SO Close!

Finally started getting somewhere with the 365 Card challenges tonight!  If I finish all of this week's cards by Sunday night, it might be a miracle.  Tomorrow I'll be running around trying to make sure I'm ready for our "secret sister trip" on Saturday!!  I don't know if I already wrote about this or not, but we're taking my youngest sister on a trip for her 16th birthday.  She doesn't know where she's going, she just knows she has to be in the car at 6 a.m. on Saturday. Hahah.  Actually, I'm pretty sure she knows where we're going now, but we won't tell her for sure and she won't tell us where she thinks we're taking her, so it's more like a "see if we knew who knew what we thought they knew" trip. LOL.  It'll be fun.  I'm totally looking forward to it :-)


ANYWAY... here are the cards I've been working on today:


Day 57-Ad Inspired
Turtles are awesome. I made this one to use as a gift card holder.

Day 58-Crazy 8's
The challenge here was to use 3 different items in quantities of 8. My three things are the "taggies", the rhinestones and the flowers.  On a scale of 1 to gaudy, this is somewhere between "sheesh" and "whoa." Haha.  I think I like it, it's just that it's a bit much for such a small card. This is another gift card holder.

Lastly, my personal favorite of the evening...


Day 59-Moving Parts
Okay, so, the very first thing I thought of when I saw this challenge was a clock.  And since I'm a few days behind, I thought for sure someone would have a similar idea and get to it before I did... but whaddya know-- Not everyone thought of clocks! Or at least no one made one. lol.  The hands on the clock move.  I used an eyelet to attach them, but I didn't hammer it as flat as usual so the pieces could still turn.

Well friends, I'm off to bed.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

"I Wanna Sing You A Song"

I've mentioned a couple of times that I work at a school.  One other gal and I keep about 20 three to five year olds for a few hours everyday for aftercare.  I love it.  They're some of the most clever, intelligent and hillarious little characters you'll ever meet.  Yesterday, we were down to the last few kids (mostly girls) and 4-yr-old Tara says to me "I wanna sing you a song." So they started having a sing-off.  I heard new renditions of songs by Lady Gaga, Hannah Montana and "Tayla Switch".  I'm always amazed by how much of the lyrics they actually know, and amused by what they say when they can't quite remember.  There was a memorable verse from a "Tayla Switch" (Taylor Swift) song about "Dooby the guy" and something about gnomes.  Haha.  I just sat there and smiled and tried not to laugh. :-)

On that note, here's another reminder to check out the Scrap It With A Song challenge blog.  This week the song is "Once Upon a Dream." (And don't worry-- they post the lyrics so you don't have to ask your preschooler!)  I'd love to see what you would do with it. Here's the card I made...

I'm still trying to catch up with all of you guys at 365 Cards-- The only problem is that every time I get one done, there's a new challenge up! lol.  I gotta pick up the pace here...

Day 55-On Pins and Needles
Pins as an embellishment, needles used for stitching.

I used fabric for the bottom of the card and then tried to mimic the flowers with some punches.  For the "pin" requirement, I used straight pins with some beads glued on the end.  I didn't use a sentiment because I wasn't totally sure what I wanted to do with it.  It might just make a cute, generic note card though.

Day 56-Super Sketchy Sunday (I flipped it) and Digi Kitty-"Whooooo's the Sweetest????"

I paper-pieced the image with Bazzill swiss dots paper.  I like the soft, girlie colors-- and how cute is that owl? :-)  I also just wanted to mention that of all things, that sentiment is the only thing that looks wrong in this picture.  Why is that??!?  In real life it's brown and it matches. Just so ya know. Haha.

So Many Ideas, So Little Time

Once again I'm up into the wee hours of the morning trying to translate a bazillion ideas into actual paper cards. :-)  I have so many things going on right now, it's just crazy! We've had weddings, first communions, birthdays, etc. every single weekend for the past month at least. Then I'm trying to finish a brochure for a homeschool conference going on this summer.  It has to be done, like, yesterday.  But it's almost like I can't call it a day unless I make something with paper and glue, so here I sit.

Here's one of my cards in an attempt to catch up on the challenges at 365 Cards. (I don't know that that's ever gonna happen at this point, but I'll go for it. Haha.)  We're going back to the challenge I skipped over, Day 53-Front, Back and Everything In Between.  The challenge was to decorate the front, back and inside of the card.

Front

Inside

Back 

I wanted to make a clear card in a way that would still be a cute picture when it was closed.  The hard part about clear cards is thinking about what it's gonna look like on the other side.  I think this turned out pretty good.  Thanks for looking!!

My Mojo Can't Stay Awake As Long As the Rest of Me

Hey, hey my friends!  Hope you all are enjoying what's left of this weekend.  If you've got nice weather, I'm a little jealous.  We had tornado warnings yesterday and crazy storms.  Of course the story varies depending on which block you live on.  Gotta love St. Louis weather.

If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure you stop by the Scrap It With A Song challenge blog.  Each week there's a new song to inspire your layouts, cards and other projects.  Challenge #2 should be up tomorrow!

SO... my plan was to stay up late the last couple of nights and finish up my cards for this past week at 365 Cards.  No dice.  My body stayed up late cutting pieces of paper into piles of unusable scraps (I'm probably exaggerating just a little), but my "mojo" went right to sleep.  I did manage to finish a card I had started earlier in the day, so that's the one I'm sharing with you.

We're gonna skip over Day 53 for now (I KNOW, right?  It's killing me too!! Lol. Ugh.)  and go to Day 54-Fancy Folds. The challenge was to create a "joy fold" card.  I'd never made one before, but I love how it looks!  Will definitely be making more like this.

I absolutely LOVE this patterned paper.  And actually because it's two-sided, I was able to make this whole card from one sheet.  I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but all the black on that butterfly is covered with that velvety flocking stuff.  It's awesome.

Thank you all for stopping by!

The Internet is Back... and Other Fun News!

I wish I could say I wasn't addicted to the internet, but it's been completely gone for a whole day and the wireless has been bonkers for a week and I wasn't sure I was gonna survive. LoL.  I was about to leave for the local coffee house when the computer tech guy finally got it working.

Also, while we're on the subject of good news, I just found out last night that I get to be on the DT for Scrap It With A Song!  This is the first design team I've been on and I'm really excited about it. Make sure to check it out-- I think it's gonna be fun :-) **Dances around**

Today I have three cards to show y'all...

This first one is for Day 51-Tuesday's Trio.  The challenge was to use three things:  A stamp, alpha stickers and the color red.

It's kinda funny because it didn't turn out even close to the picture that was in my head when I started making it. Haha.  But it's pretty.  The plan was to use it for a friend's graduation card, but really, it's elegant enough to use for a wedding card too. Hmm....

The challenge for today is Day 52-Save the Date. Typically these are used for weddings, but I'm not getting married anytime soon, so... yeah. :-)  How about we have a girls night instead?

Now that I made this, I think I need to actually plan a girls night so I can use it! 

Lastly, here's another baby card I made.  I really like this one too... now I don't know which one is my favorite!

As always, thanks so much for stopping by!

Digi Kitty!

Uh Oh.  I found a new "thing". Hahaha.

This is my first time playing with The Digi Kitty blog.  It sounds really cool and I hope I can stick with it... cuz let's be honest, who doesn't love free stuff?  Today I purchased the "Splish Splash" digital stamp for the challenge.  The awesome part is that if I continue to play along, I get the stamps for the next challenge free.

Here's the card I created with it:

There are a couple more in the set and they are super cute! I love frogs :-)  I found the quote by E.E. Cummings online.  It says "The world is... puddle-wonderful."  I thought it was cute.

Also, I'm working on a few baby cards.  For this one I used last week's sketch at 2S4Y. I LOVE how it turned out!!  This might be one of my personal favorites in a while.

I think my favorite part is the little flowers on the wire.  Sorry the colors are a little wonky... I SO wish I had Photoshop on this computer.  Picasa just isn't cutting it!!! Sheesh.  If anyone has any suggestions for some free photo-editing software, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for taking a look!

Weddings!!

I love weddings.  I like going to them, I like being a part of them.  I just think they're fun.  Except photographing them.  I don't like that so much.  It's stressful.  But anyways, I've got at least four more to go to before summer even officially gets here and I need to go shopping for something to wear.  I'll also probably need some cards, so that's what I did today.

The challenge for Day 50-Digging Deep is to use three things on your card:

1) An item that is more than a year old.  Technically, aside from the paper, it's all at least that old.  But for this, we're gonna say that the brads are my old item.  I think I bought them before I was even really making cards... and the only reason I got them was because they were in a bin of valentine's day clearance stuff at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

2) Something that you were given that you have never used.  Again, we're gonna say that this is the leather corner accents, but it could also apply to the stamp.  The corners came in a stack of stuff that my sister gave me a long time ago when she came to the realization that she was probably never really gonna scrapbook.  They've remained safely in their packaging until this morning :-)

3) Something you forgot you had.  I keep my stuff generally pretty organized and I've gotten better about going through it occasionally to get rid of things I'm not ever going to use, so I usually have a pretty good idea of what I still have in my stash.  The only thing that I tend to ignore and never get rid of are stamps.  This stamp is one that my aunt found for me at a garage sale last spring.  I really liked it, but it's been buried in the box with the rest of my stuff until I rediscovered it today.

Hey, look at me!  I'm posting a card on the actual day of the challenge! Haha.  Thanks for stopping by <3

Weird Weekend

This has been a really weird couple of days.  Not a bad weird, just---- different. Haha. My sis and I sang at a funeral on Friday.  What was supposed to be two or three songs turned into an hour and fifteen minutes of me literally making up accompaniments to songs I didn't know.  That was interesting.  Next time I agree to do that, I'll definitely be asking some more specific questions.  The super long funeral made me almost completely miss work, but it wasn't a huge deal.  And speaking of work, we got out early at the preschool which is really rare.  I got called into work at church again, but then got sent home early because half the kids didn't show up.  SO yeah. It was just weird.

Saturday was less weird.  My cousin's first communion was in the morning, then my sister and I spent the rest of the day at our church singing.  Afterward we checked out a new brewery with some friends.  That was a good time. Sang again this morning and then came home to chill AND of course, make cards :-)

I've got three for you tonight...

Finally finished the rest of the "White Space" challenges @ 365 Cards!  I think these two might've been the most challenging (or they just happened to come on the days I was most tired!).  Here is Day 47.  I don't know if I love this one.  But the little sis liked it (and she's probably my harshest critic) so I'll post it ;-)

And here's Day 48.  Took me a while to come up with this one.  I'm probably stretching the boundaries of this one just a tad with the shape of the decorated space, but it seems like there's been this mini-competition all week long to see who can stretch the rules and/or freak Pam out the most ;-) You guys are funny... and you make mine look like it's not a big deal. Hee hee.

For today's Super Sketchy Sunday challenge, I kind of had to force myself out of "white-space" mode!!  I know Pam mention something about olives, but I kept seeing half of a hard-boiled egg. Haha. But I thought that might be a dumb card, so I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and wondered what kind of animal you could make that has a big round body and a little round head...

SHEEP! Hahahaha... I hope you like it. (Haley, I thought of you when I made this! lol)  Thanks for looking and I hope you've all had a pleasant, restful weekend :-)

More Cards, Less Blah-Blah-Blah

Okay, friends.  I've only got about 15 minutes to make this post, but if I don't do it now I'll ended up posting an entire week's worth of challenges on Saturday, and that would be ridiculous (not that it isn't already). I'm gonna have to skimp on the commentary for this one, but enjoy the pictures, okay?




Sunday, Day 42-Super Sketchy Sunday

The rest of this week's challenges are "White Space" challenges and they are whoopin' my butt!  The challenge is to keep your all of your embellishments and whatnot inside the designated space and everything else is left "blank".


Monday, Day 43
I'm sad to say we've been needing a few of these lately.  But I think it turned out pretty and hopefully it will be a blessing to someone going through a rough time. :-)

Tuesday, Day 44
This one is also for this week's Tuesday Trigger: Lovely as a Rose challenge @ Moxie Fab World.  I got my inspiration from the colors in the photos, but also from Samantha's project with the paper flowers.

Wednesday, Day 45
When I saw this challenge, it just reminded me of butterfly wings.  I did turn the sketch sideways for this one.  And I probably cheated just a leeeetle bit with the stamp and the black matting. Hehe. Nobody's perfect :-)

Thursday, Day 46
I love this paper! I found it on clearance too, which makes it 10% prettier. Haha.  I also used it on the Sunday sketch.

YAY! All done-- and a few minutes to spare! Lol.  Thanks for coming by to look at my cards :-)

Life Happens :-)

Dang it.  I wasn't able to get these done before Sunday night, but I'm still going for completing the whole month again, so here they are-- my cards for the second half of last week's challenges at 365 Cards.

Thursday was the end of Easter break at the school where I work, Saturday I photographed a wedding (gaahhh! stress!!!), all on top of trying to spend as much time as possible with my brother before he flew back to San Diego.  Although somehow in the middle of that, I did manage to squeak in a late trip to Target on the way home from work for a sheet of rub-ons for Day 39-Totally Transferred. There were literally only two sheets of rub-ons in that whole store, so I picked this one because of the colors and the variety of sentiments.  I decided to keep the design really simple and just focus on the colors.

The challenge for Friday was, ironically, a little bit easier.  For Day 40-Friday Five, we had to use five colors, five patterned papers, five blossoms, five buttons and five stamps.  Find five stamps that worked together was the hardest part for me, so I ended up just stamping individual letters. On one of my recent trips to Archivers I picked up a package of these buttons which ended up working out great with the colors I picked for the paper.

The Day 41-DIY Glittered Blossoms challenge was yet another difficult challenge for me.  I don't generally use that kind of stuff.  I've said before that glitter isn't one of my favorite things, but it keeps showing up on my cards (AND in my hair, and the carpet, and my clothes.... and in my family's hair, clothes, etc. LOL).  This is another super simple design, but the textures are flippin' awesome!

That shimmery background paper is from a stash that I've had forever.  I don't even remember why I bought it, or what I thought I was gonna do with it. Haha.  I made the flower from an old gift bow that was smooshed beyond being able to use it again, so I cut rough circles from it and then melted the edges over a candle to make them curl.  I mixed some super-fine glitter into some Diamond glaze and then used a toothpick to put it on the edges of the flower. Silver leaves and a rhinestone in the center finished it off.  (I make this sound easy, but I probably burned and over-melted about 12 circles before I got these to turn out the way I wanted.)

Speaking of glitter, this would probably be an excellent time to share with you this story from the other day... My mom and I were making place cards for her women's group at church.  They were going to be very simple with just a single digi-image (this one) and a name.  For just a bit of extra "something" we decided to add some glitter to the butterfly.  Now, the glitter I have comes in one of those stacked containers, like this:

We were using the silver one-- at the very top.  Now, it seems a little risky to leave them all stacked like that while in use, but we were being careful and we finished all of the cards without any problem.  It wasn't until we started cleaning up that this happened:

OOOHHHHH, man. LOL.  Thankfully, it's a pretty small container.  However, the entire contents of that container was all over my craft table.  Also, I'm not going to point any fingers, but I'll let you figure out "who done it" by the direction of the spillage. Haha.  It's okay mom.  I still love you.

I saw, somewhere, a t-shirt that said "Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies."  'Tis true.  We got it all cleaned up for the most part, but we went to visit some family that night and my mom still had it on her face. And you can still rub your hand on my table and come up with sparkly fingers. Haha.

Thanks for stopping by, friends! Hopefully I'll be posting some more stuff tonight or tomorrow ;-)

Another Catch-up Wednesday!

Once again I've failed miserably at posting my cards for the 365 Cards challenges.  Lol.  I really am doing them almost every day, but either I'm doing them at ridiculous hours of the morning and I opt for bed instead of blogging, or I have somewhere to rush off to.  After this week, things should be slowing down a bit and maybe I can stay on top of things! :-)  In the meantime, here's what I've been working on:

Day 35-Super Sketchy Sunday
Here's my take on the sketch...

Day 36-I Quilt!
This one was tricky-- even if it was only figuring out how big those triangles needed to be! I thought I was done with Pythagoras. *sigh*  But I think it turned out cute.  I've had those buttons forever and it was nice to finally put them on a project.  The girl image is mine.

Day 37-Terrific Taggies
This was a fun challenge!  These ribbons are some more things that I've had laying around forever.  I found them in the dollar bins at Target a bazillion years ago.

Day 38-Acrostic Poem
I really had to think about this.  I liked reading the ones all of the other gals came up with-- there were some really good ideas!  Here's what I did...

As always, thanks for stopping by! I love reading your comments :-)

Happy Easter :-)

Hey there, friends!  Happy Easter to you :-)  I'm so tired, I could probably fall asleep right here on top of my laptop, but I'll try not to.  We got through two Easter services tonight at church and we'll do two more in the morning, so I'll have to be getting up yuck early, but I figured I could squeeze in a quick post.

First off is my card for Day 33-Whip Stitch It! @ 365 Cards.  I also used the colors for this week's Color Throwdown challenge and ETBK's challenge to use string.

Next is my entry for the Day 34- Color Scheme challenge and for this week's JUGS Sketch challenge.

Cute sketch!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Hope you all have a fantastic weekend :-)

Monster Post!

Hello Bloggerland!  Hope you all are enjoying this lovely Easter week :-)  I'm about to bombard you with all of the cards I've been making this week.  I've been playing along with 365 Cards everyday so far this week, but haven't had the time to sit down and actually post anything yet.  My brother is home on pre-deployment leave for two weeks, so between that and Easter preparations, it's been busy.  Anyways, all this to say, I sincerely hope you make it all the way to the end! Haha.

Day 28- Super Sketchy Sunday

This one took me SO long to do!! I don't know why.  But I like how it turned out.

Day 29- A Certain Sentiment

Use the sentiment, "Hang In There." I have to give credit to my little genius sister for the frame idea.  Thanks Gina Marie.

Day 30- In Pieces

Use an image on the outside of your card, then use it again on the inside but don't use it in the exact same way.  I created the bunny image for this project.  Gina Marie gets minus 2 "cool points" for calling it a "hippo bunny."

Day 31- All Mixed Up

Take and image and break it down into thirds - 1/3 no color, 1/3 patterned paper, and 1/3 hand-colored.  I realized when I read the challenge that I really don't have much of a selection when it comes to image stamps.  I have a lot of little sentiment stamps, but that's about it. So, I bought one. :-) This SUPER adorable image is from Meljen's Designs.   I stumbled across these stamps on Etsy, but she's got a new website where you can buy directly from her and get and instant download. Sweetness.  The mushroom cap and stem and the book are paper-pieced, the mouse is colored with pencils, and the rest is... well... white.  I wasn't gonna color the grass, but I started, so then I had to finish.  Oh well.  Haha.

Day 32- Recipe Card

Create a card that is suitable as a recipe card. I really loved how Vicky created the inside pocket on her card, so that's what I did too.  The chef image is a free clip art image I found online. Oh, and Gina Marie get's one of those "cool points" back for suggesting the cork "button."  We just sliced off the end of a wine bottle cork that happened to have a design on it.  Coolness.

It would be awesome if I could put my mom's spaghetti sauce recipe in here... But I can't, cuz it's a secret ;-)  How 'bout lasagna? Lasagna's good.  This card makes me wanna sing that song from Lady & The Tramp. Hehe.