A Walk Down Memory Lane

Last Minute Sneak Peeks!

HELLOOOOO again!  :)  Boy what a week!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with friends and family!

It was nice taking a week off from blogging last week, but now I am armed with some new things, new cards, new products to tell you about, so I'd better get going!

This card is made from all NEW products at the store.  :)  First I stamped the ADORABLE little kitty cat stamp from Hero Arts in black ink (this is a new 2008 clear stamp set that is just too cute!).  Then I colored her in with my Copic Markers.  I even added her little stripes with my copics.  I cut her out with my oval cutter and mounted her on an oval scalloped punch.

Then I cut my patterned papers by American Crafts into little strips and laid them out on my Bazzill cardstock.  The ribbon strip is from American Crafts as well and both are available in the January 2008 Life's a Party kit.  I added a little Junkitz felt flower and Junkitz bling, also available in the Life's a Party kit.  Next is that awesome little arrow.  Isn't it just too cute?  It's the new Tim Holtz Grungeboard Elements in little dots.  I took my ink pad and did direct to ink and inked it all up.  I then took my black Copic marker and colored the edges.  Last was the little sentiment stamp which is also a new Hero Arts 2008 clear stamp release.

I recently found a cool card layout blog that I used for the inspiration for this card.  The Sheetload of Cards blog has new card ideas each month, which is similar to the One Sheet Wonder.  They give you layouts for cards using limited number of patterned paper and cardstock, and help you crank out a bunch of cards using that limited supply.  I made 24 cards using their method using 4 different layouts and 6 of each card.  I have more cards inspired by them for you this week!

I hope you all had a wonderful 2007 and I wish you a very Happy New Year for 2008! 

Life's Ups and Downs

Well, I had some great plans to get you all some cool Christmas projects for last minute gifts up on the blog this week.  But, I have failed you miserably, and for that I am really sorry.  I've been a little off the past week or two, getting things ready for Christmas myself, getting the mid-month Newsletter out (which is difficult at best when my Internet is going wonky), printing out about a dozen personalized calendars when my printer doesn't seem to want to print, and getting my client's photo Christmas cards in the mail FINALLY but they came in from the printer all wrong.  :(  And that's just my business side.

One of my really great friends lost her mother on Friday, December 7th.  She has been fighting cancer for a while, and lost her battle.  She was surrounded by her 3 children, her sisters and family who loved her.  My friend is doing pretty well, and I'm so very proud of her, but just feel a little down because I'm an hour away and I just don't feel like I've done much to help her get through this holiday season without her mom.  We continue to pray for Kathryn and her family especially at this time of the year, when those empty chairs around the table are especially noticed.

On the up side...my sister had her baby today.  Olivia Marie was born at 9:20am and we're so excited to finally be able to meet her!  We had known she was going to have a girl after her ultrasound at 20 weeks, but the name was a secret.   Our family would keep trying to guess, or say a bunch of names, looking for a glimmer of something...but alas we didn't figure it out.  My mom, sister and I took our yearly weekend trip to Minneapolis in September, and my Mom had actually said the name, but my mom and I dismissed it, thinking it wasn't a name my sister would use.  :)  Everyone is healthy and happy to have a new baby girl in our family...joining the other 3 girl granddaughters. 

January Kit Sneak Peeks!

It's the middle of December so I figured what better time to tease you with some sneak peeks of the January kits?

Fire and Ice is a gorgeous mixture of warm reds, cool blues, and pale yellows mixed for some beautiful snow or water photos.  You'll get some different embellishments in this kit including buttons, diecut sheet, cardstock alphabet, transparency frame, Prima flowers, chipboard squares, etc.

Life's a Party is not for the faint of heart!  Bright and colorful papers, ribbons and embellishments make this a great kit for anyone!  Embellishments include sparkle and bling, grossgrain ribbon, cardstock stickers, huge brads and much more!

These kits and their add-ons will be available for purchase on December 31.

Grungeboard is here!

Grungeboard by Tim Holtz has FINALLY made it's way into the aisles at A Walk Down Memory Lane!!  We have a bunch of the basic sheets here (with nothing cut from them) in the various textures which work GREAT with the Klic-N-Kut diecut machines!

We got a small sampling of the elements and alphabets in a few textures.  We also got a few of the texture hammer kits as well as the Grungeboard Swatchbook in.  We're getting more, but we only got part of our order.

If you haven't heard of grungeboard yet, it is a series of alphabets, digits and punctuation and edgy shapes called “elements.” It is designed to be “grunged”—painted, stained or hammered. While flexible and silky to the touch, don’t let it fool you . . . it is durable and versatile. The series is available in 5 debossed textures—plain, harlequin, swirls, dots and stripes. Alpha Grungeboard ($19.99) includes 26 sheets of 234 letters in 9 complete fonts. The Digits & Punctuation Grungeboard ($15.99 for textures and $14.99 for plain) includes 171 numbers and punctuation. The Elements Grungeboard ($7.99 for textures and $7.49 for plain) includes 94 shapes. Sheets with no designs are also available in all 5 textures at $9.99 for 10 sheets.

You can see a video of Tim Holtz showing you what you can make with Grungeboard on You Tube HERE.

Schwoopie Flower card

This was a fun card to make.  Very easy, and colorful...my favorite kind to make!

The blue patterned paper is from KI Memories Surprise line.  The orange is some I had in my scrap pile.  :)  The flowers are from Queen & Co. and I used Stickles in the middle of the flowers for a little bling.

Sorry for the short post today.  Trying to get kit stuff finalized for January and February.  I'll show you a little sneak peeks of the January ones soon!  They're called "Fire and Ice" and "Life's a Party".  Can you guess what paper lines we'll be using??  Leave a comment and see if you can guess correctly!

Featured Scrapper scraplift

This layout is a total aborration for me.  Just one picture on a page?  LOL  Well, this picture was one taken 2 years ago of my daughter when we were camping.  It just so totally captures HER.  Her hair all cute but wind-blown, her sticky fingers, her HUGE smile, a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt and a ring on her finger.  This picture totally signifies my daughter to me.  Very much a girly-girl.

I did this layout for part of our Featured Scrapper which is in our first of the month newsletter.  Members at The Scrapbook Site vote on a member and then the Design Team and I scraplift one of her layouts.  In Stacey's layout, she had used a large picture, chipboard alphabets, and strips of Crate Paper patterned papers.

I needed some brighter colors, but liked the distressed edges of the Crate Paper, so I took some MM Paint in white, and brushed along the edges of my photo and each patterned paper.  Next, I took my Basic Grey precision file set and went around the edges of my diecut letters.  They came with a nail file thing, but with the curves and inside pieces the Basic Grey tool worked much easier.  Other than that, the layout was quite simple with a few sheets of patterned paper.

The Campaign for REAL scrapping

Are you a "real" scrapbooker?  Do you scrapbook using more than 1 photo per layout?  Do you use stickers *gasp* on your layouts?  Have you cancelled your subscriptions to the big scrapbook magazines because they no longer feature pages that look like YOURS or something you could do for less than 4 hours and $20 per page?

If so, you may be a "real" scrapbooker.  What is a "real" scrapbooker?  Someone who loves to create layouts making the photo and the story be the basis of the layout.  Not the $5 metal embellishment, not the "life artist" page where you have one picture of everyday life including your huge piles of laundry and you comment how meaningful it is to you.  A "real" scrapbooker is one who has a ton of pictures of her children's birthday party and just want some creative ideas on how to use ALL (or most) of those photos.  She's looking for a way to not only get her photos on a layout, but do it with a little panache.

It seems to me that we have missed the point on scrapping by making it something it never started out to be.  Where are the days where "regular" scrappers were published in the magazines instead of the same old people getting published all the time?  Where are the layouts with 6-8 pages on a 2 page layout?

In 2008, we at A Walk Down Memory Lane and The Scrapbook Site are working on helping get more inspiration for layouts for the "real" scrapbookers.  We're putting together some great ideas for our newsletters to help you find ways to creatively display your photos in your layouts.  We want to help you find solutions to your scrapping problems, not tell you how you should scrapbook only the *best* photos and leave the rest to sit in a photo box.

Kim at Scrapbiz started this campain, but if you want to join in on the Campaign for Real Scrapping, feel free to grab this logo and post about what real scrapbooking means to you.  Link it back to this post so we can all start a dialog and hopefully the "industry people" will notice!   

Are you in Love...with a Bug?

If so...you are in for an AWESOME DEAL!  You can get a FREE Cricut Cartridge when you purchase any 2 cartridges between now and December 31, 2008.

All you need is a purchase receipt, the rebate form and $14.95 for shipping/handling and Provo Craft will give you a free cartridge!  You can choose between: Paper Pups
Going Places
Printing 101
All Mixed Up
Stamped
Tags, Bags, Boxes & More
Cursive 101
My Community

I am also doing a pre-order on the newest Cricut Cartridges and the Design Studio Software!  So, now you can get a great deal on some new Cricut Cartridges PLUS get a free one!  What can be better than that?

If you haven't seen or heard of a Cricut yet...this is a cool little machine that allows you to make your own diecuts.  It is not computer based so you can pick up your little Cricut and take it along with you to crops, or anywhere else you'd like to cut some paper!  The Design Studio software allows you to browse the entire image collection, but you need to have the actual cartridges to cut them out on your machine.  The software will also allow you to combine and connect your images to make one long diecut.

The Cricut does not afford you the flexibility like a computer-driven cutter such as the Klic-N-Kut or Craft Robo, however it is a perfect option for those who aren't very comfortable with the computer, or want something more portable.

Merry Christmas to you!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Here is this year's card that I will be mailing out to all of our family and friends via "snail-mail."  Photo cards are big around our area, as are the catch-up, holiday letters...so that will be my next project.  :)

I made this card digitally using Paint Shop Pro 8.  The digital kit I used was from Kay Miller Designs.  She has AWESOME digital kits that are perfect for digital scrapbooks, hybrid projects, cards, screen savers, and I've even used her graphics to make my own rubons!!

I'm getting my cards printed at Winkflash this year because they have a special on photo cards for just 23 cents!  They're normally 39 cents so this is a great deal.  It's only available for a limited time, so if you don't have your cards ready...you can email me and I can design them for you, email them back to you and you can upload them to Winkflash for their great price!  I do custom designed cards, or in the store, I also have some ready-made cards you can choose from.

I have a few personalized digital calendars left to design, and then that huge project will be finished.  I had a bunch of calendar orders this year, which was great...but it's nice to be finished with them too!  The next to last set is printing on my printer right now and then I'll bind them and ship them off.  :)

Christmas is a comin'

Do you have your tree set up?  Are your stockings all hung with care?  What better time to take a few family pictures with your home decorated for the holidays!

Although I wish I could say this was MY living room, and MY picture...I cannot.  :)  I have never been good at capturing my lit Christmas tree like this.  If you've had some problems getting YOUR photos to look like this, never fear!!  Check out THIS BLOG entry and you'll receive some GREAT tips for taking holiday photos of trees and decorations both inside and outside of your home.  I plan on following some of their tips to see if I can take a better picture of MY tree this year!

Then once you have your photos taken and ready to scrapbook, check out all the beautiful holiday papers, embellishments, stickers, ribbons, etc that we offer for the holidays!  Doodlebug offers some cute and fun papers and embellishments for those who still are a child at heart.  If you are a more elegant and traditional Christmas lover...check out Basic Grey's Figgy Pudding line.  We also have some collection packs from Basic Grey called Dasher, Blitzen, and Fruitcake.  Cosmo Cricket Wonderland pack has some beautiful red/green color combinations in their line.  Crate Paper's Holly pack is wonderfully textured and distressed just a bit including some pretty light greens/reds/pinks for a more modern holiday.  As you can see, no matter your holiday mood A Walk Down Memory Lane can find the perfect papers and embellishments to fit your holiday photos!