Rainy yet creative day

I was a mostly rainy day.

But no worries, with a view like this out the window, we still enjoyed our day.

And if you know me, then you know I brought plenty of creative projects to work on. 

With my crafts in front of me (that's my washi tape, I have been keeping my container in that bag for easier transport to camp) the view of the lake to my right and the television ahead of me. The rain didn't bother me a bit ;) 

In between the rain, we did do some outside jobs and took a burn in Ray's (Wayne's dad) new toy. 

He had bought one similar to this one a couple of years ago... But he upgraded. This one has air conditioning ;)

We have the windows open as I love the sound of rain and the fresh air that it brings with it. 

I hope you all had a creative Saturday :)

Tracy :)

Licence and May's 2014 Tag

First off I have to give a big congrats to my daughter Heather.
She passed her G2 today.
She said she was so nervous that her leg was shaking as she was driving.
Yes that is my brand new jeep that she has been driving.

I finally got around to making May's tag for Tim Holtz' 12 tags of 2014.
I am not sure how I feel about this tag?
Things weren't going right in the ol' craft room today, not sure if it is because I have a bit of a cold, or because I (again) left it till the last minute.

I did a video on the tag, but my camera filled up and I didn't realize it until I went to edit the video and not all of the video was there…I will re-do it on Monday.
But because I have to post it today, I just have photos.

I wanted to keep with the spring colours, as where I live, Spring is just showing itself.
I see a few buds on the trees and the weather is warming up :)

With this month's tag, Tim was focusing on his new embossing folders and playing around with the tag to look like one of his configuration boxes. He also wanted us to actually use some of our treasured embellishments ;)
I love these lightbulbs, so cool. And of course I love this one being it says "Treasures" it has 2 meanings for this tag.
1. Part of my blog name ;)
2. I used some of my treasured embellishments on this tag :)

I also love these pen nibs.
I do (used to) calligraphy, and these nibs are so real looking.
I also popped up the birdcage with the heart on it with some foam tape. I did this because I couldn't get the birdcage and the heart in the oval frame to both fit. And I wanted to use them both. I love hearts :)

Here is the bottom of the tag.
I love that metal heart I adhered inside of that oval frame.
I also love keys. Not sure why?
I know it is all the rage in crafting for the last couple of years, but I have always liked hearts, keys and birdcages.

Here is one last look at the completed tag.
Now the more that I look at it the more that I like it, lol.

Here is a link to Tim's challenge tag on blog :)

I hope you all had a very creative Friday :)

Tracy :)

ATC's from Jeremy

I was in a couple of ATC swaps and was so excited to receive a set from Jeremy in the mail :)
I had never swapped them before, so it was so nice that Jeremy (Jeremoose80 on YouTube) offered to do a swap with me.
He gave me a long list of themes and asked me to pick three of them.

I picked
Steampunk, Fairytale and one of our choice.
Here are Jeremy's take on the 3 themes :)

I love anything Steampunk…well except for the mechanical legs, but most everything else. So of course I really like the steampunk ATC.
The Fairytale is Rapunzel, which turned out so cool. He said he got his inspiration from Tangled, such a sweet movie.
I love his take on the "one of his choice." How cool to come up with a  Nerd theme ;)
Thank you so much Jeremy for making these wonderful ATC's for me and taking a chance on this ATC newbie ;)

Here is a video I did with a better look at Jeremy's ATC's when I received them :)
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, just click my link :)
"Tracy's Treasures24"



I will share with you the ATC's that I had made for Jeremy once he receives them :)

I hope you all had a very creative Thursday :)

Tracy :)

Treat Cups

Kristy loves to give her friends candies of some type for their birthdays.
And for every birthday we try to come up with a fun and creative way to present them.
I had seen this idea from Beth of "Under a Pile of Scraps" blog and couldn't wait to use it.
Kristy's friend Julia, just celebrated her birthday and all the girls went out for dinner, and this was part of Julia's gift.
How cut is this :)
Kristy doesn't seem to go all out on the decorating, so she just filled the insulated drink cup with 6 packs of Skiddles and called it good ;)






















I hope you all had a creative Wednesday :)

Tracy :)

Walk in the Park

It was a beautiful day here today, so Kristy, Heather and I went for a nice walk in the neighbourhood.
We walked through the park and enjoyed some time on the swings :)
We tried to swing across the monkey bars, but Heather was the only one who succeeded ;)

After a nice long walk, I decided to have a bit of ice-cream.
But what do you do when all of your spoons are getting washed in the dishwasher…use a fork of course ;)

I am in the process of re-thinking my craft room set up.
My craft room has worked perfectly for me, but lately it is more of a mess then it is clean.
I am wondering if it is because I need to re-configure my supplies.
I went down to reassess the room and figured it is going to be a long daunting task.
So today was list making day, lol.

Tracy :)

Decorating up my planner :)

I am working on my planner tonight.

I haven't decorated it so much lately and when I look at my past pages that are decorated, I just love to look at them.

So I thought, get your butt in gear and start decorating them lady ;)

I brought my washi tape up to the cottage and worked on my Month on 2 pages for the rest of the year.

So tonight I thought I will put in the details…like everyone's birthdays.

I have shared this before, but what I do is stamp cupcakes out on Avery sticky labels, colour them in and then fussy cut or detail cut the cupcakes out to use as stickers.

So I will hopefully get the birthday's complete for the whole year :)

We had stir fry for supper tonight and we made way to much rice.
So what do you do when that happens?
Make rice pudding of course :)
I love when it is warm..yumm.

I spent quite a bit of the day in my jeep.
Heather and Kristy have been practicing driving to get their second part to their licence.
They are pretty good, but we have been at it for a while now…but at the beginning, I know why parents put their kids in driving school…lol.

I hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Tracy :)

Looking Forward to Next Weekend

Thought I would share an evening photo of the lake.
So beautiful. I love the reflection of the trees on the water.

I guess we must have been in a rush to close up the cottage last year, as these were sitting on the counter when we arrived Friday night.
They were dry by the way, teehee.

The water was really cold.
I just put my tootsies in. Wayne's dad told us that there was still ice on the lake last weekend.
I saw this crayfish in the water. I think he was hiding, as the otter may be around ;)
This crayfish, was huge!

Enjoyed Wayne's delicious burger for lunch..mind you I think I only ate about half of it.

Wayne wasn't feeling well all weekend.
We didn't get as much completed as we usually do, but I had to keep reminding him that we have all summer and to take it easy.
Wayne suffers from allergies and asthma. And he was really suffering this weekend. He even had a fever last night.
So we came home early and he has been resting on the couch….poor guy.

I have to mention that I am pretty proud of myself.
I am kicking my Coca-Cola habit again…but I am allowing myself to have 2 pop during the weekends.
But I didn't have a pop all weekend.
I haven't enjoyed a nice cold can of Coke since last Tuesday.
I am not giving it up all together, as I love it so much.
Go Me!

I hope you all had a very creative Sunday :)

Tracy :)

Two tickets to Paradise

First time back at the cottage :)

Even though it was a long cold winter, it seems like we never left.

Heinz is up to its old tricks again... 

Or they just like messing with me;( 

Put the batteries in the solar lights and left them on the deck to charge. 

I took the plastic off of the outside of the windows....thanks Wayne you did a great job last year putting it on.  My hands are now in a permanent knarled position from pulling 8000 staples our of the window frames. 

Wayne charged up the quad batteries.

Then I went for a short burn. 

I know, I don't have my helmet on.

Believe me I am a stickler for wearing protection on the machines. 

I knew we needed a new flag as it was ripped last year. But I didn't realize how faded it was.

Ladtly enjoyed a wonderful dinner Wayne made for us.  I am not big on eating red meat...but I do enjoy a T-bone steak every few years. 

Lastly we enjoyed our 1st sauna of the year. Even though the temperature reached 28c today, a sauna actually cools you off. 

I hope you all had a creative Saturday :)

I decorated some planner pages this evening.

Tracy :) 

May's Challenge Card..surprise, its a Tag

Here is my May's card challenge..surprise, we switched it up and made a tag ;)

The Challenges for this month are:
Use a Prima Tag
Use a Prima image
Inspirational sentiment
Use flock or loose glitter.

I love tags and I Love, love, love this one.
I almost didn't want to give it away ;)
I made this tag at my Crop I hosted and it just seemed to come together perfectly.
Maybe it was being around all my creative friends :)

I coloured up this fun Prima doll image with my Copic markers.
I paper pieced her headband, shoes and dress. I then added shading to the paper pieces as it makes the cut pieces look like part of the image and not like it was just glued on.
I wasn't to sure of her hair….with that huge bouffant I wasn't sure what to do with it, lol.

I used this Tim Holtz sentiment for this tag.
I have to thank Denise for giving me this sparkly button I spied in her embellishment container, it goes perfectly with this tag.
I added glitter around the whole tag as well.
I also wanted to play around with some embossing paste, so I used this Heidi Swapp stencil with it. I love the texture it adds.

Lastly I added a little cluster at the bottom corner of the tag.
I gave all of my friends who attended my crop a goody bag and these tags I made were in them.
They are just small shipping tags from Staples, all I did was use a border punch to the bottom to add some prettiness :)
I then inked my tag to match the project :)

I also put together this video with a bit more detail on how I put this tag together if you are interested :)
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, just click on the link :)
"Tracy's Treasures24"
I hope enjoyed my tag and I hope you all had a creative Friday :)
I am heading to our little piece of paradise soon, I am so excited :)

Tracy :)

Altering an ATC envelope

I am finally sending out my ATC's for my swaps.
I wanted to put them in nice packaging, but I didn't have any.
So I decided to alter some.

 The envelopes I used are bank envelopes.
They are thin enough for the ATC's to fit in there comfortably.
But I cut them down a bit.
Here is a tutorial I did on how I cut down my envelopes ;) Click Here

I then wanted to add some colour, so I used distress ink and added some colour to the envelope.

I wanted a vintage look that is why I used Vintage Photo to ink the background and then (my new) Chocolate Chip ink from Stampin' Up for the script stamp.

I also made a pretty one with flowers :)

Now I can finally mail off my ATC's tomorrow :)

I hope you all had a creative Thursday :)

Tracy :)

How to Caulk in the Bathroom

You may be wondering…Wayne washes the carpets and Tracy caulks the bathroom?
Yup thats how we roll in this house ;)

My new laptop froze yesterday. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even shut it down, so figured I would do some work around the house.

Our bathroom counter needed to be re-caulked and after caulking around the downstairs toilet, I figured I should do the main bathroom counter next.
This is the after photo, forgot to take a before photo.
I had done it in clear caulk last time and I didn't like the clear, so went for the white this time around.

The first thing to do is remove all the old caulk.
It is a tedious and not so fun of a job.
But my finger exacto knife from Fiskars worked great.
It scraped away the thinnest parts of this.

I have never tried this way before, I had always just used my finger, but I thought I would give it a go.
Using painters tape, adhere it to the wall and another strip to the counter, leaving a gap for the caulk.

Keeping even pressure to the tube, run the caulk in-between the tape.

After that is complete, wet your finger and run your finger between the tape, smoothing the caulk.
You have to clean off your finger and re-wet it many times during this step.

While the caulk is still wet, slowly pull off the tape for a nice crisp seam.
When the tape is pulled off, some of the caulk may lift up, just wet your finger and re-smooth the caulk….isn't that a funny word, caulk ;)

As you are waiting for the caulk to dry…why not take a selfie, lol.

Here it is looking like new again :)

That was my exciting day today :)
I also put together my mailings for my ATC swap I am in.

I hope you all had a very creative Wednesday.
I am enjoying the season finale of Survivor :)

Tracy :)

Z Fold card tutorial

The other day I had shared the cards that Sharon and I made for Kards for Kids.

Becky had asked me the measurements of these cards.

I told her I would do a photo tutorial, wellllll. I forgot.

I did a video tutorial but forgot to take photos…oops.

The image on this card I coloured with my Copic markers for a challenge last year.
I missed the challenge date, and never finished the card.
So I figured I would use it for this tutorial.
You can't tell but I added glossy accents to her goggles :)

Here is the video.
I share all of the cards on the video, but if you just want to check out the tutorial, go to 3:45 on the time.
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, just click the link "Tracy's Treasures24"
I hope you all had a creative Tuesday :)

Tracy :)

Creative Long Weekend has come to an end.

The long creative weekend has come to an end.
Lots of creating, fun, laughs and junk food was to be had.
Now it is back to reality and getting back on track with real life and a healthier lifestyle.

Here is an ATC I had made during the weekend.
I think this is my favourite one so far.
I LOVE it!!!
I used Tim Holtz stamps for the sentiment and image.
i used some mist sprays for the background and coloured the heart and banner with my Copics.

I guess Wayne forgot to water my flowers :(
I can't complain too much as he cleaned all the garbage we had collected in the yard from last weekend, he washed the carpets and they look like new, he also tidied up the house. And to make him sound like a perfect man, he is making me some calamari for supper with his homemade dipping sauce ;) so, nope, you won't hear me complaining ;)

I thought I would give my flowers a good soaking of water before I gave up hope.
But was surprised mine had lasted as long as they had.
Ashley and Sharon had both thrown their flowers out last week, or the week before already.
They look a bit sad here don't they.

But after a soaking of water and a bit of time for them to absorb it, they are all perky and healthy :)
This makes me so happy.
Love this bright happy colour :)

I hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Tracy :)

Card making night

I wanted to use up some of my scraps.

A perfect way to do this is to make some cards. An even better thing to do is to make cards and donate them to the  Children's sick kids hospital. 

So Sharon and I spent the evening making these cards and making matching envelopes.

Here are a few of them close up. 

Today I vowed would be my 12x12 layout day. 

I completed 6 layouts (I had already started them at home) only 2 of these layouts have the photos in them. 

Yes I am the worlds slowest scrapbooker. 

I am off to start a new layout :)

Hope you all had a creative Sunday :)

Tracy :)