Wish I could lighten your load

Hey everyone,

I've been crafting all weekend! That's why I didn't have time to post anything. But I did film a video, which is saving right now so I can upload it to youtube :) And I have another video for you that I posted a couple days using some of Papertrey Ink's February release products. It uses the stamp set Lighten Up and the Lighten Up Sentiments stamp set. It also uses the cricut cartridge Elegant Edges.

Thanks everyone for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed the video!!!

- Ashley

Belle Thank you Card

Hey everyone!

So Andy and I went out to Olive Garden tonight to have a date night. It was fun to just go out with my baby :) We also went to Target to pick up some stuff and I found some packs of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper from Colorbook for $1!! I got like 7 different packs. I'm excited :)

Anyway, on to the cards. Someone bought my niece a bunch of princess stuff, so my sister asked me to make a thank you card to give to them. I decided to pull out my Disney Dreams Come True cartridge for the first time for this one. Man those cuts are incredibly hard to cut and put together! I cut Belle out at 4 3/4 and it was still really intricate and hard to put together. Oh well, I think the card turned out ok. Her eyes were too small, so I had to use something else, so I decided to use stickles. I messed up her eyes a little :(

I used the En Francais stamp set on the background layer (the melon mambo layer). The card base is daffodil delight as well as her dress. I used stickles for her eyes, mouth, and dress. I used the daffodil deligh seam binding riboom, buttons from Papertrey Ink, and the patterned paper is from a DCWV layer. On the inside, I used an exclusive papertrey ink stamp set that they included in orders to thank people for being a customer.

I have realized that the other pictures I took are still on Andy's camera, so I will download the rest of them and continue to upload tomorrow :)

I hope you have a wonderful night!

- Ash

Hippo Birdie Two Ewes

Hey everyone!!

Today was a rough day... I woke up feeling terrible. I was really tired, my throat hurt, my entire body had that achey feeling, and I was feeling a little sick. I went to work because it wasn't bad enough where I wouldn't be able to each. But maybe I should have... I had a really hard time with my kids today :( It just really amazes me the attitude some of them have and the blatent lack of respect I get from so many of them. It makes me sad that they are so angry so young... Then I went to the sprint store with my dad because my phone has been restarting itself for the past several months and I've finally had enough of it. It's to the point where it's almost like having a paperweight since it restarts when I do anything. The guy told me he did a hard reset and it should be better, so we went home. I was trying to input all my contacts back into my phone and it started to reset itself AGAIN! So we took it back to the sprint store and they told me they would replace it for free since I had to come back. But the phone is on backorder so I have to wait a couple more days... I'm glad that I'll get a new phone and I don't have to pay for it, but I'm just so frustrated with the way today went. I didn't even get home until about 8. Now I'm watching Pretty Little Liars, and then I'm going to spend some time with Andy and head to bed a little early maybe. I hope so at least.

Anyway, I promised to keep catching up with my pictures. But today I'm going to show you the video I made instead, and tomorrow I'll post more pictures :)

Anyway, that's all for tonight. I hope you enjoy the video!!

- Ash

Catching up

Hey everyone,

So Andy and I have finished moving! We moved into my sister's condo because she bought a house. I'm super excited about how much room we have now! We aren't all unpacked yet, but we're getting there. I finally got all my clothes put away today. Last time I moved, it took me almost 2 weeks to get my clothes hung up and put away. This time I was smarter about how I boxed them, so that I could just hang them right up in the order I like :)

My craft room was the first thing I unpacked on the Sunday after we moved (we moved Saturday). It's almost all complete! I'm just waiting for some paper storage cubes that I want for my birthday in a little over a week! Then I'll get a video of my new area and post it for you. It's absolutely beautiful! It's soooo big! I have so much more room and everything is so much more organized. We also have a TV downstairs so now I can watch TV while I craft, so I find myself down there more often. I've already made 5 cards this week, plus a video! (Currently being uploaded to youtube) That's a lot more than I ever have time to make. Andy went to Pennsylvania this week to visit his family, so I think that had something to do with it. I had more time to craft since I was all by myself (though I did miss him!)

Anyway, I've got so many cards to share with you today. I want to catch up. The first one is a card that I made for our friends Ken and Kelly for thier baby shower. They are having a boy and their theme was dinosaurs.

I used the Create a Critter cartridge to cut the dinosaur. He's cut from all Stampin' Up colors, though I can't remember all of them. The patterned paper is from a DCWV stack, I think either the Baby Boy stack or the Glitter stack. Dino-riffic is from the Boy Crazy stamp by My Pink Stamper. The baby feet as well as the it's a boy sentiment are from the Baby set in the Stampin' Up Occasions Mini. I think it turned out super cute!!

The next card I wanted to share was the card I made for Andy for Valentine's Day! This one was made using mostly Papertrey Ink products. I absolutely love Stampin' Up and all their products, but I've rediscovered Papertrey Ink! They release a new line of stamp sets and dies to match their stamps on the 15th of every month and I've been sucked in! I've bought stuff from the last 3 releases and I'm super super excited for the new stuff that I just bought this week. I can't wait for it to come in :) I ended up spending almost $250... eek! I also bought a lot of new products from thier February release, and I finally got around to actually using some of them, which was a lot of fun. I'll take pictures of those cards and post those ones as well. The card that I'm about to share is made from products from thier January release. I used the Simply Jane stamp set, which is awesome! It also has matching dies and designer series paper.

I stamped the couple from the Simply Jane set using Dark Chocolate ink onto the Dearest Jane designer paper. I then used one of the Papertrey Ink oval dies to cut out the couple. The frame is stamped using versa mark onto Smokey Shadow cardstock and then I used silver (or it could be pewter, I can't remember) embossing powder. I then cut it out using the matching die. I absolutely had to have all of these products as soon as I saw them because I thought they were adorable. I love love love the saying I used from the stamp set (stamped in Vintage Cream), "You  must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and LOVE you." I thought it was perfect for my Valentine's Day card for Andy. The card base is Raspberry Fizz and I also added a strip of the Dearest Jane paper to the bottom of the front. I think the ribbon is just a satin ribbon from Walmart, but Papertrey Ink has beautiful Satin ribbon to match their cardstock as well. The buttons are dark chocolate buttons from Papertrey Ink.

The inside saying is from a My Pink Stamper Stampset called From the Heart, stamped in Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Fizz ink. Andy loved it :)

The last one I'm going to share today, and I'll share more tomorrow, is the St. Patrick's Day card I made for my niece.

I cut out the leprechaun from Simply Charmed at 3 3/4 inches. I also cut out the lucky from the same page. He was made using both Core'dinations paper and Stampin' Up paper. The orage for his hair is Tangerine Tango, and his legs are basic black. The rest is core'dinations.

I took a 4 by 3/4 inch strip of real red, pumpkin pie, daffodil delight, pacific point, and concord crush for the rainbow. I cut the green one from the same green as the leprechaun. I placed them on a piece of white cardstock, and then ran it through the square lattice embossing foler to make it look more like one piece. I then placed that on a 4 x 5 1/4 basic black layer. I tied a green ribbon around the corner of the black layer and tied a knot. I then glued my black layer down on I think it's a piece of New Leaf cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I popped the leprechaun up on pop dots, but glued down the lucky. I used stickles for his buckle, cheeks, and eyebrows, all matching colors (not the icicle one).

I stamped the inside with the Stampin' Up St. Patrick's Day stamp from the Occasions Mini in Garden Green.

Well, that's all for tonight. I've got tons more to share with you, so I'll upload some more tomorrow. I also have another video to share with you, which I will do tomorrow. I hope everyone has a great night! I'm starting to feel a little under the weather (my through is starting to hurt, I'm getting that achey feeling in my neck, and I'm really tired) but hopefully a good night's sleep will make me feel better... Back to work tomorrow... yay... but it's a short week this week! We have professional development on Thursday and Friday so we only have kids for 3 days. It should be a nice break. Then my birthday is the week after, and the week after that we have 4 days, and then it's break, and ANDY'S BIRTHDAY!!! Yay :)

Good night everyone!

- Ash



Established Elegance Video

Hey everyone!

So I thought I'd post that video I was talking about yesterday. It uses the Established Elegance stamp set from Stampin' Up. I absolutely adore this set! It's one of my new favorites!!! I also used heat embossing in this video as well as Stampin' Off. I hope you enjoy it!

Also, Michele came over today to help me pack. We packed up my craft room :( So no crafting for Ashley this week... But grade are due Friday and I have to pack up the rest of my stuff anyway, so I guess it's better that I can't play around with my stuff. My craft stuff will be one of the first things that I unpack when we move into our new place this weekend! I can't wait to have more room! I'm going to buy another table as well so that I have more space to actually work. That way I can also have people come over and work on things in my space too! Right now, if someone comes over, one of us has to work on the floor... Not that I have many people come over right now. Anyway, on to the video!!

Good night everyone!! I'll try to get more pictures posted soon!

- Ash

Yes I'm still alive...

Hello everyone!!

I know that I've been completely MIA for a couple weeks again... My job keeps me so busy and so stressed out. I've had to go to the doctor's lately to get checked out for my blood pressure. I've been so stressed out at work that it's been sky high, so my doctor put me on blood pressure medication... I don't think it's really working that well either.

I have started a new behavior management technique in class and it's working somewhat. The students are starting to act better because they want to earn their free time Friday and they want to play my iPad. So hopefully they'll get a little better each day... But as such, I don't have time at all during the school today to work on my lesson plans or grade papers, so I have a stack of paper about 8 inches high, and I already did about 4 inches of a paper stack... I hate grading paper :( I don't have a lot of time to work on my paper crafts, but I try to get in there as often as possible. I've made a bunch of things that I'd love to post to show you, and I've taken pictures of some of them, but I just haven't uploaded them to my computer. So I will try and get on that soon. I also have a lot of scrapbook pages of my niece that I've been working on that I'll try to post soon too. I go to power scrapping at my scrapbook store (Scrappy Chic) every other week with my Stampin' Up Demonstrator Michele and some other people I met from her classes, so it forces me to get work done on my scrapbooks. I've got a lot of pictures to do of Andy and me, but I wanted to make a scrapbook for Hailey so I could give it to my sister on Hailey's 2nd birthday. They're pretty detailed, and they take a long time to make, but I'm extremely happy with them.

I have even more news as well! Andy and I are moving this weekend! So I have to start packing up my whole craft room :( So very unhappy about that. But I think I'll have a bigger space in our new place. My sister bought a house in South Lyon, so we are renting her Condo from her for a while, at least a year and a half (until after the wedding) and I am going to use most of the basement for my craft room. Andy's desk will also go down there, but he doesn't need that much room... lol. My craft stuff will be some of the first things I unpack at the new place and so I'll take pictures as soon as I have it all set up and post them for you to see.

Anyway, Andy is gone for a couple days, so I'm home by myself until Wednesday. So it's up to me to start packing. Michele is going to come over tomorrow and help me start packing!! I appreciate that so much, Andy and I have quite a bit to pack up.... and I'm sure my craft stuff has doubled since I moved in here in December. But that's enough for now. I promise I will try to be better at posting. I also have a video that I posted on youtube a couple weeks ago that I never posted here, but I will tomorrow.

Have a wonderful night everyone!

- Ash