Last reminder

Today is Friday here, which means tomorrow is the last day to enter the Basic Grey challenge...but you will actually have until my Sunday to link your layout...since I'm ahead one day.
Three awesome prizes from Basic Grey is up for grabs.



Next week will be filled with fun here on the blog. One thing that's happening is the blog hop for my new Design Team over at http://letscapturethesesketches.blogspot.com/.
Be sure to be here then.





Tonight I'm going to the yearly Marine Corps Ball with my dear prince. I know it sounds romantic and fairy-tale-like, but it's not really my cup of tea! I don't like getting dressed up. Period.
But I have the dress, the shoes, the purse. Nails are done and for the very first time in my life, I'm going to the hair dresser to get an "up-do". That could be fun...or disaster!
I promise to show pics later.
I'll be happy when it's all over.

And then tomorrow of course is Halloween and then I will have a totally different out fit. Oh yes! I'm gonna dress up. Only one time per year when it's OK for grown-ups to wear wigs and costumes.
I'm not missing out on that.


So I will be back when this is all over. Have a nice weekend and a safe Halloween!

Straight from France to you

Remember how I said I wanted a book in French next time? Well, what do you know...I got one...at least a few pages.

Here's a roll up cardstock rose and a lollipop flower that I just cut into fringes or whatever



And here's the uber popular cardstock rose made with two different shaped hearts.
I didn't scrunch them up so much , since the back of the paper was plain. But you can easily fix that, by just putting the paper back in the printer and print on the opposite side.



And here's for you to print out: straight from France! From a flee market there.
How cool isn't that?
Laurence scanned some pages and emailed me.
I have the sweetest blog readers ever. I know it!

I hope I don't brake any copyright laws by posting these here...I'll take the risk...

(click the pictures and then just right click to print them out. I use cardstock when I print stuff like this)

Thank you, thank you Laurence...or I should say- merci beaucoup.

Please, if you use these papers for anything, I would love to see it. Link it here or just email me at scrapalittle@gmail.com

I'm excited!!!

I made another Design Team!! {Happy dance!}

It's for a sketch blog called

http://www.letscapturethesesketches.blogspot.com/

Go and check it out! Lot's of great sketches and inspiration. I'm so happy to be a part of that team.

This is the layout I submitted for the call;

and it's based on this sketch from their blog.

I also made my own sketch for the call, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to publish it, so I better not. They might wanna use it for their blog first.

So if I wasn't busy before, I will for sure be now...but it's all good.

I have gotten so many exciting emails lately and I feel so flattered by it all. Who knows what happens next?

Hey girls. Don't forget the Basic Grey challenge. You have until Saturday to link your layout here. Lots of nice prizes up for grabs.

I think a broke a record on Saturday when I went to the crop; 14 hours of non stop scrapping! And what did I create? Well, amazingly enough I didn't get much done!(oops!) A few layouts and for the first time I made some word-albums. I'll show you when they are completely done.

I realized that 14 hours is not enough time, so now we are planning a crop weekend in January... I can't wait. I'm so thrilled that I have some friends here that are just as obsessed as myself.

Bye for now and I'll be back before you know it!

Twist on flowers

(This is the last post about that card I made.)

Usually I'm drawn to bright and vivid colors when I scrap, but once in a blue moon I like to use more "earthy" tones.

It looks so cool to use papers like this for embellishments or just as a patterned paper.



Some manufacturers make paper like that, but you can also make it yourself.

You can use:

• books
• magazines
• newspapers
• music notes
• dictionaries
• maps

The possibilities are endless!

EBAY is a perfect place to find all these.

I won a bid on an old book from 1940. I think I paid 49 cents for it+ shipping. I never got it though, because this was when we were moving and I had no address in Japan yet, so I just put my old address down. DUH! It never got forwarded here. Not a big deal. I'll try again. I think I want something in French this time. Everything sounds so much better in French, don't you think?

Yard sales and dusty attics can also be a perfect spot to find old books and dictionaries.

Just remember if you DO use something like that, you will need to spray it with anti-acid spray before putting it on a layout or card.

Here's some pretty flowers that I bought. Two are from Prima and the other one I forgot.

Here's some I made with patterned paper looking like maps and books. Strip flower,lollipop flower and fan fold flowers all work good for this.

If you don't feel like looking around for old books with pages that turned yellow, you can just take any book or today's newspaper and print it on yellow paper. Or you can scan your book or whatever and change the colors with a photo editing software.

I think I'm gonna try to make a cardstock rose with newspaper.I'll let you know how it goes.

For the flower center on the card above,I used twine, I think it's called,

and just rolled it up on a small circle of cardstock. Use fast drying glue.

That's it for this time.

Have a great weekend folks. I'm going to a all-day-crop tomorrow. I can't wait!

Seriously- I can be serious...

Those who know me a little bit, also know that I always try to be funny. That's just who I am! I'm pretty easy going and laid back and I talk ( read:ramble) a lot. That doesn't mean I don't have any depth.

The latest challenge over at All About Me is about turning points.

I had quite a few in my life; getting a degree, leaving Sweden, getting married, having kids,turning 40...you know- that kind of thing. But I chose another turning point for my layout. Something that happened recently.

Here's the hidden journaling. Somewhat long and personal.

The last couple of years I’ve been feeling pretty good about myself and my life. I’ve been happy and content with no real problems.

The only little thing that was not “perfect” in my life, was that John and I did not communicate well and always misunderstood each other. We did not have huge fights, but there was lots of nagging and complaining going on.

I talked to Tina about this and she gave me some pointers and also told me what I had to change. I knew she was right, but I still didn’t want to hear it. I broke down to pieces and could not stop crying. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so good about myself anymore. I knew I hadn’t been the best of wife’s, but I thought I was a outstanding mother. I always put the kids first…but did I really? How many times had I been stuck in front of the computer instead of helping Elsa and Conrad with homework or just playing with them?
I know God wanted me to see this and realize that I could be so much more than I was. There is so many ways I can improve as a wife, mother and a human. As Tina said, God wants us to be more like Him.

I will always be grateful to my best friend, for opening my eyes.

It’s been less than two weeks, but I can already see changes. I feel different! I’m more patient and less judging. I scream less and I understand more. And most importantly; I have started to read the Bible again.
I really hope that this will be a turning point in my life, where God is part of my every day life and He will show me the right way. I know my life will not be perfect, but I’m confident that God will help me deal with whatever the future holds.

Be sure to check out the challenge over at All About Me and also see what the rest of the Design Team created. See you there!

Don't sue me!

So let's continue to talk about this card.



See the ribbon. I made that in the printer...well not the actual ribbon of course, but you know what I mean.

If you like the font, you can download it to your computer from Scrapbook.com.

It cost $0.49 and is called Distressed Typewriter. Click here if you wanna buy it.

(noticed how I always encourage you to spend money;))

It's rather easy to print on ribbons, but you have to be careful.

I had an incident recently that involved tools, cursing and unplugging of printer and turning it upside down. I was NOT happy!

But I was a Scrapper On A Mission and didn't let anything stop me.

You can print titles, journaling or whatever on a ribbon.

Here, I put a measuring tape in the printer and just printed it out on normal printer paper.

Then, take a ribbon of your choice. Preferably light color and not too thick. Use double sided tape and adhere the ribbon on you printed image. Be generous with the tape!! You don't want to make the same mistake as I did, and if you mess up, don't sue me if your printer breaks.

Put the printer paper with the ribbon attached back in the printer and print again. This time your image will appear on the ribbon.

Voila! Not hard at all, but as I said...a little bit risky...and oh by the way...I have tried putting the ribbon diagonal and horizontal and both worked fine.

Here's a layout of my mom expecting me.( She insists that she is 7 months pregnant in this picture. If that's the case, I didn't get her genes for sure. You can barely see her belly and when I was pregnant it was the opposite;you could barely see me! )

If you look closely (or click the pic) you can see that I used a

"homemade-ribbon-measuring-tape" as a border.

I have few more things to share about the card and hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

Here we go

I made this card for my dear husband and though it's very simple, there's a few things a wanted to show/share.
I decided to split it up to a few blog posts. When I have too many photos to upload I get overwhelmed and mess up. So I'm gonna start with the leafs.



It's a very simple fan fold leaf. Start with a semi circle from patterned paper. Cardstock does not work very well with fan folds.
I just cut out a 2.5" circle with the Cricut and then cut in half.




It's tricky to get the folds small and even...



You can put fast drying glue in between the folds and then pinch together.

Or you can just staple the end together.

The leafs look good with a fan fold flower. Here I punched one side of the paper before I started folding the flower.

But of course you can use the leafs with any kind of flower. For this layered flower I used 4 layers in two different sizes. I just traced and hand cut them . Then I scrunched them up like a lollipop flower.

See you real soon!

A repeat

I know I have been slacking with tutorials lately:(
Believe me, it's not lack of ideas, but rather lack of time.
Do you feel like you can never quite catch up with...ANYTHING? I'm behind with laundry, cleaning, phone calls, emails, birthday cards and gifts, exercising (ha!), spending quality time with the kids and then the obvious-scrapping! So see, that's pretty much everything. I guess it's part of the thing called- LIFE huh?

My fingers are itching to get back in the paper crafting groove and I thought I would start simple- with a repeat.

I made these little purses this afternoon. I thought I should give them to the kids teachers for Halloween and put a nice gift certificate inside.




To see the full tutorial for these simple handbags and to get the printable template click here.

I promise-they take less than 30 minutes to make.


Don't forget the details; this is how the back look- a customized stamp from Close To My Heart.



If you would like your own stamp and don't know any CTMH consultants you can order them from here. They cost $ 12.95 for two lines like I have. I think this is a must-have for us paper crafters;)


I promise I will be back soon with some sort of tutorial...of some kind;)

Prizes for the Basic Grey challenge

This might get you started on my Basic Grey challenge. ;)
The kits are not their latest stuff, but just as fabulous!!

One person will win a full collection pack of Pheobe:



Another winner will receive a collection pack of Scarlet's Letter...an old classic...


and a THIRD winner will get two kits of party favors. One from June Bug

and one from Lemonade

So what are you waiting for?

Scroll down to previous post and join the challenge that ends October 31!

A new challenge for you!

Are you ready for a new challenge?



It starts today and ends October 31.



Rules;



* you have to use one of these 4 sketches below

* Your layout has to have at least 50% Basic Grey

* You have to link your layout to this post using Mr. Linky before October 31.



Easy enough huh? Of course there will be prizes .. it will be more than one and it will all be Basic Grey stuff. Yummy! I will post them soon.

Here's my examples.

Sketch # 1 using June Bug:

Sketch # 2 using Sultry:

Sketch # 3 using Pheobe:

Sketch # 4 using Scarlet's letter:

If you have problems with linking or any other questions, please email me at scrapalittle@gmail.com.



I can't wait to see your layouts.I know you will rock this challenge.