Creating Kris

New House Construction Album: 2nd part of layouts

* in case you missed it, the first part of the New House Construction album layouts were discussed in this entry.

My scrapbook of construction photos of our new home is now complete! The album covers 24 pages and the time span of July 2008 to April 2009 – from the time we started shopping to the time our house was built and we got the keys! I do have other photos that continue the story (our first days, weeks, months as new home-owners) but I’m thinking I’ll do another album for those.

So these layouts have all the pictures from our last couple months leading up to the completion of the house. We had two inspections before taking possession (that’d be why there’s a picture of my spouse and I wearing silly construction hats), so there was ample opportunity to go through and take lots of pictures of everything. I left out many of the “boring” but very essential pictures: such as pictures of little flaws that needed to be fixed. One of the perks of buying a brand new home is the warranty, but it only goes as far as you can show the problems were due to construction faults, etc.

I’m glad to have all of these photos of our house in (near) “mint” condition… before the kids got at it!! They have managed to flood a small room *each* (our son the laundry room and our daughter the kids’ bathroom), so it has definitely lost it’s shine a little. No matter; we are all in the process of making it a home, our home, and that involves a little destruction here and there I guess! It is also a good “Before” reference for visitors who will see our newly decorated home and paint jobs. Which, like I said, will be the subject of a whole other album! For those I’ll be waiting to make sure we indeed get to keep our house… Sadly, the resulting financial difficulties from my car accident and the disabilities that it caused may force us to sell this beautiful dream home. I hope I won’t be looking at these pictures with longing and regret though, but with fondness and nostalgica as the years go by and we build many memories here.

A couple fave layouts from this section of the album:

To see the layouts, visit this album OR if you’ve already seen the first batch and want to start off at the 2nd batch, you can skip right to this picture.

TFL!

Cards: Home & Birthday

I’m grateful that even if it’s somewhat difficult for our family right now to swing events, occasions, gifts, etc., I can always manage to create a personal hand-made card to send people the message that they are thought of and valued. We’ve always liked to do as much as we can to show our friends and family how much we care about them.

These two cards were created for the occasions of a Housewarming party and a birthday party for friends of ours. We didn’t even end up getting to the housewarming party – it took all our energy to prepare for it and do some shopping and then we were tired and had to go home and get the kids some dinner and send them to bed! And only my DH was able to go to the birthday party. But I can always be there in spirit through my creations…

Materials: Riding Hood Red cardstock base and ink, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Pirouette Pink cardstock, Chocolate Chip cardstock and ink, “Tagger’s Dozen” stamp set, Tag Punches (small and large – from Stampin’ Up), chocolate brown ribbon. The small flower stamp is actually from another set altogether, yet the petals look very similar to the flowers in the little box in the Tagger’s Dozen stamp – see this closeup!

Materials: I tried a really different colour combination for this one: Elegant Eggplant, Not Quite Navy, Tempting Turquoise and Black. The ribbon is Bashful Blue. Also included a lot of silver pen writing (wide pen from Martha Stewart, narrow pen from Creative Memories) and inked onto a star stamp (from Stampin’ Up). The “Happy Birthday” stamp is a single from Stampin’ Up. The inside of the card has a message written on cardstock edged with the notebook punch (SU) which is one of my faves!

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.