Sketchbook mini album!

Um, I started and finished this entire mini album this weekend!! My BFF from growing up here in Rochester, NY has a birthday coming up soon and she lives in Colorado now. Her parents moved away while we were still in college, so it's been a LONG time since she has been to our hometown, and her husband has never been here! I know she has lots of old pictures from growing up, so I thought I'd have my husband drive me around and get pics of all our old hang outs and places with memories! It turned out to be a really fun weekend, sort of like a scavenger photo hunt!

I used the Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Day book by American Crafts, and most of the embellishments are from the matching Sketchbook line! So here it is, completed! I scratched out some of the journaling that's more personal.

This first page is just my happy birthday message and about the album.

Here's her parent's old house that we spent a lot of time in!

A pic of my parent's house and my old bike that I used to ride between our houses just about every day of the summer and to go on bike rides with her family!

A photo where our streets intersected and a view down her street!

The middle school and high school we attended, along with my husband who we weren't friends with at the time!

Rochester loves Wegmans!! This was our local Wegmans we went to all the time!

One of our favorite Italian restaurants - Ricci's! Been going there since I was a little peanut with my friend's family and still go there today with my husband!!

Intermission.

A special Wendy's we ate at every Saturday with my friend's Dad and sister!

We grew up in the town that Kodak built. My Dad, my friend's Dad and my husband's Dad all worked there, and almost everyone I knew had at least 1 if not both parents who worked at Kodak! That is how my family (transplants from Indiana) ended up in Rochester.

Both me and my friend got to participate in Bring Your Daughter to Work Day! I think that's when I realized I wanted to be an engineer like my Dad, I just didn't know I would end up a software engineer. And I always assumed I'd end up working at Kodak.

Durand Eastman (like Eastman Kodak Co.), was a golf course, but most of us who were kids of the 80's remember it as the best place to go for sledding! That pic on the right is of one of the holes, aka one of the hills that we used to go sledding down!

Got a pic of me and a doe while we were walking around Durand to get these pictures!

Chris spotted a big buck deer on the side of the road as we were leaving Durand! I just happened to have my camera on me for this album so I got a few pictures!!

We went to Seabreeze (local amusement park) at least once a summer with my friend's family and enjoyed the rides and water slides!! Those were the best times!!

Another staple of Rochester is going to the lake and getting frozen custard from Abbott's! Mmmm so good!!

A place for new memories - my house with my wonderful husband!!

Birthday Card!

This is the first thing I've made with my new Silhouette Cameo!! This is a birthday card for my mother-in-law (GG) who is also a Grandma (to our niece and nephews)!

I used Kinsey's arrows and target cut file from here, then sized down a freebie from the Silhouette store with the sentiment to fit in it!

I loved how easy it was to type and size the letters - for which I ended up using the leftover piece instead of each individual letter. I used papers from the Roller Rink kit by Studio Calico, to back the image and added the little wooden chevrons by Sodalicious!

Romans 1:16-17, Romans 1:18-23, Romans 1:24-32

I grouped together my Sunday bible study notes from the past few weeks here, since I am trying not to post until I have full pages completed. So here's the message from several weeks ago:

I used Studio Calico's Central High kit to complete the pages. I added the verse Hebrews 12:2 to the little folder in the upper right corner.

I like these points:
* The power isn't in the messenger, it's in the message!
* Proclaim Him boldly, unashamedly

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Continued from the second half of the first page, Romans 1:18-23:

I used pieces from the Roller Rink kit by Studio Calico, except the frame from the Yearbook collection by Studio Calico and the tag, I had sewed that a long time ago just for fun, but seemed to match the papers here.

* In order for God to be Holy and love that which is good, He has to hate evil
* God's saying, my wrath is being revealed by allowing man to do what he wants

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And finally, the wrap up of Chapter 1!

I kept these pages real simple since I had a lot of text to cover. I used a Tim Holtz stamp (the guy with the umbrella), which always looked sort of lonely to me, which is what you'd be without God!

* God can save you no matter what state you are in - the heart of God is to save you
* Love the sinner, not the sin

Baby Shower card

I made this card for my husband's cousin, our cousin, who is expecting a little girl! I got the inspiration for filling the hearts from here but changed it up a little and made heart shapes!

I saved some of my packaging from removing my stamps and throwing into stamp storage, and cut some hearts from that and from pieces of paper (from the Roller Rink kit by Studio Calico) and then sewed them together, and adding some punched hearts before finishing up! I had also cut some sentiments from a piece of paper and adhered them to the hearts before starting to sew.

After I finished the three hearts, I realized it looked kind of plain directly to the card, so I added a couple background papers to make them stand out and added the sentiment with letter stickers from Basic Grey (the light gray) and Studio Calico (the red ones are from the Wonderland collection).

Stamp Storage

A big shout out to Kinsey Wilson and Studio Calico for showing how stamp storage should be done!! For those that don't have a growing stash of stamps randomly thrown into bins that you seem to forget about, this post will not be interesting to you :) For those that do, feel free to head over to Kinsey's full blog explanation here!! This is basically my recap of her post, but with my own pictures and slight variation on her method!

• What the heck is all that!? You ask. Well, the basic idea is you store your stamp sets in DVD-like clear cases, then create a catalog within the binder! The catalog shows all your stamps in a concise manner, and references which case the stamp you want to use is in.
• Why would anyone on Earth want to do that!? You ask. Well since the stash keeps growing and maybe because I'm getting older, it is harder to remember what stamps I actually own! Flipping through the binder is much easier to quickly see what stamps I have when I am working on a scrapbook page or card! Also, there are other systems where you put all your stamps in the binders and then the binders become huge and bulky and just as difficult to flip through as going through your stash in random bins anyway!

STEP 1:

• Group your stamps into main categories, then start adding to the storage cases

STEP 2:

• Create spine labels (I cut mine from white paper, 6 1/2" x 1/4")
• I used Kinsey's numbering system - top number is the main category and bottom number is how many cases within that category, ex. American Crafts stamps are category 1, but I filled 2 cases with all American Crafts stamps, so you can see I have 1-1 and 1-2 for these.
• Here's where my method varied a little, I decided to use different color washi tapes as a way of "color coding" the cases, so another way I could find them is just by looking for the matching washi tape

STEP 3:

• In the binder, you can either stamp each stamp onto a sheet of paper for the index pages, or what I did was take the backings and taped them down

STEP 4:

• I made my tab using the Jenni Bowlin tab punch, but any sort of tabs will do
• I matched the main category name and taped down with the same washi tape used on the case

STEP 5:

• I made sure to start the next category on the next page instead of the back of the first category's page, so if I need to later add in sheets of paper/stamps into that same category it doesn't put my binder out of order

SHELF SPACE:

• I still have to add a bunch of random stamps I have, but they should all fit into one of those categories!
• I thought these would take up way more shelf space, but look how little that is!

Side notes:
- I printed the grid pages from the pdf provided on Kinsey's blog post here
- I tried adding rubber clings to the cases, and while they stuck, they were too thick to have stamps on both sides to close the case, so I decided they will get a separate method of storage
- It took me about 5 hours to complete this much, actually 6 if you include the time it took to stop and head to Office Max and get more heavy card stock to print off the sheets for the binder, only to find out your husband has lost his iPhone, search the house upside down, drive back to Office Max and look around the parking lot (closed by now) and suspend the service for the night (side note's side note: he called Office Max this morning and they had it for him) haha!
- I just added the mini Amy Tangerine sketchbooks in the binder for fun
- Kinsey also added an index page for her stamp pads, which I intend to do too at some point!

Hope this helps anyone looking to do this, happy organizing!! :)

WCMD: Baby shower card!

World Card making day was yesterday, which I spent all day long making... 2 cards! Haha! Not very productive, but oh well, these cards were made with love!! This card is for my BFF growing up, who announced the genders of their twins by posting that little picture of baby girl and boy shoes to Facebook!! I shrunk the photo and printed it out for this card!

I made this card for this challenge over on Studio Calico, which was to create a card based on a DT member's LO. I headed to April Foster's gallery and drew inspiration from her Hello layout here! I specifically drew from her gallery because she always has such lovely baby layouts with her little ones!

The colors from the photo just went perfectly with the colors in pieces of the Roller Rink kit from Studio Calico that I just got in the mail the other day! I don't have a Silhouette, so I drew out the sentiment in cursive then cut it out with my Fiskars finger tip knife. I added the potty people stamp from the Amy Tangerine Ready Set Go set and the fabric button from the Dear Lizzy collection.

WCMD: Thank You card!

Happy World Card Making Day!! Yes, that's right, today is World Card Making Day and I am (trying) to take advantage of it to catch up and hopefully catch ahead on some cards I need to make! Studio Calico posted a bunch of inspiration and challenges on their blog, so this card is based off this first sketch here:

Last weekend we went to the season opener of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) with free tickets we got from Chris' aunt and uncle! The show was actually a special event, with a tribute band to the Beatles who sang and even looked like the Beatles, except with a FULL orchestra behind them! If you listen to a bunch of their songs, there is a full orchestra in the background that was recorded separately - my favorite part was when they played Penny Lane and the guy in the RPO played that solo part on the piccolo trumpet, WOW!

So this card is for Chris' aunt and uncle who gave us the tix!

I used papers and the enamel dots that came in the Roller Rink kit from Studio Calico, the button and twine are from the 35mm kit and the speech bubble thank you stamp is also from Studio Calico!