Spotlight of the week: Kim M

Kim M was born in Kentucky and has lived there her entire life. She grew up on a farm and spent most of her waking hours outdoors playing in the woods, barn or the creek. She is married to her high school sweetheart for 23 years (he was the ballplayer and she was the cheerleader). The parents of three children, Kim and Jeff live in a small rural area about 20 miles from where she grew up. Their oldest son no longer lives at home and attends graduate school. Their two daughters, however, do live at home. In her early adult years, Kim worked at a bank then stopped working to attend college to become a nurse. She found out during the first semester, however, that nursing just wasn't for her—she longed to be home with her son, so she quit school. Within a month of quitting college, Kim became pregnant with her middle child and has been a stay-at-home-mom ever since. Kim loves being a SAHM more than anything and feels very blessed to be able to spend so much time with her children. Kim started scrapbooking about 5 years ago after her daughter bought a scrapbook kit from Wal-mart. When Kim tried to help her with the kit, she became “sucked in”. Kim got into cardmaking when her pastor's wife invited her to a Stampin’ Up! party and they started having monthly card making get-togethers. Kim also likes to read and do woodworking and has a goal to develop her photography skills (if she can get a better camera). Although she enjoys her other hobbies, scrapbooking is her favorite. What Kim loves most about scrapbooking/cardmaking are all the wonderful friends she has made. She has really enjoyed being in Card Chicks and has received so many beautiful/wonderful cards in the mail each month.

Question of the week: What are your Summer travel plans?

What are your Summer travel plans?

Are you going anywhere exciting or are you staying close to home?

Tip of the week - Dad's Coupon Book

For Father's Day this year, I made this coupon book for Ken. While Father's Day has come and gone, this is something you could easily do for birthdays, Christmas,
anniversaries, or just 'cause.

To make this coupon book, I started off with a simple frame. I used a free digital frame that I found on 2Peas. If you don't do digi scrapping, you could also make text boxes in Word.

Inside the frame, place a pictures - mine was actually part of the digi frame, and you could choose to do the same, use a photo (of either the recipient or the giver) or some other clipart (say, a clover for a coupon that is good only for the month of March).

Also add wording like "this coupon good for" or "redeem this coupon for" inside the frame. That gets your framework set up.

To make the individual pages, simply type in text specific to that coupon. Print it off, then change the text for the next coupon. Repeat until you have all coupons printed.



I made the cover page really similar to the pages. I simply removed the "redeem this coupon for" wording and replaced it with "Dad's coupon book". Print that off and now you've got all the pages done.

If you've got a Bind-It-All machine, simply use that to bind the pages together. If not, you can use eyelets and ribbon, or brads, or office metal rings (available in office supply stores) to bind the book together.

Voila - your coupon book is done! :)

Spotlight of the week: Lan A

Lan was born in Vietnam and currently resides in Kansas. She has lived in 6 different houses since she moved to Kansas, but all of those moves have been within the same state. Lan has always dreamed of moving out and experiencing life in one of the bigger cities, but home is where family is so she doesn’t see herself moving too far away anytime soon. Lan met her husband Lam during her second semester in college. She says, “We dated secretly for 6 years before we got married, because my parents are old fashioned and wouldn’t let me see anyone outside of our race or religion and he was both.” Luckily her parents eventually came around and after 5 ½ yrs of marriage, they have two beautiful kids (Makenzie—age 3 and Micah—age 20 months). Lan is a tax accounting specialist for a large aircraft manufacturer. She’s been at her current job for 2 years and previously worked for a CPA firm for 6 years (but the long hours from January through April 15th was just not a career she wanted to be in when she became a mother). Lan loves outdoor activities, gardening, rollerblading, volleyball, reading, dancing, and gymnastics. She dislikes watching sports on TV though and rarely gets to watch any television shows nowadays except for Nick Jr. with her children. Art was always one of her favorite subjects in school so scrapbooking fits right into her favorite hobby. She learned about Creative Memories at a party 8 years ago and after learning about kit clubs and meeting on-line friends (most of them are “Card Chicks”) she’s “hooked”! Photography is her 2nd passion and is now focused on learning the basics. (She is taking an on-line photography class with Karen Russell this month trying to utilize her Canon 20D to it’s full power.) We are glad you share your favorite hobby with us, Lan!

"tip of the week"

hey chicks!!!
i have 2 tips......one of them is a simple one that i usually do when i am limited on time or just lazy!

to make a button looked finished (stitched), with out tying a string though the holes, just "make" the string with a white pen/marker...i find the uniball signo in white is the perfect white pen to use. just make sure you let it dry completely!

my 2nd tip - is a "wallet card" that a friend of mine showed me...i created a father's day card with 3 quotes. i kept the embellishing to a minimum - to keep the masculine feel.

the measurements are:
card base - 4" x 12" round the corners on the "flap" end
score card base - from the bottom at 3 1/4" intervals. after the 3rd score line, score another line 1/4" from that.
the cardstock strips for the center of the card are 7 1/2" x 3".
the pattern paper panels are 3 1/2" x 2 3/4".
embellish to your theme and add quotes or photos or both to the wallet.
i added a velcro closure, you could also add a band of cardstock/pattern paper to keep the wallet closed.

happy day!!

Spotlight of the week: Alison B.

Alison lives in Southern California with her two sons, ages 11 and 13, and their dog (a Jack Russell “Terrorist”, lol)! Alison is a lawyer who practiced for about 8 years doing “icky things” like divorce work and child abuse cases for the County. She wanted to quit, so she started her family and decided to be a stay-at-home mom. She was introduced to scrapbooking 1996. While she was scrapbooking, she came up with the idea for a product some of you may be familiar with, Puzzle Mates (templates that crop photos into shapes such as a heart, soccer ball, etc.). The line was very successful for awhile and she even did a private label product for Stampin' Up! (Layer Ease). If you watch closely, you might even catch Alison on DIY Scrapbooking reruns since she was on several episodes. She couldn’t keep up with all the changes and trends in scrapbooking, so she now finds herself trying to figure out what to do next. In the meantime, she is a substitute teacher and volunteer at a mentoring center for disadvantaged high school kids. Alison says her favorite color is "purple, purple and more purple". She loves photography (and has even won some awards), reality television shows and shopping. As you all know, Alison came down with cancer earlier this year. It was found accidentally while she was getting a CT scan for something else. The cancer was caught very early—if it wasn’t discovered until she had symptoms, it would have been too late. Alison would like to thank everyone who sent her cards and kept her in their thoughts and prayers during her recovery time. We are glad you are doing well, Alison!

It's June!

The theme of the month is: Masculine (Father’s Day or Birthday)!
As always, please try to mail the cards to the ladies on your list by the 15th of the month!
Celebrating birthdays this month are Rita R. and Lan A. on June 4th and Monica P. and Kim M. on June 24th! Happy birthday ladies!