Its A Blog Rebirth (With A Giveaway Of Course)

Hi!  I'm so excited to be back with a great new look, a plan for keeping up, and a great giveaway (or two or three or .....).  (wa

You may have visited in the past - there was a time when I enjoyed sharing my projects here regularly.  It was lots of fun!  But somewhere along the line, I lost my focus and didn't create quite so many pretty things.  But things are on track now and I'm excited to be back.

I have a fresh (for me) view on life and creating and I wanted a new look for my blog that showed that.  But I am not a techy girl - so I did what any self respecting non-techy creative girl would do - I went shopping on etsy.  I wanted a clean design that was a little girly, maybe a little sparkly, and uniquely mine - and since this is just for fun - I wanted inexpensive.  I found Blog Parlour (formerly PinkLovesGold).  Christine put together this beautiful custom design for me - she was great to work with and really captured the feeling I wanted for my blog.

If you have seen my work, you know I love embellishments.  I love mixing colors, textures and little bits.  So I chose a layout were I played with doilies, die-cuts, alphas, acrylic pieces, sequins, woods, and frames to share.  This is one of my favorite recent projects. 

My favorite thing here are those stars from the Studio Calico South of Market line.  I used Martha Stewart gold liquid gilding to add texture and shine and loved having a custom embellishment.

Now for the important stuff!  Any good blog rebirth should feel like a party.  And the best way to party with my online friends is a good giveaway.  Since today's layout was about the embellishments, I thought an embellishment giveaway was a perfect fit.  Here's what you can win.

There are lots of goodies here - including enamel shapes from pinkfresh studios, enamel dots, a studio calico stamp, exclusive items from studio calico kits (that washi was in a subscriber exclusive kit and is gold!), freckled fawn goodies, enamel dots, a limited edition mister hueys, my minds eye buttons .... the list goes on and on.  And I have to admit that I've continued to add some of my favorites since I took this picture.

So here's how you can enter:

1. follow my blog (writing is a lot more fun if people read it) and
2. leave me a comment - about the new look for my blog, what you want to read about, or even what you want to win.  (Another giveaway is coming soon)
3. You can get extra entries if you share on other social media sites.  Come back here and leave me a link.
4. Entries will close on Sunday November 16th at midnight.  The winner will be posted here that week.

Thanks for visiting, reading and commenting.  I'm really excited about starting my blog back up.  I hope you stop by often.  

Fun and New

Its been busy these last couple days and I haven't felt very creative.  So I don't have a layout to show you.  But I do want to share some new goodies.

First - some new sequins from an Etsy shop (Idea2sequin) I have an addiction to both sequins and Etsy.

Some amazing new erasable markers that I learned about through Studio Calico and Camp Calico - now I want the pens and highlighters.

I'd love to see your newest finds - leave a link in the comments.  Have a terrific Tuesday.

Sketch-A-Thon

The My Scraps and More sketch-a-thon started Friday and runs for the entire month of March.  A sketch is being posted each day and you earn points through the month for a chance a the grand prize - items from the OA Cakewalk collection.  Here's the first sketch. 

This sketch is great and was perfect for an adaptation to a two page layout.  (Since I only have three months to finish Nicholas's high school albums, I am looking for inspiration for the two page layouts for those projects.)  The MSM challenge also asked that you use two different alphas on your project.

My layout is about joining a new soccer team after the high school season ended.  And I did use the sketch as a starting point for a two page layout.   Heres what I came up with:

My design is really simple and uses papers from Creative Memories and Fancy Pants.  The large stars are from Etsy and had been in my stash for almost a year.  The soccer balls are from Jolie and were in the value spot at Archivers.  I used two different sets of Thickers for my title and used pop dots to vary the height of the letter tiles.  The red stars are Jenni Bowlin and the white stars came from a Studio Calico kit.

I'm hoping to have more scrap time today.  Enjoy your Sunday!