A Worthy Event

I just wanted to take a minute and invite everyone to checkout Jen Tapler's Blog where you can sign up to join in a week long event currently taking place. Lots of fun challenges and give-aways going on too. She teamed with PaperCraft Planet to create a way to raise money for studies on Alzheimer's. She did this last year and this year it's even bigger. Please take a moment and visit her blog to read more about it.

God is good

Let me start by saying that God is good. We got an emergancy prayer request yesterday afternoon because one of our Sunday School friend's 3 year-old son feel into a lake and when pulled out was unresponsive and not breathing. It is with God's help that they were even able to find the young boy as quick as they did as I have been told that you really only can see about 2 inches down in the water. Not only were they able to find him quickly, but someone was right there that knew how to perform CPR on a small child. Once they got back to the shore Life Flight was waiting and said that whomever did the CPR did an excellent job as the boy was awake and crying by the time they took off to the hospital. We did know all of the details until just this morning but both DH and I asked several friends to help pray right after we did. The child and his mother were bathed in prayers and God was with them the whole time. Let me just say again that God is good!

Speaking of my Heanvenly Father, I have been trying to catch up on my His Holy Name bible study from SCS. I am almost caught up as I am waiting on a stamp for one of the pages. I wanted to post the last one I did as it really spoke to me and I love how it turned out. If you have not checked out this study please click on the blinkie in my sidebar. You will not be sorry.

The gold and purple colors were used because I thought of royalty when I was working on this page. I distress the pages to give it more of an aged look and created the flourishes with some purple dew drops. I made my own rub-on for the work Lord.

New Blog Siggy and Another Scrapbook Page

I am part of this great on-line forum over at Christain Paper Crafts. Nina, one of the amazing members there, makes these really nice blog and on-line forum signatures. All she asks is for a donation to their church in Croatia. Nina's design earnings help pay for specific needs in their women's ministry. Isn't that awesome? To get more information and see Nina's samples, look at the post on her blog.

Here's another page I also did this month. I do believe it is one of my favorites thus far.

I love how the stamps I used look like hand-drawn doodles. I've also really started taking to painting a border around my pictures. The whole page reminds me of my school days when I doodled and filled out those funny Mad Libs (which I got from The Daily Digi). This was just a fun page to do and had me smiling the whole time.

A Brother's Love

Here's a scrapbook page I finished this month. I am so happy that A loves his brother so much and covers him in kisses. In fact, he tells people (us included) that the baby is his and that he lets us do stuff for Z. I pray that these two brothers become best friends and will be there for eachother.

For the page I use crystal effects on the big heart to make it shiny. I used my white gel pen of the smaller hearts to give them some designs. I also used Prima's build-a-frame stamp set around the small journaling box and for the frame of the two pictures.

Today was a good day in that I took Z to see some old co-workers and friends. On the flip side his naps got messed up. He also didn't really want to eat dinner tonight so we are wondering what kind of a night we'll be in as is is curretnly sleeping in his bed (in our room for now).

A's Friendly Owl

Sorry folks about the few missing days but I was sick on Friday and then went to a local festival on Saturday that took the energy I had gotten back out of me. If you want to see my card with the owl then scroll on down :)

The festival was fun because A got to see a helicopter up-close (or as close as we could get with out getting on it). He loves anything that flies in the air so he was mesmerized by it taking off and landing and had the biggest grin on his face. The picture doesn't do it justice as it was really windy and he was trying to keep things from flying in his face. He was so into the helicopter that he did even want his strawberry shortcake and he LOVES strawberries. After the helicopter sighting, he got a blue balloon, got to see a sweet dog, and he did manage to eat a chocolate covered strawberry all before going home.

Ok, let me explain the picture of the blue owl. A came into the craft room today after rest time and saw me finishing up my Wise Owl card (which is seen below) and asked if he could do one. I was playing with a new product I had seen called Flower Soft and saw no reason why he couldn't. I stamped the owl and put the glue on and then the put the Delphinium Blue flower soft on since that his is favorite color. Easy peasy and he thought he was hot stuff for doing it and named it "A's Friendly Owl"

Now to explain my card :) I had seen a card with a moose on it covered in the brown flower soft and thought, "What a neat idea. I bet it would work as feathers too." I had just placed an order at Sweet n' Sassy Stamps for their Owl Occasions stamp set and could wait to get it and try out my idea. Once I got everything together the card went together rather quickly for me. I stamped and colored the owl twice with copics (one owl as the base and the other for the flower soft). I used Papertry Ink's Take a Bough for the branch on the card. I then sponged some green and blue to give the effects of a tree and sky before I roughed up the edges of the cardstock and designer paper. I put foam tape on the back of the middle branch for a little depth and thicker foam tape of the 'feathered' cut out owl for a 3D effect since it was the main focus of my card. For the base of the card I used a Cuttlebug embossing folder to add to the nature feel of the card. After I put it all together I couldn't decide how I wanted to use the card. Then I thought of a very special mature person (trying to be PC here) and thought about how owls tend to symbolize wisdom. I found a verse from my bible that I thought would fit here: "Is not wisdom found among the aged?" Job 12:12. It was then that I decided this was going to become a card to let someone special to me know who much I respect and love the wisdom they have about life and the help they have given me during mine thus far.

Terrific Thursday

No pictures of anything today. I just wanted to say that I have been working on some pages and am waiting to hear back on whether or not I can post them now. We are all still adjusting to a newborn and the whole sleep thing (or is that lack of sleep). It's going pretty good, but poor DH seems to be getting it worse than the rest of us. Between his work and karate black belt training and test, he's really missing his well-rested nights. I've been asking God each night to give us the sleep we need to get through the next day. I just really need to trust in Him. One thing that is really helping me is reading my bible before bed each night. I'm using a guide I got from my church on reading the key passages in one year and this is the first year that I'm really sticking with it too. I am behind on my His Holy Name study and am hoping to start that back up by the end of this month. There is another scrapping/stamping Christian bible study that I'm looking into as well as the HHN is every other week.

Today I bought a pool for A for the summer since we won't always be able to make it to friends or family members with a built-in pool. We aired it up and filled it up with water tonight and he loved just throwing a ball into it and trying to get it back out. I told him this weekend we would get our swimsuits on and really get in there and play. Now this means that I've got to go swimsuit shopping - something I'm not looking forward too since I have stretch marks for the first time.

Two More Cards

Here are the last two cards I made for some DT submissions.

I punched the circles out for the balloons and then thought they needed a little something so I added the glitter to three of them to give them a little oomph. I really like how they turned out with the thread as their string. This'll make a great birthday card for any age.

I used a transperancy for the base of this cards and stamped the circles with white Stazon ink. I used SU!'s retired Bubble Queen set for this card. I used water color crayons for the coloring and then added some crystal effect and glitter to several bubbles to give it some shine and sparkle. Oh to relax like that...

On another note, I gave in to the copic club. I made my first purchase and already am planning my next one. They really are great to work with. I really like the color they produce on my cards and pages.

I hope all the mom's had a good mommy's day. Ours was good; just not what we had originally planned. I've got a few scrapbook pages I have to get done this week and then there's always the cleaning of the house to do.

SCS Scrap Goals Thursday Challenge

52 wk Challenge - wk 19: All About Moms

Whether you are a mom, have a mom, or someone that is like a mom, I want you to scrap a mom moment. Here are two quotes you can chose from. If possible, I would like to see the quote you chose on your layout.

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” - Washington Irving

A Mother's Love Your arms were always open when I needed a hug. Your heart understood when I needed a friend. Your gentle eyes were stern when I needed a lesson. Your strength and love has guided me and gave me wings to fly. - Sarah Malin

The above layout is my sample for this challenge. It is a digital scrapbook page. All of the elements of the pages comes from Audrey Neal's Butterfly Fancy kit that came with the WORD April 2009 class over at {we are} storytellers. I really like the kits and classes they offer. On the blog they also do a book review/club type thing.

To join in on the challenge feel free to come on over to SCS as memebership is FREE.

I'll also leave ya'll with another card I had done for some DT calls. This was also my first attempt at what is called a Z-fold card. I really liked it and will have to keep it in mind for something different to do with cards.

This one used one of my Bella stamps (javabella) and some papers I had picked up at one of the craft stores. I also gave it a little bling with some rhinestones I have. The overhang was done with a scallop punch. I colored in my bellas with SU!'s watercolor crayons.

No Mojo

Here I sit at my craft table and I just can't get my mojo going. I even got some goodies in the mail and still no mojo. I really need to do something about that. At least I got a digi page done. I'll post it on Thursday since it's my turn to host our goals challenge over at SCS. I can, however, post two of my cards I created for a DT call since I didn't make it. So far I know I haven't made 3 of the 5 calls I submitted for. Not really sure when I find out about the other two (hoping soon).

Bothe of these cards were submitted for the 2 Sketches 4 You blog. It is a blog that gives weekly card sketches. It is a lot of fun and I think I may be joining in more often.

Here's the first one. I used SU!'s web wishes stamp for the web, spider, and saying. I also some of their now retired halloween paper. What you can't see is that I stamped the web in white and then embossed glitter. For the spider used the shrinky palstic stuff and colored her with sharpies. Before I shrunk it I punched a hole so that I could add the string later to make her appear as though she's hanging from the web.

Here's the second one. For this one I use Papertry Ink' (PTI) Take a bough (I think) and just used circle punches to make the tire swing. I hung it from white string that I tied around a branch by cutting some slits. I made a mask for the clouds and just sponged blue ink around them to make the sky. the green paper and the giggle stamp are both SU!

SCS Card Sketch Challenge

I created my first card based on a sketch. Over on SCS there is a weekly card sketch challenge in their forums and I felt like playing along. I was able to whip this card in under an hour. I am trying to find a little time each day for me create since it really is my stress release. It felt good creating this card, and now I need to find someone to give it too :) I don't know if I'll create something every day, but I'm going to try. Right now I might alternate between cards and scrapbook pages since I really enjoy doing both. I may even change it up by doing a few altered items (I've got an idea brewing in my head using some directions I found over at Srcap-tastic.com).

I really must be off now. Just when I think I've got certain rooms cleaned they go and get messy all over again.