World Card Making Day Hop and Creative Accents Challenge!!

Yippie Bloggers, it's World Card Making Day!! And to celebrate us Canucks are hoppin' Canadian style!! We've got a crazy talented group of card makers here to give you some fab inspiration, so grab a cuppa coffee and get hoppin! You should have come here from Tara Godfrey's blog, but if you're just wandering in here and would like to start at the beginning, you can go to  http://creativeaccents.blogspot.com and visit Tara Nixon first!

It's also that time again for another challenge at Creative Accents Challenges, and this one is totally in season! We want you to break out all your fun orange stuff and use it on your creation! Easy eh?!  What better time to use orange than now with all the gorgeous Autumn colors to pull inspiration from?  

For my card, I used 2 Canadian stamp companies:  the sentiment is from Graphicat Creations, she has the best sarcastic and snarky sentiments around! And the image is from Kraftin Kimmie. I love this little girl with the frog on her head and it just seems to go perfectly with that sentiment!   The cake is a Quickutz die and the paper is from Kaiser Kraft. I used my trusty little I Rock to adhere those blingies (a little secret: you can use Silhouette rhinestones with your I Rock! Cool right?!)

Here's a few close ups:

This sentiment cracks me up and it was sooo perfect for my best friend's birthday (this card is for her) because she is such a cake junkie!  You can get the sentiment here and it's only a dollar!!! 

Well there's my card! Happy World Card Making Day Everyone!!! Your next stop on the hop is the ever so talented Tracy. Happy Hopping!

Ps: We had such a long list of Canadian Crafters that we broke the hop up into two, so you can do the whole hop at once, or break it up. The start of the second part of the hop is Nicole and she is wickedly creative, so don't forget to hop over there on your next coffee break!

Cheers, 

         Sarah

Sketches in Thyme Open Challenge!!

Good Evening Bloggers!! It's time for Sketches in Thyme Open Sketch Challenge! So that means all you need to do is create a layout based on a sketch and you can play along with us! I used Creative Scrapper's Sketch 173 for my layout. I love all the white space in this sketch, and it's something I don't use often, but I really like how it turned out! 

I'm also entering this into a couple other fun challenges. Scrapping the Music is having their 4th anniversary, and they are going nostalgic and their challenge is to get inspiration from their very first song they challenged everyone with 4 years ago! The song is "Like a Star" by Corinne Bailey. I really like this song and the lyrics proved to make for a great title for this layout :) 

Scrapbooker's Anonymous's challenge this month is to use chipboard (my cute little heart is grungeboard...hope that counts!) and they're also doing an A-Z challenge and this time it's anything with the letter "B" and since most of my papers are from Basic Grey, I'm going to enter it in that one too! I'm not sure if I'm allowed to enter the same layout into both challenges, but I'm sure they'll let me know if I can't! lol 

So there you have it! Go find a sketch and get crafty and you can win some RAK from Nikki Sivils Scrapbooker!!

Also don't forget to join us over at Creative Accents Challenges and create something with 1 ribbon, 2 embellishments, and 3 patterned papers! 

Have a great day everyone, and happy crafting!!

Graphicat Designs Grand Opening and Blog Hop!!!!

OMGosh!!! I’m sooooo freakin excited to finally get to share this with all you crafty peeps! Today is the Grand Opening for Graphicat Designs and we’re kickin’ it off with a bang and having a blog hop loaded with giveaways and AMAZING inspiration!!! So if you just wandered in here and would like to start at the beginning of the hop, you can head over to Cheri's Blog (the amazingly talented card maker extraordinaire/owner of Graphicat Designs) and get hoppin!! 
 Graphicat Designs is a fabulous new stamp company that specializes in sarcastic and witty sentiments and trust me they’re hilarious!! They are the only Canadian retailer for Tickled Pink Stamps, Simply Betty Stamps, and Glo Skulls, which makes me a happy little scrapper! I was lucky enough to get to check out the website ahead of time, and it’s awesome!! It’s got all kinds of crafty goodness including a brand new blog, card gallery and events page…and of course the most important part…THE SHOPPING CART!! LOL!!
Speaking of shopping cart, Graphicat Designs is offering FREE SHIPPING this week until September 26th, so you better get yer little butts over there and do some serious shopping!! I know I’m going to!!
This is the card I made using one of Graphicat Designs fabulous digis. I just loooove this one!! It’s totally true though isn’t it?? You can’t be evil with fab shoes right?! lol  I used a white glo skull over the spider web shoe buckle…It was a tough decision to make because I really love that shoe buckle as it is, but I really love those glo skulls too and I wanted it on my card, sooo there it is!

I added a little glossy accents on her shoe to show off the shine, and I used black stickles over the spider webs in the corner. The whole image is coloured with Copics…I’m slooowly getting more confident with those fabulous markers!! 
PRIZE ALLERT!!!!
*3 digis will be given away to one lucky commenter on each of the blogs in the hop!! So don’t forget to leave us some love, you never know, you might be the lucky winner!!
*There is a Grand prize drawing from all hop participants for a $25 Gift Certificate to the store!!!
Your next stop on the hop is the ever so talented Nicole!  Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to check out Graphicat Designs you won’t be disappointed!

Sketches in Thyme Thursday Takes #56

Hello Blog Land!! I’ve been seriously behind on my blog lately! Back to school has definitely kicked my butt, and we also had company for 4 or 5 days (and they slept in my scrap room, so totally no time for scrappin lately!) But we had such a great time catching up with hubby’s lifelong best friend and his family! They have a brand new little 3 month old baby and I was in heaven playing with him! He totally made me think that I’m not done having babies yet!

Anyhoo, it’s Thursday, so you know what that means! Another fab sketch from Sketches In Thyme!! I am soooo lovin this one!!

I love how many pics you can fit into this sketch, or if you just want to use one, you could totally use some fun embellies on the side!! The versatility of this sketch rocks!!

Sorry for the horrible picture. I tried to get my photo done in daylight today, but I ran out of time and before I knew it, it was dark…so flash I went and tried not to shine on my photos! 

I channelled my inner Tim Holtz for this layout and made some super fun and grungy tags! I put a few different colors of distress ink on my splat matt and sprayed some water on it to make droplets. Then I smushed the tags onto them to see what happened, dried them with my heat gun, stamped them with my (autographed Tim Holtz stamp set hehehe) and this is how they turned out! Pretty sweet eh?!  I must say that I’m pretty happy with the way this layout turned out! Now it’s your turn!! Take this sketch and run with it and see what you come up with!! You have until the end of the month and our sponsor this month is Nikki Sivils, Scrapbooker!!!

Also, don’t forget to head over to Creative Accents Challenges and join our 1,2,3 challenge!!

Graphicat Sketch Challenge!!

Good Morning Bloggers!!  I hope you are all having a better long weekend than I am. Apparently I have a problem driving my van, because I backed it into a tree and smashed out the back window, dented the frame and took out my rear light! And of course it’s on a long weekend, so I can’t even phone a body shop until Tuesday to make an appointment to fix it!  I’ll be able to laugh about it soon, but right now it’s still just annoying me ;)
Well, enough about that, it’s time for another sketch challenge from Graphicat Sketches! Now normally we would be showing you another fabulous sketch that Cheri has created, but she’s soooo busy getting all her awesome stamps made into rubber and getting her new website up and running that she hasn’t had time to, so this month it’s ANYTHING GOES!! So, as long as you use a sketch for your creation, you can link it up HERE by the end of the month for a chance to win some of her fab digis!!
For this layout I used a sketch from The Scrappiest:
and here’s what I did with it:

The sentiment is from Graphicat Designs, and I just love it!! The first time I saw this I knew I wanted to use it to make a layout of my middle son, Caleb. Not at all because he’s evil, he’s actually a very sweet boy, but he is a bit of a challenge, because he does things like opening a can of tuna on my carpet, or getting his head stuck in our door because he tried to escape when we had the chain latched (so he couldn’t just run outside whenever he pleased). He actually squirmed his whole body outside, but got his head stuck. I came to see what was wrong when he started crying and found him like that. So I had to kinda twist his body a bit and try to get his body inside again, because I couldn’t close the door to unlatch the chain! lol  Like I said, he’s a challenge. :) And he’s also got the best “stink eye” I’ve ever seen. That’s why I knew that this sentiment would be perfect for this picture of him!

I used smootch to colour the “half evil” on the sentiment and I painted the edge of a glass to “stamp” the rings on the layout. One thing I found was that smearing distress stain over the embossed gears gave it kind of a wood grain look. I kinda like it :)

I also wanted to make sure that when he gets older and sees this layout that he knows that it was all in fun, so I added some sappy journaling to it as well to redeem myself for the sassy sentiment! lol
Well, there you have it! I hope you play along with us this month. And stay tuned, there will be some fantastic things coming up closer to the end of the month with Graphicat Designs!! Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait!!

Creative Accents September Challenge

Can you believe it’s already September?! The summer went by so fast it’s crazy!!  But, with September, comes another fun challenge from Creative Accents!! This months we have a 1, 2, 3 challenge:

How fun is that?! So get out your papers, embellishments and ribbon and join in the fun with us!! My card will not be up at the store as I’m sending it away to a little girl named Olivia who would be starting kindergarten, but has just undergone surgery for a brain tumor.  You can read more about her story HERE.  She got a couple emails from friends when she went into the hospital and it made her day, so imagine how much it will brighten her cute little spirits when she receives tons of cards from all over the world!! So if this tugs at your heart strings like it did mine, please make her a card!! Here’s mine:

I used a little more than 2 embellishments, but I just couldn’t help myself!!  It’s a totally fun challenge this month and I hope you all play along!!

I used a sketch from Twisted Sketches for this card. You can see the sketch Here.

Well, I’m off to bed. I’ve only got a couple more days until school starts, so I have to try to get my butt into bed a little sooner than 1am these days so I can start getting used to getting up at 6! Yikes! I’m sooooo not a morning person!! lol  And to add insult to injury, Ethan’s school starts 15 minutes earlier this year…it doesn’t seem like much, but I had a hard enough time getting him to school on time when it started at 8:25!! Now it’s starting at 8:10! I told Ethan that he’s just going to be late for school every day! He informed me that I’m not allowed to do that! lol So I guess I have to just get my butt in gear and possibly get a few more alarm clocks! hehehe ;)

Counterfeit Kits Blog Hop Y’all!

(2nd post today, for Janet's Birthday Blog Hop scroll down!!)

Anyhoo, there’s this lovely little blog called Counterfeit Kits and every month they give you this lovely kit for inspiration in making your own out of your stash…I’ve played along with them before, so those of you who read my blog may or may not have heard of them. Well, this month I didn’t get around to making up my counterfeit kit, but when I saw the sketch for their blog hop, I knew I had to do a layout with it. So the lovely ladies over at Counterfeit Kits were nice enough to let me in on the hop anyway!! Aren’t they sweet?!

Well, let’s get hopping shall we?! If you just wandered in here and want to start at the beginning of the hop, go here to begin!

So this is the sketch that we’ve been challenged to use this month. Isn’t it AWESOME?!?! It’s been soooo long since I’ve done a 2 page layout that it almost was a challenge! I so love the design of this sketch though! The fabulous ladies over at Sketch Support made this one just for us!!

Anyway, when I got to figuring out what photos I wanted to use, my brain kind of malfunctioned and I totally thought that my pictures were taken the right way, until I had picked all my papers, and even started cutting the paper, that’s when I realised that I had 3 4x6 length wise pictures and 1 4x6 vertical…so, I thought about finding different pictures…for about a second, then I decided to flip the sketch a little! So, here’s what I did with it: (click to enlarge)

I have to apologize for the quality of the picture, but my camera and I were arguing today, and I lost…

These pictures where taken at the Mother’s Day party that Ethan’s kindergarten teacher put on for us this Mother’s Day. We had so much fun! They did a play for us called “Are You My Mother?” based on a book where this bird falls out of his nest the day he is born and starts looking for his mother…he asks a cat, a dog, a cow etc until he finds his mom! It was ADORABLE!! We had lunch, made some crafts, and put together a puzzle, then they gave us a handmade pottery piece that the kids had made earlier in the year! I just love the school that Ethan goes to, they put so much effort into things!

Anyway, all of the papers are from Studio Calico, I cut the stars from my silhouette, the journaling tags on the side are We R Memory Keepers (I think) and the pleated ribbon and other journaling card are from Pink Paislee.

And even though I didn’t make up a kit this month, all the products that I used were older ones from my stash…I wanted to make sure that I kinda kept up with the reason for counterfeit kits…ya know, using up that stash!!

Well there ya have it! I hope you liked my take on the sketch, thank you so much for stopping by and now it’s time to head on over to Glinda's blog and see what fabulous creation she’s got for you!!

Thanks for hopping!! Have a great day!!

(I’ll also be entering this layout in the challenge over at Scrapbooker's Anonymous which is to use those journaling blocks!)

Speaking of using your stash, you still have a bit of time to enter the challenge at Creative Accents Challenges! We want you to dig out all those goodies you’ve been hoarding and USE THEM!! You could win a prize to add to that stash if you do!!