Mini Sweets and Pink Ninjas

I had so much fun making these two projects. Probably because they're both for me. So I think maybe I gave myself more permission, if you know what I mean.

DESSERT RECIPE MINI-BOOK

I mentioned earlier in the week that I'd started going through some of my Grandparents' pictures. I intend to get the pics all scanned and then scrapped properly. But, in the meantime, I think a tribute befitting of my Grandma would be a book of her beloved dessert recipes. Now, mind you, I was raised by my grandparents so I am all-too-familiar with dear ol' Grandma's cooking. Let me tell you, it wasn't that good. The woman could not shake two spice jars together to save her life. Blaaaaaaaaand. They were, afterall, from New England circa the Great Depression era. Enough said.

But, that being said, the woman could wield a mean pie pan (or muffin tin, or cookie sheet, or...you get the picture). She made THE BEST chocolate chip cookies, a dreamy lemon meringue pie, and some of the most scrumptious quick breads you've ever wrapped your lips around.

So, here's the beginning of my Grandma's desserts cookbook. I say beginning because I only have in my possession 3 of the recipes I want to get in there. The rest are tucked away in Grandma's well-worn, overstuffed, goldenrod leather cookbook which is in my mother's possession so I have to make the trek over to wrest those away from her.

So far, all the papers are from the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird line. so befitting of a retro cookbook. I'm sure the majority of the rest of the pages will also be from this line, with a bit of other Cosmo Cricket papers sprinkled in as necessary. The chipboard button and tag on the first recipe page are also CC, from my aforementioned QVC kit.

The "wax seal" on the cover is actually about 8 or 9 layers of red embossing powder with a Crafty Secrets stamp imprinted in it. I've done this technique before, but there is currently a good instructional video for it by Jennifer McGuire over on the 2Peas forum.

I was inspired to make this minibook also by a mini made by Beth Perry over on Dirty Laundry HERE. Which, incidentally, is the June "jack" on Scrapjack!! I love Beth's work so it made it just that much more fun to jack this design.

As I add more pages to the book, I'll be sure to post them.

SECRET DOUBLE AGENT NINJA

Another super fun online friend, Euphoria, recently turned me on to The Pink Ninjas site. So much fun and it's intended to be FOR YOU. Not for layouts of the kids, or the holidays, or whatever. It's to have fun with the paper crafts that you love making something JUST FOR YOU. Which, incidentally, has inspired me to make a scrapbook for Heidi...no kids allowed.

The Pink Ninjas posts prompts every Wednesday. Now, I know I'm a bit late on this one but it was so much fun that I couldn't pass it up. This one is from the 6/17 prompt HERE which asked, "What kind of Ninja are you?"

I think most people (fellow mommies, hubby's work friends, acquaintances, etc) think I'm a sweet, quiet, polite person. And, yes, I am. For them. But don't we all lead double lives? Well, most of us? I think some people might be shocked at some of the music I love (it's runs the gamut), or that I can channel my inner sailor like nobody's business, or how I've looked at times in the past. Which brings me to the lovely pic in this layout...

October/November 2010 issue

Now that I look at it in black and white and compare it to what some teens look like nowadays, it looks rather tame. But I assure you when this pic was taken (a drinking age ago!!) it was quite shocking. I mean, we all have skeletons in our past, right? I just happen to be wearing mine on my ear (can you SEE that?!) LOL! Quite a Flock of Seagulls look I've got going there, eh? (I am REALLY dating myself.) I actually took a pic of my yearbook picture - I like the way it came out all pixelated when I blew it up to 4x6. (Which reminds me, do you remember a lot of your high school years? I apparently don't. And, despite what I look like, I never did drugs so that can't be the reason and I was a really good student so it's not like I walked through the years in a stupor...when looking for this pic there were 2 page numbers listed for me in the yearbook: my mugshot and a group pic of the History Club. I have ABSOLUTELY no recollection of being in the freakin' History Club! Maybe I just dropped in for the pictures...)

So, I've titled my layout "Secret Double Agent Ninja". I love the juxtaposition of images and colors which are meant to symbolize the two sides to my personality. Sweet but edgy. Pink but black. You get the picture.

Don't you just L-O-V-E the barbed wire and chained-link fence diecuts? They're Silhouette diecuts. So intricately detailed. Those along with the butterfly are all cut out of gunmetal gray metallic paper. So pretty. And the pink paper behind my pic and on the skull & crossbones is more of that faux handmade paper I made using the SCS technique HERE.

My 5-y-o son just saw the layout and ask who was in the picture. I told him it was me a long time ago, when I was about 16 or 17. He asked how old I was now and he thought for a bit and said laughingly, "Wow, that really IS a LONG time ago." Gee. Thanks. Kids say the darnedest things, eh?

I had a really great time making this layout, though. It's probably the only one I've ever made of ME that I actually like. Probably because it doesn't really seem like me. Oh, well.

Details (recipe book): Paper - Cosmo Cricket, The Paper Company; Ink - VersaMark, Colorbox; Diecuts - Cricut, Silhouette; brads - Creative Imaginations, Stampin' Up!; 7Gypsies board book; Michaels ribbon; Joanns lace; Heart & Home Collectibles vintage buttons; Crafty Secrets stamp; Stampendous embossing powder; Dymo tape; SU! punches; SU! clip; American Crafts felt flower; Cosmo Cricket chipboard; Zig Millenium pen; unknown - twine, apple cookie cutter, green velvet ribbon.

Details (secret ninja): Paper - American Crafts, Best Occassions metallic, The Paper Company; Diecuts - Cricut, Silhouette; Making Memories paint; Diamond Glaze; Zig Millenium pen; unknown rub ons.

Thanks for stopping by today! I had fun sharing with you.

Heidi

Blog Awards

As mentioned earlier in the week, I was the lucky recipient of two blog awards. Jeannine over on Just Doin' What I LOVE gave me the Honest Scrap award and MissBliss gave me the Kreativ Blogger award. Thank you so much!!

Let's start with the Honest Scrap award.

My 10 honest facts:

1. I live 12 miles from where I grew up. My mom still lives next door to my childhood home.

2. I've been with my husband for 19 years.

3. I have 2 good friends that I've know since FIRST grade. (That's 32 years, people!!)

4. I've only been to 4 other states in my life. (OK, I'm starting to sound like a fuddy duddy here...)

5. I have a degree in finance. I've never had a job in finance.

6. I would love to be a writer - a published, PAID writer, that is.

7. I have more papercrafting supplies than any one person should ever have. I don't think it's possible to ever use it all.

8. My favorite color is green. Always has been, ever since I was very little. Never waivered.

9. I wear mostly black and pink.

10. I've never had a speeding ticket. (Didn't say I'd never been pulled over...)

I'd like to nominate the following wonderful people and blogs for the Honest Scrap award:

Blooming Pink

Jeannie at A Place for My Cards

Bonnie Rose at A Life Unrehearsed Vol. 2

Candace at My Creative Life

Next is the Kreativ Blogger award:

My 7 things people might find interesting:

1. In 11th grade my hair was shaved on the sides, about 2 inches on the top all crimped and wild (it was the 80s, afterall), and blue-black in color. I played Blanche Neige for our school for the inter-school French competition. (Snow White for you non-French-speaking folks.) (My teacher thought he was punishing and humiliating the freaky-looking girl. Little did he know I love to act. Ha!)

2. I strongly dislike dolls. I think they come to life at night and do bad things. I tolerate my girly-girl daughter's "babies".

3. I almost skipped #3. Caught it when I went back to reread my post. I'm a fanatical proofreader.

4. I love reptiles and rodents. I can't wait until my kids are old enough to get me (I mean them) some cool pets. I strongly dislike fish and birds as pets. Birds are dirty little animals. Fish are nothing more than the stiff weight felt when lifting their little bellied-up bodies out of the tank with that green net.

5. I made sure my kids' names weren't in the top 200 names on the Social Security list of baby names.

6. My Captain Underpants name is Cheeseball Bananafanny. My stripper name is Binki Harris. (No, I'm not a stripper - it's the name of your first pet and the name of the street you grew up on.)

7. I have multi-personality handwriting. I was even accused by a high school teacher of turning in someone else's work once. It just depends on my mood, what I'm writing, how much I care, etc. It runs the gamut from all caps, slanty, super small, loopy, chickenscratchish, and many more. It's never accidental. I can reproduce anything I write. I often wonder what a handwriting test would say about me. I wonder if it would give different results depending on the different styles.

For the Kreativ Blogger award, I'd like to nominate the following super creative people and blogs:

Elisa at Hybrid Alien

Diana at Design by Diana

Beth at Dirty Laundry

Patty on Patty's Stamping Spot

Mo at Stamping with Mo

Jessica on Euphoria

Sam at Scrapmaster's Paradise

The rules of the Kreativ Blogger award are:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Thank you so much Jeannine and MissBliss!!! I love both your blogs and your work.

Hugs!

Heidi

A Couple Cards

I had a couple of cards to make yesterday. The first was a sympathy card. These are always so hard to make and I'm of the opinion the simpler, the better.

This is one of my all-time favorite Stampin' Up! sets, "Embrace Life". It's so simple but elegant. Once again, I found that this week's SPCC color combo worked so well for something elegant.

I used this week's Jacksonbelle sketch for the layout:

Last night we attended a birthday party for a 6-y-o Star Wars fanatic. (And, let me tell you, that boy can now open his own Star Wars store - he got so much SW stuff!!) So, I knew already that I wanted to make another card with the light saber (like on the card HERE). Luckily I kept my template so I didn't have to draw it again. As I tried to think of a good layout, my stream-of-consciousness thinking finally arrived at this card:

Get it? The CONE Wars? (The new SW animated series is The Clone Wars.) I thought it was a good blend of SW and birthday. Pretty sure I'll be making this one again. I think it's pretty cute if I may say so myself.

There are a few touches on it that most likely others wouldn't notice but they amuse me. The brown cone is supposed to be Obi Wan Kenobi. "Obi Wan Coneobi" is brandishing a blue light saber and since Obi Wan's kinda old and dusty, I covered "him" in Crackle Medium. Tee hee.

The black cone is Darth Vader. (Sorry, I can't seem to come up with a clever cone-related version of his name...any suggestions?) He's using a red light saber and since DV is all hard and shiny, I covered him with Diamond Glaze.

Gotta love the availability of free fonts online! The title (as well as the inside which says "Happy Birthday") is the "Jedi" font from 1001 Free Fonts. I cut it using my Quickutz Silhouette machine.

Details (sympathy): Paper - Stampin' Up!, Bazzill, The Paper Co.; SU! ink & stamps; StazOn ink; Stampendous embossing powder; Cuttlebug embossing folder; Cricut diecut (oval); ribbon.

Details (Cone Wars): Paper - DCWV (Rock Star stack), The Paper Co., Best Occassions (metallic); Die Cuts - Silhouette (letters), Cricut (starburst); Unity Stamp Co. stamp; SU! ink & Crystal Effects; StazOn ink; Stickles; American Crafts white gel pen; Slick Writer; Ranger Crackle Medium; 1001 Free Fonts - Jedi font.

TFL!!

Heidi

Monster birthday card

This is just going to be a quick post. I've been fighting a cruddy summertime cold for the last week and I just received some heartbreaking news that a close friend's beloved-to-all (including me!) M-I-L has just lost her 4 year battle with cancer (LMS). So, I'm not feeling too hot.

Today my son attended his first without-mommy birthday party. His good friend just turned 5 and they went to see Up! in 3D and then went to Uno's for pizza. Here's the card I made for our little 5-y-o:

This is a Cricut Wild Card diecut. I'd been wanting to make this little guy since I'd first seen him and I finally had an opportunity. Now my son insists I have to make one for him, too. Said he looks like Broby from Yo Gabba Gabba!

When preparing to make this card I thought of this week's SPCC color combo and thought how it lends itself equally well to monsters as frilly heritage layouts (see that one here).

Wow! I just realized how off the color looks in my pic. He really is practically the spittin' image of the 3 colors above. Huh.

The little guy was ran through my Cuttlebug with the spiderweb embossing folder and then I smeared green Stickles randomly about all over him. His eyes, nose, and mouth are filled with gold Stickles. I drew stitch marks around his face with an embossing pen and embossed it with purple powder.

Here's the envelope diecut to match. I just stitch-outlined the face with a marker for definition.

Details: Paper - Stampin' Up!, Bazzill; Cricut diecut; Cuttlebug embossing folder; Stickles; Creative Beginnings embossing powder; SU! marker; embossing pen.

TFL!!

I'm going to go lie in bed, moan a bit a la When Harry Met Sally, and watch some Friday night TLC. Love my What Not to Wear. I wish someone would nominate me!!

Heidi

Happy Hip Hop Hangover!!

Woot! Woot! Happy Hip Hop Hangover!!

I hope you are having a wonderful Friday.

I feel like I've been unbelievably busy this week and yet I only have two Unity cards to show you today. I sooooo wanted to participate in the pink & green challenge, too, but time just got away from me. I feel like I should apologize for my lack of content.

Anyhoo, here's my Holiday Unity challenge:

The gorgeous patterened paper and label is from my QVC Cosmo Cricket Christmas kit.

The tree is stamped on my faux handmade paper, Split Coast Stampers challenge TLC225. I had so much fun making this paper and made several other color combos, too. I encourage you to click on over to the site and read through the tutorial. It's super easy but comes out gorgeous! Who knew toilet paper could be so pretty.

The frame is a Cricut diecut embossed with Stampendous jeweled gold embossing powder. The partridge is also embossed with this gold.

This next card was made for the Paper Crafts Connection 2009 Gallery Idol birthday card challenge:

Please see this post (or scroll down a couple days) for all the details.

That's it for my Unity offerings. Hope you enjoyed them!

Details (partridge): Paper - Cosmo Cricket, Stampin' Up!, The Paper Co.; Unity Stamp Co. June KOTM stamps; Ink - StazOn, VersaMark; Cricket diecut; Stampendous embossing powder; SU! brads; Michaels ribbon; foam squares.

TFL!!

Heidi

p.s. The animated smiley is courtesy of MillanNet. This is such a fun site!!

Blog Awards!

I feel so honored - two people left me blog awards yesterday!! Wow!! WOW!!

Jeannine over on Just Doin' What I LOVE gave me the Honest Scrap award:




And MissBliss gave me the Kreativ Blogger award:

OK, so let's see...here's what I need to do: For the Honest Scrap award I'm to list 10 honest facts about myself and then pass the award along.

And for the Kreativ Blogger award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

As it's reeeeaaaalllly late, I wanted to make sure I gave the shout out that I received these awards...I'll try to answer the questions and nominate other people tomorrow.

Please be sure to head on over to MissBliss and Jeannine's blogs and give them so love. They both have amazing blogs that will be well worth your time to visit!

I feel so lucky that there are so many sweet people out there that enjoy my blog. I have really enjoyed creating it so far and hope I can continue to keep you all interested!

Thank you!!

Heidi

Design by Diana Sketchy Thursday layout

When I saw this week's Sketchy Thursday layout over on Design by Diana I knew I would have to try it. It's so pretty:

At first I thought I'd try either a circle of flowers or a stitched circle, but then I thought of doilies, which got me to thinking about heritage pictures, of which I have not begun to scrap and SHOULD! (OK, so you're coming along on my stream of consciousness journey...) And then I thought of my Grandma of whose favorite color was purple. Which got me to thinking about this week's color challenge over on the Scrapmaster's Paradise Color Challenge blog:

How fun is that when it all just seems to come together? :o)

So anyway, here's my layout, a tribute to my Grandma Madeleine. I've had a box full of pictures for years but hadn't gone through them. I was amazed at how young and beautiful my Grandma was. (And how much they apparently traveled, but that's fodder for another layout/post.)

Since I am without a working scanner, I took photos of my favorite pictures. I left them in the album, still in their photo corners. I love how the gold corners came out in the photo (those are actually in the picture, I didn't add gold corners). And it looks so pretty with the color scheme since, of course, purple and yellow are complementary colors.

I have to admit I was skeptical at first of this color scheme. I thought it wasn't my style. But the way the garden green centers just make the lilac flowers pop is genius! I made the flowers the same way I did the on the Kewpie Happy Birthday card HERE. And I didn't want to use a whole piece of chocolate chip 12 x 12 paper for the little bit of border peeking around so I used my chocolate chip ink pad to rub the edges of a white piece. I love the way it's all mottled - it seems to blend so much more with the soft look of the page.

I got a little handsy with the Ranger Crackle Medium again - it's on the flowers and the title. I guess you could say it's my embellishment du jour. LOL.

Details: Paper - Stampin' Up!, The Paper Company; Ink - SU!, Marvy Uchida, Ribbon - Offray, DCWV; Cricut diecuts (flowers & letters); Ranger Crackle Medium; Wilton doily; Zig Milennium pen; unknown ric rac.

TFL!!

Heidi

Cosmo Cricket Layouts

Sometime last year I purchased a Cosmo Cricket 8x8 kit from QVC. This thing came chock-full of yummy Cosmo goodness...papers, embellishments, ribbon, chipboard pieces and stuff to make little books, frames, and wall hangings. The brochure that came with the kit sure does sum it up, "You know you're an artist if: inspiration comes in a 9,000 piece kit." Yes, it is a huge kit!

So anyway, I've filled one of the two albums that came with it so far and I thought I'd share a few of my favorite layouts.

I love absolutely every piece that came with this kit so the fact that the papers are double-sided worried me. But then I came up with a solution: I just made double-sided layouts! Wherever there were items like brads poking through I just made sure to embellish in that spot. I got quite creative at times but it was fun! So, each of the 4 layouts I'm going to show you are actually only on 2 sheets of paper.

This first layout showcases one of the last pics I have of an at-the-time increasingly rarer event (and which has disappeared altogether *sigh*): the tandem afternoon nap. A nice, simple layout but in my opinion supremely beautiful because you don't need a lot of embellishment when you start out with such rich supplies. I thought my inking of the ric rac was a cute touch.

On the back of that layout is this one entitled "Toes!" This documents our first family pedicure - an yes, the blue toes belong to my son, to my husband's chagrin. I got quite "fussy" cutting some of the flowered paper. Many of the flowers have seed bead centers. The letters in "Toes!" are covered with Ranger Crackle Medium which I thought was befitting of the aged look of the papers.

This next layout documents my son's penchant for unique food pairings which he got from me. (I love me an onion bagel with strawberry jam, among other oddities.) Here he's eating an american cheese slice with Redi Whip on it. Oh, no, this was not a one-time experiment. He loves this combination. (OK, even I say that one's a bit weird!)

May 2011 issue

Finally, on the flip side is this layout entitled, "Old Guys Are Brown". This is another story that my husband isn't too fond of. (But, aren't those the best stories? The ones you will forget if left undocumented but the ones that will be the most appreciated later?) The long and short of it is, my husband is really tan, I'm really fair. My son is light like me (but tans, thankfully) and my daughter is lightly olive skinned, but apparently still qualifies for "pink" in my son's eyes. This is an excerpt from a conversation I overheard between the two of them one day in the car. They were discussing how they were dressed alike, had the same eye and hair color, etc. Then my son finally said, "You are pink. I am pink. Mom is pink. Dad is brown. Old guys are brown." That still makes me laugh out loud every time I read it.

I covered the letters in "brown" in Crackle Medium, also. I thought it was befitting of something old and brown. (Oh, I hope my husband isn't reading this! Tee hee!) The swoosh is covered with coordinating seed beads, which I think looks pretty cool.

Details: Paper - All items Cosmo Cricket unless otherwise noted: The Paper Co. paper, Heidi Swapp tape; Stamps - Stampin' Up!, Sassafras Lass, Autumn Leaves; SU! ink; SEI and unknown brads; Zig Milennium pen; seed beads; foam squares.

Well, thanks for putting up with this long post. I figured no point in not showing off some of the "older" stuff just because I didn't create it the day I was posting!

TFL!!

Heidi

One more birthday card...

One more birthday card for the Paper Crafts Connection 2009 Gallery Idol challenge and the Bitten By the Bug challenge:

The cute little retro flower is from the Cricut Accent Essentials cartridge. The checkerboard background is another Silhouette diecut that I cut in white and colored with markers. Can you see that the flower and the yellow-green squares are shiney with Crystal Effects?

I got the idea for this retro-like card from the signage at a local frozen yogurt shop this weekend. No, this is not the same colors but it's the same "feel". And, I can't wait to make something else with these colors:

Details: Paper - Basic Grey, Stampin' Up!, The Paper Co.; Ink - SU!, Marvy Uchida; Diecuts - Cricut, Silhouette; My Sentiments Exactly! stamp; SU! Crystal Effects; Michaels ribbon.

TFL!!

Heidi

Happy Birthday cards

Paper Crafts Connection is hosting a Gallery Idol 2009 challenge. The first task is birthday cards.

This first card has a vintage-y, romantic feel. I love the Kewpie images of the Clear Arts Stamps stamps.

The flowers are from the Cricut Walk In My Garden cartridge. I colored them with a bit of ink and some of them are touched with a little Stickles. They're all distressed with my fingernail and bent up a bit and then covered with Crackle Medium. The photo corners are also covered with Crackle Medium.

The card is based on a sketch on Bitten By the Bug:

This next card is a little more modern and graphic.

The cherries are a Unity Stamp Co. stamp, colored with ink and hit with some Stickles. The little tag is a Quikutz Squeeze diecut.

The cool checkerboard background is a Silhouette diecut. Have I mentioned how much I love the Silhouette images - when my cutting mats are cooperating?

Details (Kewpie): Paper - Crafty Secrets, The Paper Co.; Clear Arts Stamps stamps; Ink - StazOn, Stampin' Up!; Cricut & Quickutz Squeeze diecuts; Fiskars border stamp; Stickles; Ranger Crackle Medium; SU! ribbon; pin, beads.

Details (Cherry): The Paper Co. paper; Unity Stamp Co. stamp; Quickutz Silhouette and Squeeze diecuts; Ink - StazOn, SU!; Zig Millenium pen; ribbon, floss.

TFL!!

Heidi