~Mt. Surabachi

Children are wonderfully imaginative little creatures.  ;-)
My granddaughter took a leftover long roll from Christmas wrapping paper and hand drew a flag and made herself a flag pole just after Christmas.  It sat on top of her toy box for weeks and every time I walked by I wondered just why she had created it.  I always forgot to ask her every time I saw her though.  I got my answer when we had a HUGE snow storm on the day before Valentine's Day.

Apparently (unknown to me) her great grandmother has a statue of the Marines raising the flag on Mt. Surabachi and my granddaughter admires it each time she visits.

When her grandfather piled the snow sky high last week, she took that flag that had been sitting on her toy box for weeks and planted it atop her very own Mt. Surabachi!  Life imitates Art.

My Layout.

 

 

A couple of close ups.

 



 

 

~Valentine Card in a Box + others

These were the rest of my Valentine's for this year. 

The first one is a card in a box for my mother-in-law.  My Circle MB friends had a Valentine blog hop a couple of weeks ago and TiffysMom posted one for her project.  I thought this was super cool and had to try one, so here is my card in the box.  The butterfly came from Michael's, but the rest of the hearts were cut from Artiste and Hannah Montana.  You can find a very good tutorial for these boxes at SereneStamper.com.

 Next we have a Hello Kitty card with an extra flair button and some yummy conversation candy for Tacoah.

And finally, for the love of my life, a card that follows the same basic sketch as the previous post (the one for my surrogate mom).  In this case though, instead of a vintage valentine, I used a card from Project Life. The paper is from a Crate Paper 6x6 called Love Notes.   I also used a piece of embossed foil for the heart.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Valentine Card

For a very dear friend.  More like a surrogate Mom.  I used a lot of stuff from my stash and even something that would have gone into the trash!  The silver heart layered underneath the felt heart is actually the inside cover from a can of mixed nuts!  Already embossed!  How cool is that!!!

I found the vintage valentine online and just thought it was adorable.  I don't know about you, but the store bought valentine's today are pretty strange.  Minions are cute, but as valentines??  lol
Anyway, I punched the silver heart and then cut a red felt heart a little smaller and hand stitched with white embroidery thread.  Underneath is a piece of red foil embossed with swiss dots.  The base paper comes from Crate Paper Love Notes.  I cut the card base at 6" from Creative Cards.
Thanks for stopping by!

~Valentine Cupid Bears

Tacoah's classroom Valentines this year come from the wonderful cartridge Teddy Bears on Parade!  Just love this cart.  We chose the cupid for her Valentine's and made the boys with blue wings and the girls with pink.  Twenty-four in total.  That meant 24 bows and 24 arrows.  LOL.  On the back of each bear is a treat bag with two heart shaped lollipops and a name tag tied with a coordinating color of ribbons.  The bears were cut at 5" using Bazzill cardstock.  I also used a scalloped circle from Art Philosophy for the Valentine stamp on the bags.  These sure beat the store bought Valentine's in MY opinion. 

Of course, Tacoah grumbled about writing all those name tags.
Of course, the kids are only interested in the candy.  hehe

~Lots of Hearts

What would February be without hearts?   There is a challenge on the Cricut message board right now to make or share previous projects - with Hearts!  Makes sense since Valentine's day is fast approaching.  I have several projects in progress, but thought I would share the first two that I've completed.

I've been looking for this photo of Tacoah - taken at around 9 months for awhile.  It wasn't on my computer, but when I got the new issue of CKC magazine in December and saw this layout by Kayleigh Wiles, I just knew this Red Hat picture would be perfect!  Fortunately David has brought pictures along through 3 laptops he's owned since Tacoah was born.  Yeah!  By using a pretty much black and white layout, the pictures really stand out.  The hearts lend another touch of red and of course the title is silver glittered.  Gotta have some BLING.  The background is white acrylic paint and white dye ink that I stenciled on.  I made the rest of the embellishments with my Cricut and tried to stay pretty true to the original.  I used Hanna Montana for the big heart behind the pics, Artiste, Art Philosophy, Create a Critter to make tags and the other hearts and the Ace of Hearts playing card.  There is only a little pattern paper on here and it's from a 6x6 MME pack called Love Me.  I also used a couple of Becky Higgins Project Line 3x4 grid cards to make the tabs behind the 2nd picture.  The $2 stamp is from Stella Rose and Recorded is from CTMH.  The pussy willow branch was cut from a bunch that I got at Michaels.

 

Next, I set out to decorate her Valentine Mailbox.  Target has these in the $1 bin every year but I missed out on them last year.  Tacoah likes getting little notes  all the time, so we will use this even after Valentine's day.  I put her Monogram on the front and used images from Storybook, Create a Critter,  Stamping, Beyond Birthdays and Pretty Pennants to decorate all sides.  Then I added some bling that I got as a gift for ordering from ScrapbookPals.com.  I just love working with Vinyl!

Anyway, I hope the be back later in the week with her class valentines and some cards.  In the meantime, Thanks for stopping by!

~Sympathy Card

A former coworker recently lost her husband to cancer.   She retired last year so that she could devote more time to caring for him.  I sent her a Mass Card, but wanted to create something a little more personal to let her know I was thinking of her.

This card was created with one of the Year 2 Circle Carts called Sophie.  This cartridge has such elegant cards on it, that it's really my "go to" cart for those extra special cards.  I cut the card base from a solid rose colored cardstock at 4.75" and inked the overlay leaves.  I then chose a blue and peach patterned paper for the card front.  These pieces were inked as well and pop dotted for extra dimension.  Finally, I had a package of different colored fabric rose buds and I made a pin from some little angels I've had in my stash for over a year.  I felt it appropriate and she looks so sweet there.  I lined the inside with cream card stock and stamped a Thinking of You sentiment and hand wrote a note to her.  I hope it provides her some comfort.  Thanks for stopping by!

~Beautiful

I've had this picture taped to my office wall for about 2 months.  I think it was taken when Tacoah was 4 or 5 years old.   It's such a gorgeous picture that I really felt I needed to think long and hard about the perfect layout to put it on.  Well you know how that goes.  lol.  It never gets scrapped.  So when Sara on the Cricut message boards posted another challenge today to kill some time while we await Provocraft's new reveal, I decided it was time.  There was a layout in the Nov/Dec issue of CKC magazine by Maggie Holmes that really caught my attention and I used that as my inspiration.  There is a little of everything on here including tissue paper, inks, twine, ribbon, burlap, buttons and tiny staples.  I still like staring at it. hehe.

I used Accent Essentials to cut the circles, Lacy Labels for the adore phrase and Artbooking for the kraft overlay.  Thanks for stopping by!