Can't Wait!

YAY!! Thanksgiving is only days away! This year my brother will be home for the holiday weekend-- last year he was still away at Marine Corps boot camp. Then there's the craziness of Black Friday shopping! My sister and I are usually amongst the other nut-cases standing in line in front of Target at 5 in the morning :-) Not sure what the plan is for this year. Hehe.

Anyway, here's my card for today's challenge at 365 Cards. The challenge was to color a stamped image using anything but markers. I'm usually more of a colored pencil girl, but this time I used watercolor paints to color the leaf and acorn. It was a bit difficult because I stamped the image on some homemade paper which turns out to be VERY absorbent. After a few tries, I was happy with how it turned out:



Thanks for looking! I love reading your comments :-)

Tassels and Mortarboards

Okay, I have to confess something. It's terrible. I was unprepared, so I had to do something I said I would never have to to again...

I bought a card. At the store. *sigh* I went to two graduation parties this weekend, and didn't have any graduation cards in my stash. For the first party, I at least had a cool generic card that would work just fine. But I didn't have time between Saturday and Sunday to make another one, so I had to buy one. But I made sure I bought something that I'd never make myself... I felt like that might somehow justify what I was doing. Haha.

Anyway, needless to say, my projects for today are an attempt to make sure this doesn't happen again! Lol. This first project is for 365 Cards' challenge to use five squares. I kept this one pretty simple, but I like it.

Here are a couple more with caps and tassels...


And lastly, here's a project I did just for fun. I have a few of these boxes sitting around and I've been wanting to decorate them. I thought this turned out really pretty :-)

A Certain Sentiment... Missing U

Okay, I'm back. Here's what I made for 365 Cards' challenge to create a card with the sentiment, "I Miss You." I made this one with more of my handmade paper :-) If you click here you can see the paper I made and a couple more designs.

Handmade goodness :-)

Oh no!! It's been five days since I've posted anything! Geez, this week has just flown right by. Anyway, let me tell you what I've been up to... I am SO excited because I have finally realized one of my life-long dreams (well, sometimes a week feels like a lifetime. lol) to make my own paper!

It turned out so good!! Most of the time I cut the base for my cards from a 12x12 piece of paper. Depending on the size of the card, I usually end up with stacks and stacks of leftover pieces-- all uniformly cut to the exact same, generally unuasable size. Haha. Despite my efforts to use the leftovers as elements on my creations, the pile just keeps growing. I googled for "how-to" instructions several times, but finally found what I needed on dear ol' Etsy. Lots of pictures always help! Of course, I rarely follow "recipes" exactly... but here's how it turned out:

It seemed, from the different tutorials, that the main concern with handmade paper is that ink will bleed through. But I stamped this card and I think it turned out alright. I don't love it, but the ink didn't bleed :-)


Lastly, here's a card that I made entirely out of my own paper \m/(>_<)\m/ <--- Rock on!
It's waaaay prettier in person than it is in the photo. You'll just have to take my word for it. Thanks for looking! Check back later today-- I'll be posting a project for 365 Cards' latest challenge.