Vintage Vogue Obsession

My favorite Stampin' Up! stamp set has got to be Vintage Vogue as I am slightly obsessed with it. Whenever I make cards, I find myself grabbing that set before even looking at the other sets I own. Here are some samples of my Vintage Vogue obsession...

Heidi made me do it!

It's been too long since I've last updated this blog. My apologies. In fact, I had completely forgotten that I had one until Heidi (Gotham City Stamper) mentioned it last night on her ustream. Oops! Thank you to those of you from the ustream that took the time to check out my blog and offered wonderful comments. I truly appreciate it! It's amazing how things like ustream and skype bring people together while crafting. It's great to bounce ideas off of each other even from MILES and MILES away! :)

Now that holiday vacation is underway, I can actually take the time to blog and to craft. I crafted all day yesterday and have been all day today thus far. When grad school is in session, I don't have the time to even step foot in my craft room. It's so nice to have the time over vacation to use my creative energy. That and my poor craft room has been ignored for months. I'm sure it's happy as well...except for the fact that it's now a mess from my many projects.

As I was crafting, I was looking through some of my scrapbooks. It made me giggle a little as I noticed how my scrapbooking style has evolved. When I first started years ago (perhaps 10 years ago), I was all about the stickers. Not that there is anything wrong with using stickers...I just used them everywhere, on every page...stickers stickers everywhere. Then I started using fibers and eyelets on EVERYTHING. Nowadays, I have more of a simplistic approach to scrapbooking. Pretty patterned papers, but little embellishments. I like to let the paper, pictures and journaling do the work. I sometimes can't help but wonder if maybe I'm too simple with my pages. To be quite honest with you, if you gave me cool embellishments, I probably wouldn't have a clue as to what to do with them. Does everyone's style evolve over the years??

Here is a paper pack I got at Hobby Lobby that is all NYC. There are sheets of paper and fun glittery letters and embellishments. I had been looking for NYC themed items that weren't on the cheesy side for so long and now...there it is! I did learn that the glittery letters are so glitterfied that they won't stick on anything...too much glitter was floating in the package and got on the back of the letters. I had glitter EVERYWHERE when I opened the pack. Not cool.

This was the first page I made using items from the paper pack. I took the letters from a sheet of paper and cut them apart. I thought it would be cooler to use them that way rather than the whole sheet of busy word paper. Again, a very simplistic layout. I usually lay the pictures out in an orderly fashion, but I saw a sample layout like this on a sketch site and thought I'd give it a go. I really like it! I also inked the edges of the paper in black ink to give it a little grunge look.

This page gave me a little trouble. I love this picture that I took by Lincoln Center. I didn't want to have the paper take too much away from the picture. I'm not quite sure if I like the word paper behind it or not. What do you think? Is it too much or not enough? It just doesn't sit well with me yet...I'm sometimes too much of a perfectionist when I scrapbook..

This layout is a 2 pager. My little sister turned 21 over the summer. A milestone like that can't go without being put in a scrapbook. We had so much fun that night! I used K & Co paper. I love that line. It has embellishments that go with each of their themed lines so it makes me quite easy to coordinate everything. I also did some random placement of cardstock that I used to journal on. I try to do journaling on every page if I have the room and it works with the page.

My best friend, Katie, is the mother to a beautiful little girl named Brianna. She is the love of my life! The little angel is the first baby of our group of college friends and has all of us wrapped around her sweet little finger.

Any suggestions or comments about my work are welcome. Sometimes after staring at projects for so long, one can lose focus. Outsider voices can help bring something to your view that you didn't see before and bring the project to life.

I'm back! FINALLY!

I'm finally back! My crazy life has been consumed by the local high school colorguard that I'm assisting to instruct. Between practices, vacation and now band camp, things have been absolutely nutty! However, I have managed to find time this weekend to do an update. Here are some cards and scrapbook pages that I've been working on along with a few other projects. When I craft, I have the tendency to work on multiple projects at the same time and simply switch between them as I get ideas. I've found recently that my style has been somewhat simplistic---bold papers, photos, journaling and little embellishment...I pretty much let the bold papers do the embellishing on some of my scrapbook pages.

This is a two page layout I did for an 8x8 album.

Altered clipboard

These are two tags that I had made at a stamping/scrapbooking retreat. This was my first experience making tags and fell in love with them instantly!

This baby card was actually made a few years ago, but I found it the other day in my card stash. I love this card. Not only was it my first onesie card, but it serves as inspiration for baby cards whenever I need to make them.

This is a bracelet using Stampin' Up!'s build a brad set and razzleberry lemonade paper. I just love the color combination in the paper.

This is a 12x12 two page layout I did recently. Some friends and I went to a New Kids on the Block concert last summer...how could I not scrapbook these pictures?!

I have a few more to post...but I think I will just leave that task on tomorrow's agenda...happy crafting!!

Inspiration...in the bathroom??

Everytime I walk into my bathroom and glance at my shower curtain, I think to myself...this could inspire many crafty projects.

Today I finally decided to try my hand at using this as inspiration to create card. Lately, I've had a thing for simple cards. The card I made is exactly that.


I used so saffron, cameo coral, old olive and bashful blue cut into 1 inch strips and adhered them to a very vanilla card base. The sentiment is inked in chocolate chip as are the edges of the pieces that the sentiment is on. I used SU! markers in chocolate chip, old olive and bashful blue to draw the dotted lines inbetween the strips of cardstock. What does this shower curtain inspire YOU to create?

Step into my "office"

I thought I would snap a few pictures of my craft room to show everyone. I know many people are curious as to how others organize their crafts. Everyone has their own system that works for them. Mine is a work in progress as is the decor of the room. My roommate often jokes that if you can't find me anywhere, I'm in the craft room....which is mostly true! Lucky for me, I have a fabulous landlord that has let me paint and hang whatever I want on the walls. Thank you Susie!

This is where the creative process occurs. I have space for others to come scrap with me, like my mom who is always trying to tap in my brain for crafty ideas.


I love this bar from Ikea! Not only is is great for holding punches (as you will see soon), it's great for holding your crafting tools. I used s-hooks that are from Ikea to hold my scissors and the white containers are ceramic flower pots, also from Ikea.

There are those fabulous Ikea bars again! The basket hanging from it holds any additional punches that won't fit or are too little for the bar. This area is also where I store my cardstock. I just went through my cardstock collection today to do some revamping. Stampin' Up! just revamped their color collections so I had to re-sort what I had according to the new colors.


This has just about everything I use...stamps, printer, ribbon, embellishments, additional art supplies, etc. The best part is that it is right by my chair and table. EASY ACCESS during projects.

That's it folks....my little piece of crafty heaven on Earth. Mi crafty casa es su crafty casa.

VERY FIRST POST

Hi everyone! My friend, Heidi in NYC, has yet again talked me into doing something very cool...a BLOG! I follow quite a few blogs and have often contemplated doing one myself, but just never did. I'm a card maker, scrapbooker, soon to be art journalist (once I try it! haha) and full time special education teacher. Crafting is my escape from the world. Here are a few of my crafty projects to give you a little glimpse of my creativity.