Toy Story Birthday Invitations

My oldest daughter loves Toy Story, so the girls' birthday party this year is going to be Toy-Story themed.  It's hard to say which character she likes best, but I picked Jessie as the central theme for her invitations.  I'm no Jessica, (you really should go look at hers, she designed those from nothing!) but I decided to design and print my own, rather than buying them pre-made. I found this image online, and downloaded it. Now I have to wait for the ink I ordered to get here so I can print them out.

I had a hard time choosing between doing a flat card or folded card, but in the end went with the flat one for the invitation,

 
and made the thank you cards folded.  Now, where is that ink??

Blinkies

I am going crazy without a camera!!  I hate not being able to take pictures.  For you guys, it means that you will be seeing a lot of digi stuff until I get my new one.  Maybe I'll go back and post some Christmas pictures??  Anyway, I got to playing around with making blinkies in PSE7 last night.  I started out kind of simple.  This one has only 4 layers:

 

And then I went a little crazy.  This one has 60 layers:

And I did this one this morning:

I think it's about 10 layers.  For some reason Blogger sped up the timing on this last one. It's right in my Photobucket, but I can't get it to post at the right speed here.  You get the idea, anyway.

More Bumblebee Baby

I've done a bit more for the BB kit.  I made 2 new papers

and a honeycomb element

and I made new bee stickers, with white/grey wings, instead of black.  Which looks better, do you think?

And I made an alpha, using the Tooney Loons font, which I got from this site.

I still need to scan my ribbons, I'd like to add some other "real" elements, a frame or two, 2 more alphas (pink and blue) and I'd like to try making a butterfly to go with the bees and the ladybug.

Valentine's Day was good.  Brandon just took it easy, and enjoyed being together.  We made a big dinner Sunday (Lemon and rosemary roasted chicken, creamed spinach, and herbed potatoes) and then we got up Monday and made a big breakfast (eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy).  Both were delicious!  The only shadow was that Elora was--and still is-- sick.  I couldn't get her in to see a doctor at the clinic, so I am taking her this morning to see the doctor at Brandon's unit.

Bumblebee Baby- Elements (so far)

I finally got started on the elements for my Bumblebee Baby kit!  All I needed was a little push in the right direction, which came in the form of a free template download that I found while cruising Craft Crave, formerly DigiFree.  It was just what I needed!  Here is the template that I started with, which I downloaded from here:

 And this is what I made:

 

And from there, I went on to do all of these:

In total, there are 5 brads, 4 epoxy stickers, 3 bug trails, 3 paper flowers, 3 paper stems, and 20 papers.  So far.  I have ribbons to add, but since my camera is out of commission, I'm not sure when those will get done.  Maybe I can try scanning them?

Calendar Challenges

I've been doing the Digiridoo Calendar challenges the past couple of months.  Here's what I came up with for the January challenge:

And here's my submission for the February challenge:

The December challenge was to make one for January, but I didn't do that one.  I didn't come into it until January.  Maybe if I get bored, I do that one, too.

More Digi Stuff

At Kelly's suggestion, I bought some commercial use (CU) digital cardstock textures, and set about making my own papers, from scratch.  I got the textures from After Five Designs, and I'm really happy with them.  Here is a sample of the 15 papers I've made so far, using only PSE and my new CU textures:

I'm quite pleased with them.  I'd like to put together a few more patterned papers, and then I need to figure out how to do elements.  So far, I've only made one, and it's an epoxy sticker to go with the set that I made before:

 

But now I'm afraid I'm out of ideas.  My goal is to make a Bumblebee Baby mini kit, hence the pastel colors of my new papers.  So, what to make to go with them?

#1 or #2? And Some New Crafts.

I took those old photos and played with them a bit.  Which do you like better? The single page layout?

Or the two page spread?

I can't make up my mind.

I've also finished a new scarf, using the pattern from the wrapper on a ball of Bernat Alpaca yarn. The pattern was pretty confusing, and took me some time (and my handy crochet refernece book) to figure it out. Lizy, I'd hold off on this one if I were you, it'll just make you mad. It kind of made me mad. I also tried to make the hat from the pattern on the other ball of yarn, but that pattern was just terrible. I tried it twice, and ripped it out twice. Then I threw that pattern away, and went back to my other hat pattern and now it's half done.

Here's a sneak peek of the holiday jewelry I'm getting ready to bring in to the shop. There's a lot more to come, just as soon as I can get it done.

Adventures in Bead-Buying

I went with Lizy and Katelyn yesterday to the bead fair at the airport messe. It was great!

They had wall after wall and table after table laden with lovelies. There was a lot that I would have loved to get, but much of it was way out of my price range. Still, as Lizy put it, I made out like a bandit. Here's the loot:

Gorgeous, right? It should start appearing in the shop, converted into jewelry form, over the next several days. I also managed to snag a Christmas gift or two, so it's safe to say that the day was a Total Success.

Speaking of successes, I finally managed to finish that one digi spread that I've been agonizing over for days now. I ended up taking it in a whole new direction, which is exactly what it needed. I'm happy with the result:

And since I was on a roll, I went ahead and did a sample page for Kelly's new kit, Argyle Punk. Everything came from Kelly's kit, except for the alpha and the font. It's a great kit, Kelly, I love it!

I'm Paying It Forward!

I picked up this little game from Corinnea. Here are the rules: I will make a little something for the first three people who comment on this post. I will have 365 days to do it in. If you would like to play you must have a blog and post your Pay it Foward on your blog to keep the fun going.

And, while I have your attention, I thought I would show you these:

Part one of "The Elora Book"

Here are the first 11 pages of the official Elora Scrapbook:

When I get them all done, I'm going to print them at the shop, and bind them into a book. Oh, and I'll be posting the rest as a "part 2". :)

'Stuff' Revisited

I just had to go back and do more with those 4 photos of Elora that I used before, now that I have a greater arsenal of digi-scrap materials at my disposal. I like this one a lot better than either of the last 2 pages I've done. And I should, since I spent way more time on it! I think I might actually print this one... ^_^ Now, I'm thinking I need to get started designing Elora's birth announcements...

Ok, I'm learning, I'm learning!

After talking with some of the girls at work, I checked out a few sites with free digi-scrapping supplies.  My first foray into the world of the Shabby Princess was magical! So many wonderful digi scrap kits! Kelly sent me to check out the site, shabbyprincess.com and I simply fell in love. I've heard the name thrown around both the shop and the blogosphere quite a bit, but I never knew what they were talking about (uninitiated as I was). Well, now I do, and now I'm hooked! I've already downloaded two scrap kits, though I've only gotten to play with one of them. This isn't my best work ever--the colors kind of blur together so it doesn't really pop--but I'm learning, and the learning process is fun. Stay tuned for future experiments!

Digi-Scrapping?

After 2 weeks of motherhood, I find that the only crafting I can do is on the computer, so I'm beginning to toy with digital scrapbooking...