Many challenges one lo!

Hello blogging buddies! I know I haven't been around lately...you see I've gone back to work...at least part time...so all that scrapping time I used to have...I don't have anymore...I use that time to keep up with my family, home, and friends! So This long holiday weekend I promised myself I would MAKE time to scrap. Well it's not what I thought it was gonna be, but here it is...that's right just one, but I can explain. First of all I have some really beautiful scraps I'm going to make cards out of, so keep an eye out for those. Now about the lo's I only have one to show, because the other one I did I am not at liberty to show at this time...he he he he...that sounded all technical and C.I.A. like...it's not...I'm playing the main game over at Scrap Whispers. This link is for the blog site. Love all the fun things these ladies do! So I can't reveal that lo, but I will when able. This lo is entered in several challenges. I will list them and the links to each below! Thank you so much for checking in on me! Don't forget to leave me a message and I'll stalk your blog as well! Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend!











I was hoping to make the doodles and faux stitching look like chalk on a chalk board...what do you think? I have wanted to make some hidden journaling like this for a long time...I was just waiting for the inspiration to hit and it did. This lo is made up entirely of cardstock as is the challenge for Scrap Fit. The pp's are a couple from DCWV's All Dresssed Up stack. I adore these pp's! The journaling is stickers from my stash put on more of the A.D.U. stack. There are a few new things here per my challenge from scrap whispers, the buttons are from an RAK and I only received them last week. Also the journaling is a new technique for me. The title and the journaling are all for the Dirty Scraps challenge...this time it was Serenity...I thought the two words "serenity" and "Sanctuary" went hand in hand so I used both in the journaling and in the title. You all know how I feel about my Dirty Scraps...you should check them out! Finally this lo is based on the sketch over at Sassy lil' Sketches. Please hit all the links below and check these ladies out! They are all fabulous and keep me inspired! TFL



Scrap Whispers

Dirty Scraps

Scrap Fit

Sassy Lil' Sketches

No scrap...just a rant!

I know it's been awhile...it's been crazy...I don't have anything crafty to share today... and unfortunately it may not be till this weekend that I can scrap so keep an eye out this weekend. As for now I have a bitch...I know it's uncommon for me to be so blunt and crude...but I mean really...ok so I go to the scrap store this weekend...which I don't do much of any way...I go with the intention to buy some misters and some copic markers...I have won a digi image that should be here anytime I wanted to be prepared...I find that the mists are over $7 a piece...the copic markers are over $6 a piece...WHAT THE HELL!! Are you people crazy! Am I crazy! I mean really I understand I'm new to the digi stamps thing...I've never even held one in my hand, but come on...I cannot possible be the only scrapper in the world who thinks this is an outrageous amount to pay for a marker...or a spray bottle of ink. For some silly reason I was thinking they would be like stickles...a couple two or three dollars...which I feel is over priced, but dooable...this on the other hand is just nuts!! No wonder I've been trying to win these things so bad...even before I knew what they were...don't judge me I am an equal opportunity freebie whore...if it's free I'll find a use for it. So I have made my rants public now I ask you my bloggy friends...is my store way over priced? Am I really that much of a tightwad? Do you think the price is fair? Anyone know where I can win some of these goodies? lol! Ok I feel better now!

Like I said I will be trying to scrap this week, but it may not be till this weekend. So keep an eye on me and let me know what you think about this copic/misting situation! Love to you all!

To much

I must apologize to you all...I was unable to finish all of the blog hop. I offered to help a friend with some wildlife rescue work...in the last two weeks 12 bunnies and 2 racoons have passed away...I will be trying to finish all the lo's tomorrow...I apologize to all of you for the lateness.

A need to see repost.

This is a repost for my very good bloggy friend Pinky, who lives in Tenn.







This story is my state,
this story is my friends,
this story is my area.

Many of you know I live in Middle TN,
I was speaking with a friend today crying on the phone
telling her how bad it really is in this area.
We live outside Nashville in Murfreesboro, TN and we still have 6 impassable
roads along with hundreds of homes still under water.
When I drove to Lebanon last week, we saw people
standing outside in nothing but shorts dragging all of their belongings to the street to be hauled off forever, which included furniture, mementos, pictures....basically their entire life.

We drove by homes with only the rooftops showing,
with children standing on the edge of the water with nowhere else to go.

I could not even bring myself to photograph because it is so close to my
heart and so painful still.

There is not much I can do personally, but we did go through the
boys clothing and donated all we could. We bought
supplies for cleaning and donated them.

My friend on the phone said "Pinky! Go blog this! make a difference, go and help!!"
She was so right, I cannot believe it never occurred to me.

Our local school has had 2 families at least who have lost EVERYTHING
in Nashville they have students who have NO CLOTHING at all!!
The teachers took them to WalMart and bought them clothing.

IF YOU HAVE CLOTHING OR CAN AFFORD TO BUY A FEW ITEMS
OF CLOTHING FOR CHILDREN.
If you send them to me I will take them to the schools
in Murfreesboro and Nashville and I will donate them and
get them to people who need them!
We can make a difference, please pass this blog along
to anyone who wants to donate.
Even a 5.00 t-shirt will make a difference.

I don't want your money, I just want to help those
kids who have nothing left including clothing and shoes.

email me here for a physical address
andrewcristalhobbs@yahoo.com
My heart breaks for all these families and I am only one person.
But if we all work together we ca make a BIG difference!

This is the first day of flooding a video



If you are within 50 miles and want to donate a larger item
and need to know how to....I know
Fidelity Offset Printing in Nashville is accepting donations,
they even offered to send a truck locally to take furniture and donations.

everyone is doing the best they can, I don't think people understand how many of us in Middle TN were affected..many towns...Murfreesboro, Hermatige, Symrna, Clarksville, Mill Creek, Nashville, Lebanon...just to name a few that had hundreds of millions in damage.

The football team of Titans were in the local neighborhoods yesterday
tearing down walls and helping, people from KY, AL, GA have come
to TN with boats to help rescue.

They found another body today 11 days later it was sad
and they are still looking.every day there is so much sadness and so much hope
seeing everyone work together.
Schools in Nashville some are open with no dress code because
of the clothing problem. Some are closed the
rest of the year because there is no way to clean up enough.

If you help, I will get the items to the right place....please pass this blog
along to anyone you know that might be able to help.

I am so blessed, we are safe and sound in our home.
Thank you for your help.
~Pinky~

Dirty Scraps...and another vein opens...

I've taken a short break from the blog hop, but do not fear I will be back at it tomorrow! I did finish two other challenge's today. This lo has been a long time coming and I'm sure it won't be the last of it's kind...this particular subject will be a reacuring theme in my B.O.M. book...amazing as it may seem this is the first time I have ever scrapped this particular subject...I'm glad one lo is done. I'm not looking forward to what will surely be just as painful as this lo was to complete. I don't think I would have attempted this subject if it had not been for the challenge from Dirty Scraps. I know I'm always saying how much I love these ladies and this blog...but this is just even more proof that it's not just great challenges they really encourage and...well challenge me to open a vain so to speak and scrap the me on the inside...the deep dirty raw real me. So here is some more of me. You know you wanna know more!! I made this lo using the Sassy lil' Sketches sketch challenge...I changed it up a bit...as always just to fit it all. TFL! If you don't know about Sassy lil' Sketches you should take the time to find out about them. They have the cutest sketches. I just love a Sassy lil' Sketch! I will be back to the Let's Scrap blog hop tomorrow so come back and check that out!
The journaling is impossible to read due to the colors I chose so the journaling is below the pic.



Fact: I will never be pregnant.
Oh, even now 9yrs after the first time I heard it I still get tears in my eyes. I still have to physically calm my breathing or remind myself to breath. I can remember almost nothing of real importance about that day, just silly off the wall things. I remember the obnoxious and expensive suit the dr. wore. I remember the shiny gold and two tone blue tie around his neck. I remember the disgustingly cheery looking animals on the nurses scrubs. I remember there was half a tank of gas in the car. I remember feeling the hope that had been in my chest fall away. As if I were treading water in an iced over pond and I knew my reach wasn’t long enough…I began to fall away into the dark frigid waters….of hopelessness. Something in me shut off or down. I knew I would never ever be the woman who walked into this office again. In an instant I was an entirely different person. My entire life had just been altered.

Fact: I have a child.
I wouldn’t trade her for the world…not even for the opportunity to be pregnant. She truly is my own personal gift from the universe. She is proof a woman will sacrifice everything for another woman.

Fact: Appreciating the child I have doesn’t make the hurt stop.
I will never know what it’s like to tell someone I’m going to have a baby. I will never know what a baby feels like from the inside. I will never have the chance to see my baby on a little TV screen. I will never get to hear my babies heartbeat for the first time. I will never watch my beautiful body change and grow to encompass my child. I will never know the spiritual bond with the universe a woman feels after growing life.

Fact: I will never give birth.
I’ve seen it. I’ve heard about it…in FACT hearing a woman tell her “birth stories” used to be one of my most favorite things. I used to torture myself by watching all the “baby shows”. Now I just try to avoid the topic all together. I have given up friendships…good and treasured, simply to avoid the pregnancy issue. I would spend no time ever with a pregnant woman for the rest of my life, excluding my daughter of course, if I thought it would help ease the pain or want.

Fact: I always knew.
My mother told a story my entire life that when I was about 6 I told her I wasn’t ever going to have kids. She asked me why I didn’t want kids. She thought is was strange because I was already fascinated by small children everywhere. I told her I did want to have children, I just couldn’t. When she asked why I couldn’t my reply was I don’t know ask the dr. My mother asked the dr. he said everything was fine I was just talking about things I knew nothing about. Being that not one woman for the last 3 generations had ever had reproductive issues my mother left it alone and the entire incident was forgotten for years.

Fact: No matter who tells me otherwise I feel defective.
I can smile and congratulate a girlfriend for a new pregnancy and mean it. I do mean it. I don’t begrudge any other woman the joy of pregnancy. However I am so jealous I could scream. I am so hurt and angry that life isn’t fair and that was not in my life plan. I get so upset when I hear about teenage girls throwing babies in trash cans, or smothering their own children. It’s not fair. I live with this feeling of unfair hurt, anger, aggravation and pain every day of my life.

Fact: Time heals all wounds…slowly.
Healed….I don’t think I ever will be. I don’t think the pain and hurt and anger will ever go away…it has lessened or I have adjusted to the limp and have learned to live and walk with it.

Little known fact: Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and actually think for a second I could get pregnant. Then I remember I can’t so I won’t…..ever.
Perhaps if I tell myself it’s a fact long enough, I will start to believe it, and begin to hurt less. For now I just open the steel door it’s stored behind when it get’s a bit full or tight let some out as much as will. Then I close it back up. Like a boil it slowly fills back up with grotesque oozing puss of hurt, pain, anger, and disappointment.
It’s a FACT of my life.

A couple more hop's!

This is My Blog Hop #2. This was Cori's blog Creative Chat She has a sketch up and a requirement of metal and quotation marks...she also happens to have a totally adorable lo she did based on the sketch I loved. I made this lo from our trip to the lake a month or so ago. It's Bo Bunny "roughing it" pp. I know I know I don't PIMP brand names...it's just adorable and it was a gift from my Mr. Right...He came home from work one day and brought me some of this stuff...He's fantastic!! I had to change up the sketch a bit. I wanted to make sure the "mallows" on the bottom of the paper showed. Sorry about the bad pic...it's just wasn't a good pic day!




This is my Blog Hop #4. It's Jean's Blog Pages in Time The challenge here was to use the provided sketch and use a Quote! So I did a lo of my Mini-Me's slumber party! I have to admit I took a lot of liberties with this sketch...I just lost myself in the girlyness of it all! (Love it when that happens) So TFL! I'm off to see what everyone else has been doing!

Blog Hops update!

You all thought I was gonna advertise about the blog hops and not play didn't you! No way! To many great prizes to be won!! So let me know if your doing the hop's to, so I can stalk your blog and see!!

The Clear Scraps Blog Hop

There were some amazing blogs here! I can't believe I may never have seen some of these blogs if Pinky hadn't shared the information about the hop! Thanks Pinky!

The Let's Scrap Blog Hop


I have finished two of the projects....I skipped one because I wanted to make a card with the scraps left over! I am also using these two projects in another challenge...I was shocked when I looked over at Scrap Fit I was excited because I had used all scrap's on the lo...nothing new! I had done that with this first lo for the Let's Scrap hop! I also wanted to enter it into the Scrap Fit #19 workout! I love these workout's!

When I looked at the scrap fit site they had just put up a mini work out...that's what they call challenges isn't it cute! As fate would have it the mini workout was to make a card using some of the leftover scraps from the Work out #19! I had just done that so these two projects could be used in both!! I was so excited.


This is the card, I made it using the left over scraps from my lo using scraps! Blog Hop #3
This was made for the 3rd stop on the Blog Hop! I adored looking at Deb's blog she is so talented and the card she made is adorable!








This is the lo using nothing new! Based on the sketch from the first stop on the Let's Scrap Blog Hop! Here's the link to Blog Hop 1 It's Susan's blog! Check it out and hop along! The checkered paper behind the pic I made. I love the checkered look behind the pic spot in the sketch and had just seen a cool tutorial about making checkered paper...I'm sure you all know how to do it...if you want to know how I did it just ask! TFL! Have a great day!

Wanna do a blog hop?

I happen to know of two fabulous blog hops going on right now! I am much more familiar with one site than the other...I belong to the community know as Lets Scrap I have so much fun with these laides! They are having a super fun blog hop...and my favorite part! Ton's of prizes...I know thats shallow...but as a red blooded American born and bred female...I will defend my right to and love of all things free!! (stepping off soapbox) Whoo! Ok, so I will put up both blog hops on this blog read them, and join me in learning about the other blog hop...though maybe you already know them...I'm so narsasistic. Okay I found out about this blog hop from Pinky! Pinky is absolutely adorable! I couldn't enjoy this woman more...unless she lived next door...which would be freekin brilliant! Anywho Here are the links! This is for Pinky. The blog hop is with clear scraps! So here's to a great week of blog hopping!

Welcome to the Clear Scraps blog hop!
We're so excited you joined us this weekend to help us celebrate all our Moms and the women who play a mothering role in our lives.

Our Design Team has been busy making Mom-themed projects to inspire you - both to create something, and also to honor that woman in your life who deserves something special this weekend.

To start you off....here's a layout Amy made for her Grandma for Mother's Day. We love this idea Amy - after all, you never stop being a Mom, right?

Amys mothers day layout

Leave a comment on all our DT blogs, come back to the Clear Scraps blog to let us know you did, and you'll be entered into a draw for a $25 goodie bag of acrylic from Clear Scraps.

Irene: Scrapperlicious
Cristal: Much Ado About Nothing

Rita: Let's Embellish
Tonya: Creativi-T

Elisa: Perpetual Stew

Grace: In My Shoes

Cathy: My art...so far

Happy Hopping!

And HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Let's Scrap Blog Hop!

National Scrapbooking Day was last weekend, right? Well no here at Let's Scrap. We are celebrating scrapbooking ALL MONTH LONG. We started with some great games and challenges during NSD weekend, and now we are back with the Let's Scrap Design Team Blog Hop. Below you will find a list of those DT's members who are joining us in the blog hop. Each stop on the hop will offer you a different challenge. Become a follower of each Design Team Member's blog and as you complete each challenge, upload your finished project to ttp://www.letsscrap.ning.com. Return to each blog and make sure to leave a comment letting us know that you have completed the challenge and uploaded it to Let's Scrap. Make sure you tag your project with the appropriate tag (you will find those instructions on
each of our blogs-ie: bloghop1, bloghop2, etc.).

Each Design Team member will randomly select a winner of a small prize for participating in their challenge. But that's not IT!! Keep hopping through the blogs....there are 10 of us playing along. Complete the challenges at EVERY stop on the blog within the next two weeks and your name will be entered into a random drawing for a $50 GIFT CERTIFICATE to A Cherry On Top Scrapbook Store. And the best part....you have TWO FULL WEEKS to complete your challenges and when all is said and done you will have 10 projects completed and a chance at some great prizes!!

Feel free to start anywhere along the way within this great group of blogs and each one will link from one site to the next where you will find all the great challenges!

Let's get this hop started!! Remember, to become a follower and return to leave a comment after
completing each challenge. Good luck, and have fun!!!! Oops....can't start you yet...but are you excited now? Good!! Start checking our blogs around at 10:00pm (by the time on the main page of this site) TONIGHT...Thursday. Consider it a jump start for our current members as all of the advertising (Facebook, our blogs,. etc) says the Blog Hop starts tomorrow!

1. Susan - http://www.paperdaisydreams.blogspot.com
2. Cori - http://www.creativechat.blogspot.com
3. Deb - http://debhorstcreaterofsendablesentiments.blogspot.com/
4. Jean - http://www.pagesintime.blogspot.com
5. Sally - www.sallyschallengechatter.blogspot.com
6. Rosalie - http://www.fivetulips.blogspot.com/
7. Scarlett - http://scarlettsscrapoirs.blogspot.com
8. Carolina - http://www.caromgar.blogspot.com
9. Nana - http://www.youniquereflections.blogspot.com/
10. Kristie - http://www.lotstoscrap.blogspot.com


So as you can see these two hops are amazing and sound like so much fun! I really hope you join me! I can't wait to see some of these talented ladies blogs...I follow a ton of blogs! I see one that inspires me and I go back to them for more inspiration...most I find from blog hops...and giveaway's! lol Have a great week!

What I did for NSD!

To say yesterday was a whirlwind would be an understatement!! I was thought I was keeping up with the challenges pretty well...but some of these ladies went just as fast a Nora did putting up challenges!! Needless to say I'm late getting these up on my blog, but here are the challenges I did yesterday...and keep looking 'cause I'm doing more and putting them up today!!




This was a challenge based on a sketch from Nora at Scrapjazz!!



This was another challenge on Scrapjazz...the challenge here was masking!


This was a card challenge on Scrapjazz!


This was a sketch challenge on Let's Scrap! It was also a challenge on scrapjazz to make your own flowers I tried 3 techniques here....I'm still not sure I like how they turned out!

Scrap whispers NSD challenge