DeNami July Blog Hop - Summer

Welcome to the July DeNami Designs Blog Hop.   I actually started to type June because I can't believe it's July already. You should have arrived from the blog of

Pattie Goldman.  

If at any time along the way a link doesn't work, just hop back to the

DeNami blog 

and you can hop back in wherever you want from the list of participants.  Things happen.

This month the theme is summer and there are so many wonderful images to choose from.
Here are the details of the hop from Paulina at DeNami Designs:

When: The blog hop starts on July 8th at 6 AM, PST. However, you have until July 9, 2012, 11:59 pm PST, to leave comments on all the blogs (to be eligible for a prize).
Why: To be inspired by fun DeNami Design creations and also the chance to win mini shopping sprees on the DeNami Design website!

Prizes: We are giving away THREE $20 gift certificates to our website! We'll be giving away one gift certificate to a random participant (DT members not eligible) and then we'll also be giving away TWO gift certificates to TWO people who comment along the hop!

This month I decided to make a scrapbook page instead of a card.  While cardmaking is my first love, I've been making a lot of scrapbook pages and I love the monthly paper collection release from We R Memory Keepers titled Down the Boardwalk.  

The papers are wonderfully warm and I thought the beach collection would be perfect for summer and would work great with Mimi surfing.  I don't expect to ever have a photo of someone surfing in my scrapbooks, but I do have lots of beach pictures and Mimi's just cool.

After creating my scrapbook canvas, I added a photo mount and hand cut the Mimi image.  She's stamped on white paper with black ink and colored with Copic markers.  Of course I waxed Mimi's board with some crystal lacquer to make it shine.  I was thinking water and sand.  So then I went just a little too far with that idea and thought it would be great to add some real sand.  I don't recommend it.  I used a combination of ATG tape and crystal lacquer and I think it just looks like a mess.  Plus I can't imagine I'll want loose falling sand in my book.  But I left it so show my inspiration, both the good and the bad.  I'm pretty sure I'll be rubbing that sand off the page soon.

Here's a close up of Mimi.  Don't you just love that Nami added Mimi's earrings even when she's surfing?  And not a hair out of place.  

The final stop in this hop in Glenda Wyatt.  Enjoy and don't forget that every comment you leave is an entry to win a gift certificate to the DeNami on line store.  With all the new released image, you'll have a hard time deciding what the pick.  Happy summer

Amy Tangerine Book Challenge-Covers

Captured Moments is hosting a interactive inspirational challenge using  Amy Tangerine Day Books by Amy Tan.  They've selected the 'Hug' book and several customers are participating.

The details of the challenge are outlined on the Captured Moments blog. Each week they are publishing a section and posting photos of the results.  Tara has added a link on the right side of the blog to select all of the postings about the challenge.

What I love about this challenge is the interaction between people I like to craft with and admire for their creativity, Tiffany's creations, and Amy Tan's wonderful stuff.  Everyone's interpretations are different.  So far I find myself saying 'what a great idea' and 'I love that' when I see a new posting.  So much fun.  And we're having a real internet interaction by commenting on each others work.

Here is what everyone gets in the kit.  The Hugs book, some die cuts, some envelopes, and some paper tabs.

Then I also purchased the sticker set (hello/girl/etc.) and the raised stickers (typewriter) along with some Amy Tangerine letter stickers.

Anyway...........here is my cover.

I used some papers from an Echo Park packet called This and That.  I cut flower from the same patterned paper I used in the Stampin' Up! card in the previous post. I wanted the cover to have something that celebrated everyday life so I used the sticker "these are the day's" and the die cut "a slice of the good life".  The first sticker is the color scheme of the papers but when I added the bright maroonish red die cut and then I thought of the Stampin' Up! Melon Mambo.  I went looking for the paper to cut some flowers and sadly only had one of the darker pink flower left.  I grabbed it along with some blue and light pink to add contrast to the green and yellow/orange.  Since I turned to the previous cards, I cut some of the watercolored pearlized leaves left over.  I finalized it with the crystal Stickles on the flower centers for some bling. 

Every time I start a journal or altered book I struggle to choose a theme or decide what to write.  I follow Amy Tan's blog and But there's one thing I learned about Amy Tan from her blog, SHE LOVES LIFE!  So I had to make my book be one of celebration of the days I have.  It's so easy to get bogged down with the struggles of life but learning to emphasize the positive makes getting through the day so much easier.  Reading her blog cheers me.

Check out the other creations by my fellow participants on the Captured Moments blog.  New challenge to be posted tomorrow.  Thanks Tara and Tiffany for your persistence in getting these wonderful products.  

Stampin' Up! Club Cards

Here are two cards I prepared to Sue Black's monthly Stampin' Up! club that met last Monday.  

The first uses beautiful Designer Series paper and the lattice die.  By cutting the lattice with double sided paper you can easily adhere the quilt outline with one side and fill in the pieces with the other side of the paper.  They're set to be coordinated.  Oops, I see I lost one little piece.  Glad I have some extras to add in that spot.

The vanilla paper is run through the Big Shot with an embossing folder for texture.  The same folder was used with the Top Note die.  That piece is trimmed to add just one piece along the left side.  This is an easy card that looks elegant.

The second card has a unique fold. Below you can see that the card folds in the front with velcro.  The floral stamp piece opens to the right.  The left panel of patterned paper opens to the left.

The green leaf on the right side is stamped with Wild Wasabi embossing powder and the ribbon is Daffodil Delight. The real beauty of this card is the flowers.  They are stamped with white embossing powder on white shimmering paper from Stampin' Up!. The flowers are watercolored with Melon Mambo and Daffodil Delight ink and when they are dry they have some shimmer paper tapped on for a pearlized look.

I think the cards were a hit.  They got to learn some new techniques and try some products they may not have seen before.  Everyone thought these were going to be complicated cards but I think they saw they were easy once they got to it and followed the steps.  

No meeting in July so we'll resume in August.  Happy Summer club members.

Captured Moments Die Cut Mini Album

Last week I took at class at Captured Moments to make a chip board mini album using multiple die cuts, particularly the mini album die.  The basic design is posted on the Captured Moments blog, but here is what I did to spruce mine up a little.

April Year in Review

Here are my April Year in Review pages.  Once I got in the swing of things, it got a little easier to plan for the pages.  I have to remember to take photos of what's going on around us and to think of some things in the news that are interesting (only positive or fun things; no earthquakes, fires, etc.).  Now I keep a Word document ready to go and I save copies of photos to print and find google images of things I want to include.  So what happened in April?

To Auburn for Easter.  Here's the kids with Grandma (now 85) and Grandpa (86), Mara started with her math tutor Emily, Andrew drove to Rochester to interview with LiDestri Foods.....

Mara, Genna and I drove the Manchester, NH and I worked the Kiwi Lane exhibit, baseball season started, I taught my monthly class at Capture Moments with all Magenta cards, Alex and Joey toured Europe together on school break........

Spring was all around us with more flowers blooming and robins in the lawn, Mara and Genna are here is several pictures, the rhody flower represents my friend Beth, there was a dead turkey in my yard which I had to carry into the woods (ugh), another fun crop at Captured Moments....

My baby boy moved away from home.  I'm so proud of him.  I included the wonderful card and note his psuedo grandmother, Mrs. Rabbe, gave him.

I planned my May and June card classes for Captured Moments and Michael's, we went to dinner with Mrs. Rabbe before Andrew left, and Pottermore opened officially.  

The June pages are almost done and the most of the pictures are ready to be printed.  We still have to survive Mara's sweet sixteen party this weekend.  All caught up!

March Year in Review

Here are the Year in Review pages for March.

Captured Moments approached me about teaching a card class monthly at their store and Tara posted a wonderful announcement, then I taught my first class there and it was so much fun.  I featured all DeNami stamps.  Girl scout cookie time came and since Mara wasn't selling for the first time in years, we helped out Josie and Lucy....

While the van was in the shop, I got a flat (and I mean flat) tire on the expressway in the Jeep.  Pain in the neck.  The weather was so warm the forsythias bloomed and we headed to the car wash, the girl scouts celebrated their 100the anniversary...

the Jets acquired Tim Tebow, that should be interesting....

our recipe club met again, notice the summer clothes for the March gathering..

Paul and I continue to meet weekly for lunch, Brandy and Brian announced that they are expecting, I got a new iPhone and fell in love with Siri, Layli sent me pictures of her new daughter Carolina and big sister Angelina, Mara and BFF Genna had sleepovers at the Steindorfs, monthly crop at Michael's brought a new group of crafters to our crop....

I posted a picture of my workstation for a DeNami call about work space, the kids and I had a picnic type meal at Giffy's, another sleepover of kids in our family room, another fabulous crop at Captured Moments, and I added a great pic about how wonderful reading is for kids. I'm happy I've raised two avid readers.   One more month to post.

February Year in Review

Here are the pages for my Year in Review for February.  Tiffany had one 8 1/2 by 11 snowy page in January but because we had no snow at that point, I split the page and bought another page protector.

So what happened in February?

The Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, Steve left our group, again, the month moved on with basically no snow, our group made our own crop at Captured Moments on Saturday....

Cathy, Alex and Dad celebrated their birthdays, somewhere there is a picture of Marilyn, Melanie, Kerri and I at Art Journal class, I made these cute Valentine's treat for my colleagues,

We discovered we loved Sushi X, we continued our medical care of lucky, I began a major reorganization of photo negatives and pictures, the music competitions began...

Lucky passed on and Lucy is the last cat standing, Mara and Ariana went to Colonie Center A LOT, we focused on Smash books at Michael's, Andrew, Mara and I went to Carrabba's for dinner (always a favorite).......

I kept the message Gerry wrote to Mara for Valentine's day because it was wonderful and personal, we announced a reorganization of the bureau, there were lots of awards ceremonies, I won the grand prize at the February crop, Whitney Houston died, we had our monthly recipe club meeting...

we saw my friend Laura in Rumors at the Albany Civic Theater, we found out we were moving to the tower, Avery was in an article in People magazine, the Colonie planning board met about putting a warehouse in our backyard,  Jeremy Lin was all the rage with the Knicks,  the new cast of Dancing with the Stars we announced....

finally we had some snow.........

and Mara, Brandon, and Genna continued to have sleepovers in our family room with their friends.

I try to pull information from what's happening around us as well as what's happening in our lives.  More to follow.