Here are the 3 kits that Martha has selected for March over at SD4U. These are the manufacturers/lines that will be in there!!! Exact pictures will come in a few days. Each one is just FANTASTIC!

Here is "Hippity Hoppity" by We R Memory Keepers. I get to use this one!! I told Martha at CHA that Easter is one of the few holidays that I have lot of photos for. Somehow I am not caught up with this holiday. She remembered and I get to play with this wonderful kit!!! Heather and Misty also will be using this kit...all three of us have certainly got the kiddos to fill these super cute pages with!


Here is "Estate Sale" by Bella Boulevard. This kit is fantastic for family or even masculine layouts! Kris B., Kristine D., and Mette get to work with this one...I can't wait to see how they use it!


And HERE is "Material Girl" by Cosmo Cricket. I LOVE this line! LG and Nicole get to create with this one..and I can't wait to see what beautiful things they create with their kits!!!

My favorite part about this month's kits is that EVERY KIT comes with it's own BOTTLE OF SHIMMERZ SPRITZ???!! I'm buying the extra kits just for that fact alone!

Roses are Red Crop

This weekend scrapbookdeals4u.com is hosting a Valentine crop online. There are 12 challenges and several games going on. So far I have created layouts and projects for almost all of the challenges. Most of what I created was with the Feb "All You Need is Love" kit. Here is my stuff!


#1 a Menu Challenge
You pick your menu, later its revealed what scrappy supplies match up with your order and you create a layout from that order! So fun!
This was my order:

Frozen Margarita.......................................Solid White
Shrimp cocktail .........................................ribbon
Grilled Halibut.............................................must have only 2 photos
Garlic mashed potatoes...............................ink
Classic Chocolate Cake.......................................................your choice

***Mandatory Champagne Toast to Celebrate Martha's Birthday!!!

I also used an Inspired Blueprints sketch for inspiration.


#2 This is based on an exclusive sketch by Kristine Davidson of Creative Scrappers. She is one of our 2 brand new designers at sd4u and we are so excited she is here too!

This is the sketch:





I covered these chipboard hearts with Glimmer Mist, Glossy Accents, and Martha Stewart Glitter. They look super pretty in person!

#3 was to craft something with your kids.

Wes and I made this Valentin box for his school party. I covered it in paper and deco tape. Wes applied the stickers when his homework was done. I've never seen him do his homework as eagerly before! lol

I'm still working on #4!


#5 is a challenge where you are assigned a secret "crush" and you have to scraplift them. I lifted DT KrisB's wonderful layout from the gallery!

#6 was to create anything with typical Valentine colors and neutrals. I had some girls over the other night and this was the project I created with them. I taught them how to make the paper roses. The frames one was my sample and the other one I created as we went along that night.




#7 was to be mostly red and/or pink and journal about why you love your subject.

I love those Jenni Bowlin alphas (My Tiny) and the Glimmer mist on this page. I also glimmer misted the hearts and covered them with Glossy Accents.

#8 was to use fancy flowers and bling on a layout. I used a Magpie sketch by Julie Bonner for this one.


#9 was like an ad inspiration, but it was of the family and Steve needed a pic of the family today for church. I forgot to take a pic bewfore he left. (I'm home with 2 sick kids)

#10 is not yet done.

#11 was a challenge by Martha. One of the parts of the challenge was to create these paper roses. They are not that hard and look pretty fantastic. Thanks for the tutorial Martha!


and last but not least was #12, use a love song in your title.


So, there are my projects for the crop. Have you been playing along. You have until Monday to upload your work to the forum. Did you know that they grand prize is a 3 month DT spot???

Inspired Blueprints and a Feb Kit

Inspired Blueprints is an ning site with lots of inspiration. I just complete 2 layouts with sketches from that site as starting points. Here are the 2 layouts.




These layouts were made with the February kit from scrapbookdeals4u.com, the kit club I design for. Here is a link to the kit: http://scrapbookdeals4u.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1&zenid=eb373851bb72dd75a686683189817f42

This kit is actually sold out already. Martha's kits are fantastic though, and seriously packed with scrappy goods! With this kit alone, I made 9 layouts! As a subscriber, the kit costs just $26. That is less than $3 per page! What a great value. I'll have more to post in a bit so you can see what else I made with this kit!

Roses are Red Crop is in Just a Few Days!

Here is a list of all the challenges that we will be having next weekend at the Roses are Red Crop!

1. "Valentine's Date Night"
2. "Show Me the Love!"
3. "Kids Card Class"
4. "Unexpected Surprise"
5. "Scrap~lift Love"
6. "Be My Valentine"
7. "Who do You Love?"
8. "Roses And Diamonds"
9. "Shower Me with Love"
10. "Sending You a Letter"
11. "Blooming Beauties"

Have I sparked your interest??? Are you ready to get scrappy???

Come join us in the forum and play along! http://scrapbookdeals4u.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=85&t=4895

You could be our next Guest Design Team Member!!!

Have you heard?

Scrapbook Deals 4 U will be hosting a super fun online crop over Valentine's Day weekend! There will be several awesome games, challenges, contests, giveaways and prizes! Come over now and get started on some of the monthly challenges as a warm up!

The Grand Prize is a design team spot for 3 months!

Martha and her design team are currently working on getting all of the plans in place...more details will be coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

My Origins Kit from SD4U

This kit is so beautiful and so much fun to play with. The patterns can be a little tricky, but with some planning and consideration, the layouts turn out beautifully! All the embellishments are great too! I have almost used my entire kit up with these 6 layouts!


This is Weston with a typical 1st grade mouth, full of holes! He often does not want his picture taken. I try to suprise him with the camera. The pic on the right is one of those surprise pics. I think its from the end of summer and he is sporting a nice swimmers tan! I love the black ric rac in the kit!


Here is Wade with the 3D glasses from a Toy Story movie. Lots of Glimmer Mist on the die-cut round paper and the cream paper under the ribbon.


A fairly recent picture of me with some personal journaling. Kylie wanted me to explain it to her, and I couldn't. She just doesn't need to know all the grown up details yet. Don't you just love the BG woolies?


Wade on our backyard swing set that we had to leave at our old house. This layout made all my kids sad! They miss their old backyard. Something interesting about this layout-I was trying to get that butterfly rubon to stick down to the photo and it just wouldn't stick. It has glitter in the rubon (SO PRETTY), but the slick photo didn't have enough grab. I think it would have stuck to paper ok, but I wanted it on the photo. Instead of rubbing until my fingers fell off, I decided to trim around the butterfly. I adhered it like a transparency rather that a rubon! I don't think you can even really tell either. So there is my little hint! If your rub-on won't rub-on, use it like a transparency piece!


This is a pic I took with my dad's dSLR in the summer. I love this pic! Its Wes on his b-day at my mom's swimming pool.


These pics are from when Steve and I went to Chicago last spring for a medical billing conference. One night we went to Wrigley Field for a game. Steve was in heaven. I still plan on journaling on this one. The edges of the pp are torn and folded back. The dark spots on the layout are because I took this pic when it had rained and their were water drops on my windows. I was trying to use the sunshine that we had between storms and this one ended up looking a little spotted. The spots are not there in real life!

So, there you go. There are my layouts with the Origins kit. Such a pretty kit, and yet I made almost all boy layouts! What will you make with your kit?

My First February Kit Layout

Magpie Club is having a sketch contest with a Julie Bonner sketch. Here is the sketch:



And here is my layout using the Origins kit from scrapbookdeals4u.com:


My little Wade, about 1 year ago, on our backyard playset. I miss that playset so much! The kids do too!

Here is a little closeup of one section:


Stay tuned for more reveals this weekend!

More with Pink Paislee

My Jan 15th challenge at scrapbookdeals4u.com is to scraplift a member of our gallery. Cheryl created a wonderful layout that I used for the challenge. More details about the challenge are found here: CHALLENGE

This is my sample!


I am also hosting the card challenge this time around and I chose a great PageMaps sketch as my starting point. This is the sketch:


And my Sample

Details about this contest can be found here: CHALLENGE

Basic Grey's monthly newsletter had a great sketch in it that I used to create this layout. I didn't use BG though. This is more Pink Paislee, MM flowers, and Prima kisses.


MyMind's Eye had a fun sketch on their blog that I used as inspiration for this layout. I didn't use MME product though so I can't enter it in to the contest for them. I still really like the results though.


These are what I created while waiting for my February kit from Martha. Stay tuned for those projects to be coming soon!

Page Maps Contest

There is another contest at PageMaps. This contest is in conjunction with the new Basic Grey website. Have you checked it out yet? They have digital stuff! Anyway, this is my layout for the contest.

February Kits at Scrapbookdeals4u.com

Here is the one NON Valentine kit...featuring the Basic Grey Origins line. This kit is really beautiful and you will love it! This is the line I am working with this month.


And here are the two Valentine kits that you get to choose from. One is vintagy and the other is bright and playful. The first one features Fancy Pants and beautiful embellishments to go with it. The 2nd one features the Bo Bunny "Love Bandit" AND "Persuasion" lines. Love both of these kits and I will be working with them soon!




So head on ove to SD4U and grab yours before they are all gone!

Shimmerz Latest

Check out the info on thier blog at http://shimmerzpaints.blogspot.com/

Using Up

the last of my January kit.


Cards made with just a few scraps.


Weston's Kinder Class Photo, inspired by sketch #48 by Kristine Davidson for SD4U.

Here is the sketch:


And I know the title is spelled wrong. I took out the extra G since taking the pic. I just didn't have any more good light in the day to retake the photo.


And with those projects, by kit is gone!

More Layouts

Here is a layout I did with Nutmeg, P and W at Knott's.


And here are more with my January kit. I love this kit!

Valentine Crop

Have you heard?!

Scrapbook Deals 4 U will be hosting a super fun online crop over Valentine's weekend! There will be several awesome challenges, contests, giveaways and prizes! The Grand Prize?? A design team spot for 3 months! WOW!!!

Martha and her design team are currently working on getting all of the plans in place. More details will be coming soon!

We hope you'll play along!

New Challenge Schedule at SD4U

There are four prizes to be won each month. All prize winners are randomly drawn, so everyone has several chances to win. Two of the prizes are for the 1st of the month challenges, which end on the 14th of the month, and two of the prizes are for the 15th of the month challenges, which end on the last day of the month.

Here are the 4 ways to be eligible to win the prizes each month:

1) Complete the 1st of the month layout sketch challenge and upload it to the correct sketch challenge gallery folder by midnight PST on the 14th of the month. Sketch Challenges

2) Complete any of the remaining 1st of the month DT challenges and upload them into the "1st of the month DT Challenges" gallery folder by midnight PST on the 14th of the month. By the way, for each of these DT challenges that you complete, you have a chance at this prize, so if you complete all 4 of these DT challenges, you have 4 chances at this prize! DT Challenges

3) Complete the 15th of the month layout sketch challenge and upload it to the correct sketch challenge gallery folder by midnight PST on the last day of the month. (see link in #1)

4) Complete any of the remaining 15th of the month DT challenges and upload them into the "15th of the month DT Challenges" gallery folder by midnight PST on the last day of the month. Again, for each of these DT challenges that you complete, you have a chance at this prize, so if you complete all 4 of these DT challenges, you have 4 chances at this prize! (see link in #2)

The 15th of the month DT challenges will repeat every month. They are Jen's scraplift challenge; Heather's ad inspiration challenge; Nicole's card sketch challenge; and Misty's color challenge.

Mette will be providing awesome layout classes in conjunction with the new challenge schedule!

Come on over to the forums and play with us! We want to see your work.

A Layout Tutorial with my Jan kit

I almost always start with a sketch. It gets me started and I don't sit staring at my supplies for very long when I am inspired by a sketch. Most of the time it looks different from the original start as I like to make the sketches my own.

For this layout, I had a lot of pictures I wanted to use all together. I looked for a sketch that had several photos. I chose this sketch from Sketch Inspirations:


I had my kit supplies all out and I matted my photos with white cardstock to start. I used 4x5.25 photos that I had printed by Snapfish. I cut my mats 4.25x5.5in, 1/4 in bigger than the photos. I cut all the mats from 1 sheet of 8.5x11 paper.


I then placed my photos in the design of the sketch. I had to move them around a bit to get the right amount of overlap. It would have been easier to arrange them if I had trimmed the photos down, but I wanted to leave them large. I then adhered the photos and used foam tape behind the top left photo. I wanted that one to stand out above the others.


I then chose two strips of contrasting pattern paper cut to roughly 1.5 inches wide and placed them on either side of my photo group. This is different from the sketch but I liked the way it looked. These strips were actually leftovers from another layout. I also added that little chipboard bird from the kit too.


I placed word strip stickers on the right like the sketch, a journaling block on the left, a center sticker, and my title across the top of my main photo. I chose that title placement to help draw the eye to my main photo.


The bird needed something to perch on so I cut a swirl with my cricut and used half of it under the bird.


Then I added stickles to the swirl and to the centers of the flowers on the main pattern paper.


And I was done!


I hope you can see how easy it is to get lots of photos on one page and how great sketches are! I love sketches.

Sorry for all the flash spots in the tutorial photos. I was working late at night and couldn't figure out how to photograph without them but still get a clear picture.