Scrapbooking & Life

Hi there!

I hope you all have been doing well.  This has been quite a week.  Life is catching up with me and I've been busier than all get out.  Hopefully life hasn't been as hectic for all of you.  Last night, I went on a Close To My Heart spending spree, and my credit card company thanks me.   Haha!  I ordered some ink pads, the ink pad organizer, and some stamps to help me with my upcoming Mother's Day blog hop.  Speaking of, part 1 of my project came in the mail on Friday and hopefully with this new CTMH haul, the 2nd portion should arrive by mid-week.  Exciting stuff.  I just went through and looked at the catalog again and found about another 20 items I "need".  So, once I make a couple payments on the credit card, I'm going to order some more products.

Today was the annual rock concert on campus.  It was basically an all-day event where several bands play on the campus green and students are able to sit outside and enjoy the weather.  Since my mind is always wandering, and I can't get my brain off of crafting stuff, I was scoping out Amazon to see what products they recommended to me regarding previous craft purchases.  I stumbled upon this gem, and thought I would call your attention to it.  The kit really seems like something that a scrapbooker would really like.  Currently, I'm not a scrapbooker but this seemed like a cute kit to use in your layouts.  All of the reviews on the kit say people are so impressed with the huge amount of items that come in it.  Even if you don't scrapbook, and simply do cards, these could make for some cute embellishments.  It has fun colors and tons in the box (over 600 items!)  All of that for $24.99?  That seems like a pretty good deal for me.  I mean, with that, who wouldn't want to scrapbook?  Check it out below!

The description says you should pair it with Becky Higgins photo pocket pages, but those might not be necessary.  

Anyway, I might not get any crafting done until Monday night as I just need some time to breathe right now, but hopefully I can bang out a couple cards between Monday and Wednesday.  The end of year banquet that I'm planning is also coming up this upcoming Friday so I'm excited to get that done and over with.  It's a lot of planning, and paying attention to the small details but I'm excited to see it all come together.  I'll try to post pictures of the decorations, etc. next weekend.  

Anyway, that's just an update from me.  I hope you are all well!

Craft on,

Ian

Close To My Heart - New Consultant Kit

Hi folks!

My new Consultant kit came today for Close To My Heart.  I couldn't wait to get home and open the box up and see everything that was in the box.  I was impressed!  The box was rather heavy but there was so much in it!  Although I might have a problem because it didn't satiate my CTMH appetite and I want to order more, more, more!!  :)  I recorded a video of me opening the kit and show you what's in it.  The video WAS 30+ minutes, but lucky for you, I edited it so it's less than 15 minutes.  I did have to fast forward through a couple things (and I learned out to mute the sound so you didn't hear the chipmunks while I spoke).  :)  So, here is the video!

If you are interested in ordering any products from Close To My Heart, I would love for you to order through me from my CTMH website.  I have set a goal to sell $300 worth of product by May 25th, and would love it if you helped me reach my goal.

Craft on!
Ian

Look to the right -------------> What do you see?

That's right!  I'm going to be in an upcoming blog hop and I could not be more excited!  The weekend of May 11th (Mother's Day weekend) I will be participating in Pink E's Mother's Day Blog Hop!  This will be my first hop that I'm in and you could say that I'm definitely a bit nervous.  Eeek!  I know that this hop will bring a lot of traffic to the blog which excites me and hopefully people that stop by will like what they see.  :)

The excitement doesn't stop there!  Recently a friend I met through the Cricut Message Board recently asked me to be featured on her blog!  I'm trying to work out the details of what project I will want featured on her blog so stay tuned for both of these exciting opportunities.  :)

As we all know, it is the end of April.  What that means is that school is letting out within the next few weeks and that will bring more time to craft and work on my Close To My Heart business.  A couple days ago I made the announcement that I recently became a Close To My Heart consultant.  My new Consultant kit should arrive in the mail tomorrow and I'll work on recording a video so you can see all that Close To My Heart has to offer.  Through this, I hope you fall in love with all of the CTMH products as much as I have.  If you are in the market for purchasing stamps, embellishments, ink pads, and paper (just to name a few things), I encourage you to shop through my Close To My Heart website found HERE!

Getting back on track, as we all know, it's the end of April.  That means that the students that attend the college I work at will soon be either graduating and/or moving out of the residence halls.  It just so happens that these next few weeks will be very busy for me.  I need to write 14 evaluations for the 14 Resident Assistants I supervise (due by next Tuesday), put on an end of the year Banquet for all of the members of Residence Life - which means paying attention to minor details and shopping for frames for awards and such, and go through 174 rooms to verify that students moved all of their belongings out as well as assess the room for damages so that they can be billed if necessary.  If that hasn't overwhelmed you, I'm finishing up judging a modeling competition here at the college, saying goodbye to 60% of the E-Board of the student organization I advise (I should make them a gift!), and also on duty next week which means I'm the professional staff member on call in case there are any situations that get out of hand.  Somehow, sometime, I will find time to make my Mother's Day project for the blog hop and get that ready.  :)

Like I said, in the upcoming weeks, I'll start to have more time to craft as we usually only have about 50 students on campus during the summer and they normally don't raise a ruckus.  Knock on wood.

I got an email that my printer came in so I'm going to head over and pick that up tomorrow afternoon, come back to campus to finish up the modeling competition and then open my CTMH kit and record that video.  I hope to have it edited before I go to bed tomorrow night with another blog update then.

Until then, enjoy your night/day!

Craft on,
Ian

New printer and an exciting opportunity coming up!

Good Afternoon/Evening, Everyone!

I hope everyone's having a great day.  The 70 degree weather turned to rain about an hour ago, but I'm ok with that as we needed some rain.  Today, I didn't do anything crafty per se, but there is still time in the day.  I have to get a couple projects started so look for some updates on that soon.  I was able to go out and do some comparison shopping and ended up buying a printer from Best Buy.  My hope was to pick it up today and take it home so I could set it up but there was no such luck.  Since they didn't have it in stock, they had to order it from the warehouse.  They told me that it would be here on April 25th so that's exciting.  I was able to find the exact same printer on Amazon for those of you who are interested.  This printer will not only print in black but also color as well.  It will also print photos as it has a memory card reader attached right to the printer.  It offers a touch screen navigation menu so that you know exactly what you are printing and how many copies.  I really liked it and it was affordable too.  If you are in the market for a light-weight printer, I highly recommend this.

April 25th is also a very exciting day for me.  I think there is no better time to let the cat out of the bag than right now.  April 25th is the day I start a new venture that I could not be more excited about.  After some thinking and a lot of questions and answers, I have become a new Consultant with Close To My Heart.  My new Consultant kit should arrive on April 25 so as you can see this is a very important day for me.  I am in the process of learning techniques at the moment so I can be as prepared as possible when my kit arrives.  How exciting!  If you are in the market for stamps, stamp pads, tools, and accessories, look no further.  You can certainly order from me online at my Close To My Heart website and take a look at all of the great products that Close To My Heart has to offer.

I'm looking forward to receiving my printer and new Consultant kit and will have more in store for you in the future.

Craft on,
Ian

Stickles, Liquid Pearls, Storage, oh my!

Good Evening, Everyone!

As I type this it is 9:07 p.m. and I haven't even eaten dinner yet.  Whoops!  I should really get on that.  Anyway, my stickles and liquid pearls came in!  A couple posts back I mentioned that I got a killer deal at Scrapbook Pal and couldn't pass it up!  I knew that I wanted to store these wonderful gems upside down so I was also on the search for a storage solution that would work well for me.  Look no further than Unhinged Creative's glitter glue storage.  I was able to find it locally to me and contacted the seller (Scrapbook Girl) to see if I could save on shipping and pick it up locally.  With my luck she agreed.  We met and had a very nice conversation and then I was on the road again to go home.  It was only about 45 minutes one way, so not bad at all.

I am loving having a video camera so I ended up taking a video of both purchases and have posted it below for your review.  :)  Also, there may be some blog candy coming up, so stay tuned for that.  :)  Alright, with that said, I will leave you to watch the video.  Happy viewing!

Craft on,
Ian

Wedding Card

Hi there!

Below you will find the wedding card I created for two of my friends who are getting married in Vegas in a couple weeks.  This is both of their second marriage's so when she was describing the wedding/trip she told me she was going to be wearing a "plunging red dress".  When I searched through My Cut Search for "wedding", I stumbled across a couple images from the Summer Celebrations cartridge.  The first one I cut was more fun and screamed "Vegas", but...it didn't fit on the card I was going to use.  I planned on using a plain sheet of 8.5" x 11" white cardstock that I scored at 5.5".  The foot of the bride was hanging off of the card and so I had to go back to the drawing board.  I found the next image on the same cartridge and although it doesn't scream "Vegas" to me, I think it turned out nicely.

I recorded myself making the card and let me just tell you it was rough!  I started out and didn't have all my supplies in front of me and had to walk away from the camera.  Then I apparently didn't have the other files from the SD card deleted so the video was full and turned off on me.  Ugh.  I went through and deleted old video and started recording again.  The camera then decided it had enough and ran out of battery.  I charged it for 45 minutes and started recording again.  The camera stopped recording because again the memory had been all used up.  ROUGH!  So I deleted a couple more files and continued to record and finally got it done.  The video shown below is...funny.  There are a couple times that I make random weird comments that made me laugh so I hope it makes you laugh too.  I also found in iMovie '11 how to fast forward clips and this helped tremendously.  A lot of the video where I'm glueing the pieces on were fast forwarded.

Process:

The red piece of cardstock (which is the same as the red from the dress), went through the Cuttlebug folder but was too big so I had to do it in "shifts".  This didn't get the product desired but it is hid well with the bride and groom.  I layered everything together and then added a splash of ribbon for effect.  I thought I had it completed, but I ended up adding some liquid pearls to it for more of a classy feel.  The inside was stamped with a My Pink Stamper sentiment.

Here are some pictures:

Here is the video:

For some reason, blogger is not allowing me to embed it on this post.  I will go back and fix in a day or so.

Craft on,
Ian

Tonite was rough! Kind of...

As I sit here writing this, all I can do is laugh.  Tonite was a fiasco in terms of card making, but you'll hear all about that tomorrow.  I just wanted to post quick to let you know that I have made a card, and just got done editing the video.  It's late, I'm tired and headed to bed.  I'll post the video after work tomorrow (today) so stay tuned.

There is also some news that I'll be sharing soon, so stay tuned for that as well.  :)  Exciting stuff is in store, just you wait!

Craft on,
Ian

Monday and upcoming...

Hi there!

I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend.  Mine was very relaxing with a little crafting so that was nice.  It's the end of the academic year here and April is always a crazy month.  In fact, the whole 2nd semester in general is pretty crazy.  Here's a recap of my weekend.

Friday night I chaperoned the college's semi-formal event held off-campus.  Not only was this my first semi-formal at the college I work at, but...my first semi-formal in my college career (both as a student and employee)!  It was fun!  There were only a handful of incidents but nothing the rest of the chaperones and I couldn't handle.   All of the students and chaperones had fun and the food was so good!  I ordered the parmesan crusted chicken which also came with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus.  Not eating lunch on Friday made me very hungry for the dinner that night.  I ate everything except for the asparagus.  I'm not a veggie's kind of guy.  Don't judge.  haha.  :)  The only complaint I had was that the music was so loud!  I reflected back later that night that I realized I'm getting old when music is becoming too loud.  :)  I'm OK with that though.

Saturday I slept in and woke up with a headache so I tried to continue to sleep it off (which usually works).  This time it didn't.  :(  So I got up and got some caffeine in me and that seemed to help.  I made the Easter thank you card for my parents with video and spent the rest of the evening trying to edit the video and upload it to YouTube as well as write my post.  Because I had slept most of the day away, I couldn't fall asleep until about 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning.  Rough!

I wound up waking up around 11:30 and stayed awake because I knew that I wouldn't sleep tonite if anything.  There was no crafting done today, just relaxed and caught up on tv.  Tonite was staff meeting and an open house to show the students what their rooms look like for next year.  All went well!  Now, it's 12:30 a.m. and I have to be to work in 8 hours.  Am I tired?  Not one bit...  Can I craft?  No.  It's quiet hours and I worry that my Cricut will wake the other residents up so here I sit.  I've been looking a lot into SU and CTMH.  I've been in contact with a couple people and have a lot of thinking to do.  I really like how CTMH coordinates with all of their things.  The only thing I worry about is how expensive it is.  I'll have to figure something out.  I'm going to need to think some more.

Tomorrow night, I'm planning on making a wedding card for a friend.  That will be my next task.  I'll be sure to post a video on it.  Speaking of, I have heard that the last video was a weird angle.  I'm going to ove my camera to another angle and see if that helps.  Be sure to let me know what angle you like best so I can finally decide what will work nicely.  :)  Stay tuned for that project!

Craft on,
Ian

Easter Thank You Card

Hi there!

My parents sent me a card with a couple gift cards in it.  The first one was $50 for Michael's and the next one was $15 to Coldstone Creamery.  I wanted to make them a thank you/Easter card and this is what I came up with.  I think it's missing something.  But alas, it is what it is.  As you can see my inspiration was lacking a little.

The base of the card is 4.25" by 5.5" of white card stock.  I put a layer of light blue down first and then used my Martha Stewart fringe scissors and cut a piece of green cardstock that was 2" by 4.25".  I layered that on the bottom.  I cut out the rabbit from Create A Critter at 4.5" and used an Action Wobble to adhere the rabbit to the card.  I had also cut out a basket but that didn't fit on the card so I didn't use it.  On the inside I used the Happy Easter sentiment from My Pink Stamper.  On the back of the card, I used a "Handmade Just For You By:" sentiment from My Creative TIme.  I also went back and inked the edge of the blue card stock with a Memento Ink Pad.

The front of the card.   

Side view of the card showing sentiment and Action Wobble.

Better view of the Action Wobble.  

Watch me make the card in the video below:

Craft On,
Ian

A quick shopping haul video

Hi there,

Here's my first video.  It's a quick shopping haul from tonite at Michael's.  I hope I get better at these videos.  Haha.

Craft on,

Ian

It came, it came!!

For those of you that remember, on Easter Sunday I had ordered a camcorder, from HSN.com, I've had my eyes on for a while.  Well, it came today!  It charged for about 3 hours and will be ready to go soon.  Unfortunately I am not able to craft until Saturday.  My hope is to do my very first video that day as well.  Wish me luck!

Anyway, I took some pictures of the new camcorder.  Isn't she pretty?!

This camera is so small and lightweight that it will be perfect!  The only thing I wish it had was a remote so I could zoom in on certain areas of my project while I'm making it for the viewer.  Oh well, I can always manually do it.  I will hopefully be doing some shopping haul videos as well as the occasional cooking video!  Lots of plans in the works, so stay tuned!  :)

Craft on,

Ian

New Baby!

Hi there!

My sister just recently had her second child.  Another girl!  I'm a very proud uncle even though I haven't met her yet.  I won't be able to meet her until Christmas unless I get home before then.  With the price of airplane tickets, it's not looking likely.  We shall see.  Anyway, I made my sister a Congratulations card.  Check out the details below.

The card is 5"x7".  I took a piece of pastel purple Recollections cardstock and trimmed it to be 10"x7".  I used my Martha Stewart score board and scored it at the 5" mark.  The yellow frame came from Recollections paper and the Elegant Edges cartridge.  I cut it at 4.5".  I cut the baby from the Baby Steps cartridge at 4" and pieced everything together.  I used a "congratulations" stamp sentiment from My Pink Stamper and the back of the card had a "Made Just For You By:" stamp sentiment from My Creative Time.  I pop-dotted the flower and cheeks of the baby to add dimension.  I also took a fine-tip marker and drew "stitching" on the frame of the card.  I thought this one turned out really well!!  I always forget to add stitching as it adds that little extra umph to it.  :)

To be honest with you all, before I had used the pop dots I figured it needed something.  Not remembering I had "cat eye's" ink pads, I tried to use a large ink pad to shade the borders of the baby.  This didn't turn out so well so I tried to fix it and brushed the ink pad over the baby in general.  To be honest when I lifted the ink pad, I got really scared!  I hope you aren't as scared as I was.  This also made me chuckle and I wanted to show you a picture of something I COULD NOT send my sister.  A while back there was a company that asked to send in a picture of your craft projects gone bad.  This would have been one of them!  Eeeek!  

Then I turned it over to try again and it just got worse!  See for yourself.  Oy vey!  

Anyway, that's the new baby card I made a couple days ago.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Craft on,
Ian

Lack of motivation...

Hi there,

All day I was so excited to get home and start creating.  I have a couple cards and projects swimming around in my head and need to start creating them before I forget them.  I thought about which carts I would use, the paper, how everything would be pieced together and then it came time for work to be over. As I stepped in my apartment, I saw my couch and TV calling my  name.  After looking through email and other websites, I didn't get any crafting done.  However, hope is not lost.  I ended up ordering 42 Stickles and 30 Liquid Pearls!  I've had my eyes on these for quite some time.  The price was right and I needed to jump on it.  So, my credit card will have a little bit extra on it to pay off.

You may be asking, where did you get such a great deal?!  Well, I have been scouring the internet for deals on Stickles and Liquid Pearls.  I looked at many websites before deciding that I should not look any further.  Scrapbook Pal is where it's at!  They had each bottle of Stickles separate or you could get the bundle of all 42 for one low price.  I chose the bundle rather than adding 42 separate items in my cart.  What really made me buy now rather than wait is that they only had one set left.  I thought, if I don't buy these, someone else will and then I'll need to wait even longer.  I really think all of my projects were missing that little extra sparkle and think this was one of my greatest purchases.  For 42 bottles of Stickles and 30 bottles of Liquid Pearls (which includes the 15 new colors released at Winter CHA, I was able to walk away with all of these for $126.90! Whaaaaaaa?!?  That's practically $1.76 per bottle.  Talk about a deal!

Now that I have all of these Stickles and Liquid Pearls, I am going to need something to store them in.  I have done a lot of research that says the bottles should be inverted and stored upside down to eliminate air bubbles so your projects aren't ruined.  I've looked at a lot of storage options and have come up with the three best solutions I found.  Comment below and help me decide!  Here are the options:

This option holds 48 bottles.  I could purchase two and have one designated for Stickles and one for Liquid Pearls.  2 of these for $59.98 with free shipping.  

This is 5.5" wide and 3.25" tall, (a converted case of blank CDs).  The center area pops up when the top is off (as shown) but all are the same level when the clear plastic is on.  The lid twists to hold everything in place and is stackable.  This holds 18 bottles for $13.99.  I would need 4 of these to hold the 72 bottles and that would be $55.96 plus shipping and handling.  

This last solution holds 36 bottles in the same type of holder as the middle one, although it's a bit taller.  This retails for $21.99, so two of these would be $43.98 plus shipping and handling.  

It gets a little stickier.  I am constantly moving for my job.  I would say that I move every year without fail.  I don't have a "scrap room" that I can set my roots in as I have to be mobile at the end of the academic year.  I'm a little jealous of you that live in homes where you have your scrap space that you know isn't going anywhere as you won't be moving anytime soon.  :)  I think all of these are wonderful solutions but what would you suggest for me knowing that I move often.  As far as my scrap room, I have a desk that my E2 sits on and my Imagine is on a dresser in the second bedroom.  When I move, those two items (desk and dresser) will not go with me and I'll need to find another make shift area to hold my craft supplies.  I do have 3 of the Iris 6 drawer storage units (seen below - although mine is black from Joann's) that these could be set on top of.

So with all of that knowledge, what are your suggestions?!  I'd love to hear them.  Thanks in advance!

Craft on,
Ian

A giveaway!

Hi there!

I just stumbled across Kristin Wilson's blog and found that she is giving away $100 to Scrapbook.com to a lucky winner!  Head to her blog to enter.  She will draw the winner on May 1st, 2012.  I know if I won, there is a lot on my wishlist.  Sponge dabbers, stickles, liquid pearls, ink pads, etc. etc.  What would be on yours?

Good luck!!
Ian

Get Well Card

I made this card for a staff member that is sick right now.  The lion was from Create a Critter and the ribbon was from Michael's.  I also used paper from Michael's and Joann's.  On the inside, I wrote "No lion, we miss you.  Feel better!" since I didn't have stamp that said that.  Then, the rest of the staff signed the card.  The mane on the lion is pop-dotted as well.  She text me when she got it saying it arrived on the perfect day because she was going through a lot that day.  Hopefully she will be back soon!

Appreciation Gift for my RAs

Spring Break was upon us here and I wanted to give my RAs another thank you gift for their hard work.  Going off of our theme of pirates, I bought them Pirate's Booty and cut the chest from Life's a Party cartridge.  I used a stamp sentiment from My Pink Stamper.  When the chests were done and all glued together, I added some bling to make it look like real jewels were among the "gold" in the chest.  Another successful gift.  :)

Superman Box

This is a 3D box I made from the Superman cart.  A friend asked me to make this for her as her brother is very sick right now and she thought that it would cheer him up.  This was a fun box to make.  The only thing missing from the picture was the yellow piece at the top of the S.  I went back and added that in before giving it to her.

Thank You card

As you may remember from a previous post, I am the Advisor of the ALANA student organization on campus.  ALANA stands for Asian, Latino(a), African American, Native American.  Every year the student organization that I advise does a fashion show in February.  I was so proud of the work they did that I wanted to make them a card to thank them for the hard work.  I made an easel card.  The woman came from the Forever Young cartridge and the black on the inside of the card was pop dotted to make it look like she was standing on a runway.  They thought these were just the cutest.  I also used stamped sentiments on the front of the card from My Pink Stamper.  At the last minute I added the blue to the top of the front of the card and three pieces of bling.  I thought it was a train wreck but people really thought they were cute.  The jury's still out.

Thank you card

Here's another thank you card I made for a friend.  She loves owls.  She had sent me a homemade Smash book which I loved!  The owl came from the Just Because Cards cart.  This was a Z-fold card.  She loved it and was totally surprised.  I also gave her a 12x12 shadow box of an owl.  The 12x12 owl was from the Create a Critter cart.  Not pictured are the flowers I put on the wings to give dimension to them.

Thank You banner/Thank You Journals

This was a very quick project I threw together at the last minute.  This semester we had an RA appreciation day.  I cheated and purchased banner paper (pre-cut triangles) from Joann's, and then cut out the letters.  I can't remember what cart the letters came from.  I adhered them to the banner and cut holes in the top.  I thread thick twine through the holes and hung it up in my apartment.  Fun stuff.

The next couple of pictures are of a journal I made.  I got the idea from StampTV and used sentiments from Tim Holtz.  The paper is from Joann's and Hobby Lobby.  The brads are also from Hobby Lobby.  I used a Ticket Tag punch to cut the corners of the sentiment white paper.  The front and the back are similar except the back doesn't have a sentiment on it.  The journals came from Staples as did the pens.  Inside the pen is a matching piece of cardstock from the journal.  I made 14 of these for my staff.  They liked these as well and felt appreciated.  :)

3D characters

I have a friend that is in love with comic books.  Every Wednesday he heads to the comic book store to purchase the new comics that come out.  When I stumbled across the Superman and Batman comics I knew I had to make these for him.  I couldn't figure out the Joker so if anyone can figure that out, please share!  :)  These were all fit to page.  The only thing is that I messed up and changed the size of Batman's face.  Don't do that.  It may look like it won't fit at the regular size, but it will.

Easy Valentine's Day Card

This semester, during RA training, the 4 Area Coordinator's each chose a break out session where the RAs could choose to go to during that certain time.  I had Crafting with Ian and we made 2 similar Valentine's Day cards.  These are A2 size cards.  I cut the first cardstock to cover the front of the card.  The 2nd cardstock was 1/2 of the size of the first.  I ran the 2nd cardstock through the Cuttlebug and then layered everything.  Ribbon was from Michaels, and the sentiment was from K&Co.  The inside had a stamped sentiment as well.  The RAs really liked this!

Christmas Thank You cards

Why is it that when I need to be crafty, I just can't be?  Here are the two sets of thank you cards I made for Christmas gifts I received this year.  I was rushed because it was getting very late in the game (mid January), and I needed to get these puppies out.  The paper came from Michael's and the stocking was cut from Jolly Holidays cartridge.  I also got the ribbon from Michael's as well.  My goal is to do "Christmas in July" and just start making thank you card, after thank you card so I'm not in this predicament again.  We shall see!