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Happy Mother’s Day

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It’s Mother’s Day here in the States, and I’ve had a lovely day—flowers, phone calls, Face Book compliments, and a lovely afternoon at my sister and brother-in-law’s where we celebrated with Tracy’s family.

I made just one card this year—for my mother-in-law. You couldn’t find a more devoted mother anywhere, and she extends her love and devotion to her daughter-in-laws and son-in-law as well.

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On my last trip to Buffalo Stamps and Stuff I picked up a Penny Black set (“Kind Words”) that has a wide variety of sentiments. This one for Mother’s Day is just perfect. The frame is cut from patterned paper by Amy Tangerine “Plus One” with the Monthly Moments Slide Frame die by Papertrey. I fussy cut the little flowers from “Happiness in Bloom” and adhered it all to the card front after scoring five lines. Two enamel dots filled the flower centers.

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I’m linking this to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge “Let’s Get Sentimental.” 

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If you’re celebrating Mother’s Day, I hope it was a good one!

Happy Retirement

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It’s 90° as I write this. We’ve gone from winter to spring to summer in less than three weeks! It won’t last, but I never complain about the heat. It does seem odd, however, to have turned on the air conditioning in my car this early in May. We won’t do that in the house for awhile as it always cools down nicely at night in the spring.

We’re off to help our friend, Bill, celebrate his retirement tonight. I hope he enjoys it as much as I do!

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I started with a piece of white cardstock that I scored on the scoreboard every half inch. Then I used the Sentiment Splits die and backed the split with patterned paper from the Mini Market “Clipsters” kit from Papertrey Ink. The “Oh Yeah” die and stamp are from the same kit as is the sentiment on the bottom of the card. The starts are left over from die cutting the Simply Stars cover plate a long time ago. I layered three of the “Oh Yeah” dies to get some extra dimension.

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I find it hard to believe given how many stamps sets I have that there are very few (I found two!) sentiment stamps for retirement. This one is from one of the first sets I purchased from Papertrey many years ago, “Mega Mixed Messages.” The “Cheers” die cut and stamp are from Retro Birthday.

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I’m linking this up to Virginia View’s latest challenge “Layers and Dimensions.”

Layers and Dimensions

Lots of Thanks

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I needed three thank you cards—quickly! Luckily I found two in my stash, and this one came together very quickly by going through my stash of already stamped and colored images and pre-cut die cuts. I’m not sure I would have put this together starting from scratch but I like it quite a bit and think I’ll use this design again.

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I started with Papertrey’s “Building Blocks” cover plate die in True Black and adhered it to a white card. Then I stamped the sentiment with Simon Says “Thanks” set. The “Delightful Dahlia” was already colored with Copics and fussy cut, so all I had to do was pop it up with a piece of dimensional tape. 

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My friend is a fan of florals and pink, so I think she’ll enjoy this card. 

Pairs: Zoom In, Zoom Out

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This might be the first ZIZO pair for the year. I’ve been trying to be more creative, but this just works when it’s flowering trees that are the focus. Monday I posted some photos from our walk in Highland Park on Sunday night. I saved these three (yes, one more than a pair because I couldn’t choose) for this week’s Pairs.

Zoom In:

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Zoom Out:

 

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Although most of the trees are labeled in the park, I neglected to note exactly what kind of flowering tree this is. Next time I’m there I’ll look. (Thanks to Cheri, I can tell you now that it’s a Kwanzan Cherry tree. She has one in her backyard–lucky lady!)

Spring has Sprung

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It takes a long time for Spring to arrive in Western New York, but after several days in the 70’s and 80’s it is here. Last night after dinner, Tracy and I walked to Highland Park. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, it is a fabulous place, and less than two blocks from our front door. According the website, there are over 1200 lilac bushes, 35 varieties of magnolias, and many azaleas, rhododendron, and gorgeous flower beds. The pansy bed supposedly has over 10,000 plants and was totally redesigned this winter. The lilacs are just beginning to bud. Hopefully, our warm weather will continues because the annual Lilac Festival begins on Friday. Visitors won’t be disappointed, however, because the magnolias and flowering trees are simply beautiful. Here are some highlights from our walk:

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I’ve saved a couple photos for Wednesday’s Pairs posting, and I’m likely to be back with some photos of the Lilac Festival in the next week or two.

 

Project Life: October 2014

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October saw us on the road again, off on the postponed July trip to Petoskey, MI and Door County, WI. A friend of mine lives in Milwaukee and vacations regularly in Door Co. and a friend of Tracy’s made a winter trip to Petoskey and we were intrigued. Of course, we ended up in Wilmette for some time with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb.

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I finished September’s layouts with a Design G page so went with a smaller title card: Papertrey’s Monthly Moments die cut, some stamps from the July Monthly Moments set, and a piece of Washi tape on a Becky Higgins’ Midnight card. The photos (clockwise) from top left are Petoskey; my friend, Nancy and her friend, Mary; the lighthouse at Muskegon, MI; Peninsula Park in Door County; and a dramatic sunset after a cold, windy, rainy day in Petoskey. (The photos look a bit out of focus here, but it’s the photo of the pages causing the problem.)

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I scanned two pages from my travel sketchbook to show our itinerary, my favorite photos of Caleb at the garden center and Kohl’s Children’s Museum, and ended up with two photos from our stop on our way home to meet our friends, Karen and Mike, for our annual weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

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Halloween

I had fun creating the cards for the Halloween spread. I used an OLD piece of Scenic Route patterned paper for the title card with some equally old Doodlebug border stickers, and a stamp from Monthly Moments on a Keep it Simple Frame die cut. I die cut the Journal Card #5 from a piece of patterned paper from the Lawn Fawn “Beachside” paper pad and layered it over a contrasting piece from the same set. The cute little owl is by Doodlebug that I picked it up recently in a lovely little store near Sarah’s. 

Caleb tried on his Halloween costume which I made for Matt when he was little. The only alteration needed was to hem the pants. He practiced his roars for us, as well. When Halloween actually arrived it was cold with hail. After three houses, he announced he was ready to go home. Candy was definitely not worth slogging through the terrible weather. When I asked on Face Time about trick or treating next year, he said, “NEVER!” We’ll see.

It wasn’t great here, but not quite so bad. No surprise, Skylar was Elsa from Frozen, and had a better time than Caleb. The pumpkins are Matt’s creation; every year he gets a little more creative with them.

The second page of the layout is just photos from the trip. Door County is known for it’s lighthouses as it extends into both Green Bay and Lake Michigan. We visited several of them. Here are a few more photos I added at the end of the month’s pages.

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Although it’s hard to read, the third photo on the left-hand page is of the plaque at the 45th Parallel which we crossed twice on this trip. It marks the theoretical half-way point between the North Pole and the equator. The hot dog on the right-hand page is a Chicago Dog–which I actually had in Petoskey, MI. It turned out to be the best one I’ve ever had. (I’ve eaten three of these calorie-laden dogs now, and I’m quite sure there are more in my future.)

Today is International Scrapbooking Day, and with some time off to go to spinning class, and walk down to Matt’s to get our bikes out of his garage, I expect to be working on Project Life. It’s May, and I didn’t quite meet my goal of getting caught up. I did, however, finish all the pages for 2014, so there’ll be more spreads to share soon.

Pairs: Part to Whole

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When I flipped my birthday calendar over to May, I was somewhat taken aback to see that I needed 12 birthday and anniversary cards, and only one or two appropriate ones in my file. I took some time off from Project Life and got busy. The first night, I grabbed a stack of scraps from my pile and die cut a whole group of “happys” with Papertrey Ink’s “Wet Paint” die.

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Then I set to work designing some cards. I finished all twelve, but can’t post all of them yet, since some of the recipients read my blog regularly. Here are four–three are a variation on a theme.

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All the cards are in their envelopes with the dates they need to be mailed, so today I’m back to working on Project Life. I don’t have many commitments this weekend, so even though tomorrow is May 1, I’m still plugging along, hoping to catch up soon!

Songbirds

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When I need a quick card, I often reach for my Songbird die cuts. When I first purchased this stamp and die set, I die cut multiple pieces and can usually put them together to make a quick card. 

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The folk art nature of these dies seems to lend itself to kraft cardstock. I love the pop of bright yellow gold and orange against the brown.

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For the second card, I die cut the Phrase Play #6 in kraft and layered it on a cream card base. Then I tied a piece of twin (from my very cool antique-looking twine holder) and layered a branch with a bird with dimensional tape.

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The sentiment also comes from Phrase Play #6 (Papertrey Ink.)

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Both cards fit the current Virginia’s View challenge of Layers and Dimension, but I’m just linking up this last one for now.

Layers and Dimensions

 

Just Sayin”

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Switching from a concentrated effort on Project Life to card making proved to be more stressful than I anticipated. This card doesn’t even begin to match the idea in my head when I started to make a birthday card for a good friend. I even switched stamp sets in the end. But I am happy with this card, and it gave me an opportunity to use a die that arrived in the mail about a week ago—Sentimental Splits. I resisted ordering it when it first came out, but broke down when I placed an order during Papertrey’s April release. No regrets. I think it will get a lot of use.

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I created the watercolor background (on Tim Holtz Watercolor paper) for the original card, but it came in handy when I moved to creating an ombre butterfly (die cut from “Life is Beautiful”) similar to the ones Laurie demonstrated in a Papertrey Make It Monday. I ended up using just two colors of ink, and sponged it on the die cut directly. I die cut a piece of vellum with the Scribbled Circle die and added a few Pretty Pink Posh sequins to finish it off. The sentiment is from Simon Says “Friendship Messages” and continues to the inside with “Happy Birthday.” The “gems” on the body of the butterfly are Papertrey Ink’s rainstones.

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I’m linking this up to the CAS-ology challenge: OMBRE.

Week 143 - Ombre

Project Life: September 2014

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Although we made our annual weekend trip to the Adirondacks, the big event in September was Skylar’s third birthday. I had a lot of fun embellishing the birthday pages, using stamps and die cuts from my card making supplies.

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I added a die cut and a stamp from the Monthly Moments set by Papertrey Ink to a photo this month. I like it a lot. The other noteworthy event from the month was going to our first Food Truck Rodeo at the Public Market. I don’t know how we missed these all summer. This was the last one, and it was a lot of fun. There were probably 20-30 food trucks set up around the perimeter of the Public Market downtown. The choices were amazing—wings, Thai, Chinese, barbecue, sandwiches, Cuban . . . We finally decided on comfort food: mac and cheese because we’d heard so much about Mac’Rollin. It was a bit of a wait in line, but worth it. There’s live music, too, and the crowd was as diverse as the food offerings.

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I found the digital stamp by Katie Pertiet to create this filler card for the Food Truck Rodeo.

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I recently purchased two Market Kits from Papertrey Ink: Party Pops and Clipsters. Both came in handy. The candles and banner on the title card (from the Midnight edition of Project Life) came from the Party Pops kit. I wanted to document the transformation of the swing set from a pile of boards to the completed, and truly enjoyed, final product. And I scanned both sides of the invitation to include in the layout.

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 The photo of Skylar before the party is one of my favorites from the whole year. By the time the party was over, she’d had enough of photos, but I loved this one of Matt and Betsy, even if Skylar is hiding.

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 This card gave me a chance to include one more photo of the birthday girl and play with my new goodies. The same banner from the previous page, and one of the Clipster clips.

I’ve taken a couple of days break from Project Life, but am four months down, and five to go. That’s pushing it to be done by the end of the month, but I haven’t given up!

Pairs: Cart and Basket

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One of the few flowers beside bulbs that can withstand the fickle spring weather in Western New York are the pansies. We really needed a shot of color on our stoop so we bought a few pots of pansies this weekend.

Here they are in the cart at The Garden Factory:

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And in the baskets on our front stoop. (It’s too small to call a porch.)

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I had some fun editing this photo on my iPhone with the new Enlight app. It’s a paid app, but I’m quite sure if I can figure it out, it will be well worth the money. For this photo, I used the “mask” tool which works much like Photoshop. I converted it to black and white and masked the flowers so they would remain in color.

I’m linking this to Helena’s weekly meme: Pairs.

Project Life: August 2014

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I’ve continued to make good progress on catching up with Project Life; not quite as good on getting the pages photographed for the blog. August found Sarah and Caleb still here; Adam joined them a few days later when he returned from his mission trip. All three stayed through the rest of the week and we spend most afternoons and early evenings with Tracy’s family for the annual vacation at Conesus Lake.

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Again, I kept it pretty simple with the Simple White photo templates, a couple Tiny Templates (#4) from Cathy Zielski, and a wooden veneer from my stash. The patterned paper for the title card is from a paper pad “Print Shop” by Studio Calico, the camera sticker is from a collection by Simple Stories, and die cuts from Papertrey Ink.

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I seem to have a fondness for photos of Caleb walking away from us. This is another fave.

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Those of you familiar with Rinda’s Summer Scavenger Hunt will remember this photo of Tracy’s family creating a parade for me. It ended up being one of my favorite photos from the summer.

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The last page documents our excursion to the Strong Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. An awesome place, and there will be more photos from here later in the year. At the end of August I helped organize a picnic for the Urban Presbyterians Together, a group dedicated to supporting the ten urban churches in our Prebytery as well as incredible efforts to improve the City Schools.

 

 

Pairs: Open and Closed

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I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. It was a bright, sunny day so I asked Tracy to drop me off at the doctor’s office so I could walk home. I hoped I would find some inspiration for Pairs since I hadn’t prepared anything in advance. It’s just beginning to look like spring might arrive here. There are a few snowdrops, some tiny yellow flowers, and crocus. We’ve never had crocus in our yard, but have decided that will change next year. We’re planning to plant bulbs under both of the trees in our front yard. I just love them. I walked by some pretty purple ones under a tree, and then about three threes ahead there was another group of three. The first ones were open and the second group was closed. Here they are:

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Another block or so down the street, I came to this cluster. They seem to be a smaller variety, but what caught my attention was the wonderful backlight.

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You can find other Pairs at Helena’s blog here. Today she has a beautiful pair of bright yellow flowers.

Happy Birthday, Adam!

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It’s been a long time since I posted a new card here. I made all the cards for March/early April birthdays and anniversaries before I left for Florida, and got this one done between our two trips. I love that the Retro Graduation and Retro Birthday die cuts/stamps work so well with the Zappy Birthday dies I bought a few months ago. This card is a birthday take on one Betsy Veldman created as a graduation card for the Papertrey release last month. It’s a fun set that will work for almost anyone, but especially good for guys, teens, and kids (three of the harder groups to create for.)

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I started with a piece of paper from the Comic Strip paper collection and cut two images of the skyline from black cardstock with the Zappy Birthday dies. The rest of the card was made with the Retro Graduation dies and Retro Graduation and Birthday stamps. I stamped the lined image on the main area of the sign with an old Hero Arts wooden stamp. The little stars were die cut with the Star Border die from Papertrey.

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This gives you a better view of the dimension. 

Happy Birthday, Adam! I hope you have a great day!

I’m linking up with Virginia’s View Challenge. I totally missed out on last month’s since we were on the road, but I do love her challenges. This month it’s Layers and Dimensions. This certainly fits.

Layers and Dimensions

 

 

April: Project Life Catch-up

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Rinda has been working on one creative project each month, and I decided to designate April as Project Life Catch-up. I have the layouts mapped out by the number that need to be completed each week, and if I can stay the course, I’ll be caught up by May 2.

It’s not hard to reconstruct our months. My Lightroom library keeps all the photos organized, and I keep a daily journal. I have to admit, I rarely have to consult the journal. As soon as I see the photos, the stories come right back. I’ve decided not to worry about filler cards and embellishments. What matters to me are the photos and the stories. If I come across the right embellishment I’ll use it; otherwise I’ll stick to photos and journaling.

Here’s June 2014:

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I’m using the Papertrey Ink Monthly Moment dies and stamps to create the title cards for 2014. I have a different plan when I reach 2015. I also used the Monthly Moment stamps “celebrate” and “4th of July.” Other supplies on these two pages are Tracy Larsen’s Simply White templates, Cathy Zielski Tiny Templates, a template from Sahlin Studio,a die (remember) from Paper Smooches, Stitched Rectangle die (PTI), a Simple Stories 4X3 card for journaling, and a bit cut from the brochure from the Antique Boat Museum.

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I’m not quite sure where the “hello summer” card came from. It was a freebie, and if anyone knows who to attribute it to, I’d love to know. The two journaling cards came from Monthly Moment card packs. I only have two sets, and plan to order some more now that I have a template all figured out for getting my journaling exactly on the lines! Both bits on the journaling cards are from Crate Paper: “The Open Road.” 

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The importance of scrapbooking became even more apparent this week. About six weeks ago, a dear friend who was 92 passed away. She’d been in a skilled nursing home with dementia for nearly two years, but was surprisingly alert on occasion. This week her husband (of 67 years), and one of our former pastors, also passed away. It seems this is often the case where one death leads rather quickly to another, and I will miss both of them tremendously. I’ve been helping their son go through some of their belongings this weekend, and we came across a scrapbook of sorts that includes photos of my family going back 35 years. The first photo of Sarah is when she is about two, and there are a few of Tracy and me before that. In addition to our photos, there were photos of so many couples we know from church. Some of them have changed a lot; others hardly at all. It was so much fun to go through them. Like my photos, a single photo can conjure up quite a story.