My daughter graduated high school in early June this year. We took off on a vacation right way to see another graduation - my dear friend graduate college after (some ;-) years! And then our summer was spent on trips, college prep and more. You all know how your summers can get away from you in no time.  Well after most of my holiday preparations were complete I sat down one evening and finally got my daughters graduation in the books, while the memories were still relatively fresh. We wrote a note to her and included that in one of the pages. And i was able to grab some of the photos her high school had posted on Facebook. I finally fessed this up to my husband who was amazed at some of the camera angles I got. Yes dear, I am just that good! ;-) Anyway, I won't be sharing all the pages, as some of the pictures and memories are too personal for here. What I did do was create a title type page, really a highlights page for the event. This layout - Squared Away 16 in the

I took her great ideas and made a year in one page. I printed mine as a 12x12 page and keep in my studio. Here is a great idea for pictures this holiday season. It doesn't always have to be just the tree and present opening.  Thank you to Daisies and Dimples for putting this together. 

Here is a picture I have wanted to show you for a very long time. I recently, and I mean really recently, organized my pages and books for my memories (scrapbooks). First a little history. I authored my first modern memory/journal (scrapbook) page in the spring of 2002. I went to a neighbor's Creative Memories home party. We completed one page. I liked it. I did scrapbook in high school and college using those awful tan paper scrapbooks. I still have them. In a tub. Hidden. I was also good at putting my developed photos into simple photo books. Pictures have always meant a lot to me and my dads family. Still do! My grandma Johnson, as poor as they often were, always made sure to have professional pictures taken, frequently. I am still finding some of these pictures. But I digress. Spring 2002 first modern page. A year and a half later or maybe longer, I went on my first all day crop. I felt like a mess. I didn't know what I was doing, didn't know what supplies I

Hours after the news of Prince passing my daughter and I decided a trip to Paisley Park was in order. We just wanted to pay homage to the legend. I knew some people would have stopped by already, but little did we know how big it would get. And I can honestly say, 8 months after his passing and his loss is still felt in his hometown. Will we ever stop grieving? First of all, we did not plan well for this. I am handicapped and brought nothing, no cane, no water, nothing. My daughter dropped me as close as police would allow. Yes, they were already blocking traffic in the area. And I didn't understand why, yet. She dropped me by the police barricades and parked 2 blocks away. I waited for her.  We resumed walking, up a slight hill. You can see in the page above what we saw on arrival. Several news stations from around the country no less, were beginning to set up. Presumably for the evening news. People had been dropping off purple balloons, pictures, flowers and other mem

At our recent Diva Day Christmas Party we had an ugly sweater contest. It didn't have to be ugly, but it did have to use the Cable Knit Dynamic Embossing folder item 143537 found on page 13 of the Holiday 2016 catalog. I didn't want to do the typical ugly sweater with pompoms or sequins or other manner of holiday goodies people deem ugly on their sweaters. Instead I thought, what other kinds of sweaters are there? My first thought went to fisherman sweater. How can you not love a vanilla/ivory wool sweater from Ireland? My mother knit one when I was in high school. I wore it a lot. Then it got lost for decades, and was recently found when we were cleaning up some boxes. It hangs in my closet now. Would love to lose enough weight to wear it again. I was a stick with a chest when I wore it back then. She did a beautiful job on it and it was one of the last things she knit. She loved knitting of all the crafts, the most. She had arthritis in her wrists and she just couldn

You may want to save this handy dandy chart that someone else (cannot read the name for credit) put together. I just put it all together in one photo for you to save.  I will be adding the new Stitched Shapes framelits sizes soon.  Personally, when I am prepping for swaps I have 2 of each of the basic sizes for faster cutting, but it really does go quite fast anyway.  Thank you for whomever put together the sizing! We appreciate little tricks like this to keep us stamping easier.  Thank you for stopping by today! Keep being creative! ~Sandy

Drumroll please!  Here is the list many of you are looking forward to seeing! Here is a PDF you can download too:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2l8yj0AktWDTDltX0hKUTMtTkk/view?usp=sharing Category Page Item Description Retail Price Discount Sale Price Available Host 3 142214 Cozy Critters (Photopolymer) $9.50* Host 3 143050 Des tonnes de joie (Clear) $12.00* Host 3 142223 Holly Jolly Layers (Clear) $12.00* Host 3 142220 Holly Jolly Layers (Wood) $17.00* Embellishments 5 141983 Candy Cane Lane Baker's Twine $6.00