A little birdie told me...

Two posts in one day, wait, what?  I just realized that I should have posted this card before I posted the American Celebration card because this little cutie uses the June Stamp of the Month "Life is Tweet".  This stamp set is only available during the month of June and today's the last day - yikes!

I originally made this card for my monthly CTMH unit swap, but I liked it so much that I thought I'd share it with my workshop peeps, so we made it there also.

Isn't that fun and bright?  I just love that little bird!  I didn't photograph the inside of the card, but it says "it's your birthday".

For this card we used the now retired "Dotty for You" papers, which I just can't get enough of.  I hope they bring them back at some point.  We also used the fun new Paradise Just Blooms paper flowers.  A button, sparkle and ribbon add the finishing touches.

You may remember from some of my previous posts that for our monthly unit swap we are all given a sketch to follow by that month's hostess.  This was the sketch for June:

If you have a hard time coming up with a card layout, sketches are a fun thing to try.  I use Mojo Monday a lot, but there are several others out there too. If you are interested in getting the June Stamp of the Month, you can do so by popping onto my website today and either purchase it outright for $17.95 or if you place an order of at least $50, you can get the Stamp of the Month for $5 - what a deal.  :)  Click HERE to get to my website.

Here are all of the images included in this fun stamp set:

Thank you as always for visiting my blog.  Enjoy your day!  And check back tomorrow for another card (no, I'm not going to do a 3rd post today).  ;)

American Celebration!

** Editing post to play along in the "Patriotism Challenge" on the Heart2Heart Challenges Blog.**  
It's a great site with lots of fun inspiration, check it out.  Funny thing is the last time I played along on one of their challenges was two years ago this same time of year and same theme.  My card ended up being one of the top 5 of the week back then.  Click HERE to see that card.

Happy Saturday to you!  I thought I'd share one of the cards we made in my latest card workshop this past week.  The theme this time around was "Summertime".  We made five fun, bright and sparkly cards.

This particular card was created in honor of the upcoming 4th of July holiday.  I love how it turned out.  I still haven't found my best setup for photographing my cards though (they always look better in person), but here it is.

Isn't that fun?  It's a larger card than we usually make, a 5x7.  We used the stamp set called "American Celebration" to random stamp the fireworks and the large star and banner in Cranberry & Moonstruck ink colors.  The star shape can be cut using the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge, although I cut mine by hand so it's do-able either way. The striped paper is from the Superhero paper pack.  It worked great for this card with the reds and blues. And of course we added lots of bling, larger sparkles in the centers of the large fireworks and bitty sparkles in the center of all of the small bursts. The Baker's Twine is a fun addition to any card. This particular color is not from Close to My Heart, it's from The Twinery and the color is "Denim". I must admit I'm a bit of a Baker's Twine hoarder, so I have oodles of colors.

Here's a bit of a close up of the card.  I was trying to show that the Star and the little "Celebrate" banner were both popped up.

Thanks for looking, I hope you enjoyed and I hope you have a great 4th of July holiday next week!  Check back tomorrow to see another of the cards we made.

Victory Criss-Cross Birthday Card

Hi y'all!  Yeah, I'm from Oregon, so I don't have an accent, but I think it would be fun to sometimes.  :)  I'm popping in to give a peek at another card we'll be making in my upcoming "mostly masculine" card workshop this weekend.  This is a Criss-Cross card w/ pull out insert.  I used the new "Victory" paper pack.  Isn't the plaid and camouflage fun?  I also used two different Stamp Sets: "Card Chatter - Birthday" and "Varsity Alphabet".

For my sample I stamped and cut out a number for a future birthday boy.  If my workshop attendees have a particular birthday in mind, they can do the same or they can change it up and put the word "Dad" or "Son" if it works for them.  We'll also be stamping directly on the twill ribbon.  I love to do this and unfortunately the twill is no longer in the catalog, but I've got lots in my stash, so we'll work on using it up. 

Thanks for looking!

Awesome proposal

This is already spreading like wildfire on the internet, but for anyone that hasn't seen it, wow, what a fun proposal from right here in Portland, OR.  I've never seen anything like it.  Enjoy!

Facebook is slowly killing my blog

I haven't always been the best at posting on my blog, but I can definitely tell when facebook began to rule my cyber world.  It's so easy to jump on there, especially on my phone, upload photos of the kids or projects I'm working on and my poor little blog has been suffering for it.

I think it's going to have to come down to me scheduling a certain time of the day/week/month (or whatever) to sit and write up some blog posts.  They do take a while sometimes, especially when uploading photos (because I have a bazillion still sitting on the camera), but I do enjoy keeping family & friends updated on what's going on.

I also like to be able to write more than a sentence or two like on a facebook status (I'm a little wordy if you haven't noticed).  So as of right now, I'm vowing to be a better blogger.  I'm still going to post a mix of my family and crafty stuff  (sorry Eggers).  I hope that the readers that are here for my family stuff can bare with me through the crafty stuff and vice versa.

So without further ado, here's a quick little crafty post:

I've mentioned in the past that my Close to My Heart unit has a monthly card swap between us unit mates.  One person is the hostess and picks out a sketch for us to follow and we take it from there.  We choose papers and embellishments and interpret the sketch to our liking.  Amy was the hostess last month and chose the sketch was from the Mojo Monday blog.  Each Monday they post a new sketch and you can play along and link a photo of your project to their post.  I've yet to work on a current sketch and be able to link mine, but I like the sketches anyhow.

Here is the sketch we followed:

  
Knowing that I would be doing a mostly "masculine" themed card workshop in May, I chose some more masculine colors and this is what I came up with:

Supplies used: 
Papers - Typeset, Footloose
Stamps - Blue Ribbon, Happy Birthday (retired)
Inks - Cocoa, Creme Brule, Vineyard Berry
Embellishments - Wooden button, Colonial White Waxy Flax, Twill Ribbon (retired)


What do you think?  I like a lot of dimension on my cards, so hence several embellishments.  This is one of the cards we'll be making at my workshops on Sunday, May 27th and Wednesday, May 30th.  Hopefully the attendees like it.  I need to start working on the rest of the cards.  I'll post them here as I complete each one.  Until we meet again...

What is the French word for Pig?

I don't know what made me think of this yesterday, but as I was getting ready for work I had a flash back to the Summer of 1986. My parents and I were at the dinner table with our French exchange student, Philippe. I'm not sure what the main dish was that night, but I do know one of the sides was corn on the cob.

I remember Philippe's face as we all buttered & salted our corn and then picked it up and started eating it. He was bewildered. He kind of laughed and then told us that we were "savages". He told us that they don't eat corn like that in France, they eat it off the cob. Only pigs eat corn on the cob. He then went on to teach us a new word in French - "cochon" (pig), ha ha.



I often think of Philippe when I'm savagely eating my corn on the cob in the summer. :)

Philippe, if you're reading this, thank you for the laugh. Please give your lovely wife and two beautiful daughters a hug from me. I hope to meet them some day. :)

It's swappin' time again...

no, not wife swapping, although that could be interesting. (Have you seen the new Celebrity Wife Swap show, I have to admit I've enjoyed a couple of the episodes.)

OK, enough of that, let's get to the reason I'm posting on here right now. I've been so bad about posting, so I'm just going to say my normal apologies and make my obligatory "I promise I'll start posting more often" statement and move on.

I'm supposed to be getting ready for a workshop I'm doing tomorrow afternoon, but while I'm thinking about it I thought I'd share a couple photos of some cards I just made for a swap I signed up for. The idea of this swap is to promote items in the new Idea Book, that just went live this week.

I'm participating in a couple of different swaps, but for this one I'm assigned a particular new paper pack to work with and a specific project. In this case I was assigned a 3x6 greeting card and the new paper pack called Cruisin'.

This is what I came up with.



Isn't he a cutie? I used the stamp set called "A Bowwow". I stamped him on one of the papers in the new Cruisin' paper pack, cut him out and glued him to my card front. I also stamped his little collar on a different paper from the pack, cut it out and glued it on. Some people think I'm crazy but I really find scissor cutting very relaxing. In case you're new to stamping, that's called "paper piecing" of which I'm a big fan. I also added one of the new little "gilttery buttons" to his collar with an added sparkle in the middle. Even dogs can use a little extra bling in their lives, right?

Here's a close up of the doggie and his collar.



I just love the argyle paper too. I wanted to use it as soon as I saw it in the Idea Book. So after a couple nights of cutting and gluing here are all 41 cards before being mailed to their destination.



Whew, that was a lot of work. And because I'm a glutton for punishment I signed up for two different spots in this swap, but since I'm supposed to be prepping for my card right now, I'd better stop and show you the other card tomorrow. It's almost midnight here, so I'm going to pop in a movie (I think it will be "You've Got Mail" this evening/morning) and I'll open a Mountain Dew (yes, I'm that healthy) and get to craftin'. Thanks for looking!

Randomness - Eyebrow Girl

This is totally random, but I just love this video and she's such a pretty girl, it's a bit mesmerizing. What does that little pink frame on my sidebar say? Yes, apparently I am the queen of Random, lol. Enjoy!

First Holiday Craft Bazaar of the season down...

only 5 more to go - yikes! With that said, I just can't seem to get my crafty mojo working today, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to post some photos of Linda's and my first Holiday Bazaar of the season.

This event took place on Tuesday, October 18th at the Sunset Presbyterian Church. This was a fund raiser for Eve's Daughters, a non profit and volunteer run organization for the benefit of single mothers, a very good cause. This was the first time they had put on an event like this and I hope it was a success for them. The vendors were asked to donate a portion of their sales in turn for a spot in the show, which we were glad to do.

The evening went by very quickly as there were only 2 hours of sales, but both Linda and myself did very well in that short amount of time. It was also a nice way to ease into the Bazaar Season as we've signed up for the most shows ever this year. Hopefully we'll survive this, lol.

Here we are at our table. One of the volunteers was nice enough to take our photo.
The only thing that was kind of strange about where they put us was that big display behind us. We felt a little odd about it because it had nothing to do with us. You can't really see in this photo, but there was an easel behind where we were standing which was all about kisses and had photos of people kissing on it. But we were able to make a few jokes during the night, offering up "a kiss with purchase", etc..

Just before the doors opened I took a quick tour of the table with the camera so I could show off our crafty items. Lots of fun stuff.



Here are some of Linda's beautiful flower pins and hair clips. The photo doesn't really do them justice, they're so pretty in person. There are also some fun bookmarks she made as well.

These are a new addition this year. Linda molded these cute little flowers and turned them into rings, earrings and hair pins. I love how they turned out!

Here a some more of Linda's items; some fun little girl hair clips, tissue cozies, magnet sets and mini notebooks.

Here are some of my altered Tic-Tac "Snowman Kisses", Linda's embroidered towel sets and fun fabric wristlet key fobs also made by Linda.

Here are some of my Post-It note stands with matching pens. I made these for the first time last Spring for a show we did and they were quite popular, so I thought I'd see how they did for the holidays.

New this fall are my Cozy Sock Cupcakes. You may have seen them in my previous post. These turned out to be pretty popular and I sold about half of them, so I'm replenishing my stock.

Here are some single magnets made by Linda and some Halloween test tube treats filled with Skittles, put together by me.

More goodies...

I hope you've enjoyed seeing what Linda and I have been up to. We both have more items planned to sell at our upcoming shows, so I will try to take photos of those at future events. Our next show is this Friday, November 4th. It's a private in-home show that a group of ladies put on for their friends to come and shop and they also raise money for a good cause. Should be fun, but I've definitely got lots more to do before then. I see some late nights this week after work.

Thanks for looking!

Inedible cupcakes anyone?

What?!? Inedible cupcakes? Yes, and inedible because THEY'RE SOCKS!! Okay, these are just so stinkin' adorable and I couldn't wait to share.

I saw some on line last fall and had to try them for myself. I spent most of the day yesterday making these and am loving the way they're turning out. Each one turns out a little bit differently, which adds to the fun.






I'm displaying them on a stacked dessert tower that I borrowed from my mother-in-law. Funny thing is, there is a ceramic "Ratatouille" figurine attached to the top, so I covered him up with a display cupcake. As Tim Gunn says, "make it work". lol

Now I just need to wrap them in some cellophane and add a tag. I'm going to be selling these at some upcoming bazaars in the next month and a half with my friend Linda, but these aren't the only things I'll be selling, so I'd better get to crafting, chop chop.

Thanks for stopping by!