Archive for July, 2010

new blinkies + matching Siggies!

July 13th, 2010 -- Posted in blinkies & other cuteness | Comments Off

Here’s another set of big blinkies that make use of digital scrapbooking elements to enhance their look. This set goes from age 1 to age 9, and there are 3 different styles per age. The colours are similar to the original set of Cute Kiddos Big Blinkies, but the green is a different kind of green.

The felt numbers are from the same digital scrapbooking site used for the first Cute Kiddos blinkies set, and the flowers were made by me… I had a lot of fun with those and will definitely do some more digital scrapbooking flowers in the future for my own layouts!

The entire collection can be found here and you can copy and paste the codes to use the blinkies wherever you’d like! :)

While I was playing around with digital scrapbooking elements and styles, I also figured it was time to start a new section of Freebies that I had been dreaming up for a while: Make Your Own Siggies!

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new resources on YM: baby budgets

July 12th, 2010 -- Posted in contests & freebies, work/career | Comments Off

When I was a young single mom-to-be, I planned ahead for the days of caring for my little one. I was lucky to find an apartment in a good neighbourhood that was not too terribly expensive and still clean and safe. From there, it was a matter of sticking to the basics as well as making use of lots and lots of hand-me-downs, food cupboard supplies, and second-hand-store purchases. I created regular budgets to keep track of my spending.

I’m surprised it’s taken until now to realize how useful sharing these budgets on the Young Mommies site would be, but better late than never! One thing I hear often from young women who are just finding out they are pregnant is “How much will this baby cost exactly?“.

I realize the cost of living has changed since 1998! but a lot of the general estimates are still roughly the same. Especially with baby gear – you can always spend as much as you want on that stuff and there are options ranging from “free” to “$500″ for almost each thing, whether it’s a crib or dresser or travel system, etc.

So what I did was update and transfer over 2 of my old budgets…


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Thank-You Cards : pink, orange, and brown

July 8th, 2010 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy | Comments Off

While celebrating my (milestone) birthday this year at my mom’s place, I was surprised to find the party grow to way more family members than I’d thought! I’d been told it would just be my own family plus my mother and brother, maybe my grandmother. But then as the party got going, more people started showing up!

It was really touching to have some of my aunts, cousins, and both of my grandmas there! And many of them gave very touching cards and thoughtful gifts (and gift cards, which I’ve really loved shopping with since we’re still really pinching pennies these days at home!). So I started to design a set of Thank you cards to give out to show I appreciated that my family took the time to come celebrate my birthday…

The colours for these two designs were easy to put together because of the patterned cardstock used. It’s from a really cute little pack of glitter paper (purchased at Indigo with one of the gift cards – how appropriate!) so I pulled out some of the pinks, oranges, and browns and went from there. Here are all the specifics:

Materials: I used a dark pink dotted Bazzil texture cardstock as well as a lighter pink one in the classic Bazzil texture. I used Close to Cocoa (paper) and Chocolate Chip (ink) for the browns. I’m fairly sure the base cardstock is Apricot Appeal, a colour I don’t think I’d used before.
Stamp sets: The “Thanks” is from the “Kind Thanks” SU set, the flower and circular design on the card on the right are from “a Beautiful Thing”.
Ink colours: Inks were Pink Passion, Pixie Pink, and Whisper White.
Punches: Scallop circle, new Scallop Edge punch, ribbon slot punch, 1 & 3/8″ Circle and 1″ Circle.
Techniques and Embellishments: adhesive heart crystal, paper piercing, ribbons, rhinestone brad, two-step stamping.

I do have more Thank-You cards to share that I made this spring, but as of this summer I think I’ll be taking a short break from card-making to catch up on some scrapbooking, so stay tuned for pictures of layouts. :)

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