3 more

So I have 3 more layouts to show you from my 3 day crop this weekend...these didn't really need much in the way of journaling so they got done first.

this LO was fun to do cause the pictures were so fun...nice to have pics of me and the hubster for a change..I used some of my fave paper from the Harvest Market collection by Lilybee Design to create the frame. Just love that paper. I ran into trouble trying to work with the dang flowers... i rarely use them so getting the arrangement right was giving me fits...finally settled on good enough.

This LO was a breeze to do because I already had the fun borders done...they were leftover from an older layout...they were just pieces of coordinating scraps glued to a paper strip and used as one piece. I added a bit of fake stitching to amp up the borders and then added some embellie clusters and voila..done.

This was the very last layout I got done at the crop...just love the picture arrangement on this LO....and those critters are so cute! Kept the embellies and papers to a minimum...but I love what I did use...the red check just screams country to me and that lace paper border from K&Co. is just perfect for this LO.

If I can get cracking on the journaling on the rest of my layouts I will have more to show ya tomorrow.

happy scrappy supplies at walgreens

OMG I am so stinkin excited right now...I just bought something totally awesome for a scrappy project at Walgreens...yep...Walgreens...but before you all get excited thinking there is now a scrappy aisle at your 24 hour drug store...there isn't...sorry for the bubble burst....although that would be so totally awesome. Maybe someday.

Anywho...so I took a quick run to Wags to grab hamburg rolls for dinner cause it was a glorious 76 degrees tonight and was totally ticked when they didn't have any...guess everyone was making burgers on this beautiful 76 degree day...anyways as I was storming out in a mini-huff cause I had to go to another store I spotted a display by the door that caught my eye. It was a display with tees and such featuring the high school logo...I stopped to check out a tee for my daughter when I spotted the most awesome stickers...they had a whole set of stickers featuring our school's colors and mascot!! Well since I am about to tackle making a senior scrapbook for son who graduates in June (insert weeping Mommy here) ...I was totally totally stoked to find these. They were pretty pricey...8.99 for a pack ...but totally worth it...there are 5 big stickers that have the school name and/or mascot and another 11 that have the school colors and sports icons...they even have one for track which is awesome cause track stuff is so hard to find. I actually think I might go back and get a 2nd set to put away for when my daughter graduates in 3 years. They also had invitations and thank you cards printed with the school name and mascot....I was planning on making my own invitations but I think I might pick them up as a backup plan...u know just in case I run out of time to make all the things I plan to make for graduation. So if you have a high schooler be sure to check out your walgreens next time your in there....and do me a favor and leave me some hamburg buns.

 

Winner Winner

In my sleep deprived stupor I forgot to announce the winner on Monday of my 1st giveaway on my new blog...
the WINNER IS.....

MOONGIRL!!

send me ur info to guinnevere1969g@aol.com and I will get your prize out to ya in the mail!

3 days, 13 layouts...

OK not sure if anyone happened to notice but I've been AWOL for a little while...why you ask? Because I went away to a crop for 3 glorious days! Woohoo! I meant to tell you all about it before I left but I was crazy busy getting ready...I had to edit pics, make page kits and of course pack a ton of stuff....took me 6 long days to do it all...6 long days of work. It was exhausting. All so I wouldn't over pack and bring way too much stuff or worse yet under pack and forget something. Can I just totally say...I HATE PACKING!! so so so so much.

It was of course totally worth it...the crop started on Thursday at 11 and went to 2 on Sunday so lots and lots of hours of scrapping!  I went with my pal Stacy and we kicked it off right by getting there 1st so we had dibs on the best spots...gotta love that. Also gotta love that the place we stayed at was da bomb...right on a lake only an hour from home....loved it. Really really loved the fact that they fed us too...10 awesome meals. Believe it or not I totally did not miss cooking or cleaning at all.

As for the scrapping I got tons done...at least for me it was a ton...my final tally was a whopping 13 layouts!! whoot whoot! I was totally cranking them out... I would've got more done if I didn't have to sleep at some point...which was not so much sleeping as much as it power napping...in 3 nights I got about 11 hours sleep total. I survived though thanks to 5 hour energy and lots and lots of diet coke. Can't say I looked pretty by Sunday but I survived. I also had to bail early on Sunday cause I had other plans that day...totally wanted to stay and scrap more but oh well. Anywho as for the layouts...I was super super happy with how many I managed to get done and even happier about how they all turned out. Seriously happy. I had concerns before I left cause as I was packing the kits I was not feeling the moojo and you all know when the moojo ain't flowing it ain't no good. But thankfully I had plenty of moojo to go around. I wanted to share all my layouts with ya but I still have to journal on them...I so cannot journal at a crop...need total concentration to journal. I did get 3 done though...we'll start with my absolute favorite from this weekend...

I just love this layout!! love love love it!

The hexagons are just awesome ...seriously totally awesome. My buddy Stacy has a hexagon punch from Creative Memories and I borrowed it and this is the 3rd layout I've used it on...don't tell her but she is so totally not getting it back LOL.

Beyond the hexagons I am totally in love with the colors on this layout. Both my daughter and sister both had the same color fuschia on and I thought it would be cool to do an orange/fuschia color combo and I totally love it!

Here's another layout I got done...this was my hubby's fave...he really loved the black background.

I loved it too...although originally I had an awesome green polka dot picked out for the background...the pics looked amazing on the green but the awesome snowflakes from LYB did not...but on the black they look amazing!!

also amazing... the folded paper detail I added at the last minute...thinks it looks fabtabulous.

Gotta mention the title though is not right in the pic...the and thingy fell off before I took the pics and apparently I wasn't paying much attention when I slapped it back on...the title actually should be all work & snow fun.

Here's my last share for the night...

This is a layout I did about the obsene amout of stuff we got shopping last year on Black Friday...I so love a good deal! I also so love finding the perfect embellies to go on a layout...aren't those cute little price die cuts so cute...I cut them out from an October Afternoon paper. Super duper cute.

Well that's a wrap for tonight...I'm still lagging from sleep deprivation this weekend so it's off to night nights for me. Hopefully by tomorrow I can look less zombie like after a good night's sleep.

My rejected layout...

Since it's been 3 weeks since I submitted it and I haven't gotten an email I am pretty sure it's safe to say that CK didn't want to publish the layout I sent in for February's page call for layouts with ink which means two things...1) no extra scrappy money for me...phooey and 2) I get to finally show it to you all.

No worries here though...the rejection doesn't bother me...I'm not 13 anymore...I can handle it without crying and/or buckets of ice cream. I will admit though I was really hopeful though cause I was super proud of how this layout came out...and why shouldn't I be...it's got lots of cool things going on.

First of all it's got these awesome tags...of course made with ink. They were super easy to make and I love how they turned out. I just stamped the tree image and tag frame with some staz-on on the front of a piece of transparency and then flipped it over and used alcohol inks to add all that vivid color...after it dried all I had to do was cut out the tag shapes and voila! Awesomeness!

Of course since the call was for ink I wanted to do even more fun stuff with ink so I sprayed the background with some glimmer mist and dribbled some alcohol ink to add some color. After that I used black pigment ink to stamp a ton of leaves all over and embossed them ... haven't done that in ages... really love how they came out...I thought doing them in black was very striking and a little different. 

Then I used some orange stazon to stamp some uber cute polka dots on the ribbon and used pigment ink to color my chipboard title. Lastly I used my fave Creative  Memories marker to outline around the pictures. If you've lost count...all together I used ink in 5 different ways! It was such a fun layout to work on...although I had to be patient for all that ink to dry...which was a mega feat in itself...that and I was so worried about getting ink on something that I was constantly wiping my hands and put everything I used away as soon as I was done with it. It was worth it though...I can proudly say I finished it with zero smudges! Hooray me.

Welcome to ACOWSAYS 2.0

I remember way back when I first started scrapping I did a layout about my daughter eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich...naturally being a total newbie to scrapping and therefore totally clueless I thought the best way to do that layout was to painstakingly cut out shapes from cardstock to create really big peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then lovingly slap the pics on top of them...when I was done I thought wow I am so clever, isn't this cute. Of course now when I look back at that layout...I laugh...loudly. Seriously.
Well now that I have my blog up and running I feel the same way looking at my old blog...it is so peanut butter and jelly!! Seriously. Rookie. Amateur. Kindergarten finger paints. Actually finger paints are way cooler than my old blog.
My new blog however...version 2.0...is so so so so so so so much better.
What's better about it...umm pretty much everything.
Let's start with the blog header...it's amazing! Even if I do say so myself...which I do..just did...whatever. I love love love it ...annnndddd I had tons of fun making it. Digi is cool! And before my paper girls freak...no worries...I will not be going over to the dark side...love my paper and glue too much...but I must admit...digi is cool. For so so many reasons. All of what I used on the header were digi freebies...cause I love me some free stuff. A big shout out to freedigitalscrapbooking.com and grannyenchanted.com where I got all my great freebies...both sites have some super cute stuff and again you just can't beat free!
So what else is new and improved besides the header? Well let's see...
...I added a picture of myself...this way people will see I'm not actually a cow.
...and I added a bio...cause I'm just so fascinating
...I added a video bar so you can see previews of all 6 of my videos.
...I added a gadget so you can click and follow my blog (Please do!)
...I have a favicon!
...I added 4 new gallery pages...1 one for layouts, 1 for cards , 1 for all my other projects and 1 for my orgazination ideas. The galleries are pretty cool...not just because they are loaded with a ton of awesome creations ..but because if you double clik on a picture in the gallery it will open all of them in a photo array. Very cool.
My old blog did have some stuff I liked so I didn't completely trash everything when I switched...I did keep some of the stuff from there and brought it over here including...
...the page for my scraproom
...the dancing cow :)
...the list of blogs I follow (which I need to still add to)
...oh yeah and every single one of my old posts! Yeppers cause I'm crazy like that I brought over every post from my old blog and dropped it on the new one. I wanted a new blog so bad but really didn't want an empty blog so even though it took some time to do it I did it and it was worth it.
So yep that's pretty much all you need to know about ACOWSAYS 2.0 except for one other teeeny tiny little thing ...

I'm hosting a contest to kick off my new blog!!  

Yeppers ...I am gonna kick off this spanking new blog right and give away some scrappy goodies. In order to be eligible to win you have to do 2 things...first you have to start following my blog...you know you want to..so go ahead and do it. Second you have to check out my new blog...I mean really check it out...because your going on a bit of a scavenger hunt. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to look around my blog and hunt for these...

Before you panic ...you won't have to read every post to find them and there are only 8 (the one in this post doesn't count). All you have to do is look on my on the pages of my blog to find all the "hidden" hearts (hint..be sure to check the side bars and the header!). When you find them make a note of what color they are...they will either be pink like the one above or blue, green or orange. Post in the comments how many of each you found for a chance to win a package full of scrappy stuff from me! Simple right! Right!

so to recap ..1) follow my blog and 2) find the hearts and leave me a comment on how many of each color you found.
I will be drawing the winner on Monday March 19, 2012.
Good luck!

In need of a change

A change to my blog that is. Pretty much since the day I started my blog I have been unhappy with my blog's appearance. When I started in the bloggy world I had no clue about blog design but I was eager to get blogging so I decided to start my blog and work on tweaking it's appearance as I learned more. Well so much for that plan... here it is months later and I still have no freakin clue about blog design and my blog still looks like crap. I have tried and tried and tried to improve my blog but I think between my general lack of knowledge and the fact that wordpress frustrates the heck out of me I think it might be time to throw in the towel and start anew. After playing around on blogger I am thinking of moving my blog over to there. I have only been playing around with blogger for a little while and I am already finding it much easier than wordpress...at least in the design department. Here's the problem I have with wordpress...since I don't have the skills, time or patience to design my own blog I have to rely on whatever templates are available...of which there are alot..and for as many hours as I have spent surfing through template after template I cannot find anything that I like. Some are close but just not close enough. I've tried learning about changing CSS but every time I've tried changing the CSS I have failed miserably. Since I have barely enough time to scrap and blog on a regular basis I really don't have time to keep wasting on blog design. Now I just have to commit to making the jump because it basically means starting over...getting a new blog addy out there and all that. But I think it will be for the best. Of course when and if I get the new blog up and running I will be sure to let you all know.