Pictures in Art - Wall Hanging

While this may never end up on my wall I do love how it turned out. I woke up dreaming about this project a few weeks ago and couldn't be more pleased to have it in my hands. This was the class 1 project for my Pitctures in Art class. . . Yes, I manufactured these by hand and it was a LOT of chipboard, but totally worth it! The overall size of this project is 8.5 X 11" and there are (8) 2-sided inserts. I still plan on adding photos to the inner and outer covers as well as adding some journaling. This showcase album features our family over the past few years in our favorite California get-a-ways.















The best part of making a project like this is the extra measure of gratitude I feel for my life, family, opportunities and experiences. There is a sense of satisfaction here that is hard to explain. I'm hopeful that the 7 members of my class walked away feeling it too.

Getting It Done - Sarsaparilla

These are the pages my Get it Done Class made on June 13th. We had such a great time and although they were worried about making their photos work with the class everyone's pages turned out fantastic! We had one class member use these layouts to do a "Being Joel" through the years display. Another used her Wyoming vacation pictures. Cindy used Sedona Red Rock pictures and even though the layouts were the same each went home with their own treasured memories! Shar and Laurel still need to show me their finished pages. . . they promised!!! My photos, as you can see, are of a field trip Mikensee took when she was barely 8 to the Pioneer Living History Museum and what was the very last Laura Ingals Wilder day. The class this month focused on a collage page to help deal with the "left over" pictures you have once you've basically scrapbooked your event. Sometimes as scrapbookers we feel we have to do a 2 page layout for every photo we ever take. The collage technique helps you overcome this by allowing you to feature many, many pictures (many of the not so good ones) and keep the flow of the event without just trashing it!

A Day Stamping With Friends

Lois, Jen and I got together two weeks back for a little grown up girl bonding time. (Actually it was just our excuse to play, but we can't say that in public!) We'd like to do it more regularly, but it seems like we manage about twice a year. It was just what I needed. . . thanks girls!

Jen came up with this beautiful card:




Lois showed us this cute card with fun hanging sign trick:


and I showed them another envelope trick. . . What is my deal with envelopes anyway??!!?? I actually found the tutorial for this here, but of course this is my own spin:





Our session left me feeling renewed and inspired! Hope posting these inspires you too!

That Explains It!

Where have I been?

I've been right here, but my Hard Drive Crashed and Jessica dropped my camera on the same day. I'm finally back up and running (close anyway) so I have so many projects to update you on! My family blog and Moments in Time Blog are also slowly getting worked on. If you care to "SEE IT ALL" you may want to check in and look because I am going to back date some posts to keep an order to the whole ordeal!

Also, if you don't have MOZY, you want to sign up today. I would have lost 13000+ pictures and tons of files without it. I don't know if they have a referral program, but if they do, please put my name in the referral box. It's the best $4.95a month I'll ever spend! Why did I pick Mozy and not Carbonite? Mozy also backs up all EXTERNAL devices which is the HD I lost and Carbonite does not!

P.S. I signed up 2 months ago on a whim. . . That whim saved 5 years of photographs!

CaRDs BoX and a little bit more!

So here it is. The Card Box I designed for my 1st class of the 2008-2009 class year. I believe that all 8 of the class members lucky enough to buy a seat were happy with their results. You may want to look quick because I do have a publication call and as soon as I mail it I have to pull it from any online art gallery so look quick!






So here it is. The Card Box I designed for my 1st class of the 2008-2009 class year. I believe that all 8 of the class members lucky enough to buy a seat were happy with their results. You may want to look quick because I do have a publication call and as soon as I mail it I have to pull it from any online art gallery so look quick!

Ingredients:

CTMH - Boom-di-Ada Papers and Cardstock, Chipboard Letters, Ric Rac,Buttons & Ink in Hollyhock, Barn Red, Sunkiss Yellow, Garden Green, Olive,Hollyhock, and Autumn Terracotta
CTMH Stamps - Be True, Cottage Floral, Spot On Background, and Say it in Style
Diane Ribbon - green silk
Joanne Crafts - Steamer Trunk 11 1/4" X 8 X 6 1/4" deep
Krylon Spray Paint - Cottage White

Basic Instructions: Paint Steamer Trunk to coat all surfaces; especially metal embellishments. Once dry, sand metal parts Cut paper to fit. Using good adhesive cover trunk. To make the corners I used an embossing stylus and then cut away the corners. (Much easier than creating a template!) Decorate as desired!

RAK Thank You Received

I FINALLY sent out my Blog Candy and while I was at it (and for good measure) I made a few extra packages. I sent one to Jiffy (recovering from a cancer scare), and a couple to fellow PTI friends who also have sets of twins. This is a thank you I received from Katie Renz in Bellingham, WA. Thank you Katie! (P.S.) She made this with some of the goodies in her 2 Liter Bottle. . .

Inchies Done Up

A while ago I posted the results of the inchie swap I was in. Here is a finished inchie project using the same inchies:
Quick and simple. . . 10 minutes from start to finish. Now that's a quick card!

Chance for Candy

Stamps, Paper, Scissors and Donkey Smiles: 5000 Mark Blog Candy!

Monogram Refrigerator Magnet Tutorial

Just a reminder;
Daily Blog Posts: Moments in Time
Detailed Family Posts: Funk Family Blog
All blog links are located to the right on this blog~Rachele

A Gift For Me

My Sweet daughter Mikensee made me a couple of great Mother's Day gifts and I just had to share!

First this altered tin stuffed with Kit Kat's. . . Yum!


Didn't she do a great jog? She's only 11 and she did this in her room completely on her own. She used her paper stash, but raided the tin and flowers from me. She only has her own white ribbon, so she colored it with her markers to match! Clever girl!

Then she made me this flower pot/pen holder. She made this with her Achievement Day leaders. Thanks KC, you know it made my day!

It's a Hybrid!

This is my first digital/Hybrid project. You can see the pages on my

digital ink blog

from the link to the right if you want to see them. I like how it turned out, but I have a long way to go before digital is faster for me than paper. . . There is a LOT to learn!

Happiness. . .

is a project once envisioned, realized:





Mini folio scrapbook/card. Approximately 3.5" X 5.5".

Isn't it cute?

CTMH: Garden Green, Olive, New England Ivy, Pansy Purple CS and INK
CTMH: Happiness Is and Serendipity
Ribbon: Diane Ribbons

Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

In an effort to meet some of my personal goals, I've been working on my blogs. I will have an all new look really soon, but even before then you will find new content on some of the blog links from the right bar of this blog. I am also changing my publishing to partial articles so that you will need to click on and link to my blog for the full content. I'm doing this, not to make it hard on you, but so you can easily click the other linked blogs without having to subscribe to them.

New Blogs:

Our Story Is Here - The Funk Family Blog

Moment in Time - A Daily Photo Log

My Gratitude Blog


In addition to these I'm working on My Gallery Blog so that all of my artwork will be in one place (you can see small portions of it here and portions on my CMTH site), My Ink Boutique Classes, and a For Sale Blog listing items I am creating to sell, project kits and items from my stash that need to find a new home!

Hope you like the changes and find them to be an improvement. If you have comments, please post them here! You don't have to be a registered blogger to comment. You can post an anonymous comment, but please sign it with who you are! I'm excited about all of the changes, but can't wait for the unveiling of my blog make-over!

Chance To Win

CTMH is offering a great May National Scrapbooking Promotion! From my web-site you can see a tip a day for the entire month of May, enter a drawing to win a Magic Moments Scrapbooking Kit (a $49.95 US retail value) during May or win your entire shopping cart free. You can also purchase the Magic Moments with special incentives as well. IN ADDITION to this drawing, one customer per day is getting their entire shopping cart for free! All you have to do is a place an order through my site for your chance to win! Each day they post an update to see who's won!

PTI Challenge, Past Due

But hopefully worth the post date!

I signed up to do the PTI Bloghop, but my blog wasn't chosen this month (random selection process), so I didn't worry about completing them in time for the hop, but I loved my idea so I had to make it come to life! The challenge was to use a contact sheet of samples of the newest PTI BT papers. Basically 1.5 inch square samples downloaded and printed on your choice of materials. Here is what I made using this contact sheet:

A Mother's Work

Thank you for wondering where I have been. Your emails and thoughts are appreciated and heard!

I have been taking care of Wyatt, dealing with a little personal illness and tooth ache issue, feeding, bathing, cleaning up after and teaching my 4 little darlings, finishing Dawn's baby shower ensemble (pictured below), doing a little yard work, washing piles of laundry, cleaning house (my never ending nemesis), caring for new baby bunnies (also pictured below), helping the girls prepare for their piano recital, getting further behind, looking forward to summer, taking care of church and my callings and responsibilities that go along with them, and handling my real estate business with one closing and another listing going into escrow this month along with keeping the other sellers happy in this market. (Mikensee who has been doing sentence diagramming for the past 2 years would kill me if she read the previous sentence and I told her to diagram it!) I've been living in a bit of a funk and trying to work out some personal life goals (not there yet, but still working!) I've decided that I don't bounce like I used to and that twins are still a lot of work, even if they are 4 and getting ready for kindergarten. I've also decided that motherhood, although filled with fleeting rewards, is hard and not all that fulfilling in the short term! I know motherhood is wonderful; a true gift and I love it! I wouldn't trade it for anything (not even the NYC single professional living in a pristine penthouse, childhood dream I once lived for) but I'm just being real. There is nothing rewarding or glamorous about 4 year old temper-tantrums or 6 year old stubbornness or preteen drama - and yes I'm living all of these realities! I gained some much needed perspective from my friend Tamara this week who is the mother of my other favorite set of twins. It is so easy to get caught up in the daily drudgery that sometimes it seems like mountains of laundry and fingerprint smudges on every touchable surface are all that I can see. So I did what I tell my kids to do when they are upset and I took a deep breath. Tonight I baked some cookies just because I wanted some and I'm taking a minute to blog a bit, because I want to. I might still take a bubble bath and paint my toenails! Tomorrow will still be tough, but school will be out soon and I'm going to try and just have some fun. I'm going to enjoy my kids and work on some projects I really want to do, but don't usually allow myself to. I'm going to try not to wait to have fun until after all the work is done, because lets face it, a mother's work is never done.

Here is the finished Baby Shower Ensemble:




Here are Pork Chop and Petunia (the calico):



They are already (in less than a week) 3 times this size and Petunia has outgrown Pork Chop. They have no ears (we'll call it natural causes, but they were eaten) so they look like guinea pigs more than bunnies, but they sure are cute. We had 4, but lost two due to other "natural" accidents in the night. Mooey was my favorite because he looked just like a little holstein cow.

Please say a little prayer for Copper. We haven't seen him since this morning and it just isn't like him to be separated from Penny for too long.

This is my two up and coming concert pianists (their performances will be featured in a day or two on The Funk Family Blog.)




I hope you aren't drowning in drudgery at your house. If you are, please take a moment and think about it. Life happens only once. I hope to live it and not just clean it!

Take Two!

That's what you get with identical twins! So here we are a month later and guess where I spent my day? You guessed it! Wyatt had his tonsils and adenoids taken out today.
So much for my plans to wait until after summer. At Walker's surgical check up last week, Dr. S looked in Wyatt's throat and made us the appointment for today. FORTUNATELY after my last experience things were much improved. Maybe they actually read my survey and took drastic improvement measures. Perhaps we just had better luck. Maybe I wasn't so nervous (nope, that isn't it!) Or, we just had a completely different team. In any case, things went much better. Wyatt was so stinking cute. His surgery was later in the day and he just kept asking, "Okay, can I have my french fry's now?" I promised he could have french fry's after the surgery if he still wanted them. The poor kid was starving! No stickers today either. . . Wyatt got dinosaurs! They even gave us some to take home to Walker.




He woke up quickly from anesthesia and freaked! The Anesthesiologist quickly gave him some pain med. . . unfortunately he then went to the nurses, still freaked and they gave him a second dose. We had to wait in recovery a while longer (which might have aided the more relaxed tone of today's events) to make sure he was okay from the double dose of pain killer, but after the intial sobbing he fell into a deep sleep and slept until we got through the pharmacy and almost done getting gas. . . he was ready for McDonald's! He didn't wolf it down and only ate a few bites, but bless his heart, he got his fry's!

We were once again warned that the worst is yet to come. . . been there done that! Bring it on!!!