Christmas

Well,

Christmas day has come and gone. Not a bad year for us in the Rogers household. The family got a Playstation 3 that has been amusing for me and a time consumer for the kids. Playing "Little Big Planet" with Bob proved to be quite interesting. I seem to have a problem trying to jump and grab at the same time.

I received a tool box and a tackle box for putting scrapping supplies in. I have not had the chance to put them to work yet, but I am looking forward to filling them up.

I am also looking forward to January and the new Inspirations Sneak Peak for Close to My Heart. And following in February, the new Product Catalog. The product line in the Inspirations book is so awesome! With the beautiful papers and stamps, I am looking forward to creating some cards and pages for my scrapbook. As soon as I have some finished I will post them here.

In the meantime, have a wonderful New Year!

me

Well, another birthday come and gone. I did get to spend the day at one of my favorite places, Henry Ford Museum. I don't think I could ever get tired of going there. I would have preferred Greenfield Village, but the Village is not so fun in the winter.

After the Museum; Ian, Bob and I went over to my sister's house and we had some food and divied up my mother's earrings. My sister's gave me a bottle of wine from the Northville Winery and some chocolate cake.

I then went back to Mark's house and tried to pack up stuff for our trip back to Arizona. After five days in Michigan I was ready for some Arizona sunshine.

I had two packages waiting for me from Close to my Heart with the January Inspirations order I placed. The stamps and paper are even nicer than they looked in the catalog. I can't wait to use them.

Thanksgiving

Ian and I have started our Thanksgiving preparations. We have made a pumpkin pie (well Ian did anyway) and the traditional orange jello. We set the bread to rising and have mapped out what time to put all the rest of the food in the oven tomorrow so everything will be done at the same time.

This is the first time in four years I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Usually we go out to eat so I don't have to work so hard on a meal I mostly don't eat. This year I decided I should cook the meal rather than go out. I'm not sure what I was thinking!! I remembered very quickly why I don't cook this meal as we began our preparations today. I can only hope the meal will be delicious and the family time together will be fun.

Unfortunately, my oldest son Joe called me today and said that he is sick and won't be able to come over tomorrow. I hope he feels better soon and knows that he and his fiancée Andy, will be missed by us all.

Hope everyone who reads this has a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.

CTMH Gathering

I finally had my first Close to My Heart gathering. It was this afternoon and I was nervous and excited. The project we made was a Christmas waterfall card using the Mistletoe Creative Basics kit and the Just for the Holidays stamp set. I used Topiary and Cranberry inks. I also made an alternate card using the same paper kit but with the Stars stamp set. Don't forget you can click on the CTMH logo to the right and order from my website from the entire catalog. Hope you enjoy this card.

Close to my Heart

I have recently joined the Close to My Heart family. I am very excited to start sharing this amazing product with my friends and anyone else who is interested in learning about it. As evidenced by this blog, I love to create with paper and ink and all the embellishments I can get my hands on.

I have added a link to my CTMH website in the upper right corner. Go ahead and click on it if you would like to see the products that CTMH has. You can order right from the site or send me an email if you would like me to give you a call about hosting a gathering or just to get more information about the products.

One of the products that I am very excited about (and I'm rather surprised by it) is their digital scrap booking, Studio J. I created seven pages in two nights when I first went on the site to see how it worked. I cannot believe how easy it was to create complete layouts. You can choose from all their paper products, add ribbon, brads, buttons, and their sticker products, all without adding dimension.

One of the things I plan on doing after I receive my prints is add some of those same elements to the pages. I love dimension, which is why I didn't think I would like digital scrap booking. But I love it!

mom

I am grieving the loss of my mother. She passed away this morning after failing health from a series of broken hips over the past year. I will miss her greatly even though I have not been able to see her very often since I moved to Arizona in 1997.

I was able to get back to Michigan and see her the week before last. It was hard to see her so weak and unable to communicate very well, but I am so glad I made it back to see her before she passed on to a better place where she can be together with my dad again.

I love you mommy!

tiny, whispering sound

It has been a very long time since I have written a post. My life just seems to be getting busier and more complicated day by day.

I am still working on swaps as well as cards for personal use. One of the things I am thinking about in the back of my mind is whether I can make a business out of the cards that I make for personal use. I have been given the chance to have a small display in a local business in the near future. The real question for me is whether or not I will have the time to do the job properly and keep up with making sure there is always stock on hand.

On another note, I have completed one of my swaps and have a picture to share. This is for a Scripture Swap through the Stamping Scrapping Swapping Democracy which is a yahoo group. I chose one of my favorite scriptures from 1Kings. Elijah is standing at the face of a cave waiting for the Lord to pass by him.

The page has four levels that represent the four things that Elijah experienced in his wait. the first was strong and heavy winds; I used a nice blue paper with subtle swirls on it to represent the sky. I then stamped additional "wind" in a dark blue and brown. Next came an earthquake; for this I chose a striped brown paper that I tore down the middle to represent the upthrust from an earthquake. After the earthquake was a fire; I chose an brownish orange paper for this and added some red eyelash ribbon directly behind the orange paper to represent the fire. Finally, there was a tiny, whispering sound, and God was in that sound. This piece was the most challenging for me. How do you put a tiny, whispering sound on a scrapbook page? I used a green paper with just a hint of gold sheen to it (which is not apparent in the picture). The subtle, golden sheen is where I am showing the presence of God.

I am very happy with how this particular page came out. What do you think?

Works in Progress

I have been very busy working on numerous projects, both for myself and for work.

I have three swaps I am doing for August: a steno notepad cover, a 6x6 scripture page, and a folder/envelope element swap.

For work I have to put together 60 cloth covered books, cut out 75 paper dolls with numerous clothes and hairs with my Cricut, and create a bingo game with at least 50 "common life activities".

I might be a little over my head, but I am determined to get it all done. But, boy, I will need some serious down time in September.

As soon as I get something finished, I will post it.

Thanks for sticking with me.

embellishments

I thought I would share a couple of pictures from my crafting room that David, Ian, and Bob helped to create for me for my birthday a few years ago. It is still a work in progress, mostly because I have way more stuff than I am able to satisfactorily organize with what is available to me right now. I do not have enough space, organizational materials, or money to make it what I envision in my head.

One of my favorite items in the room is my printers drawer. I found it in an antique store and was able to get it for about $20. We hung it on the wall and I use it to store many little containers of embellishments. Because I do love embellishments. I purchases that David gave me from his father's coin collection. I also have some 'just for fun' stuff on there, like the wooden spoon on top and my short-fat bolt I just had to have one time when I was at the hardware store. I also have a nice chunk of amethyst (just below the pink box on the left side) to help relieve stress. You can see I have some liquid chalk inkers on the bottom, right corner. I use those quite often in my work.

I have this hung just to the right on my work desk, so all of the supplies here are easily accessible when I am creating. I highly recommend this embellishment organizational system if you get the chance.

I also have two different spice racks that I use for my embellishments that I have lots of such as buttons and brads. I have lots of brads. One of my all time favorite things in this world is brads. Some of the jars are missing because I have them packed away with my on-the-go supplies.

Another perk of the jars is that I can take them with me when I scrap outside of my room, which I do a lot.

scrapping frustrations

Monday evening! I got to spend the entire day on Saturday scrapping with a good friend. Unfortunately, I seemed to be in a bad place because after 9 hours, all I had done was some cutting on three projects and one greeting card completed.

My problem started when I got ahead of myself and put some rivets on my project without the tag that I was supposed to be attaching. So I tried to take the rivet off, but I couldn't find my tags. The store we were at did not have any for me to buy, so I had to put that project away.

Then I started on my next project, but after getting the background cut, I realized that I needed to print the next part, and of course I had to do that at home, so I had to put that aside too.

I did have my brand new 'ultimate crafter's companion' with me and so was able to make envelopes to put my incomplete projects in.

I found a really cool card in the store and decided to recreate it using scraps. I think it turned out pretty cool for just picking through my scrap paper drawer.

I will be finishing my projects this week or the next and will post pictures of them when I get them finished.

paint chip card

Hello.

I have decided to start a blog to showcase the scrapping and cards that I made. This is my first attempt at a blog so if anyone actually decides to read my blog, I hope that you enjoy what you see. I welcome all constructive feedback on my designs and creations.

The first item I am highlighting is a card I made for an element swap. We had to use a paint chip card as our element.

While in Lowe's I noticed these awesome paint chips for Valspar paint. I really liked how there were colors that highlighted historical preservation colors. I knew immediately I wanted to use one of these chips. I went outside my comfort zone and did not choose green or purple. I chose a nice blue color and then went with a complementary yellow chip to peek through the squares. I love ribbon and decided to run a narrow ribbon with small knots behind the blue so the knots were centered on the yellow square. I added three yellow organdy ribbons with blue flowers on top with button centers.

I hope you enjoy this card and that you come back to see more if you did.