Side three is done...

Well, after taking a couple days off, today I got back to work on the memory box, and just as I had hoped the end did go alot faster than the sides had! So I am now done 3 sides and only have 1 side and the lid left, so I am over half done and now looking down the home stretch....WOOHOO!! And I must admit, I am really happy with how this is all turning out!!

The weather around here has been rainy, snowy and just plain yucky this week, so it has been conducive to hanging out inside and getting some scrapping/creative work done, but yesterday I had a sick little girl, so that was NOT conducive to actually getting ANYTHING done!! lol

I might see if I can get started on the other end tonight, but we'll just see how that goes. I might also take a little break from this and do a few cards. Not sure. I know I probably won't get much done tomorrow, cause I have to go into the city and do something I dread....shop for clothes...blah! :( One of my best friends is getting married this summer so I need to go get a dress to wear and tomorrow is the day, but whatever I get done in the next day or two, I definately plan on having this all completed by the end of next week for sure!!

Although it's been a totally new kind of project for me, and it has definately made me use my brain a time or two ;), I have actually really enjoyed working on this. One of the reasons is that it's a boys project and I don't get to do boy things very often, so they are always more of a challenge for me, but also the different shape, the fact that it is a 3d project and then doing 5 seperate LO's, that are different but still co-herent. All and all it's been alot of fun!

I will post more again when I have more completed. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Side Two is done...

Although it took the better part of the day, I managed to get the front of the memory box finished! Woohoo....two sides done, 3 to go (well 2 sides and the lid)! I figure since the ends are smaller they should go faster than the front and back did, but you never know how creativity and inspiration will work sometimes. So anyways, here's a picture of the front...

Mercedes has already decided that as soon as I finish this project that she wants me to make her a memory box too. In fact last night she even found a box that we can use. I'm kinda hoping that she forgets about it for a little while cause I'm pretty sure that when I'm finished this I'll want a break from this kinda project for a bit, but I have a feeling that more memory boxes are definately in my future. Oh well, I do think it's a cool idea, and I am happy with how this one is turning out...of course, I wouldn't consider it finished until I was happy with it!

I'll post more later when I get more done on it. :)

Memory box - First side is done....

Today was pretty productive, considering that I slept in until noon! I've had nothing but this memory box on my mind, so I started working on it almost as soon as I got up and although it looked like this, this morning...

I am proud to say that it looks like this... tonight!

It is tipped up it's side, and it's not the best picture, but you get the idea. The flowers and butterflies are all Tim Holtz grungeboard that I painted with acrylic paint in the colors that is in the Fancy Pants paper that will be used on some of the other sides. The cardstock is Core'dinations & I used Distress inks to ink the paper & photos. The brads are Recollections Antique Copper. I used Mod Podge as my mail adhesive for everything except the photos which I attached with Elmer's glue stick. I think that's about everything!

Now that I've actually gotten started I'm hoping that the rest will flow smoothly and this won't take too long. I just need the uninterupted time to be able get the work done and hopefully now that I have the house back to just me & Mercedes I will be able to get my alone time again!

Happy long weekend...

It's been a busy week, so I'm sorry that I haven't been posting, but I've been trying to catch up on everything that fell behind while I was sick. And then on Thursday evening Brad came for his first visit since he's moved to Edmonton. Mercedes is thrilled that he's here and I've enjoyed a little break from single parenthood for a few days. He will be going back home tomorrow, so we've tried to pack as much into the four days that he's here as we can.

He showed up with a cooler full of a bunch of our favorite foods that we can't find down here and then spent the whole evening playing with Mercedes. Friday we went to Lethbridge and did some shopping and then we went to dinner at the Keg and still got home in time spend most of the evening with Mercedes. Yesterday we just hung around the house, and he helped me sand and seal the wooden memory box that I am starting to work on. Then last night we watched Avatar on Blu-Ray...WOW! Considering that we didn't see it in the theater, high def, was definately the way to go, and we all really enjoyed the movie. Today, I got to sleep in until noon, and then Brad and Mercedes wanted to go fishing so I tagged along and took some pics and then just hung out and watched them for a couple hours.

So I have a few pics to show off...

This is the scenery I see everytime I am coming home from the city....I just love coming home, cause I LOVE this view...I love my mountains!!!
This is a pic that I took while Brad & Mercedes were fishing. The big mountain in the middle is Chief Mountain and it looks over our town, but I loved the way it looked today with the clouds and the snow.

Here's a pic of Brad & Mercedes during the time they were fishing....it was really cold & windy so they would set up their rods and then come sit in the car to warm up, so I managed to catch this pic just as she hugged him to thank him for helping her get her rod set up. I thought it was a great pic of my little girl with her daddy.

Tnis is a wooden box that I've been hired to decorate. She wants LO's done on each side & the top and then she is giving it to her son to use as a Memory box and every year he can go through all his projects and pick his favorites to save and he can store them in this box. This is a totally new kind of project for me. I've altered boxes before, but on a much smaller scale and usually just with paper & embellishments, not usually with pictures and doing layout type things. So this is the box that Brad helped me sand & seal yesterday and I was grateful for the help, and I've pretty much finished all the pre-planning and gathered all the supplies, so now I just need to sit down and get started on the actual creating. I'm just a little stuck on which side to start with! lol

But I wanted to post the before pics and I will take pics along the way and definately post after pics since I could not find any pictures of something like this when I was looking for ideas, but I do think it was a neat idea, although I can't take credit for it, it was my cousin's idea...she just hired me to actually do it! Wish me luck!!

This is just a pic from the front. It doesn't matter that it's so scarred and beaten up since it will all be covered with paper & pics by the time I'm done!

I've decided that I'm going to be giving some of the graduates that I know this year some packages of thank you cards to use for either gifts they recieve or to give to some special teachers, so I've been working on thank you cards and congratulations cards for the actual graduates themselves. So that's what these cards are all for...

The paper is all K&Co and the stamps are all Close to My Heart. Ink is Distress Inks and the pattern for these first 2 cards is from the book Wishes from CTMH. While the pattern from the last 2 cards is one of my own patterns using Spellbinder's Nestibilities Label's Thirteen.

Gift tag I made using the scraps left over from the above two cards & a wooden heart sprayed with a couple different colors of glimmer mist.