make good use of my craft room! So I will create something (a card or scrapbook page) that is not to be used in a class or for an event. It will be just for me (and you because you read my blog)!

Goal #5: Organize the crawl space.
Yes, it's back on the list this year. I hope to get it done!

Goal #6: Finishing journaling in ALL scrapbooks...get caught up!
I have way too many pages that have been made without journaling being applied. So I will have a journaling day, or 20, this year!

Goal #7: Write a Will.
This one made the list again this year. We didn't get it done last year so hopefully we will this year.

Goal #8: Floss teeth at least 5 times each week!
I know my dentist will be happy about this one! I need to get in the habit and what better way than to set a goal and stick to it! I picked 5 times a week so I can take the weekends off if I want to.

Goal #9: Try 2 new recipes a month (and blog about them).
I got this idea from my friend Natasha. She is doing one new recipe a week. I scaled it back a bit so I'm not overwhelmed by the task!

Goal #10: Organize something once a week.
Notice that this goal is very generic. The word something could mean a lot of things! One room, one drawer, one box of clutter...I just want to be intentional about organizing this year! You will see why later this week! The hint is Ali Edwards.

And now we get to the part that I was talking about in the first paragraph of this post. The goals that I want to have but didn't make the top 10.

Goal #11: Rely more on God's Word to get me through the day.
The only reason that this goal isn't in the top 10 is because it's not really a measureable goal. I can't take a picture and call it complete. But this is probably the most important goal on my list. I want to be in the word daily, listening to what God has to tell me. When I have doubts and questions I want to seek out answers from God and rely more on Him to calm my nerves and fulfill all of my needs as he has promised! I'm excited to see where 2011 takes me spiritually!

Goal #12: Drink Less Sonic.

Yes, I actually wrote that one down! Can you believe it?? I would have a Sonic Route 44 Diet Dr. Pepper with real cherry syrup every day if I could. But let's face it, it's not really good for me and that would cost a lot of money! So I will reserve Sonic drinks to scrapbooking nights and special occasions only...unless I have a giftcard to use...I can use that whenever I want!

Goal #13: Drink at least 72 oz. of water per day

I can do this and I will be healthier because of it!

Project Life Album

It's DONE! Yes, my 2010 album is done and I'm off to capturing life in 2011! Pictures of one layout per month are coming soon! But first, I must tell you more about Becky Higgins' Project Life Kit!

This is a great tool to use in documenting your Project 365. The process is so simple and it's SO CUTE! There are two options this year (one sold out yesterday and the other is about to sell out...but they will be back)! I can't wait to get my hands on my Turquoise Edition! I got it as a gift for Christmas but it just arrived to my parent's house yesterday! I hear they may come by tomorrow evening!

I was also thinking about getting the Amber Edition as a way to easily scrapbook all of my high school memories! I think it would work perfectly! There are tons of pockets per page, lots of journaling cards to write all my memories on, and it's SO CUTE!

Stay tuned the rest of the album to be showcased and also my 2011 goals! Looking forward to sharing with you all!