The pieces

I used a note on the outside of the can to tell the recipient to open the top little Christmas can that I mounted with some foam squares. Along with that I placed one of my tags which will have the to and from on it. Inside the little can is a note telling the recipient to open the bottom of the bigger can. Inside I placed a couple of gift cards with a little tissue paper.

The pop top bottom & the sealed bottom lid

So here is the gimmick. You use the Pampered Chef can opener to open the bottom of the can (I used a diced tomatoes can). Put the pop top to the bottom and then decorate the can and the bottom lid, which is to be the top.

Altered pop top can

Well this is the completed can. What do you think?

Debbie's Cookbook

I decided that I wanted to make my mom a cookbook for Christmas. So I took a Maya Roads binder and covered the front with Rooster paper because she likes roosters. Then I covered the rest of the pages with kitchen papers. Some with food, some with recipes, etc. I printed out my recipes on cream colored cardstock, tore them out so they would look distressed, and inked the edges with eye chalk. I glued them in the book, added embellishments, and some old pictures of my, my sister, my daughter and my parents. I hope she likes it!

My Last Book

Okay I'm done for the year. This is the second book today and last gift to make. I am cover in ink, but it has been a fun day. The second book was also from scratch. I used embossing folders to run through one side of each page, except the cover of the book which I just put through twice. It is a mix of eye chalk, Adirondack ink, distreeing ink, and a plain blach ink pad.

My Gift To Mom

This book I actually started a few weeks ago. I got the paper on the outside covers and all the pieces of chip board cut to size, rounded and holes made for rings. Today I inked up the cover a bit and then misted all the pages in the book in way or another. I have put some pictures of all her grandsons, but I did not fill it up. I know she getting some new pics of them developed so I ll let her pick the rest of the ones for the book.

Our Maya Roads Stuff Came In

Kian's 1st Scrapbook

This book I am giving to my brother and his wife fr Christmas. All the photos are of their son. He just got through turning 1 year old. The first time I saw the chip board book at The Crafty Scrapper I knew I wanted to do a baby boy book,and i knew I wanted to use these electrical washers on it. They go so well with the shape of the book. It was a little different for my using primary colors is a rare thing for me. I hope they like how it turned out.

Brittany's '08 Scrapbook

As the title says I am giving this one to my oldesr Daughter for Christmas this year. I love this Maya Roads book. 8" x 8" pages fit just right onto the inside chipboard pages. The pages and photo's inside are all in black and white but I distressed them just a bit and added a little Adirondack green ink around the edges. The outside cover is a little different. I just love playing with ink.

I got my Jar

Just before we were to leave for our crop today my jar came in the mail. I really like it. The old style tags and ornaments were great. It so so much fun getting to see the things tha tdifferent people use. The old doily ribbon is my favorit that and the wooden spool. I am kind of the designated keeper of old things in my family. As soon as we got to our crop I started gigging into all the goodies. In fact I used some of the items to make a tag which is here with the pics of the jar and goodies inside. I was going to send the tag I made with things from my jar along with one of thegifts i'm making but I liked it so much it is going to be an ornament on the Christmas tree.

Debbie's 2008 Christmas Cards

These were some of my Christmas cards that I made this year. Todd and I bought some stuff from Stampin Up when one of their demonstrators came to one of our crops, and then I ordered more because we didn't order any Christmas ones the first time. So I figured I should use them since I bought them. The one with the little truck was the most fun to do. I colored the truck with colored pencils and then used a glitter pen on the "metal" parts of the truck. I also used the glitter pen on all the tree branches to make it look like ice or snow. On the "Peanuts" one, I bought the stamp at Michael's and stamped it with black StazOn ink. Then I colored in all the characters. The two with the Christmas trees were also Stampin Up stamps. I really enjoy making my cards every year and everyone seems to like them a lot. This year I'm going to keep one of each of them for examples.

Debbie's Jar

I'll let Debbie tell you about this one.

This was a really cool jar! On the outside, there were tags, and flowers and a cute little Christmas Ornament that looked like a sled and it has my name on it! Inside, there were all kinds of stuff! Stickers and ribbons and buttons. Cute metal frames, little cards, old fashioned tags and all kinds of goodies. Thanks to my secret Santa Becky for bringing my jar to my house! I'm just sorry I wasn't home when she brought it by! Hopefully I'll get to meet her soon!

Girl Friends Book

I joined a Girl Friends/Guy page swap on the Crafty Scrapper Forum. The pages I got back were amazing. I love getting to see all the different styles of different people. It was also nice learning a little more about all my forum friends. This was something a little different for me. I wanted some thing different to put all the pages in. This is one of my scrap scrapbooks (freebie chipboard).Some paper, ink and grungeboard letters and there you go. The pages are 8.5 x 11 so you have plenty of room to punch holes for rings and still have plenty of room to frame 8 x 8 pages.

Dawn's Gift

This is just one of those shadowbox frames. I have done some of the 12 x 12 ones before but wanted to do something different so I tried this one. The backing is just chip board with that velcro fabric on it so brads work well on it. The two photo's are some of Debbie's Grand Parents and her Dad. The rosaries actually belonged to her Grandmother before she passed away. After that it was just a few letters, and buttons, and of course a heart. This one I'm giving to Debbie's sister Dawn for Christmas.

The friends page is a close copy of one that I made at our retreat the original one we all signed and left for the Sisters. The other black one is the house and our group out in front of it. And the other one you can figure out. It was a really great weekend.

Scrap Scrapbook

Okay, this is an example of me just playing around. I cut down some scrap chipboard(freebie stuff) then I covered the front and back with some faux black leather upholstry fabric I bought as a remnant. The straps and the cross came from a purse that my daughter was getting rid of. The chipboard interior is ink with Maya Roads misters and the edges are done with Adirondack Silver ink using Tim Holtz blending tool.
So what do you think?

Another little book

This one is full of pictures of my two nephews, it is to be a gift to my sister. It was my first try with fragments.

Chipboard Books

The retreat we went to was The Sisters Hideaway It was a wonderful weekend. I hope we get to go back again in the year to come. These are two chipboard books I made that weekend. The one with the copper was my favorite. It came in a Tattered Angels kit we got at the convention this year. The embossed copper on the cover was done by hand using a Ten Seconds form, the copper with the script writing on the inside was done using a Cuttlebug embossing folder on my Ellison big kick. Much easier. I was told I could use the Ten Seconds on it also but I have not tried yet.So far this is my favorite book, But I am partial to anything with metal.

Our First Maya Roads Class

These are some pages I did at our retreat a couple months ago. You might recognize some things about the pictures.

Past due updates

I'm really a bad blogger. At least that is part of the reason for not updating in so long. Partly there has been some not so happy stuff at home. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with, and when I get down in the dumps I tend to close myself off to everyone. I really wish I was not this way. I guess certain parts of who we are we don't have a lot of say in. I do feel bad about not keeping up with my blog and for not chatting with my forum friends.I know that when we are down our friends can be of such a great help and I need to do a better job of remembering that and not be a hermit. This week however I am going to try to correct that. I have been doing some crafting. In fact quite a bit of it. I need to take some pictures and then I will be doing a multi-month update. Some is from months past and some is still ongoing to be honest. I made the mistake of over commiting myself to a lot of projects which are to be given away for Christmas. So I'll be scrapping my butt off this weekend at our church crop. Debbie has been making some really awesome cards for Christmas and I am going to post a bunch of them as well. With a little luck and a lot of work I will have a vast number of updates posted by this Sunday.