WOYWW69

Hello all!

My desk shows the layers of stuff that (a) I was considering to use on this card, (b) is patiently waiting for me to get back to another project, or (c) hasn't been sent to its rightful home yet. (Hee hee.) This card has been in my head for at least a week so WOYWW encouraged me to get it done. Card specifics can be found in my SCS Gallery.

Unique items on the desk?
-My Tim Holtz ruler...so cool, with its metal edge and holes for piercing and it's see-through.
-Hard to see, but I just got my black lace trim from my dearest Stampin Up demo (believe it or not, it is not destined for a Halloween card, lol.)
-My Sept KOTM from Unity came while I was away visiting my ds in Texas, so that's future fun.
-My little Project Life cards...trying to journal on them daily (they remind me to take that daily picture, cuz then there's something to journal about...)
-And last, what I think is the best thing since sliced bread is ...

...my retractable Sharpie fine tip marker. Retractable! No more searching for the top...I'm so easily pleased. lol

Thanks for stopping by. Happy WOYWW!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

A little early...

The date up there says Thursday but I'm posting for Unity's Friends With Flair Blog Hop a day early because we're headed out today to see ds#1 in Texas today. (Woo hoo! Or should I say "Woo Hoot"? Lol) So, if you'd like to join the blog hop, it starts Friday around 11am EST. (You know what? You can actually head over there today as well because they have an additional blog hop on Thursdays. You just can't go wrong with Unity!)

I submitted this card to the FWF Challenge #43. I was inspired by Savannah's cute owl. (I can't seem to get away from these owls!) I used a Unity Bingo stamp that was one my first purchases and introduced me to this great company. The owl is from the August KOTM (...all you need). I made my owl a little granny playing Bingo. She had to have red wire-rim glasses on and her own mini dauber to follow all those cards! (The table is actually 3-D so the cards had a place to sit... :-)

Frugal tip #34: Use Q-tips to remove areas on your stamp that you don't want printed. To make her little Bingo cards, I inked up my Bingo stamp, used the Q-tip to remove the numbers from a few "every other" squares, then stamped. Since they share sides, this way I was able to cut out complete squares.

As usual, you can find my card specifics at my SCS Gallery.

Thanks for coming by and have a great day!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

WOYWW 68

This is one of those backward posts again. The desk reflects the "ingredients" for the card I posted yesterday. I'm really trying for daily posts. Just because. So, anyway, the table is covered with the stamp set I used for the sentiment, the Jolie's bling I found recently, and my Nesties and Cuttlebug. I also used these cute little bling-y things called Jelly Dots that I picked up at a CKC in July from a company called The Rubber Cafe. They are so cute, I got them in a variety of sizes and colors. But they're small so you have to use a special tool of theirs called Stick "Em" Up to pick them up and put them on your project, but they add a nice look without the bulk of brads.

After that card, I made a quick one for a friend's Saturday birthday (the day before mine - subtle, hee hee.) Her job involves TV commercials so I thought this Unity stamp and my own sentiment worked well together. The card I'm mailing her has her picture in the largest TV but I thought maybe for cyberspace it would be better to photograph it with the original stamp sentiment. (I got those metal dot thingys from The Rubber Cafe also.)

Thanks for looking. As always, the specifics on each card can be found on my SCS Gallery.

Happy WOYWW!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

A Little Happy

I have a plaque that says, "The deadline is the greatest inspiration." When I have to get right down to it, my muse seems to take over and before I know it, a card is done. I just had to get a card done by 4pm today (when my post office closes!) because my mom's dearest friend's bday is in a couple of days and she's been wonderful to my whole family. I found this beautiful velvet embossed paper by MAMBI in my scraps and with a little maneuvering I was able to trim a flower from the pattern to pop up off the page. You add a sentiment, a ribbon and bling to that formula and the result is usually a-okay. So, Frugal tip #33: Layered scraps + sentiment + ribbon + bling = pretty card. Try it!


Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery. Thanks for looking and have a wonderful, layered day!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

Cupcake-a-liscious

I discovered "stuffed" cupcakes at my local gourmet market and they seemed to be the perfect birthday treat for my mother-in-law.  I bought a Red Velvet one for her and then four other flavors for the rest of us. I brought them in on a tray with a candle in hers and we all sang to her. She loved it.

So I wanted to create a fast card to complement her cupcake treat. I've always admired the cards I see that are so spare and yet beautiful. I intended to try "simple" with the idea of stamping (a cute $1 clear stamp set I found at Joann's) directly to my cardstock and just coloring it in. But it just didn't do it for me, so I stamped the cupcake a couple of times instead on brown and white cardstock. The brown cupcake holder needed a little dimension so I used a bone folder to de-boss some lines in it to make it more realistic (unfortunately can only be felt not seen). For the next layer, I colored in the icing with a Copic marker then added Stickles for the glitter. I added the cherry on a 3rd layer. It still needed something so I drew in border lines with two markers and added the little ribbon tab with a touch of bling. There. My attempt at a "simple" card. Lol.

Card specifics can be found on my SCS Gallery.

Thanks for looking!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)


P.S. This was an exciting week for me! My cards were featured on the Unity blog on Friday and today. Woo hoo!

Friends With Flair Blog Hopping at Unity

Well, it's that time again. Welcome in. If you haven't started at the beginning, head over to Unity to get the full experience!

Another Suzi Blu girl. I just had to make this one a princess and I found just the right sentiment in the May '10 KOTM (...a little happy). Her knight in shining armor is off fighting the dragon for her. Sigh...
I wish you could see the glitter on the lace of her dress and on her heart and... I wish I had a tiara...lol.

Card specifics can be found in my SCS Gallery. Thanks for stopping by!

P.S. If you love these Suzi Blu girls, you have to get them from a store. I got them from the lovely people at Limelight Papercrafts. :-)

P.P.S. Frugal tip #32: Blow the dust off that beautiful paper you are hoarding and use some on a project today. =D

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

FWF42 Love Will Find U

For you WOYWWers that are checking back, this is not the project I promised to show you. That will be posted tomorrow for the blog hop =D. This is a card I wanted to make for the Unity's Friends With Flair challenge this week. I was inspired by Lydia's cute little owl on her card. I just wanted him to have a chance at love!
I was able to draw from 3 different Unity sets for the full image. Serendipity that I can always finesse the sentiment I want. Thanks for looking!

Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery.

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

What's On Your Workspace Wednesday 67

Apparently I thrive in tight spaces! It doesn't mean that I wouldn't love long, lovely work counters like the scrapbook celebrities have, it just means that I have to deal with it. Occasionally, if you were here, you'd hear me grumbling under my breath when some obstacle on the floor has caused me to tilt dangerously into the closet door frame. I continue to surprise myself with the odd placement of craft things on the floor! lol

Last week, I showed you the table after I'd made my card and you had to look into the past (post) to see it. This week, I'm showing you the table before I finished the card and you're going to have to look into the future for it. (I love sci-fi, hee hee.) What I mean is, I'm holding the card to post it on Friday as part of the Unity Friends with Flair blog hop. Sorry for the tease but I have a busy couple of days ahead and I had to make my card today. Hope you stop by on Friday to see the result.

Hmmm....any table notes of interest? The Color Coach is from Stampin Up. It's a new card file that helps match their colors specifically but works on a basic level, too. Lots of bling on board today. I wanted to choose just the right bling for the little lady featured on my card. The lush brown ribbon group appeared out of the bling bin I have on the floor and it only reinforces my belief in serendipity. I never would have gone looking for it if it hadn't shown up of its accord. Oh, and in the top right corner, you'll see a small Copic Swatch book. I got it at iCopic and it comes with pages categorized by color family but it's filled with blank squares so that you can color in the markers you have (as you accumulate them.)

The remote was tempting me today because it was craft day on HSN. I tried watching while working but if I'm trying to focus on measuring, etc. I just can't. So I taped the shows for another time. The grand master of grunge, Tim Holtz, was on a couple of segments. I can't wait to get back to watching him do his distressing thing. By the way, for those of you in the UK, I just heard that Tim is COMING to YOU soon for a special event. Go to his website and click on "blog" if you're interested in finding out more about that!

That's it for today. Have a great WOYWW!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

You are loved...

I was supposed to be working on holiday cards but you know how it is when you are "supposed" to be doing something. I cleaned my desk... I journaled on my Project Life cards (I was about a week behind)... I sipped my tea... I decorated some blank pages in my sketch pad journal with scraps that were cluttering my desk... and I made a card from a couple of scraps, too. (Out of procrastination came a lovely card. The road to a lovely card can be quite curvy, it seems.) I'm excited to use these new Suzi Blu stamps (you can find them over at Limelight Paper Crafts.) As I've said before, they are so "color-able". Frugal tip #31: Use scraps from your desk and a still unloved stamp and make a Clean and Simple card right now. And that's an order! Lol.

Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery.

Thanks for taking a peek. As for me, back to procrastinating! Lol.

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

FWF Unity Blog Hop and FWF41

Welcome once more to Unity's Friends with Flair Blog Hop! As soon as I saw these new Suzi Blu stamps, I knew I had to have them all! Her girls are so sweet that you just want to sit and color them all day. Lol. My card was inspired by Jen's bee-yootiful sample last week for the FWF41 challenge. I liked that her image rose above the card dimensions. In the first card, I replaced her ribbon along the horizontal with waves that are popped up so the little mermaid could swim behind them. I couldn't resist giving her a funky nautical t-shirt and I popped that up also. In the second card, the close-up reminded me of Norma Desmond and her famous line from the movie, Sunset Boulevard. The DP, film strip and sparkles just sealed the deal.

Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery. Thanks for looking and have fun hopping around the blogs!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

What's On Your Workspace Wednesday 66

Normally, I try to use WOYWW to inspire me to create something at this desk and then show it to you but today I have to show you what the desk looks like after I created yesterday's card (seen above as well). I'm just a little pressed for time this week so you have to check yesterday's post for the card.

Items of interest:

Can't live without Glue dots. I just don't trust my tape runners enough. The red tape runner on the desk, I can proudly say came from a dollar store. When I saw that the store actually had a scrapbooking/card making tool in quantity, I bought the quantity! lol. They are a little aggressive with paper (they won't give it back if you try to pull something back up, but I like that...they're feisty.) Still...a glue dot must chaperone when a card is being made.

The flowered box holds the cards you see in front of it plus many more of their friends. It comes from a kit called Project Life by Becky Higgins (of Creating Keepsakes fame). It encourages one to take a photo everyday for a year and journal about it. I'm trying to do it, hence the cards on the desk. I used to keep a little journal for jotting stuff down but I find it is much more efficient to write directly on the cards and put them in the album to wait for the photos to be developed.

The kraft envelope is the Unity stamp I used for the card. (Yesterday's post details that.)

The stars to the left of the stamp envy are actually foam dots that I picked up at a Ranger warehouse sale. There's one every year. You take a big bucket (that they provide) and you have a cordoned off area of their warehouse to peruse. Fill the bucket and then pay $4 a pound for your goodies. I've found that foam dots take up space but don't weigh alot so I try to get lots of those. I've also tended to get lots of stamp pads that I don't need so I think I need to start giving away blog candy. Hee hee. I can't make the sale this year which is okay because I've done okay for the past two sales. I can sit one out.

The little Altoids box isn't a sweet treat. It's being recycled as a holder of small charms like the gold heart that's on my card.

Sorry for the long post but I'm going to make it just a bit longer because a very nice commenter on my post last week said she tried "for ages" to see my alphabet list for the baby book. Here's the list. I'm sure there will be more words added because I want to come up with more that are better for a baby book.  Thanks for looking this week!

Amazing Adorable Beautiful Best Bathtime Caring Cherished Crawling Darling Determined Easy-going Energetic Fearless Feisty Great Gifted Happy Helpful Individual Interesting Ice Cream Joyful Joker Kind Kissable King Loved Loud Mine Marvelous Noisy Notorious Naptime Outdoorsy Outstanding Princess Prince Perfect Pleasant Playtime Quiet Queen Rowdy Runner Running Sweet Sensitive Sweet-tooth Tricky Treasured Teeth Unique Verbose Victorious Winner Wonderful Walking X-static X-cited You Youthful Zany Zoo

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

A holiday easel card

Gosh, I'm sorry that I've kept you waiting since my teaser on Sunday! I did have this card idea that I wanted to do but the rest of the holiday weekend got busy. (Yeah, like my dh and I just had to watch The Office marathon! Hee hee.) Anyway, here we are. I seem to be drawn to cards that require dissecting. I like figuring out all the component sizes kinda like someone who takes a watch apart to see how it's made. There was alot of that but I like how it came out. (I wish you could see the softness of the blue that I daubed around the image and the hematite heart growing from the tree.) The inside of the card has the holiday greeting. Now I just have to get psyched to mass produce it for the holidays. Lol.

Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery but I can tell you this cool stamp is called "Grow Yourself Extraordinary" by Unity.

Happy Tuesday!

A windy day...

DH really wanted to go to the beach this weekend so we came out to Long Island to visit my in-laws yesterday. Yes, the same Long Island that Hurricane Earl just departed. Their part of the island got no rain from the storm at all but the day at the beach yesterday was so windy you knew Earl was still nearby. A beautiful sunny cloudless day but probably 25 mph winds. We sat on the beach for about 10 minutes until the sand hitting us felt like needles, not to mention what it was doing to our hair, mine in particular. I've told my boys the story of how a cousin once nicknamed me Medusa because of my then long mane of curly hair and it comes back to bite me every now and then. Like now. Ds takes one look at my sand-crusted wind-blown do and says, "You know, you do look like Medusa." Nice. This is the same ds that took a picture of a Medusa sculpture at a museum in Texas and ran over to me to tell me, then too, that there was a striking resemblance.

Such a loving child.

Anyway, back to yesterday, we wound up moving into a sheltered cabana area. No view of the churned up (but majestic) ocean but surprisingly nice enough to spend a few hours chawing with some friends. I'm glad we went.

Now today we'll head back home (to avoid the inevitable traffic jam) and I'm soooo looking forward to getting to my crafting desk. I have a gnat of an idea buzzing around in my brain that I just have to get into card form. So check back tonight, I hope to be posting it later.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Friends With Flair Blog Hopping

Welcome to the Friends With Flair Blog Hop! Head over to Unity for a list of participants and just hop on through the land of inspiration...

I was inspired by last week's sample for the FWF40 challenge. I wanted a back-to-school theme since that's what we're in the midst of these days so it all fell into place when I saw the DP that looks like a standardized test! I thought the "Never Give Up" stamp would be perfect for encouraging the test taker to just keep going even if the going is tough. My focus flower is made to look like those cute flowers you see on top of pencils. (There's even a pencil!) Frugal tip #30: Use button stamps to make a flower. The button stamps and sentiment came from Unity's Aug KOTM and I coupled them with several fun back-to-school papers from DCVW.

Card specifics can be found on my SCS gallery. TFL!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)

WOYWW 65

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had my cousin's twin boys' baby books to work on. They are 4 months old now so I couldn't exactly start making my favorite kind of book: a month-by-month for the first year. I went back to another type I've done in the past and that's an ABC book. It can be added to over years rather than months. I use cute baby words that I generate on my computer, an alpha stamp set by Stampology and this cute Baby Stack by K&Co. The big rectangle is meant to be used as a photo mat and it is not glued down to the page so that my cousin can take it out and place a photo on it. The green scalloped paper is hopefully where she'll jot down a few words about the photo. The sentiment border is only glued down at the edges so that she can tuck it back in underneath. I like that whether her photo is vertical or horizontal, it will fit nicely on the page. Now I just have to make 25 more of these for one baby and 26 for the other. Hee hee. Oh, and I also add two more pages to the album. At the beginning, I put in a page with the header: A Letter from Mom and another that says A Letter from Dad. I think the boys will love reading notes that their parents wrote to them as babies.
Thanks for looking and have a nice day!

P.S. I happened on a blog today that made me smile quite a bit. It's called Mila's Daydreams. If you would like to smile as well, check it out. I'm not advertising, just suggesting. Lol.

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)