Creative Moms Tip #4,576

So if you're like me you always like to find a good value. Doesn't mean you always go cheap, you just make sure that what you get is worth the money and vice versa.

Well, I found this nifty little trick about buying my son clothes! I was buying all these winter clothes with a faux sleeve. There is a long sleeve sewn into the sleeve, but it isn't structurally part of the garment. I really liked that layered look so bought a bunch like that.


Well, then I realized that these shirts can do double duty! Come spring when the weather warms up, I'm just going to cut out that faux sleeve and VIOLA!! he'll have a bunch of "new" spring short sleeve shirts so I don't have to go buy a whole new wardrobe!!

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Oh, and if you haven't yet, be sure to enter my giveaway here. I'll draw winners on Tuesday.

SCAL 2 - wowza!!

I was asked to cut some signs for someone today (I'll show you in a minute), but first, I decided to upgrade my version of SCAL. I had been using the original, and now that I've upgraded, I'm KICKING MYSELF for not upgrading sooner!!! WHY :'(???

(SCAL - Sure Cuts A Lot - a software program that allows you to use your computer to cut true type fonts and other shape svg files with the Provo Craft Cricut machines (works on all machines). It is an incredible program. I'm alway using it - and I'll have more to show of what I'm currently doing with it).

If you'd like to purchase SCAL - there is a link over on my sidebar -->
scroll down a little bit until you see the red scallopy button that says "Want Sure Cuts a Lot?" That link will take you to the ordering page. And if you have any questions, leave a comment or e-mail me at amandasherman@hughes.net and I'd be glad to answer!


Here's the signs I made:

oh yeah, made the sign with vinyl. Super easy! :D

Happy Scrapping, but be careful - there might be a camera watching you!!!

oh, and uh, if you haven't yet, be sure to
enter my giveaway here!!

Sakura Glaze Pens

A dear friend across the pond sent me a little surprise this week! She sent me some Sakura Glaze Pens. I'd never used them before but knew that they had a semi-transparent "ink" that remained in a 3-D state after applying.

Of course, I had to play right away. So here is my results:

supplies: Doodlebug (alpha stickers), October Afternoon (numeric stickers), Fancy Pants Design (paper), American Crafts (ribbon), rest is misc.

Close up -- it's kinda hard to see, I wasn't able to get a great photo. But you can see the dots of pink on the bottom flower? See how they're shiny? Well, they are also dimensional. They don't fall flush with the chipboard, they dried above it.

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I had another lovely little suprise today! Joannie McBride an assistant editor at Creating Keepsakes selected one of my digital LOs to be highlighted on the Creating Keepsakes Blog.

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And if you haven't enetered yet - be sure to scroll down and enter the contest in the next post. And I think I might have to do 3 prizes because there was one answer that I REALLY liked. :-)

Pay It Forward

*(I've been so blessed and fortunate lately by all the goodies I've received! I am going to share some of it with you all.

The sun is shining and it looks like a glorious early spring day.

Leave a comment with your e-mail address (or blog so I can contact you) and tell me your favorite about spring.

I'll draw a winner on Tuesday!

(oh, and if I get more than 15 comments, I'll pick a second winner too ;))

Scrappy Go Lucky!

Nothing exciting going on around here. Just normal life. But I wanted to share a few more pages I've done lately. Lots more of those handmade Thickers (3-D foam letters). Gotta love 'em! :D




*DIY Thickers

*DIY Thickers

Sweet Scraps

I think we all have that ever nagging pile of scraps that just sit around. Well, the always talented Jennifer at Club CK had an incredible idea. She cuts all her papers to the closest inch and then sorts them by length and clips them with a binder clip. BRILLIANT!

And let me just say how much more I've been using my scraps already!

THANK YOU CREATING KEEPSAKES!!

Wow - I am feeling so fortunate! I received my box of goodies from Creating Keepsakes (remember that silly video I did a couple weeks ago ;) )

Well, I received the box and am so excited to put it all to use! Well over $100 worth of stuff and most of it is from two of my favorite four manufacturers!! (K&Co & Basic Grey)

So the kids convinced me that they needed some of it. Well, all of it is stuff I'd gladly use (I usually sacrifice to them, but not this! LOL) - so we went and cleaned out some of my older stuff from my stash so they got fun stuff too!

Okay - need to go put it all away now. Good thing CK sent me those vertical organizers a couple weeks ago or I wouldn't have a place to put this!

Sunshine!

The last few days we've finally had some sun! And how glorious it is! We've been so cloudy, foggy and rainy here we felt like we were back in Western Washington. It's been wonderful and yesterday Robert was excited because we finally had a good amp hour day (we found a week or so ago that the goats had unhooked half our solar panels. Ouch. That one hurt to be going half the winter without them :( )

Well, onto some paper stuff......Here's a little bit of what I've been working on.

The first one is one of Cody's first real drawings. He drew a Cubbie bear for Awana. I thought it was pretty impressive!! (but don't all mommies think that :) ). I love preserving their art via scrapbook pages. I know it's safe. And the best part, it's nicely organized and not collecting dust in a box somewhere.

*DIY Thickers

This page was special to me. I found a picture of the kids playing together a year ago that I hadn't scrapped. Had a similar one from this year, so I put them together on a LO. The pic on the left is from Aug 08, center and right are from Nov 09. So nice to see how much she's changed and grown over the year in ONE page.

*DIY Thickers

*DIY Thickers

Thanks for stopping by. I'm off to go work on laundry (ah, the never ending chore)! LOL!!

Save the Date

So, if you're an Omak/Okanogan girl.......Save The Date!!

Saturday, May 1

I'm planning an all day scrap event. More details will come after I confirm that I do have the location for sure!

Today I got involved in a discussion about building some custom/semi-custom storage pieces for scrapbooking. (picture from Bec_Scraps at www.clubcreatingkeepsakes.com)

WE COULD ABSOLUTELY BUILD THIS :) This particular unit would be:
$350 (plus shipping & handling)
It would ship ASSEMBLED.

I don't know what shipping would cost - obviously it would vary by location. I don't think the assembled shipping would cost anymore because most shippers ship by weight rather than volume (at least for freight).

THIS WOULD ALSO INCLUDE A LIFETIME WARRANTY.

As well as a choice of thermal fused melamine colors (5 base colors standard, about 60 to choose from for additional $30). You could also have it made of prefinished birch for a small upgrade fee (probably $30).


It could also be built "green" if desired. Because we run off solar and wind power, we can easily use certified green materials to create it. (cost would increase however)

Could also be built with different amounts of cubbies. At the moment our production schedule is full, but we are working on exact dimensions and prices for different sized units. If you're interested, please let me know!

I found a new program

With the help of the fabulous Adele at ClubCK MB I found a new photo program called GIMP. The best part, it's FREE!!! But it has a tool to easily skew your pictures to remove angles from the curvature of your camera lens. Made me happy!! (I know it can be done in Photoshop Elements, but it was a several step process that I can't remember - this was easy!)

So now I've been photographing more pages to share.

Wow- I'm so honored

A little while ago I had a message to go check the Club Creating Keepsakes Blog. I did and saw this:

One of my pages was noticed by an editor of Creating Keepsakes! I'm so excited! This is the first time (outside my silly video a few weeks ago) I've been noticed! I've honestly never really tried, but I'm excited! And the great thing is that they commented how this is a page that really works with no journaling. The picture says it all and that's what I was going for!

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day! We've never been ones to make it a special romantic day, but we do have fun as a family.

Here's a special little treat we made for some friends. Can't say the idea was mine, I borrowed it from a design team member at Paper Trey Ink. (it's a box of cake mix and decorations to make some special cupcakes!)

A couple days ago Cody made a very special present for me. He had it in a special place and was very excited to give it to me. This morning when we said it was indeed Vday, he started jumping and say Yay, ran off, grabbed it and told me I had to open it.

I must say, I absolutely LOVED it! Going to go put them in my album tonight! :-)

Hope you have a great Sweet Day!!

Just another day...

in paradise!

Yup, you guessed it. No blog title again today. But I wanted to share these last pages I have photographed so I can do the ones currently sitting on my stand.

Again, as you'll see in these LOs, I'm loving the cuttlebug and making my own thickers!

*DIY Thickers, cuttlebug

*cricut

*DIY Thickers, Cuttlebug, cricut, SCAL

*DIY Thickers

Man, I got nothing witty

Can't think of a good title today. My brain is tired. See it's been a long weekend full of wittiness and I'm witty-ed out! Creating Keepsakes (the scrapbooking magazine) launched their new website this weekend and I spent way too much time on it. Lots of great laughs, but I'm also tired! LOL!

But I wanted to share with you some more pages I've done recently.

oh, and later this week, I have a Valentines project coming too!

*DIY Thickers, cuttlebug

* DIY Thickers w/cuttlebug

*cricut & SCAL

Oh Happy Scrappy Day

About an hour ago the UPS guy called. He had a package for me. We get a lot of packages for the business, so when he said me I was a little nervous.

"what did I order that I'd forgotten about?" Hmmmm...

So Aly & I got into the car and fought our way down the driveway. Yes, fought is the appropriate word. Our property is SO muddy from the snow thaw and then rain rain rain that even with 4-wheel drive it's a crap-shoot to get up and down the drive. My car looks like I've been rooting. Seriously.

Made it safely into down and found IT!

Have you ever seen The Christmas Story? Well, yes, haven't we all. Remember the prize the dad won. He was so excited it was a bowling alley or something. Then it came and it was marked "fragile" But crazy old man he was pronounced it "fra - ji - lay, must be Italian" LOL! His box full of as the mother called it, "electric sex." But he won it by golly!!


That's how I felt today. It was my prize from the CK Commercial Challenge. How fun!

So here it is, in all it's wonderfulness!

And check that out - they all signed a copy of the Feb issue of CK!! I'm so stinkin' excited!! This must be what it's like to have your work published!

The kids were slightly disappointed when I told them they couldn't have any of the loot, but they were happy to settle for the pop-pop wrapping.

Trying to catch up

I feel like I'm behind! I'm trying to catch up on the pages I already have on my computer so I can add the ones I have still sitting in my easel!

Here's a few to look at. Hope you enjoy!

DIY Thickers w/stickles

DIY Thickers again w/stickles

*cricut w/SCAL

Tucked Away

I've had a few pages tucked away on my harddrive here. I've had other stuff to post, lots of drama involving appliances that suck *or the lack thereof* and fun stuff like having my silly video shared on a scrapbooking blog! Woo Hoo!

Lots of excitement, but back to the whole purpose of this here little blog. The pictures and pages.

*I love this one* This was a picture of Robert & I about 10 years ago. I found it a few weeks ago and it made my day.

And this one. Honestly, I just LOVE this one. The color of that pink swirl is reading a little brighter than it is, it matches much better in real life. But I just LOVE this picture. And of course, on Cosmo Cricut paper, who can go wrong!?! And the DIY thickers with SCAL and the Cricut? A girls dream! Not sure if it's hers or mine :lol:

And one more simple one. A picture of all of us the day we made one very special little boy VERY happy by taking him for a real life train ride!

I'm SO excited!!

Earlier today I saw the call from Creating Keepsakes for a 60 second "commercial" of why we love scrapbooking. Well, me being me, and being an uber dork, and having no life, and being stuck home with grumpy kids and liking my little Flip video camera a *little* too much, I decided, "hey, why not"

So after about 10 tries it still was 90 seconds. I couldn't say it any less. I submitted it anyway.

Then someone brought this to my attention (thanks Erin ;)).......

Creating Keepsakes Blog

(You really should click it -)

Now, I don't know if I was chosen because of desperation, or because they really liked it! The call had been up for almost 36 hours and I was the first one to respond. :O That tells me that either I really do have no life and am that pathetic or that everyone else is much more dignified than me and didn't want to make an idiot of themselves on the internet. But hey, why not have some fun in life, right ;) ?

But at any rate - I'm STINKIN' excited and I don't care!!!!! I'm glad they did catch the humor - I was trying to be funny, but sometimes I feel like my attempts at humor fall like a lead balloon.

(now if only I could change the way the video is paused so I don't look like a deranged hill billy missing a front tooth - shhh - I didn't need that snicker ;) LOL )

oh, I'm just so giddy right now. Yes, I know, I AM PATHETIC! LOL

DIY Thickers (and another winner)

Here is the promised video on DIY thickers with your Cricut. (Please forgive the moving video - my 5 year old recorded it for me - he's actually quite good though, at least I thought so, but I will admit I'm biased ;) LOL)



And now for the winner of the vinyl wall art.......

Kim

Please e-mail me your snail mail addy and if you want black or brown vinyl. I'll get it made and out ASAP!