My Remembrance Ribbons

I spent most of my day making remembrance ribbons for all my sponsors who asked me to honor cancer victims and survivors close to their heart. I took a large white ribbon and stamped on each name. I then took another smaller ribbon in different colors to signify the cancer type. I've decided to honor all forms of cancer. We definately need a cure for this disease. I am tying these ribbons onto my credentials and wear them around my next for the 3 days of walking. I will post pictures next week so you can see how they look.

Updates after I recover from this weekend!

Only 1 week away....

Well everyone....next weekend is the Breast Cancer 3-day walk for me. I've been training for months to get ready for this event. I have found myself discouraged, encouraged, excited, anxious, critical, and then motivated almost all in one day. Wow it's a very emotional experience to do something like this. Participating in this is very important to me so I don't want to disappoint myself nor any of my supporters. I truly want to make it through all 60 miles but I decided not to push myself if I feel pain. I want to cross that finish line next Sunday and know I did my very best.

I just received my credentials in the mail a couple days ago so I decided to decorate it a bit. Gee do you think I'll ever get over putting bling on everything?!?!?! I have also been packing and organizing my walking outfits. I will get all my last minute items tomorrow night and pack EVERYTHING in my duffel bag ...not touching them until the morning of the 26th. We are preparing for any type of weather since Michigan can be cold and warm all in the same day in September. I have no intentions of being cold at night. I have great snuggies packed and the sleeping bag will keep me very warm.

I hope to make one or two more posts before I leave. Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey. I should have wonderful pics to post after the event.

:-) Darlene

Having fun creating these...

Since the weather has turned a bit chilly the last few days here in Michigan I decided to make some additions to the Etsy shop and also for ME as well! I am hoping to participate in the weekend crop at YMBD's blog. I have some 2007 Halloween pics that I would love to do a layout with and also some pics of our grandson and granddaughter. Let's see if I can actually accomplish a layout or two.

I hand stamp these bats onto heavy cardstock and emboss with black embossing powder. I love the texture on these. I would like to use them on my Halloween cards this year.

I can do alot with these journaling blocks. I would love to make an acrylic album with a Halloween theme.

Well off to create a few flowers too. Of course I HAVE to have flowers when I scrapbook!!!

TFL :-)

Stained Glass Pumpkin

WooHoo.....I found this awesome pumpkin light to use as an accent to my scrapbook room. It matches my accent lamps perfectly. I just love the warm fall colors so this was a great find! Now I just need to finish the room so I can enjoy an organized space that I can create in that will also be warm and cozy during these upcoming chilly days and nights.

I haven't done too many scrapbook layouts or projects lately because I have been painting a scarecrow gourd. Here's a peek.....he's almost done. I've decided to name him patches and he will be listed for sale on my etsy shop soon. If you'd like to see the process of making this scarecrow you can check out my business blog at http://www.gourdsgaloreandmore.blogspot.com/. I have a few more pieces of raffia to glue into all the drilled holes and he's finished and ready to be listed for sale.

Pumpkins with Crackle Paint

I just finished making some sets of pumpkins out of Ranger's grungeboard. I added the crackle paint and inked the happy little faces in black. I really like how rustic this guy looks. I am making other pumpkin shapes so now I just need to make a few layouts to use them on! These would look great on an acrylic album or altered item like a box. I can't wait to make more.

Shopping with the Girls

My hubby and I took an evening and made a trip to Pet Smart with the doggies. Gretchen, the new pup, has outgrown her collar already! She gained 6 lbs. last week....she's going to be a BIG ONE. Our 3 year old Brittany Sadie has never been in the store before so we made it a point to socialize both of them. I couldn't have done it without my hubby Tom though. Sadie was soooo excited about all the smells of other doggies, bones, food, etc. and Gretchen just was being an active puppy. Thank goodness for strong leashes!!! We are teaching the pup to sit and stay so she did quite well with those commands. Sadie settled down once she realized where she was and everything was ok and would still be there so no need to rush through the store. We had alot of people coming up a petting both of them. Some were older couples reminising about having a Brittany and how much they loved that breed. Needless to say that lack of attention wasn't an issue that night.

We decided on a purple collar for Gretchen. I'm sure she will go through about 3 more until she is full grown. We couldn't find the type of collar we wanted for Sadie though. We wanted her to have a double-sewn one but she wears a 16" and the double-sewn start at 18". We'll need to shop around for just the right one for big sister:-)

Once finished with the collar decision we moved over to the shampoo department. We picked out a puppy shampoo (of course Baby Powder scent....how funny is that?!?) and a nice oatmeal shampoo (French Vanilla scent) for Sadie. Tonight is bath night and tomorrow morning is Gretchen's first vet visit. I'm sure there will some funny bath pics to post shortly!

Well off to some chores and hopefully some Etsy shop listings later today.

Sadie and her toy aisle.

Gretchen picking out her purple collar!

She seems to like these little snacks ALOT!

Finally ...I did a layout!

I went to a stamping convention with my daughter last weekend and we enjoyed alot of vendor demos. At one booth there was a great Make and Take for $1. My daughter Heather made a beautiful card with this Black Magic paper. It's by Core'dinations and it's great! It comes in packages of 20 colors with either pastel or jewel tones. Of course I had to purchase this. You take sandpaper and rough up the "black" side of this 80 lb. canvas textured paper and the colored core shows through. I used just the basic tan for my layout below but I can see tons of uses for all these colors in the near future!

I was able to do this layout of our new German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) puppy yesterday between playing and naps. Her "biting" stage is slowly stopping a day at a time so it is taking a large amount of time to train her. I decided that the training was a priority instead of the scrapping if I wanted a nice doggie. My supplies ARE calling my name but I think doggie manners are more important right now. Every day I am finding a bit more time to do some "crafty" things though.

On this layout of "Gretchen" I stamped the butterfly embellies onto white vellum with a white StazOn ink pad, cut them out and added some bling on the largest one. I also used lots of Basic Grey white rub-ons. For the swirl design by the flowers I used my clear stamp swirls v:1 by the awesome Rhonna Farrer. Of course there isn't a good white stamp pad ink to make a bright and clear image over such a dark paper so I did a light image and then hand painted the swirls with my white paint and a liner brush. It was fun to do!

The flowers are made by stamping my design on plain Grungeboard (by Tim Holtz) with a black StazOn inkpad, coloring them with some metallic pearl wax and cutting them out by hand. I curled the edges a tiny bit for dimension and the curl stayed! How cool :-) I really like how they came out so I will be adding them to my Etsy shop in the near future.

I added a few white accents with the Ranger white Inkessentials pen. Love this pen!!!!
Well I'm off for more GSP care.... LOL and hopefully I will be scrappin' more in the near future.

Eeyore

I made this Eeyore for our grandaughter Jada. We've been having a blast on the phone by having her guess what her surprise package is! She keeps thinking it's a giraffe or dog. We keep giving her clues and she makes a new guess.....so far she hasn't guessed a donkey yet. Oh well, the game will be over this afternoon when she receives her large box with Eeyore in it. I'm sure she will have a wonderful time playing with this. She misses her Miss Purrdy alot so I made this to replace it. Miss Purrdy was a pretty girl cat that we bought her when we went to the "Build A Bear" store 2 years ago. She and her daddy named her "Miss Purrdy". She took it back to Hawaii with her and it was never seen again so now she will keep Eeyore at daddy's home so she always has him available to play with. She has been crying about Miss Purrdy many times while visiting this summer. I wanted to make her feel special and loved so I replaced her kitty with Eeyore. I think he'll be a big hit!

Front View

What a face!
Side View...he's a big guy!

Well now that the crocheting is done I will continue on with my gourd project. I am painting a scarecrow for the fall.

Aging

I did this layout titled Time LINES a while back. I wanted to somehow archive the aging process of my husband and me. I wanted it to look complimentary and pretty as well. This is the design I came up with. I used the Heidi Swapp clock transparency and lined it with this pretty patterned paper. I felt the sepia tones created the right look for what I was trying to achive. I don't do too many two page layouts either.

Left side

Right side

A closeup of the "hands of time"

The journaling reads:

Tom & Darlene

Our 50's

The wrinkles and lines are beginning to form. Some of our wrinkles are from worry and stress over the years but mostly they are from smiling and laughing with our loved ones. It will be interesting to see our yearly changes. I plan on chroniciling our aging every 10 years. I bet scrapbooking will also revolutionize!!!

TFL!!!!

:-) Darlene

Please support Darlene's Breast Cancer 3-day Walk @ http://08.the3day.org/goto/DarlenePlotinski
Take a peek at our shop @ http://www.ggam.etsy.com/

Sunflowers

I ran across this layout that I did last year while organizing my files on my PC. I had fun doing this one. The birds dropped tons of sunflower seeds at the back of my yard while feeding at the feeders. When they all came into bloom they looked like a group of little heads all popping up. I mentioned to my husband that they just need faces and they'd come to life. I had decided to do a layout about it and this is what I created....silly but so true LOL!