Hey, You brighten my day!

Happy Monday!!!
Thanks to everyone who left comments here and on facebook about our painting fiasco. We are laughing at lot more about it and hopefully we will find a good, easy, inexpensive solution. I will keep you posted :)

Hope you had a great weekend. My family and I went hiking at Enchanted Rock (an amazing National park about two hours away) yesterday. It was 76 degrees and sunny and we all had a great time!

Today I have a card to share that I created using stamps and rub ons. The colors make me happy so I thought it was a great card to kick off a Monday morning!

The sentiment stamp is from Smile by Gina K Designs. I also used one of my favorite dies on this---Little Open Scallop Strip by My Favorite Things!

Materials used: White cardstock (Gina K Designs); Stamps- Smile (Gina K Designs); Memento tuxedo black ink; Designer paper- Be Mine: French Rose/Ash, Lipstick/Stone (Echo Park); rub on- Mail phrases (American Crafts); rhinestones- Icons (Me & My Big Ideas); pink sorbet ribbon (the Twinery); corner rounder punch (Creative Memories); Circle and scalloped circle die (Spellbinders); Die- Little open scallop strip (My Favorite things).

Thanks so much for stopping by---you truly brighten MY day!

It was a No Good, Very Bad Day!

Hello! Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Mine got off to a rocky start. Well, in the scheme of things...not a big deal. But the week was long and stressful and Friday .... well, read on!

As you know...we had our bathrooms scraped, re-textured and painted and some other repair work done. Well, we were really happy with the work and my husband asked the same crew to paint the top trim of our house.

HE picked the color (That is important to remember!)
I didn't like it, suggested another and he felt confident that his choice would work. I have been doing so much work on the inside of our home and was tired of making decisions so I relented (probably too easily!) and let him have his paint color. After all, it was JUST going to be on the top trim of the house.

My husband left for work on Friday and I was busy gutting my oldest daughter's room. I went outside at one point to move my car from the driveway and it was going well. The only paint I saw was on the top of the house.

I came out hours later to walk to the bus stop to get my kids and I almost fainted. Seriously.

While I like the coordinating color and the paint job....the only thing I can think of when i look at my house is that it looks like poo!

When my husband came home he was as surprised as I was. The more I looked at it the more it made me cry. (Not literally...I will go on record as not having shed one real tear on this mishap...not worth it.)

So, I figured I would share my poo colored house and story with you all just in case you need a laugh, a cry, or a "I am so glad that didn't happen to me" story.

Without further ado, I am proud to introduce my poo house to you: Jealous?

Here is a picture where you can see the color better (cause I KNOW you want to!)

Note the Beige on the garage door. Plan B is to change out the garage doors, shutters for a dark beige and the trim around the garage door a lighter beige. I am going to leave the top trim the poo color (for now) and see how it looks. It looks OK on the top of the house because of the shadows and it just looks darker up there in small quantities.

I will be sure to share pictures when it is de-poo-ed!

Hope you have a great day!!

A Heart FELT Valentine tutorial

Hello!!! Today I have a little Valentine project /tutorial to share with you. This is the finished project hanging right above my "severely underused double oven."

Just a little something I came up with the other day and figured I would share the process as I made it.

Materials you will need:

Styrofoam heart (Floracraft)

Rolled Flower Die (My Favorite Things)

Cuttlebug (Provocraft)

Paper Piercing tool

Glue (I used Fabri-Tac by Beacon Adhesives)

Pearl strands (in wedding aisle of craft stores)

Felt - (The felt I used on this project is (pink) Michael's- Creatology and (white) from Papertrey. I can also recommend the felt from My Favorite Things. They all cut very nicely with this die.)

Seam binding or ribbon (I used Seam binding)

Scissors (Tim Holtz)

Other Items to Embellish heart-

ribbon

Element Stickers by Echo Park Paper Co. (Little Girl Line )

Step one: Adhere the ribbon or seam binding on the back of the heart using glue as shown. This will be used to hang the heart.

Step two: Die cut the rolled flowers by placing the die face down on the felt. (If you are using a Cuttlebug--You will have the thick bottom plate then the C Plate then the felt square, then the die face down and then the B plate).

Step three: Run the stack through the machine.

Note: You will need to repeat this process many times. I didn't count how many flowers I used on mine but I ended up doing three sets of flowers. Just came back to this step until I had enough flowers to cover the heart.

To pass the time, I cut all the felt flowers then watched television while rolling them up!

Step four: After you have all your die cuts, you can begin rolling your flowers. (You can always go back and make more flowers if you are short!)

First separate the felt.

Step five: Begin rolling the flower as shown.

When you are finished rolling the flower, this is what it will look like:

Step six: Using a paper piercing tool, poke a hole through the center of the rolled flower. (Note: Wiggle the tool around a bit so the hole widens...makes the next step much easier!)

I found these double ended pearl accents in the bridal section of our local craft store. I have seen them lots of places. You will need to cut each strand in half. You use one half of each strand on each flower so you can make two flowers with one strand.

Step seven: Poke the half strand into the flower center as shown.

Step eight: Using your paper piercing tool, poke a hole in the Styrofoam heart where you want to place the flower. Put a little glue inside the opening and around it and insert the strand into it like this.

Step nine: Repeat the process until you fill the heart with flowers. Be sure to place the flowers very close to each other to cover all the Styrofoam. Felt is very easy to stretch, so you can stretch out some of the flower layers to cover patches that didn't get covered after you are finished. Remember to add flowers to the side of the heart because they will show.

Finally, embellish your heart. I used a sticker that said "made with LOVE" (Echo Park) and popped another heart for some dimension. I tied a bow with some ribbon and attached it with a pearl stick pin.

You could vary the idea to embellish a gift box or even make a flower topiary. So...what do you think?

This is a bit different from my normal style but it was fun to venture a bit out of my comfort zone!

This tutorial, along with a lot of other Valentine related craft tutorials, will be posted soon on Most Wanted, the lifestyle blog of VoucherCodes.co.uk!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

What was I thinking????

....this is how I am spending my days....

We finally hired people to come and redo two of our bathrooms. My youngest child was a sweetie and peeled what we "thought" was the paint off of the downstairs bathroom wall. Well, it turns out that there were a few layers of wallpaper underneath the paint so that all had to be scraped off.

While we were at it...we figured we would have the upstairs hall bathroom redone. It was a really dark color and I never liked the finish but had not gotten around to repainting it. Oh, and why not add my oldest child's bedroom ceiling to the list? (The installer from the satellite company fell through her roof when he was accessing cables through the attic and my husband patched it but never completely fixed it.)

Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, little did I know that it would all be done AT THE SAME TIME.

That is right---TWO out of order bathrooms and one bedroom that is out of order makes for fun times.

Now the kids either have to use the restroom downstairs in my stamp room (which has NEVER had so much traffic) OR our master bathroom.

And now I am REALLY REALLY REALLY hoping my son doesn't do his typical "sleep pee" tonight...or he might walk smack into one of those ladders :) (or, God forbid, pee on one of them!)

Here are the bathrooms now (and I will be sure to post pictures after they are finished!)

and...here is my daughter's bedroom ceiling. Ekk....

I hope to have a tutorial up very soon for a fun Heart FELT project.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blog Famous!

Happy Monday. JK...I KNOW it is Tuesday this week. I had a GREAT weekend with some wonderful friends and it was hard getting back to reality yesterday.

But...I eventually HAD to because it is one of my sister's birthday today. All she asks of me is to be "blog famous" on her special day...so here it goes:

Happy 39th Birthday Jeanne!!!

This is a picture of us when we were about 2 and 3. She is on the right: Just a year older than me, I was constantly learning so many things from her. She taught me:
1. It is OK to make fun of your siblings, but if anyone else does it...they better watch out.
2. You don't really have to study for tests (This one was BAD advice...SHE didn't have to study...but I did.)
3. If you don't want to eat your veggies...just hide them under some other food. (Or better yet, put them on the little ledge under the table and the dog will eat it.)
4. Spraying your hair with Sun In in the summer will give it beautiful highlights. (Sure....if you are blond....for brunettes it makes your hair ORANGE.)
5. If you "call" a boy first, he is yours. The other sister can never like him.
6. If you tell on your sister, you will be a declared a tattle tale and suffer the consequences. (Gasp!)
7. Drawing a line across the floor of the bedroom means that you cannot EVER cross it (even if the bedroom door is on the other side.)
8. Sometimes life isn't fair or fun.
9. Sometimes you have to "know when to fold em." (And when NOT to put $100 on black in Atlantic city!)
10. In life, you have sisters and you have friends. You are really lucky if you have sisters who are your BEST "est" friends.

And, here is the "youthful" card I created for her :

I used the My Favorite Things Pure Innocence Birthday Princess for this card. I coupled the image with some Little Girl patterned paper from Echo Park.

I used the Scalloped Scallop die to create the side detail. I cut one of the crowns from the patterned paper and put it on her head and paper pieced her dress.

I wanted to add Jeanne's initial to the card so I used the Banner Day die to cut the shape and just added the Echo Park "J"sticker to it before attaching it to the card with some twine.

Happy Birthday Deed! Hope you enjoyed your two seconds of "blog famous!"
xoxo

Thanks for stopping by!

PSA and an Anniversary Frame

Good Thursday morning! I have no idea where this week went....

I am sure I am not the only one.
I was a bit in a huff yesterday because I stupidly dropped my phone in the toilet. I feel stupid because....this is the SECOND time I did this. (I dropped my Blackberry in the hopper in the summer.) But this time---it was my not-even-a-month-old iPhone that my husband got me for Christmas.

Sigh! I really have to stop keeping it in my back pocket (or at least remember to take it out before using the restroom.)

The good news is that I grabbed it fast and today it SEEMS to be working again. Yesterday everything was working but the phone ... but then, throughout the day, that even got better. Then, it completely froze on a screen and wasn't working at all.

I kept it in a bag of uncooked rice near a radiator over night and so far....so good.
I cancelled my appt with Apple today to get a new one---so crossing my fingers that it remains functioning.

Today, I have another project using Echo Park Be Mine papers and Unity Stamp Co. coordinating stamps, - I Adore You and With Love. It is a little wall art frame:

I used the 10 stamp because we will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this year...hard to believe.

Hope you have a GREAT day. Keep those cell phones out of the bathroom!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Wednesday?!

Hello! Happy Wednesday. (I think?)

Having a holiday on a Monday always throws me for a loop :)

I am just about finished the cleaning, sorting and purging that I started in my craft room. (So look for a fun blog giveaway soon!)

In the meantime, I wanted to share this card that was featured on the Echo Park blog on Friday:

I just love this Little Boy line! So fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

I DID it!

...I finished this!
So...remember I created THIS PAGE a few months ago and promised to come back and complete the page that would be next to it....'cause I had a GREAT picture to pair with it??


Well, I finally did it. Here are the two pages together---Just the 4 of us Summer Boys:



And here is the companion page I just finished. Again, I used October Afternoon to go with the original page but I designed this one to be a bit less detailed so that the two pages together wouldn't be overwhelming. Most papers are from the Seaside Collection:

Gosh I love that picture. It is of my son, Ben (taller blond kid on the right hand side) and his three buddies (his cousins).

I was so excited when I took this picture in the summer. I asked them to take a minute and come over so I could take their picture. And THEY posed....and it just makes me smile. Totally fun. Totally random. Totally THEM!

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bright & Bold Moxie Fab Challenge

Yesterday, I created a few cards for the Bright & Bold Color Challenge for Color Inspiration for Card Makers Week in the Moxie Fab World . There are many color challenges going on over there in celebration of the new special edition: Color Inspiration for Card Makers . I decided to take a crack at this one.


The Bazzill Basics Paper color equivalents for this combination are Beetle Black, Lily White, Pink Fairy, and Tangelo Blast:

And here are my takes on the challenge!

For my first card, I based the design on the cool patterned paper from Echo Park- Be Mine. The patterned paper has white polka-dots...but I wanted to get some pink in there so I used a circle punch to punch a few pink larger dots and added them in. I cut a strip of the same pink paper (Be Mine Collection) and added it to the top of the polka dotted one, cutting a banner edge on it.

I used a Tangelo colored flower and then die cut a scalloped circle (Spellbinders) and added some black and pink rhinestones around the edge. I finished the flower off by adding a rolled pink flower (MFT Die-namics die) in the center.

Finally, I added the rub on from American Crafts and some fun twine by the Twinery.

Next, I went a little darker and used black as the dominant color on this card:

I stitched around the black cardstock and added a ghost flower. I punched a piece of patterned paper (Jillibean Soup) and added a pink button in the center. I cut a strip of the same patterned paper (just used the other side) to add along the side of the card.

The fun letters are by Cosmo Cricket. Again, I finished this card with some twine from the Twinery and a little stapled piece of patterned paper in the corner.

Finally, card three:

I used the beautiful doily image from Nana's Needlework (Gina K Designs) for the focal point of this one. The designer paper is by Echo Park (Little Boy and Be Mine). I added a strip of black cardstock along the center.

I added a big pearl to the center of the doily and a little polka dotted ribbon tie. Finally, I stamped the sentiment from Elegant Post (Gina K Designs) over the center piece and added a bit of stitching along the bottom.

That is it! It was so fun to play with these colors.
Gotta say, I didn't think I was gonna like these colors together...but after the first card, I was hooked. Guess I need this issue. LOVE finding different ways to mix and match colors.

Thanks for stopping by!

You make my heart bloom

Hello! I am in the midst of cleaning out my stamp room---what a HUGE (and not very fun) job! I have tons of things I am purging and it IS nice to get a bit of room just in time for some new CHA releases!

So..... I have a card to share using the newest Stamp TV kit from Gina K Designs called Sent with Love. I created this for the release party last week but haven't had the chance to post it until today.

This kit has so many fabulous stamps. I mixed and matched a few to create this one. I stamped the tree and then stamped it again (so I could use a few heart clusters to put on the ground). I used the bird from the mailbox stamp (just stamped the whole image and then cut out the bird so I could put him in the tree).

I colored all the images with Copic markers. I added another one of the tree hearts to the sentiment to make it all matchy matchy! Designer paper is by Jillibean Soup.

Materials used: Stamps- Sent with Love (Gina K Designs); Memento tuxedo black ink; white cardstock (Gina K Designs); Copic markers; Dienamics Sunshine die (My Favorite Things); Designer paper- Soup Staples: Green Sugar, Atomic Soup: Minced Molecules (Jillibean Soup); Twine (Jillibean Soup); ribbon- mustard (Stampin' Up!) label punch (Stampin' Up!); Sewing machine; corner rounder punch (Creative Memories).

Thanks for stopping by!!

Wintertime!

Hello! Hope you are keeping warm today. It seems like it is cold everywhere in the US today. Our temperatures are lower than usual and it is hard to get out of that warm bed in the morning.

Here is a scrapbook page I created of my littlest, Lauren. She was really excited to see snow again this year when we visited my parents over the holidays. She LOVED sledding down the hill and building a snowman.


I used Echo Park's Wintertime line on this page.

When we visited my parents in PA over Christmas, there was snow.

Since our kids don't see snow very often, they get very excited at the chance to play in it.

Lauren woke up every morning and got dressed in her winter clothes so she could go sledding.

Luckily, her daddy was willing to bear the cold to make her happy.

ETA: Some questions answered-- This is a 12 by 12 page. This is the size I usually scrap. I typically do some sort of hidden journaling if I am using my own handwriting (which I hate). If I incorporate the journaling into the page (like this one), I usually type the journaling in Microsoft Word and then print it and cut it up to add it to the page. I stitched around each photo and along the scalloped circle (Spellbinders) to add some texture.

Stay warm!
Thanks for stopping by!

LOVE offering

Just had to share this little gem we found in my son's jacket. My husband had taken him to a different church right before Christmas (we have friends who go there) and Ben (8) apparently LOVED the service because he promised them an Offering of $32, 100! Luckily, it never made it into the basket.

(FYI....I blurred out all the address info, etc. for privacy purposes!)

Just in case you missed it----The January 2011 Issue of CardMaker Magazine is on sale now.

This issue is full of wonderful card making ideas. Here is a peek at a card I have in the issue:

Thanks for stopping by!

Gina K Preview Day 4!

Hello!!! Tonight is the release of all the new fabulous Gina K stamp sets that have been previewed this week. The release party is on Stamp TV from 7-10 p.m. central and the stamps go live in the online store at 10!!

Today the design team is showing their creations with two more sets: Gleefully Yours (by Nina Brackett) and Smile (the one free with 3 set!).

Here is my card with Gleefully Yours: This set is fun, clever and beautifully designed. I love all the coordinating sentiments. Since my daughter plays piano...I gravitated toward this image but there are so many more in the set...
Yep, I used tulle again on this one...seem to be on a bit of a tulle kick!

Next, I used the Smile set to create a simple little greeting. I just love this sentiment--such a beautiful message to send someone:

Now head on over to these fabulous blogs to see more samples with these sets and don't forget to comment for a chance to win them for free!

Carolina Buchting
Carolyn King
Cathy Tidwell
Colleen Schaan
Deb Felts
Emily Giovanni
Gina K
Giovana Smith
Janice Whiting
Jennie Harper
Lee Murphy
Melanie Muenchinger
Michelle Woerner
Nina Brackett
Theresa Momber
Tina Gilliland
Vicki Dutcher
Latisha Yoast - Guest Designer

Thanks for stopping by!

Gina K Preview Day 3!

Hello! Hope you had a wonderful New Year's weekend!!!
Well, here is the good news----we FINALLY were able to get fly out to Pennsylvania to see my family on Tuesday so we lost two days of our trip but at least we got there! Yipeee!

The bad news is that I had my mail held for so long (since I thought I would be away longer) so I had to WAIT to get my stamps to work with for the new Gina K Release. But...I got them on Monday and couldn't wait to jump on board the preview party.

Today the design team is using the new Stamp TV kit- Sent with Love and it is my absolute favoritist kit EVER! I love all the images and sentiments in it. Here are two cards I made with them:

The little Eiffel tower is so cute and I cannot resist the little heart in the middle. So sweet!

Speaking of sweet---I love the tiny heart shaped gumballs in this machine!
I coated them with some crystal stickles for a touch of glitter:

It was so much fun to stamp again! Now head on over to these fabulous blogs for more Stamp TV kit inspiration. Be sure to comment on all the blogs for your chance to win it for free! Gina is giving away TWO Stamp Tv Kits!! While you are blog hopping today, leave a comment on each blog for lots of chances to win one of these fabulous stamp sets. Gina will announce the winners tomorrow, on her blog entry just before preview day 4. Each blog you comment on will count as an entry so you will have lots of chances if you comment on all of the blogs:

AJ Otto
Asela Hopkins
Carolina Buchting
Carolyn King <--- you are here!

Cathy Tidwell
Colleen Schaan
Deb Felts
Emily Giovanni
Gina K
Giovana Smith
Janice Whiting
Jennie Harper
Lee Murphy
Melanie Muenchinger
Michelle Woerner
Tami Mayberry
Theresa Momber
Tina Gilliland
Valerie Stangle
Latisha Yoast - Guest Designer

Reminder!! The Gina K Designs Release Party is Thursday, January 6th starting at 7 pm central on StampTV. There will be challenges, contest questions, and more samples from our designers on all the new stamp sets being released this month.

Thanks for stopping by!!!