*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING...

what follows is a lesson in "what not to do" when you're scrapbooking.

MULTI-TASKING!

Normally I'm just fine doing 357 things at once. But when I scrapbook, I pretty much shut down my multi-tasking feature. This morning, I thought I could handle being on the phone AND using Glimmer Mist at the same time.

WRONG! Or as my children would say...epic fail!

Earlier this morning I had paper-pieced some Greeting Farm stamps, colored in their faces, and placed them on the NEW QK Composition Notebook. I tucked the QK Split Rail Fence behind the pieced images and added my sentiment on the notebook's label with the NEW QK Cotton Candy font.

No biggie so far.

Fast-forward to my phone call. My finished card is laying in front of me, and I'm on hold. On hold with no music! I decided my card needed just a little something more - a bit of shizzle, if you will. So I grabbed my Coffee Shop Glimmer Mist.

*BEEP*BEEP*BEEP* We interrupt this crafting monologue for an impending disaster!

Realizing I already had my pieced images in place, I quickly cut out a mask to cover each of them with. I even die-cut another composition notebook label to protect that too. I just wanted a splattered, Glimmer Mist effect around the edges of my card.

First mist from about 18" away...and it's looking good.

Second mist from about 12" away...and it's just about perfect.

Third and final mist from about 6" away...and the movement of air from the Glimmer Mist blew all three of my masks away, thereby covering my cowboy, cowgirl and notebook title.

ACK! And that's exactly what I screamed into the phone, right as someone took me off of hold! {The pharmacist was completely freaked out!}

Here is my finished disaster...

Since I made this card for the sponsors of the high school FFA chapter, I'm going to just go with it. It was actually pretty windy last week during the county fair so I'm adding to the inside..."a down-and-dirty thank you very much!".

I think it'll work, and no one will ever know. Unless you tell them! {wink, wink}

So please learn from my mistakes... 

1. Glimmer Mist first, if at all possible {it'd have been so easy in this instance}
2. Use sticky notes or Scotch Tape to secure your masks {duh Susan!}
3. Make your husband call in his own darn prescription refill {I'm blaming this all on him!}

I do love using the Composition Notebook as a card. It's big...5.25"x 7.125"...and the corners are perfectly rounded. You just run adhesive up both sides of the included spine, and lay the "pages" in place. 

So it's been an interesting day around here. Hope your Monday is going better than mine is! {LOL}

Everyone needs to mark their calendars for this coming Friday, April 30th at 5pm PDT. Because I'll be LIVE! over in the Scrapy Land Studio kicking off National Scrapbook Day 2010! More details to follow - so watch the blog this week.

Questions, ideas, or other scrap-tragedy stories to share, I hope you'll leave a comment here!

I'm here for your habit...

IT'S FINALLY FRIDAY...

and what a Friday it is.

I have a girlfriend flying in today {she's hanging with me at CHA...shhhhh...her husband thinks she's "working"!} so I'm watching the airport closing information. So far so good, but the rain is due back in a couple of hours. I have to keep reminding myself..."Arizona?"!

LOL!

Dani just started a new thread on the Scrapy Land Message Board. He's asking for suggestions on what YOU ALL want to see him come home with from CHA. New products? New ideas? New lines? New concepts? Leave your suggestion over there on the board, and we'll keep checking back. It's always fun to know what kinds of things, besides dies, you all love using in your projects! THANKS! {And I'll try to keep you posted on what he's looking at!}

Our recently-missing "Fab Four", Miss Veronica, is finally back from her ski vacation. She arrived home to find her box of dies from the January Resolutions release. What a great way to end a vacation, huh?

She jumped right in and made a couple of projects for me to share with you. {Scrappin' before vacation laundry? Now THAT'S a dedicated gal, I tell you! *Wink, wink*}

One of the dies Veronica was most excited about was the NEW Revolution Apples. She liked how very realistic they are. Her photograph of the apple blooms is just gorgeous, and the apple accents are perfect!

Here's a close-up of her embellished apples - chalk and ink and her famous white pen - that look good enough to eat! She also used QK Marigold, for her title font.

This card just makes me smile. "Spoil yourself silly..." what a perfect sentiment for the NEW Revolution Spa Paper Doll. Do you recognize the shape of her "background" paper? It's the QK Epic Gingerbread page insert from the Santa's Workshop release last December. What a great idea!

But check out the inside of her card...

She cut this with her Silhouette SD, from a file she downloaded from Silhouette America. WOWZERS! What a fun way to add the greeting to your card. And to combine it with a die-cut outside...just fabulous!

Such great ideas. Thanks Veronica for ripping open that box as soon as you got home!

The weekend is upon us - and I hope you get some great "crafty time" to yourself in the upcoming days. I will be checking in, as often as I can, from the CHA floor. If you have questions - leave them on the CHA thread on the message board. When I'm mobile, that is easier to check than my email.

Leave Veronica some "welcome-home-comment-love". Have yourself a great, happy-scrappin' weekend!

I'm here for your habit...

48 HOURS SINCE THE RELEASE...

and January's "Resolution 2010" dies are flying off the shelf.

The Door Knob Hanger is HOT!
The Cookie Cutter Borders are even HOTTER!
The Rooster and Runners are IN DEMAND!
And everyone is clamoring for the Garden Font.

But while all of you shopped Tuesday and Wednesday - I mopped up water. I soaked up water. I blotted at water. I am drowning in the desert, and water is still coming down.

The other thing coming down around here is citrus. Because of the 48-hour downpour we've had, and the high winds, our trees are losing fruit by the bushel. I have the only lemon tree on our cul-de-sac, so this morning during a 5-minute rain stoppage, I ran outside and filled 2 laundry baskets with downed lemons. Today I'm going to distribute them to my neighbors.

Kind of a "day brightener" during our third day of cold and gloom.

But of course - I needed cards to go with my "sunshine" baskets. {It's almost a rule in my neighborhood - LOL!}

I made these square blue cards for the outside of the grocery bags I will put the lemons in. Each tag is going in a clear envelope first. Because, you know, it's still raining!

I used the NEW Revolution Sun and the Garden 4x8 font...I just LOVE this font.

Then I made up a couple of these cards for inside the bags, for my immediate neighbors...

The inside of the card says "...we didn't all plant lemon trees!" {Okay, and I might include my recipe for Lemon Drop Martinis!}

I used the NEW Revolution Citrus Fruit...which could be lemons, oranges, limes OR grapefruit...and the Sticky Note 4x8 font. I cut the card base using my new favorite Spellbinders Nestabilities, the Large Deckled Mega Rectangle.

For the card base I folded a 4"x 12" piece of cardstock in half, and laid the fold line just inside the top edge of the largest die. I ran it through my Epic Six and VIOLA - a cut AND slightly embossed card blank. Fast and easy...and pretty darn cute I think!

Today I'm packing for CHA, making up snack bags for the basketball team, figuring out if you can dry clean a lamb {LOL}, trying to prep meals for my family AND delivering lemons. All in the rain. I should definitely take some pictures, because these are the days I love remembering!

If you have any questions, comments or rain-rain-go-away spells...you know what to do!

I'm here for your habit...

AND THEN...

there were three!

What a great, LIVE! show today. We had six countries represented this afternoon {which kind of boggles my mind} and time zones from Hawaii to Florida checking in. WOW! Thank you Scrapy Land. Your enthusiasm always makes me smile!

Today I resurrected the "Pop-Up" card that I taught during our Virtual Crop a month ago. I think I figured out a few ways to make it easier to understand.

At least I hope I did.

In its entirety - "12 VQKX Day Three"...

For this card I used my: Scor-Pal and the Revolution Lightbulbs. {I think one of these days I'll try and do an entire project with metric measurements...just to be fair to everyone. Because look - the Scor-Pal is now available in a Metric version!}

A very simple card design - that can accommodate almost any kind of die-cut embellishment. Look at some of the samples I've received...

From our friend from Sweden today...Veronica. She actually sent this to me the weekend of the Virtual Crop, but I've been holding on to it until now.

She and her boys made this for an "Earth Day" greetings. LOVE IT! She used the Scrapy Land Spaceman & Alien Exclusive and a bunch of different circles to mask off and chalk around for her planet, craters and sky.

Her little boys used the inside of the card for their signatures {don'tcha just love 3 and 5 year old signatures!!} and then look where she put her sentiment...

up top! All the times I've made a card like this and I've NEVER thought of doing this. Just goes to show - all you need is a new set of eyes on an old idea...and it's new all over again!

Thanks Veronica for sharing this...and for tuning in, right during little-boy-bedtime!

Then there's Shelly, who was busy making cards all day long. I know, because she kept sending me pictures of her fun finished projects.

Here she decorated her card "front flap" with a preprinted die-cut/sticker. She was amazed at how fast this went together.

She took the easy way out {just like I did for the SLVC sample!} and printed her sentiment from her computer. A great way to mass-produce several of these.

We have had other scrappers share their their cards too. Phyllis and Karen W. put their cards over on the Scrapy Land Message board, where we are trying to keep a running list of completed "12 VQKX" projects. {thanks again for your help Karen}

A great LIVE! show, and a fun little project. I hope you'll try one for yourself.

Friday's show will be a recorded version. I plan on filming it first thing in the morning. I can't wait to show you what I made - those of you who own a Silhouette are going to be VERY excited, I just know it.

And then Saturday's show...well, I can't even begin to tell you about Saturday's show. Nope - not even a hint yet. Not a peep out of me...no-sir-eeeee!

{cough cough - mainly because I haven't decided yet. But that'll be our little secret, okay? I've got it narrowed down at least, so that's a start}

Thanks again ladies for your participation, your enthusiasm and your wild-Scrapy Land Diva support. I couldn't do what I do without you.

Questions, comments, ideas or general scrappy tidbits, I hope you'll leave a comment here and let me know that you've made it through Day Three. {Are you sure you can handle nine more, straight, day of yours truly!?}

I'm here for your habit...

THANK GOODNESS IT'S...

Monday!

I just love it when I have a plan for the week, and the week starts off well!

The most important thing working in my favor today is that the kids are back in school. HOORAY! {I'm fairly certain that it was a father who invented Fall Break in Arizona!}

I'm excited about lots of things this week - the first of which is a blog post full of fun ideas! Ideas all the way from Sweden.

My friend Veronica lives in Sweden - and I wanted to try for a bit of "foreign flair" this week. So I sent her a couple of NEW QK Paper Doll dies and told her to have at it! Even though she lives in a house full of boys - it appears as though she had a great time playing with a stack of paper dolls!

Here are two of the card ideas she emailed me -

supplies used: QK Paper Doll {she used her retired paper doll}, QK Fireman Outfit, QK Paper Doll font, QK Chicken Noodle font, QK Rev Grass and QK Cloud border.

Such a cute card - and usable for all sorts of occasions. Valentine's Day? YES! Anniversary? SURE! Friday afternoons? OF COURSE! I love it...and I'm planning to copy it.

Next - I think Veronica had my daughter in mind for this idea...

because this is a weekly dilemma in our house. I'm going to start suggesting HATS to her! {LOL}

supplies used: QK Paper Doll, QK Paper Doll Accessories and the QK Holiday font.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this, and I am so taking this idea and transferring it to tags. My daughter will totally laugh if I put these in her backpack each day. I think it's great how adaptable these paper dolls can be. With just a different accessory or a change of hair style - a totally new look. SO FUN!

Now this adorable card actually came in the mail Friday afternoon. And I have to say - it's my first ever mail from Sweden. Getting fun mail can totally make your day, especially when it's from so far away. This card put a big ol' smile on my face! {Thanks sweetie!}

supplies used: Chubby Bats downloaded from the Silhouette America site {the cutest dang bats I've ever seen!}, and the retired Studio SkinniMini font.

Such an adorable card that would be so easy to mass produce! But if you decide to borrow this fun card idea - make sure you give credit to the crafty gal from Sweden, who doesn't even celebrate Halloween! {LOL}

And finally - she also sent me a cute scrapbook page. But this is going to take a little bit of translation...

supplies used: QK Paper Doll, QK Fireman outfit, QK Paper Doll font and QK Paper Doll Outfits (boy).

Veronica asked her son what he wanted to be when he grows up, and his answer was immediate. He wants to be "a fireman and grandpa". Now she isn't sure if her little guy wants to BE A grandpa, or if he wants to be a farmer, like HIS grandpa. But regardless, she thought the answer was sweet, and the QK Paper Dolls were the perfect accents for his answer. I love how she used a cute, random picture of her son - but turned it in to the perfect accompaniment to this sweet story!

{Thanks a million Veronica. Love your work and love that you were willing to "play" last week.}

Let's show Veronica a proper Scrapy Land blog welcome and leave her some comment love. I know it will make her day...an ocean and a bunch of time zones away.

Details coming this afternoon about the opening of registration for Scrapy Land Virtual Crop 2.0 - so do stay tuned. It's going to be a lot of fun - fun you won't want to miss out on.

Questions, comments, challenges...or ways to beat the 100° heat on October 19th, do let me know! Comment-questions get comment-answers, so you know what to do!

I'm here for your habit...