Monday Links

What are your thoughts about Mondays?  For me it's all about new starts and beginnings and usually a long list of to-do items that needs to be crossed off. So before I dive into my 'list' let me share with you some projects (and links) that might get your "new week" off to a great start...

Over at Paper Bakery Kit blog today I shared five fun things/projects/ideas that can jumpstart your Valentine's day planning. This Valentine blondie dessert sounds sooo good right now. Check the blog here.

Last Monday I got to share some cards using my leftovers from the January Add on kit. Here's a peek at them...

PULLED OUT FOR PUBLICATION

To see the full view of the cards and to learn more about this great kit club, visit Paper Bakery here.

What have you been doing lately? Well I made a layout for Glue Arts with this theme...

Lately....

PULLED OUT FOR PUBLICATION

You can see this project along with a step by step photo tutorial on making this layout in this blogpost over at the Glue Arts blog. For this project we teamed up with Studio Calico and I was soooo giddy while working with the "Classic Kit". Fun stuff!

Thanks for stopping by.

Till next time,
Grace

Project 365 Week four

Happy Sunday everyone.This past week seemed to have gone way faster than I've anticipated and for a moment there I thought I didn't have anything to prove that I had a "productive" week but then I went through my Project 365 photos for this week and it made me smile when I recalled those small moments that I was able to capture. That's another great reason (and blessing) on why I'm taking on this project this year. Here's my past week in 7 photos....

till next time,
Grace

Incline Hike

It's Thursday and I am super sore! Good sore though. I did some Pilates last night for our YW activity and boy was I out of my element! It's funny how you don't know the muscles you haven't worked out until you put them to use and afterwards you hurt like crazy! I guess it's time for me to start doing some Pilates too. LOL.

Anyways speaking of being out of my element, I'm finally posting some pictures from our "incline" hike. It just took me nearly a month to do so. Don't ask me why cause even I don't know why it took me this long to post it.

Anyways.... so in Manitou Springs (just west of Colorado Springs) there's a side of the mountain that was used before for a railway to take people up to Pike's Peak. You can read more info on the history of the "incline" here. The funny thing about this is that it is one of the most famous hikes in the area and yet you are actually NOT ALLOWED TO HIKE THERE. Yes there is a no trespassing sign but it seems like people don't really care about it. Of course you go on your own risk and that's exactly what we did.

It was a great sunny day and the kids were still off of school (from Winter break) and we have been cooped up in the house since we got back from California. We didn't have anything major going on so I suggested that we finally take up the challenge and do this hike. The "challenge" of this walk is that it is STEEP. It's only a mile but it is a bunch of stairs. Just imagine that!

I took a picture of the family just before we started our walk. After a few steps Mitch took over the camera and so most of the photos from here on out was from him.

Although it was a nice sunny day, we didn't anticipate all the snow that would still be on the steps of the incline. This made it tougher to climb especiallly that we just had our tennis/running shoes on.

this is about on the halfway mark. It was a beautiful view but honestly by this time I was already crying (so to speak). There was a trail on the halfway mark where you can stop going up, take the detour and head back down. My main plan was to just "try out" the incline today. I was only planning on getting to the halfway mark. But Mitch had other plans and so we pushed along. Grrr!

See the steps up ahead of us? We not only had to deal with snowy steps but uneven and somewhat dangerous parts as well. But I have to say I was most proud of the kids, they grumbled and whined (like I did) but they still plugged along. Such troopers!

We were getting closer to the top here. As you can see the bottom view was getting smaller and smaller.

and when we've reached the top.

We found a hiker that was willing to take a family photo of us once up on the top.

It took us 2 hours to hike up and then because the steps were so steep and icy we had decided to go down through another route. And just when we thought that our worries were over (we were going down hill after all) it wasn't! There were spots of the trail that was still very snowy and unfortunately very slippery as well. Here's Marcus getting swept off of his feet.

We tried to be careful with the snow but it can be decieving. So when we would feel our feet slipping from underneath us, we would quickly grab a hold of the fence.

Finally after about 4 hours we made it down! We started at about 11 am and got back to our car close to 3 pm. We saw a sign on the way down to the end of the trail and it said how many miles it was to go to the top of the incline which was 4 miles. So with our 1 mile up and 4 miles down, we had walked 5 miles that day. Our longest hike with the kids ever!

After that, we had a late lunch/early dinner and called it a day.

My thoughts after finally saying I have done the "incline hike".....it was butt kicking, super tough and something I don't think I'll be doing in the near future BUT I'm glad I did it, that I had my family experiencing the struggles and the accomplishments with me and that we had a great workout for that day.

The "Incline", you love to hate it but you know you'll be a better person after it. :)

Till next time,

Grace

More WorldWin layouts

Today I'm sharing the last batch of layouts that I made for WorldWin Cardstock.

Marcus

this one, I combined the Paper Layers patternpaper and Kraft cardstock. I had cut shapes from the kraft with the Cricut. I also dry embossed my shapes for added texture and design. To make the designs pop more is to ink the top of the embossed design. It really made the stars and circles pop.

Scouts

In this page, I played with the CutMates cardstock collection. To create some pattern in one of the cardstocks (red) I used a laser cut paper, placed that on top of my cardstock and then spray misted the paper to create that masking technique. I also cut some tags and run it through my crimper to create some textures. One thing that I always follow with my pages is to grab my colors from my photo/s. It will always give you a cohesive look and not make your page clash with your photos.

Tiny Dancer

                          

In this page, I wanted to show some great Vellum technique. I was inspired to make my scallop border on the bottom of my page with the sheer dance skirt my daughter in the photos. I spray misted the whole sheet of vellum, punched out one side of strips with scallop punch and then adhered them on top of each other. I also used the Vellum with my butterflies (also sprayed with yellow mist)  and a strip to hold my title.

Again you can always check out the WorldWin products here and the layouts are put together with Glue Arts Adhesives.

Happy Wednesday.

Till next time,
Grace

Project 365 photos

I've finished the 3rd week of Project 365. Here's what I had documented in my family's life through photos...

Now off to run some errands. Happy Tuesday everyone.

Till next time,

Grace

January Wreath + Tutorial

Happy Friday everyone. Feeling glad for the warmer weather!

One of my projects for this year is to make a wreath for my front door for every month of the year. A tall task so I'm crossing my fingers I'd be able to get this accomplished. For January, I decided to make a "winter themed" wreath. Here's what I made...

thank you to Pinterest, I was able to gather so many different ideas that I incorporated in my wreath. To follow me on Pinterest, you can always click on the red Pinterest banner on my side bar. :)

 I used blue yarn to wrap around my foam circle and white felt for my flowers. I also used some twigs to give it that natural look.

Here's the tutorial....

What you'll need...
Foam circle or plumbing/pipe insulation. Found this trick here via Pinterest. It's cheaper than foam circles at the craft store. *wink*
Yarn (one big skein will do)
Felt, about 1/4 yard
Twigs
Glue Gun

These insulation tubes can be found at the Plumbing aisle of your hardware stores.

First, peel of the sticky tabs to close off your tube.

 2. Measure it into the circle you want it. I made mine bigger because my hubby doesn't like how my past wreaths have covered the peephole in our door. I secured the ends of the circle with some duct tape.

3. Wrap the yarn around the wreath. This part is a bit time consuming,especially if you have a big wreath to wrap. I did mine while overseeing my son do homework and while watching TV. Secure your ends with glue gun or tying the ends together into a knot.

 4. Then cut 1" strips (about 36" in length) from the white felt.  You can cut as many as you want, I made 10 but only used 9 on my wreath.

5. Then I folded the feld in half and started to roll it into a bun.

6. Then I adhered the ends with some glue gun.

7. Then my daughter and I went to the backyard and gathered some twigs.

8. Next, I assembled the wreath. I placed the twigs first, gluing it to the wreath and then adhering the felt flowers.

And here's where our wreath is displayed right now...

thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

Till next time,
Grace

WorldWin Projects

Today's share are a couple of WorldWin layouts that I made this month for my assignment with them. I made five and I'll share the others in another blog post. No need to crowd them all in one post. :)

100 Button Shirt

I have to say I really enjoy playing with cardstock and the challenge of making it the focus on my layouts. In this page, I used the Colormate papers for this in the following colors- Pink, Black, White, Slate, Cardinal Red, Blue and Spring Green. I grabbed the colors of the punched out circles from the buttons on my son's shirt. You can see the story of the 100 button shirt in this post.

I added a mesh stamp on each of the circles, using a combo of black and white ink so that the mesh image can show on both the dark and lighter colors cardtock. I also stamped my title on white cardstock and dry embossed the cardstock tag using a star design which I repeated in the star punched shapes I added to the layout.

A Cake Story

This story can be read here. For the layout, I focused on the fun Paper Layers collection. WorldWin had products pattern paper packs that are divided into smaller square blocks that are great to use with your die cut machine. One side of the paper has a whole page of one design and then the other side has 9 blocks of smaller squares with different colors of one design. I used those blocks to create my layered flowers which I had cut from my Cricut machine.

I decided to add some WorldWin Vellum between my layers to give the flowers some added soft touch/feel to it.

I also used the WorldWin Vellum to print out my computer generated title and journaling.

So there you have it. All Cardstock, Vellum and Pattern papers were from WorldWin and the pages were made using Glue Arts Adhesive.

till next time,
Grace