but first, coffee

I adore coffee.  It takes me back to sitting at my grandma's kitchen table and enjoying sips of her coffee with lots of creamer.  It's no doubt how I developed a taste for it!  This title cut file, but first, coffee, can be found for free in the Paper Issues shop.  That was my starting point for my layers.

The coffee cup cut file was from Kelly Purkey's Studio Calico Sketchbook class.  Her washi strips are included on my page as well.  I used lots of Shimelle's True Stories papers and embellishments.  The best part of waking up stamp is from Evalicious.  That adds to the Grandma remembrance-- she was a Folger's coffee lover!

I added lots of word and phrase stickers from Crate Paper- Maggie Holmes Confetti collection and from Ali Edwards Firsts kit.  It was fun to play off of the "first" word in various sayings.  This close up also shows the delicious wood grain cardstock paper from American Crafts.

Hope your day involves a cup of Joe. 

Ryan: Golden Birthday

Paper Issues has a Sketchy Saturday link up and this was based on an October Afternoon LO by Sasha Farina.

I loved how she spelled out a word in descending boxes so this cut file by 17 Turtles worked perfectly.

These were all photos from Ryan's golden birthday. It was pirate themed, so OA's Treasure Map was perfect to use again.  Also, I love any reason to have circle photos, too!

I loved Sasha's double frame of stitching, so I did that here.

I enjoyed the nudge to use mist, sequins, and stars!  I'm linking up to Paper Issues Seas the Day new issue! Yay for pirate themed parties!Thanks for looking!

Pedal Pub

To celebrate our 15th Anniversary, we rented a pedal pub in St. Paul to tour several bars. 

The left side with lots of pics of the fun.

The right side included my journaling about our workout adventure. I have linked this up to the Paper Issues blog.

4th of July

I was excited to try out my new SC stamp set for the Make It Big class by Paige Evans. 

The inside is a mix of star stamps by MAMBI and Elle's Studio.

This card will link up to Paper Issues Red, White, and Blue Issue. I also linked this Instagram photo collage LO:

Love You to the Moon

This page was inspired by Paige Evans Make it Big class at Studio Calico. 

It started from this sketch:

After cutting the wavy strips apart, I cut the letters from the sketch on top of scraps from SC kits as a cutting guide. Here's how it looked before pictures and stitching.

A close up of the fun moon flair from a SC kit and other puffy stickers.

And another view:

I had wanted to do a hand cut lettering page, so this was the perfect class to inspire me to make a layout. I changed out the V after sewing the grid one down as it appeared navy instead of black! 

Here's a link to Paige's blog for more lengthy hand cut lettering quotes :

http://www.paigeandchris.com/2015/06/the-one-with-make-it-big-scraplifts.html?m=1

She's even featured my page as one from our student gallery. I'm pretty honored that she added me to her blog post!

Thanks for looking!