November 09-new members

Here are some pictures of our newest members-Ruby and Cooper! As you can see they had fun and worked hard at our last meeting.

laughing, eating, talking, stamping...

Our evening started with a meal of baked potatoes with all the trimmings, salad, cheese, crackers, and two fabulous desserts. After all the eating, laughing, talking, and with happy tummies, we were ready to stamp. Our new Stampin Up representative Julie brought three card projects to make using new stamps and products from the mini catalog. What a great time we all had!!!! Thank you Marcia for hosting.

Stampin Up mini sneak preview

Here is a great website that Marcia found showing card samples using new stamps from the upcoming mini. Have fun!

http://www.stampinpretty.com/

Here are the pictures from our June swap. Grab your tub-o-popcorn... we made it into a movie!
Enjoy!

Inky Fingers on the GO

Our first "Scrap Shop Hop" on July 11th took us to three local stores. Dawn, Monique, Caryl and Cari piled into Dawn's car and enthusiastically headed out-first to Toadilly Scrappin' in Gig Harbor. A first visit for Dawn and Monique and they loved it!!!. This store has a great selection of decorative papers and embellishments, the staff is very friendly(in fact, the owner even took our picture and entrusted us to watch her store while she visited the restroom!) and their scrap page samples are beautiful! We took LOTS of pictures and basically spent our wad of cash there.

Our next stop was Artco on 6th Ave in Tacoma, and after Toadilly Scrapin', this was no big deal. Of course, by then we were hungry too, so we were not quick to impress regardless.

So off to South Hill and Red Robin where we had nice sit-down lunch filled with chatting, giggling, reviews of the previous stores we had visited, and some yummy food. The last stop on the tour was Scrap'n Book. While we were impressed with their selection (still not as good as Toadilly though!)the prices are higher and the store is not as nicely laid out. Can you guess which store we prefer?

It was a full and fun day and we are looking forward to having ALL the Inky Fingers join us for our next "Scrap Shop Hop" when we venture forth to the scrappin' territory to the north.

Bachelorette Party Invite

My co-worker Mechelle is the Maid of Honor in her friend Heidi's wedding and the Bachelorette Party is a camping trip that a group of them are taking in August. Mechelle wanted to make some cute, camping-themed invitations for the trip, so she came over and we transformed my dining room table into "Bachelorette Invite Central" (see photo above). It was a lot of work (turns out she is an over-achiever, too!) and lots of creative fun. As you can see, the invitations are super-elaborate and very adorable. So many personal touches were included, I will note some below with the pictures. Hopefully you can click on the image to see a larger version of it, but I've had a problem posting photos lately, so keeping my fingers crossed:

The champagne bottle (which we MADE, complete with tin foil topper) has a "couple's name" made up of Heidi and her fiance's last names along with the date of their wedding.

The shooting star above says, "...and then the heavens smiled..." in honor of Heidi and her fiance's Moms who have both passed away.

Internal shot of the complete camping scene. We had to cut out and color everything except for the fire, skillet and marshmallow stick. Note the couple's initials "stitched" on the tent.

The open invitation with pull-out extended...

A close-up of the camping scene - love the sleeping bag and plaid blanket!

The pull-out, with postcard-style instructions that Mechelle printed on the computer. Notice that the camper has little cans trailing behind, like a "Just Married" vehicle.

Quick Little Notecards

Here are a few 3 x 3 note cards I made today using one of my favorite color combos (Red, Black and White - so 1980's) and a few new stamp images that my sister Caryl gave to me as a get well gift. Sorry for the blurry photos...

Sick Time Thank You Cards & a Completed, Long Overdue Halloween Project

This is the cover of the Exploding Scrapbook...that is an actual photo of the pumpkins we carved, all lit-up!!!

So, being that I am home sick for the next few days I have taken to crafting - yay! I have completed two thank you cards (one for my co-worker Hye and the other for my boss, Donna) and also managed to finally finish the exploding scrapbook I started for Halloween 2008...quite an accomplishment, and only 9 months late. Here are the pictures:

This is the card for Hye...Caryl loaned me the Close To My Heart Stamp Set "Be Yourself". I chose the funky, go-go boot wearing girl for Hye's card as it goes with her personality. Young and fun!

This is the card for my boss, Donna. I chose the more sophisticated "party girl" image for her card - and the shoe definitely fits!

This is the inside (left) of the exploding scrapbook - it documents our visit to the corn maze and pumpkin patch, and then later in the day when we carved the pumpkins and proudly displayed them.

Here is the inside (right) side of the exploding scrapbook.

Included this because I love the look on Beckett's face, and the expression on Felipe's (the cat's) face!!!

A 1-minute video

I got this neat video from my Mom. She always finds the best tips. Enjoy!
http://www.valeriestangle.blogspot.com/2007/05/tying-ribbon.html

Dawn

A Few Crafty Links...

With this link, check out the Square Around and File Folder: http://www.making-mini-scrapbooks.com/index.html


and check out this site (very cool for altered books):

http://www.artellawordsandart.com/index.html

Mother's Day gifts AGAIN......

These are the "Nana" scrapbook pages (12 x 12) that I made for my mom at my monthly CTMH scrapbook club. I also gave her the rest of the kit to complete more pages too. I didn't journal, cuz I wanted to let her have control over what they say. I just LOVE their kits-too cute!

Mother's Day toilet paper roll mini scrapbook

This is the toilet paper roll mini scrapbook album that I made for my mom for Mother's Day. I used 3 empty toilet paper rolls and scraps of paper and embellishments left over from my scrapbook club. I made this in less than an hour and a half last night-just a last minute thought to make it. The thing that took the longest was cleaning off and covering the dang rolls!! Luckily though, it goes together quick cuz you CAN'T add tons of embellishments or the book won't close! I saved time and money by converting all the photos to black and white and making them into a photo collage on Walgreens.com. This way I got lots of little sizes-perfect for fitting more than one on each page if I wanted. My only problem....I didn't have rings quite large enough and didn't want to go back out last night. My mom says that she will switch these out though so the book will close better. A very fun, fast project!