reminder to self

I've been working on a bunch of scrapbooking projects the past few days ... collecting materials, looking through pictures and coming with with new ideas. I'm  mainly trying to work out classes to offer at Scrapbook Queens this fall but I also want to use this opportunity to create some new pieces to document my what my family has been doing for the past year and I want to create some funky things to use for holiday decorating and gift giving in the next few months.

 

I created this scrapbook page a few years ago ... I wrote a "memo to myself" at the bottom saying "don't forget it's the little details that really matter.  Don't let them pass you by.". I had no idea at the time that in 2 years I would be waiting to have brain surgery and wondering if I was going to have be around to see my children grow up.

I am so glad that my girls know that I love them. We have such a wonderful life and I'm so happy that I have found so many creative ways to document the little things that make us smile. I'm looking forward to spending a couple of days just creating!

dance as though no one is watching you

love as though you have never been hurt before

sing as though no on can hear you

live as though heaven is on earth

scrapbooking fever

oh dear ... i think that i have "scrapbooking fever" right now ... can't stop thinking about scrapbooking and anything that will has to do with my scrapbooking supplies and tools ... i've got lots of doodles in my notebook for projects that I want to get to work on.

it all started last friday when one of the moms on my street came to our house and started talking about a new scrapbooking store that just opened ... and it is only 10 kms from us ... she also told me that they were just starting to look for instructors to run classes. so after thinking about it all weekend ... i spent most of the day monday going through my scrapbooking things putting together a little package of my work ... 

 

this is what it looks like ... i think that it's really cute ... and it co-ordinates with my "brand". I dropped the package off at the store on Tuesday ... and now ...  

well, i'm now an instructor at Scrapbook Queens!

i'm so excited ... i didn't sleep last night because my head is just spinning with ideas and i can't wait to get started planning projects and classes.  

i'll keep you posted on what i'm doing ... if you have ever taught or taken a creative course and have any suggestions to pass onto me about what you {liked} i'd love to hear your comments ... i want to make these classes fun and creative for everyone!

i also wanted to tell you about another thing that has been adding to my scrapbooking fever this week ... if you love digital scrapbooking you have to pop over to Designhouse Digital today for the most amazing "blog hop" ... 

they have a very large, very cool kit that can be downloaded for FREE ... all of the individual parts of the kit are downloaded on each of the 10 digital scrapbooking artists' blogs. you'll find tons of inspiration and lots of great designers to get you going ... but just let me warn you ... you may end up getting "the fever" too!

inspiration is everywhere ... and one thing leads to another ...

It's been a busy week in my studio ... so much inspiration and so many things on my "to do" list now that the kids are both in school.

I have been so inspired by an idea in Real Simple Weddings magazine (2010) ... in one article they showed chalkboards being used as props in a "photo booth" at the wedding reception. Our friend's daughter Breann is getting married next summer and I'm working on her wedding stationery and a few other things for the reception. I bought a bunch of old frames at the second hand stores and started painting them this week..

I painted all of the frames a flat white and added wood inserts that I painted with blackboard paint. I found a beautiful fabric that we are going to use as the backdrop for a "photo booth" at the reception ... the fabric is also my inspiration for the colours and design of the wedding invitations, etc. 

 I'm going to store the glass from the frames in a safe place so that after the wedding Breann and Kyle can pop out the blackboard pieces, add the glass back and use the frames for their wedding photos.

This week I created the calling card for Terri Smith ... the winner of last week's contest! I made the card to promote her blog and etsy shop as she requested. I did a couple of changes to my original design to work with her blog colours and font ... Terri and I are both pleased with the way that they turned out.

You can visit Terri's blog at here .

While I was working on the card for Terri I realized that I could use one of my existing invitation designs to complete a mixed media piece that I had started a looong time ago.

 The invitation became the piece I needed to complete the "i" block in this 6 piece series. With the series completed and no where to hang it in the house, I decided to add it to my etsy shop yesterday.

 

The "f" canvas is my favourite part ... I made a bunch of these little fairies a couple of years ago and have been looking for ways to use them!

Do you like my new photo frame? It's a freebie from Shadowhouse Creations and I got it from here . I talked about Shadowhouse Creations in my last post. I spent a few nights this week with the tutorials and textures from this site ... it is so much fun and it was great to just play with some of my pictures. Here's some of my fall inspired photos that I created ... I also made the photo frame above into a square for these pics ...

 

Don't these just make you want to get out your fall sweaters and pack up your summer linens?

Speaking of summer linens ... I started tearing up some of my daughters old linen dresses last night ... ones that they have out grown years ago and I couldn't part with because I love the fabrics so much ... yep, found another use for them when I was reading one of my GreenCraft magazines yesterday ....

there was a great article by Maize Hutton on how to make frayed flowers ... here's mine so far ...

I checked out Maize's blog and she has a tutorial on how to make these here if you are interested in creating some yourself! I still have to add some ribbons and scraps to these ... I think that I'm going to tea dye some newer ribbons to make them look old and add pin backs so that I can add the flowers to couple of my purses.  These frayed flowers are a great way to use up some of those vintage buttons from my collection. I think that I will try to find some pictures of the girls wearing the dresses that I'm cutting up. I want to make hang tags using the photos and add the tags to the flowers that I'm going to make for gifts ... my Mom and Mother-in-law will get a kick out of these!

Hope that I've given you some inspiration too ... have a great weekend!

photo textures and giveaway winner

It's been a busy week in my studio ... so much inspiration and so many things on my "to do" list now that the kids are both in school.

I have been so inspired by an idea in Real Simple Weddings magazine (2010) ... in one article they showed chalkboards being used as props in a "photo booth" at the wedding reception. Our friend's daughter Breann is getting married next summer and I'm working on her wedding stationery and a few other things for the reception. I bought a bunch of old frames at the second hand stores and started painting them this week..

I painted all of the frames a flat white and added wood inserts that I painted with blackboard paint. I found a beautiful fabric that we are going to use as the backdrop for a "photo booth" at the reception ... the fabric is also my inspiration for the colours and design of the wedding invitations, etc. 

 I'm going to store the glass from the frames in a safe place so that after the wedding Breann and Kyle can pop out the blackboard pieces, add the glass back and use the frames for their wedding photos.

This week I created the calling card for Terri Smith ... the winner of last week's contest! I made the card to promote her blog and etsy shop as she requested. I did a couple of changes to my original design to work with her blog colours and font ... Terri and I are both pleased with the way that they turned out.

You can visit Terri's blog at here .

While I was working on the card for Terri I realized that I could use one of my existing invitation designs to complete a mixed media piece that I had started a looong time ago.

 The invitation became the piece I needed to complete the "i" block in this 6 piece series. With the series completed and no where to hang it in the house, I decided to add it to my Etsy shop yesterday.

 

The "f" canvas is my favourite part ... I made a bunch of these little fairies a couple of years ago and have been looking for ways to use them!

Do you like my new photo frame? It's a freebie from Shadowhouse Creations and I got it from here . I talked about Shadowhouse Creations in my last post. I spent a few nights this week with the tutorials and textures from this site ... it is so much fun and it was great to just play with some of my pictures. Here's some of my fall inspired photos that I created ... I also made the photo frame above into a square for these pics ...

 

Don't these just make you want to get out your fall sweaters and pack up your summer linens?

Speaking of summer linens ... I started tearing up some of my daughters old linen dresses last night ... ones that they have out grown years ago and I couldn't part with because I love the fabrics so much ... yep, found another use for them when I was reading one of my GreenCraft magazines yesterday ....

there was a great article by Maize Hutton on how to make frayed flowers ... here's mine so far ...

I checked out Maize's blog and she has a tutorial on how to make these here if you are interested in creating some yourself! I still have to add some ribbons and scraps to these ... I think that I'm going to tea dye some newer ribbons to make them look old and add pin backs so that I can add the flowers to couple of my purses.  These frayed flowers are a great way to use up some of those vintage buttons from my collection. I think that I will try to find some pictures of the girls wearing the dresses that I'm cutting up. I want to make hang tags using the photos and add the tags to the flowers that I'm going to make for gifts ... my Mom and Mother-in-law will get a kick out of these!

Hope that I've given you some inspiration too ... have a great weekend!

mommy card giveaway

I didn't get a lot done in my studio this week ... lots going on before the kids go back to school next week.

It was my birthday on Tuesday ... the last day of August ... and I am not too happy to say that this is the last year that I can honestly say I'm "forty-something" when someone asks my age. I think that I read somewhere that "50 is the new 30" ... I hope that is true! {giggle} I'm so happy that I waited until my mid and late 30's to have children ... at least they keep me young!

To celebrate my birthday and being a Mommy ... I thought that I'd do a little giveaway today! I'm going to offer one of my personalized Mommy card digital files for printing at home to one lucky person.

The digital file will be formatted so that you can print eight cards at a time on  8.5"x11" cardstock on your home printer. I have a number of different designs in my etsy shop to pick from and there are two colour ways for each design ... you can see them all here:

{a} dandy and funky friend

queen of hearts and day dreamer

call me and love letters

enchanted and bliss

beautiful day and springtime in paris

make me smile and enjoy life

  

These sweet little cards can be used as Mommy cards, family cards or for your blog!

Here's how to enter ... just leave me a comment and tell me in your comment which design would like if you are the winner (don't leave any personal information ... I'll get that from the winner).

** If more than 15 people leave comments ... I will select TWO winners ... so if you help to spread the word about this contest by linking this post to your blog, you could increase your chance to win as well! **   

This giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Tuesday September 7th, 2010. 

I will announce the winner(s) on Wednesday morning!

 Good luck everyone!

{free} ecards and screen savers

Do you like to send out ecards? If so ... you have to check out ecojot ... they have a bunch of really cute and colourful {free} ecards. I sent out a couple this morning. It's sooo easy ... click here to see all of the ecards!

Ecojot also has a bunch of {free} wallpaper screen savers ... perfect for making those new laptops "back to school" ready! You can find their screen savers here.

Enjoy and have a great day!

pottery painting with the kids

I just got back from a two day "girls' getaway". I spent some time with my girlfriend Sue, her youngest daughter, Taylor and my youngest daughter, Robyn. The girls go back to school next Tuesday so this was really just an excuss to get the girls together and have some fun before we all start back into our regular routines. We stayed at our friends' vacation property in Collingwood (about 2 hours north of Toronto) and we did lots of activities around Collingwood and Blue Mountain.

The girls had a great time painting pottery at Crock a Doodle ... a cute ceramic studio at the Blue Mountain resort. The staff at the studio were amazing and the selection of ceramics was awesome! There was lots of inspiration all around the studio and they had some idea books to look through. Sue and I sat and relaxed with our Starbuck's and just let the girls create. Both of the girls have painted pottery (many times) before and were happy to work  on their own. To be honest, it was difficult for me to resist making something too but I really just wanted to sit back, take photos and watch the girls have fun ...

Taylor wanted to paint a garden marker for the new garden at their house and Robyn decided to paint a travel mug that she is going to give to her Dad ...

here is Taylor putting the finishing touches on her piece and

Robyn signs and dates the bottom of her travel mug.

If you have never done pottery painting with your child, I highly recommend trying it. It's so much fun ... the kids love to do it and you will have a unique pottery piece in the end that you will cherish forever. Robyn's sixth birthday party was at a local pottery studio and she still remembers and talks about that day everytime she uses her dog shaped earring holder!

Here's one more shot of the girls at the Blue Mountain resort ... hanging out with the "wildlife"!