Vintage never goes out of style!

I love cheeky vintage cards.  Here are some of my favorites.....

I'm not typically one for pastels, but I really liked how this turned out.  I love Prima flowers!

This card still cracks me up.  Something every mom wants to hear, right?

This is a mini-book I did for my Grandma Naomi's birthday.  I scanned old pictures to put inside.  She really got a kick out of this.

I mixed different chipboard page shapes for this book.  

Mix and match flowers for this page....

Some fun chipboard embellishments from Crate Paper.  I love their goodies!  

I love this paper...it has a nice 50's diner feel to it.

More Prima Flowers and Websters Pages Bloomers flower ribbon.

This was a card that I made for a friend to give to another friend that was a little down in the dumps.

This busy little piece of work was made from a kit I had won on a Northridge Publishing giveaway.  Free Studio Calico pack of goodies... so fun!  I love their publications Cards and Scrapbook Trends for inspiration on themes, layouts, and new trends.  You can check out their blog at http://create.northridgepublishing.com  Good stuff!  

Thanks for stopping by! 

~K  

Mermaids & Fairies

What girl doesn't love anything with Fairies and Mermaids?  Living in sunny Florida, I was inspired to try my hand at some fun mermaid cards.  I searched for a while to see if I might find some mermaid goodies from any of my favorite scrap sites... but alas, no luck.  I spotted an article online about piecing paper and thought I would give it a try.  I started with mermaids and ended up doing fairies as well.  Here are a few of my favorites.  

This little beauty is all blinged out with Making Memories Gem Embellishments,

I pieced together two hand drawn body section, the upper body and the tail.  It took me a few tries to get the sizes correct.  I'm no artist, so I'm sure anyone could do this! I drew a little face on her and popped some tiny gems in her eyes to really help her iris's stand out.  

I was pretty stumped on what to do with hair, so I went to my local craft store, Michael's and ACMoore to look around and see if I could get inspiration.  I was cruising down the isles and a package of moss caught my eye.  I thought, why not?  There are actually variety packs of moss that you can find easily in the stores that I've been using for all of these cards.  As you can see below, it makes for super fun and funky (and CHUNKY) hair.  I love some texture and depth on my cards, and the moss worked like a dream.  I used white craft glue to adhere it around her little head and popped a K&Company flower in her hair for a little moxie.  

Here I decided to try a 4th of July Mermaid.  She's a little curvy, but I think that's cute.  The beauty of piecing your own paper is you can make the body shape anything you like.  I love curves.  My son thinks these Mermaids are borderline "hoochie".  I think they're quirky, which suits my personality just fine.  I will say I did a google search on mermaid art to get some ideas on different ways to draw the tail.  It was a big help.  

After having a blast with making cards, I had the bright idea of making Mermaids in a shadow box.  I went to my local Michaels and bought a value pack of shadow box frames for 50% off.  www.Michaels.com  seems to always have a 50% coupon available to print out.  Handy!  The box frames were a hit and I actually started selling these at a little store in Matlacha on Pine Island.  Its a really cute area with fun art shops.  I highly recommend it if you come visit this area!  

And here is my funky fairy.  I was again stumped on how to manage the wings.  As usual, I went down to Michael's with an iced coffee in hand and started to scout for ideas.  I was looking through the dollar bins and spotted a large butterfly clip.  I loved the gray color, texture, and shine on the butterfly.  I will be honest and say I felt bad about ripping the wings off the little guy.  I know that's silly, but true!  Instead of drawing and cutting a tail for the bottom half of her body, I simply cut a long dress.  I used two small pieces of glitter ribbon for her waist.  

The moss hair has got to be my favorite thing about these cards.  I'm pretty sure I had some days in the 80's with my hair just as big.  

Hope you enjoyed my little fairytale cards.  Thanks for dropping by!  

~K  

Here we go!

OK, its time to dive right in and try my hand at blogging.  Long overdue!  I'm a scrap super geek and can't wait to share my creations inspired by my cutest little family.  First, lets take a look at the cast of characters....

(note to reader -->  this whole next section is complete, unabashed self indulgence. But to be fair, isn't that what blogging is about??  Also, I am a huge abuser of 'run on' sentences, age inappropriate slang, and extreme over use of exclamation points.  My son, the smart one, will end up having convulsions if he reads this.) 

You can't go wrong if you kick things off with the family clowns, right?

This is Maggie.  Also known as Poops MaGee, Maggie Boo Boo, Mags & Snorty Snortikins.  Mags is a  very very bad girl, but she more than compensates in laughter, so I can't seem to bear to let go of her.  Her favorite saying is;  "I'M NOT SORRY!!!"   She loves to wake me up at 5am to play, snuggle, be bad, snuggle, and nap.  Mags is 5 and came into our lives when Mom & Dad got a second puggie to play with the 1st puggie, Abby.  (Note:  Abby will also make appearances in this blog...as will Mom & Dad (aka Bemah & Pap)).  We're big on nicknames in this family.  Well....I'm big on nicknames... everyone else deals with it.

Lets move on to our next little star....

And here is my sweet sweet girl Epiphany....also known as Schmiggy, Piphers, and Piffy.  Epiphany is the saint in the family, hence her name.  This little lady is 10 and looking younger every day.  Epiphany loves jogging, peanut butter, woobies to snuggle, and eating anything anytime.  This is my all time favorite picture of Miss Epiphany and was snapped by my very clever French exchange student son, Matthias Ohresser.  My exchange student kids will also be making appearances.  I'll be doing some feature pages on each of those little cuties in the future.  So many stories!  Epiphany was the one 'no' vote on taking Maggie into the family, and she's still pretty stewed about it.  But she's still behaving like and Angel because, as I said before, she's the saint in the family.  Thank you Schmiggy!

Ok, who's next? .....

Ahhh...here he is.  My PRIDE & JOY...my Zachary.  Also known as Bubbalouie, Bubby, & Bubba.  Zach is now 22 years old (I can't freaking believe it!) and off on his own adventure at Han University in Nijmegen Netherlands.  Just like any of you moms out there, I love him more than life itself and couldn't be more proud of my shining star.  Thankfully, Zach is more than fine about me constantly scrapbooking his life.  Bubbalouie is a firm believer that any book about himself is a very very good book.  My son is not lacking in self esteem or self appreciation... LOL.  Bubby loves to travel.  He's been in more places than most of the people I know.  He's uber book smart and speaks lots of languages.  I call him my idiot savant.  He can speak 4+ languages, can tell you anything about Euro history, and is a super science geek, but he cannot make his bed.  Drives me bananacakes!!   He has also been very fortunate in winning the "mommy lottery".  Something I like to remind him of constantly.

And one more character in the direct family....Me!

I'm Kimberly, also known as Tay.  That's it, just one nickname for me!  I love my family/friends, scrapbooking, travel, eating out, scrapping, and trying to stay consistent with exercise.  I moved to Florida 3 years ago and as Poops MaGee would say... I'm not sorry!  I love the weather here.  I've had the pleasure of raising my son Bubbalouie all by myself.  I've always told Zach that we're a small family, but we're a great family!  I have to admit that after Zach graduated and has started out in the big world on his own adventures, I was more than a little lost.  I always thought 'empty nest syndrome' was some corny cliche.... well that joke was on me!  I'm adjusting now and working on moving from 'single mum' mode to 'what in the heck does Kimberly like/want to do' mode.  I have a feeling things are going to start getting interesting!  This picture was taken in Portland Maine in Sept 2011.  It was a dream trip through New England for both Zach and I.  I've done some mini books on this trip that I'll be featuring here shortly.  Mini Books are the Cat's Meow!!!

You'll meet more of my extended cast very soon as well.   Bemah, Pap, Matt, Myke, Martin, Carlos, Victor, Kassie, Teri K, Julie, Bee Bee, Lee Lee, Momo & AndyMan.... I could go on for hours.  I have a very blessed life filled with great friends, family, and adopted family.

Wow, blogging is fun.  Even if no one ever reads this... I'm not sorry!!!

Now I'm off to start deciding which projects I want to share first....so many to choose from.

Have a wonderful scrapworthy day!
~K