In The Cat Cave

Hi all,

This month's Stampin' Up! Artisan Blog Hop focuses on the Ronald McDonald House 2017-18 stamp set, Sharing Sweet Thoughts. This set is truly near and dear to my heart as I have been lucky enough to be involved with the Ronald McDonald House here in St. John's, Newfoundland. With every stamp set purchased, proceeds are donated to the Ronald McDonald House local charities.

It's such a special charity and trily makes a difference in the lives of families every day.  I am very proud of the association with Stampin' Up! and RMH.


For today's projects, I heat embossed the images with silver embossing powder onto water colour paper.  Using my aqua painter and my Stampin' Write markers I coloured both images creating a tag and card.


Of course, I have been obsessing about using multiple trims on my projects - you can see on the card, I layered several underneath the sentiment.  On the tag, I attached a couple using the silver mini sequin trim, white baker's twine and powder pink shimmer ribbon.


These projects were difficult to capture on camera but the silver really makes this project magical. Be sure to try using the silver embossing powder on your next project!

Look-ee, Look-ee!
Kraft paper is coming back in the 2017 Stampin' Up! holiday catalog and I am so delighted!  Along with that fabulous paper, you can see a sneak peak here some of the musical patterned paper coming along.

The Holiday Catalog is so exciting and I have been working away to sort out how I'd like to launch it.

Today's card was created for TGIF Challenge Blog : #tgifc120 as a sketch challenge.  I always loved a sketch and today it jump started my creativity.  I'd love to see you give it a try.

See you soon!
Cathy

Another little story.
Another seemingly unremarkable photo.
But behind this photo there's a story.

That Narwhal though.
He's SO cute!!!
You can find him with his sloth friend in the Quirky Critters stamp set from Stampin' Up!
This design was coloured as inspiration for the TGIF Challenge #tgifc119.  I had fun watercolouring and moving the colours around so that it was just so. After it dried, I added some fun embellishments! It's hard to see but using my fine tip glue pen, I created several clusters of 3 little drops around the narwhal.  It reminded me of little bubbles in the ocean.


Be sure to play along with us this week for our colour challenge! Use the hastag #tgifc119 so we can see your amazing designs!

Cathy

Hi Friends,
My Love Story Planner from Stampin' Up! arrived last week, just in time for me to start planning in August.

I am a planner.
Until I get too busy.  Then my life flies off the rails and chaos ensues.
But I am a better person when I plan, I remember things.  I don't think about what's for supper and it helps me stay on task rather than procrastinate.

Currently I use two planners: Leuchtrum Planner + Leuchtrum Bullet Journal.
To see more about how I use these please see this post.

I will be continuing to use my two Leuchtrums but going forward my creative planning will be in the Love Story Planner by Stampin' Up! Today marks the day that I sort out how I can best fit this journal in my life.

Check out my video on my plans and review on this planner.

"It had been a long month.  The first of June found our family in Mexico but my life was being rushed as vacations meant I had a lot less time to get the annual financial statements filed. Working late, eating on the fly and rushing from one place to another.  I was overwhelmed.  It was June 30th and Ryan had cooked a BBQ. After supper while the kids were outside on the trampoline, we watched the news.  Something we don’t do often for one reason or another.  There was a local missing girl and we continued to hope there was more information on her case.  Instead I watched the weather man, Eddie Sheer do his newscast from a “Canada 100” sign at the bottom of signal hill.  I turned to Ryan and said “I wanna go there”. Not sure why but Ryan replaied “Let’s do it.”  We asked the kids whether they were interested and neither of them wanted to join us.  Throwing in an ice cream got them strapped into the SUV.  I grabbed my DLSR camera and took a few pictures on the way down.  It was a gorgeous day. The fog will start rolling in soon, I am sure. When we got to the spot the news crew were just finishing off their final sign off. Perfect timing.  We stood and waited for them and then started to take our pictures.  A line began to form behind us so all of a sudden I felt rushed in my pictures.  It didn’t matter.  I didn’t get the picture I wanted but I got a day of exploring after wards.  The kids ran down the trail and up the steep rocks.  With every foot step, I was a nervous wreck pictuing one of them running off a clift.  Ryan was getting irritated by my barks to stay close.  I couldn’t help it.  They sat on the cannons and sat in the grass. They raced over the grassy hills and looked for the light house. All the while I snapped pictures as the sun was setting. It was beautiful.  The night was warm and it was exactly what I needed to kick off a new month. Of course, we all ate ice cream to cap it off."



These layouts were created for SPARK magazine, which is a monthly magazine for members of the Simple Scrapper online community. Owner, Jennifer Wilson provides sketches and story starters each month that help drive inspiration in your quest to document your memories.

My design style was very clean and simple.  It started out with the story typed using the Remington Noiseless typewriter font within Photoshop Creative Cloud.  This was printed out on Whisper Whiter cardstock by Stampin' Up! on 8.5"x 11".

As a subscriber to the Ali Edwards Story Kits, I found some chipboard elements and embellishments that quickly brought this layout together.



If you would like more information on the Simple Scrapper Membership, please contact me. In addition, you can now see ont month of SPARK magazine for free!  This will help you see all the inspiration and resources that Jennifer Wilson provides.

Cathy