Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy New Year!!

Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!

This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!

I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!

I pray that you all have a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year!! I look forward to more inspiration from all of my scrapping friends!!

Friday, December 30, 2011

My Top 10 Personal Favorite LO's of 2011

I just wanted to share my 10 Top Personal Favorites of this past year. It was a rough year with some bumps in the road, and scrapping was my therapy. Thank you to everyone who leaves love on my blog! !It means a lot to me. Have a Wonderful and Blessed New Year...










Wednesday, December 21, 2011

December Zva Blog Hop Winners Announced

We'd like to congratulate the FIVE December Zva Blog Hop winners! Their names will be found on the following blogs:

One winner from each of the 5 blogs will receive a Zva prize package worth $30.00. Congrats winners!
The Zva Blog Hop winner on my Blog is....Beth Hallgren!!! Beth, email me with your addie so that we can send out your fabulous Zva Prize pack!!! Congrats!!

using True Random Number Generator...



See Windys' Blog for a complete list of winners from the 5 Blogs chosen!!

email me at nurselisarn2@msn.com


Monday, December 19, 2011

Zva December Blog Hop

Zva Creative and our talented Design Team welcomes you to join us for our December Design Team blog hop!

As you know, Zva offers many beautiful color groupings for pearls, flowers and crystals. We want to make sure that they shine bright for you, so each designer was asked to share a creation using a specific color or color combination on their blog hop project. If you like what you see, you can find a list of stores and online retailers that sell Zva HERE.

The Blog Hop begins at Windy Robinson's blog. She will have the complete list of all the participating blogs in case there is a glitch along the way. If you would like to play along, just follow along the blog path. I am linking to one of the Zva designers and that designer is linking to the next and so on. Be prepared to be inspired along the way!

Hidden on FIVE of the blogs is a Zva Creative prize package! Winners will be randomly chosen after the hop is over, so it's important to leave a comment on as many blogs as you can along the way.

The Blog Hop starts today, December 19th and runs through midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December 20th.

The 5 winners will be announced on Wednesday, December 21st on each of the five winning blogs. The full list will be found on Windy Robinson's blog as well. We will do our best to notify each winner, but it's best if you can pop in to all of the blogs once again on Wednesday... plus, you never know what kind of inspirational creation that you may find there.

All you need to do is leave a comment on this Zva Blog Hop post... you do not need to leave a comment on each and every designer's blog post to qualify. However, the more times you comment along the blog hop path, the more chances you will have to win.

We also thought it would be more fun to add even more chances to win our blog hop prize! To increase your chances of winning:

* Comment to let us know that you posted on your Facebook page about our hop (link to any of the blog hop posts)

* Comment to let us know that you "tweeted" about our hop (link to any of the blog hop posts)

* Comment to let us know that you asked your local store to carry Zva creative products. If they already do, that's fantastic, maybe you can suggest other products that they don't carry.

So you have FOUR chances on each blog to win one of our FIVE prizes! That's a lot of chances to win!

This is the LO I created for this Hop. The colors chosen for me are Browns, taupes and creams. I love the colors. I chose DCWV Lace and Linen Paper Stack for my LO. I used my new Martha Stewart Crochet Lace punch around the page set for the edges of my center piece of paper.

The Design Idea came from this months challenge at Once Upon A Sketch!! Nadia has a fabulous site!! Go check it out!!

All of the beautiful flowers are Zva flowers (FL-04CA-124, FL-04CA-128 and FLBK-02CA-106) and they compliment each other so well.

I love the pearl flourishes (PEB-03CB-111 and PE-03CA-106) They are so rich and elegant looking in real life. And the leaves (FL-04CA-113) are a soft brushed paper that look and feel so real . They compliment any flower cluster.

I just wanted to add a little bit of sparkle to the page with the title. I machine sewed the vine trim to the photo mat using a tiny zig zag stitch.


The blog hop begins here at Windy Robinson's blog. Your next stop is Susan Lui. Enjoy!

Thank you for joining us! Happy Holidays!

P.S. Mark your calendar to join us again on January 30th for our next Zva blog hop!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Believe ***SwirlyHues***

Come join us for our SwirlyHues challenge this month. Angelica is hostess this month anf has picked 3 colors from the December kit and a gorgeous sketch by Beggahuna to work with. The challenge is open to everyone. Here is my take on the sketch.

The photo's are my sister and I visiting Santa when we believed...
The gorgeous border is the new Martha Stewart Punch Around The Page Set Crochet Lace. It is one of my faves as it is so ornate.


The Swirly vine is from Cheery Lynne Designs. It is so delicate and cuts so beautifully with my Vagabond a a few shims. Same as Spellbinder dies.

I added one of my poinsettia flowers and added a rose in the middle. The beautiful Prima trim flows across the page beautifully.


I cut the tress from the red patterned paper in the kit then embossed them with my Cuttlebug embossing folders, then lighty sanded the raised design revealing the patterns. I enhanced the Petaloo vine with more roses.

Here is the sketch.

Here is your color challenge.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Swirlydoos December Blog Hop and Reveal

Welcome to Swirlydoos December Kit Reveal Blog Hop BLOCK PARTY!!! We are having a party and you are all invited. If you came here from Swirlydoos Blog then you are on the right track. If not, go back to Swirlydoo's blog and pick up the trail from there. We have some amazing projects for you to see today and as a bonus we have 3 manufacturer blogs that are joining in the fun!! There are 5 prize packs up for grabs so make sure to follow along and have fun!!

This first LO is my sisters granddaughter Nikki when she was a baby. I did some creative editing in Photoshop, and gave her butterfly wings.
I love the little letter stickers in the 12x12 sheet in the kit. The butterflies are a file I created for the kit, I printed them out on photo paper and outlined them with Stickles.

The beautiful vine was enhanced with Petaloo canterberry vine spray and some spiral flowers I created with scrap card stock.

This next LO is of my daughter when I took her to Swirlydoos Camp in Colorado last year before she took off for school. The girly time was just what we needed. She had not seen snow since she was 3 years old , and she did not remember it, so she was fascinated with it. We were lucky that it snow a lot on the last day of camp. Snow at the cabin was truly beautiful!!

Krissy opens up a special order for Dusty Attic for us every so often so that we can order what we want. She also sells it in the store. I purchased these bricks a while ago, and loved the way Gabrielle Pollacco used them on one of her LO's as an accent. I followed her lead. It adds just the right amount of rustic feeling to the LO. I inked it with some soft brown ink, then went over it with Fire Brick Distress ink then dry brushed some white acrylic paint over the whole bunch.

These are a closeup of the last tutorial I did. there are many variations of the poinsettia that you can create.

I created the title in Photoshop, printed it out on card stock cut into strips and inked the edges.

This next LO features a photo that I have used before. This past June in Colorado at Swirlydoos camp, I asked Krissy to snap some picks of me blowing dandelions into the wind. But with this version I used a Florabella overlay for Snow to add to the photo.

Here is a closeup of the poinsettias I created. The leaves are Spellbinders that has been misted with Glimmer Mist in 2 different colors.

The tag was created as a stand alone tag for the reveal this month. Each Designer created a tag with a different technique. I chose to do a puffy paint technique to mimic snow. I used it on the flower, letters, as well as the edges of the tag. I just decided to add the tag to the LO as my contribution to Berry 71 Bleu sketch challenge this month where I am a Guest designer, I turned and flipped the sketch around and this LO is what I came up with . We had to incorporate a tag into the LO. I love tags!! Click on the sketch for details.



Here is my stand alone tag.


Just a closeup of the flower. I love Flower Soft. It looks like real pollen. I purchased 6 different colors and you will see me incorporating them into my flowers more often now.



You have until midnight, eastern time, on December 16th to complete the hop. In order to qualify to win here is what you need to do:
1: Visit all SIX blogs and leave a comment on each. This way we know you were there. Become a follower if you're not already. Take your time. There are beautiful things to see along the way.
2: Before you leave each blog, look for the “special” words and write it down.
Once you have visited all the blogs and collected all the special words, they will create a sentence.
3: Finally, head back to the Swirlydoos blog and leave a comment letting us know how much fun you had AND tell us the sentence that was created with all of the special words you collected.

My special words are Try Not

All winners will be randomly drawn. Winners will be posted over on the Swirlydoos blog on the 17th, which also happens to be the same day December's SwirlyHues Contest is unveiled. YAY!
Have a great time!!!! The block party continues over at Clear Scraps.