My First OCC Challenge

Every week, Sue always has an a post of something wonderful she made for the OCC Challenge. In my quest to do more crafting and scrapping this year, I have decided that I am going to try to do the OCC Challenge every week. This is my first OCC Challenge creation.

I made this card in standard (4 1/4 X 5 1/2 inch) size using the Key To My Heart kit, which includes a Level 2 paper pack and an E-sized stamp set, and is only available through January 31st. I stamped the key in Cocoa ink on Colonial White cardstock, and the heart was stamped in Tulip ink on Colonial White cardstock. The heart was mounted with foam squares. The scalloped edge was made with the corner rounder, and the Juniper cardstock was ink distressed with Juniper ink. The ribbon is from the Designer Ribbon Rounds Colonial White collection. This is going to make a great Valentine's Day card for my husband.

Sparkle's Christmas Card Challenge week 5

I'm certainly glad the holidays are over. There is so much work involved, that it seems to take longer to recover from the holidays than it took to prepare for and celebrate them. I decided (since I finished my final 2008 Christmas cards on December 23rd) that this year I will participate in Sparkle's Christmas Card Challenge. Pretty easy, you make two Christmas cards a week (she started the first week of December), so that by the time the first week of December rolls around you have made 104 cards. I won't need quite that many cards, so I won't be playing catch-up. My first two cards of the year came from the July 2008 issue of CardMaker Magazine. This was another example of a really cute, detailed card that turned out WAY smaller than I thought (see my accordian card and The Rest of the Christmas Cards posts for other examples). My only bummer moment with these cards was when I ran out of both my red and green organza ribbon. I need to find a good source to get those in bulk. They were finished by Sunday, it just took me some time to take the pictures, then save them to the computer, then type a blog entry. Darn work getting in the way of fun stuff. Enjoy! Hope you are inspired to start your Christmas cards early as well. That will definitely reduce the pre-holiday stress I know so many of us deal with.

Project 365

After seeing Project 365 in this month's Creating Keepsakes magazine, I decided that it was something I would do this year. CK has a kit available (well, it may not be available, it seems that they ran into a lot of technical difficulties as well as too little supply). Lucky for me, I had intended to use CTMH products all along, so I wasn't affected by the snafu. The idea is that you take one picture each day, and journal about the picture. These will go into the pocket pages of your Project 365 album. Using 6-pocket Photo Storage Pages, you will have a space for a title, each day's picture and journaling (2 days per pocket) in each two-page layout. Since the 1st fell in the middle of the week, I opted to do the first week as a one page layout. Here is my week one layout:



For more info on the project, check out Becky Higgins' blog. To purchase supplies to make your own, check out my CTMH website.

I plan to do something more with the title, and I took the picture before I put in my journaling for today's picture. I'll take care of that tomorrow. I think this is going to be a great project for helping me use my stash of paper and other scrap stuff...