Ta-Daaaaa!!! Crafter's block solved!

So right after I posted my last entry, the ideas started flooding in.  I had the faux stitched cacus and beanie, and I knew I wanted to use that some how. 

The purple paper is from Recollections Snowy Days paper pad

White rectangle cut using Spellbinders Nestabilities Wonky Recangles and embossed with D'vine Swirl and inked with ColorBox chalk ink

Cactus cut at 4" from Destinations cart

Beanie cut at 1" from Gingerbread cart

Merry Christmas stamp from Fiskars Holiday Hooplah and embossed with Stamp Stuff Winter Wonderland embossing powder

Red 3/8" ribbon from my stash

Card, cactus, and beanie faux stitched with white gel pen

And my favorite part...  Penguins jumping rope using Christmas lights stamp on the inside!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!



Big 'ol Flower Birthday

Happy Thursday!!  We are almost to the weekend!! woop woop!

Here's a birthday card inspired by a post by Everyday Cricut.  I LOVED the way this scalloped flower look and I just had to try it out myself.  I made a little change with the inner part of the flower to make it my own.

The base of the flower is a scalloped circle cut from the Paper Lace cart at 3".  I cut 5 circles and fold 4 into quarters and used photo sticks to attach them to the 5th scallop.  I cut another 4 scallop circles at 2" for the inner part of the flower with the same process, folded into quarters and adhered with photo sticks.  Surprisingly, I didn't have any big pink buttons on hand, so I went with a shimmery clear/white button.

The sentiment was layered on plaid, magenta, and orange paper and adhered with pop dots on 3 corners. One corner was nestled in the flower folds and adhered with a photo stick.

The inside of the card has the same bright pink, orange, and yellow tiedye pattern that the flowers were made from. And the insert of the card is the same bright orange to match the front, with a magenta birthday sentiment stamped on the inside.

I hope you all have a fabulous rest of the day!

Mother's Day Part 3

I hope that you all got to enjoy some time with family and loved ones.  I got to spend the day surrounded by fam, first half of the day was with all the Hubster's fam with some super delicious food.  Came home and got to spend some QT with the Hubster and take a much needed nap.  Then my sisters and parents came over for dinner at my house for Mother's day (that way Mom didn't have to worry about cooking OR cleaning!!).  It was so fun to be in the kitchen with my sisters.  Steaks, corn, mashed taters, and sweet potato casserole were all delish! 

It was so good to spend so much time with both sides of the families.  It was definitely refreshing to be surrounded by so much love.

So finally I bring you part three of the Mother's Day cards.  I really enjoyed this card.  I hope you like it too.

Now that Mother's Day has come and gone, it's on to Dad's and Grads!!  Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!!

Mother's Day Part 1

So, as I'm sure you could imagine with all the recent baby talk...  I had A LOT of mommas to make cards for this year.  I was super excited to use this rose paper, because it's pink, and sparkly, and very pretty. 

I really really love the way this card turned out.  It's elegant and pretty.  You can't really tell in the pictures, but the "Happy Mother's Day" sentiment is rasied with pop dots to give it some dimension.

I definitely want to post some of the other cards I did, but I'm going to see little Amelia and her mommy tomorrow, so my next post might have to be postponed a bit.

Happy crafting!

Baby Shower, Flowers, and Cards

So much of my time lately has been spent on the planning and preparation of a baby shower for one of my dear friends, Misty.  She and her husband have ASTONISHING will power, and have decided to not find out the gender of their baby until the little precious boopshie arrives and surprises the world.  Thus, the baby shower was of gender neutral colors; it was a little difficult, but yellow and green are some of my fave colors.  You may have seen in previous posts the green and yellow cards and treat bags, so we had to have some coordinating flower centerpieces as well. 

I thought, green, yellow, and white flowers, what a cinch!!  But it was actually kinda difficult to find flowers in my area that looked decent in this season.  Probably had something to do with all the rain we've been having this year.  But thanks to Ralphs and Costco, I was able to put together 3 large and 3 small centerpieces.

I must admit, when I started to assemble the first arrangement, I thought, "What the heck did I get myself into?  There is no way I can pull this off..."  And considering it was the night before the shower, I was startin to get a little worried.  So I told myself, this will work.  This HAS TO work.  And thankfully my head clicked into gear and I whipped these out.

All of the roses opened up by the morning, looking full and gorgeous.  I was so stoked that they filled out.  This was one of my favorite of the smaller centerpieces.

About two weeks ago, the Scrapbook Expo was in my area, so I went with my sister and one of my co-workers (owner of Delo Designs).  We had an uber blasty blast, but were exhausted by the afternoon.  We all came out with amazing things and eager to bust out crafts with our new toys.  I rediscovered some cool techniques I had forgotten about, and found out new about new toys, like a letterpress.  Which will be my next toy...  **wink wink, Hubster**

The Hubster and I also attended a wedding last weekend and I thought it would kinda be against the rules to give a store bought card, considering I'm trying to start my own card business.  So this was another whip something together card. 



You can't really tell, but CONGRATS is embossed in black.  Silver swirls were also embossed


Their red, black, and white wedding was GORGEOUS! And so so so much fun.  It was great to see a lot of the Hubster's friends from the marines again, and nice to finally get to meet some of the wifeys.  There were lots of pictures...  and lots of drunkennes... lol  But all in all, it was a beautiful wedding, and lots of congrats to the new Mr. and Mrs. 

I just had to use some of my new toys from the expo, so I embellished the insert on the card

Without fail, when I walk into a craft store, I find stacks of paper that I feel I just cannot live without.  So my stash of paper is borderline getting out of control.  Before I got to the Scrapbook Expo, I told myself, that I would absolutely not buy any paper, what so ever...  But, as I'm sure you could guess, walked out with almost more paper than I could carry.  Thankfully, just after the expo, I had an order for Thank You cards so buying all that new paper felt justified.

After scouring the interwebz for card ideas and seeing demos of people blending borders on their designs, I just had to try it out on a card of my own.  One of my other co-workers was thinning her crafting collection, and graciously thought of me.  So I decided to give it a whirl.  I think it turned out pretty good.

I spent most of my morning getting my craft cave organized, so I have a renewed passion to get in there and make stuff happen.  Plus... I have orders coming in, so I have to get it crackin.  But I'll leave you with one last picture.  One that was snapped quickly with my phone, but gives me an uber big smile...

Just a little peek into my world of crafting.  I can't wait to make more stuff happen and to share it with you!  Until Next time...