The makings of a summer

Howdy everyone!!!  Have you missed me?  I sure have missed each and every one of you!!!  I promised in the last post that I would be back with some scrapbook pages I made for the baseball player that stayed with us this summer.  So here I am for that :)

If you follow my blog and have seen pages of my daughter - you know I put a sticky note over her face....I haven't done that here (except the pages that have her in them)......Brooks is a 21 year old, 6 foot 4 inch, extremely well built....so I don't think anyone will try to kid nap him from the web.......my little girl, another story.....I know I am strange about the Internet and pictures.....but I can't help myself.......

The entire album used the same supplies - crumb cake, garden green, basic black and very vanilla card stock.  I also used some retired Stampin' Up! sets to create the designer series papers and the baseball accents.  Everything in the book is Stampin' Up!, I believe, so if you have any questions....just ask.  :)

Here is the title page:

Brooks encompasses the love of baseball and determination.  I sure hope this scrapbook will bring back fond memories of his stay with us for life.

Here is a close up of the date strip - I created it with the computer, as well as all of the journaling, using typewriter font.

Here are the second two pages, from the home opener -

More to follow in later days - I would love to know what you think of these pages......... Happy Stampin'!

A gift for my Big Shot club members...and a tutorial for you! :)

Hi everyone!!!

I have 2 Big Shot clubs going simultaneously right now and I wanted to make them a gift using the big shot for our first meeting. I had thought that several of them didn't have experience with a die cutting system....so I thought a note pad was in order. I was originally going to alter a small tablet with dies in the Big Shot....but then, it hit me....why not make the tablet????

These were super fun to make!! The cover is old olive. I stamped the flowers from Pocket Silhouettes - on sale this month....contact me right away to place your order - first with old olive and then the top flower with whisper white craft ink. I left the covers dry over night. I could have dried them with a heat tool, but it was evening...so I thought just leave them sit over night.... The sentiments "Thank You" is from Fresh Cuts. I stamped that in elegant eggplant and punched it out with the large oval punch. I gave it a mat with an elegant eggplant oval punched with the brand new wide oval. Then placed a small accent flower on the side with a more mustard flower from three for you punch. Adhered that with a brad from the vintage brads set. Wanna see it up close?

The front and back covers were made with one pass through the big shot. It cut through two layers of card stock like butter!!! I then cut five sheets of printer paper at a time to create the pages....again...like butter.

To get the pages all cut even, I lined up the top and bottom notch at the two inch mark on my table top trimmer and cut off all of the ends. Your ends will look like this:

Next, I stacked my cover, 20 pages and back cover in little piles. And then I though to myself....what if I don't punch the holes in a perfectly straight line and the tablet is a willy-wonkus??? ( Those aren't the exact words I thought...but you get the picture....lol!!!)

So I made a template out of a piece of the tablet paper. I folded it in half long ways and punched a hole. That way, I could use that as a template and I knew the holes were in line. If I had a home binding system, I wouldn't have had to go through that last step...but I don't. I would rather spend that money on big shot stuff or stamps :):):) Here is what the template looked like:

I placed that template on top of each tablet stack and punched the holes with my crop-a-dile...again...the crop-a-dile went through the entire tablet at once, with no trouble!!! Stampin' Up! must get it that we stampers need tools that can do more than one little sheet of paper at a time....thanks Stampin' Up!!!!

I bound them together with little o rings and accented that with olive, mustard and eggplant ribbons. A girl can never "over ribbon" anything.....

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about these little note pads.

Blogger's Challenge - week 43

This week's blogger's challenge was to use chipboard.

I do have a confession, though! I have been so busy this week taking care of other things that I haven't stamped barely at all. This book wasn't made this week but I haven't shared it here yet and it does qualify for this week's challenge. Now don't get me wrong....I know challenges aren't meant to find things that you have done already that fit the challenge....we are to create new things. Honestly....I wish I had time this week to fulfill that challenge. If I get time this weekend I will create something new and post it. But for now I have this to show you:

This is the book I use to keep the technique and card folds that I teach all my club members. They also have their own version of a technique book. One club is using the retired chipboard ATC album and my other club made books out of these chipboard board basics from Stampin' Up!. All of my club members have seen this book but all of you wonderful blogging friends have not. That's why I still decided to share it with you.

Quick run down....have tons of stuff to accomplish today too. Covered in fall flowers designer series papers. Flowers are from Pretties Kit held together by build a brad. Scalloped semi circle was done with colluzzle and 3/16th inch corner rounder. Sentiment "inspire" is stamped on confetti cream with jumbo outline alphabet. I colored the letters in with stampin' write markers or a blender pen (soft sky). My ring holes are adorned with jumbo eyelets set with a crop o dile. Ribbon tie was made with round tab punch and there are various stampin' up ribbons adorning the rings that hold the book together. (some of the ribbons are retired...I wanted to have the color and texture of different ribbons......)

There you have it! Hopefully you will get some more to look at this weekend.....

I thought being a stay at home mom would give me more time.....not the case at all! hehehe!

Happy Stampin' All!!!!!!

Birthday Calendars

Here are some of the Birthday Calendars I have finished! These calendars have been very popular!

The single one was covered in Designer Series Paper from the Baroque Motifs collection and stamped with Baroque Motifs in Always Artichoke and Chocolate Chip. The picture with two calendars were covered in paper from the Designer Series Paper in Blue Bayou. The main image was stamped with River Rock and Purely Pomegranate.

Here are some inside views of both calendars: