Creating a Portfolio

While I should be working on my final paper for school that is due next Wednesday, I figured getting a crafting portfolio together would be a much better use of my time! I decided it's time to try out for some design teams because I'm looking to use my skills, share my ideas, and get my crafting on. And with this new venture I'm tired of not having my work in one central place that I can send people to. It seems like I take photos of so many of my projects, but they get scattered here and there on my computer.

There is nothing like the procrastination of one thing, to spur organization of another! I now have my images organized on my computer. I made my self a watermark to place on all m projects. And I now have a live portfolio that I can easily add and update!

You are wondering how did I make my portfolio? I decided I wanted to use an album format that was easily accessible for uploads, edits, and reorganization. I decided on Photobucket for this, since it met all my criteria! I simply created an album for each type of item I wanted to showcase. For now I have four albums, including my scrapbook layouts, cards, invitations, and other paper crafting items. I then went through and edited my photos, cropped them, and re-sized them all. I kept the width of everything but my banner images to 500 pixels so anyone can view my images from tablets to computers. One thing I'm still not certain on is the watermarks. I tried to place them so they were over lapping my work some, in a place not to distracting from the work, but also  hard enough for someone to erase to try to take the work as their own.

To store my albums I created in Photobucket, I had them all made into slide shows. Photobucket does this with a click of a button. And then I simply pasted the HTML code for the slide show into a new page in Blogger. I'm so excited blogger offers the addition of pages to their blogs. It allows me to add so much more content to my site... with more content coming soon.

You can check out my current portfolio here. If you are interested in having me on your design team or as a guest designer please contact me, and I'm sure we can work something out!

Thank you for looking.

A little Peter Pan

It all started with some bookmarks I am making for my God Daughter's 6th birthday... while those are not quite finished, I decided while I was waiting on the 6 year old's "decisions" on the bookmarks for her party favors that I would make a banner as a surprise for her with her favorite character right now Peter Pan! So what started out as going to be perhaps a simple banner, turned into a full day of assembling cuts from the Cricut to make this. I used the Disney Classic's Cartridge for all the shapes except Tinkerbell who I chose one from the Tinkerbell Cartridge instead and the letters are from the Blackletter Cartridge.



I used my alcohol based markers to add some extra shading to the characters. I also distressed the edges of everything with either brown or black ink. I added color scraps to the map behind the openings to add more dimension to it, and added scribbles with pens and markers to add more depth to them as well. I also used lots of foam pop dots to layer things at different levels to really add dimension. And what really makes everything pop is the Sakura Gelly Roller Clear Star pen that makes a lot of the accents glisten in real life. The banner spans about 4-5 feet when finished.

Thank you for looking!

Spectrum Noir Markers

I have discovered these markers at the Winter CHA 2012 show. They are a wonderful introduction into the world of Alcohol based markers. These are perfect for the crafter who wants the flexibility and look of alcohol markers, with a diverse range of colors, with out the expense or the guessing of what colors to buy and match.

As an introduction to these markers I'm offering these special prices through Friday, February 10, 2012. Be sure to check out the ULTIMATE DEAL it's almost too good to be true!

Visit my store to make your purchase. If you have any questions please email me.

CHA continued...

Moving beyond my love for all things Cricut... my next love is storage containers. I don't know makes me so happy to see containers, but it's a bit of an addiction I must say. Art Bin has come out with some wonderful magnetic inserts for the various metal dies that are on the market to cling to for nice slim storage.














Another great item I spied was the new basic grey Plumeria collection. This collection has hints of the most beautiful shades of purple. I can't wait to get my hands on this yummy collection to scrap some photos of ME.









I stopped by the Plaid booth to see what they were making. I took some time out of my day to decorate a canvas tote using the Martha Stewart paints, stencils, and brushes. I have been stalking these items at my local Michael's for some time now. I really loved how everything worked. She has even come up with her signiture blue painters tape! Now I can probably skip that, but it was fun to use everything that matched!


You can check out all of my favorites and fun finds on my Pinterest board.






Thank you for looking!

Winter CHA 2012 In review...

Today I had the opportunity to visit the Craft and Hobby Association trade show and explore what is up and coming in the crafting world. This years show there were sever come backs to the industry that have been lying low for the past few years. Heidi Swap is back with new papers and embellishments following her classic patterns but with new twists. One "twist" was her line of mistable papers and embellishments that can be misted, inked, chalked, etc to make fun multi-color custom papers and embellishments. These items were a standout for me from her collection. I'm always looking for multipurpose scrapbook supplies that are versatile... and being able to pick my own colors is fantastic.

Something near and dear to me with my love of my Cricut, was Provo Crafts releases... they had 3 major things that were notable to me: 1. A new cartridge "tags, bags, boxes and more #2", 2. A scoring blade/tool 3. Gel pens with holder. These three items may not seem like anything too special, but it's the combination of them that make them spectacular! The TBBM2 cartridge has been designed to work with the scoring blade and gel pens! The cartridge will ask for the scoring blade/tool thing to be installed during the cut, it will then scoring the folding lines into the images, instead of those silly slits that had been previous included on cartridges where the item was to be folded. This will allow us to make far superior boxes and bags. Additionally they have added some fonts or perhaps they are just sayings... I didn't get this clarified, but either way you can have hand written looking messages on your products right from the cartridge! It certainly adds a personal touch.

Here is a look at the scoring "blade" as I call it, though it doesn't cut it only scoring...

A quick peek at the gel pens... these look strikingly similar to products that have been on the market from 3rd party companies for quite some time.

Thank you for taking a look. I have lots more to come, but it has been a long day!

Less is best

This year I have chosen to incorporate the word LESS into my life. This can lead to lots of things... less stress, less over sleeping, less late nights and not getting enough sleep, less clutter... I think you get the idea of what LESS means to me. I have fallen off the LESS wagon a bit with some sho

pping on ebay... I have purchased an excessive number of cartridges this month... but I have paid way LESS then retail price on them!

One focus I have for this year is to have LESS clutter in my scrapbook room and keep every thing tidy so I can spend more time scrapbooking and being creative. I have lost the passion in the past 6 months and am looking forward to getting back. As you can see in my previous post I have my scrapbook room pretty organized. Everything basically has a place... so now I am fine tuning all the storage and organizational methods to make me more efficient and to keep the clutter at bay.

I started with a small project organizing a bag of cut ribbons and trims I have. I had seen some expensive hangers for the ribbon and though I could make my own. With some cheap chip board, a paper trimmer, and my trusty crop-a-dile whole punch. I cut some 2.5" x 3" pieces punched a variety of holes some small and some larger, being sure to leave enough border so the chipboard didn't tear. I also punched a hole at the top so I could hold them together with some binder rings or metal shower curtain hooks.

Thanks for looking!

Happy New Year

In with the new and out with the old. With 2012 here, it was time to get my scrap room back in order. It's been a long process that has consumed most of my free time in 2011... but I'm finally happy with the outcome. Despite needing to go through my stuff and purging everything has a place!

Let's take a tour of my space.



Thanks for looking! Now it's time to get back to creating!