teacher christmas gifts 2013

I have the pleasure of helping out in one of the kindergarten rooms with an amazing teacher and her equally amazing helper/ partner in crime/ friend/ paraprofessional extraordinaire. I help out twice a week so I can hang with both the AM and the PM classes. Cutest littles ever!!

But once again I digress.....

I made each of these ladies a set of eight cards for a Christmas gift. So much fun as I love making cards!! I also love using a new tool. I picked up the Fiskars hexagon punch on the black Friday weekend for a steal at Joanns. I also purchased a corner punch from Fiskars to replace the one I misplaced in my office and got both punches for under $10. Seriously happy day for me!!

So using my new hexagon tool I went to work on some cards.

And there you have a fun little something to give to two ladies who let me come into their classroom and paint the children!!

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!!

non traditional Christmas colors

This is a set of cards I created for terri's treasures. I love the non traditional colors. Breaks up all those greens and reds.

It was an amazingly fun time at the card party. So many ladies hanging out and enjoying each others company. I sold a bunch of my samples and even have a few orders to keep me out of trouble for a week or so. Hoping to do it again closer to Christmas and sell some card sets with boxes for gifts.

So if you are looking for some Christmas cards... I have twelve ready for you. :)

Have a lovely non traditional kind of day!

silly silly alex

Yup, it's that time again. Time for my monthly sketch challenge group showing. I have been so busy working on a bunch of samples for my card party, I really have had no time to scrap for me. Not complaining, just stating the fact. So it was lovely when I was able to grab some pictures and scrap! I think it helped with my card creating too.

Here is this month's sketch we had to work with. Pretty darn neat with all those embellies and such.

And here is my take on the sketch.

These pictures are so darn funny! One night hubby stole Alex's socks off his feet and then put them on his hands and used them to talk to Alex as well as tickle him. It was so funny!! The giggles were music to my ears.

These pictures were from 2009. The title was cut with my big ole red Sizzix machine using the Aphrodite Sizzlit font. The brads are from Queen & Co and I have had them FOREVER!! I used one of my EKSuccess border punches. Thanks for looking!

May you have a very silly kind of day!

riddle me this: blog refresher sketch contest

And another sketch challenge at PageMaps. This one is for the Riddle Me This: Blog Refresher Sketch Contest. If you want in on the fun, you have until Sunday September 2, 2012 midnight MST to enter. Prize is Bo Bunny's new Mistletoe papers. Yummy!!

Here is my take on the sketch. I didn't have any pictures that small so I trimmed down a 4X6 on all sides a bit and went to town! Did some sewing which didn't turn out too hot. I think my machine is mad at me for some reason. The stitches kept pulling out or not even catching. I adjusted the tension and it seemed to help a bit. Maybe I'll have to drag the Singer back into the house. I stamped and embossed the circle accents. I painted a chipboard "3" and then embossed it so it matched better. I stamped the word "generations" using  some Studio G $1 stamps. I also used one of my Fiskars border punches. I think it is called apron or something like that. I really like the look of it. Papers are all DCWV. Miscellaneous ribbon that I had laying around.

I had this layout finished, photographed and the picture edited when I went to look at it this morning. I realized it was missing something so I added the title and the brads. I am much happier with it now.

Don't forget to hop over to the PageMaps blog and see what else is happening over there. And if you are looking for amazing sketches, check out PageMaps!! Thanks for stopping by!

more examples for terri's treasures

As I was looking at my website... my examples were a bit lacking. So I am going to work on getting a few more examples posted. I thought a couple of Happy Birthday and Get Wells would look nice.

I picked up the pattern paper at my LSS Wholly Scrap! They had just moved into a new location which is amazingly bright due to the front of the store being all windows now. I had to go and check out the new place and do a little bit of shopping as we wouldn't want the only LSS near me to go out of business. oh the horror!

I did sewing on all of these and had some fun with my flower punches. All the stamping has been heat embossed.

These next two have the medallion flowers on them. I should have gone for a half inch instead of the full inch as this makes the flower pretty large on the card. Not a card to be sent in the mail!! Live and learn.

oh so much fun. Off to get some more cards made. Need to get that website up and running!!

july/ august card sketch challenge

Back again for another month with this great group of ladies who are slowly working on our Christmas cards... one month at a time. This month I only made four of them because I ran out of the background paper but I think I will have enough cards come November.

This is the sketch we had to work with. I really like this one.

And this is my take on this.

A little back story on this card. In my office (crafting pit at the moment) I have a drafting stool instead of an office chair due to the fact my counters are well... counter height. Regular office chairs leave me stretching to reach the top of my desk. (insert silly short jokes here) We found this great stool at Staples and it has been wonderful for many years.

UNTIL....

Both my sweetest Kira and loving husband standing behind me and pushing down on the chair while I am sitting in it. Busted out the hydraulic lifter on this stool of mine. It will go up when Alex sits down on it, but when I do... I'm down below sea level. Seriously.

To make up the height so I can scrap since we wouldn't want anything to interfere with that now... I am using a pillow chair to give me a lift. I got myself all situated and ready to scrap. Totally forgot to grab any Christmas paper. I mean seriously. Since it is such a pain in the hind to get in and out of this chair now... I leaned over to my 8.5X11 paper holders and found this Mickey paper. Then I could grab at my scrap cardstock and my full sized cardstock without leaving my seat. Totally lazy but seriously.... it is so hard to get into this chair now. The minute I put the pillow on it... it raises up. I have to put myself across the stool and stand on a smaller step stool and throw myself onto the chair. I have had daydreams of me falling flat on my face and trying to explain that to the ambulance crew who shows up.

Go ahead and laugh. I am hoping we can get me a new stool soon. Before I end up on the floor.

Pretty neat backstory for a Christmas card. I am wondering if I should include it with the card itself???

sketch challenge, field day and birthday....

Yes I have been quite busy, but in a totally great way. Below is a sketch we were given to use in my sketch challenge group on FB. It is pretty neat and think it will be used again in the future. I can also see where I would add extra pictures!! I love taking pictures.

And here is my layout inspired by the above sketch. After I took the picture and loaded it to the computer, I realized I did not put the date on the layout so that has now been done. This was Christmas Eve 2008. Kira looks so tiny!! She got to make reindeer food in her class and then another teacher gave her the small bag of food. We had some very happy reindeer that Christmas!

Field Day for the kids was on Friday. The day started overcast and not looking too great. By the time they did the roll call of nations/ classes... the sun was out and stayed out all day. Which was a great thing since the school had rented two bounce slides and turned them into water slides!! The kids LOVED it. Even Alex who hates to have water on his face.

Each class was a different nation and they designed puppets and made flags from their nations. The theme this year was the Olympics. All the kindergartners were Ireland. You can see Alex in the front by the white of the Irish flag. And his amazing teacher in the red shorts on the left.

Kira's class was doing Fiji. Here's a picture of my little lady with her puppet which she made into a tree kangaroo and her flag. She did such an amazing job on her puppet! I love it.

And a friend of ours, took mine and Dave's picture after the ceremony. Something that doesn't happen often since one of us is always holding the camera! Aren't we cute?? I then went into the school and helped with Alex's class while they did their events.

Then it was Saturday and a special Saturday it was. My little baby girl turned 11! I mean seriously. How does one lose eleven years?? I swear she was just being born and look at her! Heading into sixth grade and looking oh so beautiful. I'm afraid to blink since she'll be in college then!

For her day, she wanted me to make her a Piplup cake. ummm sure. I can do that. I found this image on the web and posted it to Pinterest since I am like that. Dave printed it out and off to town we went. This was my first time making a layer cake and learned a few lessons. One... you don't need a ton of frosting in between the layers (but I do like frosting) Two... make sure to level them so the cake doesn't wobble. Three... if you are going to decorate with additional frosting... you don't need as much of the base frosting. We are getting on quite the sugar high eating this cake. Totally not complaining... just explaining.

The black gel we used, was fighting us a bit and running when we didn't want it to. Hence poor Piplup's lazy eye and his crooked beak. But the cool thing is that the gel was glitter gel so Kira didn't mind these imperfections and was quite excited to see it after her bath.

Tomorrow begins our last week of school. Not sure how much learning will be happening, but it will be the end. Alex will find out his teacher for next year on Friday and they are having a step up day. I do believe I will have to be there taking some pictures!!

cards and teacher gifts

The first two cards that I am sharing today are safely in my stash... for now. Again they were both made from the scraps from other projects that were laying on the desk and they screamed to be used. So I did!

The next four cards are for Alex's teacher. There are three of each design. I had fun making them but I really am getting "carded out". Good thing its the end of the year and I won't have to make any more for a bit.

And this is the card purse that all those cards are in. She likes green so I thought this would be a good fit.

This is going to be Kira's teachers gift. I will admit I found this idea on Pinterest and I am so happy I went for it. I had a blast making this up. It was so fun picking out the buttons and the different brads to fill in the spaces as well as the mini star confetti that I have been in possession of for quite awhile.

Here is a close up shot of the J. Kira loves it. Hubby says I have too much time on my hands if I stitched all of those buttons. He may be right. LOL

I think I am off to scrap a layout. Feeling the need to do a page instead of cards. Can't imagine why.

pirate and princess party at walt disney world 2008

When we took our vacation in 2008 to our favorite place on earth, we were so excited that they were having a special after hours event. Mickey's Pirate and Princess Party. Was it worth the extra ticket price? Heck yeah. Was it worth staying up until well after midnight? Heck yeah. Would we do it again? You better believe it!!

The empty the park out of the regular visitors which are easy to identify since they don't have a special neon colored bracelet on. Of course there were a few who lingered but once the employees spotted them, they were escorted out.

I pulled out my pictures from this wonderful evening of total fun and started working on them. And then realized I had to finish up my end of the year gifts so the rest of the pictures are now waiting to be scrapped... but I am getting there!

Once again I have turned to my beloved PageMaps for inspiration on all of these layouts. I am truly a fan of these sketches as they can be used in so many different ways and they never look the same twice!

For the evening, I had purchased a princess Mickey ears hat. It even had the tulle on the back!! My family opted to be pirates. Kira was Captain Pluto and daddy was first mate even though he did try to be Captain a few times! The crown eyelets I have had forever. I purchased the Mickey pirate Jolee's just for these pages as well as the Captain hat and ship brads. The pattern paper is from a package of pirate goodies I purchased as Hobby Lobby. 

These pages include our tickets so we can look back and marvel at how much money we spent that night. Thank goodness Alex was free!! I had to change the title of the party since I couldn't very well cut apart the "party" part from the "pirate" part and still make me happy. The times flier as well as the map of the park that had where the "treasure" spots and the character spots were are in the pocket on the right hand page. I added the word stickers to make tabs for easy removal. The Mickey and Minnie on the first page was another flier. I had a couple of those so I put them on the page so that you could see both sides of it. I also had extra maps so that is what is on the front of the pocket.

Great pictures and even better memories!! Kira LOVES Abu. And he is one of those characters that they didn't have out so she was thrilled to see him. As the line was moving closer and closer to him, the character wrangler was letting people know that Genie and Abu would be leaving but that Princess Jasmine and Aladdin would be coming out. Kira was ready to get out of line and leave. Seriously, she is NOT a princess kind of girl (if you couldn't tell by her choice of attire that night) Thank goodness there was a little girl in front of us who only wanted to see Jasmine so her mom was letting people by so they could be in the front of the line when she appeared. Worked for us!! The 'flowers' on this are the Spellbinders Moroccan Motifs which I added a bit of stickles to make them happy.

The group picture was one taken by the Disney PhotoPass people and you could add the little graphic to the print. Works for me!!

Here is what my desk looked like as I started working on the next page. Hubby and kids got me the Cuttlebug Mickey Pirate ship die so that I could use it for these pages. (So sweet to encourage my hobby/ sanity saver) I had never even opened it and once I did, I wanted to put it back. Oh my word!! The number of pieces I had to cut and paste and work together! Holy smokes Batman! I have a much greater appreciation for all of you who do this type of thing free hand or even with the help of a Cricut. WOW!! You are truly special folks and I loves you for it! And happy I don't have many of this type of die. :)

And here is the completed ship on the layout! I think it came out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself (and I do) Plus it adds just enough to the layout since the pictures are stinking adorable!! That's my mom hanging with Kira. She didn't want her picture taken with me but wanted to be with Nana. Works for me. The flag on the bottom is also from that Cuttlebug die. I added some dimension to the flag by adding pieces of cardstock. Looks pretty nifty in person.

And here I am!! Of course I went all Princess colors for this page. So much fun and we were so tired!! The park was getting ready to close but we HAD to get these pictures. I'm glad we stayed for them. So fun.

I have more pictures that are needing to be loved. Hopefully soon I can finish up these teacher gifts. I'm getting there but somehow there always seems to be someone I have forgotten about. I think I have them all covered, but who knows.

disney 2008 continues (photo heavy)

I went away a couple weeks back to a friends place in Maine. I spent the entire weekend surrounded by some amazingly talented women. We ate, we laughed, we slept a bit and ate some more. We each even managed to squeeze some scrapping into the weekend as well. I brought along my Walt Disney World 2008 trip to see if I could plug away at more of that trip... and I did. Nineteen pages later I returned home. I had to put titles on two of them and a journal spot on another which I finally was able to do this week.

Time to share. I used PageMaps for all of these great pages. Sometimes they look like the sketches... sometimes not so much. But that is where my inspiration comes from.

Kira hanging with a small collection of dalmatians at one of the stores at Downtown Disney. Happy little girl there.

They have this fun fountain at Downtown Disney and Kira LOVES standing in it. It was warm so she was enjoying cooling off a bit... but not too much. I used the papers since they looked like water shooting in the air and it matched her outfit as well! I used my big red Sizzix machine and lowercase fun serif alphabet for the title.

One of my little guy on this trip. Unfortunately, he was at the age that once he was released from the stroller, he would take off and laugh at you to try to catch him. Needless to say, we didn't let him out too much. This was one of those times he was testing his boundaries.

Donald Duck!! He was so good with Alex. Alex didn't cry or scream. Just covered his eyes. I added in the circle of brads around the best picture. So much fun!

My silly silly girl. Sometimes she cracks me up to no end.

Waiting for the electric parade and the fireworks.

The kids got some new toys while we waited for more fireworks on this night.

Random smile pictures from around the Magic Kingdom. I stamped SMILE across the top of the layout with my Mickey head alphabet stamps. Very happy I picked them up when they were on clearance!!

Alex thought this was a great show! It was air conditioned, he could get out of his stroller and his television friends were there! Good time.

A few pictures from my mom's favorite ride which turned out to be one of Kira's as well.

Here Kira is hanging out in one of the shops at Downtown Disney. She took the little Tigger and helped him climb the tree in the shop. I totally loved the decorations and took pictures of them.

Alex climbing a light pole at the Hollywood Studios. If Dave hadn't been holding him, I think he would have gotten farther. He was intent on getting to the top where a bird was sitting. He then took off chasing the birds on the ground.

We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney when we first arrived on the Disney grounds. Good food and fun times.

There they are. Now to keep the pace up and I might finish this trip someday. LOL