AaaaAAaaaaAH!

GUYS!! It's almost CHRISTMAS!!!

I'm so excited.  All of my shopping is done, but I haven't wrapped a darn thing. As long as I can remember, my family has always exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve.  That way we didn't have to rush through everything before heading of to grandparents' houses.  So really, tonight is our "Christmas Eve."  That means I've got to keep this post tight so I can get to wrapping!

Today's challenge at 365 Cards is to create a card using exactly three of three different items on your card.... make sense?  Here's mine:

This is "Snow Fight Kody" from Some Odd Girl, our sponsor this week.  The three items I used on my card are 3 ribbons, 3 brads and 3 pompom balls.  I like :-)

I know the rest of this week is gonna be crazy for a lot of  you, but be sure to hop on over and link up your cards!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Deck the Card

Hey friends!  It's SUPER icy on the roads this morning, so school is canceled... can I get a "Woot, woot!?"

It's Thursday, which means I've got a card for today's challenge at 365 Cards.  All you have to do is create a detachable ornament for your card.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a Christmas ornament.  This was such a great idea and a lot of fun to make!  Here's what I did...

The ornament was pretty easy to make.  I Googled images of "paper ornaments" and got a lot of great ideas.  I found this blog with some absolutely GORGEOUS examples.  My ornament came together mostly by trial and error, since I didn't follow instructions. Hehe.  But I like how it turned out.  I used super fine gold glitter on the edges for a little sparkle.  It looks so pretty, but unfortunately I will also be sparkling for weeks to come.  My sister stopped to talk to me for, like, two seconds and even she had glitter on her. Lol. And so continues my love-hate relationship with glitter.

I used my "Accent Essentials" CC for the frame, and the "Home Decor" cartridge for the center of the ornament.  Sparkly ribbon, silver button, sticky pearl and "Voila!"

The trickiest part of this card was deciding how to attach the ornament so that it could be removed later.  I ended up just using some gold thread and tacking the bow to the top of the card.  Seems to work just fine.  To gift this, I'd probably have to figure out a way to stick the actual ornament down.  I thought some kind of re-positionable glue dot would work... I just don't have any.

I really hope you give this a try!! Since I've got plenty of unscheduled time today, I'm thinking I might have to make some more of these ;-)  Thanks for stopping by!

Super quick!!!

I'm gonna try to sneak this in really quick!  I always forget that the deadlines are for EST... so it's usually too late, but I've got four minutes as I start this post. Lol.

This card is for Saturday's "Life's a Party" challenge at 365 Cards.

Oh man! So close... it's 11:01. haha.

----EDIT----

Umm... so.... it's Saturday. Not Sunday. I have plenty of time. lol.  Hope everyone's having a fantastic weekend :-)

Ho Hum.

Today is just kind of blah.  (Except for when I went shopping and got a couple of new shirts :-P)  I need to stop anticipating the absolute SUCK of the rest of this day.  It's gloomy and rainy outside, and while typically I would be spending this time at my craft table making all kinds of fun stuff, instead I'm stuck with the projects from you-know-where.  Have you ever agreed to do a project and then as soon as you got started, realized that you really want nothing to do with it?  That's where I'm at. *GROAN*  I'm lacking some serious motivation this week.

Sorry to be such a downer today, but it's my party and I'll cry if I want to. Lol.

And anyway, on the flip side, I did remember that I had this card to post:

This one is for the current challenge at Everything But the Kitchen Sink.  The challenge is to use nail polish on your project.  A friend of mine gave me a whole bunch of goodies last week and there were these super cute butterfly-shaped buttons.  But they were definitely the wrong colors for this card, so I painted one with some cool metallic blue nail polish.

Thanks for stopping by today and putting up with my "badditude" :-)  Come back tomorrow-- I'll be in a better mood, I promise! Lol.

"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.

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 ;-)

I Never Know What to Title These Things...

Hello blogging world. It's after 2 a.m. (Just kidding Mom! I went to bed at an earlier time that is conducive to a good night's sleep :-) and I've just wrapped up a couple of projects. The first one I'm gonna show ya is for the Day 24, Terrific Ten challenge at 365 Cards. At first I thought this was only going to end in tears and gaudiness, but actually it was just fine.

Ta-da! Exactly ten.

This next card is one of the invitation/announcement I've put together for my cousin's first communion. It took me forever to decide what I wanted to do, but once I did, it was pretty simple to put together.

I created the grape and wheat image in Illustrator. The hardest part was cutting out all those cups. Sheesh.

Well, it's too late to start working on another card, but there's a DIY challenge for Day 25 at 365. We're supposed to create our own glittered brads or pearls. I figured I'd get a head start so I can work on the actually card tomorrow (err... later today, i guess). I did a few gold and a few silver since I haven't really thought about what I'm actually gonna use on my project. After I covered the brads with glitter (which makes a MESS, by the way) I also covered them with Diamond Glaze. I'm hoping that will smooth them out and keep the glitter from rubbing off later.


Thanks for stopping by! And don't forget to help yourself to my free digi stamp! The link is on the right hand side of the page.

The Touch, The Feeeeel of Cotton...

... The fabric of our lives!

When I saw the challenge for today at 365 Cards, I immediately started humming that song from the cotton commercials. Haha.

The challenge is "Imagine This: Cotton." Not a lot of specifics-- just think of cotton and ready, set, go! The first thing that came to mind wasn't necessarily just the white fluffy stuff (or pink and blue, wrapped around a paper cone). I wanted to go for that raw, natural look with the browns and soft whites.


BOY! I really had to fight with this picture to get the color right... it's still not quite there. I hope it's showing up on your screen like it's supposed to! I wish I could show you-- the colors are much softer looking in person! Oh well :-)

Also, I wanted to show you what I did with the stamp I won the other day from Stretch 'n Bubbles.



Okay. I'm gonna be late for work if I don't leave, so thanks for stopping by!!

Sometimes I Space Out

I do. When I'm concentrating on something, I tend to block out pretty much everything else-- especially my sisters. I even wrote a song about it. Lol. In fact, just moments ago, my sister was singing while I was editing photos and then asked me a question about the song. I didn't even know what she was talking about. I honestly had no recollection of anyone singing anything.

Hahahaha... anyway... okay...

Here's the card I made for the "Imagine This" challenge for Day 8 at 365 Cards. The theme was "outer space." I don't know how many of you will get the Beyonce reference, but here goes:

Wait for it...

Waaaaait for it...

LOL. I saw one of those ridiculous "fan pages" on Facebook with this joke. I thought it was pretty freakin' hilarious. I will be putting this one in the mail pronto to a friend of mine.

I Have A Purple Foot

Greetings fair people of Card Land! It's been far too long since I've done one of the challenges at 365 Cards. I really missed it! They're about to wrap up the year and I wanted to be a part of this last week. These next two cards are for Day 358 and Day 359, respectively.

It took me a while to figure out how I was going to complete the sketch challenge. It wasn't that complicated, but the flow of inspiration was moving like sap through a tree in the wintertime. The paper clips were a bit out-of-the-box for me... And that's a good thing. lol. The papers are from the "Mi Casa" stack again. (If you didn't see my super cute baby cards from yesterday, you should check them out here.)

Next is the card from the scraplift challenge. This one was SOOOOO NOT easy!! But then, if they were easy, the be called "easy card ideas" not "challenges." Gloria's cards are always lovely, but I am just not good at that vintage look! I have to admit, I almost skipped this one... but I'm glad I didn't. This isn't my favorite card, but it's pretty and I like it. I tried to copy the layout of Gloria's original card.

OH! About the post title... I couldn't think of anything clever, so I went for plain ol' facts. My foot is all purple-y in places. I sat on my sister's collapsible piano bench and, well, it did just that. Collapse. On my foot. *sigh* Almost my entire body weight (which is more than... oh... let's say... enough to hurt. Reeeeeally bad) was pinning my ankle and foot between the seat and the frame. But it's okay now. It doesn't hurt, it just looks kinda gross. Which is why I won't be posting photos :-) Thanks for looking at my cards though! Hehe.

Oh Baby...

Today I worked on some more baby cards--this time for boys.

I LOVE the ZooBalloo cartridge! There are so many fun animals! (Some weird ones too... "N" is for... narwhal? Oooookay.)

The zebra card is my favorite... it's a little busier than my usual style, but I like it way much. I guess the giraffe card could be for a girl or a boy. All of the patterned paper is from the "Mi Casa" stack by DCWV. Some of the paper even has little sparklies on it... but not so much as to make it girly.

Thanks for looking! Let me know what you think ;-)

Ad-ing It Up

Yay! I finally got a chance to sit down and make some cards!

Every time I get a new issue of my paper crafting magazine, I always come across some kind of ad that just really stands out to me-- whether it's for a new line of designer paper or some new event or product. So I've been thinking it would be cool to cut out some of these ads and create cards from them. I figure I can't sell them or anything, so it's a fun way to build up my personal stash.

Here's what I did this weekend:

I Like Big *BOWS* and I Cannot Lie

Ha. I'm so funny. :-P

ANYWAYS... here's a card for Day 167 at 365 Cards. The challenge was to create a card that looks like a wrapped gift.


The paper I used for the background is actually from an old gift bag. It was too beat up to use on it's own, but there was a big enough piece that was undamaged to justify keeping it for later :-D Even better-- it's sparkly! Which is perfect for "Art Glitter week."

I don't know if you can really see it in the photo, but I used clear embossing powder over the stamped sentiment. I didn't have a light blue ink pad, so I inked the stamp with royal blue and then stamped it a few times on scrap paper to take most of the color off. Then I inked it with my embossing pad, which also has a blue-ish tint to it. The color is almost perfect!

What day is this?

Oh, yeah. Monday. And it's been a loooong one. I made a couple of cards today for the challenges at 365 Cards. I had a hard time getting the creative juices flowing, but here's what I finally squeaked out...

For Day 162's Sketch Challenge, a VERY simple card. I pulled out the glitter for this one. I haven't used glitter in quite a while, and it didn't take me very long to remember why. I am sparklier than Edward Cullen and so is my table, the carpet and everything else in a five-foot radius. lol.


The color on these photos is a little off today... weird.

This next one is for Day 163's masking challenge. I love doing this! It always looks like such a mess of paper and ink until you pull off all the masks and then... VOILA! I used chalks to color the dress and rose.