Music

I have been reading on several boards that some people don't like blogs with music and, rather than search for the music gadget to shut it off, will simply leave. I like music, pretty much all of it, and really don't want to eliminate it. So I have moved it to the top of my blog so that, if you don't want to listen, you can easily turn it off, and then browse through my blog. I really want to share my creations with you.

More Flutterbys

I completed another double LO of the pics from the Westminster Butterfly Pavillion. These pages include some of the best pictures I took there, including an incredible close-up of a butterfly which shows its probiscus very clearly and another wonderful close up of a butterfly that landed on DD Christi's hand. The one holding her camera (!) - which is a better one than mine, but she couldn't get her own picture! I think that I have just one more double layout to complete on this visit to a very popular and well-worth-it tourist stop. Next time we visit, I am going to take these pages with and get some help in identifying the specific butterflies. The 3-D butterflies are made with the Cuddlebugs die "Butterflies" with a bottom layer of black cardstock and a top layer from the CTMH paper pack "Expedition."

A Cheap Investment

I decided I had better get one of my CTMH layout template books out and see about getting some scrapping done. Last summer, DD Christi, Kyle, Courtney and I visited my sister in Denver. While we were there, we visited the Butterfly Pavillion in Westminster and I had LOTS of great shots of these gorgeous creatures. I wanted to find a LO that used a lot of photos and found "Sampler - Flower" in the Reflections book (page 122). Flowers go well with butterflies so I decided to use this template. I then used my Cricut to cut out a big flower to mount the matted photos. Unfortunately there is not a companion page to this layout, and with all the photos I placed on this page, no place for any title, so I had to figure out a right hand page. I think I did a decent job. I was able to cut out the butterflies from several photos and used them for accents. For all but one, I was able to see the antenna and cut them out with the butterfly. The antennae for the big black, white, and blue butterfly just disappeared into the background of the photo, so I needed something to add for antennae. In the middle of the night, there is just not a lot of opportunity to scrounge for something black and skinny but I did see the skinny little antenna for a cheap radio I keep on my scrap desk. (I don't know why I keep it there, the reception is crummy, the CD player doesn't work very well, and the clock is an hour and a half off and I can't be bothered long enough to reset it!) Well it now has 2 1/2 inches less of antenna - it went for a good cause!! I pop-dotted the butterfly cut-outs and center photo of the flower. Incidentally, I was the only one of us that day that saw that giant black and green butterfly and I had to follow it halfway across the room to get a picture!

The other day, DD Christi and I were walking around in Target. I needed some envelopes to mail my swaps out. But Target is a rather dangerous place for my credit card. As we walked through the electronic department, a small tabletop tripod caught my eye. I have been disappointed in my photography skills, especially in posting pics here. So I let this tripod jump into my shopping cart. This evening I used it, a large piece of foam core, and the wooden easel my DH made many, many years ago for our children to display their Science Fair project boards on to mount these pages in preparation for photographing them. I am very pleased with how much that inexpensive little tripod helped.

Just in case...

you thought that all I was going to use this blog for was CTMH advertising, here are a few of the other things I've been working on lately. These items are for swaps on the Cricut board. The first is for a Veterans' Day tag swap. I had been looking for a reason to use my Soldier stamp. I am so proud of my son who was serving in the Army in Iraq when he was critically wounded. I bought this Paper Inspirations stamp quite a while ago with him in mind. The picture on the info side of my blog is of his new baby girl who is now just a month and a half old. (I need to post a newer picture, she is a beautiful baby - of course, I am not biased at all!) The ATC (Artist Trading Card) in the middle is for a color challenge swap. We had to use at least 3 shades of our chosen color and no other colors. I chose black, two shades of gray, and a black and gray patterned paper. And when I think of gray, I think elephant! That is one of the Life's a Jungle stamps from (guess who?) - CTMH. The third one is for the tag swap again, this time the theme is Fall. Designing this was more difficult for me, but once I got started, it went together pretty quickly. The toughest part was cutting out the leaves. But I used the magnifier of my Dazor lamp (I mostly use it for my counted cross-stitching) and an episode of CSI and it was done. The leaf stamp and the word FALL are stamps from Clear Stamps that I think I got from Archiver's.