About Me

I am wife to my wonderful husband, mother to two adult children and Nana to one special granddaughter. I also share my heart and my home with several furbabies. Being creative doesn't come easily to me, but I love to try.
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Thursday, July 24, 2014

~Woodland Fairy Altered House & much, much more!

Today I was like a little kid at Christmas.  You see I got happy mail from my swap partner today!
I am in awe and amazed at what Nanci has created for me.  I adore the color palette she chose and I love everything she made!  She created tons of extra things (see my previous post on what the swap entailed) and I love it all!  Considering this was also her first swap, I think what she did is AMAZING! So without further ado, here are my swap gifts!  I warn you, I took a tons of pictures!!

The HOUSE
My woodland fairy house has a wood grain roof and fabric ivory woven throughout.  There are 3D mushrooms and flowers and my very own fairy out front! Butterflies flutter around the dormers.





The MINI
It will take me a long time to fill this up.  There are pockets and folders and tabs everywhere!  I love the mint green and peach papers!  There is even a mini charm on the spine. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!
 




The Chunky Charm
All shapes and sizes of beads in predominantly mint green and rose colors.  It's just gorgeous!
There are word charms and fairies, a ballerina and dragonfly, a key and even a little house!

 
 
All the EXTRAS!
Nanci went above and beyond on this swap.  Besides the listed items, she made me a hand stitched and bound fairy journal, gorgeous color coordinated stick pins, tin pins and paper embellies for my mini PLUS tins pins and embellies for Tacoah.  She also made Tacoah her very own necklace!
If you are reading this Nanci, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  It has been so exciting having you as my swap partner and I love everything you created for me.  To everyone else - CONVINCE NANCI TO JOIN THE CIRCLE!!!  :-)  And thanks so much for stopping by! 
 
 

 
 



~Birthday & Graduation Cards

Summers are always full of birthdays and graduations.  My mother in law will turn 91 on the 27th, so I made these two cards.  The first is from David and me and came straight off of Creative Cards.  I added a few little pearl embellishments.  Easy peasy.  The second one is from the kids and I used a cut from Kate's ABC.  The paper for both was from MME Happy Day.

 

 
 
Next up is a graduation card I made for my hairdresser.  She just completed a two year course of studies to obtain her medical assistant certification.  Fortunately (for me), she will still work part time as a hairdresser.  That's good because I don't have the stamina to find a new one.  Did that 3 years ago and was not fun.  I used a cut from Wrap It Up on this one and the paper is TC You are My Happy.
 
 
 
Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

~House Swap + Mini + more baubles!

Back in May, the lovely Diane on the Cricut message board started a House Swap.  I have never done a swap before and somehow I got talked into this one.  The timeframe was very generous (2 1/2 months!), so I figured I would have no problem with the commitment.  I apologize in advance for this very long post, but this was a labor intensive project and I need to 'splain.  There are pics below, I promise!

I was paired with Nanci and although she is not a message board member (yet!) we traded emails back and forth on the things that may interest us and I settled on a Dog theme for her since her furbabies are very special to her. 

One thing I learned during this process is that there are not many "dog" paper collections.  Fortunately, I still had a half of a DCVW Puppy Stack (retired) left from doing an album for the service dog my sister trained.  The only other collection I could find was by BoBunny, so I bought 2 pads to do this project.  I then proceeded to buy dog ribbon, dog fabric, dog charms, dog beads, a peeing dog....well, you get the idea!  lol

Our task was to decorate a medium size (or alternative) paper mache house from Hobby Lobby, create a mini album ORtag album with at least 5 pages and create EITHER a chunky charm OR 3 stick pins.  Well I did four of them.  The paper mache house was probably the hardest to do.  Cutting and fitting wall paper isn't my idea of fun, but I love the way it turned out.  I used balsa wood for the shingles and applied a light blue acrylic "wash" before cutting/adhering them.  I added faux bricks along the base of the house and around the chimney by cutting foam sheets and adhering to paper and then spraying with "stone" paint.  From factorydirectcraft.com, I got the door mat, the fire hydrant and the two puppies on the front porch.  I needed a porch bigger than the house had, so I mounted the whole thing on a sheet of acrylic.  I added green Celebrate It confetti using Glossy accents to the acrylic to mimic grass.   A couple of pine trees from Michaels' completed the outdoors.  Inside is a dog bed and some kind of painte'rs thing that looked like two dog bowls to me, so that's what they became.  I added some grape nut cereal for dog food and coated with glossy accents. There is also a picture of the poker playing dogs inside.  Outside I added a few cuts from Paper Pups.  We joked on the message board that this house was Rose Red.  That's because I kept adding to it everytime I thought it was done.  Finally I just mailed the darn thing or it might have gotten a basement or 3rd floor!

The House






Next up was the mini album.  I knew I wanted to do way more than 5 pages and JennyD posted some links to some tutorials by My Sisters Scrapper for a paper bag mini.  It looked fabulous, so that's what I set out to make.  Here again I used BoBunny paper and miscellaneous doggie themed embellies that I picked up in various places.  This mini used the medium sized Celebrate It paper bags from Michaels and A LOT of 2 sided tape!  I also attached my chunky charm to the spine.  This album will hold AT LEAST 30 pictures.  The picture shows yellow and blue ribbons on the spine, but I later changed these to blue/white before I mailed.  Just because.  I had a dog tag made for each of Nanci's 3 furbabies and attached to a medium dog collar (with paws!) that I picked up at Walmart.  This became the mini's closure.

My Mini





And finally, because Nanci chose stick pins over a chunky charm, I made these three for her.  The folder also use the DCWV puppy stack paper.  I added a few little charms to the center (main) stick pin.

The stick pins



I sure hope Nanci liked it all.  This was a really fun project and now maybe I won't be so nervous about getting involved in some of the message board swaps.  I sure learned a few things during this process, but I had a great time.  I can't WAIT to see what Nanci has made for me!  Thanks for stopping by!

~Sprinkle some Fairy Dust!

Jenny is our resident fairy on the Cricut message boards.  Each day on our Good Morning thread she sprinkles her special brand of sunshine.  I wanted to create something for Jenny to let her know how much her happy posts mean to me, so I made this fairy canvas and sent her a little fairy dust to go along with it.  The fairy was inspired by an image I found via Google and then I gave her some dimension to lift her from the canvas.   Her wings are green Ginko leaves by Recollections and I used some specialty paper and ribbon on her bodice.  I tried to keep bright happy colors on the canvas and then I added the copper embellishment toward the end.  I had just gotten my issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors that featured this embellishment and thought it would look great here.  It was also very fun to make.  I can't remember where I found the fairy dust but it was through an Amazon store.  Hopefully I was able to make Jenny a little bit sparkly too.  Thanks for stopping by!

 
 
 

~Beads, beads and more beads!

I have been remiss in posting here lately.  I just realized I have not posted since before Memorial Day!  eek!  It's hard to believe that summer is almost half way  over when it feels like it just began.  Anyway, I needed to make a chunky charm for a swap and having never made one before, felt the need to practice.  So I made beach themed charms for my daughter, her BFF and my granddaughter.  BFF also got a card since it was her birthday.  I think they turned out well and have fueled a new addiction.  All of the beads and some of the charms came from Fire Mountain Gems (love them!).  I also picked up some charms at both Michael's and Joann's on sale  I think there may have been a few in my stash as well.  These babies are really STUFFED!  Thanks for stopping by!