Jennifer McGuire is hosting a Cards for Kate drive to help cheer a family whose little girl has been diagnosed with brain cancer. I’d participate no matter what, but my mom died from a brain tumor over 40 years ago, so this has special meaning to me. I’m sending cards for each member of the family but here are two that I’ve never posted. I haven’t used either of these stamps in so long. I don’t have a reason to create cards for kids very often, but I held on to some of my favorites when I sold off a lot of stamps a few years ago.

Patterned paper:  Crate Paper and Papertrey, Cardstock and button: Papertrey, ribbon: Paper Source, stamp:  Mostly Animals, Nestabilities and Copic markers.

Stamp: Uptown Stamps, cardstock and button: Papertrey, ribbon: Impress Stamps, Cuttlebug embossing folder, Copic markers and glitter pen, and Stickles.

I have a new 6X6 paper pad of the Cosmos Cricket Boyfriend papers that I was dying to try. Here’s my take on this week’s sketch at CPS.

Cosmos Cricket pp; cardstock, twine, button, message stamp all Papertrey Ink; October Afternoon journaling spot, EK Success border punch, and Creek Bank twill.

The weather is definitely changing–cool nights but warm, sunny days. For many of my friends the end of summer comes this weekend since school begins on Tuesday for them. A group of us had lunch today and Tracy took this photo of us on our patio. Three of us are now retired, and six head back to school next week. It’s hard to get us all together, but when we do, we have a great time. 

I’m glad to have the time to play along with some challenges this week. I love the colors Dawn chose for her Raspberry Suite Challenge.

My Road Trip scrapbook is nearly finished–just five filler pages to do, most of which I’ll do digitally. It’s a big book with layouts for each major stop we made in our month long trip with photo pages behind the layouts. I really enjoyed “reliving” the trip, and it’s without a doubt the fastest I’ve ever completed such a big project. But nothing else creative happened. . .

While Sarah and Adam were here, Adam helped me redo the blog to a fresher, cleaner look. I’m hoping to switch out photos in the banner fairly regularly. This one is a favorite from the Badlands. We had a great time while they were here and I’ll post photos from their visit soon. Here now, however, are three cards. The first is a card for a dear friend who has just moved.

The background is fabric paper by Elsie for KI Memories, I think. It goes so well with the October Afternoon sticker which I layered on an embossed Nestability circle. The border is part of a strip from Making Memories and the twill, button and twine are all Papertrey Ink.

Next is  wedding card for a friend’s son who was married in late July.

A simple card with a Fancy Flourish from Papertrey, pearls, and Midori ribbon.

Lastly, a card for the Christmas challenge at Moxie Fab. It was really difficult to photograph this, and I like it IRL a lot better.

Very clean and simple–just my style. Papertrey stamp, gems from Mrs. Grosman, and message from Savvy Stamps.

Hope to be a regular blogger now going forward! Thanks for looking.

I started this card last night while I was waiting to leave for the Buffalo Airport to pick up Sarah and Adam. Even in the summer, the plane managed to be late, so we didn’t get home until nearly 1 am. A little past my bedtime, so I finished it up this morning as they slept in. Lots of layers here, but I like the effect.

Interesting that the two reds seem different on Typepad, when in fact, they are a perfect match IRL; both are Papertrey Ink pure poppy. The spiral design is also from Papertrey, but the black grid is a small piece of Paper Loft  from my scrap drawer. Stamps are all Papertrey.

Looking forward to some family time this week until Sarah and Adam leave to meet friends in the Adirondacks on Friday.

The first is this week’s Card-a-licious-25 Challenge to use flowers, ribbon, and a journaling tag. I based my card on a card I found on Lisette Gibbons blog.

While I was away I received some new Papertrey Ink stamps which I was eager to play with. The first one is a lift of Nicole Heady’s card when she introduced the stamp set.

And the last is using the new made-for-buttons stamp set: Everyday Button Bits. I loved the messages included with this set, but I know I’ll enjoy playing with the images as well. I found the October Afternoon paper pad at a great scrapbook store in California and knew the paper would be great with cherry stamp.

It was good to get back to some crafting after a long time away from it. There’s so much I’m looking forward to making.

We’ve been home for a little over a week now . . . sort of. The week we returned Tracy’s family rented a cottage at Conesus Lake. His brother from Arizona was here, and we had a family only celebration of Ellie’s 80th birthday, so we were at the lake almost every day. Luckily, the weather was better than it has been here.

Our trip was, in a word, FABULOUS! Truly, it could not have been better. We had nearly perfect weather, and nothing we planned was a disappointment. In fact, nearly all the sights were more interesting and breathtaking than we imagined. Take The Badlands, for example. I didn’t have any high expectations about The Badlands, but I was totally taken aback by its stark beauty and the amount of wildlife we saw.

I’ve managed to sort through the 1800 photos on my computer and narrow them down to a little under 400. The thought of editing and cropping them is a bit overwhelming so that’s one reason I’ve neglected the blog since I got back. I did think that I would post from the road, but our days were so full that all I did in the evening was upload my photos from the cameras and keep a daily journal. I’m seven weeks behind with my Project 365, but the photos are there and I’ll catch up eventually. Here are the stats on the trip:

In just a bit, we’ll be off on a long road trip. You can see the general route here on my Journey Journal which I ordered from Cracked Designs on Etsy. She kindly made me a version with just the right number of pages for our trip.

Luckily Matt is here to take care of the house, keep our yard beautiful, and bring in the mail, etc. Not having to deal with any of those arrangements has made this much easier. Tonight we’ll be having dinner with my cousin in Toledo whom I haven’t seen in almost 20 years.

In addition to getting ready to go, I’ve been taking an online photography class with Katrina Kennedy at Get It Scrapped! I don’t consider myself a true beginner, and this course was billed for just such a photographer. I looked at the content, however, and knew there were topics being covered that I didn’t know that much about. I haven’t been disappointed. There were only two lessons that didn’t have new-to-me material , and I learned a lot more about my camera. Last year I tried and tried to get a good photo of the baby robin in our burning bush. Mama Robin is back this year and thanks to my new knowledge I got a pretty good photo. I’ve taken several online classes. Barbara Carroll’s at Big Picture Scrapbooking was fabulous and Katrina’s (although not as comprehensive) rates right up there as well.

I also made some cards for upcoming events:  Sarah’s birthday, my brother’s retirement, and this one just for fun with one of my all-time favorite (and brand new) Paper Trey stamp sets:

Vintage Picnic Baskets come with multiple baskets and items to put in the baskets as well as a great variety of messages (some in a separate set.) I know I’ll be using these a lot.