What a resource! (and flashback to the 80s)

I've started doing some blog-hopping. I love that technology advances (see side note below) have allowed us the opportunity to create and maintain sites to share our ideas for free! I stumbled upon this blog maintained by Courtney. She is amazingly talented. Check her out.

Side Note:
Ok. Thinking of this reminded me of just how far technology has come. I remember being in eighth grade (actually, three doors down from my current classroom) and taking Computer Literacy. We worked about half the time out of a textbook and got to get on the computers only after the chapter work had been duly completed. The computer lab (one of the best in the region) had Apple IIe computers. There were four BRAND NEW Apple IIgs computers and people fought to get the chance to work on those. We each had a 5.5" disk (or was it 5.25"?). All of our class work was stored on that disk. For mean-spirited "fun" the guys would rub the disk on the carpeted floor creating an static electricity charge, thus erasing some poor soul's year's worth of work. We learned to write programs in BASIC. There was no such thing as "Windows", but I was really good, by golly, at writing programs that would compute simple mathmatical equations. We did some typing in a very primitive word processing program, but it didn't really mesh well with our typing class. Though we were technologically advanced, we still learned to type on old manual typewriters with blanked keys (remember "click, click, click, click, ding!, left-hand-return"?). OK, that's enough of my 80s flashback. Happy memories!

Family Album

I've thought for years about creating a family tree album. I've just never gotten around to it. Last night there was a Micro-VSBN on SCS. I decided that there was no time like the present and got started last night. I created two pages using two of the challenges which were centered around the twelve days of Christmas. The first will be the title page of the album.

The challenge (...a partridge in a pear tree...) was to include a tree or bird. I included both by using the Season of Friendship stamp set. Because I stamped directly on the paper, it was a little stressful. I messed up one page as I stamped the title (the *very* last thing) and had to start completely over!

Stamps: Season of Friendship, Whimsical upper alphabet, Whimsical lower alphabet

Inks: basic brown, green galore, regal rose, garden green, brocade blue, riding hood red, tangerine tango (stamped off once), summer sun, baja breeze

Paper: whisper white, chocolate chip

Accessories: aged copper hodgepodge, chocolate chip taffeta ribbon, scallop edge punch

The second challenge (...two turtle doves...) was to place pictures side by side. An optional sketch was provided, which I mostly followed. I found two pictures of my paternal great-grandmother. The quality is horrible! It's probably the result of them being in acid-ridden albums for the past twenty years. I created the page and felt something was missing. I remembered that I had scanned in photos to my genealogy program several years ago. I found a younger picture of her in there and was able to print off a really good picture.

Stamps: Short Order alphabet

Inks: bayou blue, black stampin' journaler

Paper: rose red, bayou blue dsp, baja breeze

Accessories: crop-a-dile, eyelets, love & happiness rub-ons

Thanksgiving Pictures

I realized the last week or so that we haven't had any group family pictures in quite a few years. It used to be a tradition each year at Thanksgiving to have everyone gather outside to take a picture in the front yard. This year, I wanted to keep it simple (and the Cowboys game was on), so we took pictures in the living room. I got individual family pictures (does that even make sense?). You'll notice some wandering eyes toward the tv screen to the right of the picture taker. Here is a picture of most of our current family. David and Kate are with her family this year. Courtney's husband was working (police detective), and Chris's fiance was with her mother.

I'm so happy that I was able to get most of the family together again. I hope to make this a tradition again.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. We had a wonderful day here. I think we had 21 people for lunch. Lunch consisted of turkey, ham, dressing, hen and dressing, cream crowder peas, green bean casserole, hash brown casserole, sweet potato casserole, broccoli salad, deviled eggs, relish trays (dill pickles, sweet pickles, bread & butter pickles, homemade green pickles, carrots, cocktail onions, cauliflower relish mix, radishes, green onions, olives), buttermilk pies (2), pecan pies (2), Italian cream cake, jam cake, egg nog pound cake, sweet potato bread, and Hello Dollies.

We are blessed to be a part of such a wonderful and loving group. Blessings to each of you. Running through my mind right now is the doxology, written by Thomas Ken in 1674. Based on James 1:17, it proclaims "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host; Prase Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Rush of the Season

I've neglected my blog for a couple of weeks. I've created quite a few scrapbook pages and done little else. The biggest "news" is two-pronged. I'll post completed pages in the coming days (or hours...).

First, Stampin' Up! is having a Holiday Extravaganza sale. Click the icon in the sidebar for a flyer of everything on sale. SU! has grouped items into must-have bundles packaged for convenience. You can see and order these items on my website (www.heathercarnes.stampinup.net). If you'd prefer not to order online, you are always welcome to place these bundle orders directly with me and get the same offer.

Second, I'm adding to that sale with my own special promotion. I'm hosting a sale for Black Friday (and Saturday).

My Black Friday Email-a-Thon will begin on Friday, November 28 starting at MIDNIGHT (12:00 am) and runs to Saturday night at 11:00 pm. When you email me (heathercarnes@sbcglobal.net) I will email you back with the promotion offer that you received and the total amount due. So please make sure your order is complete when you email it to me. You won't be able to add to your order after you received your promotion. *** Please note that you cannot receive this offer on my Stampin' Up! website or from any other demonstrator. This is my gift to you as a thank you for your support.

***In your email please be sure to include the item number, description, qty and price. To qualify for the Email-A-Thon, a minimum merchandise total purchase of $30.00 is required. Once we hit 10 orders, I will start from the top of the list again with email 1. All orders will ship to me and payment must be received in order for me to place your individual order.

1st email - FREE Shipping
2nd email - FREE adhesive package (SNAIL refill and dimensionals - value $8.45)
3rd email - FREE Stamp a Stack Class - $18.00 value
4th email - FREE Classic Ink Pad (value $5.25)
5th email - FREE two markers (any colors) value $6.50
6th email - FREE medium envelopes - value $6.50
7th email - Free level 1 Hostess Set
8th email - FREE 8.5x11 single color paper pack - value $5.50
9th email - FREE Designer brads - value $5.95
10th email - FREE Ribbon - value $6.95 or less

Kidz Praise Thanksgiving Program

Eliza's children's choir program at church was tonight. They usually do a Christmas program, but due to moving into the new building in a few weeks, it was bumped to Thanksgiving. She's never really liked choir. She says it's "boring" and "not fun". I really hate that. I want her to enjoy it and I just won't/can't let her quit a church activity.

That aside, she was one of the well behaved ones. She was, of course, the cutest one there. :) And she knew every word of every song. Many of the kids looked completely lost. I was so proud of her. The program was "The Colors of Fall" or something like that. Eliza was assigned a yellow shirt to wear. Here she is after the program. I love this child.

Late night scrapping

Last night Momma and I stayed up to scrapbook. I was commissioned to "design" her two cards. How do you design something without making it? Basically, she wanted me to make those to cards for her. Durn. Nonetheless, we had a really good time. We stayed up until 2 a.m. Yikes! That's for people who don't have to go to work in the morning! I had a terrible time trying to get up.

I found one card we made a couple of months ago at the September Stamp a Stack. It has been one of my favorites since then. The set is a Hostess level 1 called Organic Grace. The sentiment comes from Much Appreciated. Paper: close to cocoa, really rust, mellow moss, very vanilla; Inks: close to cocoa, really rust, mellow moss; Acessories: dimensionals, twill tape. It is SUO.

The next card was one we made some time ago. I believe the stamp set is All Holidays. The only addition I made to it was to add the metal tag. The sentiment is from the Mini Mates set. Paper: chocolate chip, mellow moss, unknown SU DSP (retired); inks: chocolate chip, closet to cocoa, mellow moss; accessories: chocolate chip ribbon, river rock ribbon, round metal tag, brad. It is also SUO.

In the middle of all this, I made two scrapbook pages. The first is reminiscing about Box-a-saurus (see earlier post in November for more details). I thought the layout was a perfect way to showcase the progression of the project throughout the night.

The final dps was a the fall festival at the FBC South Campus. Each year my aunt and cousin ask to take the girls. It's a lot of fun (as evidenced by Beaver's huge grin) with bouncy houses, dozens of booths, a hayride, campfire, and literally tons of candy. It's always a highlight of the girls' year.

Aunt Cindianne's Christmas Card

Cindianne has just started stamping. She tried it once at a card class one weekend when she was visiting. She loved it and placed her first order for supplies to make a Christmas card. She wanted something that she could make fairly easily but that still looked nice. She brought her supplies back to my house this weekend for me to help her with the design. This is what I designed for her. She also has ideas on how to alter it to make adaptations on this card.

Paper: real red, bashful blue, whisper white

Stamps: To You & Yours

Ink: basic gray

Accessories: bashful blue taffeta ribbon, dimensionals, 2 way glue pen, dazzling diamonds

The rest of my WOW technique class items

Whew. We had a really good club meeting. I started off with three and at least one who was out of town today and will come to later club meetings. In addition to the scrapbook page I posted earlier today, club participants also made a card and a hanging treat box holder.

The card, Near and Far, was my attempt to teach reverse masking. I included several other techniques as well: heat & stick powder, masking, sponging, and dyeing ribbon.

Paper: baja breeze, whisper white

Inks: baja breeze, versamark

Stamps: snow burst, star-studded season

Accesories: coluzzle, heat & stick powder, dazzling diamonds, heat tool, white grosgrain ribbon, aquapainter

The hanging treat box was a lot of fun! It turned out to be quite a hit. Everyone thought it was neat and would be great for Halloween. It's a really good idea for a quick and simple Secret Santa.

Paper: tangerine tango, whisper white, haiku dsp

Inks: basic brown, chocolate chip, close to cocoa, more mustard, ruby red, summer sun, old olive, garden green

Stamps: Happy Blessings

Accessories: 1 3/8" circle punch, scallop punch

Count Your Blessings

I created this double page spread in response to a sketch challenge on SCS. It is the scrapbook LO for my technique WOW class this afternoon.

This is the full LO of the DPS. Pictures of the individual pages (closer pictures) are in my gallery. I decided to use this weeks sketch challenge for my WOW class (nothing like waiting 'til the last minute, huh?). I had a hard time getting it to look right. I think it will look a lot better with pictures on it, but I really struggled looking through my picture files. I really want to use this page for the girls at Thanksgiving. So I'm posting the picture sizes to my class members and will update my pages in a couple of weeks. I used chipboard elements to create the buttons by punching the thread holes with a crop-a-dile. I covered them with DSP, sanded and distressed the edges, and threaded them with very vanilla ribbon. I stamped the background with Sanded. I used the big shot to cut letters from the wingo zingo alphabet.

I also created a card and an ACAB (anything but a card). It's is a hanging water bottle holder. I'll post both of those later. Thanks for looking!

Finally! Some pages uploaded!

I got up extra early this morning to upload some pages to my SCS gallery. I'm not counting any of these pictures in my November scrapbook challenge totals because I actually completed them last summer. I do, however, have as one of my goals the insertion of these pictures into albums. You'd think that would be a simple thing to do, huh? Not so much for me. I just never got around to doing it.

You Are Priceless

Stamps: Priceless

Paper: basic black, taken with teal, real red, whisper white

Inks: real red, basic black, taken with teal

Accessories: brads, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, simon lower chipboard letters, scallop punch

Deviled Eggs

Stamps: A Good Egg, taffy alphabet

Paper: chocolate chip, whisper white, pretty in pink, wild wasabi, bashful blue, so saffron

Inks: chocolate chip, bashful blue

Accessories: slit punch

Pool Fun

Stamps: I don't remember this set! Someone, please help me. I know it's retired

Paper: old olive, soft sky, so saffron, whisper white

Inks: old olive, so saffron, soft sky, blue bayou

Accessories: old olive 5/8" ribbon

Summer 2008

Stamps: Tart & Tangy

Paper: whisper white, summer picnic DSP, bashful blue

Inks: only orange, real red, wild wasabi, real red stampin' marker

Accessories: 1 1/4" square punch, 1 3/8" square punch

Working, working, and ... umm ... more working

Things have been more and more busy this week. I haven't had time at all to do any scrapbooking and I have so many great ideas and challenges. I've found some great blogs (I'll post links later) that are so inspiring chock full of ideas and sketches and tons of personality. Tonight I have two goa-- okay - three goals. In no particular order:

1) take pictures of my SUO scrapbook pages from April's (my SU upline) classes and post some of them as cases;
2) put pages into an album (I have at least two albums worth of completed pages still stacked uselessly); and
3) begin working on my WOW class for Saturday. I don't know what I'll do as a technique yet, but I don't have that many people attending, so it shouldn't be hard.

I'll update tonight with (hopefully) pictures. Oh, and hints for big news. I hope you'll plan to participate. :)

Grandfriends Day

Today was Grandfriends Day at Eliza's school. My mother has never been able to attend one of these. However, this year she was able to make it. Well, actually, I agreed to take her students to the King Tut exhibit in exchange for her presence at the program.

Last night we rolled Eliza's hair in hot rollers and had her sleep in them.

She said it was the best thing ever! There was a musical program that featured musical arrangements from the 1920s through the 1980s. Eliza's grade represented the 1980s by singing and dancing to songs from Flashdance. She wore a neon yellow/green shirt, khaki skirt, tights, leg warmers, big hair, and blue eye makeup. She was so cute! My mother said she sang and danced so well! I'm attaching some of the pictures from the day.

Latest scrapbook pages - 5K Grad

I've tried four times today to post these to my gallery on Splitcoaststampers. After typing it all in (I wasn't smart enough to cut & paste), it went through the entire process and then defaulted back to the "upload new pictures" page. Durn.

I really like the way this turned out. I started out doing the SBSC163. I was very intrigued by it, but I didn't know how to accomplish that chain thing in the middle. I reproduced the shape using the sizes of chipboard flowers. You could recognize that shape better before I put the DSP under it, but it was missing something. I found another challenge, faux sheers (SBVVC49) and incorporated that as well. I was able to use a lot of supplies I've been hoarding in my stash for years!

Paper: SU almost amethyst, Wild Asparagus "for my husband" line using the paisley pattern, the green swirl pattern, and the coordinating ivory solidStamps: finials and frames

Ink: not quite navy

Accessories: Versamark, heat & stick powder, unknown microfine celery glitter, vellum, basic black stampin' journaler

Techniques: heat & stick powder, heat embossing

Box-a-saurus

Eliza was assigned a project last week - to create a Box-a-saurus. We knew it would be a challenge to get it done. Roy was supposed to work with her over the weekend. Well, the weekend came - and went. And so did Roy - he's in Fort Worth the rest of the week for a science convention (woo-hoo!). This year I took away his debit card, gave him cash for meals and a little spending (he and the guys might enjoy a malted beverage while away). I hope that curtails a lot of the problems. Last year he came home with an African millipede. But I digress ... that's another story...

Anyway, we remembered tonight - yes, after school - that the dinosaur is due TOMORROW. Grrr. I had envisioned a night of crafting, however, this isn't what I had in mind. After much deliberation (actually done throughout the last week and not last minute), Eliza chose the Gilmoreosaurus. According to the project it was supposed to be done without parent help and using recycled materials from home. I think we all know (especially speaking as a teacher) that most of the parents did the projects for the kids. I did help Eliza with some of the details, but she really did the project. I will admit to doing some of the clay smushing. Being a control freak and perfectionist, it was pretty hard to let her do it all alone.

Eliza made her dinosaur out of an empty Gain detergent jug covered in some kind of clay mixture made of volcanic ash. She cut the tail and legs from foam sheets. She used a styrofoam egg for the head and pinned on two jumbo blue sequins for the eyes. Since it is an herbivore (she informed me that meant it was a plant-eater), she pinned *many* sequin leaves in place of a mouth. It was hungry after 80 million years.

We had a long talk about how beautiful I thought her project is and how proud I am that she did it herself. I told her about "some kids I've taught" that didn't do their own work and how much more I value their work if they do it instead of their parents. I hope that she took from that conversation what I intended: if other people show up with "prettier" dinosaurs, hers is still perfect because she did the work herself.

By the way, the ribbons are not permanent (I don't think). The foam sheets kept coming loose so Eliza had to devise a way to hold them in place until the glue dried.

Grrr!

I've put off posting for a few days because of time and because I wanted to post again when I was able to update my banner. I want a pretty & cutesy banner rather than this plain one. After doing some preliminary research, I found that the best way to do that is by digitally scrapbooking one. I tried to digitally scrapbook once. I failed.

So I downloaded a free kit (amazing stuff, by the way, at Fishscraps). I went in search of a free scrapbook software and found Scrapbook Flair. It is the one that turns up most on searches. It also happens to be the one I downloaded in my previous attempt and later uninstalled from my computer. I can't get it to work. Period. It's horrible. It is not user friendly. The backgrounds and elements that go with the site (the only ones I can get pasted on) are ugly and - to use a retro term - cheesy. Uggghhhh. So I've given up again. I can't justify buying Photoshop just for the banner and I won't be digi-scrapping in the future. Grrrr.

On another note, I joined a scrapbook challenge on SCS. I set as my goal 10 pages for the month of November. That is a real stretch for me. And I'm commited to *not* using April's pages as three of my layouts! Even with hers, 5 layouts would be more than I usually make. :) However, I got right on the ball and made my first layout, so I'm 2/10 so far! I used a past challenge sketch and modified it to be a double page spread. I'm really excited about how it turned out.

Some playing time

I'm almost a Stampin' Up purist. They could count me 100% if they would produce more Christian sets. I would love some really great line art to watercolor and Bible verses. As it is, I find some of my inspiration coming from Our Daily Bread.

I took a few minutes this morning to have some me-time and stamp. I wanted something completely different. I usually only have the opportunity to stamp (at the last minute, sometimes) for my Stamp a Stack I host once a month.

The set I grabbed this morning was "Light of the World" one from ODB. I made two very similar cards with different sentiments. On the left, I was aiming for a monochromatic scheme that would highlight the light in a dark world. On the right, I tried for a sunset idea. I'm new to pastels (I've only used them once before these cards), so I still have a lot to learn.

Psalm 27:1 (on the left)

Paper: not quite navy, blue bayou, very vanilla (all SU)

Stamps: Our Daily Bread - Light of the World

Ink: not quite navy (SU)

Accessories: brads (non-SU)

Technique: SU pastels

Psalm 119:105 (on the right)

Paper: not quite navy, ruby red, very vanilla (all SU)

Stamps: Our Daily Bread - Light of the World

Ink: not quite navy (SU)

Accessories: brads (SU)

Technique: SU pastels