now i want long hair, and a pet chameleon!

because i watched "tangled" last night. unfortunately, niece madeline was not here to watch it with me, but i chose it on her recommendation, and i agree wholeheartedly with her enthusiasm for the film.

if you're not really into the whole disney/musical genre, two other films lovely husband jeff and i have enjoyed recently are the entirely delightful (but definitely strongly R-rated) irish cop comedy/drama "the guard" starring the incomparable brendan gleason; and the slow-to-get-going, but ultimately quite involving british indie/horror/sci-fi/comedy flick "attack the block". we've also been watching quite a bit of both the old and new versions of "hawaii five-0"... but mostly for the scenery! :) :) :)

"100 hearts" valentines minibook

i know i've said this before but it's totally TRUE:  there are lots and lots of reallllly cool things you can do besides make valentines using january's pixie dust paperie LOVE NOTES kit, but if you want, or need, make some love-themed projects, boy oh boy is this ever the right set of stuff for you to be getting on with! here's a minibook i've created, using those luscious items:

there are lots more photos and plenty of product details on the pixie blog today, i'd love for you to check it out!!!  

as many of you know, i'm pretty partial to valentinian papercrafts, myself, since my niece riley elizabeth happens to have been born on february 14th! what you may not realize--and i find it pretty hard to believe, actually--is that she will be TEN YEARS OLD exactly one month from today!!!!!  how is that even possible??! i swear it has only been TEN MINUTES since LHJ and i were at the hospital, excited to be the aunt and uncle of this little widget:

and now here she is--with little sis lindsay marie on christmas day--in her capacity as an international hat model:

so of course the only thing i wonder now is, HOW DID AN ENTIRE DECADE FLY BY SO QUICKLY??!?!?!??! don't worry, it's a rhetorical question, i realize everyone with children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews feels exactly the same way. and there is no point in even TRYING to get used to ANY change, because by the time we do, the kidlets in question have grown again, and are on to the next phase, leaving us even more perplexed. best to just sit back and enjoy the ride!

love you, miss riley! 

i hope your next ten years will be as wonderful, fun, giggly, happy and healthy as these have been.  

just maybe... could they possibly go by a liiiiiiittttttttle slower?  

please??!?!  

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

JB12-02: sketching through the snow!

helllllllo and happy friday the 13th! of course, to me, friday means ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so they all feel pretty lucky... but this week we are fortunate indeed to have another very lovely guest star, who's also a very good friend AND our first official sponsor of the year, so that makes this friday especially cool in my book.

can you possibly guess who it is? will it help if i mention she's drawn us a rather gorgeous sketch and is offering a gift certificate to her rather fabulous online papercrafting shop to one lucky cardmaker who links up with us this time? howsabout if i show you the sketch in question:

yepper, it's my very dear pixie-in-chief, ms. kirsty vittetoe, come to help us kick off the year in style and i could not be happier!!! if you have a minute, do pop over to JINGLE BELLES and say hi to her, and to stef, and see their magnificent cards, ok? it's worth the trip, i promise! plus you can read the details of the *prize* and hear about a special pixie offer, just for jingle belles!!! ♥

i cannot wait to show you my card. i should say right now, i actually made two, and i like both of them, but i'll post the other one next week and then you can decide! :)

(patterned paper: tim holtz, sei, frances meyer, echo park; florals: irene's garden, imaginisce; vintage inspired card & wordstrip: october afternoon; stickers: fancy pants, mme, 7 gypsies; brads: oriental trading; ink: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

well, heck, kirsty's sketch is--as always--fabulous and thus most of the work was already done for me; but still, i like this combination of red and kraft, old and new, xmas stash and regular... it's all got a certain balance that appeals to me.

of course, the thing that MOST appeals to me right now is getting as many of my lovely card-makin' friends as possible to come and play along with us at JINGLE BELLES!  i'm sorry if i'm starting to sound like a bad televangelist on this subject, but i cannot possibly convey to you how much more *awesome* december 2011 was, compared to the last 5 or 6 previous, and it's because my holiday cards were already finished. believe me, i know ALL the arguments against embarking on a project like this: i wasn't sure i'd have time... but the fact that it was permanently on my schedule each week made all the difference! i wasn't sure if thinking about christmas all year wouldn't sort of "dilute the magic"... but if anything, it MULTIPLIED it! i wasn't sure i could sustain my inspiration for 11 months... but it turned out that for me, the "inspiration-killer" was having to make 50 similar cards in a short period of time; whereas making one per week, to a different theme, was completely revitalizing.

ok, ok,so i will stop (for now, lol) trying to convince you... but at the very least do pop over to JINGLE BELLES and soak up a little inspiration. who knows, you might decide you'd like to give it a try! ♥♥♥

everything i love about challenges...

...is summed up in this one card!

but before i show it to you, let me tell you about the challenges which inspired it. first there's city crafter challenge blog, week #91: back to black. ok, you KNOW i love CCCB generally, they have awesome themes every week, one of the best DT's online (which includes my lovely friends kirsty and ros!) and the guest designer this week just happens to be my very oldest and dearest blogging friend, the simply elegant (and simply wonderful!) june houck. so obviously you know i was always gonna show up for this one, but it just so happens the challenge this week was REALLY challenging, and i mean that in a very verrrrry good way: we have to include a silhoutte image in our project and it has to be *BLACK*... hence the name. i really had to think about what i would do, though frankly, i didn't think for that long, because once i had seen the first of june's two gorgeous cards i knew i needed to black emboss something!

then there's the other inspiration, which is deconstructed sketch #33. i saw it on leslie's blog, along with her awesome card, and i knew i had to get in on it; which is why i'm putting in a second post today instead of waiting, i'm squeeeeeeeeeaking in just under the deadline!

ok, so NOW, finally, here is my card:

(vintage: sheet music, re-sized and printed on creamy index stock; patterned paper: glitz, authentique (thank you, stef!); flowers and text stamp: prima; bling: recollections; bird stamp: inkadinkadoo; clip: making memories; chipboard: fancy pants; ribbon: may arts (thank you, linda!); mistable ruffle trim: pink paislee (thank you, mari!) inks: ranger, colorbox; embossing powder: psx; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape and doublestick tape, sewing machine)

the reason i say this sums up everything i love about challenges is: there is NO WAY i would've made this card on my own! for one thing, i would NOT have thought of using a silhoutte image--especially a black one; and if i had wanted to, i'd have been stumped thinking, "oh i don't have any"... because it took june's card to make me realize ANY solid stamp will work for this! then even if i had gotten that far by myself, i wouldn't have reached for ruffles and chipboard and put the two flowers up top if i wasn't following the sketch. so basically NO ELEMENT of this card would have existed in the way it does now, and i'd've been a sadder and lesser crafter!

thank you, challenge devisers and hostesses, everywhere! you're performing a wonderful service, and  i, for one, really appreciate it!!! ♥♥♥

january pixie challenge: ♥LOVE NOTES♥

you probably know that my dear pixie-in-chief kirsty vittetoe holds a little challenge every month on the pixie blog. she sets a theme, invites papercrafters to create any sort of project they'd like, and awards a prize! it's always fun and inspiring, and thus i recommend checking it out! this month, there's an even better than usual reason to do so, in that the last few days have featured the creations of our brand new challenge design team... and those are VERY MUCH worth seeing, i assure you!!!

not to be outdone, of course i had to have a little go at the valentined themed ♥LOVE NOTES♥ challenge. you can probably guess the brief, can't you? make any type of project you like, but it has to either contain the word "valentine" OR have the image of a heart on it somewhere. having made some pretty cool valentine stuff using this month's LOVE NOTES KIT, i decided to go with the heart.

you'll notice that apart from the blue graph paper heart (actually an off-cut from another of this month's projects!) i didn't use much of the LOVE NOTES kit in my card. not because i didn't have enough supplies left, i assure you... (pixie kits are GENEROUS, i have never, EVER used one up, despite the fact that i generally create half-a-dozen projects each month!!!) ...but mostly because for christmas, the lovely miss kirsty verrrrrrry kindly gave me the only pixie kit i've missed out on--november's PINK ROSE COTTAGE and i am IN LOVE with pink paislee woodgrain paper.  (in love!!!)  everything else is a leftover from one or other of the pixie kits:  sass diecut flowers from SUMMER OF LOVE; american crafts key from MY FUNKY VALENTINE, etc; the only thing that came from my "civilian" stash was the sentiment made up of the yellow stickers, which is from a glitz designs sticker sheet.  

have *YOU* made any valentines yet? if not, this would be an excellent time!  or for any other love-themed projec-- just think HEARTS and/or "valentine" and link up before the end of the month on the pixie blog!!! ♥♥♥

SOS34-all that glitters...

wahey, it's tuesday, and time for another fabulous challenge at shopping our stash!  let's get right to it, k?  here are miss carla's instructions:

Challenge 34  

All that Glitters or Sparkles or Shines 

use anything sparkly, blingy, shiny or glittery

and/or 

use an image by our lovely sponsor Dilly Beans 

and here is my project, it's a 2012 weekly planner i made from scratch using a calendar template in broderbund's printshop and my lovely new* bind-it-all:

i know what you're thinking.  you're thinking, "hey, lauren! for someone who generally 'drives the bus to bling-town' this is not allllllllllll that sparkly!!!" and let me just assure you no one is more surprised than i am about this! :) but there *IS* a bit of a bling flourish & the numerals have been liberally brushed with distress stickles, a fact that was not captured in ANY of the 9,000,000 photos i took. sorry.

sooooooooooooo maybe i should've made something else that really rocked the bling casbah and saved this for another day?? nuh-uh. because what this baby lacks in bling it makes up in MEGA-LEVELS of stash-usage: every page is (mostly quite elderly) scrapbook paper printed with a week's worth of dates on one side and xyroned onto vintage paper for the other side.

the bits that make up the cover collage are offcuts (vintage dictionary & hindi newspaper), leftovers (die-cut prima paper, part of a bling flourish, crate paper butterfly leftover from this month's pixie kit) or real-life ephemera (ticket, tag, fortune from a cookie). the only NEW things in this whole project were the BIA wire and the base of the chipboard covers; and admittedly, the latter easily could've been made with a recycled bit of card.

here are a few of my favorite pages, actually ALL the pages are my favorites, but there are 60 of them so i'll spare you, lol.  the set-up is the same for each: dates on one side; the other holding vintage goodness which can be art-journaled upon, collaged-up, or left as is, throughout the year:

as you know i have A LOT of book-sale aquired, falling-apart vintage books** and paper, it's the core of what's in my etsy shop in the form of ephemera packs, eclectic decks, etc. this year i think i might just add a few little hand-made books and journals, since they are SO MUCH fun to make.

being a paperholic, of course i have loads of 12x12" scrapbook paper too. for this book mostly used cardstock-weight to make thick, heavy, STRONG pages, but since i knew they'd all be backed with a second layer of paper, some thinner things (like these hilarious elephants) snuck in.
 

the big eye is from a (not particularly old) magazine, i just happened to like it. the finished planner measures 8.5 x 6.75" and is about an inch thick. which, as it turns out, is the top-end of how much you can stuff into a 1.25" set of BIA wires and have the pages turn all right.  phew.  :)

this one might be my favorite: since a lot of the books i rescue are distressed and discarded library copies, they have the remnants of that usage, including end papers with pre-made pockets in them. am i the only one filled with delight at this thought??!***

sorry to go on and on, but as you'll have noticed, i am inordinately proud of this and i am SO EXCITED that i get to keep it and use it all year! but of course the most important thing to tell ya is that the current SOS challenge: ALL THAT GLITTERS will run all week long and you should c'mon over and PLAY!!! ♥♥♥

*LHJ and i don't really "do" holiday or birthday presents to each other. however, if one of us knows the other really quite wants something in particular, like, say... oh, i dunno... a bind-it-all... they might well decide to perform seriously heroic levels of enablage using a major holiday as the excuse. i'm not saying that's what happened here, but on the other hand if you are ever considering a bit of an indulgent purchase and you'd like a guy to make you feel ok about it, lovely husband jeff is THE MAN!!! :)


**i realize that fellow bibliophiles who've only just met me are probably appalled right now. let me just say that NO HEALTHY BOOKS were harmed in the making of this journal, or in fact in the making of ANY of my projects or ephemera packs. i use 100% book-sale finds whose fate, should they not be purchased, is otherwise the pulper or the dumpster. for the most part, these volumes also have serious flaws--like a bunch of missing or torn pages, extensive markings, moldy covers, and so forth. even so, i make sure they're not valuable, and if they are i sell or donate them, instead. believe me when i say that as an avid reader and book collector myself, i've thought about this subject long and hard, and even written about it, in a post that could be called "DEAD BOOKS WALKING"; in fact libraries discard, sell-off and recycle millions of books a year! i take some of them and make them into art... or at least, into useful, pretty things. :) 


***ok, maybe i am. ah well.  :) :) :)

one more "wrap star" moment...

...just because this one actually does involve proper papercrafting!  these are the gift card holders i made, using this great template by kristina werner, for our eldest niece and nephew's i-tunes gift cards:

(patterned paper: echo park; stickers: american crafts, recollections, paperchase; ribbon: michaels; red glossy cardstock: jam paper; ink: colorbox; eyelets (inside, unseen): oriental trading co; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, xyron)

i stuck to the instructions pretty much straight down the line. one exception being that i adhered a piece of coordinating patterned paper to the back of the holder AND to the reverse of the red cardstock for a little more interest inside the holder.  also, instead of securing inner pocket (which, again, is INSIDE--sorry i should have a pic of that!) with brads, i used small eyelets; partially because i thought they'd be stronger, but mostly so i would not have the ugly metal "legs" of the brads sticking out on the back of the holder. 

yes. i am that "detail-oriented" (feel free to use a different expression for that... but not to my face, ok?!) :)

i used small lumps of blu-tack to secure the g/c holders to the back of these little (store-bought) candy boxes which i trimmed up with the kids' initials, a little wired holly trim, and some more of those cute ornaments from hilo hattie!  mele kalikimaka, darlings!!! ♥