Some cards I made.

Below are 3 A2 cards I made. They all have stamped images that I colored in. All of these cards include embossed cardstock using my Cuttlebug folders, as well as images cut with my Nestibilities. The first 2 cards include stamped images from Pezadoodle's Polkadot Pie Chocolate Treats sets 1 and 2. I just love their stamps and have used them a lot. The strawberry was colored with Copics and a brown Glaze Pen for the chocolate. The second card below uses the slice of cake image and was colored using Glaze Pens, and embellished with both Flower Soft, and Liquid Pearls for the frosting. I love, love, love how the image turned out. Papers are Basic Grey Bittersweet. The third card below contains a stamped image that I colored with my Copics. It was one of the first times I used my Copics and I fell in love with them. I cannot remember what stamp set this is from... I will try to remember to look it up and come back and post it here. The sentiments on all of these cards are from my Studio G stamp collection. One more addiction I have! lol! I used lots of Stickles on this card also. > I hope you like these. I love all feedback. Thanks for looking!!

Scrapping Friends Summer Crop

The Summer Crop is ongoing over on Scrapping Friends right now. There are so many awesome challenges and games. We host 4 quarterly crops and they are always so much fun. I love when members tell me that ours crops are the best on the net and that they depend on them to inspire and motivate them when they are in a scrapping or card making rut. Scrapping Friends was lots more active when we were an MSN group. All anyone had to do is type scrapbooking in any search engine and our group would show up. We just don't get that search engine exposure on Yuku and it's so sad because SF is an awesome group of scrappers and anyone who gives it a chance really loves the friendships and inspiration we all share. Right now we are running a membership drive, with awesome prizes for the top 2 members who get the most new members to join. If you are reading this and you like to scrapbook traditionally or digitally; or you are a cardmaker, please won't you consider joining us over there? Just tell them Nancy sent you. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining. We are free, AND we offer discount codes to some online stores, brand new prizes, etc. for winners of our many challenges. We are a closed (private) group because we hold our member's privacy to high standards, so you do need to apply and be accepted. Everyone who applies right now is guaranteed to be accepted. We have lots going on, but both members and managers are very welcoming and supportive in helping you feel at home and figure out where to find everything. Many of our group members have traveled across the country to meet other Scrapping Friends and crop together. I have made lifelong friends and would love to make even more. I would especially be thrilled to find more members who live closer to me geographically (I am in Augusta, Maine) because I host free crops in my home every few weeks and would love to meet more people who share my interests. To contact me directly email me at nancyllake@yahoo.com , to join scrapping friends go to www.scrappingfriends.yuku.com . I would love to hear from you!!

Free Sketches for you!

I thought I would share some of my card and layout sketches. My sketches are for personal use. You may use them on groups and blogs but please give me credit by linking back to my blog. If you like them and use them I would love you to leave a comment with a link so I can see how the cards and layouts look using my sketches. Enjoy!

Finally...

I have been trying to start a blog in my spare time for a few weeks now. I have an Etsy store and an Online Scrapbook group that I want to get the word out about, plus there are a ton of blogs that I follow and I am loving the challenges I see and I would like to be able to participate in some of them. Most challenges require you to post photos of your entry on your blog. So, here I am with my own blog and hoping that some of you will enjoy it as much as I enjoy yours. Hopefully once I've got the hang of this several of you out there will follow my blog and leave occasional comments. Other blogs I tend to follow are several Cricut blogs like the Cricut Message Board, Cricut Softcuts, Everything Cricut, Split Coast Stampers, several sketch blogs, and many digi scrapping blogs (although I prefer the real paper and glue kind of scrapping). I have both the Baby Cricut and the Expression and Design Studio. I absolutely love using the Expression with the DS because it enables me so much more freedom to create, not to mention get the most from my cardstock. I also follow many of my Scrapping Friend's blogs. The talent of our SF members is incredibly amazing. If I need inspiration for something I always know where to look. SF is a big part of my life and I enjoy it a lot. I created SF a little over 6 years ago in MSN groups/communities I truly love the experiences and friendships I have made from the group so much. MSN closed down all groups in Feb. of this year. We found a new home for SF on Yuku. You can now find us at www.scrappingfriends.yuku.com . We offer so many fun things on SF... weekly challenges, games, questions, great prizes, friendship, technique classes, product classes, four big quarterly crops that last 10-14 days each. SF also has a digital scrapbooking section, card challenges, a place to share peeks of our work, a Wishing Well, etc., etc. My life has been so blessed through SF. If there is something you would like to know, just post a question on our General Board and you've usually got your answer within a few minutes. Our group is private, but all you need to do is follow the above link to apply (mention you heard about SF on Nancy's blog and you will be accepted as soon as I see your application. If you have any questions or want to give me a heads up to be looking for your application please email me at nancyllake@yahoo.com We love new members with new ideas... it always keeps things fun and interesting. Other blogs I follow are basically about scrapbooking, cardmaking, and products I love (like Copic Markers). I am totally in love with Copics and have been collecting colors for about 1 year now. I have about 70 and think I need more colors really soon. I never was much of a cardmaker or stamper until seeing the awesome cards that our Scrapping Friends members were posting sneak peeks of. It wasn't long before I was hooked to cardmaking and those little Studio G clear stamps that are perfect for cardmaking. I am trying to stay strong and focus on buying only the stamps I know I will use a lot, rather than having to have every set! In my quest to find some of the Studio G stamps that I was missing I discovered Pez-a-doodles online store and blog. I became so impressed with the blog and Marti's lessons there that I IMed Marti for permission to use some of her lessons on Scrapping Friends. Marti ended up joining Scrapping Friends and she is just a doll. I've also fallen in love with her own line of stamps, especially the PolkadotPie line. I have had a ball using them and will try to get some of the results posted here soon. I just received Princess Cleo yesterday and can't wait to try it out. A couple of my other addictions are the Cuttlebug embossing folders, and Spellbinders Nestibilities. I use them in my Cuttlebug and they are super easy to use. OMG, the embossed cardstock makes cards and layouts look so much more nice and elegant. I ordered the Swiss Dots embossing folder the other day and should have it by the beginning of the week I hope. Another thing I really enjoy doing is making handmade paper piecings. I carry several of them in my Etsy Store. I make the kind that I cut out with my Cricut, and I can also make them completely handmade by creating a pattern from a photo. I think paper piecings make all scrapbook pages look better. I am currently working on Disney albums from 3 different Disney trips with Melissa and family. What a fun place to hang out with my grandchildren!! I have a album in the works for my Mom. I gave her the album with about 10 pages for Mothers Day 2008 and for every special occasions I add 2-4 more pages to her album. She loves it. I am making what I hope is a very special album for my youngest stepdaughter, Beckie, who is getting married in October. I'm very excited about this project and really enjoy working on it. Let's see... I have several family albums ongoing also. I'm doing Memorial Album of my son, or more accurately, an album of Michael's life. I am scrapping his life, not his death... he was alive in all of the photos and I scrap in the present of the photos. So many wonderful memories. Very therapeutic, but sometimes heartbreaking when it hits me again that we can't make anymore memories together. In addition to running Scrapping Friends and this Blog, I also have a Michael P. Brooks Memorial Site. It was also on MSN and it has been moved to Aimoo now that MSN closed groups. I haven't had much time to update it and re-create the Welcome page in a format the works with Aimoo. Soon I will be adding a button to this blog with a link to the memorial site. I think some people who are suffering profound grief would benefit from some of my ramblings, the poems, songs, stories, and the factual information on grief and the sudden death of a child. I allowed myself to be completely vulnerable when writing several of the entrys. It is very person and real. I pray that in some way it helps other grieving parents, even if only to show that there is no normal or unnormal when it comes to grieving the death of your child, it just is. You can access a copy of the entire site as it was on MSN HERE. It is in a read-only format. I would love to hear from you to know what you think and if it touched or helped you in anyway. If you have made it this far thank you. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to read my ramblings!!