Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone! Welcome to 2010!

Can you believe it's already 2010? I started this blog a year ago without really knowing where I wanted it to go. I knew that I wanted to show my paper creations by posting them online and I was aiming to post once a week. I really enjoy looking at other peoples creations and I envy those people who can post daily! After looking back over the last year I see that I have actually posted about every other week. That's not to bad considering how my life has changed over the last year.

When I started this blog I was working for a consulting company and traveling to CT three days a week. In April I lost that job due to the economic difficulties many companies were/are facing. I was incredibly lucky to land another full-time, permanent job in July. The unfortunate part of this job is that it requires me to commute approximately 3 hours a day. That doesn't leave much time for crafting during the week. Thus I am only able to get creative on the weekends and have something to post approximately every other week.

This years family holiday party was held the Sunday before Christmas at my sister-in-law's house. Each year we typically give all 7 neice's and nephew's gift cards. Last year we created some hand-made gift card holders and decided to continue the tradition this year. Here is what we came up with:

The template was purchased from PaperTrey Ink in the My Timeless Templates section of their store. You get three different options for $5.oo! How amazing is that? I ended up cutting each of them out by hand and John, my dh, scored, folded and assembled them to move the process along. Isn't he sweet?!

I also made a bunch of bows for the actual gifts we gave the adults. I wasn't able to get many photos and when I cropped the first photo it altered the picture permanently. Ugh! I was able to salvage this one picture:

I was totally in love with this candy-cane striped paper. I used every last scrap of it this year. I'm a little bummed but I'm sure I'll have a new favorite paper next year! I used my Bowdabra to make the bows. I know, it's kind of cheating but it just makes things go so much quicker than making them all free-hand. For this particular bow I purchased the red ribbon from Michael's, it has little white pom-pom's on it, and added the white satin ribbon I found in my stash. I thought it came out really well. My husband kept telling me that our gifts looked professionally wrapped this year! What a nice complement!

If you are a regular reader then you might remember that I was making a calendar for 2010. Well, I worked on it off and on over the last week or two and John helped me bind it last night with the Bind It All. I think it came out really well but it still needs a few more photos. I need to get the month of January photographed and then I'll post it for you to see. I tried to get the photo today and the camera battery died. Figures huh? Well it gives me something to post next week! HAHA! :)

I hope that 2010 is everthing your heart desires!

Until next time,

Janice

Happy Holidays

Hello, hello! How is everyone out there? It's been crazy-busy around here this holiday season. I guess that's why it's been so long since I last posted! Our weekends have been full of holiday events, family, parties, shopping, wrapping, more family. It's been wonderful!

While it's been horribly cold around here (think single digits) we haven't had much snow this year. However I had a couple of days off around the Christmas holiday and it did snow off and on one day. I was very fortunate to get a few pictures which I thought I would share with you today.

We are thinking about matting and framing a few of these and hanging them over our sofa in the Family Room.

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays Everyone! Thanks for stopping by. I'll try to post more frequently now that the hustle and bustle of the holidays are behind us.

-Janice

2010 Calendar

Good Evening! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with your family and friends. I know I sure did. I think we ate turkey for a full week afterwards! LOL We were fortunate enough to decorate for Christmas over the long weekend. Doesn't the tree look pretty?

Another thing I was able to work on over the holiday weekend is a calendar for 2010. It is actually a kit that I picked up at A. C. Moore. It came with stickers for the days of the month and other stickers to embellish the calendar pages. It also came with some beautiful designer paper. I can't wait to get it finished. Here is a page of the stickers before I created a calendar page:

And here is a picture of the month of October:

You can click on the pictures to get a larger view if you'd like. I began gluing the designer papers together to make the top pages of the calendar but I haven't finished them yet. I also need to figure out which pictures I will use on each of the 12 pages. Once I get some of them completed I will share them here on the blog.

In the meantime I hope you have a safe and healthy holiday season. Thank you for stopping by.

-Janice

Happy Thanksgiving

Good Evening! I bet you've been wondering what happened to me, huh? I haven't posted in the last couple of weeks simply because I haven't had anything to share. I've been so busy working and celebrating birthday's that I haven't spent any time in the craft room.

Last weekend was my husband's birthday. Unfortunately I had to spend some time working but Sunday night we went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH. They were, quite simply, amazing to see in concert!! John described it as "intense" and he was absolutely correct. I was so energized when we got home that I didn't sleep very well and 5:30am comes pretty early when you go to bed after midnight.

Regardless I managed to get through the week without too many issues. I did spend some time this weekend simply relaxing and sleeping. I think I needed to catch up on the sleep! Now I'm really looking forward to a three-day work week. Yippee!!

Perhaps I'll have something crafty to share with you next week. I'm also hoping to see the movie 'New Moon' next weekend. Have you seen it yet? What did you think? I'd be curious to know if you liked it or not.

So until next weekend, have a safe, happy, and healthy Thanksgiving.

-Janice

Halloween & Other Fun Stuff

Happy November to you all! I cannot believe how quickly this year is slipping by. I remember as a child thinking it took forever for summer vacation to come around. And then once school started again it took forever before Christmas break. Now as an adult it seems like I just finished shopping for last years gifts and here we are beginning to discuss what to get everyone this year. It's crazy!

Last night was Halloween here and we had fun giving out candy to all the little goblins! Here are a couple of pictures of our Halloween decorations. We purchased foam pumpkins a couple of years ago and carved a Haunted House in one and a Bat in the other one. This really makes so much economical sense to me!

John found these cute Ghost lights in the basement with some of the other decorations. They look so cute on our raised wall.

Now onto some papercraft pictures. I had mentioned in a previous post that I made a Memory Book for my sister after our summer vacation. Well I finally finished it and got some cool pictures with my husbands new DSL camera. Here is a picture of the front:

And here are two shots of the inside. I made all the pages identical but chose to only photograph two. I didn't want to put pictures of other peoples children on my blog. Some people are very particular about putting their children's photos on the internet and I really don't blame them. So to keep everyone happy I chose to share a picture of myself and my dog. Besides you really can't see me too well in the photo! LOL

If you want to see the photo's better you can click on them to make them larger.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful week!

-Janice

Halloween

Good Evening! Another wonderful weekend has come and gone around here. It was quite productive in our household the last couple of days. My dh got a new camera and he has been reading up on all it's possabilities. I got some much needed items for my car, namely a new battery and new windshield wipers. Today John removed all the leaves from our yard while I cleaned the inside of the house. It was such a nice, warm day here today! I was so excited! It got to be over 60 degrees and the sun was shining brightly. I even made an Autumn stew and an Apple Crisp for dinner tonight. See, I told you we've been productive! LOL

Since the weather was pretty miserable yesterday, I don't think it reached 50 degrees and it rained all day, I spent some quality time in the craft room. I received an email from Scrapbook Trends which inspired the Halloween Triptych I worked on.

I cut a total of six tags from some old cereal and tissue boxes. In the end I don't think the cardboard was thick enough because the triptych does not stand on it's own. I painted both sides of all six pieces and then covered the front with the pattern paper you see below. Isn't it cute? I love the pumpkins! Then I painted each of the chipboard pieces using acrylic paints and covered the letters with Martha Stewart Glitter (onyx), the bolts on the Frankenstein and the cats eyes were also glittered with Martha's Glitter. The cat's eyes were John's idea and I must say I was so excited with how it came out. I just love it when he helps me!

You should be able to click on the picture for a bigger view. I'd still like to add some stamping or other embellishments to each of these but I simply ran out of time this weekend. Since Halloween is only a week away I decided to display it "as is" for now and maybe I'll get to work on it some more later.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!

Enjoy the week.

-Janice

Baby Card

Good Evening! I ran into some computer troubles last weekend and was unable to post. Rather than post mid-week I decided to just wait and post this weekend. Then we got busy and I plum forgot!

We spent the weekend enjoying a friend's Baby Shower and a local agricultural fair. There was good food all weekend, I ate way too much! We have so much Kettle Corn I think we will be eating it until Halloween!!

Here is the card I made for the Baby Shower:

The background paper is from Nana's Kids pack, the two solid squares and circle cut out are paper from PaperTrey Ink, and the two blue brads are from Queen & Co Bucket of Boy which I picked up at a local scrapbook store.

When we were on our way to the Fair yesterday we stopped by a scrapbook store that I have been wanting to visit for over a year now. I'm kind of glad we waited because I could have spent a significant amount in there! Honestly they have everything. I got some cool paper and chipboard letters that I am anxious to use for Halloween. Hopefully I can complete this and get some pictures to show you next week.

Enjoy the week, it's getting cold around here.

-Janice