I know, it's not even Christmas yet

but check out these cute Valentine's Goodie Bags by Elle's Studio, releasing Monday at jessicasprague.com:

Three "just for me" layouts

So often, the layouts I do are to fulfill creative team requirements. These three are just for me :)

Credits:Kissin' Frogs by Nikki Epperson, Solo Act 2 by Fizzy Pop Designs

Credits: Ho Ho Ho by Chelles' Creations, Sweet Starts Volume 1 by Nikki Epperson

Credits: Friendship Collab Part 2 by Jaclyn Bernardo Designs, No Matter the Miles by Lauren Grier

No title needed! :)

All items from the Daisy Jane collection by Carina Gardner, available at JessicaSprague.com.

Christmas trees and random attitude

Some layouts from this week :)

Credits: Believe in the Magic by Danielle Engebretson
Credits: 12 Days - the Kit by Mari Koegelenberg
Credits: Crabby Kid by Laura Banasiak and Jennifer Fox

Hybrid makes it easy!

I absolutely love printing my own gift bags, boxes and tags - it's so easy to perfectly customize them to look exactly the way you want them to look.

Here are a couple recent projects. The first uses Christmas Goodie Bags and Christmas Recipe Cards by Elle's Studio - the bags are the perfect size to slip in six small cookies and a gift card!


And the second project just adds a sparkly bow and Christmas Gift Tags (also by Elle's Studio) to locally made candles to make a simple gift!

Thanksgiving 2010

Family, food and fun! Layout uses a template by Jessica Sprague, a recolored button from Liv.E's Winter Breeze element pack, and Echo Park's Abundance Papers and Elements.

The photo says it all :)

Credits: Yummers by Lauren Reid

Squeee!

Here's dress 2! The chiffon has sparkles in it, which you can't really see in the photo but my princess loves!

I did it!

First, I should tell you that I am NOT a seamstress. I can do straight stitches, pretty much - I'm good for hemming, mending and my short foray into quilting, when I did machine piecing. But I was reading one of my favorite blogs - Make It and Love It - and came across this tutorial for repurposing a t shirt into a dress. HAD to try it - Alexa has a bunch of these in her closet and I wanted to see if I could make one for cheapy cheapy.

It WAS cheapy cheapy! I found junior fit t shirts at AC Moore 2/$7 - these are terrific and the small fits my size 6x daughter. Alexa picked out the fabric, which was on clearance at Joann's for $4 a yard - I needed 3/4 of a yard - so the dress cost me a grand total of $6.50.

Because of the length of the shirt, I didn't need the fabric tube described in the tutorial - I just sewed the ruffles right onto the shirt. This means of course that the ruffles show over the top, rather than being under the shirt. I think the finished product is cute either way!

It's not 100% perfect - the ruffles on the top layer are a little uneven and the stitching isn't perfectly straight - but all in all, I think it turned out great. The layers are nice and even, even though you can't see it super well in the photo. Go me!!! :)

It's beginning to look a lot like

winter! I have tons and tons of Christmas decorations, but I never know what to do with my house after the Christmas decorations have been put away and there are still a few months until spring and spring decorating. I decided to make a winter themed banner to hang above my fireplace. To create it, I used the easy-peasy template from Build a Banner: Rectangle by iKari Designs and gorgeous new papers (releasing at jessicasprague.com on Monday) by Splendid Fiins - Winter Wonderland Patterned Paper Pack. I added some transparent embossing powder over the letters, some stickles over the circle of dots, and some glittery dimensional snowflake stickers by Jolees. I wish you could see how glittery and sparkly the banner is in real life! Hopefully the closeup gives you at least a little idea. Enjoy!

Can you hear me screaming?

First things first :) - it's new release day at The Digichick!! Since I've been out of scrapping commission for a while, it feels REALLY good to have a bunch of stuff for you to look at!

And the big news - BasicGrey digital products are now available at The Digichick!!!!! If you were at any point a paper scrapper, you know what huge news that is, and I am so thrilled to be able to work with their gorgeous digital yumminess.

So here's what I've been up to - credits under each!
Credits: Le Chayim by ViVa Artistry, Sweet Starts Vol 11 by Nikki Epperson

Credits: A Happy Place by A Joyful Heart and Designs by Jen Yurko

Credits: Urban Coutre by BasicGrey

Credits: Lollipop Shoppe by Basic Grey

We're back from Florida and some good stuff!

Well, it's been an eventful couple weeks! Have I mentioned that the cat pulled a full glass of water over on my laptop and drying it out for two weeks did not work? Limping along with Gimp has been awful (especially on my tiny little netbook screen) and I'm still mostly laptopless. A new one is coming with a very long delivery wait (thank you, Dell), so I loaded PSE on Adam's computer yesterday and I'll be scrapping some over the next couple weeks, when I can squeeze time in between his poker tournaments! And I learned something really cool - did you know you can buy a "hard drive enclosure" for your internal hard drive, effectively making it an external drive? I can't tell you how comforting it is to have my hard drive accessible - even though I back up my files obsessively (I've posted about that a lot), I still have favorites and application preferences and all my PSE presets that are in application data folders that AREN'T backed up. But now I still have them!

In other news, we were in Florida last week visiting The Mouse, Adam's family (mom, grandma, aunt & uncle) and my parents. It was a really fun and relaxing week - except for the frantic call we received from the petsitter on Monday saying Archie would not or could not get up. He's 11 1/2, which is old for a German shepherd, so I had some not so nice thoughts about what that might mean. Thoughts I definitely DID NOT want to be facing while on vacation 1000 miles from home. Adam flew home Tuesday morning and thankfully my old guy (Archie, not Adam) has Lyme disease, which is treatable. He's much better but still wobbly. And Adam got a nice vacation away from the kids while I stayed with them at my mom and dad's. He ended up flying back down on Saturday, just in time for me to pick him up at the airport and continue the long drive home to Pennsylvania.

OOOOkkkay then. So that's the personal news. On the creative team front, I haven't been doing much (you know, no scrapping computer), but I definitely wanted to make sure you're aware of the upcoming FREE class at Jessica Sprague:

And, I was actually able to get another hybrid project done! I hate that I can't effectively edit images and the quality of the photo is so poor, but there you have it. This little bag was so much fun to make and would be perfect for little Christmas gifts. I used Perfect Packaging: Boxy Bag Curved by iKari Designs and the soon-to-be-released Dashes Through the Snow paper and elements packs by Echo Park.

And yes, Christmas is coming!!!

Grateful

Credits: Season of Thankfulness by The Digichick Designers

A great gift for book lovers!

I have a lot of book lovers in my life, so when I saw these brand new create-your-own bookplates by LivE (releasing at jessicasprague.com on Monday 11/8) I shouted out loud! What a super easy peasy gift idea! I coupled the bookplates with Perfect Packaging: Stationary Box Template by iKari Designs and Coquette: Damsel papers by Carina Gardner and made a super cute gift set. *NOTE: You will need to resize the box template to make it the appropriate size for your bookplates! :)

Hope this gives you some inspiration!

(Sorry about the photo quality. My cat pulled a glass of water over onto my scrapping laptop and I'm limping along on my netbook using Gimp rather than PSE.)

Trick or Treat 2010

I've posted on Facebook and in a bunch of forums about the bizarre central PA practice of trick or treating the Thursday before Halloween, so I'll spare you the rant. It resulted in a cute layout, though! The layout showcases new products by Creativity by Crystal available at jessicasprague.com on Wednesday 11/3, as well as stitches from Sew Crafty: Messy Stitches Volume 1 by Splendid Fiins. Enjoy!

Before and After - One or Two?

I'm hosting this week's challenge on The Digichick blog - it's a before and after challenge focusing on fonts as a design element. Come and play with me and you might win a $10 gift certificate to the store!

Credits: Little Rabble Rouser, Little Rabble Rouser Stackables and Little Rabble Rouser Page Edgers, all by Danielle Engebretson.

Easy peasy gift idea

I'm always looking for hand-made holiday gift ideas, and this letter sized portrait template set by iKari: Create a Calendar: 2011 Simply Circles Portrait is perfect! It's so easy to get a few photos of each of my nephews and create a "grandchildren" calendar for my parents (and then it's easy to take those same photos and make a surprise gift for my brother and sister).

Because the templates are letter sized, they're easy to print on any home printer, or you can resize them to make a desktop-sized gift!

To finish mine off, I used Walk in the Park Paper Pack 1 and Walk in the Park Paper Pack 2 by Echo Park. Hope you enjoy!

Fall fun

Credits: Stacked: Wonky and Midnight Crow by Chelle's Creations

A couple layouts and a FUN project!

Ok, I gotta say - playing around with these mask templates (Masquerade by Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs) is one of the most fun hybrid projects I've done in a long time! Alexa and Owen both LOVE to play dress up and this template set has lots and lots of possible combos - from sweet to spooky! Alexa had a lot of fun helping me pick out digital papers (from Elise Hansen's kit Spooky) and other embellishments. Please excuse the crappy photo - the masks are super cute IRL and Alexa and I have a bunch of others planned!


And you all know how much I love Mari Koegelenberg - check out this beautiful, non-traditional fall kit - Falling for You:

And finally - check out my beautiful ballerina!! I just love this soft kit - Give - by Design by Heather T. The awesome frame is from Layered Frames by ViVa Artistry:
Enjoy!

Almost ready

to hibernate!! I'm sure I've blogged about this before (probably like last week and my sieve of a mind has just forgotten), but there is something about fall that makes me want to cook, bake, and generally get ready to hibernate. Yesterday we went to our local farm stand (which is really more like a big farm store) and got our pumpkins, along with a bushel of apples. In case you don't know or you've forgotten (as I had - see the sieve comment), a bushel of apples is A LOT of apples.

We had a blast carving our pumpkins - although Owen really did not like the feel of the pumpkin guts. EWWWW!!! GROSS! was heard more than once. Here's a layout I did using Fall Whimsy by Jennifer Labre:

Then I made apple crisp, apple cake, apple pies and applesauce. Pies and sauce are in the freezer, but we're enjoying the crisp and cake! YUM!

Trick or Treat!!!!

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of all manner of treat bags and boxes....and this gable box template by iKari Designs is FABULOUS!!! I paired it up with some yumminess by Echo Park Paper Company and voila!

Credits (all available at jessicasprague.com):
Perfect Packaging: Gable Box by iKari Designs
Happy Halloween Paper Packs #1 and #2 and Journal & Element Pack by Echo Park Paper Company.

Hope you enjoy!!

I really love Halloween (and fall)

This time of year makes me so happy, especially now that we're back in the northeast and the leaves are turning. Here are a few projects I've done recently to celebrate! As always, credits under each.
Credits: Spookville by Mari Koegelenberg

Credits: Spooky by Elise Hansen

Credits: Frolic Thru Fall by Creations by Rachael

Creative Explosion!

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm so behind on layout and project sharing! I've been creatively busy - too busy to write about it. There's something about fall that makes me feel homey - I like to cook and bake and decorate even more than at other times of year, so that's keeping me busy, too. But here's a taste of what I've been up to.

1. Photoless layouts. Sometimes I want to tell a story or say something but just don't have a photo to go with it...and I find these layouts to be a ton of fun, mostly because I don't have to remember to keep the design of the layout focused on a photo. Here are two I've done recently:

Credits: Transformers v9 and Road 2 Nowhere by Lauren Reid

Credits: Sign of the Times Collection: Zodiac Bundle by ViVa Artistry

2. "Event" layouts. Here are a couple of our recent afternoon trip to Paulus Farm.

Credits: Wild Oats by Chelle's Creations and Sarah Bennett

Credits: Terra Cotta by Elise's Pieces (also the kit I used to design my blog)

And here's one I did as part of a challenge at Ninth & Bloom. I'm especially proud of this layout because it took me HOURS to get the shadows on the intertwined ribbons right, and I normally don't have the patience for that kind of detail.

Credits: Ever+After by Lauren Reid and Micheline Martin

3. Altered items. I had SO MUCH FUN altering these clothespins with paint, rub-ons, ribbon, buttons and flowers. They're perfect to hold photos and notes.


4. "Moment" layouts that I do "just because."

Credits: Trademark by Lauren Reid and One Little Bird

Credits: Things That Matter by Kelley Mickus

Hope you enjoy! :)

A little blog revamp

I know. I'm so behind on blogging. I have so many layouts to post....sigh. But I did redesign my blog tonight! Yay for me!

I'm trying to figure out why my sidebar tags have a white background. They were saved as .pngs with a transparent background and uploaded from my computer just the way I always do so I have no idea what happened. Any ideas?

School and soccer

Well, school's in full swing again - Alexa loves first grade (although she did tell me this morning when I was asking her about her classmates that she didn't want to talk about school because it's boring) and for the first time, she is playing soccer in addition to her ongoing dance and horseback riding activities (although we are still looking for a new barn, which is a long story for another day). Wow that was a long sentence. And I used although twice.

But I digress - wanted to share a school layout and a soccer layout - here they are! Credits under each:

Credits: Kick It! and Kick It! Purple Team by Chelle's Creations

Credits: Back to School by Mari Koeglenberg and Melissa Wilson

Snapshots....

Here are a few layouts I did this week. Credits under each!

Credits: Click by Kelley Mickus

Credits: Happy by Vera Lim

Credits: Destination by ViVa Artistry

My laptop crashed (and some layouts)

I truly am obsessive backup girl. People (you know who you are) make fun of me because I am REALLY obsessive about it. HA! I have been vindicated! I lost my hard drive (actually I somehow lost the segment of my hard drive that contained the operating system) last Thursday and the ONLY items I didn’t have backed up were a couple layouts I had done between my Sunday backup and the crash. My super techno geeky husband was able to access those files through the DOS prompt and copy them over to my EHD, so I ended up losing nothing!

But…the saga continues. Not only was the hard drive shot, but the little connector thingy between the hard drive and the motherboard also needed to be replaced. This cheap but hard to come by wire thing had to be ordered from Dell and I got it yesterday, so I’m cookin’ with gas (BTW – I ADORE my laptop – a Dell Studio 1737 with a giant honkin’ screen and there is no way I wanted a new one. I know. Who am I and what have I done with Tracy?).

So anyhoo – here are a few layouts that I meant to post last week, plus one I did last night. As always, linked credits under each!

Enjoy!!

Credits: She's All That by Jennifer Labre

Credits: Chillin' & Grillin' by Chelle's Creations

Credits: Contemplation by Viva Artistry, August 2010 Grab Bag by Nikki Epperson

Credits: Daydreamer Kit, Dotty Papers and Necessary Neutrals Alpha, all by Danielle Engebretson

Credits: Bug Catcher, See Through You: Words, and Stitch Me Up: Frames, all by Chelle's Creations