coloring book

When I was little, I would love to color in coloring books. I would start a book and color from begining to end. Every page had to be complete and had to be filled with as much color as possible. Now that I'm a Scrapbooker I can continue my love of coloring in the lines thanks to some cool new papers.

Popstar from Rusty Pickle:



















Color Me from Luxe Designs:



















a cool one from KI Memories




















You can also find some others at Doodlebug and Prima.
Here's what I made using the Rusty Pickle Papers.




















Make sure to use all of your favorite "coloring" materials! I used Watercolor pencils, Glaze pens, Stickles, Glossy Accents and Gems.

Sweet Treats for Fall

For the past 2 years, I've opened my home up during this time of year to my local customers for a class that has been pretty popular called "Sweet Treats." It is a different class than I normally teach, and I set up "stations" where people create a treat and move on to the next one. The gals who have taken this always love it and want me to do more of them, and so I thought it would be perfect as my next online class...

I will be teaching Sweet Treats for Fall over at Get it Scrapped. You can read all about it and register for the class here. I am absolutely THRILLED with the projects (all brand new), and I can't wait to show them to you!! If you're looking for the perfect hostess gift, need to make multiple treats for your child's classroom or want to adorn your home with crafty goodness, please check it out!! The marriage of scrapbook supplies and food is always a good thing...

And as an added bonus, if you register between now and Sunday night (midnight) you will be eligible to win a free WIP October Project Kit!! Whee!!

I'm packing up for the big crop at the Waterbury Clubhouse tomorrow, and I look forward to seeing each one of you gals--it will be a fun day as always...

Enjoy your weekend!!

Do you Wordle?

I love anything to do with text and type, so I was excited to come across the Wordle website. According to the site:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

You can create a word cloud by typing in random words, sentences, even a favourite poem. The site allows you to select a variety of orientations, as well as fonts and colours. Another option is to enter the url of your blog or website, and Wordle uses the text that is shown on the front page.

Here's a word cloud I created by tying in the URL of my personal blog.Currently the site doesn't allow you to save the image to your hard drive; but you can print it out. If you do want to save the file there is a work around. What I did was to do a Print Screen and paste that image into Photoshop. Then I cropped just the portion with the Wordle image and saved that file. I was then able to manipulate it to use on a scrapbook page. I rotated the image 90 degrees and printed it out onto a letter sized piece of cardstock as a background for a page about blogging.


There's so much you can do with this new toy! You can use it as I did for traditional scrapbooking, but also for digi-scrapping. Try it; and show us what you did!

I'm batty about Halloween!!!

I just love the fall!! Football, the crisp air, and of course, the CANDY that comes with my fav holiday, Halloween! Nothing makes me happier. I also love doing some special Halloween crafts with my kids to celebrate. Here are some of my favs:


You can find instructions for the origami bats here. Think how cute they'd be made from some of the fun papers in the October project kit!!! There a few of these kits left, but you need to act fast if you want to get your hands on them.



The directions for these cute bat pumpkins can be found here.



You can find the directions for this mobile here.

All of these ideas came from Family Fun, which is one of my fav websites for craft ideas. Happy crafting!

The Work in Progress October kits...

...sold out a lot faster than I anticipated!! The Main kit, Add-on and the Cardstock options all went very quickly. There are a few of the Halloween kits (shown below) still available here.I know you can't see it very well in the above photo, but the kit does come with 2 yards of the black fringed crepe paper and one yard of the purple.

And for the locals who are attending the crop with me this weekend, you are going to just FREAK when you see the Halloween project we're doing in the break out class! I made a few extra in case you want multiples! And I'll also have a couple of the October WIP Project kits in case you wanted to work on the projects at the crop...I've already started baking...SO FUN!!

Have a wonderful day!!

A winner.........

Thanks to everyone who left me a storage suggestion. I really loved them all, but I could only pick one. :(

The winner is JENN Z!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much for your suggestions. I especially loved this one:


Jenn, I'll be contacting you for your address so I can send you your goodies. Thanks to everyone for playing along!

The October WIP Kits...

...are available here!I made this banner using the October Project Kit and the alphas from an older WIP kit, and hung it up on my fireplace this weekend. I'm in full swing for the Fall and plan on decorating all week long! The photos of this banner come in the newsletter to customers who purchase the kit, and will be emailed out on October 1st. This is one of the projects from this kit--the other is an adorable haunted house mini book that you'll LOVE...

Have a super day!

challenge blogs.

there are sooo many out there---heck i run four YES FOUR of them, i know
i am a bit crazy---but hey it helps me scrap what can i say? LOL
do you need some inspiration?
some prompts? something to help you
get that mojo flowing? there are TONS of blogs that help you do JUST that!
here are a few of them, go out there and play along!
happy scrappin'!

the story maters.
one little word.
sketch this.
how much is too much.
random chaos.
color combos galore.
mini mania.
cardalicious.
scrapstars.
creative therapy.
the design experiment.
scrapping the music.
scrapjacked.

here's just a *few*
go have some scrappin' fun!

It's raining, it's pouring...

you know the rest, right? It's Amy here, a little late, but here none-the-less (thanks Trish). I've been so busy with back to school stuff, that I am just feeling like my to-do list is swallowing me up. What do I do when it gets to be too much??? Scrapbook, of course. :) I got my hands on the new Oct. kit, and it is just yummmmmmmmmmy!

I am a super SUPER messy scrapper. Since I've been scrapping away with the new kit, and I feel like my supplies are swallowing me up, I've been focusing on doing a reorg of my supplies. Here are a few of my fav organization tools. This is an ongoing task for me, and I am constantly trying to find new ways to organize all my stuff.

Up first, is the cart that houses my kits. I have found it's easier to keep all the kits together until there is virtually nothing left. These drawers are perfect since they hold the 12x12 paper, and they are CHEAP, which I love!



For me, these work perfect for my ribbons. And they look pretty, too!


And here are some of my fav rooms on 2 peas...be prepared to drool!

Gemm's room
Samantha Walker's room
Seriously, this is a gorgeous room!!!

I'm pretty sure this is my fav room ever!

I know I've linked Stephanie Howell before, but her scraproom deserves a look-see. The way she organizes is magnificent!!!

Do you have any organizing tips? I'd love to hear about them, or better yet, see them. Link them here and I'll send you a RAK for my fav tip ever!! You have until Sun. night.

Have a great weekend!!!

wish list

If you ever meet me in person you'll be sure to see that I'm a total nut about this hobby. I scrapbook almost every day of the week. Some days it may only be for a few minutes, others for hours if I'm lucky. After 2 1/2 years, I'm still as addicted as ever.

I love to try new tools and techniques. Working at a store gives me the privilege of seeing and trying new things on a weekly basis. Here are some of the things I'm excited to try. (and probably buy!)

Versamark Dazzle - Just like the regular Versamark watermark ink but now with either a Pearl (champagne) or Sparkle (frost) finish. Think Holiday card beauty.












GlitzDesigns RollerDoodles - they look so fun and easy. Ali Edwards uses one on her layout pg. 60 Oct 08 CK. (which by the way I'll be scraplifting - love this page so much)




















Zutter Corner Rounder - you can corner round chipboard and acrylic in 2 different sizes. This may be an early Christmas present to myself.















Ranger White Ink Pen - will it work better than the Uniball Signo White? This question MUST be answered in my head. I will need to try one for myself.
















Stampin Up Scallop Punch - I already have the Threading Water punch from Fiskars but being the addict that I am I'll need this one too. Seriously, everyone should have scallop options, right?
(have you ever been to a Stampin Up party? Go - skip the stamps, go straight to the back of the catalog where they sell AWESOME EK Success Punches that you can't buy in stores!)(note: see next obsession below)















and we will conclude will my final obsession...EK Success Whale Punches. I collect these things like candy. Love them so much. They always work and never seem to break unlike stinky McGill punches. I have 8 different EK circle punches and can honestly say that I use them all the time.

I have a Cricut, but hardly use it. Punches are so much easier and faster to use. EK recently came out with new designs and extra large shapes. Some are actually 3" in diameter. I got to try the 3" circle and it works fantastic! No problem punching through at all.

First on my list is the Arrow punch and then comes this cute little flourish. Go to their website to see all the latest designs.