Buttons! buttons! everywhere!

When I first started scrapbooking, other than patterned paper, buttons were one of my main embellishments. I fell out of love with them for awhile, I guess due to my growing stash of supplies, and probably because I didn't see their full potential.
Buttons can go anywhere that any brad, gem or pearl can go, and they often lend a warmth and homeyness due to their initial purpose as garment closures.

Here are 2 layouts I did for this week's button challenge at Practical Scrappers. One shows how you can use buttons as a simple accent, and the other in true Erin style, shows how to go completely overboard with one supply! LOL!

not another layout!?

Nope! It's a card actually! I have decided to start using the stamps, inks and markers (not to mention training) that I've paid for.
This one is for a challenge at the Club Anya blog.

Goodnight 2009!

For the last few years we've rung in the new year with a cozy dinner party at home with our good friends and neighbors Claude and Vanessa. Each year the meal becomes more and more elaborate, and every time we recount the menu to someone, the tale just gets bigger and better. I plan on doing a layout about the meal this year ( as I plan to do every other year), so this post is just to show you a page about our kids. Nothing beats clean kids in cozy jammies, off to bed so that mommies and daddies can enjoy the last evening of 2009.


Materials used:
Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper, Coordinations
PP: American Crafts
letters: American Crafts
Foam: American Crafts
chipboard: American Crafts, Pebbles
rub-ons: American Crafts
tag and sticker: American Crafts
cuttlebug embossing folder
Pen: AC slick writter
Cricut cartridges: Accent Essentials, Plantin Schoolbook

A Few layouts

We're already 2 full days ( and a few hours) into 2010, and I feel like I've already messed it all up LOL! I had been planning on starting a photo a day challenge of some sort, and "forgot". I also conveniently forgot to make any sort of resolution this year. Maybe it's because both kids are sick, and I spent the morning at the clinic, or because I'm still worried about my crazy brother who decided it would be a good idea to have a snowmobile accident over the holidays. ( He had to have surgery to insert a metal rod and pins to repair a broken femur), but I'm not really feeling that 2010 has really given us a really fresh start. Can we get a redo?

Oh well- better just dive in headfirst then!
Here's a layout I did for last week's challenge at Practical Scrappers. I took a couple of pictures of this ( very large) woodpecker from my dinning room window. He didn't stay long, and I really didn't get great photos, but a little Photoshop went a long way.


Here's my last layout of 2009.
I had a blast working on this while on Skype with my buddy Claude. It's amazing- she left my house just before dinner, and we we're back to cropping later that evening through the magic of video as if she had never left ( ok she did complain that I couldn't make her a coffee, but maybe we'll find some sort of a solution for that).



I also had fun using my cricut on this one. I think it may just change my scrapbooking style up a little. I never would have thought of using American Crafts and Sassafras together like this before.

Hope you're all either keeping your resolutions so far, or are like me, and ditched them long before you ever had a chance to fail :)

Erin