Do you know these terms?

So, as most of you know I work at a scrapbooking store and generally we have spring cleaning days/weeks and as we have been cleaning things up and getting things all nice and tidy I came across this little thing that had "Terms You Should Know" needless to say that totally caught my attention!

Wow, what are these words??  I get asked all the time about different things in the store, how something works, what should I do with this, can you just do this for me (lol), what does that mean, why is this better than that?? So, I started reading and thought oh wow, how great and useful is this?!?! But, before I could share this little book with the rest of the girls I took it home with me to educate the world, cause remember, I LOVE to teach people. It's not fair for one person to have all the info. Knowledge is power and with that being said, here are the TERMS:

Acid: In paper maufacturing, acid is used to break apart the wood fibers and lignin. When acid remains in the product, it will react to accelerate the deterioration of photos and other materials. (That is why you would look for Acid Free when buying your supplies)
PH Factor: The pH factor refers to the acidity of paper. The pH scale runs from 0 to 14. Acid-free products have a pH of 7-8.5. To determine the acidity in products, you can buy a pH tester pen. (a lot of scrapbooking stores or art supply stores carry them. Although, most packaging if made for scrapbooking, card making, etc will state that it is acid free. Pretty standard these days.)
Lignin: Lignin is a bonding material that holds wood fibers together. When lignin remains in paper, the paper will yellow and become brittle over a period of time. The majority of paper that is manufactured today is Lignin-free! (I always wondered what exactly Lignin was)
PVC: Polyvinylchloride, often referred to as "vinyl" by manufactureres, is not arcival safe. It can be chemically unstable and can cause deterioration. I have never been asked about this, but, hey it might be useful to someone :) 
Archival Safe: Archival Safe incorporates all items listed above. Materials, techniques, and methods used in manufacturing of archival safe items will make them last for generations without deteriorating. Which is exactly what we want!

Now what do you do if you have something that is not preservation safe??? Well, no worries, they make something for that so you can preserve your items. There are a few different brands out there all essentially are going to do the same thing. The one that I know the most about is... 

It neutralizes the acid and make them last forever :) 

So now that you know (or maybe you already knew and now feel delightfully refreshed)

And just for fun, my new glitter containers...thanks Nicole!

 Want all the details?? Check out my post today on Mon Ami Createry. I think you will love it. :)
Also come back tomorrow for some Birthday inspiration!!!

XOXO
Danni

Family Is...

Well, my family is:

Awesome
Wonderful
Amazing
Annoying 
Caring
Loving
Supportive
CRAZY
Silly
Weird
Beautiful
Big


But most of all I wouldn't trade them for  nothing. They are simply the best for me. Do you feel that way about your family? If so, you will LOVE the new mini book I created using the Family Is" line from Bo Bunny. Not only are the colors amazing but, it is perfect place to stick all those wonderful or not so wonderful family pictures... you know the ones where you kid is sticking his tongue or won't stop scrunching his face up lol, ya those would even work for this book.

(So, the photography, is not bad but it is not good. I am LEARNING!!! Already I have learned so much, like,  best time by far is early morning light and thanks to my good friend Connie, not only is she super crafty and has the best Tim Holtz collection of ink but her photography is AMAZING. Don't just take my word for it, you should check it out for yourself and tell her I sent you over :) She will Love it!!!)

 Don't forget to check out my Flickr where I posted A BUNCH of pictures of this book. Some that I think are AWESOME and some not so good. But it will give you a sense of what my mini book class will look like. Also, once I figure out how to create a gallery in Flickr I will be able to separate the pictures for you.

I just love all the texture and dimension in this book and am truly satisfied with the results, now to proudly put on display and wait for the world to see it :)

Have a wonderfully good crafting day

xoxo

Danni

Double Dose

Ok, well I know I already did a post on this fun little mini book, BUT...it is being featured on SRM's Blog!!!!!! I am so thrilled, tickled, and utterly excited. I love using all their stickers and, the new Glassine bags that they recently released, are so fun and VERY versatile!

Check out the fun I had using the glassine bags and life is good sentiments...

Look how perfectly that sentiment fits on the cover...I am thinking it was made for the book ;)

I used three of the small bags in the book and I embossed all of them in different styles and the texture that it gives the bag is sooo cool. It's the perfect touch without being too much.

I used three of the largest bags and papered the bottom 1/3 of the bag and made it into an additional page while leaving the opening for a fun little pocket. Cool huh?!?!?

To check out more pictures of this mini book see my gallery by Clicking Here. Can't get enough of ME, haha, I post every Wed. (along with my Createry Girls) on Mon Ami Createry. 

Don't forget to stop over at SRM's Blog and say hello and tell them I sent you.

Have a great Day!!!

xoxo

Danni

Card Challenge Amazingness....

So, as most of you know,blogging in pretty new to me, BUT my friend Nicole (you may know her from Sweet Stamp Shop) is a PRO. We decided to get together for a fun craft night in her super amazing craft room (so jealous lol) and she introduced me for the first time to CARD CHALLENGES! Let me tell you what, I think I am hooked. What a great way to get inspirtion and challenge yourself to design and create.

Our first challenge of the night was from CASE STUDY


And this was our inspiration, designed by Teri Anderson

 

I Loved the color scheme ,but I also love the the circle grid on top so I decided to play with those two ideas and this is what I came up  with

 





SO, thanks to all the wonderful supplies Nicole had, I created this masterpiece. I am really loving it!Some of my favorite things to work with are wood pieces and the hello heart totally finished it off. It has layers, dimension and most importantly naturalness :)

Up next was our "White On White" challenge from Simon Says Stamps

I really loved the challenge of making something only using white, and since there are, ironically, so many shades of white out there there is really endless possibilities.

This is what I ended up with and I couldn't be happier with it.

 

I again used some wood pieces, the hearts are from Freckled Fawn, stumbled up a fun little technique by accident. Since this challenge was an all white challenge i needed my wood pieced to be white, so, I used some white re-inker and when I went to pick it up I dropped it upside down...ooops...but that led to the fun heart background that you see in the picture. In a nutshell, I used the heart as a stamp!!!



 

OOO I felt so clever and it was the perfect texture that this white challenge needed!

 

Now go get crafty!!!

 

XOXOX

Danni 

Fun with Clear Embossing Powder

One of my favorite things to do is heat emboss when I stamp. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE heat embossing on unlikely surfaces, such as picture frames, home decor wood pieces, and more. I also love to emboss even when  I am not stamping. You can make a fun distressed edges to your cards, mini albums, or page layouts...pretty much heat embossing is the COOLEST and you should be doing it too. But, this could be quite the investment if you are new to this, so my recommendation: Buy a bottle of fine clear embossing powder. You can use it with any color ink you own and it will show that color, like below, use pink ink and emboss with clear you get pink embossed! That is what is so AWESOME about it, you don't have to go out and buy tons and tons of different colors right away just a clear and that's it.
Here is some fun I had with my clear

 I used the Sparkle N Sprinkle clear embossing powder (they make great embossing powders! The fine powder doesn't blur the image and keeps it crisp and clean.)

I then stamped my image using the Pattern Craze set from Sweet Stamp Shop in various colors and embossed them using the clear. See how cool that is, the color just pops

Just for fun, to finish it off I  sprayed it with some glimmer mist, wrapped some twine and added a brad.

Here is another card I did using black ink and clear embossing.

Well hoped you enjoyed the glorious reason why you should now invest in clear embossing powder.

Until next time :)
xoxo
Danni

Inspired by Love

Well this is a better late then never kinda post...

So normally my husband and I are really good about exchanging Valentines. I normally make a Valentine for him and he usually buys me a treat...and for anyone who knows me, treats are the way to my heart. WELL this year the beautiful season of LOVE completely escaped us. Not only did we forget to get our boys Valentines for school but we did not do anything for each other. BUT....that didn't stop me from creating something, because, at the end of the day there is always next year!!!! Wahoo!!!

Here is what I did

On the first card I kept it light, playful, and fun I just love the way that this card came out. I used some of my favorite products (glimmer mist and distress stains) and techniques (distressing edges and making pennants).

After distressing the edges of the hearts I inked the edges of them to make them stand out just a bit from each other.

On this one I decided to do some fun watermark stamping to give the card a nice subtle background, then added some washi tapes and couple little embellishments and TADAA...

Check out the hearts a little more up close. I love doing this on plain cardstock to give it a fun custom background. 

Hope you have been inspired by Love!

xoxoxo

Danni

To Toss Or Not To Toss????

So, I was cleaning and organizing my craft stuff, which btw, does NOT happen all that often. But, when I was emptying out some of the bags that I had collected from some recent classes I noticed I had a TON of scrap papers left over. Some not so big scraps. So I got to thinkin' what is an exceptable scrap to keep? What do you guys think? And then, the scraps you do keep, how do you store them? I always find they fall all over the floor or they get shoved to the bottom and forgotten about. Then I think that maybe I should have just thrown it away in the first place.

This was one of my piles I had from cleaning. All the pieces on the left I kept and all the ones on the right I threw away...Exceptable to you?

I know it is hard to tell the two seperate piles, but the pile with the big, long, diamondy tear dropy looking one in it I kept that pile. The other, tossed it.

It feels good to get some things put away and cleaned up today.

Lots of love,
Danni

Life Is Good

I had my FIRST all day class...whew....that was exhausting!!!!! I also had my FIRST teacher gift....awe soooo sweet, it was from a little 7 year old girl who came to class with her mom. I gave her some of my extra supplies I brought and she made me a cute little picture.

Even though class was long and exhausting everyone left with finished little mini books and happy as clams.

 And here is a little glimpse into what we made today...

                                                
 Aren't these glassine bags from SRM just the cutest??? They have been embossed using the Lifestyle Crafts embossing folders and it adds just the perfect touch of character. We also used the Life Is Good stickers (hence the name of the book) through out the whole book and the sentiments are a great way to caption pictures whenever they get added in.

 We even used some Dylusions Ink Sprays AND to add a little shimmer we used Kiwi Perfect Pearls.

 The whole book features October Afternoon papers. Oh, I LOVE, pretty much every paper line they put out :)

 We made fun little pull out tabs for the big pockets.

 This page was a lot of fun, stamping and cutting out these fun hexagon shapes from the Sweet Stamp Shop. Plus, Sweet Stamps are a local San Diego company. What a way to support local businesses, huh???  :)

And... something else cool we did, but might be a little confusing to explain, but, the side pockets are actually the BIG glassine bags (the largest ones they sell) folded three inches from the bottom and then when we put all of our bags together the three inches that were folded became an extra page, which you see in the picture above, covered in paper. Hope that makes sense.

 Here is another little pull out page

 The back of course is decorated too :)

Here is what all the little tags look like. I used the Forest Moss distress ink pad and Bottle Adirondack ink pad. I think that the tags are one of my favorite pieces of the whole book. The colors are so rich and beautiful.

Well, that pretty much wraps up my day making a little mini pocket book. And don't forget to check out the links for more fun and cool products from some of my favorite companies. Some of which you may already know :)

Lots Of Love,
Danni

The Awful Plague....

So between my husband and youngest son getting that nasty flu/head cold and cough and then them giving it so graciously to me I have not done a post in almost a week!!!!  So to keep it light, here is what our counter has looked like

for the past week. Have you ever bought medicine and it made you feel drunk? Well that is what that box that is in the back made me feel. Not buying that one again. Not to mention the more you drank it the worse tasting it got!!!! Not gonna buy that one again.  Lucky for me when I felt a little tickle in my throat I went and got the Zicam stop cold tablets and started on those. They have helped, I believe, but my husband was not so lucky. He got the sickness before me, so, in an effort to help him and his very terrible cough we decided to go homeopathic...nothing else had been working yet. After scouring a website dedicated to different recipes for every kind of ailment you could have, and, finally realizing that all the recipes for coughing that I was missing at least one ingredient for all of them. But, that didn't stop me I was going to make him a stop coughing drink no matter what. AND a DRINK is what I made alright. 

First I boiled about 4 or 5 garlic cloves, 1/3 of an onion, salt, ginger, 3 Cinnamon sticks snapped in half, and orange zest.  Than I squeezed the juice out of one whole orange and poured the mixture in with the orange juice. Lets just say this concoction was less than delicious. And coincidentally my husband had such a bad coughing fit after drinking it he puked...didn't even get to see if it was going to work. 

What kind of recipes do you like to make up when you are sick to help you feel better? I love to try new things especially if they work :)