Happy Mail

T.G.I.F!

Have you heard about the Happy Mail project from Stacey Jillian and Doodlebug Design?

"Starting Sept. 1 2012, I Stacy Julian, declare that I will make and send 365 handmade cards with handwritten notes. Now I do not want to do this alone and I know with your enthusiastic support, we can do this. Join me in a pay-it-forward Happy Mail movement where people rediscover the joy of sending and receiving handwritten communication (with a stamp)."

What a great idea, don't you think? When I was asked if I'd like to participate I jumped at the chance!

I created this 'Hello Spring' Doodlebug 'Happy Mail' card for my blogger friend, Ruth, who always leaves sweet comments that make my day. Ruth also thinks of me often and sends me e-mails with links to things she knows I'm interested in. Thanks Ruth! I hope you enjoy your Happy Mail!

To learn more about Julian's Happy Mail project and to see some of the cards that have been sent out this week, click here. Make sure you check out all the Happy Mail posts this week for prizes and challenges.

Thanks for visiting!

Creepy Bookmarks

Hello!

Did you see my Doodlebug Design Haunted Manor project last week? The 'Boo to You' card and tag set? Well, you can check it out here and today I have another project share using this spooky-fun collection.

These are corner style bookmarks made with the new Create-A-Card minis. I have a tutorial over at the Doodlebug blog if you would like to see how simple they are to make.

Have a wonderful day! :)

Boo To You from Haunted Manor

Eek! Have you seen the new Halloween line from Doodlebug Design called Haunted Manor? It's absolutely spook-tacular!

I'm in love with the new mini version of Doodle Pops and used a few on my card and tag.

This collection has everything you need to cook up some fun Halloween cards, pages and home decor!

There are also new mini Create-A-Cards! My larger card uses one of the regular size styles and next to it is the new 3"x3" size.

Would you like a chance to win the Haunted Manor line? Just head over to the Doodlebug blog and leave a comment about your favorite Halloween tradition and you could be playing with these adorable spooks before you know it!

T.G.I.F!

Cool Summertime

It's summertime! Time to head to the beach or pool. Time to dig your toes into the sand or cool grass. And time for a juicy slice of watermelon or an icy cold bottle of pop!

This week the Doodlebug design team is focusing on summertime projects and these soda pop bottles from the Boys Only collection are perfect, don't you think?

To add a bit of dimension to these pop bottles, I added a Mini Pearl and star Shaped Brad.

If you haven't heard, Doodlebug came out with some cool new alphas called Teensy Type. Oh what fun and perfect for cards!

How's that for a summertime refresher? Hope you enjoyed my card and a can keep your cool during these hot days of summer!

Thanks for stopping by!

Kathy :)

Pals for Life

Hello! Today I have a birthday card share using a Doodlebug Design Create-A-Card, a fabulous sketch posted on the Doodlebug blog today and the Boys Only Collection.

I adore this line! The colors, patterns, die cuts and buttons...they're all so fabulous! And now there's some fun new Doodlebug/Hampton Arts Stamps to add to the mix.

I used the You Said It set for my sentiments. Isn't this 'celebrate' stamp cool?

I think the file folder style Create-A-Card is my favorite! The tab is perfect for sentiments.

I hope you enjoyed my card and have a moment to hop over to the Doodlebug blog to see the cards my teammates made and the fabulous card sketch we have for you.

Staycation has been wonderful! Yesterday, our second day, started off at Durrant Park for a hike. There's nothing more beautiful and relaxing than the great outdoors!

After our hike we headed to the Museum of Natural Sciences. They have an amazing new wing that just opened. This is part of the building! It's quite impressive and looks like it goes out into the street! There's a theater housed in it.

There's so much to see and it was beyond what I've ever experienced at a science museum. Within the exhibits are real laboratories with scientists working on current projects.

I took so many pictures that I'm not sure which to show you and so much of what we saw there was pretty amazing! Since we paper crafters use butterfly images on a lot of our projects I thought I would show you this gorgeous display of butterflies.

Today we're driving out to a quaint little town about an hour away to do some antiquing.  I never get tired of browsing! I'm always on the look out for Charlotte transferware. It's really hard to find. I also look for interesting containers for storing crafty goodies. One of my most recent finds is an aluminum container with the word 'grease' on it. It was for storing bacon grease in the cupboard for use later on. Yuck! But that's how things were done. Now it holds buttons! ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by! Tomorrow I'll have my first Bella Blvd. and Core'dinations Team-Ups projects to show you! Have a super day!

Kathy :)

A Gift for Mom

With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, Doodlebug Design is celebrating mom by asking their design team members to makea a Create-A-Card greeting and gift set. Since I'm a mom who treasures handmade gifts, I 'm pretty excited about this project!

For my card, I picked the Square Baroque style Create-A-Card and added lots of fun goodies from the new Hello Spring collection. FYI, individual Create-A-Cards are 50% off at Two Peas in a bucket...just sayin' ;)

I love the flowers stickers in the Hello Spring line! They're so colorful and glittery! To give them texture, I topped them with Mini Pearls and used pop dots for the center flower.

For the gift portion of my project I created this hanging decor piece made with a combination of felt, canvas and paper.

It's so easy to create something that will brighten mom's everyday with all the colorful and fun Doodlebug accents!

I used die cut tags and bird house stickers and accented them with brads and more Mini Pearls.

A project is not complete without a little baker's twine, right? Doodle Twine comes in so many bright and yummy colors! A girl's got to have choices, right? ;)

I hope you enjoy your Mother's Day! I will be spending mine with my two favorite people in the world! They really now how to treat a mom and will probably make breakfast for me and bring me flowers.

Kathy :)

Living with Autism

The main purpose of this blog is to share paper crafting projects with you. I also throw in a bit about me and my family because sharing scrapbook pages is a little more personal than other types of blogs. There are real people with real families and real life struggles behind every scrapbooking blog and sharing some of these struggles helps others see that they are not alone.

Many of you probably know that my son Christopher is autistic. You also may know that his birthday is coming up because I've mentioned it a couple times in previous weeks. Today is his big day. Today Christopher turns 11. On what is supposed to be a very special day for our family, Christopher woke up in a bad mood and threw one of his worst tantrums ever.

It's a reminder that we live with autism. Some days seem very 'typical' and then some days are a reminder of the difficulty and struggles that come with autism. A lot of the time we have no idea what sets off a tantrum like this so it's difficult to foresee and take steps to avoid which is the best weapon against tantrums. Christopher has a history of not liking April and his birthday. For what reason(s) we don't completely understand. This year seemed different. He's been maturing quite a bit over the past year and his tantrums have decreased significantly.

As I type this post, I'm at a loss. I don't know how to precede with the day. Christopher is too upset to go to school. Starting the day this way usually makes it too difficult for him to get through the school day. If we try to send him, we would most likely get a call from his school asking us to come get him.

His father and I hardly feel in a festive mood. Do we put on a smile anyway, bake a cake, cook a special dinner and unwrap presents as usual. Do we try again tomorrow?

We don't have the answers. We do the best we can. We make mistakes. We struggle. Living with autism is difficult! Sometimes it makes me so mad! Mad because this 'condition' took away the 'typical' little boy I thought I gave birth to 11 years ago today. We didn't sign up for this. But it is what it is.

This card was created with Doodlebug products: Create a Card, Boys Only Collection and Doodles Card Stock Stickers.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Kathy

Hello Spring

Has anyone seen spring? It's been cold and unseasonable around here for the past few days. I think the month of March was warmer on average than this month. Just when we started opening up the windows and wearing fewer layers, we are having to pile them back on. Maybe a happy springtime card share will help bring spring back? ;)

The 'Hello Spring' collection from Doodlebug Design is perfect for springtime projects, don't you think? It's loaded with lots of color, flowers and fluttering butterflies.

I created this little flag with a die from My Favorite Things and topped it with Simply Sweet rub-ons from Doodlebug.

I love texture so I used this sticker tree to cover up the printed one on this Cute Cuts die. To adhere it to the card, I used adhesive foam tape from 3M.

The flowers are also stickers with adhesive foam tape underneath. A little bit of Doodle Twine wrapped around the Create a Card base finishes it off.

I hope you enjoyed my card and that you are enjoying warm spring weather.

Thanks for stopping in!

Kathy :)

Thank You Thursday and Giveaways

This is the second post today so scroll down to the next to view my Bella Blvd. cards. There's one with a cool Silhouette die that I'd love for you to see!

Recently Ella Publishing asked us Doodlebug design team gals to participate in 'Thank You Thursday' where we lifted one of the thank you cards in their new '31 Thank You Cards book.'

Here's the card I created.

This is the gorgeous card I lifted from page 21! I fell in love with this pocket design!

I used a Doodlebug Create-A-Card for my project along with one of their adorable Doodle Pops.

I thought it would be fun to jazz up the envelope a bit with a phrase I created with some Papertrey Ink letter dies.

Would you like to win a copy of '31 Thank You Cards' by Ella Publishing?

Or would you like to win some Doodlebug Goodies?

Three copies of  book is up for grabs in addition to the Doodlebug product you see above! Cool, huh? To find out how you can win, hop over to the Doodlebug Blog.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kathy

Doodlebug Mix & Match

Hi!

It's great to have you here for a visit! I know I say that a lot on my posts and I sincerely mean it! I love sharing my crafty projects with you and having the opportunity see yours too! I gain so much enjoyment and inspiration from your posts and projects that I hope to provide the same for you!

Today's crafty share is a couple cards using Doodlebug goodies. Several of the design team members were challenged to mix and match a few of the Doodlebug collections. As I've mentioned before, they all coordinate perfectly together so this was a pretty easy assignment! And fun!

On both cards I used Create-A-Card bases which makes the card making process so much easier. There's a lot of bright colors and styles to choose from! I always pick different envelope colors from my card base for even more contrast and color.

The three collections used for this card are Colorwheel, Nifty Notions and Welcome Home. I bet you can guess that this adorable green chair is from the Welcome Home line?!?! :)

All of Doodlebug Design accents such as their twine, gems and brads work with any collection. This polka dotted red brad is from the Birthday Celebration collection.

If you are new to paper crafting or know someone who is, to get them started, a couple of Doodlebug kits would be perfect since they all work beautifully together and would minimize the amount of product they would have to invest in to get started! Can you tell how much I love this company? ;) I'm only a good sales person if it's a product I like!

My next card uses the same three collections.

I really like these file folder Create-A-Card bases! Very cute! And the Welcome Home collection....I'm smitten over these petite little houses!

I added some pretty flowers to the 'neighborhood'! ;)

If you haven't had a chance to try the Doodles Card Stock Stickers sentiments, they are a must! There's oodles of phrases, colors and the font is pure Doodlebug!

I hope I've given you a good dose of Doodlebug fun today! :) All week long on the Doodlebug Design Blog, you can find mix and match projects from the design team. So if you have a little bit of this collection and a bit of that line....you can get a dose of good ideas for combining them together!

I've got to get this post up...I'm a little behind today because hubs and I were talking to an electrician this morning about installing some proper lighting in my studio! It's for my birthday coming up next month. What a great present, don't you think? Hubs is the best!

Have a super day!

Kathy :)