The team at CK has been busy working hard behind the scenes to create a cool new home for CKers! Club CK is officially born! Be sure to check it out for cool new scrapbook inspiration, a brand spankin’ new idea gallery, forums, videos, free downloads, contests, events and more. Whew! I was asked to create some fun blinkies for the site so be sure to grab one to personalize your signature.

Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks

The editors at CK have also been working overtime to crank out special issues called “Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks” the first of which is on newstands now. This issue is on organization and all things related. It actually inspired me to clean up & clean out my craft room (which is a pretty amazing feat). Looking forward to the next issue and all the projects it will inspire!

If you check out the site, you’ll find an option to receive all of these special issues as well as receive digital access to ALL past issues (which is pretty cool for this digital girl)! So exciting to see so many new features and changes.

Hope to see you around the halls of Club CK! Bye for now!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Christmas! I’m still recovering from the amount of kindness and generosity that overwhelmed us this holiday season. It’s simply amazing to be surrounded by people that love and care for us so much.

We had a wonderful time preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ birth! We covered all the bases…decorating the house, putting up the trees, baking sugar cookies, decorating a gingerbread house, braving a white-out snow storm to attend the Christmas eve candlelight service and of course baking a birthday cake for baby Jesus. And even though our tree now holds no decorations below the 3 foot line, our gingerbread house collapsed miserably, and several pieces of Jesus’ birthday cake went missing before we could sing…it has been one of the most beautiful holidays I can remember.

Surrounded by love ones. Celebrating the birth of our Lord. It’s a beautiful thing. And I’m left feeling completely overwhelmed by the blessings that God continues to pour out over our lives. I pray your holiday season has you finding yourself in a similar situation. Merry Christmas, my friends. Have a wonderful and safe New Year. I look forward to what 2010 brings for us all!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours.

Oh, the love! The love of thrift stores, that is. It had been a while since I visited my favorite thrift store, but a big sign that read “50% off everything store-wide” was too much to resist. And I’m so glad I went! Look at the beauty I discovered way in the back. There she was…right next to a bent up file cabinet and a wide array of 80s workout videos. Can you believe it? Even more exciting was the price tag. $5.00! That’s right. I walked away with this baby for 2 bucks and 50 cents. My deal of the year. Like I said…love rekindled.

Welcome to your new home!

Did you see the big announcement? Creating Keepsakes has selected the 2010 Dream Team! The members? Well, here they are:

Cindy Tobey
Deena Wuest
Jen Jockisch
Kim Watson
Laura Vegas
Maggie Holmes
Sara Winnick
Susan Weinroth
Suzy Plantamura
Wendy Sue Anderson

I still find myself shocked and amazed to see my name hidden in that list! What an incredible honor it was to be invited to serve the 2010 term as a Creating Keepsakes Dream Team girl! Wow. Not only do I love the magazine (this, of course, goes without saying) but the ladies there are the absolute sweetest you’ll find. I’m really looking forward to working with them more closely this year as well as getting to know all the (majorly talented) dream team members. To learn more about them, make sure you check out the Q&A session on the Creating Keepsakes Blog. Fun stuff!

Honestly, I feel completely blessed and humbled to have been able to work with CK for the last 2 1/2 years. So many great opportunities. So many friendships made. So many wonderful memories captured. I’m really looking forward to another great year! Thanks, CK!

Every time our five-year-old son sees an infommercial on tv he exclaims, “WE NEED THAT!” Now, the commercial could be for anything from a brownie pan to a steamer. It doesn’t matter. He truly believes we need it. I’m not so enthralled with the infommerical. For me, it’s product packaging. Is it weird that I get excited over boxes? Hmm. Maybe. While I doubt I would ever buy something for what’s outside of the box rather than what’s inside, still I am addicted to the clever beauty of packaging. All I know is that there are some pretty awesome designers out there. And they supply us with some pretty cool design inspiration.

As I was cleaning out my scrap room the other night, I came across a book I received when I left home for college some…<cough cough>…years ago.  Just holding it in my hands brought back so many memories of starting out on my own and learning to find my way. To this day, Life’s Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. is still one of my favorite feel-good reads. Such a great collection of simple observations and wonderful reminders. From time to time, I’ll pop in and leave one of my favorites for you all. In celebration of finding my beloved book, here is the first quotation of many to come…

Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures.

Just popping in to share some design goodness with you all. Found this baby on the web and just loved the structured randomness of it all. Hope it inspires you as much as it does me! Along with the cool mixed title and vertically sliced layout design…

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I love how the designer took the objects out of their original context and used them to convey a completely different  message. So clever. Yes? What a great concept to use in our scrapbooks! This happens to be the inspiration piece I selected for the Simply Inspired Contest over at Designer Digitals so feel free to come play along!

Ah, yes. And don’t drink and drive.

Did you hear?!? The wonderfully brilliant, creative and hilarious Cathy Zielske is now selling digital templates! Woo hoo! No offense, my friend, but it’s about time! lol. We’ve been waiting a long time for this one. And you can bet I was the first one in the download line.

I remember the day I first saw one of her layouts in a magazine. It was as if a light bulb went off in my head and it completely changed the way I viewed scrapbooking. Over the years, her clean and simple style as well as her scrapbooking philosophy has influenced me beyond words.

New CZ Template

So in her honor, here’s a layout I created with her Layered Template No. 2 which will be in the store this weekend.

If you’re a CZ stalker…er…fan (like me), be sure to check out her collection of digital templates at Designer Digitals!

Seeing You
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
Template: Layered Template No. 2 by Cathy Zielske
Paper: Miranda Paper Pack by Michelle Martin
Brushes: Miranda Brushes and Stamps by Michelle Martin
Font: Avant Garde

Inspiration. It comes from anywhere and everywhere. You can be inspired by something as simple as a color scheme, something as small as a flower, or something as artistic as the way the light falls on a certain object. Lots of times inspiration can be found in the everyday… those little bits and pieces of our lives that are so easily passed over. Then there are those times when you see something so in-your-face bold, so cleverly cool that it can’t be ignored even if you tried. Enter :

the completely-cool & oh-so-clever billboard

Brilliant and wittingly funny at the same time. It makes me wonder what clever and creative mind came up with this concept. (And it makes me wish I could borrow his/her brain for a day). So how does this relate to scrapbooking? Good question. To be honest I’m not entirely sure. But I love it! It inspires me! It makes me want to drop what I’m doing and scrap! And to me, that’s what it’s all about. Be sure to check out the Simply Inspired Contest over at Designer Digitals this week! Create a layout based on this inspiration and you could win a $10 gift certificate to the store!

Hope you find this as inspiring as I do! In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be posting more random design pieces I find inspiring, cool or just plain funny.

Thanks for stopping by! Please pardon my dust as I’m still laying the foundation here. Feel free to check back in a few days! I can’t guarantee that anything you’ll read here will forever change your life, but you’ll get your fill of miscellaneous ramblings with a side of some pretty cool scrapbook inspiration.