cough cough snarf ick gross

Why yes that has been me since the day after Christmas! I have been stuffy headed, runny nosed, coughing, aching and just plain old miserable. I spent two days laying on the couch doing absolutely nothing. Seriously could not motivate to do a thing. 

Thank goodness the kids were home or they would have been walking to and from school as this mommy was not functioning. It also helped since Kira could be my big time helper and feed me as well as Alex. She did awesome and I am so proud of her.

I am feeling much much better. Unfortunately I gave this head cold to my wonderful husband who was non too happy to receive my gift. I feel bad for him but he is also on the mend now. whew.

Of course we are getting better and are expecting a big old snowstorm Thursday into Friday of this week. oh the joys. We ventured out today to stock up because I was not in the mood to do it tomorrow (New Years Day) or the day of a storm. Been there, done that. Plus it is just going to get colder as the week goes on- brrrrrrr.

Kids go back to school on Thursday. I must say it hasn't been that bad of a vacation for them. There has been minimal screaming and fighting. That could have been because I was so deathly sick and didn't notice, but I'm taking it as they were actually able to enjoy each others company. Yup, I was loving my medicine that made me sleepy and dopey to the real world.

I am working on a small project that I hope to finish up sometime in the new year. Get it?? Since it is New Year Eve and all?? Sometimes I crack myself up. I do have some previous years projects that I need to post for your viewing pleasure as well. Hope to get on those tomorrow.

May you all enjoy the coming new year and the blessings which come with 2014!!

merry christmas from our house to yours

May you all enjoy the blessings of the day.

what flavor would you like?

One day I was coloring in some of the Paper Smooches animals and my wonderful daughter had this idea that I should color them like ice cream flavors. hmmmm... sounded like a fun thing to do so I tried it. They came out so darn cute! I then put each cow on its own card. Very cute.

My best friend has a niece who loves cows but probably wouldn't be interested in the cards so I came up with a way for her to give these adorable little creations to her niece.

I used papers that accented each cows flavor. I used my Spellbinders dies to cut out the scallop circles. I found the burlap material/ paper at Michaels and it worked out perfectly!! I also picked up a 12X12 frame which just so happened to be on sale at the time!! 

I am now awaiting to hear how she liked the cows. They did receive my friends husband stamp of approval. That is a step in the right direction!! And yes I will post the cow ice cream cards soon. They are adorable as well!!

Merry Christmas Eve!!

quick post for my friend ali

Christmas is coming rather quickly and boy do I have a ton more to do... So this will be a quick and simple post for today.

I made this card for my special friend who ran away to Canada after becoming a part of my heart over the past four years. Oh sure, use the excuse that her entire family is there and it makes her husband happy to be at home more. 

What about my needs?? 

Geez, some people can be so selfish. 

(and yes that would be me)

I found the bird cage stamp at Michaels and thought of this special lady right away. I could see it stamped and heading her way. Then I looked and there was this adorable bird stamp. How perfect!! It was like the universe aligned and said to me "yes you need those stamps". Well who am I to go against the entire universe?? 

Oh the best part?? The cost of both of the stamps was $1.00!! Serious on sale baby.

I stamped the cage and heat embossed with gold embossing powder. It turned out a bit too gold and not perfect. So I dug through my stash and found some metallic rub ons that worked amazingly well to 'age' the cage. That then brought me to the point of deciding the entire card needed an aged look. Inking to the rescue. I stamped the bird and popped him on the top of the cage since he needs to be free! I used some glaze pens for his beak and his eye. A bit of washi tape to create the table for the cage to sit on and some pearl bling and I called it done.

Very happy with how this turned out.

watch the seasons pass

Have you checked out stamps from Paper Smooches?? OMG! I totally love their images and their blog is so inspiring. And yes they have an educational blog with videos and more inspiration there. I have a few sets of their stamps and if I won the lottery I would own each and every one of them- dies too!!

I came across this amazing image on their blog created by Lynn Mangan and HAD to create the precious tree for each season. Seriously, how perfect is that tree???

The fun part was finding the perfect green shades for spring. 

Sorry for the blurry picture. Guess I was very excited about these cards.

It is a bit hard to see in the picture, but the leaves have been stamped at the base of the tree in white.

The stamp sets I used for these cards are all Paper Smooches. the Gently Seasoned stamps for the tree, Bold Blooms for the leaves, and the words are created with the Alphadot set.

I made this set for a special friend of mine who loves trees (and decided she HAD to move back to Canada). I will be making more of these as I simply love them.

monster high layout

I had the pleasure of working with some very girly papers and such for a friend of mine. She was going to cut my hair and I was creating the following layout for her in exchange. I had to first figure out the whole Monster High thing. My Kira has not gotten into them so it was a total learning thing. Plus the specific request was for a Clawdeen Wolf. Worked out pretty well as she is dressed in purple and pink!! Right up my alley!

Here is the completed layout in all of its glory.

I used Bazzill paper and some fun specialty papers from Michaels to complete this layout. The bling I had. I did have to purchase the tiger print ribbon but it was for a good cause. I tied the tiny bows myself. I have an amazing tool to help me do that. I used my Sybill (Silhouette original) to cut the title as well as her name. I used a font which was pretty close to the Monster High one. Thanks to my friend Bobbi for helping with that!! 

The layout is inspired by a PageMap and for the life of me now I cannot remember which one. But those are always a good place to start!! The claw print on the other page as well as Clawdeen and the skull head are all images I pulled from the internet and printed out on photo paper. I didn't like how it looked on regular cardstock at all. I then cut out the images to use. Clawdeen came out so darn cool. She looks like a sticker!! I used a couple of my Fiskars border punches (one on each page) and more bling!!

Happy to say that she did love these pages. Her problem now is to decide on using them for a birthday celebration or for Halloween pictures!!

50th anniversary card

Once again my mom came up with a challenge for me. A 50th wedding anniversary card! The good news is that she did give me lots of time to do it. whew. I went off to Michaels to find some gold papers to work with. I had absolutely no plan in mind, I was hoping to be inspired. I brought everything home and sat it on my desk for a few days which was very good as my first idea wouldn't have worked at all and glad I waited. The end result is so much better than I could have imagined.

I started with some chipboard numbers and used my gold ink pad to make them gold. As you can see, my poor ink pad did not survive the adventure and needed to be retired to the circle file after I took this picture. And the gold was really not what I wanted. 

This is the inside of the card. I hand cut these banners, used some gold thread and gold seed beads to attach them to the card. Some gold brads finished the hanging part of the banner.

A better view of the banner.

Here is the front of the finished card. Love that gold paper. It was a dream to work with and the glitter was not falling all over the place. Always a good thing. I used some Heidi Swapp color shine in gold to make the numbers more gold and less blah. I used one of my spellbinders shapes to create the base for the 50 to live on.

Close up of the numbers.

Inside of the card. Oh so amazing. All the letters are a stickers which I cannot remember the brand but I did get them at Michaels.

Mom was pretty happy with the card and for that I am happy.

a card for a special couple

There is an amazing couple whom I know and love (and flat out treasure) who were celebrating their anniversary. These two are my connection to the alien world around us. So they needed a very special card to celebrate their very special day and yes it needed to have an alien theme.

I started with stamping this really cute guy on his way with my anniversary wishes. It has to be a green based card and was lucky to have some amazing alien green papers!! I have had the together metal plate for the longest time ever. I do believe I was waiting for this card to use it on.

Here is a close up of this adorable alien. He has a google eye and his cockpit was pop dotted as well as his antennae on the ship. I added some green stickles and some glossy accents to give the cockpit a glass like feel.

This is the inside of the card.The astronaut was cut out and colored and pop dotted. I added the small red heart brad since he is on a mission of love. I used some white ink to stamp the sentiment and all those adorable stars. Both the alphabet and the star is a set of stamps that I bought years ago at a dollar store and they work just as well as any other I have purchased. And since I love purple, this little guy had to be purple and connected to his ship with a bit of purple twine.

Close up of the astronaut. I did add glossy accents to his helmet face.

I will admit that I totally forgot to take pictures of this card and had to beg the recipient to take them for me as I wanted to share this card with everyone. Thanks to my sweet Alien for doing that for me and for being in my life. Here's to many many more years of happiness for you and yours!!

paper bag album part 2 (photo heavy)

Thanks for coming back to see what I created with all those goodies from yesterdays post. Here is the cover! Isn't it just dreamy?? And it gets more and more dreamy as you go forth.

I won't do much narrating since the pictures are pretty self explanatory but when necessary I will pop in a word or two.

The file folder on the left page has extra pages sewn into it for added journaling or pictures.

The green book opens and can be seen open the coming pictures.

These are the inserts that were tucked into the pockets created by folding the paper bags.

Thanks for looking!! More fun stuff in the coming days. I am having fun finally getting these creations posted to share with everyone.

paper bag album part 1

Again another mini album to share. At least the start of one anyways. In one of my groups, we had a challenge to create a mini album by sending the same items to all members participating in the swap and then we would see what each one of us would create. Totally a fun challenge!!

I am showing the packages of all the goodies that all the ladies received and had to work with. Items could be altered and inked and stained and misted to make them work with your book. Look at all that stuff!!

Now are your wheels spinning with all these great ideas?? Yup, mine was too. Tomorrow I shall post the completed album. Until then, have a super duper kind of day!!

rudolph christmas tags

A few days back, Alex was bored. Code word- needs to be hanging with mommy or daddy. So I asked him what he wanted to do. He wanted to do arts and crafts. Okay, we can work with that. What kind of craft? Gluing, paper, marker, paint, clay? oh yeah, and let's remember I was heading upstairs to start working on dinner in five minutes!!

He didn't know what he wanted to do so I pulled up Pinterest and showed him this cute pin I found and asked him if he wanted to create some to/from tags for us for Christmas. He was all for it. I got him all set up and walked away!! He was so excited to be left in my office with paints and in charge of getting these tags done. He came up to the kitchen, without any paint on his fingers!! and let me know he had finished stamping and was waiting for it to dry.

He went up and down the stairs a few times until he was certain things were dry so I got the red and black paint all set up for him and let him at it. Oh my gosh, he did such an amazing job!! I told him I would add the antlers and the to/from stamp when he went to bed. I also rounded the corners and love how they came out!!

I think I have to get Kira to do some too. There are not enough tags here for all the gifts we have to give!!

mini album challenge

What do you get when you put a group of scrappers together?? A ton of fun and talent. In a group I am in there was a challenge where ladies sign up to send the same items to myself another scrapper. We would then take these items to create a mini album which would then be sent off to two lucky ladies who had sent items to us. The first two pictures show some of the items that were sent to me. Lots of fun stuff to work with.

And here are some pictures of the completed album. Front cover.

Close up of the front cover. I mod podged the quote onto a piece of chipboard and did some sewing.

Inside of the album-

Close up.

I hand sewed some seed beads at the top of the scallops.

Cute little pocket.

This is a mini flip book on this page. It is shown in the next two pictures.

More seed beads sewn into the mesh. 

Each of those file folders can be opened and used for pictures or journaling. More seed beads sewn onto the mesh.

Again, another flip book held into place with some brads.

Lots of space for journaling or pictures.

Back of the book.

It had been so long since I had made a mini album and it was so much fun to play with items that I didn't choose but had to work with!!