The one where I get engaged!

Welcome back fellow DIY-ers!!

OMG its Christmas Eve!!! Are you ready?
Im not! Still some wrapping to do :)

But the real reason I have been quiet is...

I GOT ENGAGED!!!!!

My days have been taken up with contacting friends and family and not as much blogging.

I have a Christmas pillow post for you tomorrow and expect some wedding planning posts in the future. You know I will be doing lots of DIY!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

The one with a Christmas Tradition

Welcome back fellow DIY-ers!!

With less than 2 weeks to Christmas I am starting to look forward to the events coming up.
If I survive this finals week.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is exchanging ornaments.

My parents started getting {at least} one ornament for me every year since I was born and they kept a list of which ornament was received each year. 

I have carried the tradition on with The Boyfriend and continue to do it with my Mom.

My family also does an ornament exchange instead of exchanging presents. Everyone brings one ornament already wrapped up. We put them in a big pile in the middle of the room and we start picking one by one {youngest first}. The fun part is that you can "steal" someone else's ornament if you really like it, instead of picking a new one from the pile. We have been doing this for years and its really fun. So everyone leaves with a new ornament for their tree :)
And I am hosting the ornament exchange at our new house for the first time. 
I am so excited. Lots of pictures to come!!

So when this Teresa Collins December daily album showed up on a deal-a-day site for half off, I immediately knew I wanted to do an album about all of my ornaments.

I have a page for each years ornaments, and anything I remembered about them from way back. I sat down with my mom for my early years to see what she remembered. 

Its getting pretty thick!

The first page has a picture of the tree I decorate every year {that was my Grandma's}, and all my ornaments put out on my coffee table when I was getting ready to take all the pictures. There are multiple layers there. They don't all fit on my small tree. 

I have through 1999 done. I still have to add the years and add some embellishments to the rest of the pages. I hope to have this done before my family comes for Christmas so they can see how important our traditions are to me. 

It will definitely be one that I continue to do and will pass along to my children someday.

What is your favorite tradition?

The one with 2 get well cards

Welcome back fellow DIY-ers!!

2 more cards coming your way this week! 

I have had a bunch of requests for get well cards lately so I thought I would create some for my stash. 

I made 2 similar cards with the same stamp set, Perfect Pennants, from Stampin Up! I also used one of their small paper packs.

On the white card I used the Arrows embossing folder to give it some texture.

On the brown version I thought it looked fine without the texture so I just added a little more glitter.

I inked everything with Stampin Up! Bermuda Bay  and used The Twinery twine in Caribbean.

That's it! Quick and simple today :)

Thanks for stopping by.

The one with a pretty card

Welcome back fellow DIY-ers!!

Quick Quotes, one of my favorite scrapbook companies, is having a design team call!

I submitted a couple of projects I've done recently, but wanted to create something new using their products. I am always in need of cards at work, so I grabbed a 6x6 paper pad of their Stowaway line and got to work.

I made the background using a stencil, 2 colors of Quick Quotes's powder puff chalking ink (Caribbean Blue and Creamy Cocoa) and gold shimmer mist. I inked the areas I wanted blue, and the areas I wanted darker brown, then without lifting the stencil I sprayed it all with the shimmer mist. Where there was no color, it is a light gold, but it made it all shimmery.

I cut some pieces out with some dies and my cuttlebug, found a chipboard square from a different Quick Quote kit and cut out a saying from the same paper bad. I also used a piece of torn paper and a circle for the middle of my flower. I sprayed all of that with the same gold shimmer spray from the background and inked the edges with the same two colors. I stamped a script on the chipboard piece and the background and glued everything down. After a flower and a little bit of glitter glue, it was done!

I love the way it turned out. I hope I inspire you to create your own backgrounds!

Thanks for stopping by

The one with a craft room update

Welcome back fellow DIY-ers!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Time to share a {very messy} craft room update!

As I mentioned in a previous post I am giving all the furniture in my craft studio a face lift (like everything else in my house!) 

I decided to make everything white! It is an easy color that will go with anything 

{should I decide down the road that I hate purple, but I don't see that happening}

The drawers looked like this to start:

Typical multicolored Joann Fabric's storage drawers

I laid everything out in the garage

(and you can see the last set of yellow shelves that need painted white here)

and sprayed!!

I used the same spray paint I used here to spray paint a glass bowl.

I did the inside, the sides and the front. I left the bottom colored since you don't see it and I was trying to get away without having to buy more spray paint 

I did a double coat on everything to really cover the color so I went though almost 4 cans

Please excuse the mess you are about to see! I have been trying to work on projects while still finishing up the rest of the storage for this room. So not everything has a home yet.

Here are the drawers in the room. I am loving how well everything looks white!

The taller drawers are in their final home. 

The short drawers go in another corner that is currently filled with mess. 

This corner is where the shower drawers will go. Above them will go white floating shelves.

You can also see hints of {at least} 3 projects you will see on the blog sometime soon in this picture. :)

I am also still deciding on what size table I want to put in the room so I am currently working on a folding table - which I feel is just adding to the general feeling of mess. But it is at least something for me to use until I figure it out. Any suggestions to help me in that process?

Thanks for stopping by!