Does Heaven have an address???

Hello dear friends.  It's Kimm here today. How about the all these beautiful works of art the girls have been sharing with you all? What a way to honor all the Moms out there.  Each day is such a surprise when I log in here. They knock my socks off every day! 

So, the girls have begged me to share my card with you today. They weren't taking "no" for an answer - LOL. I originally designed this card for the last MMSC, but due to my computer issues, I was unable load it before the deadline. What a bummer. Maybe next time, right?

Our theme this week is Mother's Day. I think this card is quite suitable for the occasion. If Heaven had an address.....

...I would send this card to my Mom.  Mother's Day has been a very difficult time of year for me since loosing my Mom to cancer over 5 years ago.  She was only 53 years young.  She passed peacefully one month from her diagnosis.  Sadly, this all took place around Christmas.  Certainly not enough time to say "good-bye", but we were also grateful that she did not suffer long like her father (my PopPop).  She is sadly missed.

After spending some time with my munchkins in the morning, I generally find myself hiding out in my studio crafting for a few hours on Mother's Day. This is where I feel closest to my Mom. She is the reason I got myself into the business to begin with. She was an amateur photographer, an amazing artist, and a local business owner herself (flowers, balloons, and gifts). By combining all of her passions, I found this wonderful world of paper crafting and scrapbooking that captures the beauty of her spirit.  And best of all, I get to share it with so many wonderful people.  If I had a sentiment inside this card it would read...

"Thank You Mom!  For everything you are and continue to be.  For your support, guidance, and unconditional love.  Even though you are not here with us, you are still HERE.

Love,

Kimm, Jenn & Mandy"

Enough of the sappiness.  Now let me share with you the ingredients of my card.

• Paper:  Pink Paislee 365 Degrees, Bazzill Cardstock, Neenah Cardstock 110lb cover weight cut with Spellbinder's Lg Circle and Lg Scallop Circles dies.
• Stamp:  Magnolia Tilda with Three Flowers (sold out on website - will check physical inventory)
• Medium:  Prismacolor Pencils with OMS, Stickles, Colorbox Fluid Chalk (chestnut roan)
• Embellishments:  Prima Flowers (mostly from stash), our brand new stemmed paper roses that will be available soon, Prima Say it in Crystals Centers (pg 3), Pearls from KaiserCraft, silk ribbon from stash.

Sorry about my sappiness, but I  hope you have enjoyed my creation.  Thank you for stopping by today.  Remember to give your Mom a hug and tell her just how much you love her this Mother's Day, and everyday.  I hope all of our Moms, Grandmas, Aunts, even our "Fur-Mommies" out there have wonderful Mother's Day!

Don't forget to enter to win our "Beary Sweet" Blog Candy!

♥ Hugs ♥

Mom is the Heart of the Family

"Other things may change us, but we start

and end with Family."

You have probably noticed by now that I like quotes and so I am starting my post for this week of Mothers' Day inspiration off with another one of my favorites. Family really is what it's all about and I'm sure many of you would agree, where would our families be without our moms? And so in honor of our moms and how much they put into making a family work, here is a simple gift you can make for the mom(s) in your life to show them your appreciation.

I found these letters at a very cool wood crafts store in Salt Lake City, Utah-- The Wood Connection and the unfinished letters are available to order from their website. Many craft and hobby stores also carry different types of unfinished wood and paper mache letters that would work for this project. Just make sure the bottoms of all your letters are flat so that they will stand up when you are finished.

I first painted the sides and back of my letters using a dark brown craft paint. After letting those dry thoroughly I was ready for the paper-- I chose the Basic Grey Origins lines because its colors just happen to be the exact colors I have used in my family room (the designers at Basic Grey must have really good taste! Ha-ha).

I chose the six patterns I wanted to use and then for each letter I turned the pattern paper face down, put the letter face down on it and traced around the letter. Then I cut out each letter from the paper by going just slightly inside my traced lines to make sure that the paper would not overlap the wood edges of the letters. This might sound like it took a long time but actually only took me about 15 minutes to trace and cut out all the letters (that, however, does not count how long it took me to decide which patterns to use and in which order! I sometimes analyze things much too long!)

After cutting out all my paper, I glued them to the wood using good old fashioned glue sticks. I prefer Scotch brand gluesticks and I put a layer of glue on both the back of the paper and the front of the wood to make sure and get a good bond. I know there are a lot of types of adhesives out there that would probably work for this but I have tried liquid glues and Modge Podge for paper onto wood and sometimes the paper will wrinkle, which is always frustrating. I have never had any wrinkling with glue sticks and so I stick to those for adhering paper to wood.

Once the paper was glued, I used a sanding stick to go carefully around some of the edges and filed back any paper edges that were overhanging the wood. Do this very carefully so the paper will not rip and tear off more than you want it to. Then I distressed all around the edges with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo. I found that the ink pad and any ink daubers were still too big for some of the small corners of the letters so I used a small paintbrush and "painted" the ink on.

Finally, I added just a few embellishments because I just couldn't help adding a few fun things (though I tried not to overdo it!) I tied a little ribbon to match on two of the letters and added some Prima flowers on my "F." Then I used the Basic Grey Stitched Brads that match the Origins line (these are so yummy-- fabric and rhinestones, so cute!) to embellish the "m" and the "l." I simply cut the fasteners off the back of the brads with a old pair of scissors and then attached them with glue dots.


This really was a quick and fun project to make and I know any mom would be delighted with the thought and effort behind a handmade gift. Here is the finished project displayed in my family room with some family pictures-- guess I will have to call this one my Mothers' Day gift to myself and go get me some more sets of letters to make to give away. In honor of all you moms out there (and grandmas, aunts, sisters, cousins, neighbors and friends) and your tireless, loving efforts to take care of your families-- have a truly wonderful Mothers' Day!

Please welcome the VERY talented Elise!

Wow, more exciting news to report!  Are we making your head spin yet? 

The Beary Scrap Design Team and I are honored to introduce you to our newest Design Team Member, Elise!  She's been prepping for a few weeks and I know she is anxious to start sharing with you.  Blessed with talent and a passion for paper, Elise's work will truly inspire you.  Not only are we fortunate to share her talent with you, wait until you get to meet her.  She's has the kindest heart and the most bubbling personality.  She'll make you smile all around.  Would you like to see a sampling of her amazing work?  You can visit Elise's Blog by clicking HERE. 

Elise will be joining us next week when we launch the Beary Sweet Challenge right here on our Design Team Blog.  Please give her a warm welcome by sending her some love and saying "HI!".

Check in with us daily to see what our talented ladies are up to.  Not a follower yet?  Watcha waiting for?  You can create your google account for free and connect with us using "friend connect" to become a follower.  It's quick and simple.  Besides, we wouldn't want you to miss out on all the excitement taking place.

Don't forget, we still have some (well, a lot) of Beary Sweet Candy running until May 5!  Find out how you can win all the sweetness you could ever want by clicking HERE!

Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs & Smiles

Save The Date: Beary Sweet Challenge Starts May 1st!

Introducing The Beary Scrap's Beary Sweet Challenges.

Our challenges will be on the 1st and 15th of each month here at the design team blog. You will have 2 weeks to create a project based on our challenge theme. Entries close at 11:59pm EDT the day before a new challenge begins. We will announce the Random.org winner and our "Beary Sweet Top 3" on the 3rd and 17th of each month (this gives us a couple of days to review all your fabulous entries). The prize goes to our random winner, and we'll have a fun badge to honor our three favorite projects.

Here are the "rules" to play:

• Become a follower if you aren't already
• Mention in your blog post that you are entering your project at The Beary Scrap, with a direct link back to us
• Link to your blog post (not your blog "home page") with our Inlinkz frog on the challenge post *and* leave a comment
• Kindly enter only once, with a new project (nothing posted before our challenge date)

Additional information:

• Feel free to combine with other challenges
• All project types are welcome as long as they follow our challenge theme (cards, scrapbook layouts, etc.)
• International crafters can play, too!

We'll see you May 1st!

Cheers,
Susan

It's A Whole Week For Mom!

Hello friends! Welcome to another fabulous week here with the Beary Scrappy Gals. We're all atwitter with excitement right now. Not only do we have some fabulous blog candy on offer through May 5th, next week we have a new designer joining us *and* we start our bi-weekly challenges to *you*! Whoo hoo! We feel very fortunate to have each and every one of you visit us, and hope you can play along in our challenges, too.

This week we're honoring Mom with a Mother's Day theme. Throughout the week our designers will share their projects, so be sure to check back daily. Our own blog "mom", Kimm, will even share her project!

I'll be sending this card to my lovely mother-in-law, Joyce. When it come's to mothers-in-law, I hit the jackpot with her. She's a very kind and generous person, and is fun to hang around. :) (And no, I'm not just saying that because I know what I'm getting for my birthday next month! *grin*)

The gray flowers in the top left corner and along the bottom are actually a subtle metallic finish. In this second photo, you can see the shiny parts of this delicious SEI Poppy paper.

Here's an inside view. It might not be news to any of you, but I just discovered I could use my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder on the 5.5 x 5.5" Bazzill paper. I ran it through my Spellbinder Wizard once, then moved the unembossed section into the folder, lining up the already-embossed dots with the folder. I'm pretty sure it will work on all folders with a repeating pattern. Yay!

Card Recipe
Stamp: Kraftin' Kimmie's Clara, from the Moonlight Whispers collection
Paper: Bazzill Chocolate and Rain; SEI Poppy Collection - "Rattan" front and back sides; Neenah 110lb Cover in Solar White for Clara
Medium: Prismacolor pencils with OMS; Stickles - Star Dust and Distress Broken China; Glimmer Mist Pearl (on the large green rose); ColorBox Fluid Chalk in Creamy Brown; Copic Spica Clear
Embellishments: Mulberry roses and leaves (coming soon to the store!); lace, pearls from stash; sewing machine

Thanks so much for stopping in today. Don't forget to enter to win our Beary Sweet blog candy!

Cheers,
Susan

Could it be the last of April Showers?

Ok, so I know that April Showers really refers to all of the tons of rain that we get each spring, but when I was hunting for a great image to use for this week's theme at The Beary Scrap, I just chuckled when I thought how fun it would be to use a more literal inspiration for my piece.

The cute image is from Karen's Doodles and is colored with my very loved Copics. I adore the paper that I used - Pink Paislee's Queen Bee. The colors are just my favorites. Did you notice the really cool die cut that is behind my image? I know you are thinking, what Spellbinders is that? Well, it's not. It is from the Queen Bee Flip Notes. These are really supposed to be journaling spots, but don't they make perfect mats for cards?!! They come in a pack of 24( 12 different designs) - that coordinate with the whole paper pack. I love this product! I traced around the edge of the note with a copic C-5 pen, just to finish it off a little more. On one of my layers, I added some fancy machine stitching and glued a Swarovski crystal in the center of each flower.

We hope you have been inspired this week with all kinds of April Showers! Don't forget to sign up for our blog candy and spread the word! We'll see you back on Monday for a new week of inspiring ideas.

It's April and you know what that means.

It's April and you know what that means, Flowers!

One good thing with all this rain is all the pretty spring colors that will be coming out. That is also our theme this week. I used one of Kimm's new Acrylic Paper Piecing Pattern's Emma Elephant.

Emma is sitting under her little umbrella. Her umbrella was made using Spellbinder hearts. Then I decorated with Liquid Pearls and mini flowers. The background papers are by Basic Grey. I also distressed the background papers with Distress Ink Vintage Photo. The layout I used this week is a sketch by Oh Alice that The Beary Scrap is sponsoring this week for their weekly challenge. I hand punched the flowers and added a Bo Bunny brad. The rain drops are by Colorbok. I also used Spellbinders to punch out my computer printed April Showers.

Kimm has a BLOG all set up for leaning how to make the Tear Critters be sure to check it out.  You can get Emma and other patterns from her store and she also has lots of pretty mulberry paper there to choose from. Keep watching the store because there maybe a whole zoo of animals coming to visit soon.

Thanks for checking out my post this week and make sure you enter for all that BLOG CANDY that Kimm is giving away.

~Patricia~

April Showers???

When I found out the topic for this week's Design Team projects at The Beary Scrap, images of lovely spring rains came to my mind -- a light soft rain that greens up the grass and has drops that gather on the new petals of flowers and trees. Rain you can go out, splash around and play in. You know, like Gene Kelly dancing down the street to "Singin' in the Rain."

Unfortunately that kind of rain doesn't really exist in Southeast Idaho. Spring here is quite sporadic-- a few days here, a few there with lots of cold wintry days in between where there could be anything from wind to freezing temperatures, hail storms to actual snow. And so my layout depicts a true "April Shower" in Idaho.

I used the sketch from "Oh Alice" this week (pictured below, make sure you head over to their blog to check out more ideas!) but instead of making a card, I rotated the whole thing 45 degrees and then made a 12 x 12 layout. I really enjoyed this sketch as it was fairly simple and encompassed just basic shapes-- this gave me a great place to start but left lots of room for my own ideas to take over.

I also used Basic Grey's Kioshi line this week-- I am starting to think Susan and I share a definite connection with the papers we pick out! I used Lilo for the long horizontal rectangle and Motochi for the larger vertical rectangle. All of my pictures and journaling are matted on the back side of Lilo and Water Lily. I just love these Kioshi papers-- they have such light, pretty pastel colors mixed with BROWN, probably my all time favorite go-to color for scrapping. The patterns vary a lot too, from florals little and big to dots, stripes, plaids and other geometric designs, making these very versatile papers.

One of my favorite things about spring is the tough little daffodils, tulips, crocuses, etc. that poke their heads up through (in Idaho) the snow and brave the cold in hopes of some sunshine. So I just had to have some tulips on my layout. I used a paper piecing pattern found at the Scrapbooks, Etc. website that I downloaded for free. It was very simple and fun to do. I used both some Bazzill cardstock and some of the Kioshi paper to make the tulips, both worked great. After wetting and bending the edges of my flowers as they instruct, I also chalked around the edges to give them a little more dimension (I have Pebbles, Inc. chalk in bright colors). Then for the snow!

I finally just used some Stickles but decided that didn't really look like snow, just sparkly and so I pulled out some DecoArt SnowTex that I have used when making Christmas decorations. I had honestly never thought of using it on paper before but I think I am now hooked and can see using it on all kinds of Christmas and playing in the snow type pages. I applied the SnowTex with a small paintbrush BEFORE attaching the flowers to my page-- this turned out to be a very good plan as when I put some more snow on my title letters that were already attached, it was hard to keep it from getting on the cardstock. When the SnowTex was dry (about 20 minutes) I used a little Stickles in Icicle over the top to give just a little sparkle and I love how it turned out!

I added some letter stickers for the title, with a little rickrack for good measure, and a few pearls along the edges of my Kioshi rectangles to finish it off. My April Shower page is finished-- now all I have to do is be brave, poke my head out through the snow and wait for the sun to shine!

Check back tomorrow for some more April Shower inspirations by The Beary Scrap Design Team! And while you are here make sure to get entered in the running for our FABULOUS BLOG CANDY! I have never seen such a great assortment of scrap goodies, all coordinated too, being given away. So make sure to become a follower of our blog, post the blog candy on your own blog with a link back and then come back here to leave a comment by the blue frog. Good luck!

"Beary Sweet" Blog Candy! (Is Now Closed)

Hi everyone! Our blog candy winner will be announce Friday, May 7th! Thanks for playing along with us and please enter our "May Flowers" Challenge. Thanks!

---

Hello Friends, it's Kimm here.  The girls and I have something "beary sweet" to share with you.  It's our very first "Blog Candy!"  Whoo Hoo!  You may be asking yourself why?  Well, we have lots of reasons to be Celebrating and a million more reasons to be Grateful for all that we have been blessed with. We are thankful to all of our crafting friends that come to visit us, shop in our store, visit our little shop in PA, send us beautiful emails and encourage us to keep on keeping on.  Most of all, I am truly thankful for these amazing girls that have been inspiring all of us over the past few weeks!  Aren't they amazing?  How about a round of applause for them.  Okay, before I start blubbering like a goof... drum roll please (da da da da da... )

There is over $100.00 worth of sweetness in this blog candy!

• 1 Martha Stewart Border Punch
• Labels 11 Nestabilities
• 1 Magnolia Tilda with Spring Bundler Stamp
• 1 Magnolia Elegant Heart Stamp
• 1 6"x6" Basic Grey Kioshi Paper Pad
• 1 Pack of Prima Vines & Butterflies
• 1 Package of Prima "Say it in Crystals" Centers
• 3 Stickles Glitter Glue (Waterfall, Diamond, and Stardust)
• Assorted KaiserCraft Pearls (coordinates with Kioshi)
• 1 jar of "Summer" Flower Soft
• Gorgeous assortment of lace and trim
• Crochet Flowers from my dear friend Leslie
• 100+ lucious mulberry paper flowers in various colors and sizes.

How do you win all this sweet stuff?  It's quite simple.

1. 
   
   In order to be eligible for our Sweetness, you must have an active blog and become a public follower of our Design Team's Blog.
2. Spread the word about our "Beary Sweet" Candy.  Post a picture of our candy to your blog with a link back to our Design Team's Blog.  (Sidebar images with links back are acceptable).
3. 
   
   Head on back to our Design Team Blog. Enter your name and the link to your blog using our Inlinkz tool below.  Post a comment too if you get the chance.  It really makes us *SMILE*!
4. 
   
   You are done.  Make sure you've completed all 3 steps to qualify for our Blog Candy.

If you don't meet all the requirements for this sweetness, don't worry.  There will be more sweetness in the future... here and on our other social networking sites. ~ Thanks.

Entries will be accepted until Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time.  Our lucky winner will be announced on Friday, May 7, 2010.  Click on the little blue frog to add your name/link.

Thank you for stopping by Good Luck.

EDIT:  We will gladly ship this delicious candy worldwide. *smiles*