Use It Tuesday Challenge #45

Good morning,

I just love crafting and making unique gifts - this year - I created a set of double sided blocks - You've seen these on earlier blog posts  - and I LOVE Use It Tuesday's Challenges - basically use what you already have!  Cool, right?  Well - its so cool because I was a top 2 pick - How awesome?  VERY!  Click on the "Jingle" image above and you'll go to their website.

Tree Shopping

Christmas Tree Shopping!!!

While we had planned to cut our own tree this year - even have a permit to do so - there was continual snowfall to the tune of 2-3 feet.  Well this is not good!  The forest rangers told us that we could go - but if we were stranded ....

Here’s the tree that the kids wanted:

And we settled on a 7 foot beauty.

Jingle All the Way

Good Morning Scrappy Friends!!

We are knee-deep in the holiday season here at the Johnson house ... concerts, concerts, concerts, cookie baking, sporting events, championships, more cookie baking and more concerts.  Does that mean that mama has no time for scrappy-happiness?  NOPE!  I was able to put in a full day of scrapping last weekend and I wanted to share my creation with you:

I used several pieces of "hoarded" paper - I've had some of this for so long that I don't even know what it is anymore

- I think its from Echo Park - 

wooden buttons are from last Christmas' stocking and are Martha Stewart's collection, 

the twine is from a steal last year on ScrapbookSteals.com, the red "jewels" are from Webster's Pages Warehouse Box that I received over the summer, and finally, 

the glittery swirly thingys are from a swap box with my crafty gal pals about a year and a half ago.

Altered Art "Sneak Peek"

You may have noticed that its either “feast or famine” on my blog.  There are times when I think to myself ... “I really should be getting a few more crafty items posted” and then its 10pm or later ... 

which means sleep is a priority not blog posts.

Here’s a post for you that’s a bit of a “sneak peek” of an altered art project I am working on.  I love making crafts as gifts and this is one gift that I really hope is well received!

(above) Kind of a rough draft ... which changed into this! (below)

 and some detail, of course!

This is going to be a two-sided block set that spells out “FAMILY” on one side and “JINGLE” on the other side.  The “all the way” will go on a long flat block - with the other side having the family’s last name. 

I cannot take credit for coming up with this cute idea.  I got it from a friend’s blog - Misty - she’s an incredible designer!!  click on her name to head on over to her blog to see what else she's busy creating.

Winter ATCs

I belong to a very special online scrappy crafting group which really pushes me to be a more creative and resourceful scrapper.  The gals I know through this group are just the nicest and sweetest I could ever find.

We’ve done several ATCs swaps (Artist Trading Cards) and I’ve coordinated the past two swaps.  For this swap - which I was able to send to all the participants including Canada just this week - I created a clean and simple ATC.

I used washi tape (thanks to a gal pal who sent it to me), StampinUp! card stock and a stamp that I found at my LSS that was only 99 cents - what a bargain!  

I layered several pieces of green and red card stock and then holly/music patterned paper before I put the kraft paper on top.  I stamped an evergreen tree to create a watermark affect and then finally the “Winter Greetings” stamp.  I love washi tape and couldn’t have been happier with how this card looked when finished.  

Getting my Digi-scrappiness On!

Its been a while since I last had time to do any scrappy-happiness and I couldn't wait to share these layouts with you.  I went digital for this set of layouts and while I love how they turned out - I still prefer the cutting, gluing and selecting papers instead of digi-scrapping.

In case you were counting - that's 13 layouts!!!

I submitted these layouts for the Paper Girls Challenge

Challenge #21 - Multi Photo Layouts!