June project kit

I love to scrapbook the everyday moments and routines of our lives (in fact I have a hard time scrapping Christmas and birthday layouts LOL), and that was my goal with this month's project kit. It is a mini album designed to help you record a week in your life. Just a small snapshot and a bit of journaling from each day, very simple and quick-in fact it could be completed in an evening or two. This will be great to look back on someday. The album is made up of 8 shipping tags, one for the cover and one for each day of the week. Red, blue and touches of green make up the color scheme, with plenty of fun "embellies". A simple and easy way to capture the everyday moments, those moments that we some times take for granted and forget to record. As always a complete set of instructions is included.

Lift for May

This is the May Cocoa Daisy scraplift I did of a beautiful layout by Meghan Dymock. There was a mix up and mine did not get into the newsletter so I thought I would post it. The layout is about one of my favorite poems (and flowers) "the legend of the forget-me-not" from an old book of poetry that my Mother was given when she and my Dad were first married. I loved reading this book when I was a young girl, it is starting to fall apart and the spine has been taped many times, but I think that is just the sign of a very well loved book!

Cocoa Daisy June Sneak Peek!

Just a little sneak peek from the Cocoa Daisy June kit! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend, it is going to warm up this afternoon - so you all know where I will be - digging in the dirt! Hoping to get the rest of my little pretties all planted. And then I am going to start on the June project kit.

Some Wednesday randomness (posted on Thursday)

First I really want to vent about a couple things the first being - hello its the end of May, WHY IS IT ONLY 53 DEGREES OUT!!!! I want to play in my garden, but it is too freaking cold! My plants are not liking it all. Hoping the weather man is right and it warms up this weekend. The other thing that is bothering me; why does being a stay at home mom make me less of a woman? This is why I ask, at a school function the other day one of the other mothers asked me "what I do for a living" my response without thinking was "I am just a mom". Why did I say "just" as if what I do is not significant? Part of the reason I think was her response, a kind of smirk and a "oh", long pause "it must be nice to stay home". This sort of comment is one I hear too often. I am by no means wanting to start a huge debate about staying home or working, all I am frustrated with is this notion that CHOOSING to stay home and take care of my family is a lesser choice or copout. I thought the whole feminism movement was about giving us the choice, not telling us you are nothing if you don't contribute in the work force. I may not go to a job everyday, but I sure as hell feel that I contribute, and I have made a promise to myself to never use the word "just" when describing "what I do" for a living, the next time someone asks me! OK vent over, that has just been stewing with me for a while, and I had to let it out! :-)

In other news Deli Joe had a bad seizure last night, but he is doing fine today, curled up in his bed in my scraproom, just hanging out with me.


In scrappy news, I saw this acrylic stamp storage system in CK and on Tricia's blog. I have had my acrylic stamps in a binder with page protectors, but the stamps kept falling out and it was very bulky. This looked like a great solution! Well it came the other day and I LOVE IT! I was able to fit almost all of my stamps in it (I ordered an extra set of sleeves) and it is so compact and easy to use. I highly recommend it!


I think I am going to try for Memory Maker Master, I do not like that you have to send them an original layout (kept me from entering last year) but I have some time and some sketches so I think I will give it a go. I just have to make sure and create a duplicate of the layout I send them so I have one for my albums.

And this is a sneak peek of the June project kit! This one is going to be less labor intensive than the last couple I have done, something you could easily put together in an afternoon or over a weekend. Can't wait to show you the finished project!

Mini album from HOF entry

I thought I would start posting some of my HOF entry. This is the mini album I created for one of the assignments. It had to have at least 6 pages, various size photos and a unique closure. I created the album cover from a piece of cardboard, and used a binder ring to hold it all together. What makes this unique is that you have to slide the whole thing in and out of the cover, and it stays attached to the ring. I used the Hambly clearly heavy overlays for the front and back pages, and used some additional bits of transparencies and a Maya road sheer piece. This was really fun to put together, so many fun layers and shapes. I kept the embellishments similar on each page as well as the design, this helped create a nice flow from page to page. I created the die cut of the pumpkin as well as the label on the back of each page using a design software called Multi Ad Creator (back from my ad design days) I love this software! And yes this is the album I was called and questioned about by Creating Keepsakes, the page with the photo of me and boys. Still can't believe I messed up - Just a big "duh" moment I guess! Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend, I am in full blown planting mode!! Having so much fun digging in the dirt :-)

HOF layout/Fun Mega Meet news.

Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend.


We had a great time at the Mega Meet Scrapbooking convention, a lot of great bargains, some fun new scrap "goodies" and I entered this layout from my HOF entry in the layout contest and I won first place! This is one of my favorite HOF entry layouts, everything about it, the white background, bright patterned paper, circles, graphic lettering and the priceless photo make me happy every time I look at it. (This one was for the photography assignment) I will post more of my HOF entry this week :-)


The prize was a Quickutz Revolution die cutting machine and the Diesel alphabet die cut set!


Sunday Greg did some grilling and made us a wonderful steak dinner - thank you sweetie!
And of course what makes me celebrate Mother's day - my two little cuddle buddies!

Random stuff/? answered

Hope you all have a wonderful Mother's day weekend! Mom, Amber and I are going to do our yearly trip to the Great Lakes Mega Meet in Novi, it is a huge scrapbooking convention. Classes and plenty of vendors! So my sweet hubby is going to watch the boys for the day while we go do our thing, and then on Sunday he is going to make us dinner. I know Nate made me a card and I just can't wait to open it, he showed me the front and he put hearts all over it and even spelled out "happy mother's day", what a special treasure!

Denine asked if the title letters on my Big Belly layout are stickers. Yes they are! Felt alphabet stickers from Prima!

And finally a layout done for Creative Cafe using their "Spirit" line.

Let the planting begin!

I have an addiction for flowers, I admit it, I walk into a greenhouse and I want two of everything! I know this will be hard for some of you to believe but I love buying my spring flowers - gasp! more than scrap supplies!! Luckily spring only comes once a
year :-b

So I bought my first batch today, mostly just the filler flowers for all the pots, once I have these laid out I will go back and pick out the rest of what I need. I used to actually sketch out my pot and bedding designs and make lists of the plants that I needed, but I am trying something different this year. I am not going to try and get all my flowers at once, but take my time and do a few pots, make another trip to the greenhouse and do a few more pots, stretch out the process a little. I love combining the colors, textures and different sizes of the plants, making all those great layers!

From that last statement you can tell I like to put together all my own pots, but this planter was just to beautiful to pass up! You see mostly just the green right now, but in about 2 weeks it will be full of color!

May Cocoa Daisy layouts!

This months kit was nice and soft, and I got to do some "girlie" layouts!
If you have a question about how something was done on one of my layouts please just leave a comment and I will make sure to answer you.
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
For this one I folded the Maya Road chipboard wings in half, covered them with paint and then some chunky glitter.



On this one I cut a frame using a craft knife, brushed on some thin glue and then a layer of transparent glitter.






To create the flowers I layered the die cut flower, chipboard buttons and paper and silk flowers.

Cocoa Daisy Design Team Search!

Cocoa Daisy is having a DT search, deadline is May 25th. Check out all the info here. We would love for you to try out!

I will post my May DT layouts tonight, and I know that I had promised to post my HOF entries, I will, I just need to get my butt in gear and decide if I am going to submit any of them. If I decide to submit any of them, then I cannot post them here yet.

Hope you all have fun plans for Saturday, remember it is National Scrapbooking Day!!!