Someone New In My Craft Room

I had the pleasure of hanging out with my 10 year old nephew, Jackson during my long Thanksgiving weekend.  It was a long time coming.  As these kids get older, they get busy!  Between boys scouts, sports and jobs, it's hard to pin down dates.

I made my nephew watch one of my favorite movies of all time, "Little Shop of Horrors".  I knew he would love it because I made his cousin Blake and his big sister Chandler watch it when they were younger and they both loved it.  I'm the aunt that makes her nephews and nieces watch movies from the 80's, you know, back when movies were good.   :)    

I even took Jackson Black Friday shopping at midnight with my friend Jennifer.  I filled him with powdered doughnuts and Mt Dew (Lisa, don't read this!).  He was really psyched about going...and then 10:30 rolled around and he passed out on my chaise lounge!  Thankfully, I was able to wake him up and we were on our way.

Jennifer and Jackson, waiting outside of Ulta, ready to get their makeup shopping on!  Doesn't Jack look so excited!  

There was quite the crowd at Ulta.  I don't think Jackson was quite ready for the frenzy because one moment he was right beside us and the next moment...gone!  Luckily, we knew something like that might happen so Jennifer told him to look for her since she's tall and wearing a white coat.  I found him wandering in the skin care section a few minutes later.  I asked him where he ended up.  He said he was over on the other side in the drugstore brand.  Oh, Jackson, you'll learn.  Aunt Julie likes the high end section on Black Friday!

Here's my haul!  

Too Faced "The Triple Threat"  $18

• Deluxe Primed & Poreless Skin Smoothing Face Primer 
• Glamour Gloss Volumizing Lip Gloss  
• Deluxe Chocolate Soleil Matte Bronzer

I've used the bronzer before. It's been in a couple of Too Faced sets I've bought before.  I like it although I have to watch it since I'm so pale.  It smells delicious!  I've never used their face primer before.  I highly recommend this primer.  It's so smooth!  And I've been enjoying the lip gloss.  Not too sticky, smells good, and makes my lips look nice and full.  

tarte "Balanced & Beautiful Amazonian Clay Essentials Kit"  $22

• Full size Amazonian clay 12 hour blush in flush
• Full size Amazonian clay waterproof cream eyeshadow in slate 
• Full size bamboo cream eyeshadow brush

Tarte is quickly becoming one of my favorite brands.  Their blushes are amazing!  I like their natural formulas (it's called high-performance naturals) and that they use recycled and recyclable materials for the packaging.  The blush that came in this set is normally $25 alone.  The cream shadow retails for $19.  The cream shadow will work great alone or as a base.  I've tried it both ways and it's good quality.  The blush is really bright so I try not to be so heavy handed with it.  I'm part albino though.  

Laura Geller  "Baked Eye Dreams Duo with Brushes"  $20

• shadow quad in "Pink Sunset"
• shadow quad in "Sandbar"
• 2 eyeshadow brushes

Laura Geller is new to me.  I've heard some of my favorite gurus rave about it.  This is why I love the holiday sales.  You get the opportunity to try great high end products at an affordable price.  I've only tried this dry but you can apply these baked shadows wet.  I love the nice subtle shimmer Sandbar gives.  Pink Sunset reminds me of Neopolitan ice cream.  It also looked very nice when I applied it.  I'm a fan of baked shadows.  If you get a chance, try out some Laura Geller shadows.  According to the website, these retail at $30 each.  It does look like the packaging is a bit different than what I got but the shadow is the same and the same size.  

Bedhead shampoo and conditioner 

I haven't tried this yet but it was on sale for $6.99 each so I'll givet it a try soon.  These retail for $15.99 each.

The rest of the stuff was not on sale but I did get to use my $3.50 Ulta coupon!  Woo hoo!  

I was so happy with my Tarte purchase, I ended up ordering the Sephora exclusive "Carried Away" set.  I can't wait to try it out.  I should be getting it soon.  I hope to be able to play around with it over the weekend.  Might even blog about it.  

Jackson and I made birthday cards for my step mom, Mary.  

This is his card!  

Jack picked out the polka dot paper himself.  You can't tell from the picture but the polka dots are risen so there's a nice texture.  I showed him how to cut the paper with my Fiskars paper trimmer.  He loved doing that!  

The embossed green dots cardstock is from DCWV and it's called "Nana's Kids Print".  

The hamster "Got Cake?" clear stamp is from Inkadinkado "Humorous Birthday".

The inside birthday cake and "happy birthday" stamp is from Fiskars "Birthday Party".  

I think Jack liked crafting although he did start to get a little crazy with the Stickles.  I think he liked the cutting and the taping part the most.  He lacked focus, just like any other 10 year old boy!  

Here's mine!  

The "Birthday Girl" paper is from Reminisce in the Princess collection.  I cut it to 5x7. 

The purple embellishments is Doodlebug Designs "Paper Frills".  These come 12 inches long so I cut it so I had one 5 inch and one 7 inch.  Perfect!  

The flowers are 3 petals from Recollections Floral Embellishments.  

I found a pretty brad to stick in the middle of the petals.  

The lady on the pony is a clear stamp from Inkadinkado "Humorous Birthday".  Mary likes Maxine and this felt kind of Maxinish.  

Happy Birthday, Mary!  I hope you liked your cards!  

I'm just a mean, green mother from outer space and I'm bad,

Jules

  

Miss Miranda's Monster MIx

Happy Sunday, all!  I went to a monster party for one Miss Miranda over the weekend.  She was celebrating her 6th birthday with her family and friends.  There was all kinds of craftiness going on at this event including face painting and making monster t-shirts.  Since I've known for months the theme of this soiree, I had planned my card way in advance  I know typically when you refer to something as a monstrosity, it's an insult however this just happens to be one monstrosity of a card...but in a good way!  

I used black card stock for the card itself.  I found the eyeball paper months ago at All About Pictures in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  It's Reminisce from the "Monsters Collection" called "What Are You Looking At?"  This is another 2 sided 12x12 paper.  I think I'll be able to use the scraps for Halloween scrapping.  


I'm going to try to link to all the digi stamps for all the monsters that I colored with Copics.  All but one of them were free.  


Orange monster:  Blobby takes the cake from Pink Cat Studio Digi Stamps.  He was the one I paid for.  I love Blobby!  He's so adorable and he has many digi stamps available.  


Blue monster: Free at Cre8tive Hands


Purple monster:  Free at Cre8tive Hands


Green monster:  Torico Digital gallery


And here's the inside of the card!  

I got this monsterrific digi stamp from Scrap Happy Paper Crafter.  

And there's the little monster with her card!

I hope you all enjoyed the card.  Some of the best cards are months in the making!  

It was a graveyard smash, 

Juju  

Esquilo Suave

Good day, everybody!   Beer bread is baking in the oven, I'm in some comfy jammies and I have a huge bottle of cold Mt Dew by my side.  Yep, I love Sundays!

I have another fun birthday card to show you today.  This one goes out to my friend, Wendy aka Wendall aka Fraulein Beaverhausen or as my dad calls her, "The Beave".  How do I know Wendy?  I met her in high school through a group of friends.  I ended my friendship with those friends and sadly, my friendship with Wendy ended too.  Don't you just love high school politics?  Back in 2006, during the upswing of social media, I contacted Wendy via MySpace.   I remember being nervous that 1) she wouldn't remember me and 2) she was brainwashed by others to think I was bad news.  She responded to my message right away and we've been friends again ever since.  Wendy shares in my quirky sense of humor which is why we get along so well.

FACT: Wendall is certified in Portuguese.  She is mildly obsessed with squirrels and loves calling them by their Portuguese name which is "esquilo".

The squirrel paper is Reminisce: Autumn Forest: Sharing Squirrels.  It is a doubled sided 12x12 sheet that I cut down for the card.  I cut a rectangle from the other side of the sheet which is the brown piece you see on top of the squirrel paper.  And since I love brown and pink together (sounds dirty!), I chose some pink scraps from my scrap bin to go underneath the squirrel digi stamp.  And speaking of that digi stamp, I purchased it here at Pink Cat Studios, one of my favorite digi stamp stores.  They offered the branch for free.  I used my Copic markers to color in.  And I used some distress Stickles on the leaves to make them appear wet.  

On the the inside of the card...

I got this tea sample in the mail in response to my previous donation to The Catherine McAuley Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  I am not a tea drinker but I knew Wendy was, especially the green tea.  So I thought I would include it in her card.  

Continuing with the squirrel theme, I found this digi stamp at Paper Smooches.  I sloppily wrote out the sentiment.  Banksy, I am not.  

Wendy, with the Gloria Estefan CD I got her for her birthday.  Sadly, "Bad Boys" is not on there.  

Happy Birthday, Wendall P Faye Hoss!  

There's no easy way out, 

Jules 

The soundtrack to making this card: 

Makin' Bacon

Happy Easter, everybody!  I hope you had a wonderful day and don't have a bellyache from all the sodium filled food.  I made Easter dinner for some friends, a tradition I started last year, and have plenty of leftovers.  Yum, yum!

It was a busy weekend for me.  Not only did I celebrate Easter but I also celebrated my nephew, Zach's 10th birthday.

Zach likes money (don't we all?).   And he saves it, a trait that I'm quite jealous of.  I am horrible at saving money.  I'm hoping that once I get back on my feet I can start adopting some of those money saving habits.  And I really hope Zach continues saving his money too.  Maybe he can give his good ole Aunt Julie a loan one day.   ;-D  

Because he enjoys money so much, I immediately thought of him when I saw the Reminisce "Show Me the Money" paper at All About Pictures in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I cut it down for the front of the card.  I had a hard time figuring out what I was going to put on the card besides the money paper.  On a scrapbook day, Jennifer brought over her Cricut Expressions 2 and some of her cartridges.  I looked through them and then all of the sudden it came to.  Money, saving....PIGGY BANK!  And you know my Potato Head lovin' friend Jennifer had the Toy Story 3 Cricut cartridge which featured Hamm.  Perfection!  I found some army green card stock, cut it into squares, glued them into a giant square in the middle, centered Hamm on them and the rest was history!

I spent some time googling a bacon joke.  I found a lot of not so appropriate ones but finally settled on this corny ass one for the inside of the card.

I love this card!  I hope it gives other people ideas on card making for boys.  It gets kind of tough once they reach the double digits.  And no one wants to be that lame aunt that makes babyish cards.

I think Zach liked it.  He thought the joke was funny.  :)

OD'ing on Cadbury Creme Eggs,
Jules  

Octopus's Garden

As I mentioned on my Facebook page yesterday, Jennifer and I went to a scrapbooking event at the Cedar Rapids Public Library.  It was free and gave us a great opportunity to hang out with other scrapbookers and to use other people's tools.  I made 2 birthday cards and a two page scrapbook layout.  I am going to show you how I made one of the cards and then give you a peek at my scrapbook layout.  

So here's the scoop on the birthday card!  

I was shopping at a little gift shop in the Amana's some time ago and found a sheet of paper put out by Reminisce called "Pink Bubbly Fish".  It's double sided.

My first thought was this...

I'd like to be, under the sea...

And then I thought how great this paper would be for my niece's upcoming birthday card.  You see, I love cute paper like this.  And now that my nieces and nephews are getting older and I don't have any little girls of my own...yet, I'm running out of opportunities to use cute paper like this.  I mean, this paper doesn't exactly go with a 34 year old's lifestyle.  But it is perfect for a 3 year old and my niece Gracie is turning 3 next month!

I'm using both sides of the paper for this card.  One thing I love about two sided paper is the top of the paper that has the bar code and brand name on it typically doubles as extra design paper.  It allows you to utilize the whole sheet.  This paper was perfect for that because it created a fun and matching line to separate the "sea" from the stripes.  So I cut the "sea" side down to about 2/3 the size of the card and the stripe side was about 1/3 the size.  I made sure to use the flower part of the top of the striped paper to use as a divider between the two sides.  Then I glued them to my card.  

See how the flower line matches the color scheme yet acts as a great divider between the two patterns?  I love it!  

The next step involves the use of the Cricut Expression 2.  My friend Jennifer let me use hers.  She helped me cut out these accents.  The paper is your typical card stock you buy at Michaels.  I chose 3 different colors.  We used the Cricut Essentials Flower3 pattern for the dark pink and light pink.  The dark pink was made slightly bigger than the hot pink.  Then we used the #3 Alphabet Font 2 on the lavender paper, creating the cute "3".  

And then I layered them, using my glue.  

Next I glued the layered flower to my card, placing it on the flowered line.  I found some great stickers at Michaels from their Recollections line that seemed to match the card perfectly.  I stuck the octopus on.  I'm not sure if you can tell by the pic, but there are some sticker bubbles added too.  And then I used some Stickles in Frosted Lace all over the sea life in the top part of the card.  

  

And lastly, I used a Happy Birthday Balloon clear stamp for the sentiment inside of the card.  I'm not sure the brand on that stamp.  Sorry!  But I'm pretty sure it's from Michaels.  

I am in love with this card!  I almost don't want to give it to my niece!  But I still have some leftover scraps from the 12x12 paper so I have a feeling I'll be using this again.  

And now I'm seriously thinking about getting a Cricut.  

And here's my layout!

The pictures I scrapbooked are from a year ago.  My friend Stacy and I went bowling with her kids on a cold night.  And here is what transpired.  

 "Let's bowl, let's bowl, let's rock and roll!"  <----10 points if you know what that's from!

The cute bowling ball and pins sticker on the first page is from the beloved Jolee's brand.  The bowling ball and pins on the second page are from Karen Foster Design in "High Score".  I borrowed Jennifer's Cricut once again for the words "Strike" and "Spare".  I now wish I would have cut out the word "Split".  I'm very happy with this layout.  I will be doing another bowling page for 2012 and Jennifer and I have already come up with the layout using her Cricut.  Who knows, maybe I'll be using MY Cricut.    :giggle:  

Thanks for viewing.  I'll have another blog at the end of this week showcasing the other card I made. 

~Jules