BBTB2; Food

The current challenge at the Bitten By The Bug 2 challenge site is FOOD.

I really thought this was going to be an easy one. I purchased this ornament a couple of weekends ago and decided to add some vinyl to the back to commemorate the fact that our family has been enjoying Friday Night Pizza since 1995. Yes, I said 1995!

The ornament is super cute with lots of glitter on the pepperonis!

First, it was really hard to pull off the backing sheet since these letters were very small and thin (Font is actually called Skinny Thing) but I finally did it. Then...

The vinyl letters did not want to stick to the ornament.

The back is not flat plus has a a sort of dust of glitter all over. I wiped it with a cotton ball & alcohol, but that did not help. So I added a coating of Modge Podge over all the letters. I originally had “since 1995”, but they were even smaller than the other letters so I opted to write it with a Sharpie.

Now it’s your turn, create a project with FOOD as your inspiration and link it to the BBTB2 challenge site.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #110

Happy TGIF; Thankful Friday!

This week I'm thankful for ebooks. Ok, yes, I am one of those people who did not jump on the eBook train when it was all the rage...I mean, I love the feel of books, the smell of books, the weight of a good book in your hands, but then this happened...

The book we are reading for my Book Club was not available at the library. I don't like to buy just any book, so I decided to join an eBook club on a free trial basis. So that's what I did.

My daughter is already a member of Scribd so I joined. I have to admit, it is really convenient. LOL My thought was to cancel the membership before the end of the free trial, but I may have to reconsider.

This month's book is: This is How It Always Is.  Wow, I'm only about a third way through and I highly recommend it.


What are you thankful for this week? Let me know in the comments.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #109

This week I’m thankful for our new granddaughter. She made her appearance at 7:30 a.m., Thursday morning. It still seems unbelievable to me.

Weight: 7 lbs 1 oz and Length is 20”.

My heart is full!

WOYWW #545

Good morning! Happy WOYWW everyone. Click on over to Stamping Ground for more information on the weekly linkage.

My desk this morning:

I bought this cute pizza ornament over the weekend. We’ve had Friday Night Pizza since 1995 so I thought this would be a cute addition to our Christmas tree. It’s hard to tell, but the pepperoni is glittered up really well.

We are still anxiously waiting the arrival of our newest granddaughter. She sure is taking her time!

Your turn, post a photo of your work desk and join the linkage at Stamping Ground!

BBTB2; Anniversary

It's my turn to host the challenge at the Bitten By The Bug challenge site. For the current challenge, I chose ANNIVERSARY.

This month marks my hubby & my 33rd wedding anniversary. I decided to make him a card using the Tie The Knot cartridge. It's mostly a wedding cartridge, obviously, but I love the champagne glasses.

Most of my cards are the standard 5.5 x 4.25 size, but since this image is tall & skinny, I decided to make a longer card AND a shaker card.

Have you made a shaker card before? Step by step instructions are below:

You'll need three different pieces for the shaker portion. The portion with the window, acetate or some kind of clear material (I use transparency film), and the solid base (this can also be the card base).

Adhere the clear material to the shaker window piece using regular flat adhesive. Then add 3D tape around the edges. Be sure to but up all the adhesive since you don't want cracks where the filling can come out. I doubled mine since it was pretty thin. Then add powder or something similiar to the edges so your shaker elements won't stick to the sides of the adhesive. I use my embossing buddy (which is basically powder in a bag).

Fill it with confetti, glitter, beads, whatever. Be sure not to overload it since you want it to shake.

Now the hard part. Remove the adhesive liner and place the base to it. All this while the shaker portion is flat on your surface. Then add the element to your card front.

This one was a little hard to photo in my photo box but you can still see how cute it is!

Now it's your turn...click on over to the BBTB2 challenge site and link up your project.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #108

I love the Friday before a three day weekend, don't you? Monday is Veteran's Day so we get the day off. Even though my hubby is a veteran, we don't usually participate in any activities this day. He's never been a crowd guy.

We're still anticipating the birth of granddaughter #2 which can happen any time.

This week I'm thankful for electricity. I know that seems strange, but a large part of our state was without power for multiple days due to fires and threats of fire.

I mean, we've been through power outages before but never for multiple days. I can't even imagine.

How about you? What are you thankful for this week? Please share in the comments below.

Two Hour Tour Layout

This past weekend, I was on a scrapbooking mission. I finally started the Acapulco vacation/wedding album. It's always so nice to go back and look at photos from a vacation.

I made a super quick video for YouTube, but wanted to add a little more details here.

I used the Melon Ball Paper Plus paper pad from Colorbok that I received as a gift. It's really bright and I thought it would be perfect for the trip to Mexico.

I chose this patterned paper as the background since it had a "wave-like" look. This paper is very think so I matted it with a bright blue cardstock.

This is the type of paper pad that has lots of embellishments and letters so I grabbed a few and fussy cut around the images for a journaling spot, title base, title and embellishments.

I cut a 4.5 strip of white cardstock to place the photos since the background was so busy & bright, but otherwise didn't add much of anything else. A few enamel dots, cork embellishments and some blue splashes here and there and it was done.

Now in this corner, you can see a yellow star. That is a sticker so if you scan it on your phone a video will pop up. This is an ap called Penless. Go to their website to learn more about it. I purchased some of these stickers at the Expo last year and love using these!

Also in this corner, I created my own cork dots. One of the cork embellishments I knew I wouldn't use so I used my Crop-a-dile and punched small circles in it. I used the rest as another banner on the left side so now there's three areas where I placed cork.

WOYWW #544

Happy Wednesday...Hump Day...WOYWW!

What is WOYWW? Click over to Stamping Ground to see more deckers and read all about it.

I’ll make this short and sweet. Here’s my desk. I’ve been scrapbooking a lot and actually cleaning as I go...The Cricut cartridge is for a project for one of the DTs that I’m on.

Stayed turned for that!

FSJ/Spellbinders’ Haul

I placed a small order from Fun Stampers Journey/Spellbinders and it arrived on Friday.

Here’s everything I ordered:

I am so excited to start using these two stamp sets. Last year they sold out of the gnomes set so I was really excited to get one this year! They are adorable. Click HERE to see the tags I made with this set.

I’m pretty sure I now own every Color Silk bottle they sell. I use this product all the time. I just love the convenience of the small bottle & brush.

Since Spellbinders purchased Fun Stampers Journey, I no longer am a consultant, but I still love the products. They are high quality and such great variety on their products. Check out their website...you won’t be disappointed.

Scrapbook Generation 6x6 Series

I am totally fan girl hyped right now. I am in a collaboration with Janet from RTS Scrapbooking who is my favorite YouTube person. Along with many others we’re showcasing the 6x6 Paper Pads class available from Scrapbook Generation.

Check out my YouTube video and follow the other channels on this hop.

Here’s the finished layout and more details:

Paper Pad: Off Beat by Basic Grey
The two silhouettes and title are from the County Living Cricut cartridge.

Scrapbook Generation Class

FSJ/Spellbinders for the Color Silk (Beach Ball)

I hope you are inspired to create your own layouts using a 6x6 pad too. If you aren't already, please subscribe to my YouTube channel - it's under my name, Dorlene Durham.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #107

Happy Friday! It’s the first of November and I have lots of posts for today. Sorry about that but it is Friday and I need to post #107 of the TGIF; Thankful Friday series.

We live in CA and as most of you probably heard, there are lots of fires around us. It really makes you think how thankful I am for having power, water, clean air, etc. Thankfully, we're not close enough to be in danger, but it's still a good time to reflect on what you have and how truly blessed we are.

Your turn...let me know what you are thankful for this week.

Creative With Stamps #44; Turkey

November's challenge at Creative With Stamps is...

I didn't realize that I had a turkey stamp until I went through my "Other Holidays" stamp drawer and found this:

I received this stamp (along with many others) from Rubber Paws. I don't know why the middle is blank so if anyone knows, let me know in the comments. You'll see in the final card, I used a punched heart to place there.

Here are some of the products I used for the card:

I stamped the turkey three times with the Dark Roast ink. One turkey I used watercolor pencils and a water brush and the other two I used an assortment of Tombow markers to color in the image.

I thought I was done...but no...

After coloring the turkeys, there seemed to be something missing with the plain white background. I didn't want to fussy cut so I decided to make a mask and stamp over the turkeys with two different background stamps and two different ink colors. The red hearts have a little bit of gold glitter paper underneath the small hearts and are popped up with 3D foam squares.

I matted these panels to colored cardstock but still didn't really like them - they were missing something, so I pulled out a fine tip black marker and doodled around the diamonds in the background and around the turkey images. The messier the better. Then I added some Black Licorice Color Silk (FSJ) and a gold pen on one and white on two others.

And here they are:

Be sure to link up your turkey card to the Creative With Stamps challenge site before the end of November.

Supplies:

Inks: 

Black Licorice, Dark Roast and Oatmeal Cookie - Fun Stampers Journey (FSJ)

Olive - Close To My Heart (CTMH)

Stamps:

Turkey - Gifted from Rubber Paws

Print Pattern, Simple Stripes & all sentiments - Stampin' Up! (SU!)

Black Licorice Color Silk (splatters) - FSJ

LTSCB #127; Anything Goes

The current challenge at the Love To Scrap Challenge Blog is Anything Goes. The sponsor this month is:

Sponsor: DRS Designs

Prize: 20% off online store purchase

We were given our choice image from DRS Designs and I chose this super cute Leonard Pig image. When I saw it, I knew he'd be adorable on Christmas gift tags. It's so close to Christmas and November is a great time to start making tags.

I colored the image with alcohol markers. I don't do all the shading, etc, just basic coloring.

 And then fussy cut them:

I grabbed some premade holiday tags and prettied them up by adding glitter washi, a splash of silver and lots of fun ribbons. I also adhered the tags to another piece of cardstock for stability (the tags were pretty thin).

I had some jingle bells on my desk so I added some to a couple of tags. So cute, right!?! I'm definitely going to be making more of these!

Your turn...create a project and link it at the LTSCB site. Have fun!

LTCCB #40 Memory Bear

It's November 1st and time for another challenge at the Love To Craft Challenge Blog! As always, the theme is Anything Goes. We encourage you to create!

This month I made a memory bear for my son and DIL or should I say, my granddaughter. She's due any time and I knew I needed to make this for her. My dad passed away in 2013 and will never meet his first great granddaughter.

I'll be honest, it was tough. It took close to two months to convince myself to cut into his pajamas. But then I just took a deep breath and cut. I did a search in Pinterest that led me to PA Country Crafts.  This is a pretty basic sewing project and includes a pattern. The overall size is approximately 8" tall. Of course if you want to make it bigger, you can enlarge the pattern.

My mom will cringe when she sees the hack job I did with my hand sewing, but it's in the back so it'll be ok, right?

Here's a photo of the bear with the tag I placed on it for the gift. My parents are deaf and that's why I put the ASL I Love You sign on it.

Now it's your turn. Make a project - any project - and link it to the LTCCB before the end of the month. Have fun!