I'm a Sister

I belong to this great group of women known as the Sisters on the Fly. I mention this because there are so many products in the Close To My Heart that apply to the Sisterhood. The problem is I want to buy it all!!

We're cowgirls... even those of us that aren't cowgirls, we're cowgirls at heart. What self-respecting cowgirl doesn't have a buckle?



The Sisters are, as our name implies, fly-fisherwomen. Even though this April Stamp of the Month is more of a father's day stamp, it definitely applies to the Sisters.

We also camp, mostly in our vintage campers (that we fix up ourselves!), but there are quite a few Sisters who rough it in a tent.

Of course, we love embellishments... in our trailers, on our clothing and of course in our scrapbooks & cards!

This font is soooo western.

And those are just the stamp sets. There are also awesome paper packets that are so Sisterly. There are also items that will be released when the Summer 2009 Idea Book goes live on May 1st. I cannot wait to share those!

Brrrr!!

In a word: bitter! It's been a treacherous winter! Skin freezes within minutes if you aren't covered. Fingers burn when you try to do simple things like opening your car door or get gas.

The snow banks are piled high & are hard-as-cement. Ice on surfaces isn't even being give a chance to melt, creating the thickest ice I've ever seen! At this point, 20°F would seem balmy.

So, in an attempt to rid my mind of the raging frigidity outside & in honor of my upcoming visit to sunny Florida, I decided to scrap a double page spread using Boom-Di-Ada paper collection remembering a past trip to the Sunshine State!

This is another very simple page requiring little time (just under an hour!) & used very little in the way of supplies. I purchased Level 1 Kit, Level 2 Paper Packet, and The Boom-Di-Ada My Stickease™ Assortment because it was just so cute & bright! Well, I made this double page spread, two altered checkbook covers, a couple of cards & I still have tons of stuff left over.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics before I gave the stuff away!

The only thing I did to the right hand page was sew the perimeter of the beach scene photo, cut out (with regular scissors) the flowers in the upper left hand corner & adhered them with foam squares & added the letter stickers. Fast.

The left hand page was slightly more involved, but not much! I had two 4x6 photos that I loved & another 4x6 that I wanted to love. It wasn't pleasingly composed, so I just cropped it. Voila!

I matted the one 4x6 of Jacquie, leaveing a one & a half inch space at the top & sliver around the other three sides. The top is where I put part of the title. I'm a sucker for a gorgeous flower & I found the one on the page at a craft store & I couldn't resist! I took it home & disassembled it, stuck a big brad in it for the center.

The spot I left for journaling (yep... I leave blank spots for that if I can't think of anything at the moment) is simply strips of cardstock that were leftovers from cards that I made.

Simple & Easy

This layout was so simple & quick, it's nearly criminal. Gabby is one of my favorite subjects, and this is what I like to call, her "cueball" period. This poor kid had no hair for like a year!

To create this layout, I used an 8x10 black & white photo that I trimmed to 8x8. I simply mounted that on some black cardstock leaving about a quarter inch mat, in turn mounted that on a very muted patterned paper from the Silhouette Collection (and of course, there was a My Stickease™ tag & border sticker as well!).

Before mounting that on the more bold patterned paper, I used my cutting knife cut some flower flourishes from the center of the paper that would be covered by the photo itself. Waste not, want not! You can see that I used one of the flower flourishes in the upper right corner of the photo.

I lined up where I thought I should place the large photo (this time I chose just about dead center) & lightly made some tic marks on patterned paper with a pencil. Again, I grabbed the trusty cutting knife & this time used it to cut around some flowers that I laid on top of the photo.

After cutting out the flowers & flourishes I wanted to save, I used a border strip from the My Stickease™ Assortment about one third of the way down the page, see it?

Even though it looks like the strip goes all the way across, it's only a couple of inches on each end of the paper. I still have about nine inches left of that strip. Now, I can use that on cards, altered items, & other scrapbook pages!

Note: I did not completely liberate the overlaid flowers from the bottom-most patterened paper, I only cut where the matted photo was going to be.

The foam squares were used to adhere & pop the flowers off the page.

This layout took less than half an hour!