Punctual, I am not!

So, keeping on a weekly schedule, just doesn't seem to work very well for me. I mean to sit down and post something regularly, I really do, but it always seems that life just gets in the way. I guess if it didn't, I wouldn't have anything to write about! And today, I do have several things to show you. Last week's challenge was to watercolor something. Well, that I did--x7! I made invitations for the girls' Mother/Daughter Tea Party. Isn't this stamp cute?


This is the inside of the card. It's hard to tell in this photo, but the bear and cup are popped up off the background.

I made these little boxes to hold the treats Angel made for each of the guests. They were made using one of the Big Shot dies from Stampin' Up!


Here's a close up of the jewelry items Angel made. She made the bracelets for the little girls who attended, and the key chains for the older girls and the Moms. Aren't they cute? The butterflies were cut out with a Stampin' Up Big Shot die from shrink plastic. The large ones were stamped with Proverbls 31:30, which is a memory verse that we talked about at the party, and then they were shrunk.


I also made little teapot cookies to go in the goodie bags. I tried a new sugar cookie recipe that used cream cheese. They were really good!


Here's a picture of the items we put in the goodie bags. Each girl got either a bracelet or key chain, some cookies, a butterfly wand (I wish I had taken another picture of all of these together--they were so cute!), a fan that they made at the party, and a picture frame. Actually, they colored the frames at the party, I am printing up pictures I took of each of the girls and will give them back to them along with the girls' "thank you" notes.

I made small flower arrangments in some of my teacups and attached smaller versions of the butterflies to them. We also attached butterflies all along the sheets that were hanging along the garage walls. You can see a picture of that on my family blog.


Oh, I almost forgot to add pictures of the cake! Everything on this cake is edible (except the toothpicks holding the handle and spout on)--including the cup, saucer and spoon. This cake took several days to make, and I wasn't sure it was going to come out. The humidity was too high, and the fondant did not want to harden for me. Next time I attempt this cake, I would really like to have some petal dust to do the decorations on the china. I had to use food coloring, which doesn't blend very well, and definitely is not very forgiving.


Here's a close up of the cup and spoon. I modeled the spoon with one of my real teaspoons. The cup and saucer were also molded using a cup and saucer that I had. It was actually pretty easy to make them, just nerve wracking wondering if they were going to dry in time. By the way, you can click on any of these photos to see a really big picture of them.


Well, it's getting late so I should close this here, but first, a new challenge. This week's challenge will be to work on something holiday related. It could be Christmas cards or maybe a hand made gift you would like to give someone. It's never too early to start getting ready. The more you get done now, the less hectic December will be!

I will leave you with the scripture verse we focused on at the girls' party. "Charm is deceitful, beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised." Proverbs 31:30

God's love and blessings.

Challenge #5

Ok, so either I'm VERY late for the last challenge, or I'm early for the next one. Let's go with the second option there. :o) Things have been a bit busy here with school preparations. Our school books were in dire need of an organizing specialist, but since there are none around, and I'm the resident teacher, I simply did my best at sorting through and figuring out what should go where. Twelve years of curriculum is a LOT of books!

Anyway, with the books all sorted, cataloged and put back where they belong, I didn't have much time left for finishing my challenge, but I managed to get it done. See:

This was probably the easiest layout I've ever done. I had printed this photo out with the scripture verse on it a few weeks ago to go in a frame here in the house, but printed it too large and it didn't fit so I decided to put it into one of our albums. All I did for this layout was matt the photo, emboss the dark blue strip on the side and add some snowflake embellishments that I had.

Let's see, this week's challenge will be to do some watercoloring on a project. You can use watercolor pencils, ink, watercolor crayons, or grab your kids' watercolor paints and have some fun. Michelle's birthday is coming up quick, so I'm sure I will get some watercoloring done and have some projects to post for you next week. Till then--God's love and blessings.

Week #4

Aaah! I can't believe I didn't get this posted yesterday. I even had my projects all done and pictures taken and uploaded and ready. Oh well, better late than never. I'm so excited to have my sister joining us for these challenges. (Hi Pam!)

Here's a picture of the layout I did using a chipboard letter.

I had a hard time figuring out how to incorporate a chipboard letter onto this layout because there were too many options, but I did it! I had fun using my SU butterfly die and some Brilliance ink I bought a long time ago. You can't see in the picture, but the ink on the letter and edges of the butterflies is a very iridescent red and gold color. I followed Sonja's lead and started a photo album on my Facebook just for my Challenge projects so they are all in one place.

This week's challenge is to use dry embossing on something. You can use a die cut machine with an embossing folder or do it the "old fashioned" way with a template and stylus, or any other way you know of dry embossing an image. Try it for your main image on a card, or a background texture.

Well, I picked up 2 new bookshelves yesterday and need to get my boxes of books unpacked and our school curriculum organized before I can play, so I better get off of here and get busy. Till next week...God's love and blessings.

Sunday Challenge #3

I'm so glad Sonja has made it home safe and sound and has joined me in finishing these challenges. I hope we can get some more ladies to play along. Last week's challenge was to use ribbon. I did on a few cards I made, but forgot to take pictures of them before I sent them out. I did however finally finish a layout for one of the frames here in the house using a little bit of ribbon. It's an 11 x 14 frame, so I couldn't print a picture big enough to fit it and decided to do a layout. I loved the rose that was printed on this paper and didn't want the photo to completely cover it so I cut out the edge with an X-acto blade and tucked the photo under it. The ribbon simply helps soften the line where the 2 different papers come together at the bottom.


This week's challenge is to use chipboard letters. Cover them with paper, paint them, ink them, distress them, whatever you like, but use them on a project this week and tell me all about it. Since my printer is working again, I am hoping to get some of Angel's pictures printed and do a few pages for her album this week.

In other news, I'm hoping to get my Stampin' Up! business up and going again soon. I think I'm going to start with a card swap. I just got my new catalog in and am in the middle of sorting through my retired stamps and reorganizing them. Hopefully I'll have that done today and start making a few things with my current stamp sets. It's good to get my office put together and have a place to be crafty again. :o) Especially one with such a beautiful view to look at while I'm working!

One more bit of crafty news. Today was the first Sunday of the month which means we had "potblessing" at our church today and I made a cake honoring all those with a Birthday or Anniversary in August (which includes Mike and I--21 years together and he's still my Knight in Shining Armor!) I decided on a picnic theme for this month's cake. This was so much fun to do. I felt like I was back in art class at school again playing with play-do. :o) Here's a picture of it. I'm going to upload some close-ups onto our Picasa site if you want to check them out.


Well, I better close here and get busy on these stamps. Till next week, God's love and blessings.

New challenge this week.

I am so excited! It came down to the wire, but I did meet my own challenge. I know Sonja didn't get a chance to do any crafting this week as she is driving all over the country right now, but maybe this will be inspiration for her when she returns (Hi, Sonja!).

Here's the project that I used glitter on.


It uses one of the new embossing folders from Stampin' Up! I embossed a piece of vellum and then cut off the area above the flowers. I then traced over the embossed image with a glue pen and sprinkled it with glitter. This card is going to my Sister and her hubby for their Anniversary this month. (Don't look, Pam). The ribbon on the side helps to hide the adhesive that shows through the vellum a bit.

This week's challenge will be to use ribbon-preferably ribbon scraps. You know, those little pieces left over from other projects. See what you can do with them on a new project this week. One of my favorite techniques is to fold a 2-3 inch piece in half and staple it to the side of a photo or other element on a page. I need to work on some pages in Angel's album, so I'm sure it won't be hard to use up some ribbon.

Well, have fun, and happy craftin'!

Finally Settled

Yes, it's been a long time in coming, but we're finally settled into our new home. I don't think I can possibly explain in words how much I love this place. It's not what I thought was my "dream" home, but it is absolutely perfect! One great thing is that I have plenty of crafting space, and I was able to get most of my supplies well organized and easy to reach.

I just finished a super half-week with my crafting buddy, Sonja, and we were discussing how difficult it is now to get motivated to do some crafting now that we're so far from each other and the other ladies we used to scrap with. We've decided to try some virtual crafting together by challenging each other to do or use something specific each week and then post pictures of what we've accomplished. We both feel it would be a lot more fun if more people joined us, so from now on, I will do my best to post a challenge here each Sunday afternoon along with a reminder update on my Facebook page. Some challenges will be using specific products or techniques. Some may be finishing a certain number of pages or cards. I'm not sure what all the challenges will be yet. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I would love to see the projects that you accomplish with the challenge. I don't know all the ins and outs of posting things on the web, but I do know that you can post pictures to your Facebook account or comment with a link to some other place where you have your pictures stored online (ie Picasa). You don't have to post pictures, just comment on here and let me know you finished the challenge. I know there's a lot of forums out there where you can do things like this, but I thought this would be more fun to do with the ladies I know so we can help motivate and encourage one another--besides, I also like seeing pictures of you and the projects you do.

So, in honor of the sale items I picked up at Archivers yesterday, this week's challenge will be to use glitter on a project. It can be a scrapbook page, card, or any other project that you've created. I can't wait to see who will play along with us. I'm going to close here. I've got pictures to print and glitter to glue!

Till I post pics of my projects...

God's love and blessings!

Lookie what I made!!

I got this idea from the trinket boxes that several ladies were posting at Splitcoaststampers. I had been wanting some way of organizing my daughter's hair accessories by color to make it easier to find what we needed each morning, and this seemed the perfect thing. I made some changes to fit what I needed. First off, my drawers are considerably larger than theirs and I made 8 that all face the same way. I didn't want to have to turn the box around to find the color we needed.

I made a blue one for Michelle, and a purple one for her friend Helen's birthday. Here's a shot of the front. The drawer pulls were made by punching shrink plastic with a large flower punch and shrinking them down. They were attached with rhinestone brads and unused eyelets behind to pull them away from the drawer.

Here's the top. I used my Wishblade to cut out their names and my Sizzix to cut out the butterfly. I also used my Sizzix to emboss the front of Helen's drawers.


I decorated the sides with more punched out flowers.


Well, all I have to do now is get Helen's in the mail to her. (It's already a bit late, oops.)

I think I'm going to start planning some projects for classes. Lord willing, we will be settling into a new house soon and I can start teaching again. Yeah!!!

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!