SKETCH OF THE WEEK AUG 10-16

Thanks everyone for the congrats! I have been a busy beaver lately.....trying to get everything caught up before the kids go back to school and I feel like I am nowhere near there yet!

This week's sketch features the beautiful new Cosmo Cricket line called "Earth Love" - my friend Alissa is completely addicted to this line so I made this one just for her! I would link you to her blog but she hasn't ventured there yet! I signed up for a Jessica Sprague free online course about editing pictures but haven't had time to go through them yet, but did find time to download the free goodies that came with it, including a beautiful brush set from Heidi Swapp's House of 3....so that is where the "Celebrate" came from on the photo. If you aren't a picture editor, a rub-on right over your photo would work great! I did that on one of my last layouts so I will have to take a pic :)
Hope you are all having a great week!

A Little Yippee!!!

I had to go change this post - and just wanted to share!!

SOTW Aug 3 -9

Sorry it is a day late, it was a holiday here yesterday and that always throws me off! We had a fairly uneventful weekend - spent some time at the big mall yesterday and decided to buy our first pet! Thought the kids could use it as a test pet in preparation for the big pet that will one day come (I promised my son we could get a dog when he turns 9!!).... While standing in line to pay for said fish, my 4 year old announces that he would like to name it Kitty - while everyone else laughed, my mind immediately flashed to a super-cute layout called "Hello Kitty!" but by the time we got home, he had changed it to Kit...so Kit it is.....until in the tub he tells me that really it is Kitten or Kitty but everyone laughed......so I am now convincing him that Kitty is a fabulous name!

Tonight I am being a real grown up and going to a real grown up movie at the theatre with 2 dear friends - one of which I haven't seen in a VERY long time! I honestly cannot remember the last time I went to the theatre and didn't see a kids movie! Very exciting life I lead huh?! The other friend (Karina) that I am going with is heading to Salt Lake City tomorrow for a Stampin Up convention and has generously offered to lend me her Big Shot dies while she is gone - Karina is the one that first got me into stamping and I just love seeing her creations! If you ever have the chance to take one of her classes, JUMP ON IT!!!
And without further adieu....the SOTW featuring Belle Blvd. paper!

Scrapping with the SOTW

I finally got the chance to play last night...although it really was a toss up between crawling into bed or scrapping but I am glad the scrapping won out!
Busy day yesterday as my ds had his birthday party - to the movies to watch Up (who knew it would be so sad/scary?) which I really enjoyed, then supper at Denny's (oooh...aaaahhhh..) and home for some cake and Wii.....ahhh the life of a 6 year old!
It was super hot yesterday and when we came out of the theatre, the skies were so dark and you could just tell something was in the air. We had to drive about half an hour to get to Denny's and you could feel the wind picking up and then the torrential rainstorms started......it got a bit scary but when we got home and turned on the news, it was much worse than I was expecting - the local country festival in Camrose was hit hard by the storm, causing a death and a lot of hurt and scared people - thoughts and prayers to all of those affected. Summer storms always seem so cool to me...until such things like this and tornadoes hit :(
So after getting all the munchkins wound down and into bed, I turned on all the fans and scrapped.......quite muggy but I did manage to get one layout done using the Sketch of the Week:
All this done using only scraps from my scrap box......I am working hard on not being so matchy-matchy and like how it came out! And did you notice more of my new felties? More on that to come soon.........
Oh and I wanted to thank Sarah for playing along - go check out her blog and see what she did with the sketch!

JULY DT REVEAL!

Oh how good it felt to create again! This is our first reveal with our brand new DT over at A PILE OF SCRAP! and what a job everyone did!!! Alissa gave half the team "Wisteria" by Basic Grey and the other half got "Early Bird" by Cosmo Cricket - I LOVE Cosmo Cricket so I was very excited to see it peeking out at me when I got my package. Each month, we are asked to create 4 pieces with our package but I ended up with 3 layouts, a mini project and 2 cards - the scraps are amazing for card-making! Here are my creations:

PLAYTIME - A little bit of everything on this layout! Even a little doodling...still hard to get my pen to do that! I liked the look of the naked Riff Raff dino so I let him be. Still lovin those Jenny Bowlin cards :)

BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED - A very simple yet fun layout. I got a new scalloped oval punch and thought it would make a nice flower...and then the layout just kind of grew from there! The inking is all done with Tea Dye distress ink (my fave!).

BE HAPPY - 7 different patterns on this one! Cosmo Cricket makes it so easy to mix up the patterns. I found that the Bazzill Swiss dot paper went so nicely with this line. I used a little bit of glossy accents on the Be Happy strip just to make it stand out a little more.

What is this you may ask? Well it was my Mom's birthday so I made a cd holder for her and then burned a cd with pictures of the kids. This is the front of the cover - I used my ScorePal to do a little embossing on the front cover (for a frame) and my ever handy pokey tool!

This is the inside of the case.

And the inside with the cd in it. I went to Cosmo Cricket's website to get a picture of the paper so that I could make the label on the cd with the matching paper. I didn't tell my mom what was on the cd so when they got home, it was a nice surprise for her :)

And to fullfill my birdie obsession, I made this cute little card with my new Slice cartridge "Big Kids". I think you may be seeing quite a bit of this birdie! The cream strip (that looks white) was embossed using the new Cuttlebug embossing strips, some ink and my brayer!

And last but not least,

A birthday card for my son who is turning 6 today! The lizard is courtesy of the Big Kids cartridge again - love him!
Hope you enjoyed my creations, make sure you head on over to Vicki and Jerusha's blogs to see what they also did with this line. Then check out Cheryl, Candace, Valerie and Jen's blogs to see they beautiful projects made using the Wisteria line.

Have a great week!!!!!!!!

SKETCH OF THE WEEK JULY 20-AUG 2

Hope you all had a good weekend - we had a major heat wave here this weekend and unfortunately, my scrap room is the hottest room in the house :( Last night, I wanted to scrap so bad but after 10 minutes of trying to stay in the room, I gave up. Today was much cooler and I happily made 6 cards today! Sketch of the Week today is inspired by numerous layouts in magazines and even some of the cards and layouts over on the APOS forum - a great way to use up some of your scraps (and a hint to pull out the sewing machine!) Be sure to check back later today for the APOS Design Team reveal - some BEAUTIFUL stuff!!

WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!!

And now for some contest winners! My biggest apologies as I had totally forgotten about the contest for Following Me until I (ahem) cleaned my desk off and found this stash of goodies! I had my son draw a name for me and the winner is:

CHUXFOX!!!!!!!!!!

Congrats!!!!! If you would be so kind as to email (at icecheeks@yahoo.com) me your address, I will happily send you out some goodies!

And to send out more goodies, the winners of the felties are

So that would be TraceyT and Sarah! Tracey is off to CHA so when you get back and a chance to catch up yourself, let me know where to send to :) Sarah, please send me an email and we can make arrangements too!
Have a great weekend everyone - we are in a heat wave here so I'm not sure how much scrapping I will get done as my scrap room just happens to be in the hottest room in the house :( Big DT reveal coming up on Sunday - stay tuned!

I honestly didn't think summer would be this busy..but with weddings, my parents coming for a visit and my new job at the LSS, somehow, bloggy gets a little neglected. On the plus side of things, I did teach my very first class this week and had the best time!!!!!!!! I can't wait for the one next month!

I did forget to post the last 2 of the Sketch of the Week so thought I would add those here!