Scrapbooking

Over on my DIY Blog today, Emily is sharing another wonderful collection of Free Fonts! This time she's compiled a list of Fonts that are perfect for creating Monograms... CLICK TO READ MORE OF THIS POST » Hello! Are you new to The Graphics Fairy? Welcome, I'm so glad you're here! Browse around to find thousands of Stock Images that you can use in your projects or designs! I post new Vintage

Sorry it has been forever since my last post! Life has been just a little busy. Since March, I've moved into a new house. Which I've been painting and painting. I'm not one for white walls, and like to add my own style to my home! Anyway, lots has happened. Tons of new goodies have been added, plus I'm now at Scrap Takeout. :) Hopefully, things will get back to normal come June. So that I can start scrapping and sharing again with all of you! For today, I do have a layout. Made with Kit: Stache MeTemplate Pack: Add a Border Thanks for stopping by!!!

Several people have posted or e-mailed about how to punch holes in the mica. Several were worried it would crack or break like glass. Even though it's fairly brittle and is see through like glass it's VERY tough stuff. Yes, you can break it if you try really hard but I've never had any trouble with punching holes in mica or even cutting it for that matter. Now many times you'll want to separate the pieces because for most projects you only need a few sheets instead of a really thick piece. This is super for making charms because you can make two exact halves to sandwich your images between! You can use your fingernail or like here a pick or paper piercing tool. You can punch the mica with a hole punch - I'm using a Crop-o-Dile because it's what I have. As long as your punch is sharp it will cut like butter. As far as cutting mica thinner sheets can be cut with regular shears while thicker pieces can be cut with heavier duty scissors like Tim Holtz type. I say this only because lighter weight scissors may dull after cutting much mica. I have a pair of heavier duty Mundial scissors that I use all the time and they cut the mica just fine. As you can see here the mica doesn't crack, break or peel where I made the hole... (Note, this is a thicker piece of mica) And to show you that you can punch a hole on thinner mica this piece has only 2-3 layers (which is pretty thin as you can tell since it's very transparent). Now on thinner pieces the piece of mica that you punched out may not come away clean as you can sort of see in this photo. All you do to remove it is run your finger nail across it and the excess flakes right off. No damage what so ever done to the mica. Now, no matter if you're cutting thick or thin sheets of mica you'll end up with waste from the holes...don't throw it away!!! You can use this just as you would glitter... it's beautiful and so very pretty as an embellishment. Now, where can you get it??? Well, I've been referring people to Altered Pages - Mica or USArtQuest - the two places I've been getting my mica. BUT, I've been thinking about adding mica to my Etsy shop. Lots of people shy away from mica because of the price but I would offer it at lower prices than I've seen elsewhere. I just need to figure out if there would be enough interest in it. The initial investment would be substantial and I need to make sure I would be able to at least make enough to cover the costs. Anyway, I hope this helps answer at least some of the questions you've had about mica. If you have any more, please feel free to post...I'm always happy to help when I can.

Today we have the last of Ellen's beautiful rose clusters from the Rose Garden collection that you can download here.

This past weekend I was lucky enough to go fishin' with my son and his girlfriend over at her grandparents pond. It was the first time I've been fishing in years even though I love it. Summer has been so busy the last few years cause dh has been makin' so much hay he just never took the time to do so. We were having an unofficial fishin contest to see who could catch the most and we were also pretending to be Jeremy Wade (from River Monsters). Well, ds only caught 2 but he wasn't really trying and he decided it was more fun to troll the boat around instead of fish. Morgan (dsgf) caught 9 and I caught 7 - but I caught the largest fish that day....this devil. I know it doesn't look like much compared to lots of different fish but being so early in the year and the largest fish I've caught in years I was pretty tickled with it. (fuzzy photos = son's camera phone) What fun! Do you all fish? What kinds of fish do you catch where you live? We have mostly blue gill, crappies & bass here. A few perch if you go to the right lakes but I don't think there were any in this pond.

For this blog hop the generous folks at STAEDTLER sent our Design Team a terrific package of products. The team has had so much fun creating beautiful projects with these terrific tools.  Legendary for quality and durability, STAEDTLER products have a long been our choice here at Stampendous. We tried to get a little “out of the box” this week to use some of the terrific things they supplied to us. Our own Fran Seiford created a page for a Mixed Media Journal using her favorite Karat Aquarelle Pencils, our Jumbo Cling Butterfly Trio stamp and our Bicycle Works Background stamp as well as our Teal Encrusted Jewel Kit and our Frantage Embossing Kit. What a fun way to fly a kite! Butterfly Bicycle Journal Page by Fran Seiford Playing along today are several members of the STAEDTLER Design Team along with lots of our gals! Be sure to visit each of the blogs and leave a terrific comment for each one! We’ve got some great prizes, you can see them on Monday’s post. Here’s who is playing today: Suzanne Czosek Kelli Mowat Krissy Fossmeyer Kristine Reynolds Lea Kimmel Rhea Weigand

Welcome to another fun challenge at Meljen's Designs! This week's theme is: ~ Bejewelled Bliss ~ (Use lots of sparky bling on your project) Please note that we require the use of Meljen's Designs digital stamps for participation in our challenges! Entries that do not use a Meljen's Designs digital stamp will be deleted before the random draw. The TALENTED Design Team members created some inspiring projects for this weeks challenge... Barb Digital Stamp: Fancy Swirls Peacock Ceal Digital Stamp: Cocoa Cupcake Céline Digital Stamp: Prancing Poodle Gina Digital Stamp: Lazy Susan Buggies Ria Digital Stamp: Flutterby Fairy Robbie Digital Stamp: Tutu Sweet We hope that you've been inspired to join us for this week's challenge! document.write(''); After you post your project, PLEASE leave some blog love for Melissa & the Design Team! ? We love to see everyone's creations and we love it when you share it with us in the Meljen's Designs Club on Facebook! We can't wait to see what you create! Dianna Senior DT Member & Blog Writer

Good morning! I hope everyone is having a AWESOME week! I've enjoyed being on Joy's Blog SO much and hate that it's getting close to the end! This week is graduation at our local High School. My cousin's daughter will be graduating and I wanted to make her a card! I used Cricut Essentials for the frame (cut once in kraft and again in pattern paper). The family is from the cartridge Pack Your Bags! I used the background stamps in the My Creative Time's, Build A Banner set on their clothes. I used the polka dots for the woman and little girl and chose to go with the stripes for the man and little boy! I used the Stitched oval die and heat embossed a sentiment from the From Our Family to Yours set. For the inside of my card, I used another one of My Creative Time sets, Follow Your Dreams. I did one sentiment in black and the other one in red. I also used the diploma that comes in the set! Be sure to come back tomorrow for my final day as guest designer on Joy's Blog! Thanks for looking! Hugs, Leanne We have TWO GIVEAWAYS! Leave me a comment here AND on my blog CreatedbyLeanne, follow my blog and I'll pick one lucky winner Sunday! 1) The winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to My Creative Time! I'll announce the winner next Monday on my blog, you will have till 11:59 central time Sunday night to comment! Don't forget to leave a way for me to contact you!! 2) AND This week's cartridge giveaway is the: Cricut Sophisticated Cartridge How can you win? 1) Leave a comment below (or HERE if you are viewing in email) about Leanne's project and your plans for Father's Day (if any). This will enter you in to the cartridge giveaway AND the My Creative Time $25 gift certificate giveaway. Don't forget to leave a comment on Leanne's blog also for the My Creative Time $25 gift certificate. 2) Subscribe to my Obsessed with Scrapbooking newsletter HERE. That's it! Leave a comment under all posts this week to maximize your chances of winning! Winner will be announced on Monday, May 27, 2013 and has two weeks to claim prize. Want to see more of my projects? Click HERE to see my gallery! Subscribe to Obsessed with Scrapbooking to learn more about ways to use the Cricut in your scrapbooking!

Today: I always want to remember the joy on your face when you realized we had dandelions in the backyard ready for wishing. Yesterday: I heard so much love and patience in Grandma’s voice as she taught you how to blow dandelion wishes when we went on our adventure to the park. The day before: I listened to you run down the hall to the guest room saying, “It’s time to get up Grandma Fina! It’s morning time!” I am a bit obsessed with prompts. I like how they give us a place to begin when we face the blank page or canvas. Somehow it takes the mystery out of creating for me in a way that supports me to get right to it instead of getting caught up in thinking “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Sometimes a prompt takes me to unexpected places and pushes me to see things from angles I hadn’t noticed before. I often turn to prompts when I want to tell a piece of a story in a blog post or in my Project Life layouts or when I’m writing a poem. Sometimes I want to share details of a day or an experience without telling the whole story. Maybe I’m keeping pieces of the story close to me or maybe I want to drill down and look closely at one moment. One prompt I really love is: Today Yesterday The day before Sometimes I will tell the story with one photo like I did above. Sometimes I have photos to pair with each written snapshots. For example: Today: It’s a vintage quilts spread out in the backyard while eating a picnic and listening to her tell stories kind of Sunday afternoon. Yesterday: Walking along Puget Sound looking for sea glass, I am in awe of the beauty of this place I now call home. The day before: Something about the way the birds are singing and the way Spring feels almost overwhelmingly beautiful has me deeply missing my grandparents today. Sometimes I just have the words, so I really try to paint a picture by bringing in the senses like this example from a year ago: Now: Neighborhood children giggle and yell and run under the peeking through grey sunshine as I sit cross-legged in the middle of my bed wrapping wire around beads and stringing them together to soon be sent across the sea to become a talisman of words another wants to hold close to her heart. Yesterday: A cafe full of chattering, eating, meeting people, I weave between the tables trying to find a place to call my own where I can sip this mug of chai and write and remind myself that I do know what step to take next even though the uncertainty sometimes slips around me like a cloak I don’t remember buying in a dusty flea market another lifetime ago. The day before: When Ellie Jane refused to get in the car, we walk along the sidewalk passing storefronts and cars with “you have to hold my hand” said aloud on repeat, and then we turn and do it again because a one year old has no need to understand the stacked up inside my head to-do list that includes “picking up the taxes” on the line right after the doctor’s appointment we just completed. This is also a great way to tell the stories when you don’t have photos of moments you want to remember. It becomes a written illustration of the photos you didn’t take. This is really useful to me when I’m sifting through my feelings around something. Writing short snapshots like these grounds me in the present and helps me focus on the beauty even in challenging moments. “The day before” example above describes a moment when I didn’t have my camera, but I really wanted to remember the way I just leaned into the experience with my daughter and let go of “all that must get done.” Honestly, I could probably write one of these a day, which could become a beautiful practice of an entire journal filled of written snapshots of “the photo I didn’t take today…” Other prompts I’ve been using lately: This is me Today, I… I want to remember Observations on [insert date, time] In this moment… What prompts do you like to use when sharing the snapshots of a stor

Here’s your reminder that I’ll be continuing with my monthly 2013 Day In The Life project next week on Friday, May 31st. I’m including this monthly documentation in with Project Life but it would also work great in a traditional album as well. HELPFUL LINKS + ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Read about how this project got started here. Download free Daily Sheets for documenting your day. Purchase my Day In The Life layered template set and 6×12 Day In The Life Photo Collage set and check out my free video tutorial on how to work with those templates in Photoshop Elements. Check out my days so far in 2013: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December You can also check out how I incorporated them into my completed Project Life spreads: January (Week 5) | February (Week 9) | March (Week 13) | April (Week 18) | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December 6×12 format not for you? Check out my 8.5×11 Day In The Life layered template that’s great for incorporating a bunch of photos. See how I used that in 2012 here (simply combined the 8.5×11 photo collage template + the Daily Sheets with my hand-written documentation together in Project Life 2012 | Week Six). Hope you’ll consider participating!