A very late wreath post...

Hi everyone,
I am very very late with this.  I posted months ago that I like to make my own wreaths and showed you my new Halloween wreath :)  Since then I've put up one for Fall and one for Christmas.  I hope to do a winter/new years one but who can say....it's a bit nuts right now.

I did this one last year and I snapped this picture right before I took it down and put the one below up.  Funny thing is I let my dear hubby put this up and realized that it's upside down. haha oh well.  he still gets an A for effort.  

This one I did last year as well but the white flower got a bit squished.  I should have fluffed it before taking the picture.  Enjoy :)

Back of the title page for my DD

Project Life protector


SC DD kit (chipboard calendar, light green twine, red ribbon, Jenni Bowlin Santa)

Bling accessories from Close to My Heart (crystal gem button and crystal/pearl stick pin)

Close to my heart brown/cream stripe ribbon

Cosmo Cricket "Dear Santa" rub-on

DD Day 2

Day two
Today was my son's first advent calendar.  He is starting to understand all the joys and wonders of the season so I decided it was time for his first advent calendar.  When I was a child my grandmother would get these for me filed with little chocolate treats.  I've seen a bunch of posts were other mothers are against the whole chocolate part but I don't give a whole lot of sweets (unless you count fruit) so I figure for 24 nights a small piece of chocolate is not going to hurt. 

This day my husband came off of orders and brought me a new Starbucks mug!  Oh and one of their chocolate muffins.  He's so awesome! 


Project Life protector & grid cards

Chatterbox paper (green)

Cosmo Cricket (for you sticker)

Red Velvet paper (unknown)

SC DD kit (#2 coaster, Jenni Bowlin paper, light green twine)

Sew Easy - We R Memories

DD day 1

For my first December day my son (who loves cows) always looks forward to seeing them on our way to work/sitters but today he also realized that there are lots of colored and/or white lights everywhere and now every time he gets in the car he asks "more lights?"

Project Life protector

Paper Smooches stamps - cow

Lawn Fawn stamps - lights

Doodlebug alpha in simply sweet (assort colors) 

SC DD kit (Teresa Collins, Jenni Bowlin, Hambly Studios overlay, SC Mister Huey's Holly Berry)

Designer Digital Ali Edwards DD (date transparency)

My DD title page

Originally I had the 25 on chipboard but then cut it down to fit the original binder that was part of the kit.  I loved the look of Ali's cover and wanted to do something similar so I got a thing of white flock and went to town.  I ended up flocking it over and over again because it just wasn't coming out how I had it in my head and then I started to lose the coolness of this font so I whipped out the white paint and outlined the numbers.  It still wasn't looking exactly the way I wanted it which lead me to the icicle stickles.  This is when I really switched gears to do the 12x12 PL and now my chipboard was only 6x8.  I decided to grab the holly berry spray and a white piece of Bazzill.  I also grabbed my washi sliver tape from A Muse Studio's, some glitter glass by Melissa Frances and you can't do Ali's DD without her awesome Technique Tuesday December stamps (I highly suggest becoming a member)

Once I finish any project I put it up on my mantel and take a step back.  When I did this for this page I realized I was PL was the perfect fit for me and that I'm on the right track!  Stay tuned for 25 more layouts :)   

My Project Life review....

As i scanned the blogs one day I kept seeing a consistent theme from all the bloggers posting their project life pages.  What I noticed right away was that they were putting items in their pages that traditional scrapbookers don't really scrapbook (but always wanted to).  I thought that was cool but not enough to sell me. 

I'm a die hard traditional scrapbooker.  So seeing something like this makes me skeptical.  When I end up in the skeptical zone I scrutinize, I scoff and think no way - it's not for me!

Keep in mind that I'm behind - I know, aren't we all, but I'm REALLY behind.  My son's book is only up to his first birthday, he will be 3 this month.  My daughter who just turned 1 doesn't even have a first year book like my son does. UGH behind! 

For some reason about two months ago I guess I had seen enough and thou still being really skeptical for some reason I ordered it off of Amazon anyway.  When it arrived I looked through it but my lack of excitement made me stick it under my desk, and there it sat until a week ago. 

My verdict...

I don't like PL. 


I love it.

I wonder what my issue was and why I didn't just trust the genius behind PL - Ms. Becky Higgins with being able to do what I needed to do in WAY less time.  The thing that sold me?  I am able to capture my memories, jot down all the crazy stuff my 3 year old says and 1 year old does and still use all my traditional sb supplies.  In fact is so much less stressful! 

You aren't staring at a huge piece of paper.  Each page has a bunch of different pockets so it's like doing a bunch of mini sb layouts on one page.  It all works together, you can journal (which was a big issue for me) AND you can get the 6x6 paper packs that not only save space but are 1/4 of the price of the big packs!!!!  

With that being said I am doing my DD (see earlier post) with PL and loving every page! 

December is a busy month & Moxie Fab World's Championing Award Medallions Challenge

Hi everyone,
December is setting out to be one crazy month!  And I'm not talking the regular shopping, decorating, baking etc etc crazy.  I'm talking about taking on WAY too many projects for one's sanity ;)  SO just what am I up too?  Well besides my A Muse Studio "business" (see my other blog @ http://www.itsallveryamusing.blogspot.com/) I have decided to do Tim Holtz's12 days of tags AND Ali Edwards' December Daily/25 days book.  I am also working on my home decor and just like the BOO for Halloween I've got a JOY for Christmas coming this way too.  Yes I know I'm nuts, but in a fun way I guess.  So without further ado... Here is my first tag in my TH "collection".  I will be adding this in with my 25 days so at least it goes hand in hand.  Since this little guy also has a rosette I am adding it to the Moxie Fab World  challenge just for fun.  Yes I know I said no more challenges but this just happened to fall within the challenge guidelines so why not toss my hat into the ring...

I wanted to something along the lines of sugar plum fairy and even though I find this a bit cutesy for me I think it came out pretty well.  All the stamps are from A Muse Studio, the tags (Tim Holtz) and the glass glitter (Melisa Frances) I purchased from Simon Says Stamp.  I used Versa Mark for the back ground stamps then took two of Tim's limited edition colors - Seedless Preserves (fall) and Festive Berries (winter) and swirled them on to each corner.  I then took antique linen and covered the entire tag to give it a more grunge look.  I then took my Martha Stewart scoring board (can't paper craft without this tool!) and made the rosette from MMBI Christmas kit paper pack.  I once I scored the 1.5 inch strip I balled it up then flattened it out, ran over it with more antique linen and then attempted to fold it.  There are some rips and a few parts that didn't want to fold up but that's just all part of the "look".  I grabbed my nesting circles from spellbinders for the center, gave that an antique linen treatment and then stamped in black my sentiment.  I stamped out our little ginger bread couple, cut them out and gave them some antique linen treatment.  To color them I used a white gel pen for the "icing" and my awesome copics for the buttons and eyes.  I also stamped out 3 gum drops, ran them through the seedless preserves and then used icicle stickles and glitter glass to give them the look of sugar.  Because I felt it needed more bling I used the same stickles and glitter around the circle.  Grabbed some ribbon out of my stash for the green bow and used A Muse Studios' twine (dragged that through antique linen as well - can you tell it's one of my favorite colors) for the ribbon on the top. 


Whew!  What a post!  I think that's the longest one I've done so far.  Well only 11 more to go as well as my DD (daily December) book and Joy decor to post.  It's going to be one crafty month!  I will do my best to post almost every day.  Thanks everyone :)