Lily Bee Love

Well, I did it. I just hit the send button on my application to the Lily Bee Designs DT. I made a few new layouts for my app but in the end I sent one new layout and one older one. Oh, I hope they like them! I hope they like me! LOL! Here are some of my favorite Lily Bee layouts and cards including the two I sent. This is one of the new ones I sent with my application. I used just the red and blue papers from the Hello Sunshine line to make this 4th of July-ish layout about Audrey. Hee! This layout always makes me laugh. I made it right after they announced their call and I'm really so proud of those stinkin' cute sheep I made. They just crack me up! Another new one, this one uses the French Couture line that was featured in a mini kit from My Scrapbook Nook. I fussy cut some of the little flowers and each one has an iridescent sequin in the middle from my stash that matches the ones in the tulle flower. I won their super cute Domestic Bliss line from a CHA blog post of theirs and when I saw that sticker and the way they have their banner stickers on their sticker sheets, I knew I wanted to make a party hat card. It was fun picking out different toppers for each hat. :) Finally, this is the older layout that I included in my application. It was actually featured on their blog! I used their DeLovely line for it, one of my favorite lines of their to date!

Now, all I have to do is wait. I think to help the time go faster, I'm going to have a go at the sketch challenge they just posted. If you want to play along, you can find it here!

Wish me luck!!! :)

Dixie Pieces April Kit---Sew Silhouette!

Oh guys, this kit is so pretty! I have a feeling that this one is going to sell out just as fast as February's so if you want it...hop on it! :)

Two alphas, some really cool vintage and vintage style goodies (I adore the post cards), and a ton of Jenni Bowlin faboulessness make up this month's kit and I had a blast playing with it.

Since I was getting ready for our Spring Break house guests, I had to bust out my DT stuff super quickly and I was a little worried about it. I shouldn't have. I got it, two days later I got some free time and I quickly found a bunch of pictures that would work and made three layouts and two cards.

And, I LOVE what I made. Especially this first layout. It just cracks me up every time I look at it. It's a layout about the outtakes from our Christmas card photo shoot from 2010. Man, that kid is a nut!!!

This next one is another Mickey layout, well Mickey and me layout. :) It's a layout about some of our similarities. Love that kid! (Granny took this picture, too!)

Finally, I made a layout with a vintage photo. It's my paternal grandmother (in the middle), her sister (on the right) and their best friend (on the left).

I also made a couple cards. This first one was made just because I loved all the buttons in the kit. I was messing around with them and pulled out the fun, floral ones and made this card. Very easy, just used some scraps left over from the above layouts and some doodling. :)

I made this last card after I made the Friends layout because I really liked how the vintage dress pattern flower turned out and I wanted to make some more. :D Super easy and super sweet!

I still have a bunch of stuff left and I'm definitely keeping it all together. It's just such a great kit!!! If you do want one, make sure to get over to Dixie Pieces quickly, they are available beginning Friday!

Some Fun Shares!!!

Hey guys! Long time, no talk! LOL!!! We've got house guests for Spring Break so I've been a cleaning and getting ready maniac. :)

I've got a few fun things to share with you! First up, my very first project is up at the Punky Sprouts blog.

You can see the rest of it here.

My second bit of news involves this layout.

It was picked to be one of the featured layouts for the week over at Club CK. Yay!!

I'll be back soon with some more scrappy fun! :)

Goin' Green at Dixie Pieces!

Hey guys! We've got a bunch of "Green" challenges up at the Dixie Pieces forum and you should pop on over and check them out!

Here's my "Green" card challenge. Now, green isn't just a color, it's also a way of living.
My challenge for this month is to create a card made by recycling the leftovers from another project.

As an example, remember my layout of Little Man on his first day of preschool?

Well, here's a reindeer card I made using some of the leftover scraps.
My "green" layout challenge is to create a layout with grass on it and the grass in the pictures does not count! LOL!

All challenges need to be completed by 11:59pm on March 31st and uploaded to the gallery and then linked to the forum. If you also post them to the Dixie Pieces facebook page, you will get 2 entries! The prize for the March Challenges is a class kit from Jenni Bowlin Studios!!!

While you're at our forums make sure to check out the other ladies challenges too! The more you complete, the more chances you have to win! :)

If You are Out and About...

and happen to come across the March/April edition of Paper Crafts and then you happen to flip to page 56, you may just see this little card, made by little old me! LOL!!!

Thanks for stoppin' by! :)

Plum Tuckered...

and she knows it!!! Miss Thing asked for her nap early today! I'd sneak in a take a pic for you all but I don't want to wake her. She's had a rough few days with not enough sleep and not enough naps.

Friday night she stayed up late at the babysitters. Saturday was the day we drove to Bend and back and she had less than a one hour nap plus she went to bed late because family came over to see the new ride. Sunday, we went to lunch with Andrew's new boss and so instead of going down at 12:30, she didn't get to sleep until after two!

So, I'm really not suprised that she's having her nap early. I am suprised that it was her idea though! LOL!

Meet Bess!

I got a new car! Well, "new to me" car! And, I named her Bess!

Isn't she purty? LOL!!!



She's just as purty on the inside!

We've been looking at Expeditions for quite a while now and at the King Ranch Expedition for months. I wanted to wait until summer when gas prices go up and gas guzzler prices go down but Andrew found her in Bend and I fell in love. :D

She seats eight but what I'm really looking forward to the most is picking up my mom and my granny and heading out for a day jaunt with my kids. I haven't been able to do that since we had Aud. Two car seats in the back of the Sport Trac equals very little room for another adult. LOL!

I'm so excited! I've never gotten exactly the car I wanted before. I've always had to compromise and just take what was available. Bess has everything I wanted and she's white! I love white! Hee!!!

My New Necklace!

I did it, I finished my necklace! And, in record time I might add. :D

I'm pretty happy with her and can't wait to wear her soon!

She does need a name though, what should I call her?

The Rest of the Layouts!

I made three other layouts President's Day weekend and wanted to share them with you!

First up, one that will probably be included in my Jillibean DT application. They've got a DT call going on now and if you love them, you should try out! I used a technique for making paper look like fabric that I saw on the incomparable Lolly Chops blog!
I used the few pieces of Pasta Fagioli that I had on hand and I think I may add a little more since I picked up the stickers and some more paper at Life's a Scrapbook last weekend.

This next one also uses Jillibean but it was made just for fun. It needs a bit of work to be DT worthy. LOL! One of the gals at the President's Day crop (Hi, Lacy!!!) was making some of that string art with some brads and I snagged that idea and modified it to work with my scallop punch. :)

This layout still needs the date added and a whole lot of doodling before I put it away for good! :)

This last layout was my last layout of the weekend and I'd had the idea for it in my head for a while. I used my scraps from my February Dixie Pieces kit to scrap Miss Thing wearing my sports bra as a shrug. Don't you love it when the kids get into your clothes! LOL!

I had a lot of fun "dressing up" the dress form included in the kit and making those teeny flowers!

I also made some cards and a mini book but I haven't photographed them yet.

I'll post some more pictures just from the weekend soon! You guys have to meet Louise!

President's Day Weekend Crop Games!

One of the coolest things about my scrappy getaway over President's Day was that I got to play some really fun crop games. Now, I've played crop games before but none of them were ones that ended up with a completed layout!

Our first game was "Bossy Scrapper". One gal is Bossy and picks nine or ten items that we have to use on our layouts and away we go! She announces one item every five minutes or so and then after the last item is announced we get about 15 minutes to finish up our layouts. So fun and such a great way to get the creative juices flowing!

This was my layout from the first Bossy Scrapper game. I made a pink boy layout! I used the pretty Be Mine line from Echo Park to scrap Mickey's first Valentine!



I made a paper rosette to replace the actual lollipop because I didn't want to have candy in my album! Hee!
The second game we played was called "Round Robin". For this game, everyone picks out a background piece of paper and a photo or photos and lightly adheres it to the sheet. We then write out a little info about the picture on the back of the paper and pass it to the person on the left. Everyone works on the layout on their table for five minutes and then we pass it to the person on the left and so on and so forth until it comes back to us.

This was my layout. I was so happy with how it turned out. Two of the gals at the crop sewed on my layout!!! Machine sewed!!! Yay!!! Isn't it cool?

Side note: There were like five sewing machines at the crop! Five! My desire to get my act together and actually sew on my layouts has been renewed and it's now one of my goals. :)

We played another round of Bossy Scrapper, and I used my new favorite picture. It's a very Kim Holmes inspired layout as I scrapped 5x7, I didn't think too much about the size of the gingham patterned paper that I cut and I tilted my photo/paper grouping! This one was such a fun round and I loved how this layout turned out. I even used Punky Sprouts products on it! Check out the banner it's made of Lil' Petals!

The last game we played, we were down to eight girls and they decided that Grab Bag would be a fun one to play. They were right! We all put four pieces of paper (at least 6x6) in the paper bag and four embellishments in the embellishments bag and then Kim walked around the room and we each grabbed one piece of paper and one embellishment until we all had four pieces of paper and four embellies. Then, we had to make a layout that used all our stuff. We could alter it or hide it and we could add stuff to it but we had to use all our grab bag items.

I sooooo loved this game! I was actually the second one finished with my layout and that says something as I was the last one finished with my layout on every other game. Seriously, the last one each time! Anyway, I used everything that I pulled and I only added some staples, the chipboard "1" and the strip of lace. And, I love it! :)

I'm thinking that I'll be using some of these games when I'm having mojo issues at home. :)

Have you ever played any make-a-layout games before?

Dixie Pieces March Kit---Dot-a-licious!!!

Ooooh, this month's kit was sooo much fun to work with! I took it with me to my scrappy President's Day retreat and went nutso with it!

This first layout is about Little Man and his mad "bacuuming" skills! I love that denim strip that comes in the kit, I'm almost out of it and now I'm eyeing Andrew's oldest pair of work jeans! LOL!

Journaling reads~Mickey learned how to vacuum and he loved it so much that he didn't want to stop with just the living room. He made me promise that I'd let him vacuum the hall when he got back from preschool. No problem, Little Man!

All items from March Dixie Pieces kit except for EK Success Bumpy Road punch and Uniball Signo white gel pen.

This next layout just cracks me up! Mickey thinks that every set of letters makes a word and so he writes some out and asks me what it spells! :D The edges of this layout seemed a little plain to me so I cut out a section of the cardstock behind the plaid patterned paper and ran it through my Revolution and adhered some random letters to the cardstock border. To make the letters stand out a bit with out being too obvious, I just stacked two regular mini glue dots on top of each other instead of using my regular foam tape. It gives just a hint of a shadow to make it pop a bit from the background. :)

Journaling reads~Mickey, You love to write random letters on your drawing board and then as me, "What word is this, Mama?". I don't know buddy but I think it's pretty darn awesome! Love, Mom

All items from March Dixie Pieces kit except for Studio Calico Stamp, white Signo pen, Charcoal Colorbox ink and and blue Stampin' Up marker.

I wanted to change up the feel of my layouts with this next one so I used the back side of the yellow Crate Paper polka dot page and made this lighter, non-primary colored page. This was the first page that I busted out the tape with. I made leaves for my Jillibean flowers, a border for the bottom of the patterned paper, an extra layer for the sub-title to hang out on and a little extra touch on my tag.

To get a multi-colored title that looks like the coloring the kids were doing, I outlined the Bella Blvd letters and filled them in kind of sketchily with some fine point markers.

Journaling reads~We have such a good time with Mara on Fridays. Today we dug out the markers and had such fun coloring up a storm. We love Mara!!

All products from Dixie Pieces March kit except white Signo pen, Marvy marker (green), Zig Millennium pen (black) and Bic fine point permanent markers.

This next little layout about Mickey "studying" just makes me happy. I love that pic, love those papers and the whole thing was just fun to make! There's a hidden journaling tag that's also the title, I cut up one of the Jillibean flowers to make some pretty little hearts and while I really wanted to use some more of that denim, I was afraid I wouldn't have enough left for a project that I was planning, so I created "faux denim". I cut a strip of the BoBunny dot paper and roughed up the edges and I'm really pleased with how it looks.

Confession~I still haven't done the journaling on this one! :)

All products from the March Dixie Pieces kit except for Frayed Burlap Distress Ink.

My final layout was one I'd been wanting to scrap for ages. I loved book fairs when I was in school and I was so excited when Mickey's preschool held one. :)

Journaling reads~Mickey's first book fair at Macksburg Preschool. He looked at all of them and really liked the ones about cars and trucks but wound up ordering a Cat in the Hat book.

All products from Dixie Pieces March kit except for white Signo pen and Stampin' Up border punch.

These last few projects were ones I'd planned since the minute I got the kit. I knew that I wanted to make the kids mini coloring books with Color Wonder paper in it so they could color in the truck without me freakin' out! ;)

I borrowed a sheet of 12x12 chipboard and then cut it in quarters to make two 6x6 books. I bound them with my Bind-it-All when I got home.

Here's Miss Thing's book.
And, here is Little Man's! I distressed his letters and then inked them up. Very rugged, don't you think? :)

Finally, I made this last project at home. I'd wanted to make a mobile with paper barn stars ever since I saw my first tutorial on making them. I cut out six stars from the BoBunny paper, scored and folded them to create barn stars and adhered them back to back with a bit of baker's twine in between. I then staggered them in height and tied the twine to a small embroidery hoop. I added more twine to the top to hang it from and then covered the hoop with the denim strip and some red buttons.

So fun to make!!! So hard to photograph!!! LOL!!!

All products from March Dixie Pieces kit except for bakers twine and embroidery hoop.

Even with all the goodies I made, I still have two full sheets of paper, the shrinky dink sheet and a bunch of the letters and accessories left.

Now, the Dixie Pieces February kit sold out quickly last month so if you'd like to get your hands on Dot-a-licious, head over to Dixie Pieces soon! :)