I've seen plenty of people on Instagram do photo challenges for month and I've not gotten into that myself... but I always admired people with the discipline to stick to a goal for any length of time. I stumbled onto Kathy Racoosin's 30 Day Coloring Challenge over at her blog: The Daily Marker.

I will attempt to commit to coloring 1 thing a day.. for 30 days.. I can do this, right? We shall see...

Here are my efforts for Day 1.
In truth, I started coloring this over the weekend and didn't finish, but finishing my coloring still counts, right?

A thank you card for Grace! She's traveling on her own from Singapore and agreed to carry packages for me and my IG friend Trisha to swap. Isn't that so nice of her? I'm driving up to the city to meet with her briefly and swap the gifts. Trisha already treated her to dinner and I added a little Starbucks gift card in this handmade card. I was inspired by Simon Says Stamp's card kit last month. A lot of   Card makers seemed to make a design like this. It's so cute!

Happy World Card Making Day! 

A couple of weekends ago, I hosted my first card-making party at home! I don't have a lot of room at my house, but I have plenty of supplies. I figured it'd a good way to get together with my friends and use some supplies while having fun and eating food :D Teresa has made quite a few cards before, Lieh started making cards recently, and Alice had never made a card before! It was a great opportunity to try new things and work on whatever projects we had. I'm definitely looking forward to doing it again!

Straight up, I'm not so great about making baby cards. Last year I attended quite a few baby showers which was great fun minus rooms full of screaming children (lovely...). I am not in any way against children and I do love them I can't just be around a whole bunch of them for hours on end. lol. That being said, I love being an auntie! I have 8 nieces and nephews by blood and many more whom despite not being blood related, I'm close to and they still feel like family.

After I saw the release of Lawn Fawn's Hello Baby - I had to have it! I didn't care if I made cards for babies or for any other reason. I just LOVED the little animals!~ Google results have tons of adorable cards using this set.

Stamp: Lawn Fawn - Hello Baby
Dies: Lawn Fawn - Hello Baby lawn cuts, Impression Obsession - Spiral Flowers dies

I've been making cards for about a year now and my stamp collection has grown to crazy proportions! Some girls want handbags, some want shoes.. I LOVE stamps and other crafting things and I MUST HAVE them! I finally figured out how I can reference my stamps relatively quickly and it'll help me remember what I have in my stash. I made a sort of stamp dictionary. The closest example I've seen of this style is here on the sweet stamp shop blog in a post by Colie Kumar. I've come across quite a few examples of organizing but this project was more for my own ease of reference than full on organizing (because right now, most of my stamps are just in a bin ~ LOL).
I started by printing the stamp images on paper and cutting them out. Then adhering the printed images onto 4x6 journaling cards. I keep them all together with a binder ring in the upper left corner of the book. I have stamps from the same brand all together but not alphabetized or anything (maybe I should do that?).
I created a cover card with the list of categories I most likely would reference when digging through the book looking for just the right stamps for my project. I had a set of colored thin washi tapes from Michaels and used those as the reference colors for each topic. Every reference card has whatever colored washi tabs are related to the topics on that stamp set. This totally came in handy during my card party!


Stamp brands I have:
Paper Smooches, Stamps of Life, Avery Elle, Simon Says Stamp, Winnie & Walter, Papertrey Ink, Crafter's Companion, Hero Arts, Sweet Stamp Shop, Altenew, Wplus9, Penny Black, Some Odd Girl, Lawn Fawn, KaiserCraft, Technique Tuesday, Stampin' Up, Unity Stamp Co, Mama Elephant, Studio Calico, Studio L2e, Pink Paislee, Stampendous, Impression Obsession

Used my first feather dies! When feathers were all the rage in papercrafting, I was still on the sidelines shaking my head b/c I didn't understand the style. Maybe it was too bohemian for me? I dunno! I think even now, I'm just slowly getting used to it. I got suckered into buying the Spellbinders Shapeabilities Peacock Feather die set. It's out of my comfort zone but I want to love them! lol - I know.. I'm weird.
The dies have embossing lines in the feathers too which is a nice detail you won't notice on a patterned paper. I just realized that my embossed background looks like chicken wire when it's next to the feathers. BOK BOK!
Die: Spellbinders Shapeabilities - Peacock Feathers
Embossing Folder:

For these 2 cards, I embossed the background with sizzix embossing folders then blended distress inks using a blending sponge. Look! I did a background ASKEW! haha~ I'm a stickler for things being lined up so this was a challenge for me (like it is every time I attempt a skewed background).
Stamps/Dies: Stamps of Life - candy2share
Embossing folders: Sizzix - Smile, Sizzix - Polka Dots

As part of the card/gift, the recipient would be getting 2 gift cards. I created 2 gift card pockets out of fiber paper and die cut some extra sakura blossoms to decorate with. My friend requested that the recipient's name was on the card so I stamped "Charlene" using Milo's ABCs from Lawn Fawn and the  "Congratulations" stamp is from Avery Elle.


On the back, went with a humorous stamp from Sweet Stamp Shop. And of course I signed it in lime green to match the polka dot paper on the front.


I went one step further and made a coordinating sushi themed envelope. I stamped it in Memento Dew Drop ink Pear Tart.


Stamps: Lawn Fawn - Let's Roll, Avery Elle - Oh Happy Day, Lawn Fawn - Milo's ABCs, Sweet Stamp Shop - Made By #2
Ink: Memento Dew Drops - Pear Tart & Angel Pink, Hero Arts Dye - Black, Hero Arts Shadow - Bubble Gum

Last weekend, my friends and I went on an adventure.. a Scrapbook Expo adventure! It started at 8am when Alice and I arrived at the convention center first and got ourselves a golden ticket to enter for a grand prize drawing. Teresa came shortly after and we dropped in our tickets for the raffle. By 9am, the shopping area opened. I'm not sure angels attend scrapbook conventions but I'm pretty sure I heard some singing off in the distance when I walked inside. There was so much to see and tons of people there for shopping and cropping. We set budgets (which only Alice adhered to) and were on a mission. See it all and shop on the 2nd round. We didn't really stick to our guns on that either. Especially since some stuff was just worth getting right away if we thought they'd run out. After a few hours, we were spent (and had spent plenty!) and I went in to the office to get some work done. It was a crazy day.





 One of the last booths we visited on our first round through was the bee creative shop where Alice was the first to spot these adorable stamps from Crafters Companion. Teresa and I might've gone a little crazy at this shop. But the images were SO CUTE!
The image below is from one of the stamp sets I bought from the Everyday Barkley line called Scent of Summer. Super cute! I colored it with my prismacolor pencils and gamsol.

2 of my sisters, my parents, and I all have 2 cats per family. Meaning in my immediate family, we have 8 cats!

Oliver and Emma are my dad and mom's pride and joy these days. Aren't they sweet?

I wanted to make card for my dad that he'd want to keep and smile at which basically means it can't just be a generic card with regular dude stuff. Sweet Stamp Shop Stamps to the rescue!


Stamps: Sweet Stamp Shop - Kitty Cat

I was on a roll this weekend since I got my Too Hip stamp set from Sweet Stamp Shop. Isn't it TOO cute!? Looking especially hip in his party hat. I spotted this tube of square colorful confetti at Michaels on the non-scrapbooking side of the store. I thought they'd be perfect for shaker cards! Aren't they fun? Love the colors and the variety of sizes. Go hippo, it's your birthday.. *doing the cabbage patch*.