Gearing up for Valentine's Day.

I can be a prickly person to be around sometimes, so I try to do little things to remind my friends and family that I appreciate them. Valentine's Day isn't a huge deal around here, but I do like hand written notes.  Last year, I went a little old school...literally.  When I was in elementary school, we always made envelopes to hang from our desks on Valentine's Day to collect all the cards that the other kids brought.  At the beginning of February, I made mini versions of those envelopes for each member of our family and hung them by the door with a pen and handmade blank cards for us to  write notes on and put in each others' envelopes as the mood struck us throughout the month.  Of course, I don't have any pictures of the ones I made last year, but I'm planning on making this a tradition.
The first thing I usually do when I sit down to do paper crafting is pull together the supplies that I think I'm going to use for the project.  I never have very much time to work on things like this, so I don't want to spend all of it looking for a bottle of stickles.  You might notice that I don't have a lot of pink and red in this pile of stuff.  Each member of our family has their own signature color (this is one of my many little quirks, I'll talk about it eventually).  Mine is green.  Alfred's is blue.  Lilah's is purple, and we're still deciding about Michaela's, but it might just be pink (there's some hesitation about this because my niece's color is pink...we'll have to see).

The envelopes are just as simple as they look.  This year, I'm planning to make 3 x 4 cards for the valentines because I'm doing project life, so they'll fit nicely into the spots for the journaling cards.  I'll just use a pocket page protector for one of the February layouts in the kids' scrapbooks so these notes can easily fit.  The notes Alfred and I write to each other will probably end up in the family Project Life album, unless they're just so sentimental that they inspire me to make a whole layout about them in our individual books.  

Since I'm using 3 x 4 cards, I made the envelopes pretty small.  I started with a 6 x 9 sheet of cardstock and scored it horizontally at the 4 inch mark.  I folded it so I got a 4 x 6 face and a 1 inch header space.  I layered on patterned paper and white cardstock, then embellished with stamps, punches, glitter glue, and die cut letters.  The sides of Michaela's envelope are adhered to one another using washi tape folded over the side, and Alfred's is held together with decorative brads.

I used one of my favorite new toys on both of these.  It's a glue pad made by Hampton Arts.  I got it when I was trolling around JoAnne's, which I often do.  It looks pretty much like a regular stamp pad except that it comes with a small bottle of glue that you moisten the pad with each time you use it.  That way, you can stamp images and then adhere glitter (like I did here) or flocking power, or whatever.  I just love getting intricate designs on my projects with beautiful, sparkly, wonderful glitter.  

What do you think?  Do you have any fun, low key family traditions for Valentines Day?

One Little Word 2nd Page

I am an art journaler!  Ok, that might be jumping the gun just a little bit, but I have now done 2 pages in a row for this OLW project with paint on them, without pictures, and with relatively thoughtful writing.  That's all it takes.  Right?  I'll be the first to admit that my pages aren't as messy and free flowing as most of the art journal pages that I see, but what can I say?  I'm a non-conformist...Actually, maybe I'm too much of a conformist to do anything like the lovely things that these people are creating.  So here's my second page

I might just be over using that butterfly punch, but I like it.  It doesn't look so great in the picture, but the journaling is on a white paper doily that was colored using distress ink followed by antique gold perfect pearls, so it has a sheen that you can't see in the picture.  

The journaling is about how difficult it is to focus on self improvement when I'm still only a few weeks postpartum.  It's not always easy to distinguish between when I'm engaging in meaningful introspection, and when I'm just beating myself up over things I can't change.  I added another journaling card behind this page with a string to pull it out.  I'm challenging myself to dwell on 3 of my favorite memories when I get caught in a destructive thought pattern: 1) My wedding ceremony: we laughed through the whole thing; 2) The first time Lilah said, "I love you;" and 3) Catching Michaela's first smile on camera.  How do you keep your thoughts positive, when you're not feeling the best about yourself?

Michaela's first smile.

My new Silhouette Portrait

I have been eyeing the Silhouette in all its manifestations since the original came out.  I already had a Cricut and several cartridges, so I couldn't justify the $300 buy in for the Silhouette.  Finally, last fall, I decided to sell my Cricut on Ebay so that I could pay for the Silhouette Cameo.  Well, the Cricut sold...with all of its cartriges, but I clearly am not a saleswoman.  My Cricut with 12 cartridges sold for less than $250.  I also underestimated the cost of shipping, so long story short, no Cameo for me, but also no Cricut!  This was a sad state of affairs.  I never bought letter stickers for my scrapbooking while I had my Cricut; I never realized just how expensive they were.  Suffice it to say, that my recent scrapbook pages have a lot more of my own hand on them.  I did buy a set of clear letter stamps, which is nice, but I still missed being able to cut my own dies on demand. I heard about the Silhouette Portrait around Thanksgiving, and was super excited...partially because at $100 less than the Cameo, it was a lot more reasonably priced, but also because my new scrap space in the basement is significantly smaller than my old space was and the smaller size would fit perfectly.  I thought I might get it for Christmas...No Dice, but I did work out a deal for my sister to buy it for me in exchange for babysitting services and since she didn't get around to getting me a Christmas present.

I'm pretty excited for my new machine to get here, and I'm sure I'll have a ton of things to say about it. Maybe I'll even do a review of it in comparison to the Cricut.  Maybe. In the mean time, here's my first attempt at playing with the software.  It's an 8x8 chevron background.  I have to be honest and say that I don't know if it will work.  I'll let you know when the machine gets here.  Download it here.

No more hoarding!

I have resolved to use my stash this year.  That isn't to say that I won't buy anything new at all, but scrapbooking often seems like a hoarders' hobby.  Kind of like Warhammer, but I digress.  Like every other scrapbooker out there, I have a bunch of beautiful papers that I've had for years because I just can't bring myself to use them for fear that I'll ruin them.  No more! I'm going to use all of this stuff I've got lying around.  That's what I bought it for after all...Isn't it?  Most of my pages last year were digital because I didn't have time or inclination to get out my supplies, but also because my craft room was next door to my daughter's bedroom. She just wouldn't sleep if I was in the next room working.  Now, my craft space is in the basement family room, so I can sit there and work while my husband is playing video games  or while my daughter is playing with her toys.  Another serious benefit is that I don't have to schlep supplies to the dining room anymore.  All my stuff can stay at my table, and I can leave projects out to work on until I'm done.  No more clearing up for dinner!  Well, not clearing up craft supplies anyway.  I made two more cards that I have to show you.  The first is the same design as the smile card from a few days ago.  I just swapped out the paper an stamp, an I wrote a different word.  Other than that, it's exactly the same, not having to think about the design meant that it only took 8 minutes. I know this because I recorded it, thinking I would post a video to youtube.  I'm not quite ready for video editing yet, I'm afraid.  The second card is a thank you card.  The butterfly tag is another one from the same BasicGrey element pack that I used before.  I did the scalloped border using my American Crafts knock outs border bunch.  Distress ink and letter die cuts and that's it. What do you think?  Any suggestions about what kind of card I should make next?

My First One Little Word Page

I've decided that my One Little Word scrapbook this year is going to be something between a scrapbook and an art journal.  I love the idea of art journaling, but I don't consider myself an artist, and I get so tied up in knots worrying about it looking good that I can't start.  I figure that using one new to me technique on each  art journal type page.  I was watching this video at Two Peas in a Bucket, it seemed easy enough to do a painted background.  I have khaki acrylic paint, that I used to form the background for this page.  When the paint dried, I used an oil pastel pencil to write the verse directly on.  It smudged a little, but I'm trying to forgive myself for that.  Nothing's perfect the first time you try it.  What do you think?