Purple....

I don't know why I don't like the color purple... might be that whole Barney thing back when Emma was a baby, but I just don't like purple. I like purple things, like lilacs and grapes, but as far as using purple in my home decor, art or my layouts, nope, it's not gonna happen....

UNTIL now! I think I might be a convert!

I went to my LSS Art Tech on Saturday and met Debbie there. We shopped and I also got in touch with the owner who wanted me to do a few layouts. She wanted me to work with this Bobunny Jazmyne line.

I ended up just loving this layout, purple and all:


Here are a couple of close ups:


Used my Slice to cut these butterflies out of this pretty glitter paper, and also the letters below:




My sweet teen went to the Ohio State football game on Saturday with her friend. When she came home, she announced that is where she wants to go to college. I said what's wrong with Penn State or Pitt? LOL! I'd actually prefer her to go to Seton Hill College or Saint Vincent. Both have great art degrees and are within driving distance! ;)

Have a great day!

Friday Freebie!! Circle Card Cutable Files

Oh my the day has gotten away from me!

I've had so much energy I have been (brace yourself) cleaning! I did a ton of laundry today, cleaned my shower, cleaned up the kitchen and dusted the dining room.

In between the cleaning, I did make some cutable files from the card posted below.

Everything is sized to cut on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. The folded card is 5" x 5".

Here is the outside:


And the inside:


All the files are in one folder. It contains SVG, PNG and Jpeg files.

Here's the link.

Enjoy!!

Have a great weekend.

Round & Round

My first round card! :) Joscie totally inspired me to use my Silhouette, which has been sitting here gathering dust.

I made this pretty little circle card for my in-laws anniversary. I LOVE it! I'm so glad that I have the pattern now, I can make more. I drew everything in Adobe Illustrator, then cut it out on my Silhouette. I will have svg files later in the week for you, if you'd like to cut them out, too.



I used my Slice for the butterfly, then outlined it with some Stickles.

For the sentiment shape, you just cut out the shape, print your sentiment on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper using word or whatever program you want. Tape the shape over the word, using double sided tape. Also, tape down the top tip of the shape. It tends to bend over. Took me 3 tries before I fixed it. Just make sure your tape isn't super sticky. Stick it to your shirt first to get it fuzzy and take some of the tackiness off of it.



Pretty bow! I really like the width of this ribbon. I'd like to get some more.



Oh, I guess I should share my refrigerator story with ya... too funny.

We bought a new Samsung stainless steel fridge at Best Buy. Now, we weren't stupid about it, we measured our cabinets. We had 36 inches on the top, and about 35 1/2, due to the fact that the counter top was hanging over a bit, and there was about an inch of space to the right of our stove.

We looked and looked and found the one I fell in love with at Best Buy. You know how it is, you just MUST to have THAT one. No other would do. It had all the bells and whistles of the over 2 grand models, but for half the price. LED lights that slowly light up the longer the door is open, fancy buttons for the ice... easy access to the water filter. Nice shelves, that were closed so if you spill soy sauce in it, it doesn't drip down to all the other shelves.

We buy it on Saturday. We come home and measure. Hmmm, doesn't look like it's going to fit on the bottom. Top cabinets are OK. Matt takes the counter top off and cuts off an inch. Then he painstakingly shaves off about a half inch from the cupboard.

Tuesday the ginormous fridge arrives. The delivery guys take our old white ancient (14 year old) fridge and move it into the garage. (hello beer fridge) They bring in the new fridge, and take one look at the space and say, “That ain’t gonna fit.”

Oh no!

We tell them, just leave it where it is and we'll figure something out.

We remeasured the top, and assured ourselves that it will indeed fit. We decided to go to Lowes and get the waterline hookup and also look for a smaller base cabinet. Ours was 18 inches... we needed to go to 16. (alas, they don't make 16, we got a 15")

At Lowes I found an oak 15" cabinet that looked similar to ours. We get it home and I immediately say, "That doesn't match our cabinets at all."

Oi vay, what a fiasco!

Matt tells me that we are not taking it back. He had already opened the box. Oh well. He put the cabinet in, shaved off some more of the counter top, and we hook the waterline up... push the fridge back into the space and .... dang!! Now the WALL is in the way!! What the heck!! This space is supposedly designed for a refrigerator.

Well, we just have to have the fridge about 8 inches from the back wall in order for the freezer door to open. Can you believe this?

I was sooo upset. Crying that I had a "hillbilly" kitchen!

Sometime in the future, I will remodel the kitchen. For now, I'm stuck with the hillbilly cabinets and my shiny new fridge pulled too far from the wall. I think if I paint the cabinets, then they'll all be unified. Plus, I wanted to paint them anyway.

Here's the monster that caused all the problems:


Notice how the upper cabinets are a reddish stain, and the lower cabinet is quite a bit lighter and not reddish at all. Not to mention, a completely different style!!

I do love the shelves, and I have SO much room now!!


Look at all those healthy fruits and veggies in there. Dr. Oz would be proud!

Don't ya just love these lights??


Well, that's my fridge story. I swear, we live by Murphy's law. What can you do.

So, what's the moral of this story? I think it is you can make anything work if you try. ;)

Have a great day.

Cross Your Fingers...

I applied to be on Jessica Sprague's design team. You had to submit your 3 best digi layouts, showing different techniques.

Here's one of the layouts that I submitted. I was trying to make it look like a skateboard poster. I did it 8 1/2 x 11 so that I can print it out and start a digi album. I never print out my 12 x 12 digi pages. (blush)

I was super happy with it.

I do love photoshop... I use it everyday for work... I don't know what I would do without it!

Toot, toot!

Speaking of design teams, my local scrapbook store, Art Tech Supplies, asked me to be on their design team. I'm really excited. I love shopping there, they have the best scrappy stuff, tons of stamps, and lots of art stuff, like paints and inks and markers and copics (oh my!!).... and even some old school stuff like hot press board and rapidiograph pens. I can't wait to get some new stuff to play with. Well, actually, when I was there I did practically buy the entire line of MME Quite Contrary.

But wait, there's more... check it out, I'm in Scrapstreet Magazine, page 40, here's a link. I'm the third layout down. My friend Heather is the top one. I was quite honored to be asked by Nicole to be in Scrapstreet. That was my first time.

This week has just flown by, and I was super busy. We got a new fridge... what a fiasco... I'll save that story for next time, cause like I said before, Murphy's Law baby! Yep, that's my life!

I can't believe it's Friday already! Have a great weekend.

R&R

Took a little R&R last week. My left arm hurts. I have to have physical therapy so I can raise it up. I can put it to my shoulder now, and sleeping isn't as painful.

So, the dreaded pathology report came back... and in the words of the PA they were disappointing. I hate writing this... makes me want to cry... but the chemo did not work on the tumor and it grew while I was getting chemo from 4 cm to 7 cm. They also removed 15 lymph nodes, and 8 had cancer.

I was mad.

I asked them why they didn't do surgery in September back when the tumor was little... she said I would have had to have chemo anyway... I knew that, but at least it wouldn't have grown. Then she said, but had we did that, and you'd gotten chemo, then a year down the road I might have gotten cancer again, because they didn't know that that chemo didn't work. So, in a weird way, it's better that it happened this way. Now they know what doesn't work, so I can have chemo that will work.

Yes, I have to have more chemo. I don't know what kind yet, but I have an appointment with my oncologist on the 19th. She had mentioned a chemo pill that I could take.

All my doctors are women, by the way. Except my radiologist, who is a little Russian guy.

Anyway, they also can take my tumor, grow it in a lab, divide it up and try different chemos on it and see which one kills it. It's called microass.... something like that. I remember when she was saying it, I kept thinking "small butt", lol! I did look it up and saw the real name online.

Science is pretty amazing. I don't know if my oncologist will order that test or not, but I will be asking her. Why mess around and give me more draino that doesn't work. OMG, chemo is horrid.

I am just the epitome of Murphy's Law. It's always been like that for me. Can't get anything right the first time!

I feel 200% better knowing that the cancer is out of my body, tho. The chemo is to get any little cancer cell that might be floating around in my blood stream. Then I will also have radiation to kill any cells that might be around the incision area.



On a happier note... I did lots of layouts last week. I know, gimp arm and all! I did 4 digi early on in the week, since I only had to use my right arm... then on Sunday I did a paper layout.

Here's the paper one, I used super duper old Making Memories paper, that I was hording... silly woman!




Couple of close ups, I used my Slice to make these shapes:




I also made pillows, well, pillow slip covers. They're so fun and bright.... now I need a new sofa! LOL!


I'll share my digi layouts later in the week.

Hope you have a great week, and please, please feel your boobies... I don't want you to go what I have to go through. Stop putting it off, just do it!

"Bikini" in the Old...

If anyone has or had a daughter in Daisy Scouts or Girl Scouts or have been a Girl Scout yourself, you might know the Girl Scout song... “make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

Well, my daughter insisted that the song was, “make new friends, bikini in the old...”

My husband and I would just laugh and laugh. 7 years later and she’s still a funny girl.

I used the Bikini in my title for this layout. How cute are these little 6 year olds? In a blink of an eye I now have a teenager! When did that happen??



I used the new Cosmo Cricket papers Material Girl. Fun stuff.

Here are a couple close ups:


I ran my pink polka dot Bo Bunny cardstock thru my printer to get the black part of the title on, then I adhered the Thickers.



The butterfly I cut out using my Slice (we are still having a hot and heavy love affair!) and my Martha Stewart loopy punch (coming in at a close second as my other fav!).

Since I can’t quite move my left arm, I’ve been working on some digi projects. Then it hit me.... why not do 8 1/2 x 11 digi? I mean, I can print that out at home. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier! I have all these digi layouts that are just stuck in my computer, but now, if I do them 8 1/2 x 11, I can print them! (Can you see the light bulb glowing above my head? It’s an energy star one, so it takes a while to light up! lol!)

BC Surgery Update....

Well, it has been 4 full days since my surgery. I feel OK. I slept A LOT over the weekend. Pain meds will do that to you. I tried to tough it out yesterday and only took 1 pill before bed, but had all these weird feelings in my arm and chest... not necessarily pain, but I guess all the nerves are cut, and I get these little zings like you hit your funny bone. Very weird. The hardest thing was taking a shower. Also getting dressed, since I can't lift my arm up, that was kinda tough. But, other than that, I'm OK. The incision feels really tight, but I'm sure it will feel more normal in time. I just hope that my pathology results come back negative. Please, please, please. Scary stuff.

Today I see a home health nurse, and tomorrow I will see the surgeon. I'm hoping she will take out this drain. Very strange little thing and quite annoying, I must say.

Other than that, I feel pretty good. I'd like to take a walk, and it's sooo pretty out. I probably won't make it far. Sometimes I feel like a 40 year old inside an 80 year old body!

This too shall pass.

Have a wonderful day. Take time to stop and smell the roses, or tulips, or heck, even the coffee!! ;)