For my sweetie

This super cute little felt book is what my sweetie, Ray got for Valentines Day yesterday. I got the idea from Ali Edwards who posted the instructions & template on her blog. My printer was out of color ink so I printed the template in black ink. After I had cut it all down to size, I used my Versamark pen and some cranberry red embossing powder to colorize the "I love you" printed inside each page. I didn't photograph the sentiments inside because it was super personal and ultra-mooshy so you just have to use your imagination this time!! Below are a few more pics of the book. It is super cute and you might want to download the PDF's for next year!

Challenge 59

Happy Friday!! I don't know about you but my Valentines Day yesterday was awesome! Who wouldn't love waking up to the smell of bacon and having Eggs Benny delivered to you in bed?!?! That's just about the best way that I can think of to start the day. So today we are getting down to business with another challenge. I love this sketch. It is super versatile and you can see by all the pages below how many ways it can be interpreted with your unique materials & style.

Remember, if you want to have a shot at winning a free Couture Collection, just scrap a page (or more if you like) from this challenge, upload it to our Flickr Group and you might be the lucky winner of this month's vote! Please be sure that when you upload to the group that your page title includes the challenge it was created for so we know who to vote for at the end of the month. Also, you don't have to scrap with the Couture Collection but if you have one already, you can use those products.

Ronda

Tania

Vanessa
(Shannon, this page is what you call PAYBACK!!)

Jessi
Danielle

Christine
Sallie

And here are some super cute Valentine's cards that Jessi made. I love them!! I think my favorite is the bottom one, but then, I'm going thru a bit of a 'wings' phase right now.

Amy Tangerine

During January, One Little Word did a major giveaway to their loyal wordsters and in that giveaway of oodles of prizes was the January Couture Collection. The winner of that prize was Amy Tangerine, an extremely talented scrapbooker who also happens to be a T-shirt designer too. Clearly, this gal's got the creative gene! She received her Collection and I guess she got right down to creating with it because this morning I was greeted with a very friendly note in my inbox with a link to her page at SIS TV. I absolutely LOVE seeing what everyone makes with their Couture Collections and hope to see more of all y'all's work in the future. So here's some eye candy for today.

I'm on the quest for creative Valentines goodies for my 9 year old son today...I was GONNA make fortune cookies but they were NOT working out so I had to admit defeat in the cookie dep't. today. So it might end up being mini take-out boxes filled with candy (ACK, did I just say I was gonna give them candy?? I must be losing my mind) We'll see how much time I have and how far I get with all that icky work stuff. Happy Hump-day!! On your mark...get set... GO!

What a DEAL!!

I don't exactly know why the retail gods were smiling on me yesterday, but they were! The town I live in is fairly small and rather isolated. We have no major department stores like Holt Renfrew, Macy's or Target. We have WalMart. That's it. We DO have lots of small retailers who sell skater clothes and high-school aged clothing. Not so much for the average mom who has a sense of style. I'm really a big fan of sales & not spending top dollar on fashion items (I used to be, but that was pre-kids). Now, I save the big spending for things like my winter boots that are rated for -40 and down-filled jacket liners that cost $300 or super hi-tech snow pants...you know, survival gear.

When it comes to my mon-uniform, I tend to stick to Reitman's jeans because they fit my booty and they sell petites so I don't have to hem them; and cool T-shirts from wherever they are on sale (my favorite is Jacob Annexe because they are long but have shape to fit my waist and again with the booty). For a very long time I pursued a dream to be a fashion designer. I did spend time creating custom wedding gowns & graduation gowns when I was younger. As a side effect of being involved in that industry, I became very familiar with the leading designers. Several were very exciting to watch and several have really become pillars of the industry.

So back to my small town and utter lack of good clothing shopping...I was making a grocery run and decided to visit Liquidation World, a great kind of never-know-what-you're-gonna-find kind of store. They sell stuff from all over the place.Things from foodstuffs to bed linens (and even the beds themselves!) Seth had managed to pour the entire contents of his sippy cup all over his pants in the car and being that it was -40, having wet pants was a really bad thing so we popped in to Liquidation World to grab a pair of cheap pants for him and that's when I saw IT! It was sitting very inconspicuously on the rack, blending in with all the other jackets and pajama tops that were missing their bottoms, all helter-skelter like these kinds of stores can be. I saw that IT was made of heavy weight cotton velvet with heavy distressed steel buttons, heavy gauge cotton satin lining, immaculately crafted welt pockets and seaming that if you knew what you were looking at, would make you drool. I was in love with IT, a great tan jacket. I was curious to see if the label had been cut out or not and it was fully intact. So was the original price tag...
This is NOT what I paid for it, but I was afraid to know what it WAS gonna cost. I almost didn't ask (it had no price tag for the clearance store on it) but when I asked the price, I almost passed out. It was $10. That's it. Can you believe it?!?! Score of scores, a Marc Jacobs cotton velvet coat for $10. Brand new, no flaws, label inside the jacket- NOT A FAKE!!! Unbelievable. So needless to say, I go to Liquidation World every single time I'm in town!! I hope everyone has great shopping Karma today!! Happy Saturday!

Challenge 58

It's Friday again and that means it's time for yet another challenge. These non-sketch ones are my favorite, I think. This great diaper bag idea was sent to me by Tania and I have to agree with what she saw as inspiration in this item. There is so much texture and great design elements that the possibilities are endless. It was especially handy that the color scheme for this bag was bang-on with our Couture Collection for this month! So here's how we rocked it this time...

edited: We had a minor file mix up and the wrong project was posted for Danielle's contribution. Have a look below to see what she REALLY made with this week's challenge image.


Oh, and if you're interested in this bag or others from their collection, go to Keeta Collection to browse their website.

As always, you are all welcome to participate in our Flickr group where you can post your pages created from the inspiration in our challenges (be sure to include the challenge number in your image title or in the description) and have a shot at winning one of our Couture Collections. You don't have to use the Couture Collections (but we'd love it if you did!) and you can submit as many times as you like. Pages need to be uploaded to the photo pool on Flickr by the last day of the month and one winner will be chosen from all the submissions.

Jessi

Vanessa

Tania
This box is gorgeous! Tania made it (and the little dolls too) for her daughter, Emma, so she had a special way to let her worries go. So clever and sooooo pretty.

Ronda

Christine

Danielle
Sallie

And as always, Tania has whipped up a few extras for us just in time for some Valentines Day crafting. Make sure you carve out a little time for that this weekend... Only six days left to get 'em all made!