Random Chaos #34 and News from InspireME September 30, 2008

Good morning everyone!  I am SO excited to show you all my page for the Random Chaos challenge blog this week.  Janelle could not have picked a better challenge for me if she tried.  Any of you that have read my blog in the last week or two have seen how much I love all things Halloween.  So you can probably guess how happy I was when this week’s challenge ended up being to make any project (page, card or altered object) relating to Halloween.  You all REALLY should go check out what the other designers did.  There is a little bit of everything, and oh my, is there some great stuff.  I am so in love with Rachel’s altered project! It is so worth going to see. Here is what I did.

I chose to scrap this tiny photo of me when I was 7 wearing the witch costume my mom sewed for me.  I loved this costume more than any other I ever wore, and I managed to wear it for several years.  Mom added a whole new strip of fabric at the bottom so that I could continue to wear it as I grew, because I couldn’t stand to part with it.  She’s kept it all these years and I’ve since passed it down to Nicole, who has also worn it for Halloween.  That makes me pretty darn sentimental.  This costume is, without a doubt, one of my favorite childhood memories.  So even though this photo is really itty bitty, I’m still so glad to have it.

I had fun combining a bunch of different products and manufacturers on here.  I used a mixture of papers from Scenic Route (both black patterns), Webster’s Pages (the beige), and a touch of KI Memories( the orange strip).  Also used an overlay from Hambly in the background.  The chipboard buttons are from Making Memories, the ribbons are Stampin’Up and Making Memories, and the velvet alpha letters are from American Crafts.  I went back to my friend, Shanna’s, blog and downloaded a few more sizes of her awesome “scrolly frame” template to use as my photo mat.  Shanna has all sorts of fun templates that she is generously sharing with us all, so do go take a look!  And last, but not least, I added a few floral and leaf cut-outs from the gorgeous, new Reflections of Nature paper by Webster’s Pages.  I love the “ghostly” look these light flowers add to my little Halloween page!  I sure do love me some Webster’s!

And speaking of, there are a few new things going on over at Webster’s community blog site, inspireME, that I wanted to tell you about.  The first is a challenge that was posted this morning for the month of October.  The challenge for October is being led by design team member Iris and is to scrap photos of a favored or treasured object.  Be sure to check out the forum for all the latest information.

The second thing to note is that we are going to be holding our first ever live chat at the inspireME site tomorrow evening at 10 pm.  The chat is open to all inspireME members, so if you haven’t joined yet, you still have plenty of time to do so.  Here is what design team leader, Terri has to say.

Please join us for our very first LIVE chat, Wednesday, October 1, 10pm EST. It is scheduled for 1 hour.

This will be a chance for you to “meet” one of the owners of Webster’s Pages, chat with our design team members and guest designers, ask any questions you might have about products, share ideas and just have fun chatting about paper crafts.

We will have a few giveaways and Brandin will announce the winner of our quarterly banner drawing too.

The Chat is easy to access. That night a Chat option will appear on the inspireME menu, and when you click it, it will take you to the Chat room. You need to be a registered member of the site to have access to the chat.

Look forward to seeing you there!

ScrapPink September 29, 2008

This weekend has just flown by, hasn’t it?  I hope you all had a good one.  I sure did.  The highlight for me was Saturday when our little kit club, the Paper-Playground, held our second ScrapPink Crop for the Cure.  Hundreds of stores and groups across the nation participated in this annual event to help raise money for breast cancer awareness, and it was really an honor for us to be able to do our small part once again.  We had a larger turn out, even, than last year, and the day was filled with scrapping and fellowship.  There were make-n-takes and door prizes, giveaways and freebies, and food, food, and more food.  You can bet that I spent quite a bit of time up at the ‘ol buffet! I never seem to get a whole lot of scrapping done at crops, cause I’m usually running my mouth too much.  I did finish my projects for the week for Random Chaos and Sketch This that I will be able to share soon.  But for now, I have a few photos that I can share instead.

That’s me in the middle with two of my bestest Paper-Playground buds, Beth and Sherry.  I was trying to be queen of the crop, but think I’ll have to settle for princess because here is the real queen, for sure!

We bow to you, Oh Pink One! (Never mind that it was really all my stuff and Beth was just borrowing it).  You definitely deserve the crown!

And here’s a picture of Kathie, friend extraordinaire and business partner, and PP pal Sandi.

We had so much fun!  Hope if any of you are ever in the Raleigh area that you can join us at our next ScrapPink event or any of our monthly crops.  Just shoot me a message!

I also wanted to share these pictures I took of Nik last night.  She’s been going through a real rough spell, and my good friend, Queen Beth and her husband James bestowed upon her the most heartfelt gift that I am just so grateful for.  James is an art teacher and after looking on my blog recently and seeing Nik’s Halloween drawings done on cruddy tablet paper, they both wanted to see Nik get some decent tools to work with.  So, they got together a real sketch book and a set of genuine artist pencils and surprised me with them at the crop on Saturday.  Here are some of the photos I took of her opening this wonderful gift.

Look at her expressions!!  She was SO excited and happy!  But the absolute best photo of all is the one I snapped after telling her that Mr. James wants to come down one weekend soon and give her lessons on perspective.

That face just says it all.  Thank you, thank you, Beth and James, for everything you have done!!

Time for me to go wake the little peanut up and get her ready for school.  Hope you all have a wonderful day!

It’s Finally Done! September 27, 2008

To those of you following the saga of our latest little craft project here at the Pettit house, I can actually say that it’s finished, it’s over, it’s finally done!  I was beginning to have some serious doubts about that….

It took so much longer than I was expecting.  And,  we had a big set-back on Thursday that kind of soured me to the whole experience.  Mom could see that my patience with the project was pretty well shot, but she’s one determined lady who pushed me to see that it got all the way done.  You all can probably appreciate the horror of our “crafting accident” story.  After spending hours picking beads off an old belt, and even more hours gluing them to some sticks, you can imagine our reaction when one of the sticks fell from it’s drying “rack” we rigged up in the garage…..  It was like a slow-motion scene in a scary movie where you just cannot move……we heard a noise, we looked up, we saw it start to slip, we saw it come crashing down, we saw it bounce against the garage floor, and bounce again, and again….beads flying off in all directions, tips to branches snapping off and hurling themselves into space…   sigh.

Then the worst part ever is that Mom insisted we pick up every single bead in that garage and put it back in the bowl…. and glue it back on.  Must have been at least 200 tiny seed beads.  At least.  I absolutely drew the line at trying to re-glue the broken off branches.  Didn’t care at that point if I ever saw those darn branches again in my life.  But, we persevered and the branches are now set up in the house like we had hoped.  Here are a few more photos.

Once we got the sticks propped into a hurricane jar and held in place with some rocks, we were finally able to bring out the ornaments I found at Pottery Barn that inspired the whole project in the first place.

Love, love, love these little black spiders hanging from their chain webs.  Can you believe we did all this work just so we could hang these spiders on some black sticks like they did at Pottery Barn??  We must be crazy people!  (Do not say a word, Uncle Paul)!

Here is our Halloween project in it’s final home.

I’m pretty relieved that it’s over.  I’m still glad we tackled this, as it gave Nik lots of joy to work on it with us.  And we certainly will have lots of memories from it all.  I’m getting to the point where I can almost laugh about the garage incident.  But I still might suggest to all of you out there that you just buy the sticks at Pottery Barn and be done with it.

In other news, I’m really looking forward to this afternoon.  Today, our little kit club, the Paper-Playground, is holding our second annual ScrapPink Crop for the Cure.   Why ScrapPink?
Every 12 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer. We are helping to raise money for breast cancer awareness by scrapbooking! Every penny of a $10 donation will support the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s mission to find a cure for breast cancer through research, education, screening and treatment. For further information on this worthy cause, go to www.scrappink.com. What better way to spend a beautiful Saturday?  If any of you are in the Raleigh, NC area and would like to join us, we would love to have you. Visit our website for more information and directions.

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Pottery Barn Project-Part Two September 25, 2008

This project is taking much longer than I EVER thought possible.  I was so sure it would be done by today and that I would have all these great photos to share, but it’s not.  This is a lot more work than I was expecting.  Glammie and I were both getting a bit frustrated yesterday afternoon.  We even went so far as to ask why on earth we didn’t just buy the originals at Pottery Barn and be done with it.  That would have been a lot easier and certainly less time consuming.  And, I wouldn’t have had to scrub paint off of my garage floor yesterday.  But it’s too late now.  We are committed and will see this project through to the end, even if it kills us.  I just hope I end up liking it!

Yesterday afternoon was mostly spent in picking thousands of beads off an old belt of mine.  We needed beads for this project, and I just didn’t have any others.  Glammie got this brain storm of recycling these old beads, and since they were the perfect color, we went for it.  Little did we know how long it would take to get them off.  Little tip for all you do-it-yourself-ers……go buy beads.  Seriously.  Here is Nik working on the last of the beads.

Then it was out to the garage to start some gluing.

We still have more gluing to do.  It’s rather a slow process, as just as many beads fall off as stick on.  Who would have guessed at how difficult this would end up being?

This is a bit of what the sticks look like now.  Unfortunately, the bead work doesn’t show up real well in the photographs.

We’ll see how much more we get done this afternoon.  Are you guys starting to get a feel for what we’re up to?

I also have a card to share this morning.

I was inspired to make this card after visiting my scrappy friend, Shanna’s, wonderful blog.  Shanna has graciously uploaded a bunch of really fun templates that she has created, and is even offering a contest prize for using them.  How cool is that?  I fell in love with her “scrolly frame” and couldn’t wait to use it. The templates are so easy to download, and one of the best things about them is that you can easily change the size to fit your needs.  I used the template as is, and also re-sized it several times so that I can layer the frames as well.  LOVE that!

The papers on this card are from the beautiful Webster’s Pages collections.  I combined papers of the new line, Reflections of Nature, with pieces from the Raspberry Truffle and Feather Your Nest collections.  I also used my brand new stamps from October Afternoon for the greeting and for the sweet, little bird.  Thank you, Kathie, for those beautiful stamps!  And thank you, Shanna, for those awesome templates!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Pottery Barn Project-Part One September 24, 2008

Well, I wish I could show you all the fabulous finished project I hinted at in yesterday’s post.  We did start the project, but it took more time than I thought it would, and we didn’t get very far.  I have to admit that it doesn’t look like much at this point in time.  But, I’m still hopeful that it will turn out fabulous and will look even better than the super expensive Pottery Barn version Glammie and I saw yesterday shopping.  I’m thinking it will be even better, because my little cutie is making most of it for me.  Here is where we are at this point.

The first thing we had to do was go on a little foraging trip in the woods for supplies.  Glammie and I were able to do that on the way home from the mall on a little back country road.  Then we needed to get everything cleaned up a bit.

Here is Nik washing up a bucket of rocks.  While they were drying, we did some pruning on a few tree branches.

then it was time to break out the spray paint.

That’s about as far as we got yesterday.  This is what it all looks like this morning.

Doesn’t look like much, does it?  Basically what we have is a bunch of rocks and some black sticks.  Hhmmmm.  What do you all think?? Any ideas of what we’re trying to make?  Think we have any hope of having it turn into anything good?

At least so far, all I’ll be out is $2 in spray paint.  And Nik is having fun…

We’re hoping to finish up the project this afternoon.  Maybe I’ll have some finished photos I can share tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Have a great day!

Sketch This #68 September 23, 2008

Hey everyone!  Happy Tuesday to you!  I don’t know about you all, but I’m in a pretty good mood right now.  I’ve just come home from shopping and lunch out with Glammie.  Nothing like a little retail therapy to cure all that ails you, right?  And we even managed to find a few sales, and that makes things even better.  Needed to find some pants for Peter, as now that the weather is getting cooler in the morning, we’re starting to think about pants again.  Went through his dresser and discovered he was down to one pair of khakis and one pair of jeans that still fits.  That’s just not going to cut it.  We found a couple of jeans on sale for him and now I’ve just got to try to twist his arm to try them on, which is a whole other struggle in itself.  Also found a couple of clearance shorts, so snagged those up, too.  Found one small thing for Nik, and picked up a little something for myself while we were at it.  I am SO excited about my little find……..but I’m not going to tell you all yet.  The thing that we found leads into other things that are needed to complete the whole look…..you know how that goes. (I need to stay away from Pottery Barn).  Glammie and I decided that we can try to make this project ourselves, and that’s what we are going to work on this afternoon when Nik gets home.  Hopefully I can show you all tomorrow!!  Tee hee!  I’m practically giddy.  Hope it turns out half as cute as the display at Pottery Barn.

But before I go get Nik, I want to share my card for the Sketch This blog this week.  Sketch #68.

So cute, isn’t it?  Here is my card.

I’m sure you all are not in the least bit surprised to see a Halloween card, are you?  I’ve got Halloween on the brain.  It just makes me happy, and……..I used up some old, old scraps for this so I feel thrifty, too boot.  The paper is from Reminisce and KI, and that spider……my gosh is he ever OLD.  It’s from a die-cut sheet from Carolee’s that my friend Kathie gave me years ago.  Feels good to use it finally.  I did some machine stitching around each piece of paper, and gave the spider a hand-stitched web.  I free-handed a little speech bubble and stamped the greeting with my tiny Hero Arts alphabet stamps.  I always feel good when I break out my stamps, too.  Yup….it’s a feel good kind of day.

Time for me to get started on that new project.  Wish me luck!

Have a great day everyone!

Random Chaos #33 September 22, 2008

Good Monday morning everyone!  Hope you all had a nice weekend.  We took it pretty easy, and didn’t stray too far from home.  The weather was beautiful.  I’m starting to really notice a shift in the air and can feel fall coming.  It’s getting cooler and have you noticed how much earlier it’s getting dark at night?  It is SO dark at 6 am when Peter has to wake up for school, too.  And, he needed pants this morning instead of his usual shorts.  Yes, I think fall is definitely in the air.  Well, that was the excuse Nik and I used yesterday when we decided to bring a few more Halloween decorations up out of the basement.

My mom kept saying we are two weeks too early.  Guess she’s not as fond of the Halloween stuff as we are. At least we didn’t bring up EVERYTHING.  There’s still a lot of stuff yet to pull out of storage.  We just took out a small sampling…

Had to bring out this guy.  He’s one of our oldest and most favorite decorations.

This is Big Jack.  That was the name on him in the window of the paint-it-yourself ceramic place where we saw him.  Nik was 3 years old.  We were up at the grocery store that day when out of the corner of my eye we spied Big Jack in the window a few doors down.  And who could resist?  In we went.  Nik painted all of the orange, and I painted the green leaves on the lid.  Every year when we take him out, we re-tell the story of how he was created.  I think Nik likes this decoration more than any other we have.  She’s already asked if she can have him when she grows up. LOVE that.

Here’s another one of our oldies but goodies.

Nik and I made this together in an art class I signed her up for when she was 2.  It is made out of a brown paper grocery bag and some construction paper.  As I recall, she needed lots of help on the face cut-outs, but she did manage to do most of the painting herself.  Every year, a little more paint flakes off, but I love this guy to pieces anyway.

And here’s one last little scene we started on yesterday.  Still needs some work, but it’s a cute start.

And now for some scrappy news, it is time to share this week’s challenge over at the Random Chaos blog.  I really enjoyed this one.  This week, the challenge is to use two photos, ribbon, and at least two pieces of chipboard.  You all should hop over and see what the other designers did.  There are some really great, diverse pages there.  Here is what I did.

My two photos are of Nik the morning of her school’s field day last May. She is wearing her class’ fourth grade T-shirt, so I wanted to get a shot of both the front and back of her.  I love how happy she was that day.  Field day is by far one of the best days of the school year.  Great memories.

For the ribbon part of the challenge, I included two different pieces on my page.  I used some velvet scalloped trim from Creative Cafe as a border across the whole page, and a smaller piece of Fancy Pants lace trim directly below the photos.  To meet the chipboard requirement, I decided to use chipboard letters from Scenic Route for my title.  Very easy way to get some chipboard in, huh?  The paper on here is a combo of Cosmo Cricket, K&Co. and Scenic Route.  Also threw in a few small journaling pages from Making Memories, a bling heart from Me & My Big Ideas, and an overlay from Hambly.  A few gems from MAMBI add the finishing touch.

Hope you all feel inspired to give this fun challenge a try!  And if you are looking for even more inspiration, check out this new blog that Janelle Richmond has started.  Mini Mania is the name, and it’s all about mini albums and other coolio projects!  Does this girl never sleep???  My hats off to you, Janelle!  You are one amazing lady!

And by the way……..Janelle is looking for a few guest designers.  Be sure to check out the new blog for further info.

Have a great day everyone!

And the Winner is….. September 19, 2008

Happy Friday!

Thanks to everyone who left nice comments over the last week for my Bazzill stitching templates giveaway.  These templates were my favorite part of the August kit from Paper-Playground, and I am so excited to have some extras to offer up to a new home.

I’ve had some questions as to how best use these templates, and I thought I would share how I generally use them.  They can shift around on you, and if you poke holes while it’s shifting, it can turn out a bit messy and frustrating. So what I tend to do is hold them firmly in place with one hand and place pencil dots inside each template hole with the other.  Then I remove the template and using a needle or a piercer, poke a hole where each pencil mark is.  You can then draw a faint line in pencil connecting all the dots, or just keep your template nearby to use as a guide while stitching.  I use only 2 to 3 strands of embroidery floss at a time.  If you use all 8 strands that make up the typical floss, you need a fairly large needle with a larger eye, and the floss is a bit harder to pull.  I hope some of these tips help!

And now that I’ve got you all excited about the templates, I can announce the winner of my random drawing.  Congratulations goes to Lisa Dorsey.  Yeah Lisa!  Woo-hoo.  I can’t wait to see what cute projects you do with these templates, girl.  And thanks again to everyone for playing along with me.

Not much else is going on scrappy-wise, but I have to show you all this cute book that Nik and I have fallen in love with lately.  If you guys like Halloween, you are going to love this.

Are you guys familiar with Ed Emberley?  I am just the biggest fan of his.  He has created all sorts of step-by-step drawing books for children.  I’m also in love with his fingerprint art books.  I’ve used the fingerprints in art projects I’ve done at the kids’ school and even in some card classes I’ve taught.  Nik and I have been having a ball with this Halloween book.  Here’s a couple of our latest masterpieces.

Sorry for the lousy scans.  One thing I’ve really come to realize lately is that Nik is ready for a genuine sketch book with real watercolor paper.  We’re going to put that on her Christmas list.  On these, we were stuck using a cheapy doodle book from back in her preschool days, but we sure still had tons of fun.  For both pictures, we did sort of a round robin game where she would start the picture with one image, which I couldn’t see her draw.  Then she would pass the book to me and I would add one thing to the picture that she then couldn’t see.  We kept passing it back and forth until we thought we had added everything that could be added.  I loved seeing the happiness on her face every time she would search for my new addition.  Very fun.

So glad the weekend is almost here.  Hope you all have a good one!

Sketch This 67 September 18, 2008

Hi everyone!  Are you all ready for another sketch over at the Sketch This site?  Here is this week’s sketch.

I thought this was a fabulous sketch for a layout, and as a matter of fact, I think I’d like to go back and make a page from this soon.  For my card project, however, I simplified the design just a tad by eliminating a few elements.

I removed just a few strips from the bottom and left side of the design, and used the cut-out leaf branch in place of the vertical strip down the side.  A rub-on sentiment from K&Co. acts as my greeting on the journaling block, and another floral cut-out stands out as my focal point.  The cardstock, patterned paper, journaling block and brads are all from the August Paper-Playground kit.

And speaking of the August kit, I still have a couple of extra Bazzill mini stitching templates that I am giving away.

These little templates were by far my most favorite items from August’s kit.  If you would like to have your name entered into the drawing, just leave me a message in the comments.  I will do a random drawing tomorrow and announce the winner on my blog.  Good luck everyone!

Have a great day!

Random Chaos #32 September 16, 2008

Hey everyone!  It’s that time!  Time for this week’s Random Chaos challenge!  The challenge this time is to use four different patterned papers, two journaling tags/spots/prompts, and two brads.  I was a bit of an over-achiever, as I actually used a few more journaling stickers than that, and snuck in a couple more brads, too.  Had to make sure everybody could see them, right?

And if you couldn’t all tell how much I love fall already, then take a look at this.

Guess I’ve just got autumn and pumpkins and Halloween on the brain!  I can’t help it.  I love it…….and I love this photo of Nik from a couple of years ago.  This was one of the first pictures I took when I finally, finally got a digital camera, and here it’s been sitting in my scraproom all this time.  It’s about time I scrapped it!

I love these gorgeous patterned papers from Melissa Francis.  We used these in the very first kit we did at Paper-Playground, over a year ago…and I still had all this paper left.  I’ve been hoarding it.  As you can see, I did use 4 different patterns.  I then layered multiple journaling prompt cardstock stickers to the right of the photo. The stickers are mostly Melissa Francis, too, as is the fall chipboard letters I used in my title.  I did add one journaling spot from Heidi Swapp to the collection.  The trim is from Making Memories, and the brads are All My Memories.

Gotta run and get Nik from school now.  We are off to the doctor’s, once again.  Poor little thing is still feeling horrible.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!