The Little Things

Hey Neighbors!  Thanks for stopping by our blog during The Craft Squad blog hop!  I hope you enjoyed all the projects we prepared for you and that you’ll come back to visit more often.  Some of the blogs in our hop post daily, so be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss any of the great projects we post in the future.  You can subscribe to the Crafty Neighbor “Neighborhood Gossip” blog using the gadget boxes over on the left. 

In the mean time, I wanted to announce that the winner of the blog hop is:

Jean Bullock

Jean wins a prize from each of our participating blogs.   Jean please contact us with your mailing address so we can send your prizes!

As you know, our theme for the hop was “Love is in the Air”, but LOAD is what’s on my mind -- both the virtual kind and the figurative.  I started LOAD this month with high hopes of completing all 28 layouts (one for each day), but after getting a call that my father suffered a heart attack last night, I have a different kind of load on my mind.  That said, I’m going to be posting a few of my LOAD layouts that I’ve done to date and I’ll try to catch back up, but if I miss a day or two, I hope you won’t mind.

A family crisis sure makes you appreciate all the little things, and that was exactly the topic of LOAD Day 2.  Lain challenged us to scrapbook about the little things, and I chose this picture of my son enjoying an ice cream after a very challenging week away at college.

I’ve been trying to keep my LOAD pages simple since I haven’t had a lot of time to work on them.  This one was a little extra challenging because it’s supposed to go in my son’s college scrapbook, which I’m doing in his school colors of maroon and white.  Luckily, I found this paper which is maroon with blue, pink and cream polka dots.  The ice cream embellishments were created with Stampin’ Up’s Mouthwatering stamp set.

One of the reasons I do LOAD every year is because it challenges me to do pages I wouldn’t have thought of other wise.  I’m terribly guilty of tackling my family scrapbooks in a chronological order, devoting most of my attention to the big events: births, birthdays, weddings, graduations, etc.  And while those things are important, it’s really the little things that tend to mean the most to us when we think back on our lives, and they are the things that make us who we are.  So be sure to document all those little things…like the time your sister got gum in her hair or the joy of eating your favorite comfort food or even the relief of getting to work and finding your lost iPhone right there on your desk.  You’ll be glad you did!

Love is in the Air

Welcome to Crafty Neighbor’s “Neighborhood Gossip” blog, and welcome to The Craft Squad’s monthly blog hop.  The hop starts right here, so grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage, and get ready to visit some fun and fabulous blogs from The Craft Squad.  And be sure to read through to the end to find out how you can win one of the prizes we’ll be giving away on each of the blogs.

If you are new to Crafty Neighbor, my name is Cindy Murray, and I am the owner of Crafty Neighbor and Crafty Neighbor Travel.  I host crops, retreats, classes, workshops, and even scrapbooking cruises and garage sales, but my real mission is to bring crafters together and support the scrapbooking and paper-crafting industries by providing fun and unique opportunities to learn new techniques, scrapbook at different venues, and meet new friends.  I also run this blog, which I like to view as a source of news, tips, tricks, and inspiration for scrapbooking and paper-crafting of all kinds. 

Our February blog theme is “Love is in the Air”, and we are, of course, referring to Valentine’s Day, which is coming up in less than two weeks.  I decided this would be a good opportunity to use my time wisely and make my Valentine for my own sweet husband, Mark, so that’s what I’m sharing with you today.  I always like to make him a really special card, because he actually appreciates them.  And it doesn’t hurt that he brings me my favorite Valentine candy – Godiva Chocolates.  I just love those chocolates!  I love any chocolate, really, but the Godivas are so good, I have been known to buy them for him on Valentine’s Day just to be sure I got some!

This card is full of texture and color, but it was super easy to make.  I just cut a bunch of hearts of varying sizes from different papers, colored a Tim Holtz grungeboard “U” and glossed over it with Diamond Glaze, and stuck it all together.  A list of the materials used is available for download by clicking here.

I hope you liked my card.  If you would like to see some of my previous posts and projects, scroll down to the “Blog Archives” on the left, or you can search for posts by specific topics just below that.  Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think!  You can also find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/craftyneighbor, on Pinterest at http://www.pinterest.com/c1ndyluhu/, or on the web at http://www.craftyneighbor.com.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today!  Be sure to subscribe using one of the links on the left to be eligible to win one of our awesome prizes! 

HOW to WIN:

Beginning today February 5th through February 9th, simply visit each of the sites listed below.  Become a follower of their blog or sign up for their newsletter. Read the post and look for a Valentine’s candy treat (a different candy will be mentioned on each blog). As you hop from site to site, you must collect ALL the candies! When you are done, you will send your name and candy list to:

TheCraftSquad@hotmail.com

Your email is your entry to win a prize from one of our seven participating blogs!!!!  The winners will be announced on Monday, February 10^th on each of the blogs.

Here’s the list of participating blogs

Crafty Neighbor
http://craftyneighbor.blogspot.com/2014/02/love-is-in-air.html

Stamp-Patty's
http://www.stamppattys.com/2014/02/love-is-in-air.html

Treasure Chest of Memories
http://TreasureChestofMemories.com/Love-is-in-the-air/

The 'Thrifty & Organized' Scrapper with I Finally Got It Right INC.
http://www.ifinallygotitrightproductsinfo.com/origami-owl/love-is-in-the-air-with-origami-owl

Roxie's Stamping Room
http://roxiesstampingroom.blogspot.com/2014/02/Love-is-in-the-air.html

Lisa T Loves to Stamp
http://lisatstamps.blogspot.com/2014/02/love-is-in-air_3.html

That’s it for now, so be sure to hop on over to the next blog: Stamp-Patty's at http://www.stamppattys.com/2014/02/love-is-in-air.html  Patty Chenail will have another candy for you to collect.

Don't forget to become a follower and Good Luck!!!

Back From Hiatus

My, my, my…how time flies.  I took a little break from the blog over the Christmas holidays, and it sort of stretched into the New Year.  I certainly did not mean to be away for so long, but it just simply could not be helped.  Hosting our annual scrapbooking cruise right in the the middle of the busy holiday season was not a good idea.  I came home to total chaos, and the last six or seven weeks have just been a total blur.  Hopefully, things have started to settle down now, and I can get back into my regular blogging routine.  That’s a good thing because I have several blog hops coming up over the course of the next several months and LOAD214 started on Saturday.  So I will have lots of great projects coming up for you.

I mentioned the blog hops, and I’d like to tell you a little more about them.  There are actually two groups I’m “hopping” with these days.  The first is the “Busy Chicks” networking group.  This is a group of scrapbook business owners from the Dallas-Fort Worth area who have come together to help support the industry in the DFW Metroplex area.  We have several retreat venues, scrapbook stores, plus a mobile scrapbook business, a crop venue, and myself.  It really is a great bunch of ladies, and I’m very excited to be working with all of them.  We have four blog hops coming up in 2014 – one each quarter, with the first one starting February 27^th.  We have some really great prizes for this series of hops, so stay tuned for more details.

The other group I am “hopping” with for 2014 is the newly reorganized group called “The Craft Squad”.  This group of bloggers was formed on LinkedIn in early 2013 and we did several blogs throughout the year last year.  For 2014, we are shooting for a monthly hop some time around the beginning of each month.  It took us a little bit longer to get organized than anticipated, so we missed January, so the first hop of 2014 will begin right here on Wednesday, Feb. 5th.  The blog runs through Sunday, Feb. 9^th and we have prizes to give away on each blog in the hop, so be sure to stop in and play!  The theme for this month is “Love is in the Air”, and I have made the cutest little card to share with you!

As I mentioned earlier in this post, LOAD214 began on Saturday.  If you haven’t joined LOAD, you should check it out.  I’ve been doing LOAD since 2012, and I have a huge stack of scrapbook pages to show for it!  I get so much inspiration, learn so many techniques, bust so many myths that I just can’t imagine not doing it!  Another bonus is that it gives me lots of great pages to share with you right here on the blog.  Here is the page I made Saturday for the kick-off. 

The tag reads:  The greatest possession is friendship.

Our myth to bust was “You have to use perfect photos,” and Lain’s challenge was to find some less-than-perfect pictures to scrapbook.  I chose to use this picture of my son, Steven (right), and his Corps of Cadets buddies at Texas A&M University.  I downloaded the photo from Facebook, so it’s not the greatest quality to start with.  On top of that, the photographer must have had a dirty camera lens because the faces in the middle of the cluster are smudged and blurry.

The papers I used came from a lot of different sources, most of which I have forgotten, but the number paper is Close to My Heart and some of the stickers are from Echo Park’s All About a Boy line.  The arrows and film frame were cut with the new Stampin’ Up Sizzlet On Film collection which is in the brand new Occasions mini catalog.  I just got them this week and couldn’t wait to try them out!

That’s it for now.  Be sure to come back tomorrow for The Craft Squad blog hop and a chance to win one of seven prizes!