Response to Cards for Troops

Wow! Your response to this was overwhelming. I am sorry I could not accomodate everyone. Remember if you have a level one kit to bring, that would be great. It should be fun. I will post the results.
If you got a confirmatory email, then you are in.

Level One Card Class for the Troops

Here is an example of cards made from a Level One Close to my Heart Kit. This is one of my favorite things tod o becasue they always look great and they are sooooo fast and easy.

These were made rom an old level one Silhouette pack I had hanging around.

On Jan 23rd at 1:30 I will be teaching a level one card making class. I will be providing all the materials If you want to bring a level one kit you have to "donate" that will be great. Here's the twist..... I will be teaching the class and you will make the cards, but we are going to donate them all to soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan. My husband said when he was there, the card basket was one of the most popular things.

So let me know if you want to come and have fun for a good cause. Let me know if you are going to donate or need me to order for you. You can then take this skill and use it on your own. I promise you will, cause the are the easiest, quickest and most elegant way to make a bunch of cards.

Fights at the Feeder

There have been big fights and crowding at the bird feeder these last few days. I have had a red headed woodpecker coming to feed. He is so big her can barely hang on long enough to get the food. I have also had tons of a bird I have never seen here, a house finch, which is a beautiful red color, like a toned down tiny cardinal. Needless to say, the cats have crowded around "cat TV" for the Christmas special. Tato has even been napping on the table in front of the window, like falling asleep watching TV.

Favorite recipe Project

This is the project we did in my last Oasis class. It took three classes or about 9 hours, not including the time to journal and assemble picture and recipes.

This was inspired by my friend Joy's project to catalog her family's special objects and heirlooms. As a matter of fact some of my student used the same format but did a project called our Favorite Things.

We used dimensional elements on the front. We cut the old 6x6 album project with random stamping for the base pages. We doubled this, so we had 24 pages.

On each page we used a different technique or embellishment to highlight our family recipes. We included stories abou the person or story behind the recipe or object in the case of favorite things. The 6x6 display book is perfect for this, since you can stand it up and the pages are protected.

Some of the recipes were hilarious like "hot chocolate for 100". We rewrote some recipes, but left others in the original form. This was a great project.

More Mistletoe

I saw in one of the old idea books a card made with the three elements pattern.

I thought this idea was intriguing so, having a lot of mistletoe, I decided to experiment with some different ideas. I changed the dimensions to 4x4 form the 6x6 so it would be easier to mail and I also wanted to use smaller "elements". After the first two, I came upon the stamp set I bought, Just for the Holidays, and the third design came to me. So I made 18 of these to give as a Chrsitmas gift. It also uses the stamp set holiday commentary.

I liked how it came out and I plan on using this pattern for some birthday and all purpose cards.

Haley, if you read this, tell me again how to post from here to the art boards.

Thanks for looking.

Making a page from a photo page

I saw this idea for the first time this year in the idea book on page 63 and I thought, wow! how clever, using a photo page to make a page!

Many times I have many more pictures than I have spaces in my scrapbook pages and often I will stick in a photo page, horizontal or vertical. But rarely do I have the exact number of photos to fill up exactly one photo page...

TAH DAH! The team at CTMH came up with a brilliant solution, make a page out them, or incorporate page elements in the photopages, like journaling.

This top picture is a close up of the upper left corner. It is not rotated correctly, but I wanted to show how you can embellish this area.

The second photo shows a photopage I made as a companion to my Christmas pages. They are vertical photopages and you can either use them as a decorative element and fill the rest photos, put journaling on the white insert, or even crop photos to put on all of them.

This is an example of the one we made in my Oasis class. But check out the one on page 63 in the Autumn/Winter catalog. The funny thing is that I was looking through a catalog from 2 years ago and there was the same idea! That's what I love about the idea books...every time I look I see something new...even years later!

One of my favorite time wasters

I have a lot of them, but one of my favorite is to link to one of the blogs I follow (left hand side of my post) and then link to a blog they follow and so on and so on. I have found some of the most interesting blogs and some of the most inspiring doing this. Give it a try. Link to at least 5 and see where it takes you.