Tim Holtz giveaway to enter

Hop on over to Scrap with Stacy to enter her fab Tim Holtz giveaway. You won't believe all the great stuff she's giving away!

Saturday's Crop

Well I survived another group crop! There were lots of very talented ladies making cards, scrapbooks and other paper things. The vendors very graciously had some supplies that we all needed and also did a few make and takes. I found some awesome unmounted stamps from The Angel Company and ordered two grab bags, one with some of their retired stamps and one with paper and many other surprises. I'll post pics after everything arrives and I've calmed down from the high of the surprise of opening my packages!

This is one corner of our table. Emily and I have matching totes from Tuesday Morning. Don't you just love that orange pop-up trash bin I found?

 I brought my own folding table for our machines. 

 My awesome folding wheeled cart held punches, cropadile, heat gun and an assortment of other supplies.

My sister Kathy and my lovely daughter Emily. Yes these pictures were all taken during our lunch break. Couldn't pull myself away from card-making before that! 

Co-worker and friend, Mary deep in thought over her bowl of chili. She's the one who got me started with all this paper crafting, so I've nicknamed her "the Paper Pimp!" 

Do you like group crops?

Of course I'm referring to scrapbook crops, not farming crops silly! I knew you'd know that, but since I might have mentioned my gardening and pear canning escapades on this blog I thought it would be good to clarify my question. Here's my question:

Do you prefer to crop alone or in a group? If with a group do you prefer small groups or huge crowds?

OMG folks, I just heard the most AMAZING thing on Oprah!!! Mark Zuckerberg, CEO & Founder of Facebook (and VERY young at that) just pledged... hold on to your hats or seats.... just announced that he's setting up a $100 million challenge grant to the New Jersey public school system! WOW!!!! I just can't wrap my head around anyone having that much money, much less that much excess to donate. What a guy!!!

Okay, back to MY world where my $100 budget for tomorrow's crop got cut back to $70 after a $30 trip to JoAnn's for supplies. So I'm going to this big crop at a church in town, the second year for me. Last year after only getting four pages of my daughter's wedding album done I swore that I wouldn't go again because I work so much better alone or in a small group. So why, you say, am I going back to another one? Well there's this friend at work who thought it would be fun, so she got a bunch of us signed up again, then she moved to Louisiana!!! How dare she! We forgive her and wish her the best anyway. Three who planned to attend already backed out, but since they already paid for their spot my sister is coming up (2 1/2 hour drive) to take one spot and well, there's just more room at the reserved tables for the rest of us!

So what's the verdict? Individual, small or large crops? Where are you most productive and why?

Ta ta!

Eco Chique Boutique Logo cut with my Cricut!

I am sooooo excited about this awesome vinyl cut designed by my daughter and created in Sure Cuts A Lot, then cut out of vinyl using my Cricut Expression! The tree is totally her design and there will be another one on the right side just like on the banner of our Etsy Shop, Eco Chique Boutique after I cut another one. This was a fun project and hopefully will result in more traffic to our little online shop. Oh yeah, it's on the back of my cute little Honda Civic, "Misty" and will soon also grace the rear window of Emily's SUV.

Sneak peek at my paper flowers

So I've been watching all these really cool videos on YouTube about making your own paper flowers, and so my daughter goes out and buys a new Sizzix Big Kick and some flower dies and well, you know what comes next. Oh and I forgot to tell you that I've already located an old children's dictionary (thank you Emily!) and saved an old phone book in anticipation of this golden opportunity. For the last week I've been putting together the pieces by spraying with homemade glimmer mist and walnut ink, scrunching and gluing and whatever else suited my fancy and tonight.... tada.... you get a sneak peek at some of the flowers I created! Drum roll puleeease.....

The pic above is darker because the flash didn't go off.

The one below is more true to color. Some of them are done with the spritzer thing, so they're lighter anyway. The darker ones are coated with walnut ink.

What'dya think?

Homemade Embossing Folder Holder

As promised, here are pictures of my finished holder for my embossing folders. It is made out of rescued interoffice envelopes destined for the trash bin. I embossed sheets of envelope paper, ran an ink pad over them to show the patterns, then glued on to the pages. The pages are stapled to form individual pockets customized to fit each folder.

I used a 2 inch circle punch for the cut-outs that make it easier to get folders out, then used the punched pieces to make tabs for each folder.

The smaller sets with dies have their own page. The die slips in to the plastic that it came in, cut to size and held shut by stick on velcro dots.

Embossing with Cricut Blade Turned Backwards

Wow! I knew I saved that old Cricut blade for some reason, now I know why! Also glad I didn't spend the money on one of the special embossing "blades". Now if I could just find a really good deal on some of that thin metal and Tim Holtz inks I'd be even happier!