Creating Kris

new card designs: “Thank You Kindly”

These cards have been up for a few weeks or more in my Scrappy Gallery, but with holidays and other things to post about, I hadn’t had a chance to post about them!

I had a lot of fun playing with my new stamp set – the “Thank Yoy Kindly” set of 4. Thank-you cards aren’t something I’ve done super often (except for milestone occasions like my wedding and baby showers) but I know they are wonderful to give and receive.

The tradition of thank-you cards runs so deeply in my family that we kept joking that surely one day my British grand-mother would send me a Thank-you card in return for a thank-you card… and you know what? She did!! “Thank you for the lovely thank you card…” was how her card started off. I was tempted to send a similar card back and attempt to create a never-ending loop but I just laughed, smiled, and tucked it away.

Materials: Pirouette Pink cardstock, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Riding Hood Red cardstock and ink, Old Olive cardstock, Chocolate Chip ink, red mini-brads, felt flowers in Chocolate Chip and Pirouette Pink, white cardstock, ribbons, punched flower shapes (Stampin’ Up scallop for large and Fiskars for small) and circles (Stampin’ Up).

Techniques: Paper-piercing, embossing, oval-shaped window, scalloped edge punching.

Each of these cards is available for sale in my KStar Store: Thank-You Cards.

Happy Valentine’s Day cards

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope everyone is enjoying a “love”ly day with their loved ones this weekend… I’ve continued to be very busy with lots of cute projects, which I’ll share with you over the rest of February.

So I’ve already shown you the little Valentine treat folders for DS’s kindergarten class. Once those were complete, I started to turn those same stamps and punches towards other uses: making Valentine’s Day cards for my immediate family.

I created a few smaller ones with some of stamping done on vellum paper and then a couple larger ones.

All cards were made using different combinations of the following materials: white cardstock, black cardstock (CM), vellum (SU), Riding Hood Red cardstock (SU), and Pink Pirouette cardstock (SU), Basic Black ink (SU), Riding Hood Red ink (SU), stamps from the Happy Heart Day set (SU), a stamp from the All Through the Year set (SU), roller-stamped hearts in Real Red ink (SU), punched circles (1″ and 1&3/4″), punched scallops, a scalloped-edge rectangle, punched tags (large and small).

For the three small cards, I placed them in a regular-card-sized clear envelope and then added some little Valentine candies at the bottom. The cards were made a little at a time… just whenever I had the chance to get to my craft table and pick up where I left off.

Have I mentioned yet how much I absolutely love that our dinning room is currently set up as a huge craft area for the whole family? Since we moved from a small house with only one eating area, we had no extra furniture for the dinning room. And since we have not really been able to remedy that in our time here (we didn’t even have the money to be able to buy an air conditioning unit as planned!), the temporary set-up just became more long term. And I’ve resolved to just enjoy that while it lasts!

Our set-up is great; we’ve got a few IKEA shelves along the wall, with plastic drawer units on the bottom to organize all the craft items. There’s our fold-out craft table with 4 folding chairs (of dubious comfort levels, which is why I usually roll over the chair from the kids’ computer). I have my scrapbooking bags stashed under one shelving unit and bins on the shelves that hold all my punches, ribbons, templates, etc. It’s nothing compared to some of the beautiful craft room designs I’ve seen, but it suits us just fine!

All in all, I’m very glad I have a handy place where I can work on my creative projects and not have to tidy it all away in between! I can usually carve out enough space to make cards as long as I can contain the kids’ projects to “their” (unofficial) side of the table. Today I was back and forth between card-making, baking some yummy Vday treats (stay tuned to see those!), and crashing on the couch with my ice packs! I hope everyone else enjoyed their day/weekend.

new house construction scrapbook

I created this album to tell the story (through pictures and a little bit of journaling) of the construction of our new house. After we bought this home in summer 2008, we stopped by at least once a month to check on the progress as it was built from the ground up. It was very exciting to see all the pieces come together – the foundation, the walls, the roof, the inside wiring and plumbing, the counter-tops, the flooring, and all the decorative fixtures and features we’d picked out.

Part 1 of the album has been uploaded to my Scrappy & Stampy Gallery…

Click on the picture to see the gallery album with pictures of each layout. Unlike the other albums in the gallery, these pics have been placed in ascending order. Try a slideshow; it’ll be almost like flipping through the pages for real.

Here are a few favourite layouts from the first half of this album…

Most of the cardstock and other materials used to create the album were Stampin’ Up items, but I also dipped into my stash and pulled some papers and things from my CM supplies as well as papers from Michaels and Costco. I used almost all of the paper I had left in the Washington Apple paper pack that I’d used to create our change-of-address cards back in the summer.

Throughout the album, there are also lots of silver rub-on flowers and flourishes. Other embellishments include buttons, brads, punched cork, ribbons, hemp thread, gemstones, staples, velum, and felt flowers. The journaling in printed in a dark brown on white cardstock. For techniques, I did a lot of paper-piercing, inked edges, punched shapes and stamping.

Part 2 of the album is currently in the works (albeit slowly, especially the journaling component) so stay tuned for when I upload pics of those pages!

Happy Scrappin’!

scrapbooking the last pages of 2007

I know things’ve been a little quiet on the blogging side of things, but I assure you I’ve been turning my creative inclinations towards other passions lately and it has not all gone to waste. I took advantage of a good sale to print out nearly 300 digital pictures and have been working at getting my albums sorted out.

As a first completed project of the year, the “Family 2007″ layouts are now totally scrapbooked. This album (or rather section of an album; it shares space with 2008) was mostly complete for the longest time even before 2009 rolled around. Then I’d somehow skipped over November and December ‘07 in favour of jumping right into the beginning of 2008 and ending up scrapbooking from January to June of ‘08 in one big cropping weekend in October (which I paid for dearly in pain afterwards due to a fire alarm!).

In my recent album organizing efforts, the unfinished area stood out as a priority. So I finally chose some digital pics to print out from those couple months and got to work…

I finished the title bar to the first 1/2 layout of November (Paul’s 27th birthday), and then added another 1-page layout (of Stella’s 3rd birthday) on the other side. On the next pages, I did a 2-page spread with the title “Here comes Winter” and I think it turned out really nicely…

For the final layout of 2007, I did a 1-page layout which was kept to just one un-cropped photo and a block of journaling – all about my experience of being “Always behind the camera!” and why I love scrapbooking for my family.

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