A CSNstore Giveaway + a sketch challenge

Hey everyone,
You are not going to want to miss a minute in February.  I am having 3 giveaways. Yes, you heard it correctly!  The first one starts TODAY!!

My hubby and I were looking for some furniture for our basement.  We have a bar that came  with the house, but we do not have any bar stools.  So we started to look a various online stores and we came across the CSN stores that are based in Boston and Canada.  There were sooo many adjustable bar stools that we were in heaven!  Plus their prices were awesome!  CSN is really your one stop shopping place because they really offer tons of merchandise from kitchen to bath to furniture to toys,  and they have a couple of different stores.  Well It just so happens that I was approached by Sean  at CSNstores to give one of my lucky followers a $40 gift certificate.  Yes, that's right a $40!  There are so many things that you could get! So let's get started!!! 

CSNstores Giveaway--How to enter!

1.  You must sign up to follow my blog, and then leave a comment saying so.

Ways to earn extra entries:

1.  Spread the word about the giveaway.  Post it on your blog or facebook page and then link it back here in the comments.

2. Go to CSNstores and find something that you would love to buy with your gift certificate and then leave a comment with the link to the item!

Each time you leave a comment you get another chance to win!!!!!

You have till February 6th to enter the giveaway!  What are you waiting for--let's get going!!

Now on to my layout.

Here is the sketch from The Scrappiest.  Sketch 99

And here is my take on it.

I love to dress the boys in matching pajamas during the holidays.  I think they look so cute together.  Here is the layout Christmas Pjs.

 I just love the little snow globe with Mr and Mrs Claus.  just way too cute!  I used the on the edge die from tim holtz--love love that new die!

 I scattered some random buttons around.  I love buttons.

Supplies

cardstock:  bazzill and bobunny

pattern  paper & embellishments:  Imaginisce

buttons:  paper trey ink and basic grey

tools:  on the edge die tim holtz

Well I hope everyone signs up for the CSNstores $40 giveaway!!  I will be back tomorrow with another layout.

Thanks for stopping by!

GYSO#4

Happy Friday!

Well we made it through another week!!!  I am going to a crop tonight.  I am so excited.  My one girl friend that I always go with can't make it so I am going by myself.  There are some great ladies who go so I will have plenty of people to talk to!  I have a couple of layouts I want to work on plus I want to finish my Valentine's day cards. I also have an idea for a new card set that I want to start on.  Lots and lots to do!

Well my layout for today is this weeks sketch from Get Your Sketch On.  Here is the sketch #4

Here is my take on the sketch:

I used Echo Park paper for this layout.  I like to take a picture of the tree each year, and I thought this would be the perfect layout for it.  I changed it up just a bit.  I didn't want to use the circle because I had this great tag from EP that actually had the title that I wanted to use "oh Christmas Tree". 

 I really like the strip of paper with the ornaments.  I thought that was  just a perfect choice.

 You know I love buttons so I added 3 in opposite corners.

 I also added the ticket in the corner and put the date on it.  I love those little tags!

Supplies

cardstock-bazzill

pattern paper--echo park

buttons--paper trey ink, basic grey

.

Other than the crop tonight I don't have any plans this weekend--hoorray!!!  I think we are just hanging out.  I need one of those again.  Just really tired.  I want to just curl up on the couch and watch a movie--well I can dream can't I.

Well thanks for stopping by! I will be back on Monday with a new layout!  Plus I will announce my first giveaway! You won't want to miss a minute!

Have a great weekend!

Love-Little Yellow Bicycle Challenge

Happy Thursday Everyone!

Well usually on Thursday I show you what I am working on but guess what?  There is NOTHING on my desk right now.  Tomorrow I am going to a crop and I just made a couple of kits. My bag is packed and I am ready to go. 

You know how I love challenges and Little Yellow Bicycle and Liz Qualman had a new challenge.  Liz makes awesome sketches and this is the new one that she came up with.  I really liked the sketch and knew that I had to use it.  If you remember a little back I made the top 5 for the last Liz Qualman and Little Yellow Bicycle for the last challenge. (click here to see the sketch and the layout.)  For coming in the top 5 I received a prize package of of the new line Cupcake Love.  This is such an adorable line. With boys I have this hang up that I can't use pink, but I thought with Michael's baby pictures it would work. 

So here is my take on the sketch.
Love
I love these pictures of Michael right after his bath.  I just want to squeeze him up!  I switched things up a bit for the layout just to add my touch and I tried to bring in the brown and the blue.

First the green cardstock had a pink trim and I cut that off and matted it on the brown (I love the brown and green colo combo). To add some blue in their I matted the 4x6 picture and the journaling tag with the baby blue cardstock.

My title was from their chipboard shapes and my little message was from their strips of messages. They are cardstock stickers.

I used the banner cardstock stickers--love that there was a blue pennent to go along with my theme.

I added a cupcake that also had the blue icing top.

I love that chipboard heart that says cutie pie because that is what my little one is!!!  For the bottom scalloped piece that is from their border collection and it is actually a fabric.  I loved it.  It had a sticky backing.  It was perfect for this!!

cardstock: bazzill

everything else--Little Yellow Bicycle.

I hope everyone has a fantastic day.  Thanks for stopping by!

Friends Card

Hello Everyone,

This is just a quick post today!  Lots to do!
Well I am bringing you over the next 4 weeks my Valentine's Day Cards.  I love to make cards for Valentine's Day. 

Sassy Lil Sketches was having their 14th card sketch and I loved this design and it was perfect for my scrap I had from another project.  Here is the sketch:

Here is my take on the sketch. I used my prize winnings from Little Yellow Bicycle for this one.  Around the edges of the green and blue layer I used my white pen to create a faux stitching effect.  I love the chipboard cupcake!.

I also like to decorate the inside of the cards and so I put a special little message on the inside.  I used the phrase cardstock stickers. I also created the faux stitching with my white pen again.  I then attached the little chipboard circle flower.

Supplies

cardstock:  bazzill

everything else:  little yellow bicycle

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you have a great day.  I will be back tomorrow with a new layout.

Sketchy Thursdays on Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday everyone,

I hope your week is going well.  I am trying to get back into the swing of things.  I pulled a muscle in my back so I am very sore and very slow moving.  I hate it when I do this.  It happened while I was cleaning this weekend--that should show me not to clean. Right?

On to my  sketch challenge.

Sketchy Thursdays challenge for this week was an awesome sketch.  I just knew I had to do Michael on Christmas Eve.  Last week I did Jack so this time I wanted to work on Michael.  Michael had such a blast this year.  When he saw the presents under the tree he got so excited.  When he was opening his present he was just so happy.  I love to see a smile on his face.  When he finally had the wrapping off enough to see what it was he screamed  "ELMO!".  Michael LOVES Elmo.  I just  loved it.

Here is the sketch:

And here is my take on the sketch.

I used the Imaginisce Christmas Cottage line for this one. It shows Michael opening his one present on Christmas Eve. 

 Here is a close up of the journaling.  I simply punched a circle on the pattern paper and put the faux stitching around the edges.   I also used on of their chipboard shapes.

 Here I used the nestabilities die cuts and paper trey ink stamps and then put in some doodlebug rub ons to spell joy!

Here you can see the rub on stitching.    I used the gold stitching.  I also cut the tree from a piece of pattern paper.

 Supplies

cardstock:  bazzill and neenah solar white

pattern paper:  imaginisce

stamps:  paper trey ink

rubons:  doodlebug and dcwv

Well I hope everyone has a great day.   I will be back tomorrow with my first of my Valentine's day cards.  I will be bringing you 4 weeks of cards. 

Also you will want to make sure you are following me in the month of February.  I will be having 3 separate giveaways!!!! 

Thanks for stopping by and  I hope you have a great day!

Altered Challenge by Imaginisce

Hey everyone--Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I know I did.  I was able to relax and read.  I am reading a great book right now called Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.  I love his books and this one is outstanding.  Plus I had to clean the house and just do odd n ends stuff.  I can never get all the stuff done when I get absorbed in my scrap room so the scrap room AND the computer were pretty much off limits. 

Imaginisce's monthly challenge was to alter something using their products.  Well I am not one to alter things all the time so this was a little difficult for me.  I bought these frames at Michael's ages ago. I had the intention to alter them but I just never got around to it. 

The Dino Roar paper was perfect for my project.  I plan on making over Michael's bedroom with a dinosaur theme.  Michael LOVES dinos so this was perfect to put this picture frame in his bedroom.

First, I painted the  edges of the wooden frame with brown paint, and then i cut the paper to the size of the frame.  I adhered the paper and then I needed to jazz it up a bit.

Here you can see two of the stamps I used.  It was a snag em stamp that I stamped and colored with copic markers. Once the markers dried I attached them and added a layer of glossy accents to give them that epoxy look.

At the bottom of the frame I attached part of their border strip.  I liked  the volcano and the other dinos. 

supplies:

paint

glossy accents

frame

imaginisce dino roar

I hope everyone has a fantastic day today.  I am hoping we have a normal week of weather. I am so tired of the snow and the snow days.  I need to get back in the grove again.   plus the more days we are off the longer we have to go in June and boy oh boy I do not want to go to school in the middle of June.

I will be back tomorrow with a new layout.  Thanks for stopping by! 

Yet Another Challenge + some good news!

OK,
I lied.  I said I wouldn't be back until Monday, but we had a snow day on Friday, and I thought I would enter another challenge.  I didn't have time before but with the snow I was able to squeak in one more.  Plus this was a really fun one!

Sketchy Thursdays Challenge

Here is the awesome sketch!

You also had to include the following things:

• Use a heart


• Use red and/or pink

• And journaling somewhere on the page

And here is my take on the sketch.

Those Eyes

Michael had the biggest blue eyes when he was a baby, and I thought this paper was just perfect to show them off.   I love this line of Echo Park (but has there been a line that I haven't liked?).

 Here is my journaling.

 Here is my red.

 And here are my hearts!

Supplies
cardstock:  bazzill
pattern paper: echo park
brads:  making memories
punches:  tim holtz on the edge dies

So this was just a quick post. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.  I am going to relax --and believe it or not--NO SCRAPPING for me this weekend.  Need a quick little break to get my juices flowing again.  Plus I want to catch up on my reading and maybe watch a movie.

I had some great news today I made the Top 5 for my sketch here.  I was so excited! and I made 3rd place for the Little Yellow Bicycle Savor Challenge.  Here it is on my blog and here it is on Little Yellow Bicycle Blog.  I can't believe it!  What an awesome day!  I just had to share it with you!

Thanks for stopping by and I will be back on Monday!

GYSO #3

hey everyone,
well it is a very cold snowy day here in Ohio.  Brrrrrrr!!! All I want to do is curl up by the fire.  As I am writing this I am waiting to hear if we have a snow day.  We have already used up our allotted days so we have to make up days this summer.  YUCK!  I am so ready for Spring.

Get Your Sketch On had another great sketch to work with this week.  I am getting so much done with these awesome sketches.  Here is the new sketch:

And here is my take on the sketch.

Christmas Eve 2010
For this layout I used the Imaginisce Christmas Cottage line.  It is so cute.  I love all the pattern papers and embellishments.  I used my Silhouette to create the large die cut.  I am just loving how simple it is to create these die cut images.  I also like how it  made the cut out border around it!  I have to admit that I used a bunch of different tools on this layout.  It was so fun!

Here you can see my border strip.  I used my fiskars border scallop punch, and I cut out the die cut image of the 24 from a piece of pattern paper to make an embellishment. I also punched a circle out and then made it into a journaling tag. 

Here you can see a close look of the die cut tag with the cut out border. Too cute!

Here I added a small strip of a scalloped border.  I used my Tim Holtz On the Edge Die.  I so love this die. It is just fun. I then layered it with on of the tags.  The tag says -- Santa Claus is Coming Tonight & Merry & Bright.  It is hard to see from the picture.  There was not lighting in the house.

It has been a tradition in my family that on Christmas Eve we would open ONE present from my parents.  I have passed this tradition down to my kids.  This year Jack wanted slippers and I found a pair of Transformer Slippers.  He loved them.

I have to say that this Christmas I took horrible pictures.  Nothing really turned out.  I was pretty bummed about it.  So I will still scrap them, but I am not happy with them.  Oh well what can I do?

Supplies

Pattern Paper:  Imaginisce

Embellishments:  Imaginisce

Cardstock:  Neenah Solar White Cardstock

Well I am taking the weekend off to relax a bit.  I will be back on Monday with an altered item.  I know you are probably thinking WHAT?  I hardly ever do stuff like that but this one was calling me.  Come and check it out on Monday. 

Thanks for stopping by!

What I am Working on Thursday

Good Morning Everyone,

I am very chipper this morning.  The "White Death" is coming today.  We are expected to get a pretty good snow storm today and into the day of Friday.  It will be fun and exciting to drive home from work today, but what can you do?

Over the weekend I got a new DT kit from Simply Scrapbooks, my local scrap store, and it is from Pebbles. The line is called Cats & Dogs.  It is really cute paper if you have a pet.   For my work here we must submit 2 page layouts.  Again first I design my sketch.  Here is is.

And then I plot it out.  I have several shapes that I use a lot of the help me plot out the page.  I use a lot of 10 X10 squares in the center of my layouts, and then I have several scraps in the shape of 4x6 and 4x4 squares so that they "resemble" photos.  I don't like to actually CUT my paper until I am definitely sure of the design.

When we get a kit we must use all the paper in the kit on the layout.  Here are the pictures of the 4 papers.  They are all double sided too.  I think they are so cute and the colors are awesome.  I even like the design on the B sides because they are not pet oriented.

Here are the felt embellishments that I need to use on the layout.  They are so cute with little buttons and dog bones etc.

I think the page is going to come out really cute.  I have to go take pictures now of my dog Bailey ( who currently lives with my mom) and Jack.  Hopefully they will cooperate.  I don't know which will be worse-posing my dog or my son or both.  We shall see. 

I hope everyone is having a great day!  I will be back tomorrow with a new layout.  Thanks so much for stopping by!



Wednesday's Card

Happy Wednesday,
This week is flying by!  I love it.  I have been trying to get a little of scrappin' done each day and so far I am making some progress on some projects.  I have a couple going on right now (a layout, several different cards etc). 

I made a new very simple very easy card set for a quick hostess gift.  My friend loves homemade things but doesn't make anything--not the craft type--which is OK-not everyone is you know what I mean.    I simply stamped the stamp in coordinating ink to match the card color.  I am in love with the tone on tone look.  I then stamped the greeting in black ink and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.   I really like how they turned out!  I am going to do a bunch of these to give as gifts this year and for next Christmas.  I know I am crazy but i am already thinking of little gifts for people for Christmas. 

Everything is by Hero Arts!!! Love this company for my stamping!!

Well this is again a short post.  I hope everyone has a great day and I will be back tomorrow with a new layout.  I am wrapping up all my fall layouts.  Just a couple more to post and then I can finally move on to winter!!

Thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow!

Hay Ride

Happy Tuesday,

Hope everyone is having a good day today.  Once again swamped at work with the start of the 3rd quarter.  Boy, where has the time gone that we are 1/2 way done with the school year--WOW!

This is just a quick post today--

Hay Ride

This layout again uses the Jillibean Soup collection.  I really fell in love with their paper.  It is just so fun!  This fall we went on a hay ride  and the boys had fun at first but then it turned out to be very bumpy and  a bit scary.  Michael held on to me for dear life. 

I love that I was able to get 4 pictures in the layout!

I love the little journaling spots.  They are so fun!  I really love all the colors of this collection.

Supplies
cardstock:  bazzill
pattern paper:  jilliibean soup

Well I am off!  Thanks for stopping by today and I will be back tomorrow with my Card of the Week.  Thanks again!

Finally talking

Happy Monday!

Well how was every one's weekend?  Mine was awesome!  I worked hard on Saturday and got all my errands and work out of the way so that I was free and clear the rest of the weekend.  On Saturday we took the boys over to my mom's house in the evening and they ate dinner with her so that hubby and I could grab a quick bite out just the two of us!  We had a great time.  We went to a little local place and split a  pizza.  It was nice and fun.  Just what we needed.  On Sunday we hung out for most of the day.  We had a break through moment with Jack ( my 5 year old)--he went down the basement by himself to play his Star Wars Lego Wii game.  Usually he is scared and doesn't want to go down by himself, but today hubby and I were on the couch by the fire and we just didn't want to go downstairs so Jack actually said he would go by himself.  We both cheered!!!  Since our move a little over a year ago Jack has been extremely attached and doesn't like to be alone so this was a MAJOR break through!!!!  I also got some scrappin' in.  I finished my DT work for Simply Scrapbooks, and I was able to finish another layout. 

I am off today from school (Martin Luther King Day).  I have some errands to run in the morning and then I am meeting my mom for lunch.  Too fun!!!  I also plan on getting a jump on some cards I need to make.  Should be a wonderful day!!! (cross fingers)

On to my layout----

Finally Talking

2Peas was having a challenge last month to use Jillibean Soup paper.  You could make any layout or card but you just had to use their paper.  Believe or not I had never used their paper before so this was new to me.  I went to my lss and found this line and I fell in instant love with them.  I was so glad that I entered their challenge.

Michael was very late to talk and he was 23 months and still not really talking.  Finally just one day he started talking.  We were so happy.  We laugh because I guess he just liked the words associated with Halloween.  He went crazy for words like pumpkin, bat, ghost and spider.  I guess he just really loved all the Halloween books I was reading to him. 

Here is the list of your top words in October.

I love all the matching journaling tags and spots.  It makes it so easy to put together a great page!

Supplies

Cardstock:  bazzill

Pattern Paper and embellishments:  Jillibean Soup

I hope everyone has a great day and I truly appreciate all of you for stopping by!  Thanks for all of you who leave me blog love.  I so look forward to reading all your kind comments!