More Tags!

I've been happily busy at the table on and off again. It's very nice to be able to say that I can do something creative at the end of a busy day! I got a job!! And I love it and as soon as my "trial period" is over, I'm certain that you will occasionally get a glimpse into that world.

Most of my creative endeavor as of late has been at making tags... I've been trying to get up some to send out as gifts, and to dress up some gifts.

I've been using a TON of Lawn Fawn Stamps including the Happy Hanukkah set (I'm celebrating Hanukkah for the first time ever this year) and I'm LOVING these stamps!!

Lots of Paper piecing here: Basic Grey's Out of Print Paper.

I'm having a lot of fun making all these, and I'm really excited about how they are turning out. It feels good to feel at home and inspired! I'm also excited about using some non-traditional Christmas colors in my stuff!

Christmas Tags!

So I have decided to live! I got all moved in to my new apartment. Just yesterday I finished putting all my scrappy stuff into it's places so that I could work. After dinner last night, I decided I needed to start playing so I pulled out my stamps and made some tags.

This picture shows the tag in progress. It was stamped with a Stampendous rubber cling stamp called Cling Tweet Top Hat and colored in with distress ink (I used a blender pen to color). The berries are dotted with burgundy stickles and after I distressed the tag I coated it with Golden Goddess Glimmer Glam

Here's the final result:

  This morning I wanted to do something special so I made another, larger tag using two sets of stamps from Lawn Fawn, Smitty's ABCs and Let it Snow. First I stamped a sentiment from let it snow all over my tag using Weathered Wood Distress Ink. Then I used the same ink to distress around the body of the tag, then spritzed it to within and inch of it's life with Perfect Pearls Spray (in Perfect Pearl)

I stamped out several of the trees in Forest Moss Distress Ink and then coated them with a layer of Peeled paint distress stickles. I stamped out the hills on another Tag and then cut out the hill and coated it in a layer of glue and added Flowersoft in Polar White. I stamped out the Merry Christmas Sentiment onto that tag where I cut out the hill and then coated the sentiment with Burgundy Stickles (I used a toothpick to do this) then cut a flag shape in one end and edged it with Weathered Wood Distress ink. The hill, Trees and banner are popped up on dimensional adhesive. And I spelled out the to and from using Smitty's ABCs. The colons are drawn with a marker. 

The finished tag in all it's sparkly glory ;)

Thanks so much for looking!

Hold the phone!!! (or... Pack the truck!)

I have not been around much this year, and for that... I am sorry. I have made more cards and little minis as gifts but forgot to take photos. I have a new piece of equipment or two that you will be seeing a WHOLE lot of in the future ;)... but for now I have an announcement.

I am moving. I am moving this weekend. I am moving this weekend from Memphis, TN to Annandale, VA to start a new life. This Saturday marks one year to the day when my husband "disappeared." He "left" to go to his grandparent's house for the weekend, and that evening they called to see what time he should get there. He should have been there hours earlier than they called. The police found him the next day. They took him to see a doctor. I'll spare all the details, but I took him home after he saw the physician. Just after Thanksgiving, 2011 he ended his life.

I've had quite a bit going on. I flaked on first swap ever, and I still feel bad about that, but I think all of the ladies understand. It took a long time for me to get back into creating. I wanted to do something, ANYTHING way before I finally was able. I have made and have it in me to make some more hardcore therapy type pages about my feelings on the subject. It really makes me feel better.

If sad/bad things happen, use your medium... wether it's paper/paint/digiscrapping... the medium doesn't matter,  but your health and sanity do. You can keep the work private or you can choose to share. I have another blog, it's just a therapy blog. For all my whining and poor me stuff, that helped too. And so you know, I did see a professional until she dismissed me. She said I was welcome to come back at any time, but that I was doing a wonderful job working through my grief myself. She gave me tools, exercises. And I was willing to try, even the things I thought were so STUPID, and how could ANYONE wake up on a special day and KNOW they were GOING to PLAN to devote some time to just grieving. But told me to plan on giving in to the sad for a while on special days. And when the first one came around, it worked. I planned for some sad. I had my little breakdown. The rest of the day was fine. I wrote about it in the therapy blog. And moved on.

I'm moving away. I AM leaving so many friends and people I truly love and care about. I am so thankful to have them in my life. This wonderful thing called internet insures that we can chat and visit on some sort of regular schedule. That's how I keep up with them for the most part already. I've started telling them that we can crop together on google+.

You sometimes don't know what people go through in their private lives. My close friends have learned so much more about me this year. The biggest compliment I received was from a really close friend from my college days who told me one day that it was really good seeing "Charity" come out again. I hadn't realized how much of who I WAS had disappeared over the years. I also had forgotten there was anyone who ever knew just single me. That comment made me feel SO GOOD!

It let me know that what I was doing was working not only to myself, but to others.

:)

Halloween Frame Mini

I enjoy watching craft videos (duh) and was watching some over at My Craft Channel and was inspired by a video that I can no longer find listed on their channel... I'm not sure if it's gone or just out of their current lineup, but I am loving the variety I can see over there, it's not just scrapping.

Anyway I was inspired by a video where Heidi Swapp made a mini that she attached to an awsome frame that she had purchased. Going with my trying to use up my stuff thing I have going on, I decided to create a halloween themed mini using a frame that I've had at home forever. I did not paint the frame or anything, I just pulled it out of a box. It was already crackle finished.

Jokey Birthday Card

So one of the doctors that I work for is 50 today. So I asked the peeps at work if they wanted a really jokey "sympathy" card for his birthday. Of course they said "yes" :)!

More cards and another video :)

I completed some more cards using the Woodland Park Collection from October Afternoon

and then using up some of my Sketchbook by Amy Tangerine.

I also dug out some of the scraps from the Daily Junque collection by Pink Paislee and some Teresa Collins.

All of the sentiments are from Paper Smooches and I LOVE those cute fonts and the ability to Mix up words and phrases! 

I finally made a video of a thank you paper bag album that I made for one of our clients at work. Please to enjoy :)

Surprise Happy Mail

Okay, it's been a while since I played with my camera. So I decided to practice with it some more. I like this photo of the LO better than my previous one. You can really tell it was a patterned paper before it got saturated with Licorice Metallic Maya Mist. The background paper is Blue Sky from the new Woodland Park Collection by October Afternoon. I purchased both of these product from my LSS and linked the products to their website. I couldn't find the Mist available online, but if it's available they can order it for you :). The heart stickers I got a couple of years ago from the 1.00 spot in Archivers and I'd never used them. I think they were the perfect accent. I used my copic liner to journal black ink over the black metallic mist. The journalling is very sentimental regarding my late spouse (God rest his soul) and my trip to the Dark Knight Rises with someone else.

Now for some cheerier new :)

I recently went and perused the 12 Tags of 2012 by Tim Holtz. I hadn't gone anywhere near Timmy's blog since my spouse passed. I had enjoyed his Christmas tags for the last several years but felt I just couldn't face them for 2011. And just this month I went to visit one of my scrappy girlfriends and she asked me if I had seen the August tag. I admitted to her that I hadn't seen the first tag for the year. She fussed at me a bit but said I had to see the August tag because it was " SO CHARITY." I went and looked and agreed it was me, then I waited a few days and carefully went through all the tags from the year. I was awed and inspired and so I sent him an email to thank him.

Little did I know he would respond. 

He also wanted to send me the tag.

It came Saturday.

It's wonderful, and he signed the back! 

Who knew Rock Stars could be so precious???? 

My heart is really touched by his kind words and the fact that he sent me this awesome little tag. 

Tim Rocks!

I've been really creative and inspired lately. I even made a project and a video. If you need help using your stash, you should play along. This video is posted as a response to Tonya over at Psychomoms on yt.

The Dark Knight Rises...

This movie was one I both anticipated and dreaded. I didn't know how I'd react to seeing a movie that would have been important to my late husband (God rest his soul).

This layout has more journalling on it than any layout I've done before... and I'm so happy with how it looks, and how it felt making it.

I'm not crazy about this pic, but wanted to share it asap.

Card Frenzy!

I have finished a DC project that I filmed, I just haven't edited yet. I'll try to work on that today. I've been very, very creative lately and inspiration just seems to hit me like a ton of bricks from everywhere. I thought I'd share some cards I made over the weekend. I picked up the new Woodland Park 8x8 paper pad (by October Afternoon) from my FAVORITE locally owned scrapbook store Eclectica

Jewels!

I learned this past week that if you don't practice a particular skill, you WILL lose it! I went to Washington, D.C. and my pics are NOT what I would have liked :).

I made a lovely necklace recently. I bought some beaded chain at Michaels and a junk charm which I covered with a Petaloo Flower (Claudine Hellmuth's Multi Medium was the perfect adhesive for flower to charm). (You can have Eclectica special order these things for you, or there are links to online retailers... if you are in Memphis, please call Eclectica... I love those ladies and they love me back!)

The silver necklace is not a part of the beaded one. I LOVE how this turned out and I've actually gotten some more Flowers in a different color and have ideas for other jewelry. I promise to take better pics in the future.

Say Cheese!

Ok, so don't kill me for the title, but I decided to make a mini using the Teresa Collins Timeless collection and decorated a cheesbox as the holder for the mini.

And lucky for you, I got so excited about it... I made a video :)

Sorry it's crooked, it's been a LONG time since I've done a video... :(

All Things Altered BLOG HOP 3/23

Ok, so this is actually the first creative project that I completed since all my personal drama. And I have to admit if it hadn't been for Pammejo inviting me to participate and being so encouraging...(along with my other scrappy sisters around here) I don't know if I would be able to do anything yet. I also have to say that completing this project made me feel SO GOOD!!! (and really, I knew it would so why couldn't I do something sooner, maybe my muse wasn't ready)

You should be hopping over here from Jess B. If you just popped in to check my personal blog then the hop begins at Pammejo's so come on and join the fun, there are prizes to be won and lots of cool inspirational things to see!

I found this at a local thrift store:

The canvas measures 36 inches square. The frame adds another inch.

I couldn't have bought a canvas this size on sale for this price!

So I took out some lovely gesso and got to work on Plan A for this giant canvas.

Now I needed some words, for texture:

And to apply the pages/words I needed my favorite medium :)

One coat of Gesso later:

Then I started adding pages.

Then breaktime was over so I went back to work with evidence that I was creating at home.

All the words are added now for some lovely COLOR!

Bright, happy, energetic this is what I was feeling and now for the phrase I wanted to add.

I cut the lettering out of vinyl with my Cricut.

Then I carefully layed out my phrase. We are almost at the part where I had to go to 

Plan B.

Now a layer of Black Gesso.

And even more Color!

And now, when I tried to peel up the vinyl letters, it peeled up everything, even my dictionary pages. I blame impatience and using the wrong type of vinyl. I should have used a lower tack vinyl and let the stuff dry way longer before trying to add the letters and then paint over... ugh impatience is NOT a virtue. 

But again my fingers bore evidence of some well spent crafty time at home, and my mood was super elevated!

Plan B involved cutting paper letters out and then altering them with stamps and glimmermist for a really cool look. I used painter's tape as a guide to position my letters.

Yeah this would work!

I liked it so much, I signed and dated the front! Now how to make the frame look good...

Oh yeah, there's still that dictionary!

Right now I can honestly say that this is the best thing I've ever created for myself. 

All my pain went in and all the joy I crave came out.

This quote is from the original Muppet Movie. In fact, I looked it up for you, thanks youtube!

Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out my project. I hope you had a great time and good luck on the hop! Next stop is Laura so get have fun! 

St Patty's Day!

I've been not scrapping so long... well, so long for me. I just haven't been able to put my "new" space together, I go upstairs and walk in the room and just get so down I can't function. I was supposed to go out with friends for St. Patrick's Day, but my plans got cancelled this afternoon. I didn't think it was a big deal, then it was. I didn't realize how much I had been looking forward to the company. I got sad, I wanted to get motivated to do some much needed work around here, but that wasn't happening.

I got a text from another friend asking what it was I liked so much from Jim and Nick's (the answer was pig in a potato patch btw...) and then she asked what I was doing. When I said my plans had gotten cancelled, she told me to get over to Archiver's to scrap.

I said ok, and it was possibly the best thing I could have done for myself :)

Here is what it was like...

And even more exciting, here's what I made: (note... it still needs to be bound, and I'm missing a photo that I need to find and print but here's most of it anyway... I'll do a video when it's all done, ok?)