Wordless Wednesday

Products from Echo Park Paper Co.

So I had my first chance to work with some Echo Park papers from their line "For the Record". I created some project for my LSS, Paper Pals.

In case you didn't see these posted on their blog, I thought I'd share them here too.

I just loved the photo of my kids and I taken by my friend Becky with Simply Enjoy Photography. I shared a post with other photos from our shoot here.

And the other layout was to document a time when I tackled my son in football. Something tells me that I won't always be able to do that. :) My friend Harmony at Keep on Keeping On was nearby at our family picnic taking these shots. :)

I had a lot of fun using these products and am excited to add a new company's products to my repretoire!

Friday Fave-- The Rusted Chain

I got a great little necklace for christmas, and was very happy with the product we purchased from The Rusted Chain.

When I had a couple of great friends' birthdays coming up, I decided to order up two special necklaces as gifts for them.

Necklace for birthday friend #1:

And birthday friend #2 necklace:

They turned out so lovely, and my friends were so grateful and happy to receive them! Do you have a reason for a lovely hand stamped necklace? Visit The Rusted Chain!

Wordless Wednesday

Failure.

These are not my cake pops. These belong to Little Miss Momma, where we found our idea. Lovely blog w/ lovely photos and great instructions-- just what I strive for in my blog too!

But I'm gonna share a failure w/ you. Because life isn't perfect, even if blogs make it look so.

For my daughter's 8th birthday, we decided to create a special treat for her parties with friends. The popular trend in treats is CAKE POPS. After some internet research, Allison and I felt ready for the challenge.

Ingredients and cake stand (styro circle) ready!

Following the instructions from Little Miss Momma perfectly... make the cake, crumble it up...

Add in the frosting...

Yummy, fun, messy!

Everyone joined in making the cake balls. Closest to mud we can play this time of year.

Went to the smallest detail of dipping our sticks to make them stick well into the balls of cake/frosting...

Lookin' good! Chilled them in hopes they'd firm up.

Here's where it all went downhill. Pretty photos, pops, happy creators... until we begin the dipping. I anticipated it to be tricky, so my anxiety level was up a bit.

They didn't look too pretty, but we wanted to forge ahead. Dipped and stuck like a lollipop into the styrofoam circle.

Then, disaster.

The cake balls began falling right off the sticks! They were too heavy and goopy-- but we'd followed the instructions.

Sweet A broke into tears... and mommy almost did! Not sure where it went wrong. My best guess is that the balls needed to be firmer (chilled longer or partially frozen maybe?) to work out. But even then, I'm not sure how they'd hold their own weight.

Luckily, they still tasted great. And sweet Allison can make the most of any bummer-- she pretends it's just how she intended and she moves on. (I need to be more like her.)

So, smiles on the face w/ plan B...

And we had some tasty treats for her friends.

And I'll tell you that not one 8 year old complained of the imperfections of our failure.

Just my lesson for today that I don't have to be perfect or even proclaim that I try to be. Thank goodness for grace on so many levels!

Wordless Wednesday

Friday Fave: Being Published (and a giveaway).

I have been so very lucky to be published in Creating Keepsakes... not once, but TWICE. This summer's July/August issue will feature a layout I created that is very special to my heart. (Pun intended. See more about it HERE.)

But today, I'm so excited for someone else who has been published! And while she's a super creative scrapper, she's not getting a paper project published (yet at least). She's a great writer and has been published in a popular book!!!

My sister in law Shelle submitted a story from her blog to the famous "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series. Because her story is so great and well written, they published it in their brand new "New Moms" edition.

Would you like a copy? Head on over to her blog HERE and leave a comment to win a copy! You can also hear a little bit about her story there and read other well written, clever, real and heartwarming blog posts. Plus you get to see cute pictures of my niece. What could be better?

Congratulations to you, Shelle!!!

24 hours later...

(Okay, I AM slow scrapper, but I didn't spend the full 24 hours on this layout...)

Yesterday I started (as my WW photo showed) a new layout using My Mind's Eye's Good Day Sunshine line.

But I didn't stop there.

I saw the recent sketch for the My Minds Eye Blog Challenge and I just love to join in these challenges (because who wouldn't want to win three complete lines of your choice?!?). This particular challenge's theme is "Celebrate Today" and requires 80% MME products. Here's the sketch:

Then I rotated it 90 degrees to the right. (I created a layered file so you can see how the final layout and the sketch matched up.)

Since MME is my favorite manufacturer, I've collected quite a supply of their products. And I LOVE that you can pull pieces from so many different lines that still fit together!

Can you guess the number of product lines I used elements from?

That's it! SIX!

Good Day Sunshine-- papers and accessory sheet

Fine and Dandy-- sticker

Lush-- ribbon and chipboard letters

Life Stories-- accessory sheet (kraft puchouts)

Laundry Line-- dragonfly rubons

Quite Contrary-- sticker

Here's the final product:

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to pull all these pieces together to make a 99% MME layout (1%-bit of red cardstock, fluid chalk and a staple. Oh, and photos. Maybe that's a bit over 1%...). Great challenge, huh?

Do you have favorite online scrappy challenges?

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday