My New Craft Space!!

One of our challenges in our Crafty Critters Blog Group was to take pictures of our craft space. Since I was in transition I thought I would wait and post my before and after pictures together. For the past year I have been camped out in our kitchen space. That is where we created our home office since having our 1 year old. We moved everything out of our spare room/computer room to make a nursery for him. However our oldest son, Mitchell, is rarely in his room (that includes sleeping.) He has a huge room that used to be two rooms but the previous owners combined the rooms into one. So we made the decision to combines the boys rooms and get back our office/craft room area.
So this past week I pushed around a lot of cabinets, dressers, shelves, tables, craft supplies, etc. But the result is so freshing!!

This is our kitchen before the move. Horrifying!!

Dining Room after the move. Still some tidying and cleaning to do but aaahhhh, so much better!!
(Yes that is a kitchen table you see!!!)

In the middle of my craft space move!!

My sons crib is the next thing to be moved.

The boys play area for when I need to work from home which I do part time here and there when my work allows. Or when I want to get in some craft time while they are still awake.

The little munchkins helping me move (this in their new combined room which is very messy right now!!)

This feel so good!!! The next few are of my new craft space before I mess it all up!!

Awards!

I would like to thank Teresa for awarding me with a Lemonade Award. I lover her and her blog. When I need some great inspiration I always know I can visit her blog to spark my creative juices. Hop on ever to her blog and show some love.

The Lemonade Stand Award is given to bloggers who show great attitude and gratitude.

OK guys you know the drill, chose the bloggers you want to award and tell them about it.


Lemonade Stand Award
Megan
AnnMarie
April
Tracey

On SCS I started monthly page kit swaps. Each month you fill out a survey and are then matched with a secret sister that you create pages kits for. The jist is to supply your secret sister with enough coordinating supplies to make a double page layout. For the month of April Claudie (ibaa4food) was my secret sister. She put together a really neat sketch kits for me. I LOVED the colors!! Brown and Blue are my favorite coordinating colors. I also loved this sketch! She precut all the pieces for me and gave me a picture of how it was to look. It was great because sometimes I tend to lack creativity.

I thought these parade pictures were perfect for the colors and sketch. Claudie even gave me enough supplies to make 2-3 more double page layouts. She totally spoiled me!!

Double page spread!

Left page!

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The time has rolled around for our next Craft Critters challenge. This time it was a card sketch challenge using Sketch 49 from SCS. We were also challenged to use the color red, ribbon, and a stamp we have not used in the last 3 months.

Happy Mother's Day!

I must put my head down and admit that I can not take 100% credit for my card for my mom. I hosted a tag swap and someone created this wonderful, pretty tag. So I put some dp on a card and added the tag and BAM!!!!!

Card Kit Swap

I hosted a Bella, Riley, and Changito card kit swap on SCS. I swapped them out last night and it was killing me, I was ready to dig into the kits. So after feeding the kiddos breakfast it was my first order of business today.

First is a Riley kit put together by aprillower. Great kit girl!

Next is Changito the monkey. Are they not so cute!! I apologize but I can't recall who did this kit. It's really sweet though!

Last but NOT least is my favorite girl, Bella. I LOVE the colors that were put together for this kit. Once again I'm really sorry but I forget who put this kit together. It's great and colorful ready for spring. Love the glitter card stock!

Yellow Color of the Year Swap

Tracey on SCS is hosting a color of the year card swap. The color of the year for 2009 is yellow. I LOVED the idea she had with this swap but for some reason really struggled with it. So my cards are super simple with not a ton of flair but they are done and on their way to her. Here they are:

This past Saturday we had our PA Shoebox Swap. These are some of the cards we created. We also did some altered items that I'll have to take pictures of and post. All the ladies that came were so super talented and provided great, fun cards to make.
I put together the Riley and Bella cards for the girls to make. (imagine that)

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Kellyluvs2stamp on SCS hosted our 4th Crafty Critters challenge. Our challenge was to create card showing a flower. It could be in any form our little hearts desired.


Here is my card entry:

Hoppy Times!

I just adore this stamp set from SU! This is the first time I have inked it up and loved it.

This tag is for a tag contest we are having at our PA Shoebox Swap this Saturday. There were no requirements so it allowed us to let our creative mojo flow.

My nephew is having his 6th B-day party this weekend. I knew with our PA Shoebox Swap on Saturday that it would be pushing it for me to get a card done for him by Sunday. SO I broke out some of the tags I received in a tag swap I hosted. I love this b-day tag that aprillower created. My nephews party is a "military themed" party so I just popped star DP onto the card base and went with it. I know it does not match perfect but it was quick easy and simple. Thanks April!!

SBPS#14 "Circle of Love"

Kel on SCS hosted a swap that you scrap a 12x12 layout for a secret sister using their pictures. The theme was "Circle of Love." The rules were to create a layout using circles in any form on the page. This is the first I ever participated in one of these challenges. I was nervous to scrap someone else's pictures but it actually came together a lot easier than I was expecting.

On the left page I made the DP into circles and then used chipboard embellishments that are round as well. On the right page I used the word "Love" to tye the "Circle of Love" onto both pages. I was not into journalizing someone else's pictures so I left this for my SS.

I listed the products used under the pictures.

Products Used: DP K&Company Seaglass Palm, K&Company Seaglass Embossed Shell Paper, Creative Memories sticker wording, American Crafts Felt Flower, Bazzill Cardstock, K&Company Chipboard embellishments, tags, and button.

Cleaned up Mess!

Ok I know these pictures are probably going to make April twitch!! Hopefully when she sees my cleaned up mess she'll beable to breath. LOL!!

So what motivated me? This messy table is the table that I have been keeping my finished LOTWs on. I have some that went missing and I though MAYBE JUST MAYBE my craft storage cabinet ATE THEM!! So I thought I better see if I can rescue them. Well no luck finding the LOTW but my cabinet is now tidied up!!

My finished clean up!!!!

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Well this seemed to take forever for me to get a minute to sit down and post our 3rd challenge on our Craft Critters Blog Group.

April gave us a great challenge to decorate an egg using our craft supplies (not our kids.) I thought this was going to be really fun and easy but I actually struggled with it.

I don't own craft ink so my ink took forever to dry which in turn make it hard for me to decorate. Everything I put on would not stick no matter what adhesive I used. Finally when it did I decided to go simple with rhinestone images and popped them up with pop dots. I inked my egg with dabbers to give it a tie die type look. Not my best work by any means but it was a fun challenge.

Pick A Theme

So one of my favorite SCSers (KAcopan) is hosting a Pick A Disney theme border swap. Basically you choose a theme of your choice and then those that are in your group make you a border set based upon your pick. Two of the girls in one of my groups picked a Pooh theme and Cars theme. These are the two sets I put together for them. They were fun, easy, and quick to do. It was a nice change of pace to my crafting.

GREAT Friday!

I had a really Great Good Friday! We were supposed to go to an egg hunt but it got rained out. So the boys and I spent the day in playing and of course I spent time crafting. The boys were so good today and were on a great schedule which allowed me to get a lot done. I have not downloaded all of my pictures so this one is actually from a project I finished on Thursday afternoon.

I'm hosting a Cricut Page Swap on SCS. Even though I'm hosting and do not have to participate I wanted to because I love to use my Cricut. I decided to do a Dinosaur theme which is in a previous post and a Superboy theme.

I used my Paper Dolls and Storybook cartridges, My Minds Eye dp, Bazzill cardstock, and rhinestone accents.

Easter Celebration!

My mom and I have been dying to get together to make cards since Christmas. Well we did not think it would be practical for us to make Christmas cards for Easter so we decided to knock out some Easter cards. Maybe we should have done Christmas to get a head start for next year. It was fun to have the crafting company and we ended up knocking out about 8 cards. Here is some of our work.

You know sometimes I love to pop out a card without stamping and just focus on one companies products. I loved the brown with these sweet, soft Easter colors.

I love my little Riley!! It took me a while to pop out this card. I just could not get comfortable with the color combo with the colors of Riley.

I'm not a huge House Mouse fan but my mom loves this little guy. So I thought I would play with this stamp a little and thought it turned out somewhat cute.

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Our second challge in our Crafty Critters group was hosted by traceyc0103 and it was a sketch challenge. I love sketchs because I don't tend to use them often but always love the creative juices it pulls from me.

The Challenge:

1 - Use SCS Card Sketch 180.

2 - Use pink and brown color combo

3 - Include a flower on your card, it can be in your DP, a brad, diecut, prima, etc.

4 - Use the image of your choice.

Play Time!

I finally got some play time today. I have been dying to let my creative juices flow with some card making. First today I did a card that I cased from a card I received in a swap on SCS. I just love this color combo and the dp. I received the turtle image from a secret sister on SCS. Tonight I need to work on some LOTW swaps so I'm sure I'll be sharing those later this weekend.

Cricut Page Swap

I'm hosting a Cricut themed swap on SCS. The "rule" was to create a double page 12x12 layout using your Cricut. I decided to do a dinosaur page because my 3 1/2 year old Mitchell loves dinosaurs. The brown page is the left side. I used dp, buttons, rope ribbon, a cricut cut t-rex and put a googly eye on the t-rex. The green page is the right side. The tree/bush and dinosaur were cut with my cricut. I also put a googly eye on this dinosaur. I felt like I needed to add more to the pages but after looking at them a zillion times I decided I did not want to over do them.

Go Ahead and DROOL!!!

On SCS I hosted a Secret Sister Element swap. The "rules" were to create a gift package for a secret sister that consisted of certain elements. They were:

Each kit needs to contain the following elements.
1. 3-4 tubes of stickles
2. 5-10 stamped images
3. 2-3 card kits (each kit should allow your ss to make 1-2 cards)
4. 1 spool of ribbon (atleast 1 yard)
5. Pack of embelishments (bling, brads, eyelets, etc)
6. 1 altered item (this can be a jar, box, can, folder, notepad, etc)

I received my kit from my SS on Thursday and she WAY spoiled me. My kit contained:

4 Bottles of Stickles
4 Spools of Ribbon
Huge bag of Eyelets, Buttons, and Brads
Bag of Primas and Rinestone Embelishments
Bag of assorted shaped paper clips
7 (yes 7) Card Kits (girl you know the weakness to my heart, I LOVE card kits)
Huge bag of stamped images
and last but definitely NOT least an Altered flower tin stuffed FULL of Primas. I LOVE it! I have been searching for a better way to store my Primas and I love this.

Here are some pictures to drool over!!

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I hosted a challenge on SCS with our Crafty Critters Blog Group. Not sure if I 100% love it but it turned out bright and ready for spring.

The Challenge: Your challenge is to create a card of any size that is "critter" related. That is right, use stamps, stickers, embelishments, anything that has a critter or critters on it. The second part of the challenge is to use the colors green and yellow. We are getting in the mood for spring!!!!!