Best Creation Holiday Blog Hop!

It's our first blog hop at Best Creation today. We're so excited to show you lots of projects for the upcoming holiday. We are giving one lucky person a chance to win $100 of Best Creation products, and a second person a chance to win our Valentine collection of papers and stickers. How great is that?!

So here's how it works... Start at the Best Creation, Inc. Blog. We have 13 stops, so leave a comment at each blog as you hop along to collect the letters of our secret word. When you are done, leave a comment on the Best Creation blog AND email the word(s) to teresa@bestcreation.us.

Today I'd like to share a couple of projects I made with the Winter Wonderful line.

First is a home decor item. I created this wall / door hanging with a piece of acrylic.

You can create a frosty edging to the acrylic by rubbing a white Stazon ink pad along the edges. Layering paper on top of and beneath the the acrylic adds extra dimension. A pleated paper ruffle border and some jingle bells finishes the project nicely, don't you think? Products Used: ESG005, EC005, GP432, GP437, MSS025, GCS012

Next up is a layout with the Winter Wonderful line:

I began by misting my cardstock base. I used 2 different colors of glitter cardstock here. The big snowflake was die cut with an Accucut machine. Products used: GP440, GP437, GP433, ESG005, EC005, GCS012, GCS009

So what do you think? Leave a comment for me!
My letter for the blog hop is the letter "E".

Now you're off to visit Kim Holmes' blog... Have fun!

Thanksgiving

It hardly seems possible to me that the holiday season is upon us. Time just flies by me these days.
I spent almost every waking moment the past few days getting ready for Thanksgiving, and now it is over.

We hosted this year. I cooked for 16 people. Mike had to work this year, so dinner was to be served early. I decided we'd roast a couple of turkey breasts to have everything done in time. When the turkeys came out and the sides went in, Mike accidently put in two pans of potatoes and no stuffing. So dinner was put on hold, and Mike ate a quick plate before leaving for work. Oh well, everything was yummy and worth the wait.

After working so hard, I treated myself to a little creative time.

As I played with my December DT kit for Coordinates Collections, I realized I never shared my November projects. The kits this month are:

Festive Feast:


Just Dessert:

Aren't they both beautiful?
I designed with Just Dessert this month. The Pink Paislee Anthology papers are a blast to work with. I used a variety of alcohol and distress inks to create this layout:

I so loved the feminine feel to the My Minds Eye products.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Hello, my poor neglected blog.

Where have I been, you ask? Well, let me tell you...

Caught in a whirlwind of soccer games, football games, practices, dance lessons.
Homework and housework and paperwork.
Medical tests and flu shots.
Broken computer, broken well pump, 3 birthdays.
Apple picking, pumpkin picking, trick or treating.
Trying to fit in some scrapbooking and sleeping in between.

How's that for a crazy month?

Here's some pictures from our October happenings...

and here's a few of the projects I made:

From Coordinates Collections Black Magic kit:

Stay tuned, because there's some fun happenings in the works at Best Creation, Inc, and Coordinates Collections!

Toot!!

I've been keeping a secret the past several days...



I came across this awesome website, Coordinates Collections ,
a few weeks back. Since they were having a design team call, I decided to stick around. What a great kit club!

Each month, there are two kits to choose from, along with embellishment add ons. There is oodles of inspiration, like sketches, videos, contests and tutorials.
And there's lots more good things coming soon.

I was thrilled when Jamie emailed me and asked me to join her team.

I hope you'll stop by the forum, where I'll be the Forum Coordinator.
Be on the lookout on the blog, where I'll be posting a tutorial every month.

Have a great day!

Playing Catch Up

So much for my blog plans the past week.
My road of life took me on a few detours.
Mostly busy stuff with the family, but all things that needed my attention.

Then I pulled my back out at work this week, trying to put panties on a plus sized patient who was still pretty numb from her spinal. I am sore and stiff and have learned that 800mg of Motrin makes me fall asleep!

Ah well, what can I say?

I have some scrappy projects to share:

First up is my first DT work for Best Creation,Inc. This is the Autumn Splendor line which is absolutely gorgeous:






I glimmer misted some aida cloth from my cross stiching days. If you pull a few threads from the edges, it creates a cool fringe. Then I stitched a quick border with DMC floss and beads. I was happy with the texture it added to the page.

Here's a sneak peak of my next layout with the Trick or Treat line:



Til next time...

Two Page Tuesday

When I started out scrapping, I always made 2 page layouts.

As my style evolved, I fell in love with single pagers and consciously tried to copy the layouts I saw in magazines.
I learned principles of page design and techniques to add pizzazz to my layouts.
Single page layouts were all I made.
Two page spreads were viewed as challenges on the message boards I frequented.

Fast forward seven years.

I began teaching an occasional class at my LSS, New England Scrapbook Co.
The customers there are mostly a two page creators.
This has challenged me to relearn how to scrap 12 x 24 while retaining my style.

The result?

I've become infatuated once again with double page spreads. These days, I'm on a mission to inspire others to give it a try.
Let's face it, we all have a LOT of pictures to scrap.
And you can fit more in the bigger space.

Here's a look at a couple of my 2 pagers:

I'll be posting more 2 pagers next Tuesday!

How Much is Too Much Monday

Happy Labor Day!

I worked this weekend, so it was no big holiday for me. It's okay, though, because holiday pay is SUH-weet! Mike and I celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary on Friday. We had a date planned for lunch, but Bren was sick and needed to go to the doctor.

I can't believe summer is over. My older kids are back in school and my little guy starts Kindergarten in the morning. We did a lot of fun things, but there were still more I wish we could have fit in, like more days swimming at the lake, or going to a drive in movie.

Did you know the challenge blog, How Much is Too Much? posts a new challenge each Monday ?

This week's challenge is to pick a shape and use it 10 times on your layout and to use the name of your shape in your title. Here is mine:

So I cheated a bit on my title - I figured a heart symbolizes love, so I went with that. The clear letters are Bo Bunny acrylic that I outlined with a marker.

I really enjoy mixing new product with old. The paper doily is by Martha Stewart. I love how the felt Dear Lizzy embellishment looks layered on top.

Here's a couple of layouts from recent challenge that I hadn't blogged yet:

Well, it's off to sleep for me - I've been awake for almost 29 hours! Gotta be well rested for Tommy's big day tomorrow.

We came, we saw, we left tired and happy...

When summer draws to an end, and school is about to begin, we celebrate with a family fun day.The past several years, it has been a trip to Lake Compounce, a local amusement park.


This year, we decided to try something different.
The kids had never been to New York City, so we decided to go for a day trip.


We figured they were old enough for us to finally attempt it.


It was their first train trip. We left for the day from:

We went to mass here:

St. Patrick's is one of the most beautiful churches with the most amazing architecture. You could spend all day there taking in all the details.

Then walked down 5Th Avenue and saw things like this:

Then we went into FAO Schwarz and played a bit:

We snacked on these as we walked. Honey roasted mixed nuts. Yummmm.....Colin thought they should make an air freshener with that scent, LOL.

I used to love to look at all the flowers in these corner markets when I lived in NYC.

Then we walked through Central Park:



to get here:

The kids had a blast looking for things from the movie, Night at the Museum:

and Brenna even brought some gum-gum to give to a dumb-dumb:

Then we hopped in a couple of cabs (note the plural here - 7 people can't fit in one NYC taxi)
to go to dinner here:

I had THE best dinner of Bolognese meatballs over the creamiest of polentas:

And there were delicious ice cream sandwiches made with amazing homemade cookies or brownies for dessert.

After dinner, it was back to the train station for a long ride home.

The kids had a blast and can't wait to do it again.

Me too.

Somebody pinch me!

Seriously.
I was so excited this morning to see my name on the list of new Design Team members at Best Creation, Inc. !
I actually let out a shriek of delight. My kids came running, thinking I had seen a giant bug. LOL.

I am looking forward with the entire team, but wanted to give a special shout out to Tracey Taylor, Julie Walton, and Jona Saavedra, who I have known via the online scrapping community for years.

I can't wait to get started!

Summer's winding down...

...and fall is approaching quickly here.
Some trees are changing colors already.
Some leaves are falling down in my yard.
Acorns are dropping on my deck.
We've begun back to school shopping.
Colin & Ryan started football practices.
It's crazy how fast time flies anymore.

I managed to get a ton of scrapping done this past week.
We had our employee crop at NESC last weekend.
Then I learned about the Best Creations DT Call on Thursday morning.
ACK! The call ended Saturday. It meant a tight deadline for me, but I think I rocked out some decent projects. If you haven't tried working with their patterned papers, then you're missing out! They are a nice weight, with patterns on both sides of most of them. One side always has the most gorgeous sparkly designs. Luckily, NESC carries a great selection so I chose my stuff and got busy!

First up is the layout I made for my Best Creations submission, using the Surf's Up line:



I especially loved the wave paper and wanted to feature it, so I cut out portions of the waves and popped them up in places to add some movement.


I was inspired by Duff of Cake Boss fame to make a paper wedding cake. The papers of the Mr. & Mrs. line are so elegant!! I fashioned my design after a picture a scrappy friend showed me of her daughter's wedding cake. I crafted the majority of the flowers in the cascade. If I had more time, I would've added more flowers to the top of the cake, but alas, I ran out of the yellow paper...





The last requirement was card. Cards are harder for me, but I think this one turned out to be pretty:


I hope they like they see. Keeping my fingers crossed...