My wife Tammy has passed away I want to thank all out there that have been a part of my wifes life and let her into yours.  thank you and God bless.

Journaling In Your Own Words!

I’ve been waiting for this event because I believe that journaling is so important.  I tend to write too much and I need to learn to edit out a lot of unimportant stuff.  This event is free and has a lot of very talented people participating.  Go on over to Elles Studio Blog and check out the great information?

I was on vacation and missed the beginning but can now go back and catch up.  The event dates are August 8th – 28th.

Swap Sisters live class about Blog Signatures!

Tonight I am learning how to create my own blog signature in a live class on the Swap Sisters site.

Here it is:                             Check out the Swap Sisters site by clicking the Blinkie at the bottom left of this blog

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TP Tube Album with Cricut

Lately I have been on this huge recycle, reuse, compost, etc. surge (Those who have visited us lately can attest to how bad it is). I save all of my packing material to use in my crafting. When people throw away compost material or recycling I go into the garbage after it and give the offending wasteful person a reminder. We've had a lot of company lately so everyone has been submitted to my reign of thriftiness. I've been watching some You Tube tutorials today and found this great and adorable recycling idea for Tag Mini Albums out of toilet paper or paper towel rolls. There are so many cute tutorials out there but I really liked this one because she created a Cricut file for the paper that covers the toilet paper rolls very nicely. She is offering the .cut or SVG file on her blog (you can get the address after watching the video).

My sister and I were raised by Grandparents who were children during the depression and they learned not to waist and to be frugal. I remember some people being embarrased by their family members because of the extent of their frugality. Well, hard times have rolled around again for a lot of us and we need to relearn those lessons. Funny how that happens...

I hope you enjoy this video and that it helps you get some great new ideas of your own. Oh yeah, save all those old CD's, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, etc., they have more value than you thought. Some things are better the second time around!

Dimensional Details

My current class is also found at BigPictureScrapbooking.com and taught by Nic Howard, titled Dimensional Details. I decided to take this class because I sometimes overdue embellishments and am unsure of myself. New techniques and ideas would also be very welcome. Here is my prework layout.

I used my Cricut to cut out the word Discover and the swirl embellishment.

 

One of our challenges was to find a tool from the kitchen to use on our layout. I found my pastry tool and inked a zig zag design around my embellishments. Who would have thought to use this for scrapbooking?  I wonder what Nic has up her sleeve for the future.

Design My Life – Finally!

Twelve weeks ago I started an online class at BigPictureScrapbooking.com which I was so excited about. Needless to say I didn’t get the time to do the class. So….I am now going to work on that class plus the current class. My first class is by one of my favorite designers; Cathy Zielske titled Design Your Life. I love Cathy’s layouts because she uses very basic templates and actually gets a lot done in a small amount of time. I sit and worry over each layout so that I don’t get anything done. I thought that Cathy could help and boy was I right! The class taught basic design principles which help me to not be so intimidated. Our first prework assignment was to fill in a page with our intention for this class. Here is my page:

 

Our next prework assignment was to create a 12 x 12 personal style/mission statement layout. I’m going to try to do most of these pages digitally so that I can learn skills to help me in my personal scrapbooking. Cathy has us keep a binder of our work and I love it because each page is a different size and so we are mixing it all up. I love the look and freedom to do what I want.

For those of you who haven’t seen me in a while may notice that my picture is a bit different. Yes, I finally covered the grey! I know it took Bob so many years to talk me into letting the grey come in but I’ve decided that I’m not quite ready. I LOVE it and feel younger already. 

Here’s the before picture a few days before.  What do you think?