R.I.P. Beefcake :o(

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while… I’ve been super busy with work and putting in a lot of extra evening and weekend hours. I hope to have some new stuff to post soon!

Today was a particularly hard morning though… we had to put our kitty, Regan (a.k.a. Beefcake) to sleep. This was a first for me and it was just an awful experience. Beefer was 8 years young but had a bad case of “megacolon”. She was being treated with medicine, but it wasn’t working anymore and she was suffering too much. Here’s a little tribute to my “Fat kitty in a little coat:”

Taken earlier this month, hangin' with her sister Emily (a rarity) on the dog bed in my office:

She had the longest whiskers I've ever seen!

Here she is hangin' with her other sister, Chessie.

One of my favs: "It puts the kitty in the basket" :o)

One of the times we shaved her - I can't repeat what she was saying in this picture... this is a "family" blog. :o)

She always loved to find "hide out" spots.... that she could fit into.

Here she is basking in all her furry glory:

Hangin' out with the whole family (pre-buddy & samson)

Rollin' in the cat nip with Emily:

She always loved to just lay on "stuff", lol:

I don't think she liked her new little friend in this pic:

Me & my kekker - when she was still a little one.

The day I brought her home:

My favorite picture: :o)

Thanks for lookin'... just wanted to share :o)

My Cricut cut Foam!!!

David got me the Cricut Deep Blade for Christmas, and the first thing I tried it on was foam! You know... those dirt-cheap packs of craft foam you can get at HL, Ms, etc? Yeah, those! And the cricut cut right through them like butter! I believe I had the blade set to a 5 or 6 and the next-to-the-last pressure setting. I used a medium speed and no multi-cutting!

I just had to bling 'em up a little and added some sugar coating glitter to the tops!

FYI - I used Cuttin' Up for the title and the bath bubbles from New Arrival.

Doodling is fun!

I had so much fun lifting this scrap technique from Scrappin' Mama, Stephanie! Her advice guided me through the whole thing, so I'll go ahead and post it here, as it worked wonderfully for me:

"The best advice I can give for the doodling is do it imperfect on purpose! Give your lines a little wiggle on purpose, and maybe draw back over a line one or two more times, but not directly on the first one. Just off on either side, as though you were in a really big hurry while trying to thicken the original line. And make sure to slightly cross lines coming from different directions that meet. Hmmm…I try to make my writing somewhere between cursive and print. I guess it looks like I’m just jotting notes as quickly yet legibly as I can. This is about all it takes. I tend to just put the LO’s together the same as anybody else’s but then I feel it needs something, so I just pull out a trusty pen and start throwing outlines around stuff! So, all-in-all my basic advice is to just throw some imperfect lines onto a LO!"

So here is my result in following her great advice! :o)

LO "Extreme Makeover"

One of the challenges this month in my Scrappin' Mammas thread was to make over an old LO you were unhappy with. I immediately thought of this atrocity:

Yes... an explosion of mismatched fibers and letter beads. YUK YUK YUK! So here's the "Extreme Makeover" - or complete re-do into something much more tolerable using the Basic Gray "Two Scoops" line:

This is a new technique I started using where I gather some tule under a "pop-dotted" layer. To make the top layer, I hand-trimmed the wave pattern in the paper, then distressed the edge and added some pearl gem stickies for accents:

For the title I used Tim Holtz grungeboard letters painted with MM paints and embellished them with jewels, silver colorbox ink and stickles:

For the flower accents, I stamped some flourishes and embossed them with silver. Then I added flowers by punching a big flower from the BG paper and curling the petals down and then placing a cream-colored prima flower on top of it and finishing off with a silver brad. I adhered the flowers with Zots. The border underneath was done with a bottom layer of crochet edging I found in the ribbon isle at Michaels and then using the threading water punch on the pop-dotted top layer and weaving a thin sheer ribbon in & out - making sure to leave some slack for "texture":

The journaling paper is from the MM "Noteworthy" collection. The embellishments include more tulle, a flower set, and a tied piece of twill tape from stampin' up!

First Haircut LO

I really enjoyed doing this LO documenting William's first haircut that I gave him! I used the "My Guy" page kit from Pebbles, Inc. and kept a lock of his hair in a 3L clear envelope. For the title, I painted some raw paper studio chipboard with my mm paints for "1st" and used AC stickles for "haircut."

The journaling is just a simple text box from MS Word with a background color of navy and white font. I often forget I can use this technique!

I loved adding this touch - We R Memory Keepers grommets with some ribbon from the kit weaved through.

Close-up of the 3L envelope with his hair:

Denver 2 pager!

Here's a long-overdue 2 page LO I did using the Basic Gray Granola line, the Doodletype font cartridge, some vellum, and a whole lot of buttons!

I had to slip in a pic highlighting how William slept all the way through his first plane ride... both ways!

I didn't apply adhesive all the way up the mountain layers so I could slip in the trail map from our hike (I couldn't find the original I'd saved... so thank God for the internet! :o))

A plethora of sketch sites!

Another great site – compliments of Michelle!

http://www.sketchlover.com/id6.html

First DigiKit & Freebie... and IMS is online!

I'm so excited! I have finally completed my first digital kit EVER! And furthermore, after many hours of toil and troubles my store is up as well! So basically, I have a store with one kit... haha. But rest assured, 2 more are on the way!

So, I would like to introduce everyone to "Winter Chill":

You can find it at my new store: imotionstudios.com! I'm having a major sale for the time being until things get up and running over there!

And here is the freebie for it - the freebies for my kits will only be available here on my blog! You can click here to download it!

Hope you digiscrappers out there like it! :o)

My latest online discoveries...

The Basic Gray Newsletter! Beautiful PDF downloads with tons of inspiration and projects using the basic gray line! http://www.basicgrey.com/index.php?src=news&category=Newsletters&osCsid=6dd04e46bdb6669f73a30d45f413bd3c

Free Card & Scrapbooking Mag! http://www.scrapbookandcards.com/index.html If you wanna subscribe, you have to pay for S&H, but you can download the PDF version for free!

Awesome Page, Card & Tag sketches by Beck Fleck! http://www.pagemaps.com/ (Thanks Michelle!) :o)

Puppy Dog Hat

William got this super cute puppy dog hat from his Aunt Didi and Uncle Rick for Christmas.  He’s never been much for wearing hats, but he wore this to play in all evening the other day!  I couldn’t believe it, and it was so cute I just had to share!

Photoshop Fairy Tutorial

I wanted to post my first tutorial, so I "jazzed" one up that a created a while back for the fairy image above. The instructions are for Photoshop CS3, but should work for most other versions. And as long as you are fairly familiar with Elements, you should be able to get by there as well. Some steps are optional, but they can teach you many different PS techniques to use on other projects!

CLICK HERE to download the tutorial in PDF format.

Enjoy! :o)

Awesome Calendar!

Just found this at Two Peas while browsing with Didi! We’re taking this project on! Anyone else wanna join in? :o)

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/pg.asp?cmd=display&layout_id=1426636

First Digital Photobook - Wil's first year

I am very proud of my first printed digital scrapbook ever! I made all the pages using lots of my favorite designer's kits (see their links under my favs to the right). I had several books printed up at Shutterfly.com as Christmas gifts this year - it was a great gift and so work the time and effort to see how much everyone loved it!

Click Here to go take a look at the entire book on Shutterfly!

I also have to give proper credit to Melanie Colosimo and her awesome layout templates. Without them, I could never have put this together in the amount of time I had!

Latest Round of Layouts

Here's the latest round of Layouts I've churned out... now that Christmas is done, I'm looking forward to scrappin' a whole lot more! I've got lots of catching up to do!

This LO is all about William's first attempt at crawling. I picked up the SEI "Dill Blossom" paper line at HL the other day and I love it! I also expiramented with the SEI Linen and Velvet specialty paper to cut the title out with my Alphalicious cart - the cricut cut right through it like butter! Click on the 4th picture down to get a great view of it!

Finally getting around to documenting William's first teeth! (He got the bottom two at the same time!) And I have to give credit to DH for this one... he came up with the title for me! :o)

My Mother's Day LO using Basic Gray's Urban Prairie Line:

His first swim! Lifted from Scrappin' Mama, Julie! :o) I believe the paper is from Me & My Big Ideas.

Big Boy Jammies

I bought William his first pair of “Big Boy” Jammies the other day and he looked SO darn cute wearing them! My little man is growing TOO fast!

Hello Kitty Birthday Card

I made this SUPER CUTE b-day card for my friend, Michelle using HER Hello Kitty Greetings Cartridge (lol) :oP I now know the font cart isn’t enough… I must have the whole enchilada! The real fun part was decorating it with gems, stickles and frosty pink fabric paint!

Fun with Mickey & Friends

William has shown a great interest in Mickey Mouse (he says “Mu Mou” whenever he sees him). So I borrowed my buddy Michelle’s Mickey & Friends Cricut Cartridge and went to work designing these for his playroom! I found the perfect 12x12 frames for these at Hobby Lobby for $4.00! (They were originally $7.99 marked 50% off). He’ll have a set of Pooh & Sesame Street on the way soon! :o)