November Expressions!!!

Wow. . . this year is flying by faster and faster each month! The November club kits are out from Express the Moment and there is a super cool suprise included with the Expressions Kits! The Expressions kits are for making cards, tags or other lovely things. They cost just $15.oo (plus shipping if you are not local) and boy are they worth every penny! You get all of these great papers and embelishments and envelopes for making . . . . anything that your imagination can create! Kim has asked me to help out by making a few cards for examples each month. She calls this being part of her design team. . . I call it, Ultimate Fun!!!!! Hehehe.

You can purchase the kits at the ETM website. You can even sign up to get them sent to you each month. Can you imagine going to the local craft store to purchase things to make 6-10 cards? I can garuntee you that I can NEVER get out of the craft store only spending $15.00. And even then, I am not so sure that what I bought will match very well. Kim has an incredible eye for detail and such great taste in matching patterns and embelishments and papers. You really have to see these kits to believe it!

Allow me to show an example. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a ten minute video? Oh, all videos for YouTube have to be less than ten minutes. Who knew! :D

I will showcase my Expressions creations here at my blog each month. For even MORE detail and instructions on how to make the cards, you will need to check out the photo gallery at ETM. Thanks for checkin' it out. And here are some fun cards for November. :D

This one's for the boys!

Ahh. . . the next few weeks are going to be just full of scrap! I have a ton of things to finish up to add to my inventory for the craft fair at Bonneville High School - it will be the 21st of November so set your calendars and alarm clocks and phone alarms and all of that jazz. :) I hope to have a lot of really unique an fun things up for sale for the holidays - including all of this last years' inventory that did not sell on ETSY and tons of really fun holiday cards and gifts.

Now then. Who says you can't find or make the perfect hand made card for the guys in our lives? It's not that guys don't like or appreciate hand made cards, I don't think. I'm pretty sure that it's mostly because they could just do without all of the glitter and ribbons and all of that fancy schmancy stuff. So here is one that will be in my inventory for the craft fair. . . just right for all of the Dads and husbands and brothers and grandpas out there, especially if they are the outdoorsy type!

Oh, and there is just one tiny bit of bling. I couldn't help it. (See nose.)



Card Day Clubbers. . . we will be meeting next Monday at Stephanie's house! Hooray for card day. . . who is ready to make Christmas cards?

I will have my November cards up for Express the Moment later this week. I owe a big thank you to Kim for allowing me to help her out with the Expressions Kits each month. . . they will always be featured here at my blog as well as at the ETM site for anyone who wants ideas and tutorials! I am so super excited to be part of Kim's design team! There are going to be a lot of really fun things to do with this in the future. I CAN'T WAIT!

I will also be participating in a blog hop later this month for Operation Write Home, in which we will be featuring Valentines for the troops! This will be a really fun event for Veterans' Day. Lots of great things headed my way, for which I am truly thankful. Times are good!

-Nancy

Card Day!

Card Day is always a little like Christmas :) Everybody gets to go home with so many goodies! It's also an awesome afternoon spent with friends. Good fun, good friends, good munchies. . . hehehe. . . and today we had a new member, Brandi!

Here is a video of the goods from today's creativity. Next Card Day will be November 16th at Stephanie's house. Hooray!

Check out all of these super cute Halloween Treats that we got to take home.

A lot has happened since last I stopped by blogland. I have decided that I need something more mobile for posting with while I am travelling. I recently got to spend some time with my grandfolks in Albuquerque again. I do love getting to see them, even if it is not under the best of circumstances. . .

While in Albuquerque I did pick up some new idea books for card making. One thing that I noticed is the use of a term that is new to me. Paper Engineering. I am terribly excited about this! Paper Engineering. It has such a nice ring to it, don't you think? It sounds so much more important than "scrapping" or "crafting" or "oh, you're working on that stuff again??" Yes, honey, I am a paper engineer now. It sounds so stately! So formal! And so like there should be a big paycheck attached to it. HA!!! Well, we can all dream can't we? :)

Another thing I am terribly excited about is the October Expressions Kit from ETM. Oh, and there is a crop weekend coming up too. . . YAAY! At any rate, I got those cards made from my October kit and I couldn't wait to showcase some of my new learned engineering techniques.
So here you go. If I get requests for such, I will make tutorials. Or perhaps I should call them blueprints? :)

Fall Inspiration

So I have been having a pretty hard time getting inspired to make fall-ish looking cards and such. I guess it is because things are still pretty green and warm here in the valley and I am NOT READY for fall anyway! But fall is my favorite time of year. The 21st of this month was the Autumn Equinox, which is a holiday of sorts in some cultures. It has been fun to read and learn about some of the pagan celebrations that have leaked over into modern day culture. The symbol of a cornucopia, the celebrating of leaves and trees, and feasts in honor of times of harvest. The realization that we are now headed for longer days and shorter nights - these are all inspirational to me.

I also took a drive to Jackson and visited Grand Teton National Park yesterday, just for fun. This is one of my favorite places and somewhere that I try to go with some frequency. It's like going home - and Wednesday was a beautiful, clear day. Sometimes it is great just to road-trip it and see beautiful things and clean your soul! Who needs more inspiration than this?

I also picked up a 12x12 DCWV stack at JoAnns this week - Indian Summer. The colors are awesome for fall and there are some really neat patters, foiled papers, and glittered papers too. I used my Storybook Cricut cartridge to make the leaves and did a little stitching and glittering too. I ended up with two large cards for the craft booth and four smaller ones for the troops. Click for a zoom to see how I used chalks to edge the patterned papers a little bit. . . I layered them and stitched everything down to the brown card base. The little marquee signs were also cut from the Storybook cartridge. I used some dimentional dots to pop the signs up, and added a green ribbon last. I love how these turned out with so much texture and color. Even though that middle stripe of patterned paper looks like some kind of golfer pants accident!!!

Finally, I was sort of at a loss for what kind of sentiment to use. I wanted something fall-ish and also something that people could use for any fall occasion. I ended up making these in Paint Shop and now I am passing them on to you. The larger sentiment fits perfectly in a 5x7ish card, and the smaller one is for those of us making the A2 size cards for the troops. Both images are .jpg formats and you can save them and print them easily onto blank card stock or paper for your cards or even for scrapbook pages! Be sure to click on them first before saving.

Happy Autumn. . . .

Card Day!

Oh, it had been too long since the ladies got together for card day!!!

The events of today were fantastic. . . it was a great time for the CDC (Card Day Club!) and we did save a few kits for those who couldn't make it this time around. And so I will post pics of todays projects for those who may need a little hand with assembly and such!!! :) We are sure hoping that with fall and the kids going back to school that the CDC will get back in full force in time for making Christmas Cards and such. Our next meeting will be Monday October 19th - hosted by me! More news to follow and of course anybody locally who would like to join us is more than welcome - it's a great time!

Today's Card Day was all about . . . bags and tags!!! WHAT??? No cards??? Well, we decided to do something different and fun, and it WAS! We are definitely going to have to do this one again. We all got to go home with all of these great gift bags. So here are pics of the loot. (click for bigger pics if needed!)

This birthday bag was designed by Tiffani and we had a ton of fun with all of the glitter and the cupcakes. I love the blue and brown colors and the glitter, of course. Yaay! Tiffani also even found the perfect tissue paper for the insides of all of her bags. I think that most of the supplies that we got for all of these bags came from Big Lots and from Wal Mart - Big Lots has especially good deals on plain gift bags in lots of different colors and sizes and you can get them in packages for a very inexpensive price.





This bag is great for a girlie birthday - loving the birthday fairy and all of the bling. This one is also by Tiffani. I think that she went totally nuts with the Paper Doll Cricut cartridge . . .

. . . she also made one for the super men (and boys) in our lives as well because . . . well. . . they just probably wouldn't dig all of the pink glitter on the fairy bag. Then again, you never know.






Too cute this little super man is, with the silver foil city in the background!!!










Deb Egan brought this bag and tag and Tiffani and I are just going nuts over the paper that she chose. She also cut out that little star embelishment thing using glitter paper and we stuck it on the bag with a sugar coated brad. Love the colors for this one and it could be for Christmas OR a winter birthday. . . perfect!







Here is a bag for Halloween goodies. I didn't make a tag to match, I wish I had been that smart. But I DID make a Halloween card because I just couldn't stand it, and we put those together too. Yes- next month will be all Halloween stuff, but I JUST COULDN'T HELP IT. . . HALLOWEEN IS MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY EVER THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH HALLOWEEN!!!








Scary, huh? I know. :)









Finally, here is a bag and tag of sorts, although not a gift bag. This little "bag" is more of a holder for a ziplock baggie. Now you can put cookies or candy or cocoa mix or whatever you want in the baggie, and the baggie goes inside THIS. See? Then the treats show through the little window. All done in my favorite Christmas paper from last year too. . . and that is the end of the Card Day goodies for now. :)


What a great day! Thank you all, it was really a treat!

Operation Write Home!

Operation Write Home posted this video tonight. . . and although I have seen this one in the past, it was a very influental reminder of things that are important to me right now.

I can't really do much as an individual to change health care, or prevent global disaster. My car isn't very "green." I don't have much to say about the whole MTV video music awards or time to worry about Brangelina's thirteen kids. . . but I can make a difference in the life of a few strangers, and that is what I would like to do.

To make a point about how very easy it is to get involved with something like Operation Write Home, I am displaying my newest goal. I bought a box of these "My Mind's Eye" blank greeting cards at the Hobby Lobby when I was visiting my grandfolks last spring. They were on clearance. All of the other materials shown here, came from the dollar store, or other various scrapbook sales where things were very, very cheap. I am going to make fifty cards for OWH with supplies and scraps that I already have on hand. I was suprised at how easy it was to whip these ones out. And for pennies! You don't have to spend a lot of money to donate hand made cards. It doesn't take a lot of time or effort. Best of all when I get done and sit back and see what I have done, I just feel really really good. *sigh*

If anyone is interested in joining me in this goal, I am more than glad to share my supplies, space and time, in fact, I spend most of all day Mondays doing laundry and making cards after AJ goes to school. I won't make you help me fold socks. :) But I will share my glue! Email me or leave me a message and you can come join me if you like. I hope to have this box of 50 ready to mail out some time in the next couple of weeks.

Scrap mania over for today. Good night!